Don’t miss! your blessings! – How God Fills Your Dry Places

Don’t miss! your blessings! – How God Fills Your Dry Places David Jeremiah – 2023 – 2020 Sermon

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

This week, I read that one of the things that will keep evangelicals in the sight of persecution is our insistence on the exclusivity of the gospel.
The Bible says there is one gospel Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life.
No man comes to the father, except through me.
There’s one gospel, it comes from God Almighty and it is life changing.
But there aren’t many, there’s just one. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s letter to the Galatian believers is proof that this problem which plagues so many of today’s Christians is as old as the first century church.
Many of you like me, perhaps grew up in a church where you were considered to be a good Christian based upon your ability to live up to a certain number of things.
And I don’t have to give you what they are.
They were different for everyone, but you were judged on the basis of your ability to do certain things and often not do certain other things we call that legalism because it’s a return to the law.
Well, the Galatian letter was written to a group of Christians who were about ready to return to the bondage of the law.
Let me tell you their story quickly.
Had it not been for Paul’s intervention in their lives through this letter called Galatians, many of them would have gone back to a dreary, dull legalism lived at its lowest level.
You see, many gentiles had come to be Christians during the time that Paul was preaching toward the end of his preaching career.
Paul was reaching hundreds and hundreds of gentiles with the gospel.
But just as these gentile, Christians were getting established in the freedom of their faith.
Some teachers that Paul refers to as Judaize in this text came from Jerusalem and began to teach these gentiles that their faith wasn’t complete unless it was accompanied by the law.
In other words, they said, you want to believe in Jesus Christ, that’s fine, but you can’t have full salvation unless you add to it.
The observance of the Old Testament Law and especially at stake was the practice of circumcision, which was the Jewish, right?
So they were trying to tell the gentiles that really in order for them to be Christians, they had to be Jews too.
And the attack was powerful against these new believers. It wasn’t really original, but it was powerful.
You know, from the very beginning, there always have been attacks on the gospel.
Let me tell you how they come, they come in two different ways.
First of all, sometimes people come and they try to subtract stuff from the gospel. Have you noticed?
Well, I believe in the gospel. I just don’t believe in the deity of Jesus.
How do you do that?
Oh, yes, I believe in the gospel, but I don’t accept the Bible as the authoritative word of God.
It’s full of heirs and it’s not true. My friends, you can’t do that.
You can’t take the gospel and pull out of it. The stuff you don’t like and still have the gospel.
What you’ve got is nothing. And over the years, we’ve been able to see that process and we’ve identified it when people start to denigrate the deity of Christ, we stand up against it, we teach against it.
But the new thing in the world today is not the subtraction from the gospel.
It’s the addition to the gospel. The new thing is to take the gospel, leave it as it is.
But add more stuff to it. Like if you’re not baptized, you can’t be a Christian. You, I don’t know.
We believe in baptism here. We baptize somebody in almost every service, but we don’t baptize them so that they can become Christians.
We baptize them because they already are Christians. And baptism is a picture of what has already happened to them.
Let me say this clearly. You don’t have to be baptized to go to heaven.
And I know that for a fact because the thief on the cross went right into the presence of the Lord and they didn’t have time to baptize him.
So baptism is an ordinance but it’s not a work of grace.
Some people say, well, you can’t have the gospel if you don’t have the Eucharist, well, the Eucharist may be all right.
But it’s not the gospel communions, not the gospel, the laws, not the gospel, giving food to the hungry is not the gospel.
Helping people who are poor is important as it is. It is not the gospel.
It is the result of the gospel at work in your life. But it isn’t the gospel and friends.
When we start tampering with the gospel, we do great damage to the cause of Christ.
Let’s get this clear that the gospel isn’t anything other than what the Bible says. It is.
And Paul is going to deal with that here in this passage of scripture.
Now he begins where he had to begin because one of the things that was happening to him as this book starts is that people had begun to criticize Paul.
They didn’t have anything good to say that they could use against the message of grace and they didn’t like Paul.
So they said, well, you can’t trust Paul. He’s not even a real apostle.
He was born after the other apostles were gone. He’s not one of the 12.
And so listen, how Paul begins the letter?
He says Paul an apostle, not from men or through man but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead, Paul has to go after this accusation against him that he’s not a real apostle because here they’re not trying to discredit him as an apostle for any other reason than to be able to discredit his message.
If Paul is an apostle, then he can say what he says.
But if he’s not, then you don’t have to believe anything that he’s taught. So they went after Paul’s apostleship.
And Paul begins this letter by dealing with the fact that he is a true messenger of God.
He is an apostle, not from men or through men, but through Jesus Christ.
His defense of his apostleship isn’t a matter of pride. He’s not trying to say warm an apostle.
No, his defense is born out of a deep concern for the gospel which he preached.
In other words, if he is not God’s Apostle, then the Galatians can disregard anything he might say so from the outset, Paul wants it understood that as a true messenger.
His gospel is not from men, but it’s from God.
And of course, it was true that Paul wasn’t one of the 12, but his call was just as real as theirs had been in First Corinthians 15.
He says, and last of all, he was seen by me, Paul’s writing me also as one born out of due time for I am the least of the apostles who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of Christ.
What is Paul saying? Am I not an apostle? Absolutely. Did he see Christ?
That was one of the requirements. When did he see him on the road to Damascus?
He saw Christ after all of the rest, he was born out of due time.
One of the other requirements for an apostle was they had to have received a message directly from God.
Did Paul receive such a message?
Look at verse 11, but I make known to you brethren that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man, where did he get it?
He got it from God. Paul was an apostle. He was a legitimate apostle of Jesus Christ.
Now probably you’ve noticed that some people today say they’re apostles and if by their claim, they mean that they are sent ones, which is what the word means, then that’s OK.
But if they think they are apostles like the same apostles in the New Testament, they are certainly in error because according to the New Testament, you cannot be an apostle unless you saw the risen Lord, unless you accompany Jesus from his baptism to his resurrection, nobody today can say that.
But Paul said it and it was true of Paul, an apostle born out of due time, had every right to say what he was about to say.
Now, Paul is defending his own legitimacy.
His own credibility for if he is not credible, then the rest of this is meaningless.
We now understand that Paul accepts his apostleship from God, not from men.
He is appointed by God as an apostle.
And so he moves from his defense of the true messenger to talk about the true message.
And here’s what he says about the true message of the gospel grace to you and peace from God.
Verse three, our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and father to whom be glory forever and ever now that he has dealt with his own credibility.
Paul turns his attention to the content of the message of the gospel by the way, you can’t see my Bible, but it’s all marked up in this first chapter.
One of the reasons is this is all about the gospel.
The word Gospel is in the 1st 11 verses five times.
Paul is talking about the Gospel and what it really is and he wants us to understand the nature of it and now he’s going to define it in these verses.
And what does he say about the gospel?
He said, first of all, it is the voluntary death of Christ on the cross for our sin by his own will.
He says, he went to the cross.
How many of you know Jesus didn’t go to the cross because he was made to go to the cross.
He went to the cross us of his own will. When he came into this world, he prayed this prayer.
He said, Lord, in the volume of the book, it is written, I have come to do your will.
He went to the cross as the will of the Father by his own volition.
Paul says the first thing to remember about the gospel. It is the voluntary death of Christ on the cross.
And then it says, it’s the vicarious death of Christ.
The word vicarious means to do something on behalf of another person to do something and someone else place.
Paul says that he died, Christ died for our sins, for yours and for mine, he died in the place where we deserve to die.
He was our vicarious substitute on the cross. His death is voluntary. His death is vicarious and thirdly, it’s victorious.
Notice what he says happens when he dies for us.
He delivers us from the evil age in which we live, we have been delivered because of what Jesus did on the cross.
That’s the Gospel. If you go back to verse one, it involves the resurrection God, the father who raised him from the dead.
So what is the Gospel class? It’s simply this Christ died. Christ was buried, Christ rose again.
His death was in our behalf as the Son of God.
It was the propitiation for all the sins of the world and whoever will put their trust in what Jesus did on the cross will become a Christian.
That’s what it means to be a Christian.
That’s the gospel, not anything added to it, not anything subtracted from it.
It’s the pure gospel of the grace of God.
Now, since Christ has done all of this for us, since he voluntarily has given himself for us, taking our place in death, rescuing us out of this evil age, how presumptuous it must seem to Him to God when we try to add something human into what he’s already done.
It’s like we’re saying, God, thank you for the gospel, but it’s not quite enough.
Thank you for the gospel.
But I’m not gonna be able to accept this gospel unless I can add something to it for myself.
The gospel is either God’s Gospel or it’s no gospel.
And Paul is saying, you can’t say to these new Galatian believers, you have been saved by the grace of God and the gospel is sufficient for you.
Oh, but you need the law too.
And it was the very thing that they were doing that so angered Paul.
I need to tell you, we’re going to find this out before we’re done.
This is a violent passage of scripture.
I mean, Paul is exercised in this passage of scripture more so than you’ve ever seen your pastor exercised in this pulpit to put it mildly.
The boy’s upset and he’s upset for a legitimate reason.
It’s because the gentile churches were being taught that what Jesus did through his death on the cross was not enough.
It may have been adequate for their initial salvation, but they needed something more in order to maintain their Christian life.
Paul says something. Turning your Bibles over to the third chapter where I just want to read the first three verses of the third chapter.
Listen, how Paul deals with this.
He says, listen, he says, all foolish Galatians who has Bewitched you that you should not obey the truth.
Now watch this before whose eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.
This only He says, here’s the question I wanna ask you. Listen up.
He said, I just want to know this.
Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
Are you so foolish having begun in the spirit that you can now be made perfect in the flesh?
You who think I’m saved by grace?
But I gotta keep myself saved and walking with God by my own works.
Paul said, are you so foolish to think that you can keep yourself in a situation you can never get yourself into in the first place.
How foolish is that you cannot be saved without the grace of God and you cannot live the Christian life without the grace of God.
There’s nobody here who can live the Christian life in his own flesh, in his own strength.
I’ve said before, the Christian life isn’t hard. It’s not difficult. It’s impossible.
Now, he’s gonna talk about the false message. And what is the false message notice in verse six?
I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him that called you into the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
One of the things we notice, first of all, is Paul says, whoever this is, that’s doing this to the Galatian believers is troubling them and perverting the gospel in the process.
That’s pretty serious. Don’t do that.
But notice Paul is astonished, he’s shocked, he’s overwhelmed that the Galatians who’ve only been Christians for a short time have so quickly turned away from the simplicity of their faith.
And at this place in all of Paul’s letters, this is interesting in this place in all of Paul’s letters right here.
In the first part of the chapter of chapter one, there’s a prayer, there is no prayer in this letter.
Paul is not in the praying mood. Have you ever had people do this?
You’re having a discussion with a spiritual brother or sister and it gets really difficult and they’re not really dealing with the truth.
And so they say, you know, why don’t we pray? I have actually said this.
No, we’re not going to pray. This is no time for prayer.
We’re going to deal with this issue, then we’ll pray.
And Paul is saying this is no time for prayer. He’s not gonna pray about this.
Paul is upset and he’s not going to pray. He accuses his readers of being turn coats.
He says, how could you so quickly turn away from the purity of the gospel, which was given to you.
And this word turn away is the word which really means a military revolt and a change of attitude.
The Apostle thinks of the readers as having changed sides.
You have become Christians and now you’re going back to the old way. And these are tough words.
These are grave words. The Galatians were not just exchanging one set of opinions for another set of opinions.
No, they were not merely preferring one acceptable way to another acceptable way.
Paul makes it clear that by leaving the grace of God, they have left God himself and the seriousness of this erosion is observable in two words that Paul uses.
And I don’t like to get into all this Greek stuff because I’m not trying to impress you.
But these two words are really important. The first word is this notice in your Bible.
He says, you have turned to a different gospel underlying different in your Bible.
You know what the word is in the language of the New Testament.
It’s the word Heteros and we would know that meaning because we talk about somebody who is heterosexual.
What does that mean? They’re interested in the opposite sex. What Paul is saying is here.
You have turned to a heteros gospel. It’s not the same gospel. It’s a different gospel.
It’s not even the real gospel.
He’s saying you haven’t changed from one gospel that’s acceptable to God to another gospel. That’s acceptable to God.
No, no, no, no. You’ve given up the real gospel for a different gospel.
And then he uses another word all which isn’t even the same. This isn’t even the same.
This is not a gospel. Ladies and gentlemen, when you corrupt the simplicity of the grace of God in the gospel, you do away with the gospel.
It isn’t the gospel anymore. You can’t do that. And if it isn’t the gospel, it can’t save anybody.
If there’s anything I could do to merit the grace of God, then it isn’t the grace of God.
If there’s anything I could do to be acceptable to God, do you think he would have sent his own son into this world to die on my behalf?
I don’t think so. The reason he came was because I’m incapable of reaching up to God in my own strength.
I have nothing to give him.
The Bible says, even my righteousness is, are as filthy rags, my hands are empty and all I can do with empty hands is receive what God has already done.
That’s God’s grace. And when somebody comes along and tries to add something to the gospel, Paul understands that to be a serious violation that should not be just winked at and let go.
According to the Apostle, there is no compromise.
It’s either the Gospel of Grace or it is not the gospel at all.
Now, he comes finally to the false messenger and in verses eight and nine, here’s what Paul says as if his words had not already been strong enough.
Verse eight. He says, but even if we or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be a cursed who I’m telling you this is a little violent.
In fact, an angel from heaven is the highest created authority.
Even an angel cannot defy the authority of God and preach a gospel that does not originate with God.
Paul says that if a man or an angel should dare to do such a thing, he is anathema.
That’s the word a cursed. If someone should stand in this pulpit someday and teach a gospel that is not the gospel of grace.
God puts his stamp of curse on that person. He is selected for damnation. That’s what it means. You say.
Whoa pastor. That’s strong. He surely didn’t mean it. Well, yes, he did.
He did mean it because he said it again in the next verse in case we didn’t get it verse nine as we have said before.
So now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be a cursed.
Why would Paul repeat himself?
Well, for one thing sure would leave an impression on the people who are reading it.
Remove any doubt that maybe he had miswritten or misspoken. No, Paul wants us to understand.
This is not an optional thing we should concern ourselves about. This is a serious issue.
Don’t mess with the gospel. Perhaps you’re thinking, well, aren’t Paul’s words a little severe?
I mean, in our age of tolerance and easygoing religion, Paul’s words are really harsh.
We have been conditioned in our culture to accept anything.
I mean, that’s the standard deal.
The thing that we want now more than anything else is to be tolerant politically correct, never say anything.
I mean, even in our government, we’re taking out all the words that might offend anyone.
And John Stott said what that represents is what is going on today. It’s called synchronism.
Synchronism is bringing everything together from all of the various things and making it all one take a piece of this and a piece of that and mix and match a little of this.
Take some of the scientists take some of their stuff and take some of the stuff from the Old Testament and that’s where a lot of people are today.
They’re collecting things and here’s what they say.
I’m going to get all the stuff and collect it all and I’m going to make my own religion.
Well, my friend, if you make your own religion, you’re gonna have to make your own heaven because you aren’t going there because you can’t get to heaven in your own religion.
Whoever taught you that you get to make the rules. Almighty. God is your creator. He set the rules out.
He doesn’t say to you. Ok?
You guys, you’re on the earth now, go find a way, put something together and bring it to me and let’s see if we can make it work.
God is not a synchro.
And if you think you can get to heaven by just grabbing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and putting it all together and creating your own religion, it isn’t gonna happen.
It’s high time that Christians discover that the very heart of our faith is Jesus Christ.
And that Jesus Christ did not come to make a contribution to the religious storehouse of mankind that he came to reconcile the world unto himself.
And that’s what Paul is saying.
What Paul is saying is, hey, listen up the gospel is the gospel.
Don’t take from it. Don’t add to it or it isn’t the gospel anymore.
A person who doesn’t believe the Gospel of God will end up in an eternal hell.
That’s why Paul said if anybody preaches another gospel, let him be cursed because that person is leading people down a primrose path that will land them in an eternal fire forever and ever.
And that’s pretty serious. Paul says, don’t do that.
Don’t tamper with the one thing that God has given you that will get you to heaven.
Don’t tamper with it for your sake or anybody else’s, everybody take a deep breath.
Ask yourself this question. Why is this not taught? Why do we stay away from this?
We don’t want to be controversial. We have become so mesmerized by the importance of tolerance.
We think we are being Godly. If we go out of our way, not to ever offend anyone.
And God sees it quite differently. Friends to God and to His apostle.
The issues of all eternity are hanging in the balance for the human soul.
Think of the value of a soul for a moment, a soul created by a direct act of God in his own image and in his own likeness and that soul is deathless.
Oh You said, Pastor, what do you mean if I don’t accept Christ, I just die and it’s over.
Oh no, it’s not. The Bible teaches that every one of us will be alive somewhere forever and ever and ever.
The soul that God gave you when he created you is a deathless eternal soul.
Its value is so great, this soul, it’s so great that Jesus Christ himself.
The second person of the Godhead came from the mansions of glory to this sick sad world to pay the price of our redemption.
And he had to give his own life as a ransom for our souls.
He died on Calvary’s cross to the jeers and the sneers of the mocking multitude.
He who knew no sin became sin for us because of the value of the soul.
As far as God is concerned, to tamper with so great a salvation is to tamper with the eternal destiny of a human soul.
Now, maybe we can understand a little bit why Paul was so angry about what these people were doing.
The Bible says when we were without strength, Christ died for us.
Our only hope is grace and grace alone.
Our only hope is that almighty God would reach down into the pit where we are and by His wonderful grace, pull us up out of our situation, which he did because of the cross of Jesus Christ, our only hope.
And when people play with the content of the grace of God, they play with the only hope of the world, which is why we shouldn’t be quite so tolerant sometimes as we are and maybe a little bit more strident than we are to say.
No. That’s the glorious, wonderful gospel of God’s grace.
You leave it alone, it belongs to God and it’s the only hope of the world and my friend.
It’s not just the only hope of the world. It’s the only hope for any of us in this room.
One of the reasons why so many people and especially is this true of men, so many men struggle with the gospel is because, and I’ve actually heard them say to me, Pastor Jeremiah, I believe your gospel.
It’s just too easy, too simple. Tell me something I can do.
Tell me something I can do and then I’ll believe your gospel.
But there isn’t anything you can do If there was anything any of us could do.
Jesus Christ wouldn’t have come down here.
He came down here because we were at the bottom of the well and we couldn’t get out and he sent Jesus down here to rescue us.
What a great story. What a great, wonderful truth.
One day I was at the bottom of the well and Jesus rescued me.
How many of you been rescued here today? Say I’ve been rescued, I’ve been rescued. Amen.
And until we come to the place where we understand our helplessness, apart from the grace of God, we can’t be saved because until we understand that we keep trying to give God something, Lord, I go to church a lot.
God, I’m a good husband. God, I work hard man.
I’ve made a good living provided, those are all great things, but they have nothing to do with you going to heaven until you come to the place.
The Bible says as a little child and say, Lord, I need you in my life, I’ve tried everything else and I need you and I realize that unless you do it all, it’ll never happen.
And so I give myself to you, Lord, you’ve come to give me this gift and I receive it and I accept it.
And when you do that, then you become a Christian until you do that.
As long as you’re trying to claw your way up the side of the, well, you can’t become a Christian because you’re trying to do it your way.
And God says, no, that’s never going to be enough.
I did it all, everything that needs to be done is done.
All you have to do is accept it and receive it.
And you can be a Christian and everybody who is a Christ follower got to be a Christ follower that way there isn’t any other way we come to the end of ourselves and we accept what Jesus did for us on the cross.
I am so grateful to have the opportunity to come and talk with you and that we’re sharing a wonderful series called The Word.
It’s the signature series that I have put together message that I have preached over the years about the Bible and the importance of it in our life.
Nothing could be more central to who we are at turning point than this series.
And I would love for you to um have a copy of the study guide so that you can go through that study guide and follow along and perhaps take some of the thoughts that you heard and share them with others.
You can get the study guide by going to David Jeremiah dot org.
There’s also a set of C DS you can acquire there.
And then uh during the month, there’s this very special gift book that we have produced and it’s just for the month of June because June is a critical month of giving for turning point.
We want to say something very special to those of you who do something very special.
This gift book is called Living the 66 Books of the Bible.
It’s a 287 page hardcover book uh with practical application to every book of the Bible.
And uh you will love this. Uh you will want to have it where you can get to it.
You’ll share it with others. I expect you all probably send us an email saying how can I get some more of these?
Because it’s a very positive powerful book. It’s not just what’s in the books of the Bible.
It’s how the books of the Bible teach you to live your life. Very practical, very powerful.
When you send a gift, ask for your copy of living the 66 books of the Bible.
And it will be on its way to you as our way of saying thank you for your investment.
All right, here’s the question is there only one gospel. And here’s the answer from Galatians chapter one.
She came into my office early that morning, looking as dejected and defeated as any new Christian I had ever seen.
I knew that just a few weeks earlier, she had received Christ as her savior through our evangelism explosion outreach program which we had used in our church.
I had heard good things about her growth.
Someone told me that she was being disciple by one of the good women in our congregation.
And I assumed that her visit that day was to talk with me about some personal problem that she might have or some family problem.
You can imagine my surprise.
When upon entering my office, she threw her bible down on my desk and she said, I quit, I can’t do it.
I’ll never be able to do it. And I said, do what she said, do the Christian life.
That’s what, after what I heard last night, she said, I know I will never be able to live the Christian life.
There is no sense even trying. I’m turning in my bible pastor. I quit.
Well, that actually took place several years ago during a crusade that was held in our church when I was a pastor in Fort Wayne, Indiana on the night to which this woman referred.
The crusade team had decided to distribute a sheet of paper to everyone who was present and on the sheet of paper, they had listed all the sins of the flesh, plus a few other evil practices, which certainly would have gotten the attention of any young follower of Christ trying to get started living a Christian life.
I don’t remember all the items that were on the list, but I do recall that there was a place to evaluate how much time you had prayed the previous week.
How much time you had spent reading the Bible? How many people you had witnessed to?
I remember that I felt defeated and I was the pastor of the church.
And I found out later that some of the people who presented the list were also overwhelmed by the implications of it.
It took us weeks to bring that woman back to a wholesome outlook on the Christian life.
We had taught her at the beginning that Christianity was a relationship with Jesus Christ, not a bunch of rules to be followed.
But that night in that crusade had almost convinced her that she was now responsible for her own standing before God.
And while this event took place all those years ago, it has been replayed for me in one form or another many times since for some reason, man has an incurable desire to replace the wonderful grace of Jesus with some rules and regulations.
Jerry Bridges spoke for many Christians when he wrote my observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance.
Instead of on his grace. In this sense, we live by works rather than grace.
We are saved by grace, but we are living by the sweat of our own performance.
End of quote, and writer Dudley Hall says more often than not, what is proclaimed as gospel is just another challenge to do.
Better, try harder, pray longer, be more committed love, deeper, stop sinning, be good, be happy.
No one of the church has failed to connect with so many people out there.
The hurting masses of the world are seeking a cure for their ills and solutions for their problems.
And too often the church has just given them more expectations to fulfill more rules, to keep more activities, to maintain more work to do.
And the result has been a trail of disillusionment and discouragement.
Eugene Peterson, who has given us the paraphrase called The Message wrote a book once called Traveling Light.
And in this book, he said, we might fairly suppose that a congregation of Christians well stocked with freedom stories like the stories of Abraham Moses, David Samson, Deborah and Daniel would not for a moment accept any teaching that would suppress freedom.
We might reasonably expect that a group of people who from their earliest days have been told stories of Jesus setting people free and who keep Jesus at the center of their lives in weekly worship would be sensitive to any encroachment of their freedom that these people would be critically alert to anyone or anything that would suppress their newly acquired spontaneity.
But he goes on to say, in fact, in the community of faith, the very place where we actually experience the free life for the first time.
If we’re not careful, we are in most danger of losing it in the very same place.
Paul’s letter to the Galatian believers is proof that this problem which plagues so many of today’s Christians is as old as the first century church.
Many of you like me perhaps grew up in a church where you were considered to be a good Christian based upon your ability to live up to a certain number of things.
And I don’t have to give you what they are.
They were different for everyone, but you were judged on the basis of your ability to do certain things and often not do certain other things we call that legalism because it’s a return to the law.
Well, the Galatian letter was written to a group of Christians who were about ready to return to the bondage of the law.
Let me tell you their story quickly had it not been for Paul’s intervention in their lives through this letter called Galatians.
Many of them would have gone back to a dreary dull legalism lived at its lowest level.
You see many gentiles had come to be Christians during the time that Paul was preaching toward the end of his preaching career.
Paul was reaching hundreds and hundreds of gentiles with the gospel.
But just as these gentile Christians were getting established in the freedom of their faith.
Some teachers that Paul refers to as Judaize in this text came from Jerusalem and began to teach these gentiles that their faith wasn’t complete unless it was accompanied by the law.
In other words, they said, you want to believe in Jesus Christ, that’s fine, but you can’t have full salvation unless you add to it.
The observance of the Old Testament law and especially at stake was the practice of circumcision, which was the Jewish, right?
So they were trying to tell the gentiles that really in order for them to be Christians, they had to be Jews too and the attack was powerful against these new believers.
It wasn’t really original, but it was powerful.
You know, from the very beginning there always have been attacks on the gospel.
Let me tell you how they come. They come in two different ways.
First of all, sometimes people come and they try to subtract stuff from the gospel. Have you noticed?
Well, I believe in the gospel. I just don’t believe in the deity of Jesus.
How do you do that?
Oh, yes, I believe in the gospel, but I don’t accept the Bible as the authoritative word of God.
It’s full of errors and it’s not true. My friends, you can’t do that.
You can’t take the gospel and pull out of it. The stuff you don’t like and still have the gospel.
What you got is nothing. And over the years we’ve been able to see that process and we’ve identified fight it.
When people start to denigrate the deity of Christ, we stand up against it, we teach against it.
But the new thing in the world today is not the subtraction from the gospel.
It’s the addition to the gospel. The new thing is to take the gospel, leave it as it is.
But add more stuff to it. Like if you’re not baptized, you can’t be a Christian. You, I don’t know.
We believe in baptism. Here. We baptize somebody in almost every service, but we don’t baptize them so that they can become Christians.
We baptize them because they already are Christians. And baptism is a picture of what has already happened to them.
Let me say this clearly. You don’t have to be baptized to go to heaven.
And I know that for a fact because the thief on the cross went right into the presence of the Lord and they didn’t have time to baptize him.
So baptism is an ordinance, but it’s not a work of grace.
Some people say, well, you can’t have the gospel if you don’t have the Eucharist.
Well, the Eucharist may be all right, but it’s not the gospel communions, not the gospel, the laws, not the gospel.
I have a friend, a very good friend, very knowledgeable friend who said something to me the other day, I was telling you about a book I had read written by a man who has gotten a hold of the importance of compassion in the community.
And he’s been giving lessons on how to deal in your community all which is well and good.
But my friend was telling me about this book and he was so excited about it and he kept saying this over and over again.
He kept saying, you know what’s so good about that? Doctor J is, it’s the gospel, it’s the gospel.
It’s not the gospel, giving food to the hungry is not the gospel.
Helping people who are poor is important as it is. It is not the gospel.
It is the result of the gospel at work in your life. But it isn’t the gospel and friends.
When we start tampering with the gospel, we do great damage to the cause of Christ.
Let’s get this clear that the gospel isn’t anything other than what the Bible says. It is.
And Paul is going to deal with that here in this passage of scripture.
Now he begins where he had to begin because one of the things that was happening to him as this book starts is that people had begun to criticize Paul.
They didn’t have anything good to say that they could use against the message of grace and they didn’t like Paul.
So they said, well, you can’t trust Paul. He’s not even a real apostle.
He was born after the other apostles were gone. He’s not one of the 12.
And so listen, how Paul begins the letter?
He says Paul an apostle, not from men or through man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead.
Paul has to go after this accusation against him that he’s not a real apostle because here, they’re not trying to discredit him as an apostle for any other reason than to be able to discredit his message.
If Paul is an apostle, then he can say what he says.
But if he’s not, then you don’t have to believe anything that he’s taught. So they went after Paul’s apostleship.
And Paul begins this letter by dealing with the fact that he is a true messenger of God.
He is an apostle, not from men or through men, but through Jesus Christ.
His defense of his apostleship isn’t a matter of pride. He’s not trying to say, well, I’m an apostle.
No, his defense is born out of a deep concern for the gospel which he preached.
In other words, if he is not God’s Apostle, then the Galatians can disregard anything he might say so from the outset, Paul wants it, understood that as a true messenger.
His gospel is not from men, but it’s from God.
And of course, it was true that Paul wasn’t one of the 12, but his call was just as real as theirs had been in First Corinthians 15.
He says, and last of all, he was seen by me, Paul’s writing me also as one born out of due time for I am the least of the apostles who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of Christ.
What is Paul saying? Am I not an apostle? Absolutely. Did he see Christ?
That was one of the requirements. When did he see him on the road to Damascus?
He saw Christ after all of the rest, he was born out of due time.
One of the other requirements for an apostle was they had to have received a message directly from God.
Did Paul receive such a message?
Look at verse 11, but I make known to you brethren that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man, where did he get it?
He got it from God. Paul was an apostle. He was a legitimate apostle of Jesus Christ.
Now, probably you’ve noticed that some people today say they’re apostles and if by their claim, they mean that they are sent ones, which is what the word means, then that’s ok.
But if they think they are apostles like the same apostles in the New Testament, they are certainly in error because according to the New Testament, you cannot be an apostle unless you saw the risen Lord, unless you accompany Jesus from his baptism to his resurrection nobody today can say that but Paul said it and it was true of Paul an apostle born out of due time, had every right to say what he was about to say.
Now, Paul is defending his own legitimacy, his own credibility for if he is not credible, then the rest of this is meaningless.
We now understand that Paul accepts his apostleship from God, not from men.
He is appointed by God as an apostle.
And so he moves from his defense of the true messenger to talk about the true message.
And here’s what he says about the true message of the gospel. Grace to you and peace from God.
Verse three, our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and father to whom be glory forever and ever now that he has dealt with his own credibility, Paul turns his attention to the content of the message of the gospel by the way, you can’t see my Bible, but it’s all marked up in this first chapter.
One of the reasons is this is all about the gospel.
The word gospel is in the 1st 11 verses five times.
Paul is talking about the gospel and what it really is and he wants us to understand the nature of it.
And now he’s going to define it in these verses. And what does he say about the gospel.
He said, first of all, it is the voluntary death of Christ on the cross for our sin by his own will.
He says, he went to the cross.
How many of you know Jesus didn’t go to the cross because he was made to go to the cross.
He went to the cross of his own will. When he came into this world, he prayed this prayer.
He said, Lord, in the volume of the book, it is written, I have come to do your will.
He went to the cross as the will of the father by his own volition.
Paul says the first thing to remember about the Gospel. It is the voluntary death of Christ on the cross.
And then it says, it’s the vicarious death of Christ.
The word vicarious means to do something on behalf of another person to do something in someone else. His place.
Paul says that he died, Christ died for our sins, for yours and for mine.
He died in the place where we deserve to die. He was our vicarious substitute on the cross.
His death is voluntary. His death is vicarious and thirdly it’s victorious.
Notice what he says happens when he dies for us.
He delivers us from the evil age in which we live, we have been delivered because of what Jesus did on the cross.
That’s the Gospel. If you go back to verse one, it involves the resurrection, God, the father who raised him from the dead.
So what is the gospel class? It’s simply this Christ died. Christ was buried, Christ Rose again.
His death was in our behalf as the Son of God.
It was the propitiation for all the sins of the world and whoever will put their trust in what Jesus did on the cross will become a Christian.
That’s what it means to be a Christian.
That’s the gospel, not anything added to it, not anything subtracted from it.
It’s the pure gospel of the grace of God.
Now, since Christ has done all of this for us, since he voluntarily has given himself for us, taking our place in death, rescuing us out of this evil age.
How presumptuous it must seem to Him to God when we try to add something human into what He’s already done.
It’s like we’re saying, God, thank you for the Gospel, but it’s not quite enough.
Thank you for the gospel.
But I’m not gonna be able to accept this gospel unless I can add something to it for myself.
The gospel is either God’s Gospel or it’s no gospel.
And Paul is saying, you can’t say to these new Galatian believers, you have been saved by the grace of God and the gospel is sufficient for you.
Oh, but you need the law too.
And it was the very thing that they were doing that so angered Paul.
I need to tell you we’re gonna find this out before we’re done. This is a violent passage of scripture.
I mean, Paul is exercised in this passage of scripture more so than you’ve ever seen your pastor exercised in this pulpit to put it mildly.
The boy’s upset and he’s upset for a legitimate reason.
It’s because the gentile churches were being taught that what Jesus did through his death on the cross was not enough.
It may have been adequate for their initial salvation, but they needed something more in order to maintain their Christian life.
Paul says something turning your Bibles over to the third chapter.
We, I just want to read the first three verses of the third chapter. Listen, how Paul deals with this.
He says, listen, he says, all foolish Galatians who has Bewitched you that you should not obey the truth.
Now watch this before whose eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified this only he says, here’s the question I wanna ask you listen up.
He said, I just wanna know this. Did you receive the?