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Encouragement for the journey from God’s Word. Today's Scripture: Isaiah 30:12-33:12 / Proverbs 23:22
Well, good Friday to you. Here we are at the end of our week already, end of our work week anyway. Last day of our work week, last day of our vacation Bible school at church. Looking forward to the weekend.
Looking forward to what God will do on the Lord's Day as we gather together and worship him together. We open his word and hear what he has to say to us. I hope you can join us this coming Lord's Day.
We have Sunday school classes for all ages at 9 .30 and then morning service at 10 .30 and evening service at 6 o 'clock. I hope you can make it out for one or all of those services. I know God's word will be a blessing to you if you can do so.
Speaking of a blessing, we're reading today in Galatians chapter 5 and there is a statement that Paul makes here that is a proverbial statement. He uses the same proverb more than once, a little saying that probably had a common application in the culture and would have many applications.
It's a statement that says a little leaven leavens a whole lump. Many, many years ago, I was a late teenager and senior in high school. Summer after my senior year of high school as well, I worked at a Holiday Inn in the kitchen as a cook.
One of the things we did, you know when you go to a restaurant they often provide you bread and serve you some bread. This restaurant, what they did was they made these little loaves of bread. We had these little loaf pans.
They were probably, oh, I'd say three inches by five, three by five size pans. We got these frozen rolls of dough. They looked about the size of, oh, not even as big as a toilet paper roll, just a small thin roll of dough.
It came frozen. One of the jobs that I had every day was to take out a bunch of these little frozen rolls of dough and stick them in these little bread pans. I had to grease, spray down the bread pans and so forth, then stick the frozen rolls of dough, one in each bread pan, and then stick it up on top of one of the ovens, just where it was warm.
It was warm. It was an amazing, amazing thing. Within an hour or so of putting those things up there, the dough had thawed out and it was overflowing the top of that bread pan. It was incredible. What had happened?
A little bit of leaven in that frozen thin roll of dough leavened the whole lump. It caused the expansion of that dough to be eight, nine times bigger than it was when in its frozen state. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
What was Paul getting at? One of the places he uses that proverb is in 1 Corinthians 5. There he's talking about the problem of the church in Corinth tolerating a man living in sin. He was living in incest.
The church was just letting this happen instead of dealing with the man. He says, you can't do that, because a little leaven leavens the whole lump. You tolerate this and it just, even as we've seen already this week, it opens a floodgate to more and more sin.
A little leaven, it's going to eat through the congregation and wreck it. It'll ruin it. That was in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 5. Here he uses the same proverb, but with a different application. Here he's not talking so much about some moral issue, he's talking about a theological issue.
The theological issue has to do with justification. How is a person justified? Is he justified by faith alone or faith and works? The problem in Galatia was that there were some who were teaching that in order to be truly saved, you not only need to believe in Jesus, but you also need to be circumcised according to the Old Testament law.
It's faith plus works. Paul's been arguing in the entire book of Galatians, this letter, that no, justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and nothing more. This is the point we come to in chapter 5.
He says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. You tolerate one little shred of works, adding that to your requirements for salvation, and it will permeate throughout the entire lump, and it'll ruin the gospel.
It'll become denominations that would declare that faith alone is not enough. You need faith plus works in order to be saved. No, that destroys the gospel. That is another gospel. Don't allow a little leaven to ruin the gospel.
Salvation, justification, being right before God, justification, is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and nothing more, and nothing more. Let's be sure that we guard the gospel and not tolerate any additions, not tolerate any leaven that will really spread through the whole lump and destroy the gospel.
Father, we do pray today that we would be vigilant and not allow ourselves to fall prey to those who might tell us, no, no, you need this plus that. You need faith plus works. Let's not destroy the gospel, we pray.
We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and that your Friday ends well, and Saturday you get some break from your typical work routine, and on the Lord's day, you have a day of rest, where you turn away from all the stuff of life, Monday through Saturday, and you focus your attention on the Lord, his word, fellowship with his people, worshiping him in spirit and in truth.
All right, have a good day. God bless you.