Galatians - God & Man, You Can't Please Both

God Centered Theology

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

But continuing again, this week with Martin Luther who I absolutely love to study and read about.

00:09

I don't have as much this week to read from his work as I did last week, but I do have just a little bit to read for you to set the stage as we begin today.

00:20

Writing in this same book that I quoted from last week, this is Martin Luther's commentary on the epistle of Galatians written back in the 1500's.

00:29

And in reference to verse 10, so in Galatians chapter 1 verse 10,

00:35

Paul writes and says, For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am

00:40

I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

00:47

So in reference to that verse, Martin Luther writes, Do I serve men or God?

00:54

Paul keeps an eye on the false apostles. And coming out of the quote for a second, just in passing, you'll remember last week we looked at all the false gospels and how if you were saved by a false gospel, you're not actually saved.

01:09

And the false gospel and false teaching will only take you as far as what it can teach you.

01:14

But the true gospel of Jesus Christ saves to the other most. It saves eternally. And that is what

01:20

Paul is contrasting here. And so, getting back into the quote, Luther says,

01:25

Paul keeps an eye on the false apostles, those flatterers of men. They taught circumcision to avoid the hatred and persecution of men.

01:34

So once again in passing, you'll notice that Martin Luther is picking up on the fact that these false teachers were preaching a political gospel.

01:41

It was what made everybody happy, and what made everybody feel good. We see this in other inspired scripture where it says, there will come a time where they, wanting to have their ears tickled, will heap for themselves false teachers.

01:54

Luther goes on to say, I would say that not much has changed from the year 1500 to today's world.

02:25

You look at just what happened in Sri Lanka with over 200 people killed. You see all the persecution and killings of Christians, and the hatred towards Christianity.

02:36

Not much has changed from Luther's day to our day. He goes on and says, How can you believe which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God alone?

02:55

And then with the same vehemence, Paul continues. Paul essentially is saying in this first chapter, according to Luther, that you

03:03

Galatians ought to be able to tell from my preaching, and from the many afflictions which

03:09

I have endured, whether I serve men or God. Everybody can see that my preaching has stirred up persecution against me everywhere, and has earned for me the cruel hatred of my own people.

03:21

In fact, the hatred of all men. This should convince you by my preaching, that I do not seek the favor and praise of men, but the glory of God.

03:33

Can't you see that I seek no man's favor by my doctrine? If I were anxious for the favor of men,

03:39

I would flatter them. But what do I do? I condemn their works. I teach things only that I have been commanded to teach from above.

03:49

For that I bring down upon my head the wrath of Jews and Gentiles. My doctrine must be right.

03:56

It must be divine. Paul knew what

04:02

Martin Luther knew, what I know, and what all of you need to know, and that is, as our picture indicates, blues really don't work on here.

04:14

That's supposed to be a blue sky. I promise. It was in the picture.

04:21

But thankfully you can make out the point of the picture. You cannot go both ways. When you're heading down that path, and you come to that point of decision, you either chart a course to follow and serve

04:32

God, or you will chart a course to follow and serve and please man. Paul knew this.

04:38

Martin Luther knew this. I know it, and I pray that all of you know it, that you cannot please God and please man.

04:45

You cannot please them at the same time. You must choose who you will serve. You must choose who you will follow.

04:56

Every decision you make, every meeting you have at work and in your home, and every place where you have contact with fellow believers and unbelievers alike, the whole scope of your life, every day that you live, you're taking action.

05:15

You're going to show whether you're a bondservant of Christ, or a servant of man.

05:21

And if you're a servant of man, as scripture tells us, you're therefore a servant of Satan. You're of your father, the devil.

05:28

And Paul makes this very clear, because he says in verse 10, if I'm striving to please man,

05:34

I'm not a bondservant of Christ. Verses 8 and 9 he says, in reference to the false gospel that the

05:42

Judaizers and other false teachers were teaching, he says, but even if we are an angel from heaven, and even in Paul what he's implying here, even if I myself preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

06:01

This word, accursed, literally means estranged from God. You're not in God.

06:07

You're still in Adam. You're eternally condemned in your sins. You're under the condemnation of your sins.

06:12

He says, as we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed.

06:24

So God and man, you can't please both. Why? Because those serving

06:33

God and those serving man come from two completely different sides when it comes to their motivation, their goals, so on and so forth.

06:41

And that's what we're going to look at this morning in the book of Galatians and elsewhere. Number one, the first thing we're going to notice is that the origins of their service are different.

06:52

The origins of their service are different. Notice with me once again as we looked last week in verse 1 of Galatians 1.

07:01

It says, Paul, an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the

07:12

Father. So while we don't have the Holy Spirit mentioned, you have a Trinitarian teaching going on here.

07:18

God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren who are with me, so on and so forth. And you'll notice in verse 11 he says,

07:27

For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.

07:34

Notice he doesn't do the ecumenism deal. He doesn't do the false gospel we talked about last week, the interfaith gospel, where you take a piece over here, and you take a piece over there, and a piece up here, a piece down here.

07:47

You put it all in one pot, stir it together, and whatever comes out, that's what we'll believe. No, you're either for Christ, or you're against Christ.

07:55

You're either for God, or you'll find yourself pleasing man. And he says, It's not according to man.

08:02

Verse 12, For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it by man, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

08:10

So for each one of these I'm going to show the contrast. So for the origins of service being different,

08:17

Paul, in the interest of serving God, knew that his service came and had its origin through Jesus Christ and God the

08:25

Father. Paul's commission as an apostle, the origin of his ministry, the origin of your ministry, because you all have spiritual gifts.

08:38

The Holy Spirit has gifted us each. And we've been through all that, I think it was about a year ago last summer, how

08:43

He uniquely gifts you with a variety of different giftings, and you're to be discovering, developing, and using those gifts for the edification of the body, and for the unity of the brethren.

08:56

So your origin of ministry, ministry is not something that is limited to just preachers and apostles.

09:01

Now there may have been specifically and specially appointed apostles in that day, and we believe that apostles have passed off the scene.

09:08

They were foundational for the origin of the early church, but they're not something that have continued. But there's only two offices in the

09:15

New Testament local church, that of the elder and that of the deacon. So apostles have passed off the scene.

09:21

But even in dealing with the fact that God did have specially appointed apostles, the difference is, there is no difference.

09:29

The origin of Paul's ministry, the origin of your ministry, the origin of my ministry, is from Jesus Christ, that we hope to serve and please

09:38

God. It's not from man, it's not according to man, but it's of God.

09:46

And notice he says in verse 4, "...who gave Himself," referring to Jesus Christ, "...for

09:52

our sins, so that He might rescue us from this present evil age." Because Christ gave

09:57

Himself for our sins, and salvation causes us to serve Him out of love. You remember last week, when we looked at Luther and what he said about Paul, and we looked at what

10:08

Paul wrote, the key difference between the legalist and the Pharisee, and the truly born again child of God, is one serves

10:16

God out of duty, the other one serves Him out of love. We serve God not because we're forced to, not because it's going to get us any merit or credit with God, but because we love our

10:27

Savior. We love Him because of what He did for us. And as I said, the true message of the

10:33

Gospel is that you point to the cross and say, look at what He did. The entirety of the

10:39

Christian religion, if you want to borrow that quote -unquote religion word, the whole point of Christianity is not what man did, but what

10:47

God did. That should make you rejoice. It should be a cause for celebration, because if left to ourselves, no flesh would be justified.

10:59

Everyone would spend eternity in Hell. Without what He points out in verse 3, grace to you and peace from God and our

11:05

Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is the source of our salvation, peace being the result.

11:11

We saw this when we looked through the book of Colossians, do you remember? We are enemies of God. Our mind in its unregenerate state is hostile towards God.

11:20

But through Jesus Christ and His reconciliation work on the cross, we have peace with God. We have a right standing before Him.

11:27

We'll stand before God one day and have no reason for fear, because when we stand before Him, you'll see

11:33

Jesus Christ, you'll see the shed blood of His Son has washed us clean from all sin, and we'll stand forgiven.

11:43

Verses 11 and 12, which we read earlier, the gospel that Paul preached and the ministry that he performed, he shows it didn't come from any authority of man.

11:55

Paul, Luther, us, every Christian that has ever lived, all the believing ones owe everything to God.

12:06

Everything that we have, everything that we are is by the grace of God. There's not one thing you can point to and say, this finds its origin in me.

12:17

Now man, his origins of his service, man in serving man and in pleasing man finds the origin for his service in himself.

12:29

You say, well, that seems odd because you were talking about man serving and pleasing man.

12:35

But watch this. If you serve man, it's because you ultimately want to serve yourself and your own self -interest.

12:43

You may even convince yourself that you are somehow serving God, but according to His Word, you are not. You're serving yourself.

12:51

You see, to please man, to seek and to strive to please flesh and blood is ultimately to serve yourself.

12:58

Why? Because just like the Judaizers and the false teachers that preached that you had to have circumcision, and you had to adhere to the law in combination with your faith in Christ, the whole place was getting riled up.

13:12

They said, well we've got to do something about this. So instead of standing firm on truth, they preached a compromised gospel because it quieted everything down and made it better.

13:21

Serving their self -interest. It removed what they were having to deal with. You see? So in acting, in saying and doing that which is going to please this group, or these people, or serving pleasing man, you're actually serving yourself because you're doing what is going to make your circumstances or your life ultimately better.

13:43

So therefore, you put yourself on the throne. That's why the origins of the service, if you're serving a pleasing man, is not the same as if you're serving

13:53

God, because in one you're serving God, and in the other one you're ultimately serving yourself. So number one, the origins of service are different.

14:04

Number two, the goals of service are different. Look at verse 6.

14:11

Paul says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

14:28

Paul, once again, for our example of those serving God, was always clear about his gospel and where he stood.

14:38

If you want to turn with me, look at Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, to get our example of what it looks like when you serve

14:45

God, when the goals of your service are to serve God. In verse 16 of chapter 1 of the book of Romans, Paul says,

14:53

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

15:01

Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.

15:14

Paul was not ashamed. He understood that the power of the gospel, the power of biblical teaching, the power of transformation, the power of the

15:30

Christian life is not man's but God's. He understood that salvation is not withheld.

15:40

It's not something that's just for a special elite citizen class. It's for all who believe.

15:50

And Paul preached this gospel. He stood firm on this gospel. He stood firm on good, sound teaching.

15:56

You'll notice he says, As it is written. If you ever want to have fun, do a study in the New Testament and mark your

16:02

Bibles for every single time one of the New Testament writers quotes the Old Testament. They'll say,

16:09

As it is written. Or they'll say, Paul says, What does Scripture say? The New Testament writers,

16:15

Paul being one of them, Martin Luther included, myself included, and what every good Christian would be concerned about is not what man thinks, but what

16:23

God has said. In Exodus 24 3, the people of God, the Israelites, they heard all the commandments of God and said,

16:30

Yes, Lord, we will do all that You have said. Deuteronomy 6 3 says,

16:36

You obey all the commandments of God, and it will be well with you, because obedience always brings blessing.

16:43

Paul knew this, and he knew the path to obedience, which brings blessing, goes to the cross, goes through Christ, goes through faith, because the righteous man lives by faith, and he had zero tolerance for any false gospel that would distort or disturb the people.

17:03

So that's what serving God looks like when you have God honoring goals. What's the contrast?

17:10

What does man look like? Well man's goals, since they find the origin in serving themselves, can only have one goal, and that is to break down, tear down, destroy, and pervert anything that comes from God.

17:23

Notice, and this is something I learned last night, so if you ever wonder if I actually learn things when studying for a sermon, yes

17:29

I do. I learned something very interesting when studying for this sermon. Let's look at verse 7 once again.

17:35

Paul says it's a different gospel which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you.

17:44

Hmm. Now this word disturbing is a

17:50

Greek word in the original that means troubling, to stir up, to agitate.

17:57

It's understanding like if you had a can, and had like a little nut or a bean in it, you literally set it in motion.

18:03

You're shaking it back and forth. That nut, or the coin, or whatever you have inside that can, is being tossed back and forth, clinking on both sides.

18:12

But it also carries the meaning that someone has set in motion that which is intended to remain still.

18:23

So notice Paul, he sets up all these churches, and he goes on to his missionary journey, and goes on to do what he's called to do.

18:32

And he has to write this letter to the churches of Galatia, and he's essentially saying, what in the world is going on with you people?

18:42

When I left, this is not how I left you. You had sound doctrine.

18:48

You had sound teaching. You were walking in obedience and righteousness. And now I am astonished,

18:54

I am amazed that you have so quickly deserted the true gospel.

19:01

But why? Notice he says, there are some who are disturbing you.

19:10

Which means that false teachers, these Judaizers, they weren't doing this by accident.

19:15

They weren't like, I'm sorry, I guess I probably should have said or done that. Their intention, the goals of their service to themselves, was intentional to disturb the people of God.

19:32

So what does that mean? Well here's what I've come to recognize and learn.

19:37

I never thought about it in this respect, but it's scriptural, it's true. When there is trouble, when there is strife, when things are stirred up in your

19:48

Christian life or in a church, the origin of that strife is never truth and obedience.

19:55

It's always error and disobedience. Notice it wasn't the people that Paul came down on, although he was amazed that they were leaving his teaching.

20:05

But he was shepherding them like a shepherd would shepherd sheep. His condemnation was for those teaching error and walking and causing others to walk in disobedience.

20:17

So if you ever want to know why you have strife or agitation or something being shaken up or something set in motion that was meant to remain still, whether it's in your life or in the church, you need to keep turning over every rock, looking in every corner, doing everything you can to find where the error and the disobedience is.

20:38

Because that is where your strife and your controversy and your problems are coming from. Scripture is clear on this point.

20:46

Paul is abundantly clear. Sadly, so often we go to look as they do with these people.

20:52

We look for the things that, well, this will make the situation better, or make it go away fast, so we'll just point to this, or we'll deflect blame and point over here.

21:02

Paul, what he is saying is you, as these people in these churches in Galatia, need to take all the time it takes until you find these people that are teaching the error and the disobedience, correct that behavior, deal with it, and it will end your strife.

21:17

Because the origin of strife is never truth. The origin of strife is never obedience.

21:24

It's always error. It's always disobedience. And he says it because they were disturbing you.

21:30

And why is that? Because their goal, their intention, was not to, well, you know, we'll just see if we can cause a little bit of trouble here.

21:39

They were looking to distort the Gospel of Christ. There's so much more at stake in this world than whether or not the carpet's a certain color, or our furniture's arrayed a certain way, or if our class is taught the way we want it, and all these things we worry about.

21:58

Paul says there's so much more at stake, so much more important than those things that are created, those things that are creaturely.

22:08

There are eternal matters at stake, and he says these people are teaching you error. They're causing you to walk in disobedience because they're teaching you a false

22:17

Gospel. God always holds His strongest condemnation in Scripture for those that should know better, and still walk in disobedience.

22:28

And combined with that He holds even stronger condemnation for those that preach and teach things contrary to the

22:35

Word of God, because of all that it causes. The Gospel is something that is meant to be still, something that is meant to be firm, something that is rooted down in the ground so far that nothing that man could use could ever pull it up.

22:52

And to go along with that that would include all of truth, all of God's teaching, but primarily in view of the

22:57

Gospel. Because if you uproot that, you don't have Christianity! We have religion!

23:07

We have man! You take the Gospel away, everything else doesn't matter.

23:13

But you put the Gospel in the Word of God then every word of it matters. See the goal of truth and obedience is glory to God.

23:26

And what that produces is unity! You get unity from truth and walking in obedience.

23:36

The goal of error and disobedience is to bring glory to man. And that produces disunity.

23:43

It's all throughout Scripture. I almost didn't get to bed last night finding all these references.

23:49

I said, man if I preach every one of these references we'll be there at 3 o 'clock in the afternoon. We'll have a mutiny on my hands.

23:55

Because I'll be hungry. I'm sure you all will be hungry too, but I'll be most mad at myself because I'll be hungry.

24:05

My friends this Bible is available to all of you. Read it. It's all over there. Do a study.

24:11

Every single time you find disunity, or strife, or controversy, and problems in God's people, it doesn't come from those preaching truth, and from those attempting to walk in obedience.

24:24

It always comes from error. Every time. So number one, the origins.

24:31

Number two, the goals. And lastly, the results. The results of their service are different.

24:37

Now for this we are going to spend the remainder of our time in the book of Hosea. I keep following,

24:44

I know I say this every Sunday, but Hosea has become my new favorite book. I keep falling in love with the new book of Scripture, it seems like on a weekly basis.

24:51

I love this book. And I'm reading through and come to chapter 10, and I say, this is the perfect illustration for this last point.

24:58

The results of the service are different. Look at Hosea chapter 10, in verse 12.

25:04

It says, "...so with a view to righteousness." In other words it is saying, plant the good seeds of righteousness.

25:10

Reap in accordance with kindness. Now this word translated kindness is a word that can also be translated favor,

25:17

God's disposition of good favor and grace towards mankind. It is also interpersonal, and so on and so forth.

25:23

But it can be translated justice, kindness, favor, so on and so forth. It says, "...break up your fallow ground."

25:30

Or in other words, plow up the hard ground of your hearts. Any of you that are farmers, or ever done any planting in your yard, you know which types of soil is going to work with you, and which types aren't, right?

25:43

You can almost sniff it out a mile away, you can tell which ground isn't going to work with you. And God says, we get that kind of ground that's not conducive to growth in our hearts, and you need to plow up, stir up the hard ground in your hearts.

26:02

You serve God by planting the good seeds of righteousness, obeying what God has said. You see, serving man is what it says in verse 13, it says, "...you

26:11

have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice." Serving man is cultivating wickedness, it's cultivating sin.

26:19

And when you do that, you will only harvest a thriving crop of sins.

26:25

And notice what he says, "...you have eaten the fruit of lies, because you have trusted in your way."

26:37

The Bible has so many themes that jump off the pages. And one of them that we're addressing today is if you serve man, serve yourself, if you obey man, if you disobey

26:48

God, it will never be good for you, it will never go well with you. You will only reap that which you sow.

26:55

That's New Testament! You always reap what you sow, and you'll keep on sowing.

27:01

If you don't plant the good seeds of righteousness, if you sow in sin, and sow in wickedness and disobedience, don't be surprised when you reap a harvest full of sin.

27:12

That's what Hosea is screaming to us from the pages of Scripture, from the Old Testament from thousands of years ago when it was written.

27:19

He's crying out all the way past the cross to Christians living today, sow righteousness and obedience.

27:31

Notice he says you need to break up the hard ground of your heart in verse 12. Why? For it is time to seek the

27:40

Lord until He comes to rain righteousness on you. If you sow the good seeds of righteousness, if you sow obedience in your life, it will take time.

27:52

You're not going to start here on day one and obey God today, and then turn around and all the blessings of God just pour on you.

27:59

But what it indicates and what it's teaching is that as you sow, and sow some more, sow some more, obey some more, conform yourself to Christ here.

28:09

I found another area in Scripture where I haven't been obedient. Make changes, repent, get in obedience, and obedience, and obedience.

28:16

Over time you're gradually growing and being sanctified and conforming to His Son. And he says at that point,

28:23

He comes to rain righteousness on you. That means that God is coming along that journey as you're sowing, and as you're reaping, and as you're walking, and as you're obeying.

28:34

And He's going to keep raining righteousness on you, raining righteousness on you, raining blessing on you.

28:41

While I don't preach and don't believe in a health and wealth prosperity gospel, that does not mean that the

28:46

Bible does not teach that God wants to bless you, and bless you abundantly.

28:52

It might primarily be spiritual, but you have a roof over your head, you have food. Man, God blesses me in ways that I haven't even thought about to thank

29:02

Him for yet. Stop some time and look around what you have.

29:08

God has blessed you. And that's what He's telling us here. You see, there's a reason

29:13

I say some of the things I do. If you go way back to when I first got here, and I talked about the method to my madness, well, bring that right back into picture.

29:20

There's a method to my madness. There's a reason I say some of the things I do, like obedience brings blessing, and disobedience brings destruction.

29:28

It matters not what man thinks, but what God has said. The reason I say these things is because it's what the

29:34

Bible says! It's scriptural! So what do you do if you find that in your life you've been serving man instead of God?

29:49

What's the application? Just what Hosea tells you to do.

29:57

In verse 12, break up, plow up, do whatever it takes to break up that hard ground in your heart.

30:08

Repent! Because it is time to seek the

30:16

Lord. And if you seek the Lord, repent of your sin, if you humble yourselves before God, Scripture tells you

30:28

He will come, and He will rain righteousness on your life and on this church.

30:36

But He'll never do it if you're walking in error and disobedience. But if you sow the seeds of righteousness and seek the

30:44

Lord, He promises you to rain righteousness on your life because there's God and there's man.