Yeah. So we're we're in our series
finishing up today bearing fruit.
We'll talk about that again at the end.
You ever seen one of these? This is this is a boilerplate
and these boilerplates were put on boilers obviously, but they
had had the writing on them in the same thing was stamped on
every boiler. You know, they make these plates
up and and stick them on every boiler that that went out.
Have you ever received a boilerplate response to A to a
letter or e-mail that you've written?
You know, you send an e-mail, you sent a letter and they've
replied to you and you thought this is not personal at all.
This is just the same thing they send out to everybody, right?
Yeah, people are nodding had that experience.
If you've applied for jobs, you may have may have come across
that one guy, he just finished uni and he was applying for all
these different jobs and he realised that all that every
time he got a rejection letter, they were all exactly the same,
didn't matter what company it was.
And he said, you know, obviously somebody had come up with a
really good reply at some point and this thing's gone viral and
it's just kind of the standard response that everybody sends
out. And so he decided to write a
reply. Here is his reply.
He said, Dear Sir Slash Madam, thank you for your letter of
February the 17th. After careful consideration, I
regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to
offer me employment with your company this year.
I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an
unusually large number of rejection letters.
Some of them are very high quality.
With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is
impossible for me to accept all refusals.
Despite your company's outstanding qualifications and
previous experience in rejecting applicants, I've find that your
rejection does not meet my needs at this time.
Therefore, I will initiate an employment with your firm
immediately. I look forward to seeing you on
Monday. Sincerely, John.
All right, why did I tell you there?
That'll make sense in a minute. But first of all, a quick
overview of what we've seen in our study through Galatians,
right? So we started off looking at
salvation. The concept of salvation being
rescued from the eternal consequences of our sin passing
our falling short. Remember we we looked at this,
the Greek word for sin, hamatia, means to miss the mark and has
this idea of firing an error, but it drops short of the
target. We fall short because God's
commands reflect his nature. You remember this one We talked
about lying. God's very nature is truth.
Titus tells us that God cannot lie.
Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life truth is
God's very nature. So when we lie, we're going
against the the character and nature of God, right?
And so that sin we fall short of God's God's standard.
All of us have fallen short. Romans tells us quoted this
morning. There is none righteous.
No, not one right also from book of Romans right.
So we all fall short and the wages of sin is death.
What does sin is death. We're going to look at something
shortly the the Galatians, something interesting.
And I just wanna explain an interesting thing about language
in English. When we talk about peace
generally, our definition of peace is the absence of war.
Ohh, that's probably how we did it.
In fact, if you if you ask most English speakers what is the
opposite of peace, most people would answer war, war as the
opposite of peace. But in the in the Greek language
of the New Testament, and many languages are like this, the
word peace literally means to join together.
That's what that's literally what they word means.
Peace means joined together, right?
To join together the Greek word for death is Thanatos and
thanatos literally means to separate.
You can see that the the thinking, right you, you were
separated from the living, your soul is separated from your
body, right. So for 1st century Greek
speakers, although they they used the word peace kind of like
we do, if you ask them what is the opposite of peace, they
would likely say death. Yeah, see the sort of thinking
there? The wages of sin is death.
We are, we die and we are separated from God because we
fall short of keeping God's commands.
That's the bad news. The good news is that from the
beginning of time, God had a rescue plan organised.
That plan was that Jesus Christ, who didn't fall short, who
didn't send, would die in our place.
And so if we realise our sinfulness, we're truly sorry
and we ask God for forgiveness, trusting in what Jesus did on
our behalf on the cross, then multiple places in the Bible
tell us that God will forgive us and will wipe the slate clean,
that we can be joined with him, right?
Not because we deserve it, but because his love and compassion
means that he's forgiven and he won't treat us like we deserve,
right? We don't deserve it.
It's an undeserved favour. And that the Bible word for that
is grace and undeserved favour, something that you, you don't
deserve. It's a it's a gift in that
sense. And so we saw right back at the
start, right, that the church family at Antioch in Syria,
you'll see see them there just up if you kind of know your
world geography, right. So Jerusalem's kind of at the
bottom there stone Antioch, but further up in Syria and there
was church family there. And they send out Paul and
Barnabas into the Gentile world, right into the the non Jewish
world in order to share this good news.
And people believed it and put their faith and trust in it.
And they were joined with God, right?
And churches were established. And one of the regions where
this happened was this area in Turkey called Galatia, right?
And at least four churches were established in that, in that
area and and maybe others, but at least four that we we don't
have that are spoken of in in the book of Acts.
But at some point some Jewish believers from Judea came up to
Galatia and they told believers, no, no, no, having faith in
Jesus is not enough. You also have to keep the Old
Testament laws circumcised. The boys abstained from certain
foods and on and on and on. And another thinking, well,
that's not what Paul taught us. And obviously getting a response
worth of well, who is Paul? Who does Paul think he is
anyway? This is what you gotta do.
And so Paul writes this letter and told them to make copies and
pass it around from church to church in Galatia.
And in chapter 1, he started off telling him about his sorrow
that they've walked away from the true gospel, right?
The true good news and that their salvation, you know that
this good news that their salvation, their rescue is based
solely on God's grace, on his free gift of forgiveness.
And that started believing that they could earn God their way to
God by doing good works and and keeping Old Testament law.
Remember that sort of still there.
And then he spent some time in chapters one and two explaining
how and why he had the authority to speak on behalf of Jesus
because his authority was being challenged.
He talks about how this legalism right this, this trying to reach
God by following laws and ticking all the right boxes and,
and all of that. It's an easy trap for us to get
caught up. And even Peter got caught up in
it. It traps us in an impossible
situation of trying to be good enough when that's impossible,
right? We just can't be.
And he and he goes to great lengths, right, to try and
explain to us that keeping laws can't save you.
And how even the Old Testament shows that that the whole
purpose of the law was to teach us that we could never be good
enough. We need a saviour.
And he talked about that we need a rescuer chapter 3.
And then in chapter 4, he used a whole bunch of examples like
slavery and adoption and Old Testament history kind of
illustrate how this grace thing works.
And then in chapter 5, he starts to get into how that should
affect our lives right? In the way we behave and the way
we live our lives. That you can't make people do
the right thing by just passing more laws.
There isn't a law that can create love and joy and peace
and patience and, and all of those things.
Those things come from us experiencing God's grace and
letting us, letting that influence the way we see and
treat others. And it's not something that can
be forced. And then in chapter 6, he talks
about how understanding grace should affect the way that we we
treat other people. Sitting brothers and sisters in
Christ, burden, brothers and sisters in Christ, elders, other
things, right? And he says, you know how we
should do good to everyone, but especially the fellow believers.
And now he signs off, right? He's signing off this letter.
Now, this idea of salvation by grace, and we've already seen it
this morning, right? Calibre, long passage in Romans
right there, explained a whole bunch of stuff about that,
right? This whole thing of salvation by
grace was also quoted from Ephesians, right?
Almost every letter that Paul writes, he talks about this, he
talks about the importance of this.
It would be easy to think law, blah blah.
This is just another boilerplate letter from Paul.
Lots of theology, whatever. So let's pick it up in Galatians
chapter 6, verse #11 he says, See with what large letters I'm
writing to you with my own hand. We know from several of false
letters that he usually dictated them, a guy named Susan, he's
acted as his secretary to do that often.
So he would dictate the letters societies would write, write
down what what Paul said. But this letter was part of the
letter at least, is handwritten. He's running by hand.
He wanted them to understand how important this was, that this is
not just the boilerplate thing that he's sending out to them,
that it was personal. This isn't some boilerplate
theological essay. Yeah, this is real world, real
life stuff that impacts lives and eternities and, and he's not
messing around. Now the large litters thing,
right? He's writing with large litters
that some people think that maybe had eyesight issues cause
you know, he talks about things like that a few in a few
different places. We don't really know.
It's not specifically stated. It's probably just living in a
time, you know, before reading glasses were invented, right.
He's getting on a bit. He just gets a bit harder to,
you know, so he's writing in, in large print.
There is another possibility here though, just from some
other 1st century documents that we've found, this could be the
1st century equivalent of all caps bold type, right?
Cause that that's been done in some some other letters we
found. But you know, to say how
important it is, not sure. But the point is here that it's
personal. It's very important and he's not
messing around. He's not messing around and
we'll see this right. Then he goes into verse 12 and
he talks about the motivation of these people who are teaching
them that they need to follow Old Testament laws in order to
receive God's rescue. Here's what he says.
He says it is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh
who would force you to be circumcised, and only then order
that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
For even those who are circumcised do not themselves
keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they
may boast in your flesh, he says.
Look, the reason these people are teaching you this stuff and
getting you to do this stuff is to make themselves look good.
You know you you can imagine these people boasting to their
peers, right? I bought 5 Gentiles under the
law of Moses this week. Sort of.
But the street created right with their with their friends
who believe this stuff, he says. But even these guys know that
they can't keep the law. Ever told a lie?
You've fallen short. You know you've fallen short.
Decreasing Jesus death on the cross and bringing our salvation
can actually get you on side with a bunch of different
people. It'll get you on side with with
other legalists. Lots of people think this way,
right? People think, ohh, well, you
know, just teach people to be good.
Took all the all the right boxes.
They can work their way to God. You know, maybe they'll be good
enough. They can when you a lot of
friends, a lot of people think their way.
It can get you on on side with other religions.
Almost all religions we talked about this in in week 1 and
later on as well, right? Almost all religions are about
trying to live a life good enough that God or the gods or
the universe or however the religion works will accept you.
Do lots of good things and God will accept you.
So if you teach people you know falsely and you teach them,
look, you don't need to recognise the authority of God,
you don't reckon need to recognise that you've fallen
short and apologise to him. You just need to live your best
life. If you teach there, you'll fill
in with every other religion. That's kind of the the teaching
of every other religion. They'll also get you on side
with the government however their government looks if you
teach people that look, Jesus was just a good moral example
and we should try and be good like he he was.
Any government would be more than happy with that.
But if you start teaching people the only way to reach peace with
God is by recognising Jesus death on your behalf and and
asking for forgiveness, well now you're meddling all right.
Now you're being divisive. Now you're saying that members
of the government are accountable to God, Paul says.
The reason these people are teaching you legalism, right,
trying to follow rules instead of repentance, is that it helps
them avoid any persecution. They're not going to be
persecuted by their friends. They're not going to be
persecuted by, you know, other religions.
They're not going to be persecuted by the government
That that's why they're they're pushing this.
And then he talks about his own motives.
Why is he doing this? Why is he, why has he done all
this stuff to go into the into the world and, and all kinds of
places and we will see in a minute some of the stuff he went
through to do this. Why is he doing that?
To get this message? That's gospel.
That's good news. That salvation is by grace.
Here's what he says. But far be it from me to glory
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world
has been crucified to me and I to the world.
How do you how do you receive glory in today's society?
What are some of the ways that we can do that?
There's there's a few in there, but kind of some main ones are,
are, are being famous. What famous people receive
glory, right? Glory means like turn the
spotlight on something that light something up.
Being famous right, gets you, gets you glory.
Being very wealthy gets you glory.
Having status gets you glory. You know, even in even in a
small sense, if you're part of a small club and you, you know,
somewhere up there, you know, having that status gets you some
glory. These are all common ways that
that people receive glory today. But the words glory and cross
don't go together right at all. Death on the cross.
And this is hard for us to kind of get a heads around.
But it wasn't just about execution, right?
The Romans had other ways of executing people as well.
Paul Headers was beheaded. You know, in Rome, crucifixion
wasn't just about execution. It was about humiliation, it was
about humiliating the person. Even Roman judges would use a
euphemism for this. They would say hang him on the
unlucky tree. That's what they would say.
He was sentenced to be hung on the unlucky tree because in
polite society, you didn't talk about the cross.
You didn't say it out loud. When Paul talks about the cross,
he doesn't mean the piece of wood.
He's not talking about the piece of wood.
He's talking about what Jesus did on the cross, Right.
He took my guilt on him. This was never about what I'm
doing for him. Yeah, it's what he did, he says.
The world is dead to me, right? And vice versa.
Meaning the culture of the world in, in glorying and you know,
fame and fortune and status and all of that.
It doesn't have the same control over me and it doesn't have the
same motivation. Like it doesn't motivate me like
it used to. This 15 for neither circumcision
counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new
creation. To the Corinthians, he said that
if anyone is in Christ, they're a new creation.
Their new creation, circumcision, was a sign of
being Jewish, right? Not being circumcised was a sign
of being Gentile, and the legalists were teaching, look,
you, you have to follow the laws of Moses, which included all the
boys being circumcised, right? Paul says.
Look, that's missing the point. Outward religion doesn't make us
a new creation. I quite like to watch a good
stand up comedy, but you know, it's quite hard to find a good
one, isn't it? Well, times you you see a thing
in this like ohh, there's a Comedy Festival on stand up
Comedy Festival, especially in New Zealand one.
And you think, Oh, this is great.
And you turn it on right and you get like a minute into a day and
the language is flying or the contents really smutty and you
think, ohh, man, but every now and again, right, you had a
really good one and you go through and think, man, this is
this is really clean and it's funny and you know, it's got and
if you're like me, you start to think wonder if she's saved?
I wonder if he's a Christian and they will might be right, but if
they are, the fact that they're not using bad language and and
you know, rugby content is kind of a, it's an outward sign of,
of that, isn't it? Like it's a, it's kind of a
symbol of the things they believe it's coming out.
Yeah. But are they saved because they
don't use bad language and their contents clean?
No, they're not. It's just kind of a, it's a,
it's an outward sign of that coming out.
Paul said this back in the relations too.
He said this, He said, you. We know that a person is not
justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus
Christ. So we also have believed in
Jesus, in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in
Christ Jesus and not by works of the law, because by works of the
law no one will be justified. He's saying, look, if you wanna
follow a rule, here's a simple rule.
Salvation is a free gift received by recognising your
sin, turning from it and asking for forgiveness.
That's what makes you a new creation, not the fact that you
were good enough, right? It's being forgiven of your sin
because you came and apologised, right?
This is the rule, right? Not by being good enough, not by
outward religious symbols, right?
By this. And then he says this.
And As for all who walk by this rule, peace, right, being joined
together and by contacts with God and mercy, right, not being
treated like we deserve to be treated, be upon them and upon
the Israel of God, right? Any Jews that live by this rule,
Same deal for them. Whether you're due or a Gentile,
the rule is salvation is by grace through faith.
It brings peace with God, and you don't get treated like you,
just you, you deserve. And you can feel the kind of the
passion here and how personal it is to Paul when he says this
inverse 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear
on my body the marks of Jesus. So you're these 11.
Paul recounts some of the things he's been through and getting
the gospel to people. He says this imprisonment with
countless beatings and often near death.
Five times I received at the hands of the Jews 40 lashes -1
So there's a bit of cultural significance there.
If you've ever seen one of those movies, you know, Passion of the
Christ or something, you know, you've seen the scourging, the
flogging. They did so back in the 1st
century. You know, they have those, those
whips think they cat of nine tails was what came to be known
as down through the centuries. But you have a handle and they
have all these sort of leather straps that come off at, you
know, the whips. And then they tied bits of
pottery and glass and all that sort of stuff into the thing.
And so then they would whip you and it would dig in and then
they would pull it out. It would tear your flesh, right?
40 lashes with one of those was considered a death sentence
because most people didn't recover.
Yeah, so five times he got sentenced to 39 lashes.
Five times, right? Imagine that.
Imagine going through that. Three times I was beaten with
rods. Once I was stoned, three times I
was shipwrecked a night and the day I was adrift at sea.
No, in the days before light jackets and light boats, and all
of that on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from
robbers, dangers from my own people, danger from Gentiles,
danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea,
danger from false, false brothers.
And toil and hardship through many a sleepless night.
And hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and
exposure. And apart from all these other
things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for
all the churches. Imagine going through all of
that in order to get the good news that salvation is available
through faith and have people say who's Paul game?
Don't listen to Paul. What does he know?
Imagine that. Imagine how that must have felt
hearing that back that got passed back to him.
He says goodbye. From now on, let no one calls me
trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
I sat and thought about this for a long time and I I thought
about this. Do the identifying marks on my
life lead people to Christ? Do they point people to Christ?
He closes in verse 18. He says this the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Be with your spirit, President.
Amen. It's quite a short ending
compared to a lot of his other letters, which is, you know, say
hello to so and so and, you know, encourage so and so and
don't forget so and so is coming to visit.
He's just very, very, very, very to the point here, very blunt.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
There it is again, right there. Free gift, that undeserved
favour. So here's the question for us.
Here's the kind of concluding question from the series.
Will we let God's grace change us?
If you are here and you have never received God's grace in in
in the sense of having your sins forgiven, you know, maybe you
would be considered a good person by most people.
Maybe you've been in church for a while, but you've never come
to the point where you recognise your own sinfulness, that you
fall short of God's standard, and you've never honestly asked
Him for forgiveness for that. God's grace is waiting for you
today. You can be a new creation and
you create. Have the conversation with them,
experiencing that peace, being joined with God.
For those of us who have done that, we need to ask ourselves
this Am I now letting God's grace affect who I am?
Am I letting God's grace affect who I am, or am I trying to
endlessly keep a list of rules and regulations?
So the the real question is, am I connecting to him through
prayer and and reading my Bible and just relationship, right?
Having that connection, having that relationship so that that
fruit that the Holy Spirit generates, Lovejoy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control, those things are flowing out of me despite
whatever circumstances I find myself in.
That's kind of challenging, isn't it?
I start to think, man, is that the case?
Is is that what people are seeing?
The sermon series was called Bearing fruit.
Is God's grace bearing fruit in my life?
Yeah, We've talked about this before.
I went to a Chinese circus many years ago, and I had this dude
that was spinning plates on a stick.
You ever seen that? And then they get a plate
spinning, and it's just kind of balancing there.
And then he stands the next one up, and he spins the next plate,
and he stands the next one up, and he spins the next plate.
And then he gets to about #4 and number #1 starting to wobble,
and he goes back and he gets that one going again.
And by the end of it, he's got, like nine of these things
spinning, right? And the crowds are, you know,
right into it. And I think sometimes we look at
the fruit of the Spirit, kind of like that, and we go, well, I've
kind of got love, right? And Joy's doing okay and well, I
gotta work, come on, piece a little bit, and then I gotta go
back and work on love and I kind of get these things going.
This is the fruit of the spirit. And, and interestingly in Greek,
that fruit is singular. It's a single fruit, the fruit
of the Spirit. Are these things Lovejoy, peace.
If I am connecting with the Holy Spirit, if I am living God's
grace fix me. These things will come out.
Is God's grace bearing fruit in
my life? Am I connecting with God in such
a way that His Holy Spirit is working through me in that
regard? Let's pray and I'll hand back to
Tim. Father, we thank you for yeah,
Grace and what it means, and lovely thank you that even
though it's it's through all of Paul's letters, this was just so
personal because he understood it.
He understood what it meant. They have since forgiven and
what that that freedom feels like.
Thank you for it. But we just pray if there's
anyone here who hasn't experienced that, the freedom of
forgiveness from sin that Matt talked about this morning, Lord,
just pray that they would make that connection today, that they
would come to you and realise their sinfulness and connect.
Lord, thank you there. Thank you there.
You're a for giving God that you don't treat us like we deserve.
We thank you for who you are in that regard.
And Lord, and again, we just thank you that Your Holy Spirit
does work in us that brings out the fruit.
And we just pray that we would be connected with you enough
that that's the case. Well, thank you for the whole
series and the whole, all the different nuances and things
that come out about this. And we just pray that we would
all be challenged and we would be different.
And as a church family, your grace would be evident to those
around us. We just pray these things in
Jesus name, Amen.