The Foolishness of Fleshly Perfection

Well, good morning, man, it's cold in here. When we began, we checked the thermostats at 50 degrees when we started the service.

It still says 50 degrees, so I don't know if it's going. But it is good to be together today.

Now, before we go into this sermon, which is a beautiful text,

I want us to think about a time when maybe you were foolish.

We could go around the time when we did something that was foolish, when we did something that we just weren't thinking, we didn't consider the consequences, and someone came and they questioned our behavior.

And they probably used rhetorical questions, right? We know what rhetorical questions are. They're questions that are so obvious, you don't need to answer the question, right?

You know what the question is. They know what the, or you know what the answer is. They know what the answer is. It's just in and out or something?

It is, yeah. Oh, I just fixed it. I just fixed it. All right, we're good. So that would be a little bit uncomfortable, though, if I took the microphone and we began to share.

I'm sure we could fill the whole time, though, with stories of our foolishness, but let's think about our children, okay, because that's a little bit safer, right?

So there are times, and we could pass the microphone around, we could talk about foolish things that our children did, right?

But usually when we confront them with that foolishness, right, because we want them to mature, we want them to think about the consequences, we want them to think ahead, we want them to be thinking, right?

We start with those rhetorical questions, and usually that rhetorical question for the first one is, what were you thinking?

What were you thinking? And then it's followed with things like, what did you think would happen? Did you think your brother would laugh when you hit him in the face?

Did you think that the rock would bounce off the window, right? Why do you think this is funny, right?

Usually that one comes in there. Would you like someone to do that to you? When have

I ever told you to lick the floor? Or told you that it's okay to touch people's eyes, right?

But usually it's not something that's funny like that. It's usually something that happens after they run into the street, or when they touch something that's hot, or they grab something that is dangerous, right?

And we come with those questions, right? Now, let's go back to us as adults.

When someone asks you those questions, did you respond defensively?

Have you ever heard someone who tried to defend their foolishness, right? Proverbs 12, one says, whoever loves discipline, loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

And I like that translation. It's stupid. Discipline leads to maturity, and it often includes someone questioning our thinking or our behavior.

And we see that in this text as Paul begins by saying, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

Now, we can divide this passage into two parts, right? So let me just give you the structure. Verses one through six, and we're going to look at this verse by verse.

We're going to hone in on some words as well. Verses one through six are going to be rhetorical questions for the

Galatians, and there's going to be six of them. And then the second part, verses six through nine, or the second part of six through nine is

Abraham, using Abraham as an example for the Galatians. So let's begin with these rhetorical questions.

And just as a bit of kind of recap, Paul has rested his case against the slander of the

Jewish Christians in chapter two. They were coming in and they were causing trouble among the

Galatians. Their desire was to enslave the Gentile Christians with Jewish tradition. He's even called out

Peter's hypocrisy, right? And so after he's done all of that, now he turns his eyes back to the

Galatians where he started, and he says, he gives that rebuke, foolish Galatians.

I think it's interesting that he uses Galatians and he calls them by their ethnic name, right?

He doesn't say foolish brothers, he doesn't say foolish, oh, foolish church. He calls them

Galatians, right? And I think it's kind of a jab, I think it's kind of a point right here to say, to refer to them because they were

Gauls, they were impetuous, they were rowdy, they were pagan, right?

And so he's saying, you foolish Galatians, and he asks the first question, who has bewitched you?

And this address seems to be dripping with shame, right? Like maybe it's punitive, maybe he's angry with them.

But think about that time, why I started with the introductions, I want you to think about when you were instructing your children in their foolishness, right?

There's a heart there, there's a passionate, loving act of asking them these questions, helping them to think it through.

Paul's rhetorical questions have a point, and their point is to take them back to the gospel before they were tricked, to help them to remember.

And you're going to hear that over, I'm going to push that point over and over in this message. These rhetorical questions are to help them to remember.

They need to know what is at stake here. The gospel, if they continue to be tricked, will become meaningless.

In this witchery, they will deny its power. So he says, let's go back and see who did the bewitching.

Who was it who tricked you? Who was it who bamboozled you? It wasn't me, and I can prove it.

He calls that, he uses this word foolish, which is enuetoi, which literally means without mind.

You are the worst kind of dumb. You were caught in a state where you were too lazy to think.

Usually when we ask those questions of our children, what were you thinking? What's their response? I don't know.

Right? Why? I don't know. And Paul is using this word foolish to point that out.

As a result of your not thinking, you've become true disciples of false teachers. Your guard was down and they trapped you in their spell.

This word bewitched is only used one time in the New Testament, it's baskeno, which means to fascinate or to place someone under a spell.

Now, I'll call to mind an example because I know there are lots of Lord of the Rings fans here, and I just want you to nerd out for a second.

This is just like Theoden, King of Rohan, right? In Tolkien's Two Towers, who's enthralled by the counsel and influence of Wormtongue.

Truly despicable. If you watch the movie, he's just kind of a gross individual. And as Theoden sits on his throne, he is weakened and controlled by a spell that numbs his mind.

It numbs him to the point where he can't even protect his family. I think one of the parts of the story is when he's even considering giving his daughter in marriage, or it's not his daughter, it's someone in his family, in marriage to Wormtongue, which is just gross.

I'm just like, what is going on? But his mind is also numbed from protecting his country and his subjects.

And that's the picture of being bewitched. Theoden had lost his mind to witchery, and so had the

Galatians. Paul says in the next line, he says, it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Now, Paul is not saying that the Galatians were there at Calvary and watching Jesus be crucified.

Rather, he is stating that his public presentation of Christ crucified helped them to see the salvation of God on the cross.

F .F. Bruce, commentator, writes, the gospel of Christ crucified so completely ruled out the law as a means of getting right with God that it was scarcely credible.

In fact, it was incredible that people who had once embraced such a gospel should ever turn to the law for salvation.

Paul is saying, remember. Remember what you heard. Remember the first time when we were together and I laid out the gospel before you.

Remember. As Paul apparently had constructed and delivered such a masterful and vivid and impressive verbal picture, it was so clear, so simple that they must have felt as if they had been transported to see the person and work of Christ on the cross, along with His burial and resurrection.

That gospel takes us to the cross, and faith says,

I'm in. I want that. My life is over.

Let Christ live in me. Remember, Paul has just said that masterful phrase in Galatians 2 .20,

I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave

Himself for me. I'm in. That's what faith says, and what an incredible sermon that must have been.

Probably a lot better than this one, but it was unthinkable that they had heard the gospel, responded to it in faith, and now they had turned their backs to it and embraced living by the

Jewish law. Let's look at verse 2. He continues, and now he says, let me ask you only this, did you receive the

Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Paul is saying,

I gotta ask you a question, just one fundamental question.

Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing by faith? He's saying, remember, remember,

I've proclaimed the gospel to you. How did you respond to the message? What happened next?

How did you receive the Spirit? How did God respond with the gift of the Spirit and justification in His presence?

How did you receive peace with God? Was it by faith or was it because of something you did?

This is the fundamental question for all of chapter 3. How do we receive the

Spirit? And it's by faith. And I can almost hear their answer as Paul is asking this rhetorical question, just like a bunch of children, when you're calling them out on their foolishness, they look at the floor and they barely breathe out the answer, by faith.

Excuse me, what? Did you say something? I thought

I heard you say by faith. Okay, now, there's an interesting thing that's in here that I want you to see.

How do we receive the Spirit? Now, there are lots of ideas about how this happens in our

Christian culture, right? Some people say that you have to have hands laid upon you.

Some say that someone has to be praying over you. Some people say that it's evidenced by speaking in tongues, but what does it say here?

It says, how did you receive the Spirit? And he implies that it is by faith, that the

Spirit of God seals a person at their salvation. We see this in Ephesians 1.

By faith and by faith alone we receive the

Spirit, and that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. And this is why we have such confidence as parents, even as parents of adult children, that our children will be saved.

Why? Because as parents we're diligent to let them hear the Word of God.

We're diligent to pray that God would regenerate their hearts. That's what we were praying this morning before you guys arrived, praying for the children that are in this place, saying,

God, will you begin to work in their lives? Would you let them hear the gospel, and would you allow that to birth faith in them, who of all people are most likely to receive the precious gift, but those who hear the

Word preach to them? This is why evangelism is so important. This is why we proclaim it.

This is why we get out of our comfort zone and we say the things that we don't want to say because we might offend somebody.

Because it's powerful, because through hearing, faith is born in the heart of men.

Paul will confirm this in verse 14. You can just look down, chapter 3, verse 14, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the

Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Again, the Spirit comes by faith in Christ alone. It is the only way that we receive the

Spirit. Let's continue. Paul says, question three, are you so foolish?

Having begun with the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the law? That's question four. Paul is reiterating the rebuke, probably because he has seen their actions, and their actions, even though they said by faith, their actions said circumcision.

So question three, are you so foolish? Are you dumb? That is a bit harsh, but again, it's an unwillingness to use one's mind.

It does not imply a mental state of being an idiot or an imbecile or a moron.

It's just not thinking. Perhaps he does this, again, because they are following through with works of the law to justify themselves.

They have added to the gospel, and they have diluted it. I would even go so far as to say they may have polluted it.

Now think about this, okay? So Chris and I, this fall, have enjoyed going to a wine tasting.

It's a place where we run into non -Christians, and we get to know them, and they ask questions like, oh, what do you do?

And I go, well, I'm a pastor. And they're like, what kind of church are you at? Well, we serve real wine with our communion.

They're like, oh, okay. So you're Catholic? And I'm like, no, we're Baptist. And they're like, huh, okay.

And the interesting conversations come out of that. But in that time, I've learned something about wine, right?

And I've actually purchased some really nice wines, and I've met some of the winemakers.

They've come to the class, and they've told us about it. Now, to drink a nice glass of wine is to...it's

kind of special, right? If you show up at my house, and we open a bottle of wine, you go, oh, what's the special occasion, right?

And it brings a bit of joy, right? That's its purpose. Now, if I'd taken that wine, and maybe

I had diluted it with a little bit of water, right? Why would

I do that? Why would I do that? But this is what the

Galatians are doing. They're taking their faith, and they're diluting it a little bit. And they're putting some other things into it that don't belong.

And maybe, you know, in the past, they had had something that was kind of a shadow of this wine, right?

It wasn't the fullness of it, but they'd kind of gotten a taste for what this wine could be, right?

And maybe it was kind of like cooking wine, or maybe some kind of swill, you know, maybe even like some kind of vinegar or something.

And they kind of went, well, you know, we kind of liked...I remember that. Maybe we should mix a little bit of that into this wine that we have been...this

wonderful drink that we've been given. And then even more, what we do as Christians is we take other things and pour it in there.

Well, you know, I kind of like Diet Dr. Pepper, so I'm putting a little bit of that in there. Kind of like Mountain Dew, or milk, or pickle juice, yeah.

Or even more, we could even go and put something in there that's kind of toxic. Found a factory with a pipe, you know, pouring into a stream, and we just filled up a little bit of that and poured it in that glass.

Now, what would the winemaker think if he came and he tasted that wine?

He would say, what have you done? You have made this an abomination.

You have destroyed this because of the things that you added.

And I think about that with the Galatians and what Paul is doing, he says, I brought you the gospel in its purity.

I brought you what the Jewish people were looking for for centuries, this final fulfillment, the real thing, not shadows anymore, not kind of looking forward to this thing.

It's the real thing, and you tasted it. Do you remember what it tasted like?

Now, before we condemn the Galatians, we must humbly confess our reoccurring dumbness as Christians, okay?

Proverbs 26, 12 says, do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There's more hope for a fool than for him.

There's more hope for these Galatians than there are for us if we think we are wise in our own eyes.

Because there's witchery in our world today. There is a witchery that bewitches those without understanding who do not know what they believe.

Just type in any kind of theological question in YouTube and see what comes up. And people believe that because they don't know the

Word of God. Question four, if you started with the Spirit, what are you doing now?

Is there some other way? You think that somehow you're going to perfect what the

Jewish people were never able to perfect by following the law perfectly? And these very

Jews are the ones who are trying to convince you to try it again. But this is a wonderful question that we should ask ourselves daily.

Having begun by the Spirit, are we now being perfected by the flesh?

Are we trying to do this very same thing? Because it's so easy to fall into religious justification, which is self -righteousness.

Understand that this Spirit's work of justifying regeneration as He makes us alive in Christ, then

He reveals the finished work of Christ on the cross through the hearing of the gospel. And then as He applies the sufficient and powerful work to our sanctification, we would foolishly put our faith in our own goodness and watch the

Spirit's work wither with the addition of self -righteous works.

That's what we do. It's almost like we were trained to do it and we need to learn a different way.

Justification here, which is that thing that makes us right with God, and sanctification, which is that ongoing process where God makes us more and more like Christ go hand in hand while we participate with our sanctification, that ongoing process of becoming more like Christ, the basis of our salvation is never lost.

We are sanctified. We are made holy by saving faith as we continue to repent and believe.

That's the thing that saved us, repent and believe. It's the only way anyone is ever saved, through repentance and believing in Christ's atoning sacrifice and receiving it by faith.

Now, you may say, well, Pastor Barth, that's a lot of theological stuff right there that you just gave us.

And I kind of already know that stuff. And my response would be, do we?

Do we fully understand the gravity of how unnecessary and counterproductive our efforts are to earn our salvation?

Remember Jonathan Edwards, I like to quote him often as he says, you contribute nothing to your salvation except for the sin that made it necessary.

The only thing that you bring to the table is sin and the need to be saved.

And God does everything. It is the hardest concept for us to fully understand because, like I said, everything in our culture, everything in religion trains us to believe otherwise.

It tells us grace can't be that good. Grace cannot be that good, but it is.

So the next two verses, five and six, go together. I'm going to read them together and then we're going to find some context.

Did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the

Spirit to you with works of miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Okay? So like I said, to understand this, let's go to Acts chapter 14, okay?

Because what's wonderful about reading the book of Galatians, this letter, is we actually can go back and we have the story of how

Paul goes and preaches this very message that he's trying to get them to remember in the book of Acts.

So I'm going to kind of jump around in here because I don't want to read the whole thing. But I encourage you later if you want to go back and read it, you can read it.

And what I want you to look for here is two things that are in verse four. One, conflict.

Did you suffer so many things in vain? And the second thing is miracles. Does he who supply the

Spirit to you and works miracles among you, okay? So in this story, look for conflict and miracles.

I'll point them out. Let's go to Acts 14 verse two.

So Paul goes to the region of Galatia, which is modern day central Turkey.

At the end of his first missionary journey. So there's Paul and Barnabas and they're planting churches in Iconium, in Lystra, in Derbe.

These are all cities in Galatia. So in the first city, we find Iconium in verse two.

And it says, but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.

Immediately, they come into town and there is conflict from the Jews. So, they leave there and they go to Lyconium, no, they go to Lystra, sorry.

And in Lystra, they find a lame man who's lame from birth. And if we read verses 10 and 12, it says,

Paul said in a loud voice, stand up on your feet. And he sprang up and began walking.

And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted their voices saying in Lyconium, the gods have come down among us in the likeness of men.

Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. Now you see why the term

Galatians stung so much. These guys were pagans, right? They thought

Paul and Barnabas were Zeus and Hermes. But you also have a miracle that happens here.

And if we go back a little bit further, I should have read eight, there was a man sitting who could not use his feet.

He was crippled from birth and never walked. He listened to Paul speaking and Paul looking intently at him and what?

Seeing that he had faith to be made well. He believed, okay?

Notice that. Let's continue in the story of Paul and the Galatians.

So, here's what happens. The radical Jews from verse 2, they show up and they cause the people in Lystra to riot, which ends in them stoning

Paul, dragging his broken and beaten body out of town. They assume he's dead and they dump his limp, lifeless body in a ditch probably and return to town.

And then we read this in verse 20, but when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up, entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

So again, conflict, there's a riot, they throw rocks at him, they think he's dead.

And here's the miracle, he gets up and he goes back. Then at Derbe, we read 21 and 23, through 23, the church planters, when they had preached the gospel to that city and had made disciples, they turned to Lystra and to Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.

And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the

Lord in whom they had believed. So go back to question 5, did you suffer so many things in vain?

Suffering, the words for suffer there is pascho, which means to undergo an experience, usually difficult and normally with the implication of physical or psychological suffering.

But this word in the Greek has two ways of using it. You can use it in the negative sense, which would mean suffering, somebody throwing rocks at you.

You could also use it in a neutral sense as well, to talk about an experience, so it doesn't really have a negative sense to it.

It can just be an experience. Did you experience so many things in vain?

Now, probably Paul is referring to valuable experiences which the

Galatians had received when they found salvation on the basis of hearing and believing.

So it could be that they had some experience. What would these experiences be? Maybe joy,

I found it, I found the gospel, I believed in Jesus, finally, for the first time in my life,

I'm pleasing to God, I have peace with God. For the first time in my life,

I am free from sin. Think about that experience.

It also could be in the negative sense that they had difficult experiences resulting from the opposition to their new faith in Jesus Christ.

You know what I believe it is? I believe Paul is so smart that he used the perfect word that it could mean experience and suffering, right?

Again, Paul wants them to remember their salvation experience. He wants them to remember that internal evidence that only they could know a change had happened in them.

He says, you know it, it happened. It wasn't fake. It wasn't empty.

It wasn't meaningless. God confirmed that salvation in you. He asked the question afterwards if it was in vain.

I almost think he's saying, tell me my efforts weren't in vain. Tell me my suffering wasn't in vain.

Tell me that it took, that it was real. Now, like I said, verse 4 and 5 go together, so it continues, does he who supply the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing, by faith?

Just as Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. So the last question was about that internal evidence, but he's also saying you were given an external evidence as well.

We just read in Acts 14 about the miracles done, this person who was lame, who was able to walk, and this was common in the spread of the early church among the

Gentiles. It was typical. It was normal. Now, question 6 asks, why?

Why was the spirit given to you and why were miracles done among you? Was it because you sacrificed, because you prayed, because you sang, because you danced, because you gave your money, because you cried, because you offered sacrifices?

Why? And it's a good question because if we go to Matthew chapter 13 verses 53 through 58, we see

Jesus, Jesus himself going to his hometown. He's there and people are like, wait a second, this guy seems familiar.

Hurry, get out of your book from back in high school. Yeah, we know this guy.

We know his parents. We know his brothers. He's the carpenter's son. And it says in there, it says, and they took offense at him.

Who does he think he is? And Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.

And then it says this very telling, and he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

So getting back to Paul's question, why? Why did you get to see miracles?

Because there were miracles among you. The Spirit of God was poured out on you. Why? It was because God was confirming the word, the message that you heard and believed.

And he says, look at Abraham. His righteousness was granted. It was counted. It was imputed to him, not earned by the sweat of sacrifice.

He simply believed in God. So why, why, why would you think that works or tradition or rituals do anything to earn

God's favor, to earn His blessing, to earn His mercy? Grace was given to you just like it was given to Abraham.

That's the first section. That's all the rhetorical questions. All getting them to understand and getting them to this point where he can use

Abraham. And he's going to use Abraham all through chapter 3. Abraham is an example.

He says, know then that it is those... This is verse 7. Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham.

And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, and you shall all the nations be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Do you hear the repetition? Over and over. He says, know then, because of all that I've just said, you need to understand that those of faith are the sons of Abraham.

Not the Jews, not the Jew of Jews, not the Pharisee of Pharisees, but those of faith.

Last week, Josh kind of tipped my...the hand of my message here to say that I was going to hammer on two things, that there are only two kinds of people.

There are people of faith and people of unbelief. There are not two ways to be saved, a

Jewish way to be saved, and then a way for the rest of us to be saved.

There's only one way to be saved, it is by faith. And he's making this point by going back to Abraham.

All the rest of that stuff were just shadows, shadows of things to come. Shadows of things to be fulfilled.

The temple was a shadow of something to come, a people that he was going to create.

The sacrifices were a shadow of the things to come, which was Christ Himself to be our sacrifice, and now we have that true thing.

Now, there is a type of theology, and I just have to touch on this because it's going to jump into the rest of Galatians, and it was hard for me not to preach just solely upon this theology, which is called replacement theology.

Actually, that's what dispensationalists call it in kind of a derogatory term. We would call it fulfillment theology or covenant theology.

But it's one of the hallmarks of a Reformed Baptist church, is covenant theology.

And so I'm not going to spend the whole rest of the time that I have left talking about this, but I am going to touch on it because I do think that it does have some implications for today and the things we see in the news.

So replacement theology, when you hear that, it is a theology that teaches that the church is the replacement for Israel, and all the promises that were made to Israel in the

Bible are now fulfilled in the Christian church because all of those promises

Israel rejected when they rejected the Messiah. These promises are no longer fulfilled for the nation of Israel or for the

Jewish race as a chosen people. Now the covenant, and in covenant theology, we believe that the covenants of the

Bible are the way that God relates to man, okay? All the way starting back in the

Edemic Covenant, going through the Noaic Covenant, through the Abrahamic Covenant, going through the

Davidic Covenant, and now we receive the new covenant. And we celebrate that every

Sunday here in communion, right? We see that those covenants don't replace the ones that have come before, but they fulfill them, that they expand them, they develop them, they build on them.

And that what Paul is saying here when he says that, know then it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham, that God would justify the

Gentiles by faith, and that those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith, that we as the church are

God's chosen people. He's going to say that at the end of Galatians, in Galatians 6, 14 through 16, he says, and this will be the last verse in the letter to the

Galatians, but far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision but a new creation. That's what counts.

And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy upon them and upon the

Israel of God. So covenant theology sees the church as an expansion of Israel.

It's an understanding of how, again, God relates to man in history, and He's relating to man in the fullness of His original intent, what

He intended when He gave the covenant to Abraham, that all nations would be blessed through Him.

If we go to Romans chapter 9 to read some sections out of that, we understand, as Paul says, but it is not as though the

Word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are not his offspring.

But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as His offspring, the children who are by faith, not by the flesh.

If we bump down to verse 30, what shall we say then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it?

That is a righteousness by faith? But that Israel who pursued the law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law?

Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith. But as if it were based on works, they have stumbled over the stumbling stone.

As it is written, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.

So in the beginning, when the proto -eugengelion comes out, and God says to the woman, there's a seed that is coming from you that's going to crush the head of the serpent, and we didn't know who that was, just this promise all the way through the

Old Testament until finally in God's perfect time, He reveals His Son who dies, and He saves us all.

You see, that true fulfillment that we only saw in shadows in the Old Testament in Abraham's day, now we see clearly.

The nation of Israel is in the news today, and the

Scriptures need to inform our thoughts as we hear media, and even as we hear pastors say things like, they're

God's chosen people. The Scriptures say that the nation of Israel is no longer in a favored status.

Now we should pray for them, absolutely. Just in the same way we should pray for any nation who is in war, that God would bring peace, and I do.

But there's no spiritual connection with Israel as a nation and God's chosen people.

Jewish people actually hate Christians, and they deny our Savior, Jesus Christ.

They don't act like God's chosen people because they're not.

Now, is there hope for Israel? Maybe. Read on in Romans 11, there's a possibility that God is going to regraft them back into the olive tree that we've been grafted in as Gentiles.

But that's for another sermon. So let's kind of wrap this up here, and ask the question that is in verse 3.

Are we so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, being justified, made right with God, are we now being perfected, becoming more like Jesus by works of the flesh?

Paul is putting justification and sanctification...we

tend to make these two different things, but what he's saying here is that they are the same.

They both happen by faith. That we can't add things to it.

We can't add ritual. We can't add traditions of men. We also can't add sin to it.

We can't receive Christ and have this new faith, and also at the same time say, but I really kind of like, you know,

I like some of the sinful things that I do. I want to hold on to some of those things.

God, you can have most of my life, but this little thing over here, I don't want you to touch.

But that's the thing with sanctification, right? God wants to change us.

He didn't save us for nothing. He saved us for something. I hear people say, you know, what is that phrase that I hate so much?

God loves you just the way that you are. Oh, I hate that. Why? Why do

I hate that so much? Because God does not love me just the way that I am. Otherwise, He wouldn't have sent

His done Son to die for me. He hated the way

I was. He loved me, yes, but He did not love me just the way that I am, and He doesn't want me to stay the way that I am.

That's what sanctification is about. So here are four things about sanctification that I want you to know, and we'll close with this.

First, Christ will complete it. Our call to worship this morning was Philippians 1 .6,

and I'm sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.

He is going to do it. He also says this in 1 Thessalonians 5 .23, now may the God of peace

Himself sanctify you completely, and may your entire spirit, your soul, and your body, all of you, be kept blameless at the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ, the one who calls you as faithful, and He will do it.

God is relentless about our sanctification. He's on a mission to change us, to make us look more like Christ.

We don't become Christ, but we want to imitate Him. He wants us to imitate

Him. The second thing I want you to understand about sanctification, and also justification, is that it is through an act of God's will.

Let's look at justification first, John 1 .13, you who are born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God, of God's will.

God willed you to be saved. He chose you. He wanted you, and now sanctification is of His will.

Now listen to 1 Thessalonians 4 .13, this can't be more clear, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality and every other kind of sin.

He wants you to change. He desires to transform men and women by an act of His sovereign grace.

The third thing I want you to understand about sanctification, because there's got to be someone in here who's going, yeah, but don't we have anything to do with that?

Aren't we supposed to do something? Yes, we are. We are to work it out.

In Philippians 2 .12, it says, therefore, my brethren, as you've always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, your own salvation with fear and trembling work out.

Now, I move that to the end there because I think the work out, the verb actually moves to the end.

Your own salvation with fear and trembling work out. In the Greek, work out there means work out.

So what does that mean? You have to dig a little bit deeper. It actually is in the middle or the passive voice, which makes it have this connotation.

Let the result be brought about. So with fear, your own salvation with fear and trembling, let the result be brought about.

Let it happen. Let it happen. The next verse, he says, for or because it is

God who works. Now, that works is active and it is a participle, which means that it is ongoing.

So it is actively happening, it is actively working in you both to will and to work for your good pleasure.

So how do we let that process happen?

That's what it means to work it out, is to let that process that God is so diligent about working in us, let it happen.

Now does that require something of us? I think it does. I think it does.

I think it's not being passive. I think you can either be working with the process or working against the process.

And a lot of us work against the process. But what would it look like for us to work with the process of God sanctifying us?

Because I really want to use my efforts efficiently and not waste them. Well, I believe that Romans 12, 1 and 2, as he says, don't be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

I think that us putting our understanding that what we experienced at first, that joy, that freedom from sin, that unity with the body, that being pleasing in God's eyes, that experience is what we want.

But we kind of believe other things that tell us, well, actually what's really going to make you happy is this, this sin, this anger, this lust, and we believe it.

We've got to get it into our minds. We have to instruct ourselves by the hearing of God's Word.

That's how faith came, right? If it's the same way as we...if we walk in the same way as how we received it by faith, certainly we need to be having faith to be sanctified.

And how does that faith come? By hearing the Word of God. That means

I'm way over time. Last thing. Yep, that's the sound.

Last thing. Obedience is part of justification and sanctification. God called you to repent and believe.

Mark 1 .15, He says, repent and believe the gospel. And the obedient heart is the one that responds to that.

The obedient heart is the one that says, okay, yeah, I'm in. First Peter 1 .2, we are saved according to the foreknowledge of God the

Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for this, or to this end, obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood.

We obey because obedience matters. Again, I don't think you can be passive -passive.

You're either working with God or you're working against Him. Obedience is working with Him.

We obey in justification. We obey in sanctification because it is the singular, true, and proper response to grace that is given.

Again, knowing that our justification is secure, it is protected, it is anchored, and it is captured, and our sanctification is nailed down, it is in the bag, it is foolproof, it is settled, it is determined.

And so, therefore, we obey because it is the true, singular, and proper response to the grace that we've been given.

Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for all that it says to us.

Thank You for how it calls us, Lord, to something real, to something true, to something better.

Forgive us, Lord, for accepting things that are so much less, for mixing things in that dilute and pollute the purity of our faith.

God, we want to walk in freedom. We want to walk in joy.

We want to walk in the pleasure of our God, and we do that by faith and faith alone.