You Cannot Climb Law Mountain

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Alright guys, good morning Want y'all to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Galatians chapter 2 We've been we've been out of Galatians for a while Because I was out for a week and then last week.
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We did our study of the life of Martin Luther I hope you guys enjoyed that those who are here watch the video.
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Oh 95 pcs, that's right All right, so we're going to read the whole chapter only because we're going to be focusing specifically on verses 17 and 18 but Nothing is without a context and this verse is very important to be understood in the context I want to I want to sort of add a disclaimer Some verses are harder to understand than others you'd agree Okay, well this morning we're coming to two verses that are difficult to understand and so it is imperative that we maintain an understanding of the Context and I said we're going to read the whole chapter.
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I'm sorry We're going to start at verse 11 and we're going to read verse 11 to 21 because that's the context of verses 17 and 18 So we're going to read verse 11 to 21 and we're going to pray But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned For before certain men came from James he was eating with the Gentiles But when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy But when I saw that the Gospel or excuse me when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel I said to Cephas before them all if you though a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew How can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners yet We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law Because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.
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That's where we ended last time.
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So now we're picking up verse 17 but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners is Christ then a servant of sin certainly not For if I revealed what I tore down I proved myself to be a transgressor For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
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I Have 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 loved me and gave himself for me.
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I Do not nullify the grace of God for if justification were through the law Then Christ died for no purpose father in heaven Your mercies are new every morning and Lord your word is the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path and yet Lord sometimes we come as weak broken men To the scripture and we find ourselves in places that are more difficult than others to understand So this morning Lord, I pray by the mercy of God That you would give me an extra measure of your spirit as I'm preaching that you would keep me from error as I'm preaching and Lord God that you would open the hearts of these men to understand the truth of the word Lord for those who know Christ and our believers That today would be for them a great day of encouragement and Lord God If there is something in their life that they need to repent of that they would be encouraged to repent Lord if there are things in their life that they need to take hold of that they would take hold And Lord if there are things they need to abandon that they would abandon But father I also pray for the one in this room or maybe many Who have not yet received Christ, maybe Lord they're holding on to some shred of righteousness of their own Maybe Lord they are proud of Their accomplishments or maybe Lord they think that their sins make them unable to be saved Lord I pray that you would break the heart of the proud and that you would lift the heart of the humble Lord that you would show every man that we are equal at the foot of the cross No, man is worthy of what Christ has done and yet Christ's accomplishments can satisfy the sin debt of any man And we pray this Lord in Jesus name and for his sake Amen Well as I said We have found ourselves in a section That is a little more difficult to understand Than Some of the rest of the book, but I hope to show by the end of today how it all fits together First and foremost I want to remind us About what Galatians is about I look out there And I see that some of you are here that I haven't seen before or I've only seen once So you're you're you are on this is sermon 19.
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I So far and in one and a half chapters, I've preached 19 sermons, so Yeah, so Ultimately if you haven't been here for the other 19 sermons Then you might feel a little bit behind and that's fine I mean I can't start over every week But I do want to remind you where we are and what the book of Galatians is about Just so that you understand the context of where we are a Verse without a context is a pretext.
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It's it's it's unable to be understood You have to understand the Bible in the context.
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It was written Galatians is in fact.
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I'll give you a good example this week.
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I had a lady come to my office and Wants to join our seminary class that we teach at the church I teach a seminary class on Thursday nights And she wants to join the class so she filled out an application And I said we'll come in for an interview so I can learn about you and learn where you go to church and she came in and shared some things with my secretary and I was telling me the story and while she was telling me the story she began to talk about Galatians 1 and She began to say things about Galatians 1 that wasn't completely accurate and so while she was talking I simply said That's really not what that means That wasn't being ugly and certainly I would I would tell this story with her sitting there because to her credit She said Well, can you tell me what it does me? She didn't argue.
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She didn't she didn't stand on her own justification and say no.
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No.
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No, I'm right She said well if I'm wrong Tell me And I said well, thank God.
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I'll be happy to tell you I said the problem that you're having is you're interpreting this book in light of your own experience first and if you interpret the book in light of your experience first, you will always have a Personal application that doesn't necessarily fit the actual interpretation You're reading yourself into it, that's not what you're supposed to do the goal of Interpretation is not what does this mean to me? The goal of interpretation is what does this mean? You understand the difference because if it's only what it means to you Then that can become very personal and it can mean something different to you mean something different to you mean something different to you That's not the why the why that's not the way the Bible works the Bible has a meaning a truth That is universal and that is independent of you That's the truth you want to find Then you can apply it to yourself But only after you have found what it means Can you make the personal application if you go to the personal application first and you don't understand who the Galatians were? Who Paul is why he wrote to this group of people who the enemies of the gospel are that he is talking about if you Don't understand those four things.
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It is impossible to understand What this book really means? So what are those four things? I just said who are the Galatians? Well, the Galatians is Actually a region of churches.
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It was Lystra Iconium and Derby and a few other churches that were in Southern Galatia.
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This was Paul's Missionary journey remember he went on a missionary journey and he preached to these churches and he established churches in this region called Galatia Paul established these churches on the preaching of the gospel Paul, of course was the Pharisee who was saved on the road to Damascus.
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You probably know who Paul is.
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I hope Paul was a hater of Christians He was a persecutor of Christians and God saved him by grace So Paul because of being saved by grace becoming became the greatest missionary evangelist in the first century of the church he went throughout the Galatian region, which is what we would call now southern Turkey and Then he went out through and to Macedonia and Greece and other places finally ending his life in Rome That is who Paul was and that's what Galatia is Galatia is a region.
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It's not one church It's a it's several churches in an area after Paul left Galatia a Group of people came in known as the Judaizers.
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Yeah, who said that? Women.
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Yeah, that's because you've been here the whole time the Judaizers Were a group of people who told the Galatian Christians You cannot be saved Simply by believing in Jesus You must also adopt the legal rituals of the Jewish faith Meaning unless you're circumcised you can't be saved Unless you eat the right foods and not eat the wrong foods You can't be saved and unless you observe the Sabbath which was their Saturday restricted day where they could do no work Unless you obey What we would refer to as the ceremonial laws or the the legal requirements externally circumcision diet and day Unless you observe these you can't really be saved And so in chapter 1 Paul responds to this and he says I'm amazed That you have so quickly Abandoned the gospel and gone to another gospel not that there is another gospel for there is only one gospel And if anyone comes to you preaching a gospel different than the one I gave to you.
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Let him be damned I say again if an angel from heaven or even me Comes and preaches to you a gospel different than the one I gave to you.
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Let him be damned That's chapter 1 6 to 9 Okay now in your Bible it probably says cursed or anathema, but it is the word to be damned So that's Paul's argument.
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That's who he's debating.
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That's who he's fighting with That's the context of the book at the end of chapter 1 Paul Defends his own apostleship because these people are saying Paul's not giving you the whole truth Paul's not giving you the whole message and Paul says I got the message from Jesus And I'm giving you the message I got from Jesus And I even went to the Apostles and I shared with them my message They agreed that the message was right so these guys who are coming and saying I'm wrong I got my message from Christ.
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I've confirmed it with the other Apostles.
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We all agree on what the gospel is I'm not wrong those guys are wrong So the end of chapter 1 is Paul defending his Message so first he defends himself as an apostle and he defends his message as the messenger of Christ Now in chapter 2 he continues that defense chapter 2 1 to 10 He talks about a little bit about his autobiography who he is where he came from what he did And then we get to verse 11 and Paul talks about Cephas now Cephas is Peter It's just another way of saying it you'll see the word Cephas which means rock or stone Peter means rock or stone it's whether it's Hebrew or whether it's Greek There's oftentimes you'll see two names for the same person Saul and Paul You know it's very common, so don't let that throw you this is the Apostle Peter and Cephas Peter Had come to Antioch which was Paul's home church, and he was eating with the Gentiles Which means he was breaking the dietary restrictions because the dietary restrictions wasn't just that you can't eat Gentile food But you can't eat at a Gentile's table Because the Gentiles table is going to be Tainted it's going to be Yeah polluted it's going to be polluted with the with the Gentiles food So you can't eat with them you can't be at their table that you might your your potato salad might touch a pork sandwich You can't have that you understand you got to make sure you got to keep that unclean the whole Gentile community has to be Separated did they live different? So Paul Peter comes and he's eating right along with him And he's enjoying it, and I'd like to believe he ate a pork sandwich.
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I can't prove it But I'd like to believe Maybe I think the first time he ate a pork sandwich.
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He was nervous But I like to believe that he Understood his freedom in Christ that is until The Judaizers came now in this it says the circumcision party That's just another name for those people who say you have to keep the Jewish law we use the term Judaizers that term is used in Galatians in fact in this very section When Paul says if you though a Jew lived like a Gentile not like a Jew how can you force the Gentiles to Judaize? That's the Greek word there, but in English It's translated live like a Jew but a Judaizer is a person who demands that you live like a Jew Before you can be a Christian you have to keep the law before you can be saved All right, so that that leads us to verse 15 now We spent several weeks on verses 15 to 16 where Paul explains that the Jews and The Gentiles are saved the same way By faith alone in Christ alone We do not add Anything to our salvation by keeping the law Because the law has been perfectly fulfilled in Christ Christ came and he said these very words.
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He said I didn't come to abolish the law I came to fulfill the law and he did that you have a question Sure go ahead When when Paul challenged publicly Cephas publicly.
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Yep.
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Was that before or after his vision and visit to the century? This would have been after that Yeah, I don't I don't think Peter would have been eating with the Apostles if it hadn't been after that yeah, yeah Yeah, this way and for those who don't know he's talking about Acts chapter 10 Peter sees a Cloth filled with all kinds of unclean animals and God says rise kill and eat and Peter says I can't do that I've never eaten anything unclean and God said what I've made clean do not call unclean.
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So that's the context.
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Yeah Yeah, he's yes But if you remember we talked about this, I don't think Peter Thought it was a sin to eat the food.
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I think he drew back because he was afraid of the gent of the Yeah, exactly.
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I think he I think he was afraid of men this is Paul's whole point about whether you're a man pleaser or God pleaser right and and and as much as I respect Peter and Love Peter and I and I do in fact of all the Apostles I connect most with him because he had a big mouth and he's talked faster than he thought And sometimes I feel like that's me so if of all the Apostles Peter is Is the one I feel like most connected with right because he he somewhat had a leader attitude, but he also Spoke before he thought He was compulsive.
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Yeah, absolutely, and I find myself to be compulsive I don't know if you guys are perfect in that area But I find myself to be very imperfect in the area of personal compulsion.
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So Yeah, I believe this is before the Jerusalem Council, but it's after his after his Having received the vision.
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So this is happening somewhere in Acts 13 14.
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This is where it is Yes Yeah, and I think yeah, I think Galatians is written right before the council because the council solves the issue yes, sir Yes, and Acts chapter 10 Peter was eating with the Apollo eating with the Gentiles No was cool It was cool.
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But what happened was when the Jews came He separated himself.
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He didn't eat so he became like the Bible says he became a lewk, which is like being a snob He was like, oh now I can't do that.
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I got my people here, right? His these people came and he so he separated himself and Paul Let him have it Paul says how can you do that just because these people come you're going to treat these other people bad So he he attacks him not when I say attack and not viciously, but he verbally tells him publicly You can't do this.
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You are wrong You're vacillating.
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Yes, sir Yes, in fact when I a few weeks ago when I taught on this I talked about What we would talk about is discipline church discipline where one brother goes to another brother and calls him to account It's not to break him down.
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It's to correct him and build him up.
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So this isn't hate.
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It's not Paul hating Peter He's just making sure Peter understands that this is wrong And I'd like to think Peter repented here because Paul makes an ironclad case against what he's done But yes, it's brotherly accountability All right.
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So now we're at verse 17, which is again.
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All that was introduction so verse 17 says this but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ We too were found to be sinners is Christ the servant of sin certainly not Let's break this down into its parts because this in verse 18 are a little complicated Because Paul is asking the question.
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I believe he's still talking to Peter.
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That's an important Side note this beginning at verse 15 all the way down to verse 21 is Paul's Telling Peter what he did wrong and it might even be he's saying this publicly Because ultimately the message is for Peter, but it's for everybody And he says this But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, who's the hour there? This is how you do interpretation.
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You have to start out by asking the relevant questions first.
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We see the word but But is a what? It's a adversative conjunction it's saying it's a but Yeah, but but it's changing something right? It's like if I say you're very handsome, but yeah, that's me Yeah, because you know what's coming next You're a really nice guy, but you know, that's that's whatever comes next is going to be adversative and it's a conjunction so we say he says but If in our endeavor, who's the hour? Nope the hour in this Context is Paul and Peter But by extension is also the Jewish people because that's who they're representing in this conversation You say how do you prove that go back up verse 15, but we ourselves are Jews by birth.
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Who's the weed? Paul and Peter, but he's talking about what the Jewish community so they're representing a group so I could say the hour here is The Jews that that's by virtue the context if in our Endeavor to be justified in Christ and by our of course, he's not talking about all the Jews.
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He's talking about him and Paul Paul and Peter and those Jews who sought to be justified if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ we too were found to be Sinners, so what does he mean by that? Very simple in a bit, but it's a little it's it's complex and simple at the same time.
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What are you saying? Is this? when we came to Christ for justification We put ourselves on the same level as the Gentiles who are sinners You understand that basically what he's saying is this the Jews always felt like they had a different Relationship with God than the Gentiles go back up to verse 15.
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We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, right? So there's this separation.
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We're Jews.
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They're sinners and Paul is saying here, but if we if we endeavor to be justified in Christ We're saying we're also sinners and that's the truth, right? Let me tell you this You cannot Absolutely Positively No way.
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Can you be saved if you don't first recognize that you're a sinner before God? You cannot be because why would you want to be saved if you don't need a Savior? It'd be like a person who was sick, but didn't know he was sick And I walked up let's say you had a disease and it was terminal and I come to you and I say I want to Give you this medicine for your disease.
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You say I don't want that medicine.
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I'm not sick First I have to convince you that you're sick.
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Here's the symptoms.
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I see it in your eyes.
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I see it in your ears I see it in your mouth I see I'm a doctor and I can take the blood test and I can prove that you're sick that proof makes you want the medicine You won't want the medicine until you know for sure that you're sick No one comes to Christ who is not first convinced that they're a sinner That's why when I go to share the gospel, I don't start with Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life That's not the way I said, by the way, that's not the gospel.
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I Start with a very simple question If you died today and you face God and God said why should I let you into heaven? What would be your answer? Most people would say no go ahead.
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I'm here Amen praise the Lord.
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That's what I hope to hear.
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But normally what I do here is this.
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I'm a good person Now no, I'm serious Most people when I say if you died today and God said why should I let you in heaven? A lot of people say well, hey, I'm a good guy I've you know I've always I've gone to church or I've done this or they start listing off the eyes eyes eyes So like the Pharisee in Luke 18, right? I give a tithe and I fast and I do this and I do that But like what you said, it's not me The only reason why God should let me into heaven is because of what Christ has done not because of me And that's the difference right? And so that's the first question is do you understand your sin before God and Paul is saying here if we endeavor to be justified in Christ We are found to be sinners Because that's what it means to be justified in Christ.
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You first have to be a sinner But here's the question does that make Christ a servant of sin Of course not that's what he's about to say, but why would anybody think that? Here's the here's the logic in the question.
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Paul is saying this For you to become a Christian You have to abandon Your faith and your ability to keep the law and you have to place your faith in Christ Which means you're abandoning the law for Christ And if you abandon the law for Christ, are you not abandoning what makes you righteous? Because the law makes you right according to the Jews the law is what made them righteous So they're abandoning what makes them righteous for Jesus and in doing so Is it Christ promoting sin because he's promoting the idea that you abandon the law See the art you see there again.
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It's not an easy argument, but it's it's a simple.
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Yes, go ahead Jesus came down To die for our sins For he knew no sin.
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That's right.
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Yes, absolutely.
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He knew no sin But the question they're asking is is he promoting sin and you Is Jesus promoting you to do sin? No, no, absolutely not, right? But that's the accusation if you abandon the law for Christ You're abandoning righteousness for Jesus Does that make Jesus a promoter that I think that's a better word Even though the word is diakonos where we get the word deacon it means servant or minister But I think the idea behind the word is Christ promoting sin Let me tell you something a lot of people believe that Listen to this.
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I want you to tell me in your mind's mind if you've ever heard somebody say this I'm a Christian.
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I'm under grace.
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It doesn't matter what I do You heard it, maybe you've said it So now I get hit home That's the idea Paul is addressing here because that's the accusation if you're saying we don't need the law If you're saying all we need is Jesus You're abandoning the law, which means you're Seeking righteousness without the law There's outside the law.
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It's just sin that makes Christ the promoter of sin.
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Yes Yeah Yeah, but you're getting a little ahead of me But you're on the right track But at the same time that I'm trying to get us to understand the argument.
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How about this? This might help you guys y'all y'all remember Romans 6 and Romans 6 Paul asked this question Shall we continue to sin so that grace can abound what's the response? Certainly not in fact It's interesting All right.
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So that's the word that's used here and it's the same word that's used in That's English, that's Greek.
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Okay, so meganoto means this is the adversative not This is the word for be or being It's the root of the word the word the root gene which means it's where we get the word gene which means origin or being and so not Being or in English it would be may it never be May it never be in English we could say certainly not But the reason why I point this out, I didn't just do that just because it's fancy I did it for a reason if you look here where he says is Christ the servant of sin Certainly not that's meganoto if you go over to Romans 6 where Paul says shall we continue in sin? So that grace can abound Meganoid it's the same word so that I think the concept is essentially the same is by coming to Christ for righteousness a promotion for sin No Absolutely not if you think that Justification by faith alone is a license for sin Then you don't understand Christ you don't understand the gospel and you certainly don't understand grace grace saves us from sin but grace is not a license for sin and If some I told this story before a buddy of mine used to have a roommate and the roommate watched TBN all the time and he became fascinated with your crazy TV preachers and He used to get online and he would find women that were willing to go out and have illicit relationships with him and On his way out the door for one of these rendezvous He would look at my friend and laugh and say I'm going to sin so that grace can abound haha that That is a layer of blasphemy That we should be unwilling to apply And the point is this Paul is asking the question if by being justified in Christ We are sinners.
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Are we saying Christ is promoting sin? The answer is no and Verse 18 follows the same logic because he says this for which is the word it means because or for If I rebuild what I tore down I prove myself to be a transgressor.
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What does that mean? What he's saying is this? The transgressor does mean lawbreaker.
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That's right.
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But what he's what's he talking about tearing down? Paul Had this system called the law and his whole life He tried to keep this law and he he he tried to climb that mountain as a Pharisee and boy He got high up there.
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He was a Pharisee.
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He was a Hebrew of Hebrews He was born and bred and he was he had that system of law to keep Then along comes Christ Christ says trust in me Not in your ability to keep the law trust in me And when you trust in Christ that law comes crumbling down because it can't save you You now have a new mountain and that mountain is Jesus Christ and you don't have to climb because he picks you up and he Puts you up there.
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That's a fear Ephesians chapter 2 You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked but God being rich in mercy Saved you by grace.
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You've been saved.
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I always think about the skill crane I was dead just like all those dead stuffed animals and along comes the hand of God and he reaches down and he picks me Up and he cleans me off and he seats me with Christ and now I am in Christ I don't have to climb the mountain God put me on the mountain, but there's two mountains When you go to Christ the law comes crumbling down because you can't keep it and Paul is asking this question Should I rebuild the law? Should I go back and Start over there and the question he says if I rebuild what I tore down I Prove myself to be a transgressor because but here's what that means.
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He's saying I proved myself that I was wrong about Jesus I Proved myself to be wrong about Christ because what he's saying is this if I go back to the mountain of the law I now have to abandon Jesus because you can't have both You're either going to climb the mountain of the law or you're going to be put on the mountain of Christ And if you come off of Christ Mountain and go back to that mountain, you're saying Jesus was wrong You're saying you were wrong for following Christ And that's why it goes on to say for through the law.
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I died to the law so that I might live to God that Attempt to be saved through the law.
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I'm dead to that.
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I am dead to trying to keep the law for my salvation I Cannot do it.
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I'm not able to do it I'm not going to try to make that my righteousness now.
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There are other ways in which the law is good The law does tell us about the holy character of God the law can be used to help us You thought about walking right with Christ the law can give us a moral compass to guide us But we never look at the compass and say that's how I'm saved No, we're saved by Christ That and that's Well, I'm glad because this is a hard section Paul's ultimate point is this by abandoning the law and following Christ.
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We can't go back If we go back to the law We are Saying it was wrong to follow Christ And you're contradicting.
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Yeah, so Now what we're going to see in chapter 3 is Paul fleshing this out because he says this Oh foolish Galatians Who has bewitched you it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified Let me ask you this Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith and see he starts to then? Make the distinction between how you got saved you didn't get saved by the law you got saved by faith You didn't get saved by doing you got saved by hearing and believing that's two different things So that's what chapter 3 is going to start fleshing that out, but before we get to chapter 3 He gives us what I consider to be the most beautiful well one of The most beautiful sections in the Bible and that's verse 20 And I want to read verse 20 you have a question, but I'm sorry Like lust or hatred Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and and and so the law is more than just the external it's in the heart That's why somebody can't say I've kept the law I asked people I said I said do you believe you've kept any of the Ten Commandments? Not one Because Jesus said if we've ever hated we've commit murder in our heart if we've ever lusted we've committed adultery in our heart you Can you've not kept one law? Not perfectly So again that mountain of the law You it's it's you can't do it yes No, and here's the difference, so this is important.
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This is so I'm glad you asked because this is important Because Paul is going to address this in chapter 3 The law becomes to us like I said like a compass right and in a way it shows us the moral character of God and Therefore as a believer in Christ we should want to do what Christ wants us to do but we can never trust in our law-keeping as the reason for our salvation You understand if if somebody says to me, I'm saved because I keep the law I Would say there's no way you're saved by keeping the law If somebody says I love the law of God because Christ saved me from the curse of the law I would say praise the Lord.
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That's a difference see think about Psalm 1 what a Psalm 1 say blessed is the man who walks not in the way or The council of the wicked nor sits in the seat of scoffers or stands in the way of sinners But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on it He meditates all day long see there is a way in which the law is good and Paul tells us the law is good when it's used lawfully But if you think the law saves you the law only has the power to condemn It does not have the power to say only Christ has the power to say so there's the distinction, right? If you're trying to climb the mountain of the law stop and trust in Christ, that's my admonition to you today Stop trying to climb the mountain of self-righteousness.
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You're never going to get to the top You're not even going to break the small foothills at the bottom Your self-righteousness the very best you could do is glorified sin John Gerstner said this I know you don't know who that is, but he's a great teacher of the past John Gerstner said It's not my sins that separate me so much from God as it is my damnable good works He said what does he mean by that what he meant was he said every time I do something good I think I've earned something from God And that's really what separates me more than anything Because I'm not earning one thing Christ has earned everything.
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I Didn't earn a inch.
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I have not made myself one inch closer to God By law keeping Does that mean that I should run out and sin all crazy? No Paul says no, that's stupid He didn't say that that was Keith saying that but but but ultimately he just said that's not the right way to think But at the same time you cannot rely on law law keeping if you rely on law keeping You're going to be lost now.
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Let me read this last part I may I may go over this again next week because verse 20 and 21.
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I'm telling you this is most beautiful passage in Scripture There's a song that sets this to music if I can if I can I'm gonna bring it in and let you listen to it It's just such a beautiful song but this Paul says this and again, I don't I only have a few minutes left So I'm gonna I'm gonna save the bulk of it for next week But I want to read it and kind of just show how it fits together.
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I Have 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 loved me and gave himself for me See what he's saying I've been crucified with Christ.
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I was climbing that mountain and what I did.
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I didn't just tear the mountain down I died on that mountain.
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I Died on that mountain because I can't do that.
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I Been crucified with Christ.
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I no longer live now.
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You say what do you mean? I no longer live If you are in Christ You're a new man You your life has changed right you don't I'll tell you a good story in The fourth century there was a teacher named Augustin you probably heard of st.
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Augustine.
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That's that's him Augustine He was a scoundrel When he was younger, he was a drunkard.
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He was a carouser a womanizer He had quite the reputation and his mother.
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I think her name was Monica I may be wrong, but I think her name was Monica.
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She prayed for her son that he would be saved Just like I imagine a lot of our mamas have prayed for us that we would be saved and She prayed that Augustine would be saved One day God saved him and God saved him radically God changed his life in a way that is miraculous.
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He became one of the greatest minds of the early church writing some of the greatest literature We're talking about 1,500 years ago 1,600 years ago.
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He was writing things that are amazing even today One day as Augustine was walking in the I guess it was some kind of a market a Woman who he knew before he was saved saw him And she was excited because she remembered the partier that he was she remembered the attitude that he had That he was a carouser and a drinker and a partier and she came to him and she goes Augustine Augustine it is I And he said yes, man, but it is no longer I I Am NOT who I was What you were looking for is a different man.
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Yes Yeah, he was a brilliant guy absolutely Yeah, and we got st.
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Augustine yeah Yeah But But you guys see what I'm saying there on that the idea that it's no longer.
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I'm not me anymore Christ is in me now Do I still have this do I still fight some of the same battles that I used to fight as the old man? Do I still have the flesh? Absolutely, but I have a different.
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I'm a different man.
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I know who I was When I was 19 years old before I got saved I know who I was when I was 16 and 17 and 18 years old I know I Know who I was and I know who I am And I know this I Have been crucified with Christ That's what baptism picture.
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We'll talk about this next week Baptism is not just about Cleaning because that's one picture of baptism is cleaning, but baptism is death and resurrection That's why we put you under the water, and you come back up it represents dying with Christ and being raised to a new life Paul says I Have been crucified with Christ.
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I don't live anymore Christ lives in me that's the difference between living for the law and trying to find salvation in the law and Dying to the law and finding our salvation in Christ last thing brother.
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You had a question I said did that last you? fired Yeah, yeah, it is it is and he says and by doing that I don't nullify the grace of God Instead I show this I'm not righteous by the law.
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I'm righteous in Christ guys I pray this has been a blessing to you and a help to you next week.
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We'll look closer verses 20 and 21.
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Let's pray Father I thank you for this time study I pray these men have been encouraged Lord that we would not try to scale the mountain of the law and find our salvation where it cannot be found But that we would reject self-righteousness and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ The only one through whom we can find true salvation in his name.