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Guys take out your Bibles with me.
Yes, sir.
We're gonna read Galatians 3 We're gonna read verses 1 to 5 And then I'm gonna try to explain it That's my job Boy, that's a song right there Boy, I tell you what when I was a little kid Man that song as I love my daddy that song made me cry boy, man.
Don't get me going Done did me wrong this morning Yeah Yeah, yes, sir All right, so we're gonna read chapter 3 now last week if you were here, and you remember this is gonna make me so nervous This thing No, it's okay.
I just I feel like I'm far away.
Am I good I guess I'm all right But um last week we looked over the whole chapter and that's what I'm typically do when I get to a new chapter is I give An overview and then I go back and break it down And the way that I've got this broken down is is we're going to look at verses 1 to 5 Then we're going to look at verses 6 to 18 Then we're going to look at verses 19 to 29 So it'll be probably more than three sermons, but it'd be three parts because that's the way that the text breaks down So we're going to begin by reading Chapter 3 verse 1 Oh Foolish Galatians Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified Let me ask you only this Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected? by the flesh Did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith Now we'll read verse 6 to close just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness Let's pray Father I thank you for your word.
I thank you for the truth And I thank you for this morning and these men Lord, I am grateful That you've called me to preach and you've given me an opportunity to come and meet with these men to show them the love of Christ and To encourage them to trust in him.
I Pray Lord for those who know Christ in this room Lord that through this message their faith would be encouraged That they would stand steadfast in the truth The Lord for those who do not yet know Christ Lord that today it would be to them a day of reckoning That they would understand that they lay Bare and naked before the cross and they have nothing that they can bring Except the sin which made the cross necessary Lord and Lord that they would lay down All of their righteousnesses which are as filthy rags and would take up the cross of Christ and would trust in him And Lord that they would place their faith in him alone Is our prayer in Jesus name? All right, I know some of you haven't been here we've been doing a verse-by-verse study of Galatians and Because some of you haven't been here.
I don't want to leave you in the dark By jumping ahead to chapter 3.
So let me just very quickly overview where we've been so far chapter 1 The Apostle Paul rebukes the Galatians The Galatians was a group of churches in What would be now called Turkey southern Turkey? and Paul had established these churches in his missionary journeys and He rebukes them for turning from the gospel And turning to a false gospel that they had been given By some men that came after him.
So imagine this scenario Imagine you go and start a church and you preach the gospel You leave that church in the hands of what you believe to be faithful teachers and you go to lead other churches And while you're gone someone else comes in another group comes in and totally perverts what you built and Totally perverts the gospel that you preached would you be upset? Absolutely.
So the very first chapter in verses 6 through 9 Paul says I am astonished that you have so quickly turned from the gospel and Turned to another gospel not that there is another one for there is only one gospel And he challenges them and then in the next several verses on into chapter 2 He defends himself and his message now in chapter 3 he's turning the attention of the text back on the Galatians and He's going to ask them a series of questions that are intended to challenge them for what they have done they have turned from the truth and He's asking them a series of questions about that turn And the first portion of chapter 3 this series of questions bases his argument on Experience on the experience that they have had You all know that experience is probably one of the best teachers in the world You probably remember at least somewhat the first time you learned That when mama's cooking something on the stove You don't go in and put your hands on that stove It didn't have to be explained to you You didn't have to read a book about it You didn't have to get three points in a poem about why you didn't touch that stove again experience was your teacher and The experience of burning your hand and leaving that red mark on your hand that you could see for maybe even several days was enough For you to learn by experience not to do that again We learn a lot of things by experience I have I have Children as you all know I tell stories about my kids sometimes and I have five children and my seven-year-old is Going through the experience of losing her first teeth her little baby teeth and she lost her first tooth about well about a week ago and We as parents, you know, we're going to do the whole thing put the tooth under the pillow and replace it with some money I told you this story yesterday Kyle didn't yeah, I Put the money under the pillow.
All I had in my wallet was three one dollar bills I don't carry a lot of cash.
So all I had was three one dollar bills So I took her tooth out and I put three one dollar bills in and she woke up the next morning She ran into my bedroom.
She had her three dollars.
She was so excited.
Daddy.
I got three dollars so excited Little did I know two days later.
She's gonna lose another tooth She lost another two nights later.
She comes in with a tooth and then both of her little teeth in the bottom are gone Yes, you cute I got a gold mine So she pulls out that tooth She comes and hands it to me now.
I'm like, I don't have much cash, but I did my wife had a $5 bill It's all we had and we weren't gonna let her have nothing.
So She went to sleep put the tooth under the pillow We went in took the tooth out put the $5 bill in the next morning.
She walks into my room sad And she's holding this thing and she said daddy I only got one Because she doesn't know what a five is She only knows one bill two bills, you know what I mean? So in a five didn't didn't know anything to her To her the five was one and she thought she went from three to one.
I said no, baby.
You went from three to five That doesn't make sense.
I said, well you see right there where it says five.
She said yeah, I said that means it's more than one Okay, how many do you have one? No, we had to this again So it must have took me ten minutes to help her understand that that one five Was more valuable than those three ones and so I use that only to illustrate this morning She had to experience that and now that she has experienced it.
She understands a little bit more about how money works and my hope is that She'll become even better handling money as she gets older, but Experience is a tremendous teacher.
I Learned so much more outside of the classroom than I did in the classroom I learned so much more going through life and meeting friends and going through the difficulties of being bullied being falling in love and all those things that happen when you're young and growing up and Those experiences become wonderful teachers.
Well Paul in this passage relations 3 1 2 5 Paul is going to argue his point about faith and Works and you remember what his point is Justification is by faith alone not by works of the law and he's going to now use the experience of the Galatians as his argument he's going to say okay I've said Justification is by faith alone not by works of the law and you know this because you've experienced this You know this to be true because you've been through it So, let's look at the text we'll begin with the first verse now I looked at this verse last week, but I'm gonna break it down a little bit more this week He says old foolish Galatians Who has bewitched you we'll stop right there and just for a moment consider the fact that this is not nice We live in a society where people get so offended so easily People say oh you offended me very like at the drop of a hat When I'm preaching often people come and say pastor, why do you have to use such harsh language? I say you should have listened to Martin Luther Martin Luther used very harsh language.
You should listen to some of the early church fathers and The words they use but consider for a moment the Apostle Paul He is calling them foolish Now you might not think much of that because if you if somebody called you a fool You might even take it as a joke.
It's not that big of an insult anymore But this word for Paul is actually pregnant with meaning.
It's filled with meaning Because the word foolish here doesn't mean that you're an imbecile or an idiot What it means is you're not using the capacity that you have And what is it when somebody knows something, but they're not using their brain Stupid we talked about this last week didn't we? He's saying this is stupid.
You're being stupid Now that might not sound very nice and I don't know about you But when I was growing up, we were told not to call people stupid don't say stupid.
That's not nice Well, Paul's not concerned about nice.
He's concerned about right And I will tell you this You should be nice.
You should be loving you should be kind But you should always and foremost be concerned with what's right Sometimes we allow nice To allow us to accept things that aren't right Now you got to stand for what's true, even if it's hard and Paul says you foolish Galatians Who has bewitched you now? We talked about that word last week the word bewitched literally means to charm or to fool or to deceive Another pastor I like his name is Brian Boardman.
He mentions in his sermon on this heavy the movie the jungle book you ever see the jungle book and the the the the Python with the eyes that begin to Start to create like a spinny whirly Hypnotism and Mowgli is looking into his eyes and the and this in the Python is saying Look at my eyes and listen to what I'm saying And then that old I think it was what was the bear grabbed it and yanked it out of the way.
Yeah It's interesting that this text this word bewitched actually refers to an ancient Word an old Greek word which refers to giving someone an evil eye or to give someone a hypnotic look So the idea here that Paul saying is who has who has come and charmed you who has come and fooled you who's come and bewitched you Now he gets To the point.
He says it was before your eyes Notice that's a play on words because he's talking about this evil.
Eye.
He says it was before your eyes the Jesus Christ Was publicly portrayed as crucified now Jesus Christ was not Physically crucified in their midst because remember Galatia Is many miles away from Jerusalem and had happened many years before this.
This is probably being written well Close to 25 years after the the goss or the cross So you're looking at a at a time where a lot of these people some of them might not even have been alive when Jesus Christ Died on the cross and many of them had probably never seen it So what does he mean when he says that Christ was publicly portrayed as? crucified Well, it helps to understand the original language a little bit because the original language here actually means that he was publicly proclaimed as Crucified now when was Jesus proclaimed as crucified or placarded as crucified when did they hear of this? When Paul came to them Yeah, Paul came and what did Paul preach you all know this I knew nothing among you but Christ and him crucified So Jesus was was put on display by the words of Paul In fact, that's what one of the commentators says it says publicly portrayed what could be translated was vividly verbally described Have you ever heard someone describe the crucifixion I Think I've done it here a few times Do you know what it's like? Do you know what death on the cross is like? Well, it is horrible death on the cross is death by asphyxiation which means your body weight Collapses your lungs slowly and over time you make You have the inability to breathe in and eventually you die by suffocation Not only that but your flesh is torn by the nails that are in your arms and in your feet They are hanging you between heaven and earth on a wooden.
I imagine Unsanded very rough wooden cross and your bare back Is stretched out as it is filled with splinters and the pain of it is Relentless and some people lived days on the cross Especially if they had a place to put their feet Because if they had a place to put their feet they could lift up and breathe But then they would collapse again We believe Jesus had a nail through his feet every time he spoke.
He had to push up on that nail To get a breath in so he could say there's seven things Jesus said from the cross that we know of He had to push up on that nail To get a breath in To be able to say what he said Death on the cross is a vivid thing and they had heard it from the Apostle Paul in his own words and He's saying Oh foolish Galatians who has fooled you It was before your eyes or maybe a better way of saying this might be as simple as this you had Portrayed before you through my preaching the crucified Christ So verse two, let me ask you then only this Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith well That's actually an interesting way of asking the question because If you think about it, that doesn't really go along with what Paul has been talking about So far Paul's been talking about justification, right? How are you saved? How are you justified not by faith? Or see me not by works of the law, but by faith, but now he mentions the Spirit He said did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or hearing with faith? It Seems to me that to go along with his argument It might have been better that he said did you were you justified by works of the law? or by hearing with faith But that's not what he says.
He doesn't say were you justified? He says did you receive the Spirit why? You guys look like you're half-asleep this morning y'all with me Alright, why did he say did you receive the Spirit? Here's the answer.
It's very very simple receiving the Spirit is What happens the moment you believe and are justified before God? Therefore Paul is talking about the experience that they had the moment they believed The moment you come to saving faith in Jesus Christ You Receive the Holy Spirit within you.
Amen It doesn't happen later.
It doesn't happen at some time in the future It doesn't even happen Some people believe it happens at baptism But the Bible says if you do not have the Spirit of God, you do not belong to him Romans chapter 8 and verse 9 says that it says if you have not the Spirit of Christ, you do not belong to him Therefore if you believe The Spirit comes and makes his home within your heart at that very moment So Paul is asking the question.
Did you receive the Spirit? by doing works or by believing with faith and The answer is obvious, right? It's the answer is obviously, you know, you didn't receive the Spirit by works You didn't work your way into having the Spirit.
He came into your heart the moment you exercised saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ That is when he came and made his home in your heart Now I want to show you a passage just to help you understand that what I'm saying is correct And I always like to try to fortify my points if I feel like I need to I want to show you a passage in Ephesians so hold your place in Galatians Nope, it's a 1 13 and 14 289 is good though.
I used to have that on a bracelet.
I wore that for a long time.
I Like all the way to verse 10 actually 2 8 through 10, but in Galatians, excuse me Ephesians chapter 1 It says this in him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and Believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory notice what it said? It says in him that is in Christ You also when you heard the word of truth The gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit notice what it says But it says it happened when you heard and believed It didn't happen later see there are some people and some of you may have come from different Christian backgrounds There are some people who believe you get saved When you believe but you don't get the Holy Spirit until later They say you get saved when you believe But you don't get the Holy Spirit Until some later time and some churches call this the second blessing They'll say you get saved.
That's the first blessing but later and They usually tie it to some kind of outward expression or manifestation like speaking in tongues and they'll say that's when you know, you have the Holy Spirit because you've had this expression of Tongues and I don't want to get into the conversation about tongues But the point is this what they're saying is there's two types of Christians They're saying there's the unspirit filled Christians and there's the spirit filled Christians This passage proves that is not true Notice what it says again in Ephesians 1 it says in him You also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit Happened the moment you believed if you are a believer if you are saved You have the Spirit of God If you tell me I'm saved but I don't have the Spirit of God I would say you ain't saved And I don't argue with you because I got the authority of the Word of God right here It says the moment you got saved the moment you believe the Holy Spirit came into your heart and became the arrow bone Which is the word here for guarantee.
It's the Greek word, which means it's well, it's essentially in our In our language we would say it's the it's the promise for instance Let's say you were selling something like a let's say you were selling a car and I came to you I said brother.
I want to buy your car.
You want $5,000 for your car? I'm gonna give you $3,000 as my down payment And I'll bring you the rest of the money and I'll get the car but but this is my promise that I'll be back This is my promise that I'm gonna follow through I wouldn't leave $3,000 if I didn't intend to come back and finish the job, right? I wouldn't leave the three if I left you $3,000 and never came back.
You got all the money and the car right If I give you $3,000, I'm gonna come back and get the car when I get the rest of the money So That is the idea of era bone.
The era bone is sometimes translated down payment I my only fear with the down payment is I don't want you to think this God made the down payment I got to keep up with the monthlies.
That ain't how it works What the point is this God made the down payment when he put the Holy Spirit in us as a promise that he's going to fulfill the final Completion of our salvation the spirit is the promise that God's not gonna fail God will not fail to save me because he's given me the promise of The spirit within me if I have the spirit within me I have no reason to fear because God does not know how to fail God does not know how to not follow through I could give you $3,000 and maybe not come back and you might just have $3,000 God doesn't know how to fail So he says I put the Holy Spirit within you and that Holy Spirit is the promise That I'm going to follow through Now go back to Galatians And look with me again in Galatians 1 Or excuse me Galatians 3 verse 2.
He says did you receive the Spirit? The answer is if they're believers.
Yes, they received the Spirit They must have received the Spirit.
In fact, they wouldn't understand anything without it.
What is the first Corinthians to say? If you don't have the Spirit of God, you can't even understand the things of God right The Spirit of God is necessary for you to even understand the things of God So for to even be having this conversation, he's assuming they have the Spirit because he's talking to them about spiritual things and he says Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law? The answer is absolutely not or Hearing with faith.
The answer is absolutely There's only one way to receive the Spirit and that is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ Repent of your sin and place your trust in him.
That's the only way You cannot earn it.
You cannot deserve it You cannot work for it.
And I got to tell you if you are here this morning and you think That you have earned it I'm going to tell this story Sunday So if you're coming to church Sunday, you're gonna hear this again Some of some of y'all come to church with me.
There's a guy in New York His name is Michael Bloomberg he's one of the richest men in the world and He is also the former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg said in an interview in 2014 so several years ago after he had done a lot to try to get guns off the street and Try to increase healthy eating and a lot of other things that he did in New York He banned large sodas can't buy big sodas in New York anymore because he banned them You can only buy small sodas because apparently that's the issue that everybody's concerned about whether or not I can get a 64 ounce coca-cola, you know, that's But he did all this work to to get healthy eating and guns off the street and in an interview With a journalist.
He said this he said if God exists I Have earned my way to heaven He said he said I'm not he said I'm not even stopping to be interviewed I'm gonna go straight in I know about it.
He wrong But to me what he said I have earned my way to heaven I'm tell you guys something.
I love you enough to tell you this You have not earned your way to heaven The only thing you've earned in this life is your way to hell And not because and not because you are necessarily having gone through whatever you've gone through But every man in this world even the most virtuous man Deserves to go to hell Because he has sinned against Almighty God The only distinction between the believer and the unbeliever is Jesus Christ Jesus Christ righteousness will save you or your righteousness those filthy rags will damn you Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law? Did you receive the Spirit by what you've done? No You did not You received when you believed Now verse 3 He builds on this.
Are you so foolish same word as chapter 1 or verse 1? He already called him foolish now.
He's now he's compounding it.
Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by? The flesh now this actually compounds the argument this actually takes it a step further because the first question is this did you get saved? Did you receive the Spirit because of works or faith the answer faith? Now he goes on.
Okay, if you agree with me that you got saved by faith and not by works Are you staying saved by faith or by works? That's the question because he already he made the point.
Did you get saved by faith? Yes So are you being are you are you keeping yourself saved by your works? No That's the answer are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit are you now being perfected in the flesh? and the answer is No Let me ask you a question and you you probably know this But you guys read the scriptures a lot now, you know, I'm thankful for that a lot of time I'll say a verse you guys finish it before I even get it out of my mouth Because you guys spend so much time in the word.
I'm thankful You should be thankful That you have that much time in the word praise the Lord for that But think about one passage if you can pull it in your mind where Paul in Romans chapter 8 he compares the faith Or rather, excuse me this living in the spirit with living in the flesh What does he say flesh profits nothing right the flesh can do nothing Okay, let's look at it.
Just real quick.
Just pull up Romans 8 real fast.
I Know we're doing Yes, exactly Who I can't get sick I got to do a wedding this weekend All right, so Romans 8 Let's let's begin in verse 3 verses 1 and 2 are awesome, but just for time let's start a verse 3 Says for God has done what the law? Weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh But according to the spirit for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit To set the mind on the flesh is death But to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace for the mind that is set on the flesh Hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law.
Indeed.
It cannot those who are in the flesh Cannot please God So Let me ask you this Paul at Paul in Galatians Says are you so foolish having begun in the spirit? Are you now being perfected in the flesh? What does he say in Romans? If you are still in the flesh, you can't please God You cannot please God and you began in the spirit meaning you began by faith and the spirit came to live in you How are you to live now by flesh or by the spirit? By the spirit.
What does that look like? That means you are walking daily in the spirit Not in the flesh.
Yes, sir That's absolutely right and that was the issue that Paul was having right with his with the Judaizers They believed that it had to do with their flesh They believed it had to do with their works and Paul said no the Gentiles have received it because they've taken it by faith alone the Jews want to add works They want to add to the law Or rather add to faith.
They want to add the law So that's a good point.
That's a very good passage.
Yes Romans 9 So what does that mean? Let's talk it for just a minute and I know I'm short on time But in just a minute, I just want to ask this question What does it mean when he says having begun in the spirit? Are you now being perfected in the flesh if we're not if we're not living our lives in the flesh if we're living our lives by the spirit What does that look like what does that mean in a practical sense because and Honestly, we have to live out this practically, right? That's right to live in the spirit which one's a bro About sin deliberately.
Yeah So here's and that's true.
We ask God for strength.
We ask them to keep us from sin But here's the thing about the the Judaizers remember that group that Paul is dealing with They're saying that for you to be a Christian you have to follow the ceremonial laws of the history Or excuse me of Israel's history for instance circumcision That'd be the first thing if they came to Galatia and they saw all these Galatian Christians and they say yes It's good that you've believed But you're not really Christians until you're circumcised It's good that you believe But you're not really Christians unless You're following our dietary laws It's good that you believed But you're not really Christians Unless you're keeping the Sabbath on Saturday Keeping yourself from all work Now I want to ask you this because some of you may have come out of this background And I'm not here to kick you in the shins or to make you argue with me or to argue with you but some of you may have come out of movements like the Hebrew roots movement Or the Seventh-day Adventists or maybe even the Jehovah Witnesses And one of the things that you'll note especially in the SDA the Seventh-day Adventists is they they hold these same things They say yes, you can be a Christian if you believe But once you believe you have to start following all the laws and If you don't follow all of the laws, you really have no reason to believe you're saved Unless you're following those dietary laws.
Why would you think you're saved? You're not doing what God wants you to do Well Well as a nice woman, but yeah, but I bet you but you understand though.
Yeah notice what they're saying Yes, you were saved by faith, but you're keeping yourself saved by the flesh Is that not the very thing Paul is going against when he says in this passage Are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit? Are you now being perfected in the flesh? That's the point and that was what that you won't say something whether you keep Okay Because that's the point in all of this There are those who are saying yes, you come to Christ by faith, but faith alone is not enough You must add Works of the law and Paul is saying no if you at any point Begin to trust in your ability to keep the law you have ceased trusting in Christ You can only trust in one or the other Christ or your abilities I Gotta tell you I ain't got one ounce of hope in my ability It's like I said last week if you were in the sermon when I preached at the church Charles Spurgeon said this he said He said if my salvation was in my hands.
I would have lost it in ten minutes And I think he was being generous because I don't think I last him in If my salvation was in my hands it would it wouldn't last ten minutes, but He said my salvation is in the hands of Christ So having begun by faith and begun in the Spirit I Continue by faith in the Spirit.
I don't switch to works I Never switch and say now I'm being saved by works I was saved by faith in the beginning, but now I'm being saved by what I do when I get to heaven and I face my God and If he were to ask me why I should be able to be with him in his heaven I better not say Because I was a pastor Or because I was a Bible teacher or because I gave a tithe I Better say Jesus Christ and him alone I Have nothing else Nothing in my hand.
I bring only to the cross I cling that's it It's Christ or nothing.
I Have no goodness to bring Having begun in the Spirit are you now being perfected in the flesh the answer is no I Began in the Spirit, and I continue in the Spirit And this is why Paul tells us we are to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh now verse 5 oh Rather I'm sorry I jumped past verse 4 I guess I can learn to count huh Very handy toy Verse 4 remember these are a series of questions all intended to help them understand where they have erred Verse 4 did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed? It was in vain now this this passage Actually has an interesting history this verse 4 is considered very difficult to interpret and The reason is the word suffer here in fact is everybody's Bible say suffer Does anybody have a translation that says in? Really what translation is that? Now I want it.
I want to I want to give I want to give Credence to the New Living Translation at this point because I didn't know that the NLT said that but I Believe that's correct Does it say experience Really? Because here's the thing about this word the word suffer The word suffer has a range of meaning and We think of suffer as going through hardship Right if I said I've been if I said brothers pray for me.
I've been suffering Then you think of suffering I've either I've lost something or I've lost someone or I'm hurting or I'm going through an ailment Suffering is a bad thing In Context I don't think suffer is the best way to translate this word even though.
That's what the ESV uses even though That's what most of your translations use.
I don't think suffer is correct even though Most of the times this word is translated.
It is suffer is what it means However, because it has a what we call a semantic domain.
It has a semantic range It can be translated experience as It is in the NLT and the NIV and I think that's the better Translation and here's why Paul's whole argument is based on their experience when we talked about that at the beginning and He's asking them about their experience Did you receive the Spirit when you believed or by the works when you believed that's your experience? And he's saying are you being kept by the works or by the Spirit? It's by the Spirit by faith.
That's how you're being kept and now he says did you experience these things in vain? Meaning have you gone through hearing the gospel believing the gospel trusting in Christ Receiving the Spirit living for Christ.
Have you experienced all this in vain? Have you experienced all this for nothing? And here's why he's asking that because the point is if you go back to the law, the answer is yes If you come to Christ and you trust in Christ and you believe in Christ and you place your faith in Christ And then you say oh, but now I've got to go back to the law to find my salvation You've abandoned Christ and it's all for nothing You can't live on both mountains when we talk about mountain of Christ the mountain of the law If you try to climb the mountain of the law, you'll always fail But Christ puts you on his mountain if you try to live on both mountains, you will not survive it's one or the other and Paul says did you go through this experience of trusting Christ for nothing? Because if you've gone back to the law you've abandoned Christ, yes, sir, that's right.
You can't serve two masters That's right.
And we're not trusting in the law.
We're trusting in him That's right Yeah, give yourself completely and we do we give ourselves to him When you come to Christ you get a new Captain up until that point you've been the captain of your own ship But when you submit to Christ you get a new captain a new man in charge And it ain't you no more All right, so verse 5 and we're going to begin to draw to a close Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Remember, these are all questions one's building on the last one So he asked the question did you experience all this in vain if you're going back to the law? It was in vain and Does he who supplies the Spirit who's he talking about who's the he there who supplies the Spirit and works miracles You say you say the Trinity you say God Jesus the Holy Spirit.
All right, but in this sense that the idea is God has supplied the Spirit to you And he works miracles among you.
Is he doing this by works of the law or is he doing this by hearing with faith? The answer is by hearing with faith again.
The answer is always the same, right? Is it by works of the law or by hearing with faith? It's not by works of the law.
It's always by hearing with faith.
Yes Yeah, the law And Not only do I say amen to that that's what we've been saying this whole time right the law is no Savior The law cannot save it is simply able to condemn.
It's not able to save So that's what he says here Does he who supplies the Spirit and to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law by hearing with faith? the answer is Obvious it's by hearing with faith.
So I want to ask you this this morning I asked you just about every week, but I want to remind you and ask you again this morning What are you trusting it? Are you trusting Somehow and what you have done Or are you trusting in what Christ has accomplished and maybe I'll add a thought Because maybe you're not trusting in anything this morning Maybe this morning you feel like you are hopeless Maybe you feel like you're at a point where you have nothing that you could ever find salvation in Not only is your salvation not by works But you're also your salvation is not kept away from you because of sin The Bible says that Jesus is able to cleanse us from all sin You can't be saved by works But you can't be kept away from salvation by sin either Your sins those scarlet can be washed whiter than snow Jesus Christ is a better Savior than you are a sinner Jesus Christ can save you no matter how bad No matter how far away you might have walked think about the story of the prodigal son Who was in? the pig slop Far away from his father having insulted his father having insulted his family having squandered all of his earthly goods and he finally realizes my father is a good man and my father will take me in as a servant And I can live better as a servant in my father's house than I can Anywhere else in the world and he goes back and his father treats him not as a servant But as a son he runs to him He embraces him and he receives him the Bible says Jesus speaking in John 6 the one who comes to me I will not Cast out the one who comes to me I will not cast out So I encourage you this morning if you have not come to Christ by faith It's because of only one of two reasons either you're trusting in your own righteousness Which cannot save or you feel like your sin is so bad that Christ cannot save and both of those are false Your righteousness will never save you and Christ will never fail to save if you draw to him through repentance and faith Today we looked at experience as a teacher But next week we're going to see that the more valuable teacher is scripture Because Paul switches he says your experience tells you you were saved by faith and not by works but scripture also teaches you and he looks at the story of Abraham and Shows us through Abraham all the way back to the first patriarch of the faith that he was saved not by works But by faith alone, and we'll look at that next week.
Let's pray Father I thank you for this time I pray that this word has been an encouragement to these men and I pray Lord that if any of these men Have a sense of self-righteousness that they would be humbled and see the need of Christ And if any of these men are so debased that they feel like there is no hope That they would recognize that Christ is able to save to the uttermost Everyone who draws nigh unto God through him May we see Christ as our all in all and it's in his name.