The Spirit is Received by Faith - part 1
Galatians 3:1-2 · Roger Henderson · Apr 25, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492621175765

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning we're going to look at the first, actually only the first two verses, and then next week we'll finish with the three through five. So can I get a volunteer to read one through five? And if I had some of Hal's gold stars left, I'd give those out.

You said, well, a gold star for you or whatever. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish after beginning with the Spirit? Are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing? If it really was for nothing, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you've heard? Okay, thanks Dan. It's pretty clear. Okay, so actually, we're kind of going back.

In the previous chapter, if you have your Bibles, Paul He answered a question, not a question, he didn't answer a question. He basically made a statement in terms of, you know, he confronted Peter, and actually from verse, in the previous chapter, I'm having a hard time finding it here, from verse 14, about middle of 14 down through 21, he was basically answering the question about the truth of the gospel. So now he kind of starts into, he actually kind of returns, I was thinking, if you look back in chapter 1, he talks about how I'm amazed, in verse 6 of chapter 1, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. And then he goes on, so he's kind of returning maybe to the, and kind of admonishing the Galatians of where their focus is. Is their focus on on the works of the law, or are they on Christ?

So we're going to see that. And what's interesting is here, and I kind of did it for emphasis, he asked a whole bunch of questions. Two of the questions we'll look now. And actually, it seems that that's kind of his approach. And I noticed that Mike and actually Courtney too, they really enjoy that format, right? You ask questions to get people to think. And that's kind of what Paul's doing here. So this is scriptural to ask questions. That was a door, right?

OK. Wow. OK. And then, OK, then basically we're going to cover just the first two verses today. We're going to look at these two verses in some detail. OK. So let's just go on. We'll just start with the. So basically it starts out with, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? And basically, if you have like a King James, it has, O foolish Galatians, and I think I actually like that better.

It kind of maybe makes a point clear. It's something you might do with your children. You might say something to them, O John, O Sam, O Betty, whatever. What have you done now? Sounds like he's discouraged a little. He's been through this before, and here we go again. Everyone who's had children, or been around children, or adults too. We all can be frustrated. So that seems like that's kind of the tenor. And actually there's a Actually, the word foolish here is the word, I'm not sure I can pronounce it, so I'll skip over that. It's basically the negative of understanding. It's not applying your mind, not thinking. And some have translated it or expressed it, what were you thinking? What were you thinking, you foolish Galatians? And actually, there's sort of That door is strange. It's like a whoopee cushion or something. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on here. It's strange.

Okay. Okay, so let's look at this. Another verse where the phraseology, oh foolish, is kind of used in Luke. And this is interesting. This is what we covered recently. We talked about, I think Vern covered it for Easter Sunday, I think. Is it Easter Sunday or was Luke chapter 24, and if I could get a volunteer, actually I'd like to read, maybe back a little bit, 24 and, can someone read 22 through 24 in Luke 24? 22 through 25, excuse me.

In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning, but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.

He said to them, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." Good, thank you. So you see, this is the Lord speaking on the road to Emmaus here. So somewhat the same idea, kind of an expression of You could figure this out. In this case, actually, in the Luke path, they were prevented. It says very clearly they were prevented. But in this case, it's almost like if you thought about this, you might come to a different conclusion. Why are you going down the path you're going down? He's going to get a little bit stronger here. He's going to ratchet up a bit, so to speak. OK, so let's go on. So the second part of that, who has bewitched you? And note it's a who. It's not what has bewitched you, it's who has bewitched you. So he's pointing out to the Galatians that there's some who's out there that are causing problems.

And bewitch is this idea. To bring evil on a person by praise, to mislead by the evil eye. The evil eye, and I actually wasn't that familiar with it, but it's the idea that it's a superstition that if someone looks at you that has some bad effect, and maybe I don't know a lot about it, but I just read a couple of little things that it was a superstition that some people were afraid that someone would put the evil eye on you, so to speak. So that word is related to that. But I think the idea here is that they were being charmed or misled. Deception was involved. They're being misled. It was attractive. Some people are misled by things being attractive. It looks very attractive. I'll go down that path. So who has bewitched you? And it's a who. So one of the questions is, Who's the who? Who's the who?

Not Woodsy Owl. What's that? Not Woodsy Owl. OK. Oh, well. All right. I think we've been through these who's before. They were false teachers, Judaizers, people wanting to put people back under the law. And we saw back in the previous chapter how Peter kind of responded to that. The whos came in, so to speak, and he said, well, the whos are here, so I've got to do this. So anyway, so they're being bewitched or charmed into going down the wrong path.

So the second part of the verse, before whose eyes, or literally right in front of your eyes, so it wasn't something that was second hand, right in front of your eyes, Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. And that's a really interesting kind of phraseology here.

So one question I have, when I first read this, this is the question I had. Was this, my first thought was, was this in the past at Calvary? Were they looking back and saying, well, you know, he was talking to people, you know, some of the disciples, you know, you guys saw the Lord crucified. Was he speaking of that or was he speaking of something else? And that was one of my first questions. So I'm going to ask you, is that what he's talking about here? Or not? Tom? Well, Paul was writing back to people he had previously evangelized. Excellent. That's a good observation. Right. Right. So would that fit, then, you think? I mean, the question is somewhat a trick question. Anyone else? Donna?

Well, I would think there may have been some that physically saw him crucified, but I think he's dealing more with the salvation or the gospel message that was delivered to them when they realized their death through Christ. Good. That's what I thought, too. But it did occur to me. I said, you know, I wonder, you know, because it publicly portrayed Christ was publicly crucified. It wasn't a private thing. It was public. That was my first thought.

But I think as we go in farther, we're going to see with some of the tenses of the verbs and stuff and the definition of the word, we're going to see that it's really speaking of Paul's preaching, his message he gave. Well, since they didn't have YouTube back then. OK. They didn't have YouTube back then.

Everything was by word of mouth and it spread quickly. So I would assume that, you know, anybody in that area or that region at least heard. He says eyes here, but you know, and like they said, I think some people could have been there, but I'm sure almost everybody knew about it. Right, right. This was common knowledge.

But I think what we're going to see, and I kind of asked the question just to generate this discussion. We're going to see that really he's really focused. He said, I brought to you the good news. about faith in Christ, and then what do I find? You're going back and trying to work really hard under a law system. What are you doing here? What's going on here? Go ahead. I was just going to say, the version that I have reads a little different.

It says, Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you. OK, good. And we're going to see why. And this word, this publicly portrayed, the Greek word there, is a key part of this. And there are a couple of different translations of that. But actually, the root word is this word that is pro, or before, and then grapho, to write. But what's interesting is, and I spent a little bit of time looking at this, You know, that would kind of say, well, it was like written before, like Stan was talking about. Well, but he kind of goes a step further. It seems like in this particular case, and there's a whole bunch of other verses that use this word, but this is one of the few verses that actually has the idea of this openly set forth. And that's where this idea of publicly portrayed, it's openly set forth, or maybe even stronger, publicly, you know, it's publicly proclaimed, placarded is another synonym.

Or actually one that I noticed that Hal used in his notes is a portrait that Paul in his teachings gave us a portrait of Christ crucified. Think about how often he did that. He gave us a vivid portrait of what Christ did. Tom? He mentions in other parts of his epistles that he wanted to know nothing among them except Christ and Him crucified. I'm sure that he was very blunt in his It's theoretical. He really died on the cross. Exactly. And I think that's what's kind of at the heart of this. This is a descriptive picture of Christ's death on the cross. His crucifixion on the cross.

But that's not the normal translation of this word. And that's what kind of, you know, you go through all your helps and it goes on and they refer you to different pages over here. Pretty soon it says, well, in this case, my knowledge of the Greek is limited, so I couldn't quite see why in this case, but Lyons had it and others had it, basically that in this case it's the idea there's an openness, openly set forth, or a portrait. Does it correlate that maybe possibly with Isaiah 53 there, with the reading in the Old Testament? Referring back to that.

I actually didn't see that, but that certainly does really describe vividly in words, certainly. So I think his admonishment here is, you, O foolish Galatians, who has charmed you away from this message? I presented this message before your eyes. I described to you this wonderful portrait of our Savior, and you've deserted that. Okay, so...

Roger, just looking back on it, do you think any of those people could have been there for the sermon that Peter preached? You know, if he's talking about openly portrayed and presented and all this other sort of thing, was there 3,000 people there? were brought to the Lord and received the Spirit at that time?

Right, on the day of Pentecost, yeah. Right, so that's a lot of people for that particular region and area. Right, right, that's a good point. So maybe he's saying, you know, some of you, but he didn't say some of you, he's saying all, but you know, some saw and presented it to the others as well as himself, right? I think I think some of them were probably there. I don't see why they couldn't be. I'm not saying that he's saying everybody was there, but I think some of them were there to make it a valid experience to them.

I think probably one of the key parts here is that the message that Paul was presenting was a vivid portrait. He was saying, I present you this portrait of Christ and then you Something else kind of, it's like, oh, that's fine, but let me get busy on this other stuff over here. This is way more interesting than this. But what's interesting, Paul wasn't there himself. And that's true. And that's a good point. Paul, yeah, that's right. But he knew the message, so he spent time with the Lord. He knew the message. And he publicly portrayed Christ for what happened, who he was, and what he did. So how was Christ publicly portrayed?

Another possibility, and that is the Romans were very image conscious about them being in power. There is no doubt in my mind that it's because of numerous military transfers and all that people that ultimately, over the years, got to Galatia simply because of the way the Romans handled stuff. And they wanted to make sure that the people they were supervising, or the conquered peoples, were in the know that Rome scored a triumph over Judaism and other things when they crucified Jesus. And they wanted to make sure the people would remain compliant, subservient, Right, right. Crucifixion was a very effective...

This is kind of a trick question, because actually, if you look, the verse tells you, it says Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. So, I mean, we kind of talked around it. I put the question down before, I thought, well, I go through this, it's going to be It's kind of a trick.

So basically, it's as crucified. What's more interesting, it's having been crucified. And this is this wonderful Greek tense, which is so wonderful that it really gives us some additional detail. Basically, it's a perfect tense. It's a fact that Christ was crucified in the past. That's a completed action with abiding results up into the present. So he's saying, as Crusar has been crucified.

That's a statement of fact. So the next part of this kind of goes to what we were talking about before. So how did Paul publicly portray Christ in his preaching? And I'll just, without belaboring it here, a couple of verses. And one is the one that Tom mentioned. But let's look at a couple of those verses.

1 Corinthians 1.23.

Roger? Yes. Also, I would say that when he says Jesus Christ, he's literally saying the Messiah, right? Right. So, since these are Jewish people, and they would know the Old Testament Scriptures because he's saying that they're reverting back to the law, he's saying, you know, the Messiah was crucified, basically. Yeah, and we're going to find, and that message of crucifixion, we're going to see that exact verse. Right, but the person who was crucified is what's key. Exactly.

Because I personally feel, well, Arnold Fruchtenbaum says that they knew he was the Messiah from three of the miracles that he performed. One of them was when he raised Lazarus from the dead on the fourth healing a person blind from birth. Nobody had ever healed anybody that was genetically incapable of seeing, yet he did. And then there was a third one which I can never remember. But all three of those were messianic healings.

So there was no doubt for anybody who knew the Old Testament Scriptures that this was the Messiah. And yet they still crucified him because they did not supposed to do according to the Scriptures, which was rid them of Rome. So they didn't want him around, even though they knew he was the Messiah and didn't understand why he wasn't doing this. They didn't know he was going to come twice. Right, right. Yep, that's a good point.

Okay, so let's look at these couple of verses. And it's going to kind of point out the fact about crucifixion and how the Jews, crucifixion was not their solution, as you said. That was not their solution to their problems. First Corinthians, can I get someone to read First Corinthians 1, 23? Let's see, maybe we want to go, let's see, one second here. Well, we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles. Yeah, and actually, just right back before that, this is kind of, you know, for the Jews asked for signs, and Greeks seek for wisdom. So they're looking for a sign. But this wasn't the sign they wanted, right? Crucifying their Messiah was not part of it. That was just, it can't be. You can't do that. So that's the first one.

So Paul's portraying Christ in his preaching. He preached a crucified Christ. And then also, over in chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians, it says, And this is mentioned before, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. So Paul's message was a crucified Christ over and over and over again. And that's key, critical, that Christ was crucified.

Can you imagine how hard it would be to understand that from their standpoint? It's almost an oxymoron. Right. That you could kill the Messiah. I know. The Messiah is God. I know, exactly. At that point in time that had to be beyond comprehension. Well, God becoming a man. There's so many things that just were way over, you know, ever.

Okay, and then actually if you kind of back up a little bit and you say, What did Paul stress in his preaching concerning Christ? This is what we talked about in the Good Friday service. Crucified for our sins or behalf of our sins. And we have just a bunch of wonderful verses here. One of them is just back in the first part of Galatians there. Let's look at that one.

Galatians 1.4, which we had earlier. Actually back in January. If someone could read that, I'll get to it before I do. So Paul's preaching stress crucified for our sins, but also crucified unto our sins, or unto our sin nature. So we have the root of the problem, which is our sin nature, Christ died for both. Both the sins, plural, and the sin nature.

And we just finished with Galatians 2.20, for I am crucified with Christ.

So both aspects Paul stressed in his teaching. Both those aspects were stressed in Paul's teaching about it. that Christ was publicly portrayed. He was, in his preaching, he portrayed, he painted a picture of Christ and what he had done on the cross.

Roger, I was reading in 1 Corinthians 2, just beyond where we had been reading, and in verse 4 it says, My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power. that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power.

Excellent, excellent. And so, I mean, here you have the Judaizers coming in with persuasive words and it looks wise and full of wisdom, but Paul is just simply laying out a portrait of Christ and it was God's power that they saw, not something that man was controlling. recollections of Christ doing these things that were previously discussed. But also, since Paul had this gift of apostolic miracles, it doesn't state specifically, but it's possible that he used them as additional backups to say, see this is not a random act of kindness. Good, excellent, great points, great points.

And there's other, to try to compress Paul's teaching, and certainly in Galatians we're seeing that he's stressing that we've been redeemed, we're going to see later on, later in the chapter, we've been redeemed from the curse of the law, and back in 2.19 in Galatians, I died to the law, so his message included our relationship to the law over and over again. Galatians just really spells it out significantly.

So he presented a crucified Christ, which was a stumbling block, which offended people. And it's true today as well. It's been said that Christianity is a bloody religion. Let's not talk about that. That's not in polite company, so to speak. But today, it seems like most of this thing is polite company, unfortunately. So let's go on. Let's go on to verse 2. So now he's going to get down to the focus of this little section here.

And this kind of reminded me of talking to my kids again. This is only one thing I want to find out from you. Talk to your kids. Adore is strange, Margaret. It's strange. So he says, this is the only thing, or literally it's, in the Greek it's actually only two words, this only.

And it kind of emphasizes that there's a critical question coming up after the colon. This is a critical question he's going to ask him about the spirit. How did you receive the spirit? And notice here that really, I'll just wait until I get to it. So basically, let's just look. This is the only thing, literally this only, I want to find out. One is a desire. and find out is to learn. So what kind of question do you think this is? Is Paul really... Does he need information here? Exactly. He already has the information. Like I said, this is just like with the kids.

Why were you out? One thing I want to find out from you, Johnny, why were you out in the street by yourself and all that traffic or whatever it is? Why were you doing that? Now, you can take it. You guys all know. So it is a rhetorical question. Roger, do you remember ever getting asked any of those questions? Oh, yeah. I've been asked those questions. Do you know how it made you feel?

Pretty small. Pretty small. Well, I can remember, this is what we're talking about, stories. In school, I was kind of the quiet kind of guy and didn't do much. Back in my grade reports, you got conduct. And mine were always just top kind of. Every student was like Roger.

Except, at one time, there was an assembly. for a pep rally, and I actually went out for football for some small time period until I realized I was going to get killed. So the coach, a junior varsity coach, I was talking with somebody in the assembly, which was kind of rare for me, but I found a friend to talk with. The coach saw me, and in the middle of the assembly, he called me out and said, I want you to report to my office after the assembly. And back in those days, they had the panel. I got some laughs for talking in the assembly. So anyway, I, you know... Can I borrow that? I wish that...

You'll be arrested. I know. Exactly, exactly. I know. Yes, go ahead. Real quick, I just want to say that I think the Galatians were a lot like my sister. Because the teacher asked her I looked at the teacher, I guess, and said, you know, why ask me? Yeah, exactly. That's very, very good. That's very, very good. Of course, they had rulers then. Exactly. She got her knuckles slapped. Exactly. Rulers for the girls, fellows for the boys. That's good. That's good. Discrimination. Yep, yep. Hardliners, aren't they? I was a teacher. Did you receive the Spirit by the works? He is assuming that they did accept the Spirit.

And that's excellent point. Doug, you're right on the right path. That's exactly where I wanted to go. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because there's nothing here that shows there's evidence of it. Exactly. So basically, you're right. And actually, the tense of the verb here is the Aorist tense. It's a fact tense.

It says basically, he's assuming that they have the Spirit. And let's just look at 1 Corinthians. You want to go into that saying, well, he's not asking if they received the Spirit. He's asking, well, how did you receive the Spirit? I know you received the Spirit, and you know you received the Spirit. And let's just look at a verse, I think that's probably germane to that, in 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6, can somebody read verse 19? 1 Corinthians 6, 19.

So basically, you know, You know, no you not they knew that they knew they realized the Spirit of God was in their lives But then they're going off and they're doing and you say what are you doing? You know, you know Did you really see the Spirit by the works the law is that how you did you just work really hard and all sudden one day Okay, here's your you get the Holy Spirit today Didn't work that way at all so, you know just I Okay, so let's just go on.

So basically, so actually if you look at the last phrase there, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or is it a conjunction? So you could actually, I'm going to treat it as like two separate, I'm going to repeat the first part twice. Did you receive the spirit? Receive is this word lambano, to take and receive. Okay, by the works, and by is this word ek in the Greek, out of or by means of, so he's saying, did you receive the spirit out of or by means of, and actually here again, the definite article is not there, so it's referring, it can refer to the mosaic system, but it also includes any law system. Did you, through any law system, receive the spirit? Is that how you, how God gave you the spirit, by some, set of works or whatever. So, you know, for the Jews, it might be, you know, keeping the commandments, tithing, circumcision, keeping the Sabbath. Oh, 590. Right, right. And the commandments, you know, there are 600 and how many of those? Right.

So, Roger, again, he's not saying that it's bad to be doing those things. No, no. He's saying that, that they didn't do it themselves, so they can't boast about it. but their focus needs to be on God who, through grace, gave them the Spirit. But he's not putting any of this stuff down. He's saying that even if you're the most devout Jew on the face of the earth, and if it's possible, which it's not, to keep all of these things, God still gave you the Spirit because of grace, not because of anything else. Exactly. And as we learned, as Vern, a couple of weeks ago, talked about this, these are They got blessings. They were blessed if they did this. And that's the focus.

Blessing versus not. Not gaining the Spirit. Not making the Spirit... It doesn't compute. I mean, you know. You don't go through a set of things to receive the Spirit. The Spirit is a gift of God's grace. The problem with that is blessings are easier or tangible. Exactly. It's much easier to receive than the Spirit. How do you measure? Right. Right. Yep. Right.

And today, we can go down the same path as the Jews did. We can think, well, okay, I can be more spiritual if, and you make up your list, if I do A, B, C, D, I read my Bible 12 times a day, rather than 6 times a day, or whatever. I go to church every time I'm involved in every activity there is in the church. I'm never absent, I'm always here. If anybody asks me, I always do it. I mean, you can't say, boy, I've really gained some spiritual...

Paul says, no, that's not what it's about. No, it's a relationship. I was kind of thinking, this kind of crossed my mind. I was thinking about our children. There's a lot of children today. Think about your children, and if you don't have children, maybe somebody that's helpful to you. Imagine that person or your child did everything they They kept their room straight. They were home on time. They did every single thing, but they never wanted to sit down and talk with you. They were just gone all the time.

That's kind of what the Lord is saying. He says, I want to spend time with you. I want to get to know you. You can do all these wonderful things, and they're fine things. There's nothing wrong with that. But I want to have a relationship with you. I want to have fellowship with you. And I have fellowship through the Word. I want to have fellowship with with you.

I mean, it's just a marked difference. You know, even though I'd love to have my kids be, you know, there's so many other things I'd like to have them do. I think, well, wait a minute, what do I really want? I have to kind of think, what do I really want? I want a relationship with them. And that's what God wants with us. And on that, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Actually, I'm sorry.

I've been thinking that this whole thing reminds me of how much like sheep we are in the sense that, yeah, we have We've all had Christ before our eyes. That's why we placed our faith in Him. We were so convinced that what He did we needed. And yet, it's so easy to follow after something even still. I think in our case it's like it was for them. Anything that appeals to the old nature. But in regard to doctrine, we are to be thinking people. God wants us to understand what we believe and think about the implications of that instead of just going along with whatever. I know.

That's really good. That's really good. It's funny. It's always so neat. I think those classes are really exciting for me when I see people that want to understand, that want to dig in and want to understand. It's just so wonderful because they're thinking. They're not just, well, okay, that sounds good. Vern sounds good, Mike sounds good, Roger's good too sometimes, and whatever, you know. So, you know, they all have good things to say and I'm happy to be here.

But, you know, we want you to be involved in God's Word. I mean, that's what it's about. Involved in who Christ is and understanding what he's done for us. Stan? Yeah, it's interesting that the great commandment wasn't, do what your neighbor tells you to do. as yourself, which refers more to a relationship and a fellowship than it does accomplishments or doing what's easy to do. Somebody comes over and says, can you help me mow the grass? And you say, sure. So you go over and mow the grass, and then you go home. That's cool. So didn't you earn some brownie points there? That has nothing to do with love or relationship or anything else. Right. That's good. That's really good.

Okay, so this is after the or, or did you receive the spirit by hearing of faith. Or actually, in this case, it could be rendered faith hearing. Faith actually modifies hearing. So it's faith hearing. And this is this word. Akuo is a typical word. This is a little bit different word. This actually is a word for For the faculty of hearing. But this is one of the cases where it's used in a little bit different sense. I thought I had a verse for that. I don't think of the word acoustics. Right. And that's a good point. So actually. I have some examples here, but this is, you know, faith, the hearing of faith, and a couple of these verses kind of demonstrate the, and this is in Acts 16, 30-31.

Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. And then in Colossians, and this maybe speaks a little more to the fact that that faith is to be the operating principle both for salvation and for our Christian walk.

Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. So the question is always asked after you read that verse, how did you receive Christ? You received him by faith. Therefore, how are you to walk? You are to walk by faith. Tom? so many syllables, you actually took it in precisely the way God meant you to. Then you were able to act upon it the way God wanted you to.

On from there. And there's actually one verse I don't have on here. And let's just look at it. I think it's kind of critical. Connecting hearing with faith is in Romans 10. Romans chapter 10. And this is a pretty familiar verse. Romans 10, 17. And it says, so faith comes from hearing. So the source of faith comes from hearing. So we have to hear the message. We have to hear the message, or read the message. I think it applies here too. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. So hearing and faith are intimately linked. So this is talking about, did you receive the Spirit by faith hearing.

You heard the message and you were saved and the Holy Spirit, it wasn't a separate, now this is a whole other class on the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit was one of the wonderful things that the Lord, by His grace, gave you. You didn't have to wait for a time period while the Holy Spirit is going to come a little bit later. No, you didn't have to. Scripture teaches clearly that the Holy Spirit is something that every believer has at the moment of salvation.

And that's, like I said, a whole other way to spend a lot of time on that. Maybe we'll get into that when we get down. Actually, this is the first mention of the Holy Spirit in Galatians. And then from this point on, there's probably about maybe a dozen more times it's mentioned.

All right. So actually, once again, I had the privilege of studying through house notes. I actually see it's been great to copy off all these notes. I got notebooks. Sometimes it's overwhelming. I look, I said, so I just have to pick and choose. I always seem to find some review. Hal reviewed in 94. I had to make it small font because Hal would write from border to border.

You couldn't get any space in that page left. He's going to summarize verses 1 and 2. He goes through defining the words. Foolish. Not applying your minds. Not understanding correctly. bewitched, to be misled by charming someone into false doctrine. So now he's going to tell us about this portrait, Jesus Christ's portrait, detailed and clear, before their very eyes, crucified, and the two aspects of substitution and identification. False questions. to cause them to apply their minds versus being foolishly continuously. He wants them to think, as was mentioned.

How did you receive the Holy Spirit? The one indwelling you, as was mentioned. It's the one that you already have. If you're a believer, you have the Holy Spirit. How did that happen? By the works of a law system? By the hearing of faith or faith hearing? Reason for the questions. Actually, on your handout, there's an S missing on questions in a couple of places. I apologize.

Their Christian life was characterized by living according to a law system. This is where they were at, and that's why he was talking with them. But this is not the way they started their Christian life. They started the Christian life by the hearing of faith. They heard of God's grace. They responded by faith. There's no other way that man can please God or come to God. And I believe Hebrews 11, 6 says, without faith it's impossible to please God. I think that's right. Roger, it's interesting to me that it says up on top, by applying your mind, it says mind, and I think that's probably pneumos. their minds.

Okay, if you think Jesus commended, it wasn't Jesus who commended the Bereans for going back and studying the scriptures. And we're continually told that one of the things we're supposed to do is study God's word so that we understand, not that we feel good about, but that we actually understand who God is and what God wants us to do and know who's what God's character is well again the law is a picture of God's character so it's in scripture and so we're supposed to do all these things how do we do it by some good good thing that's come to us because we we did something special right that's new age exactly that's what Brandy talks about a lot of times about the charismatic church and what Byrne talks about as well where the feelings dominate what you do. This is mind. You're supposed to think, you're supposed to reason, you're supposed to hear, you're supposed to use your senses, which comes through your mind, and then you come to a conclusion. I personally believe the Holy Spirit works through one's mind. We have the mind of Christ. That's one of the blessings of God's grace. Now we also can go back to our our simple nature and we can walk down that path. But we have, as we walk with him, we have the very mind of Christ.

And that's kind of mind-boggling, actually. Well, it's frustrating to me. My sister is in New Age and anybody can pray for her if they want, you know, because she really needs it. And I think she's coming to an understanding That's not the answer, but it's an easy answer because it's how you feel about something.

And you can read all these different books that are in the library and they tell you all different things about how you're supposed to feel. But it's the scripture. It's the gospel. It's the word of God that you go to that gives you the truth. You know, like what is truth? That's what Pilate asked. What is truth? You know, Jesus is truth. Now that you mention that, You can come up with a phrase that comes back as English says it. Truth is the one standing in front of.

Well, OK. All right. All right. So. So actually, the very last I didn't read, you know. The Christian life is a moment-by-moment responding by faith. That's what it's about. It's not by a set of laws or a good checklist. It's by us responding moment-by-moment by faith and seeing Christ for who He is, the crucified one, and by trusting Him and relying upon Him. Even though things don't look that good many times, But actually, the Lord says, don't be surprised when all kinds of trials and temptations come into your life. And they come for a reason. So even though it's not much fun sometimes, the Lord is faithful.

Well, next week we'll continue on with the last three verses. So let's close. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think it was this last week, one of the hungry hearts. You know, they always have the verse at the bottom and so on. And I've gone back through. days and days to try to find what verse it was and I can't but it was a Weymouth translation and it used the phrase the bondage of effort and I've been kind of rolling that around in my head and you know anything I do in the old nature there's an effort involved and a bondage to that that I should be better in some way or gee I really did that good and then I feel good about myself and that's a kind of bondage too And yet the Lord lifts all that off of us. I know. And I just feel so peaceful when I allow that effort and the bondage it brings with it to be out of my life and truly just rest. in the fact that I belong to him.

That's wonderful. That's great Gail. Thank you. That's really good. You guys, I'm just up here. All great things today. I'm excited about it. Alright, let's close. We thank you Father. We thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for your word. Just for the marvelous grace that you've provided to us and you've given us all that we need for life and godliness, and you've asked us simply to trust you and walk by faith, not by sight. And we ask that we would just do that, simply trust you for what you have for us and be thankful. In Christ's name, amen.