How to blow up in a crisis? Because this same controversy
appeared. How Jewish do you need to be in
order to be in the life and family of Abraham in the embrace
of God, of Yahweh? For us, sometimes that feels a
long way away. I mean, very few of you would
have answered, Oh my legacy and heritage of family is that I am
in the family of Abraham. Did anybody say that?
None of us here said that, though I have friends who would
say that because they are Jewish and they would claim that they
are children of Abraham. Now some of you growing up in
church would have sang that song.
OK, so you know it, you know it, you claimed it, but you forgot
this was a very close issue and conversation in Paul's day.
Can you and I claim Abraham as our father in faith?
Can we claim to be in the covenant of Abraham?
Can we claim to be truly in the fellowship of God?
And so he's having this conversation with the people of
Galatia, with these churches, and in chapter 3, he's telling
them you have forgotten the gospel.
And he says, 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
the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?
Are you so foolish after beginning by means of the
Spirit? Are you now trying to finish by
means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in
vain, if it really was in vain? So again I asked, does God give
you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the
law, or by your believing what you heard?
So also Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as
righteousness. Understand, then, that those who
have faith are children of Abraham.
Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith
and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham.
All nations will be blessed through you.
So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the
man of faith. For all who rely on the works of
the Law are under a curse as it is written.
Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything
written in the book of the Law. Clearly, no one who relies on
the Law is justified before God because the righteous will live
by faith. The Law is not based on faith.
On the contrary, it says, the person who does these things
will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
For, it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might
come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith
we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
Paul is talking about their freedom of association of Jew
and Gentile together under the banner and life of Christ, and
he wants them to key in that. They started the life of faith
or the life with Christ by faith, and he's trying to give
them some good news that the way you started your life with Jesus
is the way you finish the life with Jesus.
You started the life with Jesus by believing him.
You finish the life with Jesus by believing him.
You continue to grow and live in the life of faith with Jesus by
believing Him. You are made acceptable and put
into this family of faith by believing Him, not by following
a set of rules or laws or dietary code or changing your
flesh through circumcision, he says.
You actually become part of this family, and you remain part of
this family the way you started. You started with faith.
Notice, he says. I would like to learn just one
thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by
the works of the law or by believing what you've heard?
Paul treated the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives as
this one who brings them into the communion of God and causes
them to have an experience with God that the Spirit is working
in their life to confirm that they really are children of God.
And he says, you didn't get this by ticking a box, you got this
by believing. In fact, this had been Peter's
experience of watching in the living room of Cornelius that
when these Gentiles believed the gospel of Jesus, the sign that
they believed was that the Holy Spirit showed up and some of
them started speaking in tongues.
They actually expressed and showed with their life the
presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
And so Paul's appealing to this with the Galatian folks to say,
don't, Don't you have an experience of God that came
about not because you tried to do a few things, but because you
believed in Jesus? This is pretty consistent with
Paul's expressions in his life. He says in Romans chapter 10,
faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is
heard through the word of Christ.
Have you recently tried to tell someone the message of Jesus?
Did it seem strange, as you started to tell the message of
Jesus, that you actually believe that there was a man who was
born of a virgin who actually came from God, and who was God
who lived in Israel and died on a Roman cross in Israel, was
buried, and God raised him from the dead and that his death on
the cross was significant for all of us?
Of course, there were other Jewish people who died on
crosses, but Jesus died on a cross, and God accomplished
something in that moment for our benefit, showing us that God
loved us, that he forgave us for our sin, and that he paid the
debt of our sin and cleansed us from the death that our idolatry
had brought to us. He set us free.
Did your conversation go anything like that, or did you
find yourself stuttering a little bit and feeling a little
bit like that is the strangest thing?
I believe, and I'm going to tell it to you, there are no stranger
things than this. And Paul says that through that
message, a significant radical transformation happens in our
lives when we believe. And some of us are so from far
from that day. We've forgotten because now
we're just living in the grace of it.
And we've forgotten that it was actually that believing that
ushered us into the transforming work of God.
Remember Paul's argument from Galatians chapter 2?
He provides a vision of discipleship for both Jews and
Gentiles. He says, look, this is what it
is. This vision for spiritual
formation in our lives comes because we are crucified with
Christ. There's some sort of conversion
that happens in our life because we're believing Jesus, we're
crucified with him, we're dying a death with him so that we can
receive a life from him. And then we live by faith in the
Son of God who loved us and gave us life for us.
And we don't throw away this grace.
We hold on to this grace. This is his vision of
discipleship for both Jew and Gentile.
And he's expanding now on what is this life of faith?
And he appeals to Abraham. He says Abraham believed God and
it was credited to him as righteousness.
What did Abraham do to have this new covenant from God at the
time that God actually would bless all the nations through
him, that God actually would give him a family that was as
numerous as the stars that he could see in the dark of night?
And he says it's Abraham. Abraham believed God and the
Scripture says God credited it to him as righteousness.
Now most often when we hear the word credited, we're thinking
about I opened up my school loans and they had been paid.
Wow, someone credited my account.
Wouldn't you like that to happen tomorrow?
It's done, it's paid for. But this actually in the
reference in the Scripture is a reference to God doing something
for this person that that establishes a family line for
them, that establishes a family line for them where they have a
special place in the work and life of God.
There's a really strange passage in the Old Testament where it's
used one other time where Phineas is told that his actions
which were violent, we're actually now going to be
credited to him as righteousness because he had acted for the
holiness of God. Now, that's that's weird.
But when this phrase here is being used to say God is
crediting it as righteousness with Abraham, Paul's appealing
to this thing where God is just deciding, I see you, I see your
faith, and now I've included you in a covenant and I'm making you
into a family. He has to expand this some more
because it would have been really hard.
This is his thing, that everyone who has faith in Christ is
completely accepted into Abraham's family.
Everyone who has faith in Christ is completely accepted into
Abraham's family. And most of us have no emotional
draw on that. Most of us are not going, oh,
I'm so glad I'm in Abraham's family.
But there were Gentile followers of Jesus in the church who
weren't sure that they really were included because they
weren't signing up to be circumcised.
They weren't signing up to follow the dietary laws.
They had only signed up to hold on to Jesus.
That's all they had signed up for.
We we see Jesus like the Greeks who came to Philip and said we
want to see Jesus. They had grabbed hold of Jesus
and now they needed assurance that Jesus had grabbed hold of
them and that God had actually made them family.
You all have had that experience.
Maybe we're because of something that happens in your life.
You're like, I'm not sure God really loves me because of
something you do or say or some nagging persisting sin in your
life. And you're like, I'm not sure
that I'm really acceptable to God.
I feel like I'm stuck in an airport and there's an official
for me saying unacceptable. And all the time we have an
accusing voice to ourselves saying not really in not really
sure. I feel sad.
Is it OK to come to a happy church?
I'm not really sure. I feel like part of the family
today. And God's assurance is, did you
put your faith in Jesus the Son of God?
You're in the family. Notice what Paul says.
He says Scripture for so that God would justify the Gentiles
by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham.
All nations will be blessed through you.
God was assured of it. He says for all who rely on the
works of the law are under a curse.
Curse. It is everyone who does not
continue to do everything written in the book of the law.
Now, at this point, Paul quit talking to the Gentiles and
started talking to the Jewish audience.
And he reminds them, you know, if you're under the law, you're
now under a curse. That's bad news.
If you're under the law, you're under a curse.
But all of them would have gone. Yeah, Paul, you're right.
You're right. They would have just said you're
right. In fact, they would have gone
further and said the experience of being under the curse is that
now we're still in exile in our own land.
We're in spiritual exile in our own land because we cannot
fulfil the law. They would reach all the way
back to Deuteronomy chapter 2720820930 and 31, where God
tells them that here are the blessings, here are the curses,
here are all the blessings that will come to you if you obey the
Lord your God and keep this word.
Here are all the curses that will come to you if you do not
obey the word of God. It's as if then the Word of God
now became the rubric for the paper they were writing in life.
How many of you have had a rubric?
A standard. And then the rubric is held up
to their lives and the red pen comes out.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Wrong, wrong.
How many of you have had papers with lots of red, but how many
of you have had your life read that way?
And Paul is saying and reminding the Jewish audience in the
churches there, hey, you know how God sees us.
We are in exile and our lives are full of red marks.
But here's the incredible news that Christ Jesus poured out his
blood, and now our lives are read so differently because he
redeemed us from the curse. The righteous will live by faith
in the man who died on the cross for us.
He just says there is a mystery of what God has done for the
Jewish person, and there is a mystery for what God has done
for the Gentile person. And every time a Gentile person
says I trust Jesus Christ, they're actually saying I trust
Jesus Israel's Messiah. For that is what Christ means.
I trust Jesus Israel's Messiah. And so there's our connection.
Israel's Messiah has brought us into the family of Abraham and
has truly blessed us now, for he's given us his Spirit so that
we can be in the communion of God, so that we can be forgiven
of our own sin and idolatry. We weren't under that curse, but
we were under Adam's exile as well.
And now we're being brought back into the life and fellowship of
God, 'cause he says, look, I'm gifting you this spirit,
redeeming you and including you in Abraham's family.
Notice what he says. Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law. That's the Jewish folks, by
becoming a curse for us. For as it is written, cursed is
everyone who's hung on a pole. He redeemed us, and now he's
speaking to all of us in order that the blessing given to
Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus,
so that by faith we might receive the promise of the
Spirit. One of our basic prayers of
Christian life is Come, Holy Spirit, Come.
When you pray that prayer, you are praying into the blessing of
Abraham. Because the blessing of Abraham
is fulfilled in this, you become the friend of God because of the
Spirit of God within you. You become part of the family of
God because of the Spirit of God within you.
And so now even our expectations of ourselves and of each other
change. I'm expecting you to act like a
Christian. Is that what we're expecting?
I'm expecting rather the Spirit of God to help you act like a
Christian. I'm expecting the Spirit of God
to bear fruit in your life. I'm expecting the Spirit of God
to change your life and mine. Here's the challenge for us and
why we can't just get away from this.
Word about the curse is that the longer you reside in the life of
the church, the more likely it is that you and I will become
like older brothers. Do you remember the story that
Jesus told about two lost sons? One of the sons said, oh, Dad, I
wish you were dead. Give me the inheritance now.
And the dad did the extraordinary thing.
He didn't go and die. He just tore his life apart by
selling property and giving his son the inheritance.
The younger son went off and like money that comes.
Easy, easy come, easy go. And it went.
He had no discipline, he had no character, he had no way to
actually hold on to it. And in wild living he spent it
all till he was desperate. And he got a little job feeding
the pigs, but there really wasn't much to eat.
And he came to his senses and says, I'll go home to my dad.
At least there with my dad, I can be like a servant.
I'll become my dad's slave and I'll work for him.
At least I'll get to eat. And the older brother was lost
as well. For when the younger brother
came home, the older brother was very angry because he wasn't
acting like Abraham's son. He wasn't acting like a son or
daughter of Abraham. He wasn't marching to the right
beat. In fact, he just seemed to be
out of step father Abraham, one of them.
He couldn't get it right. And so the younger brother was
an outcast. But the older brother became
angry when he came home and judged him and said, you're not
doing it right. And he even told his dad, you're
not doing it right. I've been doing the right thing.
I should have more. I've been slaving for you.
Oh, there's the word. He'd been trying to be good
enough to get the Father's blessings.
And the strange thing is, the longer we're in church and in
the life of this body, the more likely we are to become like
older brothers. And that's the worst kind of
church. Who wants an older brother like
that? None of us want that.
And so that means we've sort of slid in under the curse and we
begin to use the righteousness and the works of God and all of
these things, and we hold it over onto each other and
ourselves and we slave away. But Christ redeems us from the
curse. When Israel would have heard
that word redemption, they would have immediately thought of a
slave Set free. I've been set free to live free.
I've been set free to love freely.
I've been set free to truly live with Jesus by faith.
God has fulfilled His promise over and over and over for you
and for me. You are set free.
Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, I pray that just the
simple ways that you would let this truth settle deep in our
lives, that you would let it settle into our life so that we
actually appreciate the church as a place where we become more
like Jesus, as a people with whom we get to know Jesus and
the people with whom we get to join Jesus in this mission.
Lord, would you give us a new vision so that we see rightly
each other and you, Paul had to ask the Galatians who bewitched
you, who gave you the evil eye? Whose?