Galatians Summary

Good morning. Nice to see you all. Boy, it's been an interesting week, hasn't it? How the Lord can change your life in a couple of days. The whole sense of priorities change overnight. Before I get going, I just want to make a couple of comments about what's happened this week and how important it is for us to recognize that we have a sovereign God, that everybody in the world will get or not get the coronavirus because God has already determined who gets it and who doesn't. Not that you don't take the precautions that have been laid out, but He's decided. He already knows. And he's already determined.

So it's really good for us to realize that, that anybody in this room, or anybody in our group of believers, if we get the coronavirus, it's because you screwed up and didn't have your toilet paper. Or you didn't wash your hands enough. How do you know when you get it? And how do you know how sick you're going to be? You don't know any of that.

We're here by God's grace alone. He recreated us in Christ to do one thing, and that's to serve Him. And that's what our job is. We're to serve Him in every circumstance we find ourself in. We're not to serve Him until we get tired and then we get to serve ourself. We're to serve Him from now on. And we've been equipped for that and recreated for that. We're the ones. And so how we live and how we walk, this is a huge opportunity to demonstrate how believers function in a crisis situation. So we trust the Lord and on we go. And we're not foolish, like I say, but we trust Him.

And I'm not speaking from a Position of where I don't have doubt I was driving down the road today this week. I've been sick all week with a sinus infection and I think it was Thursday this thought comes into my mind Are you sure? That everything you believe is really true, and I'm thinking who's he think he's talking to Eve But I'm listening I'm thinking, wait a minute, that's not who I am. I've never had that kind of experience before where it's really an attempt to put doubt in my mind about everything. And now with this virus and all this other stuff, who do you really think is in charge around here?

And I thought, gee, Lord. And I didn't have an epiphany experience about it. But there was a reckoning about, wait a minute, Lord, you're right. You've always been right. And I don't have to experience it, but I trust you about this and I trust you about me.

And so as we go through our, you know, what's going to happen over the next days and weeks and months, we have to keep in mind who we are in Christ and what we're here to do and that our Father is sovereign and we are one of his legitimate, organic offsprings.

We're one of his. children. We're not just floating around. He absolutely, the Lord Jesus gave His life for each one of us. And He owns us. And He wants us to walk with Him and trust Him and serve Him. And so I see it, like I said, as an opportunity.

Now, Galatians. What we're going to do, we're going to do a review of Galatians today quickly. And then we're going to First Corinthians next. And then next week, I will kind of do an overview and a preview of the book of First Corinthians, and then we'll start into it the following week. So a little history about Galatians. We talked when we set it up a year and a half ago what Galatia was and where it was.

And when Paul first arrived in Galatia, his very first missionary trip, he got sick and he was in Galatians 4.13 he talks about it and so he's stuck in Antioch teaching the gospel and he goes and he continues that but he isn't moving around initially as much as he would have liked to and then he goes to Lystra.

Lystra would be a great town if you were on this missionary journey and you think back, well what happened to me in Lystra? Oh, I got stoned to death. Oh gee, maybe I don't want to go to Lystra again. Brutal persecution, and everywhere he goes he leaves a handful of new believers.

And he is encouraging them, and then to encourage them even more when he comes back from his first missionary journey, he retraces his steps just to encourage them. Now, here's Galatia. Church has been established there. Of course, Paul established them in grace through faith. But now there's a problem.

And it didn't take very long after he left for this problem. And it came in the form of false teaching. And false teaching, we're very familiar with it in 2020 because it's everywhere. The false teaching was the same false teaching that we're assaulted with today, and that's the teaching of legalism.

And so the book of Galatians has to do with the issue of grace versus law, and we'll separate those out in a minute. Legalism, good definition, a mental attitude. that man can do something to merit the blessings of God. That man can do something to merit the blessings of God, either in salvation or in sanctification, spiritual growth. That I can do something. It's a problem that forms the background of the whole letter of the book of Galatians.

In Galatians, the results of the legalism in Galatians was one, the life of Christ was suppressed. We'll see that in 5.4. Second, the grace principle for living was being canceled out. And thirdly, hypocrisy had entered and Christian living had become a matter of mere performance to impress men.

Now, those of you who grew up with Christians and been in churches, you understand what a matter of mere performance to impress men are all about. I grew up in a denomination that that's what it was all about. So Paul's answer to this whole thing is that in chapters 1 through 4, is that it's grace alone, not an admixture of a little bit of I got to do with a little bit of he did. It's all grace, 100%. for not only salvation, but also for sanctification. When I use the term sanctification, I'm talking about spiritual growth, I'm talking about our Christian life. It has to be grace alone.

Now, in searching for a good summation of Galatians, the best one I could find, in 1999, you've already heard this. Remember? No, you don't. I found Hal Malloy's outline of his summary of Galatians in it. It is superior to everything I've studied, and I looked through all the people I like. So a lot of what we're going to talk about today, the outline of it at least, was from Hal.

His approach was two things. The first one was, what's the major theme of the book of Galatians? What's the major principles that are taught in the book of Galatians? So, the major theme of the book of Galatians is liberty in Christ. That's what it's all about.

Liberty in Christ. And liberty is a word that especially we Americans hear it all the time and sometimes we're not sure if we really understand it or not. The reason that we have liberty in Christ is because we are positioned in Christ. Everything I'm going to say this right.

Every human being that's conceived and born on this planet is born and conceived and lives as a slave. A slave to sin. A slave to the world. A slave to the tenants and the thinking and the whole mindset of the world. And they don't know it. Because in the other ear, somebody's telling them that they have free will. If I'm a slave to sin, what am I, free to sin? Is that what free will means? I'm a slave. And everybody, until the Lord intervenes at some point and shows you that you have been a slave to sin, you don't even know it. You're walking around with it. It's like you maybe have some sort of virus inside of you today and don't know it, but you got it.

So in chapters 1 through 4, He lays out the reason why, and he lays out the reason why we have been liberated in Christ. And that's what pretty much all four of those chapters, which we call positional truth. It's things that are true of us, whether we realize them or not, that God says, these are true of you, and that just sit in your position. I'm saying that you, like, you were crucified with Christ. Is that a positional truth? Yeah. I jokingly like to ask people, did it hurt? Do you remember? No. It just says so in the Word, and God says it's so, and my job is just to believe Him. That's it.

And then Galatians 5 and 6 are the shoe leather chapters. In other words, once Paul has laid out the position, corresponding with that is a life to be lived based on this position. And so that's what 5 and 6 are all about. And all Paul's epistles are written pretty much that way, where here's your position, and once he gets done sort of laying out and explaining your position, then he will say, now here's, based on this position, here's what it looks like in shoe leather, okay? So we get the appropriate truths in 1 through 4, we get to how that looks like in action in 5 and 6, and it reflects our practice And our practice and our life should reflect who we are, who Paul says we are.

If you observe Galatians 5.1, what's the first thing he says to us? Stand fast in the freedom of which Christ has made us free. So he doesn't tell us to do spiritual push-ups. He just says, stay where you are. You're free. Stay there.

Is there anything harder for us to do than just stay there? I mean, everybody is so nervous because we might get quarantined. I can't live at home for days on end. I've got to be doing something. Winnie is quarantined in her building. She's going crazy. She can't get out. I've got to go down to dinner. I can't go out the door. If I go out the door, then they put me on a 72-hour watch.

We're not used to that kind of restriction. So we have freedom in Christ. And so the stand fast exhortation is to just stay in the freedom. So you've got to know the freedom. You've got to know what it is. When we speak of liberty, what are we liberated from and what are we liberated to?

The from part is the yoke of bondage. You know what a yoke is? It fits over an ox or an animal and it makes sure that they go where the driver wants them to go. And we would say that the yoke of bondage is to be occupied with something other than the Lord Jesus Christ. So, you know, I know what Courtney's thinking.

I can't go to a hockey game? And I can say, well, if you want to be in bondage, help yourself. No nuggets, no broncos, no nothing. No golf. Anything that's not of Christ is a yoke of bondage. We're free to do anything, but we're not free to be controlled by anything. We can go wherever God would allow us to go. It'd be fine. But it's not to control us. It depends on what you get occupied with and what you think is really, really important. I've told you this story before.

When I was first a believer, I was saved through some people at Young Life, and Young Life had an annual golf tournament in which they raised money. So I thought, oh great, I'm a golfer, I'm going to really enjoy this tournament. So I go early. I get a bucket of balls, I go out to the driving range and I'm trying to keep from bouncing them off the walls and stuff. The guy next to me is hitting the ball like a professional, right down the middle, every time, nice easy swing. And he's a member of the staff at Young Life. And I said, I forget the guy's name now, I said, boy, you really can hit the ball. And he said to me, golf is my thing.

I said, I thought Jesus Christ was your thing. Well, I'd probably intimidate him. But that's what I mean. Is the Lord Jesus your thing or is something else your thing? You know, and it can be... Would you say that your family could be your thing above Jesus Christ? Yeah, you could say that. You could say that my job is my thing above Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is your thing. That's what Paul's trying to tell them. He is your thing. The self-life and the flesh life will always have you in bondage to something other than Christ. That's the point.

So if we take a quick look here at chapters 1-4, some of the verses that were read this morning, in 1-3 it says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father. And the point that I wanted to make in that, he says that He might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of God our Father. Well, we wouldn't have thought two weeks ago that we live in a present evil age, but now that we've got this virus going, it's not as attractive as it used to be. Might be a little evil. Might be around a while.

So Paul reminds us of the voluntary and substitutionary character of the death of Christ. It's the only ground of acceptance before God. That's it. You have to observe Christ's purpose to deliver us or to rescue us or to liberate us from what? This present evil age. And he doesn't mean it that we get delivered when we die. He means now. How this theme of liberty opens this epistle and introduction and now let's look at the liberty from any lost system. If you look at chapter one, I'm sorry, chapter 2, 1 through 5.

The other thing I wanted you to see in there was a long scenario, a little bit about Paul going up with Barnabas to Jerusalem to talk to Peter and the guys up there. But verse 3 was the interesting verse, and that was that not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. That is a big deal. that a Gentile comes in to Jerusalem, even with a bunch of Christian guys that are Jews, and he's a Gentile, and they wouldn't let him in unless he was circumcised.

They didn't compel him to do it. And that was a really huge deal. And this occurred because of false brethren, secretly brought in to stealth out or spy out our liberty that we have in Christ, that they might bring us into bondage. And the fact that Titus was not compelled to be circumcised was the fact that they hung on to their freedom in Christ, and they didn't let the Jews override the freedom that they had. And he says we didn't yield to that for one second.

For an hour, the truth of the gospel might continue. If you're preaching the gospel of grace and freedom, and your companion must be circumcised in order to be accepted in a community, you've just gone against what you preach. And we see that in denominations today. Well, if you're going to be a this, then you've got to do this.

A friend of mine called me a couple of weeks ago, and he said, you know, we found a new church, and we really like it, and the teaching is pretty good, but they've come to us and said that unless we're baptized, that we can't take the Lord's table. What do you think? I said, I'd leave. He said, well, yeah, but I said, well, then go talk to the pastor and say, are you serious that in order for me to take the Lord's table, I have to be baptized? And he did, and he went and talked to him, and the guy said, well, maybe it's not that necessary.

You see how they try to take your freedom away from you? Very simple and very astute. Circumcision was a requirement of the law. Every Jew had to be circumcised. On the other side of that was our liberty. We don't have to be circumcised. That was the point that Paul's trying to make. Now, liberated to walk in Christ, liberty. We have it. It's our possession. Our liberty is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's look at our liberty from the self, life, and the flesh.

We glory in the cross because it's what He did. We died, He died to pay the penalty for our sins. Every sin that we have ever committed or will commit, every sin that has been committed by any person or will be committed, the penalty for that sin has been paid for by the death of Christ on the cross. So people say, well, the guy that lives in the White House over here, boy, they're doing a great job at rehabbing it, aren't they? Are his sins paid for? What do you think? Yeah, they are.

So if he's not a believer, then why when he dies is he not going to go to be with the Lord? It's the second part of the word of the cross. We died unto sin. We were included in Christ's death. We were separated from the source of sin at the time that we believed. So Christ not only paid the penalty of our sins, and He did that alone, but He included us in that death, which we call identification. We were crucified with Him, we were buried with Him, and resurrected with Him.

And when Romans 6 says your old man was crucified, and Romans 6.11 says reckon yourself dead to sin, the sin, you're dead to it, or you're separated from it, and alive to God.

What it means is that when you leave the planet, you're separated, you've been separated from that sin nature since the moment you've believed. If you didn't believe in the person and work of Christ while you were here, when you leave this planet, you go where the sin nature goes, because you're attached to it. Where does it go? It goes to condemnation. If you're separated from it, where do you go? You go to be with the Lord, because He's now your life, and that's who you're attached to now.

So, Galatians 2.20 is the really key verse of the whole book of Galatians, where Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ.

That's a done deal, as we would say. It's no longer I who live. It isn't the old Adam. It isn't attachment to the old Adam. But Christ lives in me, not in part of me, but all of my life now, from God's perspective, is the resurrected Christ, and I'm in Him, and it's His life that God sees.

And this life which I live in this body, which is a dying body, how do I live? How do I walk, and how do I function? Key word. I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's why you walk by faith, because the positional truths that we have may or may not be experiential. The position never changes. So how important is it to learn your position? It's critical.

So when the next time someone whispers in your ear, are you sure this is all right? Are you sure what you've believed is really... You can say, yeah, I am convinced. Because the Spirit of God has convinced me, not only was I saved, but I've been crucified, and buried, and resurrected, and I live in Christ. And you can do all the talking you want, but you're talking to the wrong person. Because I'm in Christ.

So, major principles. The major principles will be taught in the book of Galatians. And what we're going to go through is ten principles divided up into five units. And it's the way it's set up, it's either this or this. That's one principle. Either this or this. Next principle. Okay?

So they're in two groups of five, and each principle in one group stands in opposition to the other one. Like grace stands in opposition to law. or faith stands in opposition to works. These corresponding principles are dramatically opposed to each other, and the difference between, like grace and law is the difference between light and darkness, the difference between heaven and earth, life and death, old creation, new creation. Difference, difference. These principles have to do with living the Christian life. We believers, at any given moment, might be operating under grace and walking by faith and in the next moment operating under law and walking by works or what I call work sense and reason. It's one or the other. We never are walking on the yellow line. We're either here or here. We're either functioning out of the flesh or functioning out of Christ.

So let's look at some of these principles. The first one is grace and law. Ephesians 1 6 tells us that to the praise and glory of his grace Which he has made us accepted in the beloved We are called or we were invited By grace into God's grace It's a divine invite It's an acceptance that in is we are we accepted that invitation by faith and by his grace We were made the sons of the Living God And we have been baptized into Christ, and we have put on Christ. It's our position. It's eternal. It's immutable. It can never change. And it's a moment-by-moment thing in our Christian walk.

On the other side, in Galatians 1.6, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you into the grace of Christ to a different gospel.

Law is a different gospel of a different kind. It is living the Christian life by any kind of a performance system. I will do this in order to be more pleasing to God than I was two minutes ago. Or any form of legal, even if it's the Mosaic Law, it's another gospel. We don't ever think of the Mosaic Law as being another gospel, but it is. Because once grace comes in, the Mosaic Law is different.

And so it's another of a different kind. It's totally in opposition to God's grace. So if you're like me, you know, your mind says to you, well, gee, I can kind of do whatever I want. No, we are servants of grace. And I've explained this. You know, I'm always thinking about what would be a good illustration of what it is to live under grace.

The best one I've come up with is if you go down a Cape Kennedy, where they shoot off those rockets. And if you've ever been down there, what is it, Pad 39A and 39B, where they light that shuttle thing off, and they've got like, I don't know, four huge rocket motors. And the thing is so powerful that they have to flood the launching pad with water so that it doesn't vibrate apart when it goes off the launching pad. Well, if you were to stand underneath that rocket and when they lit it off, that's what living under grace is like.

That grace comes at us so fast and so much, you can't get your arms around it. The only thing you can do is receive it and trust Him about it. And that's the way it's going to be for all eternity for every one of us. That grace is going to just overwhelm us. So we will never think about anything other than receiving this grace. That's affordable to us today.

Second principle is faith and works. So if you clarify works, only faith can justify us, so only faith can sanctify us. If the only way you can get saved is by faith, then the only way you can live the Christian life is by faith. You can't admix them.

And God has a specific plan for good works. You know that? He before ordained the works that we should all walk in them, every single one of them. And He prepared them for us. So I know sometimes you look around and think, well, boy, you must have a skinny list. You don't do much. But what you do may not be visible. What if God called you just to pray for people? No one ever sees that. But you're a servant, and you do what the Lord has called you to do, and you don't have any trouble resisting that. That's what you do.

Every one of us has at least one of these gifts that God has called us to do. Every believer is his workmanship. We were recreated in Christ for the specific thing that He wanted us to do. These good works. These things that are to perform through us as we walk by faith, being led by the Spirit. He's going to perform these good works through us. And you know when we get to this cool little event called the beam of judgment, all of the stuff that we thought we were going to do for the Lord gets to be thrown into the fire. All of the things that God was able to do us through His workmanship, we get rewarded for.

Now think about that deal. Somebody came to you and said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do all of this wonderful stuff through you, but I'm going to reward you for doing it. Wait a minute, you did it. Yeah, that's right, but I'm going to give you the reward for it anyway. That's really what this is. God has designed a situation where all of who we are in Christ, and lived out in a practical application, we're going to get rewarded for it, but he did it all. That's how grace works. It's a pretty good system.

On the work side, work is always under a law system because it's always under the principle, if I do, then I get. Grace is under the system, I get, so then I'm going to do. See the difference in those two? The works of self-righteousness, the only place a law work comes from is from you because it forces you to look at you.

I have some friends that go to this church and they're all in their reformed church and they live in California and they can't go anywhere else. Imagine living in Orange County, how many millions of people live in Orange County and they can't find a good church? And so they've got these guys that teach a little bit of grace, but they teach a lot of law, and they go and they talk to them. My friend goes and meets with these guys every other week, and they talk about these things. And these men won't accept the grace. They won't accept the grace. And he said to me, you know something?

If you don't live under grace, then you're not free to behold the glory of the Lord. If you live under law, you always have to be looking at yourself to see how you're doing. If you live under grace, you're free. free to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus. Again, grace is this amazing thing that God has put us under so that we can hang out with Him. We can behold His glory. So we need to distinguish here between flesh and spirit. Flesh and spirit.

Galatians 3.1 says, O foolish Galatians, whose bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you, crucified.

This only do I want to learn from you. This is what I want you to answer. This is his question. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith? How did you receive them? The answer is obvious. He says, are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, you're now going to be made perfect in the flesh. You didn't receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the law.

You received the Holy Spirit by the hearing of faith. That's how you became a believer. And where does faith come from? Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by what? The Word of God. You received the Holy Spirit the very second that you trusted. The Holy Spirit took up residence in each one of you permanently. So you began the Christian life in the Spirit.

So he's really saying, why wouldn't you want to continue in the Spirit? That's what he's really asking him. to walk in our Christian life in the same way we began. That's the way it ought to be, don't you think? Because only He can make us perfect. Only He can mature us in Christ or grow us up. You can't do that by the law. It's impossible for the flesh to make us perfect or mature because only the Holy Spirit knows the things which Christ has to do in us.

So when you get to the Galatians 2.20 is another really, really critical verse in the book of Galatians.

I think I miswrote that. It should have been, what should it have been? 3.1. And then 2.3 says, Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit, are you now trying to perfect in the flesh? And then he says in 5.16, to walk in the Spirit, and you won't fulfill the desires of the flesh. And that's the other thing you learn as we go along, that just because you've been crucified with Christ, just because that happened doesn't mean that this flesh says, well, I am not going to bother you anymore, because you got it.

You're a really smart one. You read it, and you believed it. So I'm going to have to leave you alone, because I'm not going to have any effect. Nonsense. You know, even after you've been a believer 42 years and you're driving down the road and in one of your ears it says, you really believe what I've been teaching you all these years? God didn't really mean that.

I thought to myself, gee, that's the same trick he pulled on Eve. He said, what did God say, you can't eat of the thing? And she said, no, he said we could eat any whatever we wanted. But we can't touch or eat of the tree." And Satan said, well, yeah, he did that for a purpose, you know.

The purpose is that if you eat of that, you're going to be just like him, and he doesn't want you to be just like him. The temptation is the same every time. It's just that the circumstances are different, but it's the same appeal. Do you really believe that? Now that the coronavirus is here, do you really believe those positional truths? Answer, yeah, I do. I do. And the flesh has this really strong desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and that goes on until we get out of here. We get to finally be free from that assault.

Walk in the spirit and it's impossible to fulfill the desires of the flesh. Because as long as the Spirit of God has you focusing on Christ, the desires of the flesh don't influence you. Because your focus is somewhere else. Bondage and liberty. If Christ is our very life, we're in living union with Him. He is our liberty, and He is our freedom. in chapter 513, only do not use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. I think the key to this verse is this. Why did God do all of this to you and me? Why did He save us so that we could be these really terrific Christians?

No, we have a job. You know what the job is? To serve one another. To serve one another. If you read through Ephesians 5, you find out that those are the verses that have to do with husbands and wives and kids and employers and employees, but it all starts back in 5 when the Apostle says that we are to submit ourselves to one another, which really means we're to serve one another. And from that service comes the husband's role, the wife's role, the children's role, the boss's role, the employee's role, all of that. And it's all based on that one principle. We serve one another. We serve one another.

So we have this life that keeps us free so that we can serve one another. That's a really neat thing to be able to be put in a position where God has called us to serve one another. And we serve one another by praying for one another, by encouraging one another. And so when he says, brethren, don't use your liberty for an opportunity to the flesh, but through love, serve one another. Serve one another. It's a really cool thing.

Because sometimes you wonder, well, you know, I get down to the end of the day and this Christian thing, what am I supposed to do with all of this? Well, I find out that my Father is love. And you know, He's the God of the universe and He spends the whole day blessing me and has me living in every spiritual blessing possible. Well, I'm supposed to return the favor to you. That's my job. And I live under grace. I have my focus on Him. It's the easiest thing in the world to do.

When you take liberty or you take Opportunity of the flesh, it means that, well, I get all this stuff and you're going to have to work for your own. No, we serve one another. Death or life, that's what it comes down to, death or life. This is the best way I know of to summarize the whole book of Galatians. It's death and life.

Back to Galatians 2.20. I am crucified with Christ.

True. Nevertheless, I'm living. As long as the coronavirus doesn't get me, I'm still living. No. I'm living in this body. Yet it's not I that lives in this body. It's Christ who lives in me. It's Him. And the life that I now live in the flesh, the life that's proactive and actively animating my body and my flesh, I live by faith. I trust God about everything He's told me. I walk by every word that He tells me. Faith in the Son of God. And why? Because He loved me and He gave Himself for me. That's why.

In contrast to the self-effort and self-glorying of legalizers, Paul adds, but God forbid that I should glory in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now here's a kicker. By whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. It's really interesting that in addition to all of the other things that God did on the cross, not only to us, but for us. Not only for us, but to us. This cross is the separator. It separated me from the penalty of my sins. It separated me from the power of the sin nature. It separated me from having to be under the law system. And now it tells me I've been separated from the world.

Totally from the world. So keep that in mind as you watch CNN and MSNBC and Fox News about how scary this virus is. It's not. We're sons of God. We walk with Him. We have no fear about anything. We're already seated in Christ and we're to serve one another. And I really think that that's what Galatians is really all about. William Kelly said to finish up, now I'm entitled to say, this is the one in whom I am seated before the throne of God. We are now by grace in another in Christ, even the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, in order to give us our family position in the very presence of the Father. That's where every one of us are right now.

So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. We thank you for an opportunity to spend this time studying the Book of Relations. We thank you for the freedom that you've so carefully laid out to us that we have in Christ. And we want to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and be able to rest in the faith, rest in the provision and the truth in which you have told us. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.