I’m a Victim of Legalism
I’m a Victim of Legalism
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is brought to you in part by the partners and Friends of prow Dollar Ministries coming up next on changing your world some of us are very tempted to depend on our intellect depend on who we know depend on the fact that we’ve done this before depend on the fact that we’ve done this for 20 or 30 years and it really it really takes a conscious effort to say Lord show me how to depend on you because what happens is he’s training us right now so when these crazy times here well they already here but when these crazy times show up in
your life you’re already conditioned in depending on God not just with our mouths we as Christians we do a lot of things with our mouth that don’t translate in our life God has given us a Grace gift to help overcome the limitations of our understanding so that we can receive clear Direction introducing Grace Life Academy Grace Life Academy offers unlimited access to hundreds of hours of online teachings from crlo Dollar features like ecourses study guides quizzes and more to get started on your 30-day free trial simply text or sign up
online by visiting myrac lifee academy.com this is your world so let’s vow to make it a better place let every heart that needs to know your love is here to St it’s time we live a new life let us sh ring you we’re Sav by his grace so we Embrace Your Love today we are [Music] Chang we continue our study on the Book of John pulling out of it all of the amazing things that John saw concerning the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ and this revelation of Grace and so tonight we’re going to deal with
something pretty interesting in John chapter 5 you see very clearly this contrast between the grace of God and something called legalism it’s a term that when I first uh heard it I I wasn’t too sure what it was talking about I thought maybe some dude in the church made it up but it has a lot of significance and it’s going to really help you to see uh whether or not you you know you go back and forth between grace and legalism and it’ll help you to understand how God can do some amazing things in your life if you’ll understand
what that is all about so if you would let’s go to the Book of John um let’s see where am I John chapter 5 and we’re going to read verse 1-1 17 in the NLT John chapter 5 and we’re going to read verses 1- 17 in the NLT Bible uh okay so he says here now listen this is a great story he says here afterwards Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days inside the city near the Sheep gate was the pool of Bethesda everybody say Bethesda now it’s interesting that word means uh the House of Mercy that’s the
meaning of Bethesda I thought that was so cool so they they gathered in the House of Mercy Bethesda with five covered porches crowds of sick people blind lame or paralyzed lay on the porches they’re in the House of Mercy one of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years now 38 years is also equivalent to how long the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness so there’s going to be a connection nection here next verse When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time he asked him would you like to get well now
think about it if Jesus came up to you you’ve been sick for 38 years and they asked you would you like to be well how would you answer that question just that simple right yes yes sir absolutely you know check this dude out uh he asked him would you like to be get well he says I can’t sir huh well he’s been sick for 38 years would you like to get well I can’t sir the sick man said for I have no watch this for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up someone else always gets there ahead
of me huh oh that’s so amazing I hope you see it already before I even tell you I ain’t got nobody to put me in the pool you’ve been sick for 38 years why I ain’t got nobody to put me in the pool all right watch this now Jesus told him stand up pick up your mat or that was his bed stand up pick up your ma and walk now instantly the man was healed he rolled up his sleeping mat began walking but this miracle happened on the Sabbath so the Jewish leaders objected I mean forget the fact man who been sick for 38 years just got healed
they objected because you did it on the Sabbath they said to the man who was cured you can’t work on the Sabbath the law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat now I’m going to show you a little later on they stoned a man to death because according to the law you couldn’t do it they stoned a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath but he replied the man who healed me told me pick up your mat and walk who said such a thing as that they demanded the man didn’t know for Jesus had
disappeared into the crowd but afterwards and I just love it so much Jesus is not waiting around for somebody to give him approval but afterwards Jesus found him in the temple and told him now now you’re well so stop sinning you well now so stop sinning or something even worse may happen to you then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it it was Jesus look at there who had healed him so the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules but Jesus replied my father is always working and so I
am or so am I now I want to deal with the the first 17 verses if we get to the rest we can and one of the things I’m seeing here is that Grace does not only provide life for all of us but a more Abundant Life please understand Grace provides Abundant Life for Us and to do so in order for Grace to provide abundant life for us we got to be delivered from the helplessness of life as people lived it under the law principle they lived it under the law principle now the House of Mercy that’s Bethesda all those who were in that
house they have not received all that Grace has for them so when Jesus asked this guy wilt thou be made whole he said something that I hope hope you caught he said sir I ain’t got nobody to put me in the pool now it was bigger than that because when the water is troubled he said in verse 6 and 7 and I I I I’ll repeat that again in verse 6 and 7 he said uh uh when the water is troubled I don’t have any man to put me into the pool but while I am coming another steth down before me verse 6 and 7 so these 38
years this guy has been wasting away wow why was he wasting away according to his own words because of the failure of human human strength and human help he’s wasting away because of human strength and human help in other words he had been depending upon self and others he’s depending on somebody else and others not God he’s depending on self and he’s dependent on others now I want to look at just hold a pen right there the 38 years that Israel under the leadership of Moses wandered aimlessly in the
wilderness and God commanded them at ketes it’s in Deuteronomy 2:14 he commanded them to turn back he told him to go back into Into the Wilderness and then it says until all the generations of the men of War were wasted out from among the host so according to Deuteronomy 2:14 let’s go in the wilderness because you all are self dependent let’s get everybody in there until all of that has been wasted away and in those 38 years under the leadership of Moses the lawgiver um there was a wasting away it
was a period of a period of impotence uh helplessness um when nothing was accomplished for 38 years it was all due listen to this to the fact that at cetus when God commanded them to enter the promised land here’s what happened Israel had looked at their own Manpower and fail to depend upon God to undertake and to help him out they face the conquest they forgot about that the conquest of Canaan on the basis of the law principle of dependence upon self instead of what dependence upon God it’s dependence upon God principle so
they had forgotten how God in his Mercy had turned around and delivered them from the Egyptians and how he be them on Eagle wings according to Exodus chapter 19 and for and brought them to himself now you remember in Exodus when the word of the Lord came from the mountain and God says I want you to do this and they said we are well aable to do everything you said and then after that all hell broke loose because again the issue was depending upon human strength and not depending upon God and so uh this this help lessness this man
who was in the House of Mercy and had wasted away for 38 years because he had nothing but man in which to trust in nothing but man to trust in or self I mean he might as well have said uh according to Galatians 3 and 3 he might as well said you know uh in fact go there Galatians I want to show you this Galatians 3 and3 and NLT Galatians 3 and3 cuz what he what he did is exactly what Galatians 3:3 says he says how foolish can you be after starting your new lives in the spirit why are you now trying to become Perfect by your own
human effort you started life in the spirit and now you’re trying to become perfect through your own human effort that describes religion today that describes the church today we we somehow after we started in the spirit somehow we allow allowed ourselves to go back to that old way of thinking trying to deal with things depending more on human effort somebody else trusting what somebody else does and we don’t even realize that we’re not depending and trusting on God I tell you this whole thing that we’re going through right now
is trying to get us to a place where we drive out that toxic Spirit of self-dependence and learn how to depend on God in everything so let’s look at another type real quick as Joshua that’s a type Christ okay Joshua’s a type Christ LED Israel into the promised land after the death of Moses just like Joshua did they didn’t get him when Moses there so Joshua led him to the promised land so Jesus delivered this impotent man from his state of wasting this ladies and gentlemen is Grace God’s abounding provision in love
for him who will depend on him and trust in him God wants to do some amazing things in our lives if we can uh I won’t say if we can depend on him I’m going to see if we can start practicing depending on him okay if you’ll start practicing if you can just in your everyday walk with God become consciously aware Ware make say it out loud if you have to become consciously aware today I’m going to depend on God some of us are very tempted to depend on our intellect depend on who we know depend on the fact
that we’ve done this before depending on the fact that we’ve done this for 20 or 30 years and it really it really takes a conscious effort to say Lord show me how to depend on you because what happens is he’s training us right now so when these crazy times here well they’re already here but when these crazy times show up in your life you’re already conditioned in depending on God not just with our mouths we as Christians we do a lot of things with our mouth that don’t translate in our
life okay and we’re talking about translating this stance it’s a faith stance depending on God I depend on God but now you have to balance it like this this Sunday I’m going to talk about Grace and Faith uh in the midst of discomfort because some people get the idea that you just let let things happen you just you just sit there and get beat up no no no you’re fighting a a good fight of Faith you’re not you’re not just sitting there and let the devil beat you up you’re not sitting there let
let suffering beat you up you’re standing against it that that’s where the growth comes from there’s got to be some resistance glory to God you have to resist it the Bible says submit yourself to God God resist the devil so if he’s coming at you or if trouble’s coming at you you you got to you got to resist it and a lot of Christians they either go we love going to to to the extreme on one end or to the extreme on the other end and we don’t find that that middle ground yeah well nobody you know it’s
like you get a truth and then you erase everything else you ever learn you know you don’t want to do that you get the truth and you say all right I know I know this is a victory that overcomes the world even my faith I know my faith is dependent on God I know it’s it’s important for me to maintain the right attitude to maintain the right stance I know it’s important that you know the my part of suffering is maintaining the victory that Jesus died to obtain I’m going to do all of that and still know
that when I come out of this discomfort I’m going to be better than I was before it’s not a matter of God doesn’t throw bad things at you to make you better we ain’t talking about that okay we’re talking about it’s going to come cuz you who are Christians you who are Godly going to suffer persecution so since it’s going to come let it meet somebody that’s been conditioning their lives in dependent on God let them let them meet somebody that says all right now I’m in this thing but I’m not just going to sit
in here and let you beat me up I’m I’m going to pull up the name of Jesus praying in the English praying in tongues I’m going to pull up the scriptures I’m going to pull up my Psalms I’m going to lift my hands I’m going worship I’m doing all of that the training listen you you you’re not going to get you’re not going to get physically in shape by showing up in the wait room and just sitting down same thing in the place of discomfort when dis Comfort come it shows up but you ready for a fight yes
sir you ready for a fight we get the idea of where this compfort is here let’s just be satisfied and we going to grow as a result of it not if you’re not pressing the weight not if you’re not resisting not I I said I was going holler night I wanted to be like some of those preachers I see on television they they so smooth you know you know the Bible says this and you know we have to do this and and I’m like Lord how come I just can’t just do like that you know you know the Bethesda means the House of
Mercy and in the House of Mercy then we understand that we do that you know there’s another thing I’d like you to know I I try to do that I can’t it don’t it don’t I got to a I ain’t why I like that I’m a I’m a screamer you understand what I’m saying I came up in Kip Paul was nobody wasn’t no quiet in you heard arguments two houses down amen so to those who are bound by the law then Grace is restricted and it’s limited by the law now we got to get into this legalism
so follow me now the work of Grace appears to be judged by by the legalist and they do it based on the law so let’s let’s let me give you some let me give you I worked out a definition and and and hope this will it’ll it’ll satisfy our understanding but let’s look at a few things about legalism what is it let’s see what how the dictionary defines it first and then I’m going to apply to where we are where Grace is concerned first of all legalism it is a Doctrine when I say Doctrine I
mean teaching legalism is a teaching that salvation is gained through good works so legalism is you have to do good works in order to gain something that the New Testament says is free but legalist legalism says you got to you got to you got to have some good works it it is the judging of Conduct in terms of the adherence to precise laws so your conduct is being judged based on whether you are keeping or walking in certain laws basically legalism focuses on God’s law more than the relationship you have with God so if
