The Biblical Gameplan For Legalism

I want you to picture a believer walking toward God, hands open, with their hearts sincere.

At first the walk is joyful, but slowly weights are placed on their shoulders.

Do more. Try harder. Don't fail. Don't look like them.

None of these weights came from Jesus, yet they feel holy, so the believer carries them anyway.

Before long their head is down, worship feels heavy, prayer feels forced.

They're still following, but they're exhausted, ashamed, afraid of getting it wrong.

My friends, that is what legalism does to the

Christian. It turns grace into pressure and love into performance.

And the tragedy is this. The weight crushing them is not the cross

Christ asked them to carry. It's a burden He already died to lift.

If you've ever lived under or lived around or lived through or if you're like me, we used to be in legalism or some form of fundamentalism, you understand what this feels like.

I know all too well what it feels like to have grace turned into pressure.

When you feel like on all sides of you something is caving in and pushing on you to be better.

Don't do this. Do that. Don't do that. Do this. Don't look like that person.

You need to look like this. You need to dress this way, operate this way, talk this way. Endless rules.

And yes, this does not mean that our holy inspired Scripture does not have expectation and prescription and does not call certain things righteous and certain things sin.

But what we're going to see today is much like the Judaizers and false brethren that the early church dealt with.

We still have among us today these things and is something that we need to deal with.

So I want to talk to you today about the biblical game plan to deal with legalism, both in your own life and hopefully you're not currently burdened by it.

I would hope not. But if you ever have or ever felt like you weren't good enough or weren't up to par based on whoever's standards, hopefully this message will bring you quite a bit of hope and comfort.

You see, Paul had already defended the gospel he preaches. You see here in verse 1 of chapter 2 it says,

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem. Now if you'll remember before in our previous messages, specifically verse 18 in chapter 1 it said three years later

I went to Jerusalem and it goes through all these different things. There are years and sometimes we think we read

Scripture and think it's almost like a sitcom, right? It's a little 30 minute episode and all this stuff happened over the course of a day.

Well no, this is real people, real situations, real places, and this is occurring over a period of days and months and years.

My friends, your life occurs over days and weeks and months, years and decades.

You can't accomplish all you're going to accomplish for God in one day. Trust me,

I know. I've had this false illusion of I've got to do all this now. I've got to get this done and this done and this done and then

I'll be good enough. Not by the standards of those you're trying to please.

But if you rest in God's grace, you're worthy.

You're good enough because God saw fit to die for you. And His grace is much easier to walk in.

For He only expects you to accomplish on that day, on any given day, what

He's put in front of you to accomplish for that day. Now both for Christians and for churches it's good to have goals.

It's good to have things we may be working towards or things we'd like to see happen down the road.

But my friends, the only thing He expects of you as Christians and us as a church is what He's put in front of us for that day.

Don't carry burdens that you were never expected to carry. But He's defended

Himself over all these days and months and years. And what we're going to see, we're dealing with legalism here, but also this section here we've already seen where He's defended the gospel.

Verses 6 -10 of chapter 1 He talks about those that were distorting the gospel. From verses 11 -24 of chapter 1,

He's demonstrating how this wasn't something He conjured up Himself. He was directly and specifically called by God for the ministry that He has.

Now in verses 1 -10 of chapter 2, He is explaining to the Galatians that yes, while the other apostles, the 12 of Jesus and the ones that you look up to, the other ones that are writing inspired scripture, the other apostles you've had dealing with, while they're important and they're good leaders,

He even calls them later in the passage here, He refers to James and Cephas and John as pillars, those that are foundational and helping grow the church, and He takes nothing away from that.

He wants them to know that His ministry is specifically called and originates by God.

He even says at one point, they contributed nothing to Me. It doesn't mean that what they contribute isn't important.

What He's trying to say is yes, they're accepting Me, and they're accepting Me as an apostle, and that's why

I'm defending my apostleship, because not only am I called by God, not only have I been trained directly by God, but the very apostles you appreciate and hold to high esteem, they've accepted

Me, but the reason they accepted Paul was not because of anything he did, not because of anything the apostles expected of him, but because of what

God did, because of the true gospel of grace, and that is what we're going to see here.

So we've seen all this articulated, but what you see is that wherever and whenever the good seed of God's truth is sown,

Satan and false teachers will seek to sow seeds of falsehood. Now my friends, we don't have time to get into a big discussion on this this morning.

This will be a sermon for another day, primarily probably in Romans 14 and 15, where the subject is dealt with at length.

But when we talk about legalists and false brethren, we're not talking about weak, immature Christians.

Now in my opinion, one of the things that plagues the church in America more than anything today is immaturity, both emotional and spiritual, in Christians.

Not knowing how to act, or what to say, or being very self -centered, and things like that. But when we're dealing with weak

Christians, those that are babes in Christ, or maybe those that haven't grown up in the Lord, or haven't reached a state of maturity spiritually yet, we're still dealing with saved people.

We're not going to handle them as harshly, and we're not going to be as stern, or firm, or even reject them simply because they're acting in an immature way.

And in this sermon we could cover for another day, we could go and look at different passages where Paul himself made concessions at times.

He would change things about his methods, adjust himself to the people he'd be speaking to.

He didn't compromise the message, he didn't compromise the gospel, but he knew his audience.

And he knew that certain times he may have to engage in certain cultures, or maybe look, or be a certain way in order to reach them.

Those things that we do, we have to tolerate, and we have to make concessions sometimes for maybe weaker, more immature

Christians that are among us. And it shouldn't be a need to remind you of this, or remind myself of this, but it needs to be said, all of you, and me, were all immature

Christians at one point. Hopefully you're not now, I haven't seen any of my immaturity here thus far.

We all seem to be very mature in the Lord, and seem to want to do the right things. But if you've ever been around immature

Christians, you know what it's like to tolerate it. Well you know what, somebody had to tolerate you at some point, and they had to tolerate me at some point.

They had to put up, and I think of my pastor that trained me, and I think about some of my early days that he knew me, and some of the ideas

I had, and things, and I had a lot of passion and gumption, but not a lot of wisdom and experience to match it.

And what you find over time, it isn't that you lose your passion, but your experience and wisdom comes up to match it.

That way you're more measured, more mature, more regimented, not in a legalistic sense, but you're just more aware of what you're doing.

We're not talking about those kinds of people here. Those kinds of people need to learn the

Scriptures and grow up in maturity, and we need mature Christians to help them come along. That's not what's in view here.

We're talking about actual, unsaved, unregenerate, false brethren that Satan will use to get into a church and disrupt it.

We see some of this come out, and there's reasons for these things, but in Acts 20 and verse 28,

Paul tells this church he's speaking with, Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.

Because I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

Inspired New Testament Scripture never refers to Christians as savage wolves.

Wolves, goats, that language is used for non -Christians. And notice he's telling the elders here, you need to be on guard.

Now, this application can go to non -pastors as well. All Christians need to be on guard for the truth.

And when you have a church where the elders and the non -elders are all in concert together, being on guard for the truth, you're going to have a very strong church.

I don't care how many people are in the pews, because it's not about how many are in the pews, it's about how strong the hearts of the believers are.

But you have to be on guard. You can never just say, well, I know so -and -sos come into our church, and they're teaching some really weird stuff, but, you know, bless their heart,

I'm sure it'll be okay. You know, there are items and things. We talk about this a lot on Wednesday nights.

Shameless plug. If you come on Wednesday nights, we talk about a lot of these things, about how there are levels to things, and some doctrines can be debated, and good

Christians can disagree over certain... It's not what we're talking about. We're talking about foundational doctrine, things that we've sung about.

The hymn we have, the church is one foundation. I still have to encourage you all the time. I encourage you again.

When we're singing these hymns in a worship service, take note of the rich theology in these hymns.

It's beautiful. But that's what we're dealing with. These are people that would be in our church that would go against and teach against, preach against, and live against what is the true definitional aspects of Christianity.

Good Christians can disagree on end times, eschatology. We can even have, you know, our

Presbyterian friends would disagree with us on the mode of baptism. We can all still be Christians and get along and be united in faith.

But my friends, there are certain things that we are never to go against.

Jesus Christ is Lord. He is deity. He is the only accepted sacrifice for sin.

Scripture is inspired of God. It's God -breathed, theanostos. It's literally God -breathed.

It's inspired. It's without error. The Trinity, God is one eternal being, having revealed

Himself to exist in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. The authority of Scripture, these things, the gospel, the grace, and the freedom of the gospel.

This is what Paul was up against. They were not quabbling, squabbling over minor things.

These were major things because these Judaizers, these Jewish legalists, were teaching and demanding.

And yes, demanding because you'll notice here in chapter 2 of Galatians, verse 3, when it says,

But not even Titus, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. What's being said there is you've got

Titus here, full Gentile, no Jew in him at all, ethnically speaking.

And the proof of the gospel, he's a living proof of the gospel because he had not been circumcised, nor was he forced to or compelled to.

But these Jewish legalists would say, Titus is not a Christian. Titus is not saved because he hasn't become a

Jew yet. He hasn't been circumcised. That's what they were teaching. You must become a Jew before you can become a

Christian. Legalists today are no different. They will tell you all the things that they have decreed for you to do before you are deemed acceptable by them.

You keep adding it up and adding up. You're just like this person I talked about before. It's your heart's sincere, your walk is joyful, and they keep adding weights and weights and more.

You've got to do more. Try harder. Don't fail. Don't look like them. You've got to look like this. Nobody can live like that.

Nobody can carry that. You can't carry that. I can't carry that. The cross we're asked to carry is,

Lord, I love you supremely. I want to repent and turn from all evidences of sin in my life.

And I want to live as righteously as I can today. I want to be everything

I can be for you. I want to be a shining light for you. And it's amazing.

Anytime you go against one of these things or say something, it gets like, oh, I guess you just don't care about standards. Like, yeah, clearly that's what

I said. No. What I care about is people that add to Scripture. The Pharisees were famous for having 600 -some -odd extra laws they added to the law.

I'm like, oh, so the law wasn't good enough. It ain't good enough to love your neighbor as yourself. You've got to do all these extra things.

How many steps can you take on the Sabbath? And what you're carrying with you and all the... I'm like, what's the point?

Did Christ die needlessly? That's what they do. They're self -centered.

They operate with themselves at the center rather than God at the center. You ever wonder why everything about what

I teach is about being God -centered? This is why. If God is at the center of your life, there's no room for self.

And look, I didn't always operate well with this in mind. There's been many years of my life that were spent with myself at the center.

Part of maturity, part of growing in Christ is a removal of self and filling up that space of your life with God everywhere, in all facets of it.

So we see here, we're going to go through this quickly. This is going to be a little bit more rapid fire than normal on these points.

But this biblical game plan. Number one, you have to know the gospel, the true gospel, and preach the truth.

Notice verse 1 through 3, specifically verse 2, he says, I went up because of a revelation, and I laid out to them the gospel.

When he says here, I laid out, he's saying it's a word that means to set forth in words or to communicate or to declare.

So when he goes up and sees the apostles, he didn't take anything crafty.

He didn't take any some new fancy way of doing things. So many churches get themselves in trouble because they think the latest program or the latest thing, this is going to solve it all.

I don't care if anybody thinks it sounds boring, because it's not, but sometimes people will claim it is.

But the best plan and program for any Christian, for any church, is very simple.

It's not easy at times, but it's very simple. The consistent, thorough, and faithful preaching and teaching of the

Word of God and applying it to the lives of the believers. That's it.

It's simple. It takes on different forms depending on if you're dealing with children, adults, different groups in different contexts that can look a little different depending on what you're doing.

But the basis of it, that's it. Everything that we have, everything that we are, everything that we do as a people and as a church should be focused on the consistent preaching and teaching of the

Word of God, getting it into the lives of believers, and then seeing us live it out as disciples.

So he doesn't go to these apostles and say, Hey, I'm Paul. You need to rely on all of my experience.

I'm going to show you all these cool things we can do. No, he says, I want to tell you about the gospel

I've been preaching. All these people are thinking, these Judaizers, these false brethren, are trying to drive a wedge between us, fellow apostles.

They're trying to make it look like I'm out there going rogue preaching some other gospel. So they say, Hey, you need to come back to Judaism.

That's what we've been doing. That's the way we've always done it. All these years, Judaism, circumcision,

Moses. Why are you changing everything? Paul says, Hold on, fellas.

You don't need to be worried. I'm preaching the same gospel you are.

Jesus Christ died for sinners. He says, I did this in private to those who are of reputation.

Now, he's using this in two... You're going to see this terminology, those who are of reputation.

You're going to see this repeated a couple of times in this passage. There's two purposes for which he's using it. One, he's speaking about the apostles.

Yes, the apostles had a reputation. The people of Galatia knew who they were.

They knew what they were all about. They had earned their reputation. If you have a pastor or someone that preaches the word faithfully...

In our community, we talk about Randy Martin a lot. Very faithful pastor.

One who has spent many years faithfully preaching the word. We would say he's someone of reputation.

Not because of anything Randy's done, but what God has done through him. But also in this passage, there's just a tinge of sarcasm...

In the sense that he knows the legalists are going to read... Or at least, to some degree, hear what he's written here.

So he wants them to know... Those Judaizers who think they're of reputation...

Yeah, I'm talking to you guys. You think you're so high and mighty. You think you're so special.

Well, you're sham Christians. That's what it means in verse 4. It says false brothers.

Sham Christians. You're fake. You're not here by accident. You're here because Satan has sent you.

But that's what you've got to do. You've got to know the true gospel and preach it. And that's what he did. You've also got to recognize legalism for what it really is.

Notice in verse 4, he says... Hey, I've preached the true gospel. Even Titus, who's a

Greek, hasn't been forced to be circumcised... Because he's saved by the true gospel. But he comes in here and says...

All this distortion, all these fake gospels, all this fake teaching is not by accident.

He says in verse 4... But it was because, or through, or by the agency of false brothers.

Sham Christians. Goats. Savage wolves. Not weak, immature

Christians. Not even Christians that need to be taught more. Maybe Christians that need to do a little repenting and kind of grow up in Christ.

We're not talking about justified believers here. We're talking about unregenerate, unsaved people.

And these false brothers were secretly brought in. Sneaked in to spy out our freedom.

Think about stealth, right? Any of you that are into military operations, stealth operations.

You know, you've got to go in secretly. You can't be seen, you can't get caught, or the whole mission's over.

And when it talks about spying out our freedom, this is not... Okay, you know, they're going about their day.

Oh, hey look, there's those Christians over there. No. They had intent.

They had purpose. This took time. Maybe days, weeks, or months of them watching closely, intently.

What are those Christians doing over there? What? They're not getting circumcised? They're not doing what we think they should be doing?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We can't have that. Somebody needs to set them straight.

They need to know how we do things around here. It's what they were doing.

They were spying out. And goats and savage wolves will spy out your freedom, my friends.

They'll see you living and walking and rejoicing and worshiping and the freedom we have in Christ and say, that's not enough.

You need to do this and this and this and this and this and then maybe you can stand before God justified.

My friends, Scripture does not teach that. Romans 5 teaches that we are fully justified in the presence of the

Father based on the works of Christ, not based on ours. Legalism won't add.

It's a works -based salvation. For some reason, if you understand the unregenerate mind, especially if you're saved later in life, you may have a better understanding of this than if you were saved as a child.

But the unregenerate mind is so consumed with thinking that they can prove their worth.

This is why Romans 4 deals with this. It says, how do you think, Abraham, your father was justified? It wasn't by works because if it was,

Abraham could stand before God and say, hey, you need to let me into your kingdom because of who

I am and what I've done. And Paul says, no. He was justified by faith.

And you know what? So are you. People in the

Bible, people that we read about that lived thousands of years before us are no different than you sitting here today.

You are just as saved, just as justified, just as holy before the father as Abraham was.

Abraham? David? These giants of the faith using the Bible? Yes, them.

You're just as saved, just as holy. Don't let anybody in this pulpit, outside of this pulpit, anywhere at any time ever tell you anything otherwise because they're lying to you.

You are a special child of God, a new creation in Christ.

Scripture is saying that about you. If you've repented and put your faith in Christ, you're just as saved.

Christ didn't have to die any extra for Abraham. His salvation is sufficient for all those who believe.

So you have to recognize it for what it is. Now, let's talk as we shift into the latter half of this sermon.

Let's talk about the proper response to legalism. What's the proper response? First of all, we need to make sure you're actually dealing with it.

You need to be careful. We don't want to be unkind. You don't want to be mean or harsh because, look, there are things

I believe now that I've had to have my mind changed over time from Scripture. There are places where I've grown and no doubt people have had to tolerate the younger, more mature version of Andy.

And I'm still working on it, so y 'all will tolerate me as I am now and hopefully in the future be like, you know, he's a lot better now.

He used to be a little weird, but now he's still weird. But at least he's a more mature version of his weirdness.

But look, people grow, people change. They talk about babes in Christ for a reason.

A babe in Christ is just as saved as a mature saint. But practically, in application, that's why the

Scripture talks about you have to grow up in all things pertaining to Christ. Learning what it means to worship, learning what it means to pray, learning why it means to have outreach and to look at others and to walk a holy life and live a holy life, all these things.

So when we encounter something that maybe smells like legalism, looks like legalism, or sounds wrong or off, how do we judge it?

Same way we judge everything else. Look to Scripture. And if you're dealing with something that good

Christians can disagree with or maybe you kind of learn to let those things go if it's not affecting or disrupting the harmony or unity of the church for the most part.

But if you start to look like it and it smells like legalism and looks like legalism and tastes like legalism, it's not a mongoose.

It's legalism. And at that point, and look, we'll talk about church discipline at some point and people think church discipline is about dragging people in front of a church.

No, church discipline has a lot more to do with private relationships of me.

Let's say Richard, we know Richard's a sinner so I can talk about him. Let's say

Richard was involved in some sin in his life and I know this and I have such a relationship where I can go to him privately and say,

Hey Richard, man, I think you've got a blind spot over here. We need to talk about this. We're not dragging Richard in front of the church.

We're trying to handle these things privately so there's no embarrassment and hopefully that believer will recognize it and say,

Yeah, you know, I've been wrong here. I need to deal... That's what we're dealing... Even if you're dealing with the legalism, if someone were to come into our midst here and start preaching works -based salvation or something like that, we would still need to try as much as we can to make every effort to be sure.

But if we find it out and it's true and it's clear, you have to respond the way

Scripture tells us to respond. Verse 5, he says, We did not yield in subjection to them for even a moment.

Some of the translations will say for even an hour, whether it's hour, minute, week, that's the relevant point.

The point is for not even any space of time is what he's saying here, for not even a moment. So that the truth of the gospel will remain or be permanent or continue with you.

We did not yield. We did not submit. We did not bow the knee. We did not change anything about what we were doing to that.

So as an elder, as a pastor, one of the things is we oversee and shepherd. You've got to know when to step in and say,

Hold on, y 'all. We got to talk about this. This can't happen. And when you say, Hey, look, there's people in place to make decisions.

These people are good Christians or leadership positions. They're making this call. We need to submit to that, let them make that call and respect what they're doing.

And understand people are going to make mistakes. You don't you never want a pastor that's going to micromanage the life of the church.

Sometimes you need to let people do things in their positions and mess up. Because what do you learn from more than life?

Mistakes. But there are times when pastors need to step in and say, Hey, we've got an issue here and it needs to be limited to the times that Scripture outlines it.

And this is one area where a pastor can be heavily influential and saying, Hey, look, we've got a problem over here.

This is legalism. This is anti -gospel. This is anti -grace. Here from the

Scripture is how I'm backing the statement up. We are not yielding to this. That can be a very influential stance to take.

And also if a pastor has to get to that point, by then he should have already talked to all his members and good

Christians and said, Look, you know, hey, I think we have to say something about this. I think we have to do something about this.

Christians need to take as much action as they can to try to avoid publicly saying,

Hey, you need to leave because you're teaching something false. But if it comes to a point and the church is in agreement with the elders and we're all seeing the same thing, you've got to respond.

You cannot yield to that because it will get into your church. It'll get into your Christians and to you as believers and to me as a pastor.

And before you know it, your whole world will be turned upside down. Then also we find that the strength to fight it and the strength to not yield to it is not found in you.

It's not found in me. It comes from God's power and grace. Look at verse 6. It says, From those who are of high reputation.

So he's speaking about the apostles again here. The apostles that he met with.

He's saying now what they are, you know, it makes no difference because in the end it's about God.

It's not about them or me. That's what he's saying here. Then he says verse 7. On the contrary, it wasn't because of anything the apostles did.

It weren't because of anything I did. So I want you Galatian believers to understand, on the contrary, here's why they accepted me.

They saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised or the Gentiles just as Peter was preaching the gospel to the

Jews and to the circumcised. Recognizing the grace that had been given to me,

James, Cephas, and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship so that we might go, the

Gentiles and them, to the uncircumcised. In any church, all

Christians were all level playing field. But we also recognize that in any local body of believers, there are certain ones that you look to as pillars of a church or pillars of the faith.

I hear you all speak so kindly and graciously of Mr. Bass and others that have no doubt been in this church well before me that I've never had the opportunity to meet that you probably think about.

That's good. And you always would see if they wanted to act or if they said something, it just seemed to carry a little bit more weight, didn't it?

That's what he's saying here. He's saying, look, I don't need their approval, but you need to understand

James, Cephas, John, all names that the Galatian believers would have said, oh, we better perk up and listen right now.

He just mentioned them. He said, they gave us the right hand of fellowship, not because my name's Paul or I'm anything special, but because I'm preaching the true gospel.

So this brings us to our last sort of quick little point here before we close.

With all this in mind, with all that Paul's covered here, with all that has been said and done, what is the winning play?

I know not everybody's a sports fan, so you'll never see me as a pastor do a lot of sports stories and metaphors.

I will throw them in occasionally. So if you don't like sports, you can roll your eyes at me and be like, oh, another one of those, but we'll use it here.

So you think about sports, you think about trick plays, winning plays, you think about certain teams are defined by defense or whatever.

So what is the winning play to help us as Christians and as a church guard ourselves against the self -centeredness of legalism?

Well, it comes in one word and verse 10 is going to be the backing for it.

Verse 10 says, Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I also was eager to do.

Now, this word poor here, yes, it literally can mean destitute of belongings and money.

But it also is a word that means poor in spirit or lacking in some area, maybe depression, maybe they're depressed.

Any area, physically, mentally, emotionally, economically, whatever it is, any person among you that is lacking in some area.

That's what's being said here. So what's the winning play? What do you mean? Well, one word, O -T -H -E -R -S, others.

Okay, Andy, how do we run this play? Let me ask you a question. If you're mindful and remembering the poor or thinking of others, what are you not thinking about yourselves?

Now, very quickly, not getting the whole thing about it, we're out of time this morning, but it doesn't mean that you aren't important.

You shouldn't care for yourself. If you have a need and you need to care for yourself, care for yourself. When we're talking about battling sin and legalism in the hearts of our minds, in the minds of ourselves, you keep your focus on others, you're not going to have time to think about yourself because you're going to be thinking about everybody else.

That's why he says, I'm eager to do it. My friends, the solution to any problem this church may have ever had, the solution to any problem we may have now or any problem we may have in the future, if we focus on others, focus on outreach to others that may be lacking, focus on the other people in the pews beside you and not what you want to make them into, but what you can be for them, this other stuff takes care of itself.

It really does. Like I said, the premise of Christianity, it's not easy at times, but it's very simple.

Love the Lord Supreme, you love your neighbor as yourself. It's very simple. You want to fight legalism, you want to fight false teaching, you want to fight all these things.

Yes, you need armor at times for fighting spiritual battles, but this isn't about putting on armor and fighting against human flesh and blood.