With a knock at the door, Saul began his destruction of the
church because he noticed that the followers of the way had put
so much value in Jesus and they had so much value in their
gatherings of believers. And I imagine the persecution
because it says they started going door to door and dragging
the followers of way out. It started with a knock at the
door. Barnabas arrived in Antioch to
hear about some of the Christians who had been
scattered that they had shared the message of Jesus with people
who were not real Jewish people. And so Barnabas came to see.
He knocked at the door. And when Barnabas walked into
that grand living room of that house, he saw the grace of God.
He saw the grace of God because there he saw Judah and Gentile
together worshipping Jesus, gathered together under the
banner and name of Jesus, where the Spirit of God was doing a
new thing in their midst. And he was amazed.
In the meantime, Paul would become a Christian.
And so Saul sent friends to go find, or actually Barnabas sent
friends go find. Saul, also called Paul, started
with a knock at the door. Hey Paul, it's time for you to
start teaching more people about Jesus.
We've got a Jew and Gentile audience that need to hear you
talk about Jesus and the law and how the Scripture has been
fulfilled. And so he travelled back with
them to Antioch. I imagine it started with
knocking the door in the Galatian churches as the
Judaizers came to see the freedom that was being enjoyed
by Jude and Gentile worshipping Jesus together.
And we want to come to your house church too.
But when they got in, they said you're not doing it right.
And so just in the same way that the church in Galatia had had a
crisis because of a knock at the door by the Judaizers, the
church in Galatia was experiencing the same thing, the
knock at the door. What's your automatic question
when someone knocks on your door, on your door, Who's there?
Who's there, Who's there? Do I open the door ready for an
attack, or do I open the door in freedom?
I hope you actually asked that before shooting.
This has become a problem in North America that people are so
afraid of the knock at the door. But she first asked questions
later instead. But that's how it starts, with a
knock at the door. Maybe you've had a knock at the
door and there's there's someone there wanting to talk to you
about Jesus in that church, and maybe you're afraid of being
that kind of person. He walks down the hallway of
your dormitory and knocks on the door.
I'm so grateful for the person that came and knocked on the
door of my dad when he was an engineer with Lockheed Martin,
knocked on the door and stuck his head in and said, hey,
O'Brien, you ever read the Bible?
And my dad, sort of taken aback, said, no, but I know it.
I was in church every day of my life almost growing up.
And the guy said, I I didn't ask if you knew it.
I asked if you read it and disappeared.
The next day he came back, hey, O'Brien.
And he came in with a great big Bible and he plopped it down on
my dad's desk and said, there you go read it.
And my dad did started with a knock on the door.
And it launched my dad on a spiritual journey to change the
trajectory of my own life because someone dared to knock
at the door. Now he was pointing the way to
Jesus, but he was also inviting my dad into a fellowship of
Christians. And my dad began to attend with
him and others a fellowship of Christians, a variety of groups,
Full Gospel Business, Men's Association, Charismatic Home
groups, Baptist Church. And it set my dad on a new
spiritual jacket of life under the all in Christ in his word.
My dad really appreciated the church and the churches.
And one of the things he told me when when I became a pastor and
indicated I wanted to go into ministry, we went on a walk and
he sat on the walk. He said, well, I have to ask you
to not become one of those kind of pastors.
And I said, OK, what's that? He says one of those kind that's
always criticizing all the other churches.
Instead, appreciate the churches of Jesus.
I wonder how it is with you. Are you appreciating the
churches of Jesus? I sort of accept you're
appreciating this one. You're here.
Do you really appreciate the church?
So the situation that Paul was writing to when you wrote the
letter we call Galatians is that there were people who were not
appreciating the church as Jesus was constructing it, Jew and
Gentile together. They were not appreciating it.
And it created a kind of doubt within the congregation where
those who were Jewish were wondering, well, do we really
have the right kind of church? And those who were Gentile were
wondering, do I really belong in this church?
And maybe they were running around with a sense of trauma
for being rejected. And so Paul was having to
reconstruct the church to rebuild the appreciation of the
church. Do you know when you appreciate
something, it means the value of it keeps going up and up and up
and up and up. My mom passed away in October
and in preparation of of her on incoming death, she knew it was
coming. She would go around the house
and she would put little stories with pictures and little jars
and she would put a price tag with them and she said don't
throw this away without seeing if it's worth something.
It looks like junk but it's not. My mom appreciated it because of
the story. So do we.
The value kept going up, but for someone else looking at it, they
might think, oh, that's just jump.
And so they put it in a garage sale and they miss the true
value of it, She says. I know that picture is sort of
ugly, but it's worth about $13,000.
I'm like, I'll never go in my house.
And so I wonder, we live in a day and age where a lot of our
friends don't really appreciate the church, and we get nervous
about that. We feel anxious about that.
And Paul is riding exactly into that situation.
And he's riding in such a way that he's wanting them to
appreciate now what they have, that they're actually part of a
bigger story. They're part of a story that's
intensely personal. And they're part of the story
that's going on and on and on. It's an ongoing story.
So I hope this adds a little bit of life to a text that you might
feel like this seems a little drunk, but here we go.
OK, here's the text from Galatians Chapter 3.
He says this. Listen, brothers and sisters,
let me take an example from everyday life.
Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant, we
might call it a will. You know, people who are getting
ready to die should have a will, and those who are not should
also have a will. But this is what he's describing
here. Just as no one can set aside or
add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is
in this case. The promises were spoken to
Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say unto
seeds, meaning many people, but to your seed, meaning one person
who is Christ will come back to that central oral confusion.
What I mean is this. The law introduced 430 years
later does not set aside the covenant previously established
by God and thus do away with the promise.
Now wait a minute. The law.
We probably ought to personalize this a little bit and give it a
capital L Is that the right word?
L? There it is an L, the capital L
of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which are
big numbers in your army called the Torah.
And he's saying, look, when the Torah was given, the law was
given. It came 430 years after God had
made a promise to Abraham. Now, the if you were to ask
people who was more important, Abraham or Moses, to whom the
law was given in their daily life, they were probably more
keyed up about Moses. And so Paul's reminding them
there's actually another promise given.
We talked at length about it last week, the promise to
Abraham to create a family and through him to bless all the
nations of the world with a special blessing and
inheritance. And so he says, look, when the
law came, when the Torah came, even though it was 430 years
later, it didn't do away with what God promised to Abraham.
Here's why verse 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law,
then it no longer depends on the promise.
So he's saying God's covenant is like a will.
It's a promise that's been activated.
Appreciate it. Appreciate the will more than
you appreciate the law. For if the inheritance depends
on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, But God
in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
Why then was the law given at all?
It was added because of transgressions until the seed to
whom the promise referred had come.
The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.
A mediator, however, implies more than one party, but God is
1. Is the law therefore opposed to
the promises of God, particularly the promise given
to Abraham? Absolutely not, for if a law had
been given that could impart life, then righteousness would
certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up
everything under the control of sin so that what was promised
being given through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to
those who believe. We're going to come back to
that. It's like, wow, look at Paul's
dense argument. He's like a lawyer who just has
constructed an argument where every sentence takes you one
more step to his grand conclusion.
So you got to follow along. You got to turn on your coffee
buzz, pay attention. Here we go.
Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under
the law. Custody.
Have any of you been in custody? You don't want to tell us.
Maybe, maybe you were, you know you, you got taken up.
But by custody, he doesn't mean you were literally arrested.
But he takes the language. He's Infirmary.
He means you're not of age yet. So you are under the custody of
a guardian. A parent is, is there anybody
here who's 17, 1819 You're adults.
You know, if if you're 17 and, and you sign up to go on a
retreat, some groups are supposed to ask their parents
for permission. And you're like, I'm in
university, I'm 17. Why are you making me go get a
permission slip from my parents? It's because you are in custody.
OK. Do you get it?
This is the use. This is the idea of the use of
the term. It's difficult.
I told you before the coming of the stage, we were held in
custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come
would be revealed. So the law was our guardian
until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.
Now he's talking to the Jewish believers.
The Jewish believers were under the law.
Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
How many of you when you came to university and you're 18, when
you're like, yes, I'm an adult, I'm free.
Not really true. Guess who's paying the bill?
But this is the idea. And so he goes on to say, Look,
so in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs
according to the promise. What I'm saying is this, that as
long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave.
Although he owns the whole state, the heir is subject to
guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.
So also when we were underage, we were in slavery under the
elemental spiritual forces of the world.
Mind blowing, Yeah, speaking to the Jewish believers in the
churches of Galatia. But when the time set had full
account, God sent his son, born of a woman born under the law,
to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption
to sunshine. This would have been mind
blowing to the Jewish believers. They're like, wait a minute, we
thought we were sons the whole time, he says.
You didn't fully have your inheritance yet.
You hadn't realized the full benefits of your sonship yet, so
you might as well have just been a slave in that state because it
wasn't yours yet. But now in Christ, you have been
adopted to a full sonship. You get your inheritance because
verse 6, you are his sons. God sent the Spirit of His Son
into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out the Spirit who calls
out haba ha. So you are no longer a slave,
but God's child. And since you are his child, God
has also made you an heir. Wow, I think Paul wanted them to
appreciate you're part of a bigger story.
You keep letting the story in with a with Moses, but you need
to go back a little bit further. Let's go back all the way to
Abraham because God made a promise to Abraham where the
righteous will live by faith. And he uses a metaphor here to
say that the the promise made to Abraham and his seed is now
fully fulfilled in the person of Christ, his seed.
So he's saying there's a long line.
And if you were to read the genealogy in Matthew, you would
see a long line going from father Abraham.
The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
This is a reference to who comes after him.
And he says it's not really just a plurality of children.
It's actually this main child Jesus who would be born.
And so Paul does some work here to connect the promise of
Abraham to the promise of Jesus and then to those who believe in
him. And if you are of Christ, he's
saying you're part of this. You're part of a bigger story.
You know, when you learn the story of your parents, sometimes
your appreciation for them goes up.
Maybe you learn the story of a grandparent and your
appreciation goes up because you're like, wow, they have a
struggle. Look who they became and maybe
you find some hope in it. Paul wants them to understand if
you're part of the church, you're part of a bigger story.
It's a story that goes back to the past.
It's a story that comes from arise in the present for you,
but also has a great future. It's a bigger story.
It behooves you become familiar with it.
And so in a sense, Paul is teaching them how to read what
we call the Old Testament. He's teaching them how to read
the Old Testament through the limbs of Christ and to go to
Abraham instead of getting just mired down and stuck in the law
that was given, he says, for a season.
And so the right reading of the law, the right application and
fulfilment of the law in our lives will be seen when we see
it through Christ. And we go back to Abraham.
What was God doing there? How was he showing how to live
in relationship to him? Of Abraham it said he became the
friend of God. Maybe in Christ Jesus now both
Jew and Gentile can be the friend of God.
We're part of a bigger story. If you're part of a bigger
story, the lessons are infinite. This is the great thing about
the story is that it's been given to Abraham, granted to him
by God's favour. It was a gift.
God picked up Abraham by grace. God gave a promise to Abraham,
and Abraham didn't earn it. He just believed it.
And so I'm part of a bigger story just by God's choosing and
grace is my Lord. Same thing.
Because it's mind blowing. It's really personal and and
Paul's trying to remind them just how personal this story is.
And there's a couple parts of it.
It's personal even for the Gentiles because their problem
was that they were locked up under the control of sin.
This was a common belief. Just ask the Jewish person
what's the the Gentile problem? They're sinners and we don't
like that. But, you know, if you had a
problem with your neighbor and you're like, look at their life
and how they live, and you were really, really frustrated, you'd
be like, wow, they're just sinners.
Maybe your neighbor just does something that they don't even
need to do. Like this week, I reflexively
landed on this. I'm walking across.
I've been trying to park in front of my house, and I
couldn't fit the van into that spot.
And Ellen says to me, oh, she'll move up.
But she was being a screenager. She was stuck in her phone and
she didn't move up even though she was parked in two spaces.
I was so frustrated. And so I just said to Alan, I
hate when people do that. Actually, I think I said I hate
people who do that. I was so frustrated and the
Jewish problem with the Gentiles was that their problem to them
was they're just under sin. But Paul here calls it out and
says, yes, we were all locked up under the control of sin, for
this is what Scripture does. Scripture gives us sort of God's
parameters that says here is the worldwide global problem,
www.lockedupunderstand. This is our problem, our common
problem, our common address. But the Jewish problem wasn't
just that they were under sin. They were also under the law,
for they had committed themselves to this set of
covenant issues of either blessings or curses.
You can go back to last week's message and review it.
So they needed to appreciate that they were under the custody
of the law and locked up, almost as if they were immature, not
yet fully realizing their inheritance.
For their inheritance was contained in one person.
It was contained in Christ Jesus who was coming, who would live,
who would die on a cross, be buried, defeat the powers of sin
and death and be raised from the dead as evidence of it, ascend
into heaven and then give an incredible blessing.
The Jewish problem of being under the law and being under
sin, they understood in the matter of slavery to say we are
actually enslaved to this. So if you sort of study the
psychology of sin, instead we become enslaved to things.
Something that was good started out in our life and became an
addiction to which we couldn't shake free.
Something that was good in our life became something we relied
on our life and they controlled us.
We are enslaved by it. Russell Moore recently wrote how
AI is sort of like the idols described in the Old Testament,
and he says we must be careful that we are not enslaved by it.
And this is what idolatry does. It takes something that's good,
then we give ourselves to it, and it has powers over us.
Enslaved. So both Jew and Gentile then
have a common testimony. So in Christ Jesus you are
children of God through faith. For you all were baptized into
Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ.
There's neither Jew nor Gentile, nor slave or free, nor is there
male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham, see.
And heirs according to the promise.
So I'm part of the bigger story, and it's really personal.
I mean, no one got baptized for Diego.
He was baptized. It was intensely personal.
He got in the water, he was put under the water.
He came up above the water. It's just descriptive of his
intense personal experience with God, that now he is with Christ,
who died his death in sin, was buried in death, common death
with us, but raised to life. I'm now denied with Christ.
That same power is at work in US.
The power of the Holy Spirit is at work in us.
So we're going to have a personal story.
All of you, I hope, have a personal story of your encounter
with God and how He is freeing you, empowered sin and death,
and freeing you to live into the power of His life in Christians
so that you know He loves you. It's personal.
And when you appreciate the personal stories of people in
the church, you'll appreciate the church a little more.
The danger of coming to church for the first time when your own
life is a wreck is that you look around and you're like, the only
thing I see that's problematic here is that everyone is
sleeping. But they all seem to have their
life going pretty well. They clean up good.
They don't smell hungover, and they seem OK.
And so the, the misconception is that our lives are all OK, that
we have no struggles, that we never had a struggle, and that's
why we came to church. But that's not the truth.
The truth is we have a very personal story of God freeing us
from condemnation under the law, that we have a personal story of
God freeing us from the shame of our slavery and sin.
And we have a personal story of God continuing to help us grow.
Right. Do you?
Yes. Yes, I heard you all say I do,
right? Yeah, I do.
So then we have our common testimony.
And if you learn the common testimonies of people in small
group life and time over coffee, if you say, hey, I'd like to
meet up with you and hear your story, you'll love your church
even more. You'll love the church even more
when you know the story. And then the third thing, it's
an ongoing story and you're part of it.
And Paul wanted them to know you're part of an ongoing story.
So then I think This is why he emphasized the metaphor of the
child. When you look at a child, do you
think, oh, their story's done? No.
When you hold a baby, you think, my goodness, who will they
become? I mean, I watched one of my
children run around the living room and come through that
circle in the kitchen and surprised me.
And I looked at them and I thought, where did you come
from? You're amazing.
But I always wonder, what will they look?
And so whenever we use and accept the moniker of I'm a
Child of God, it immediately says, hey, my story is not done.
I'm a child of God. My story's not done.
There's still a story to be written, and I'm going to get to
be a part of it. And indeed, we are in
relationship with the God who rejoices to call us children and
not robots, children and not Ottomans.
We're children because now we're participating in writing the
story of the Kingdom of God. Look how Paul says it.
Look, he says, when the time set had fully come, God sent his
son. A son means there's some kind of
story coming, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem
those under the law, that we might receive adoption to the
sonship. There's a story coming.
Your story's not finished even if you fail an exam.
Your son's not finished even if you really mess up in a
relationship. Your story is not finished even
if you lose a game. Your story is not finished as
your son and daughter now of God because you are his sons and
daughters. God sent the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts that the Spirit who calls out ABBA father so
that you're no longer a slave, but God's child.
And since you are his child, God has made you and care.
And what are you an heir of? What is your inheritance?
Paul had already said your inheritance is the Holy Spirit.
Your inheritance is the Holy Spirit.
He now has you calling out in prayer, ABBA Father, say
anything ABBA Father. And if you call out ABBA Father,
it means the story is not finished.
There's still a story to be written.
There's still something coming. And when you see a church that
calls out, ah, the Father, you know the story's not over for
that church. They are still praying.
They are still calling on God. If you find a church that's
committed to the life of prayer for a people, you know that
story's not finished because they're still calling out to the
God and raises the dead. They're still calling out to the
God who changes things. They're still calling out to the
God who draws people to himself. They're still calling out to the
God who sets people free. Their story's not done.
It started with the Malik. I wish I could tell you the full
story of the Moravians and Count Zeisendorf.
It looks like a very pleasant guy, doesn't he?
Count Zeisendorf, Ludwig Zizendorf.
He grew up in a in a home that was committed to Jesus, but a
home that had power, had position, and had land.
But after youth, Zizendorf believed that his vocation in
life was to win souls for the Lamb, the Lamb of God.
And one day there was a knock at the door, and a man named
Christian David showed up and said, hey, we need help.
We're running for our life and we need a place to live.
We've become refugees in our own land.
That's actually Germany. I don't know if any of you
recognize anybody know that was Germany.
Yeah. There we go.
And he was, that's modern day Germany, but he grew up in an
area called Saxony. And that area had now
experienced over 200 years of oppression of people who are not
a part of the official state church.
They were followers of Jesus and there were lots of different
groups, but over 200 years of persecution and they were almost
wiped out. And so they came, right?
Christian David said, Would you give us a place to live?
And the count says the north, moved by the story, offered land
on the estate's hilltop. And there they established a
place called Hermit, the Lord's watch.
The Lord's watch, like guardians on a wall.
And before you knew it, multiple families came, and these
families came from all types of different groups.
It's not going to mean anything to you, but I'm going to read it
to you. Pietists, Lutherans,
Separatists, Schwinn King Felders, spiritual refugees of
every kind, they all came. And before you know it, this
group of people who came from all kinds of different
backgrounds, trying to live together in the same place.
Do you know what they started doing?
Fussing. They started fussing.
There was a crisis in the church.
They started fussing together about who was doing it right,
who had the right way. Sounds familiar.
Sounds like Antioch. Sounds like Galatian.
Sounds like made in the place they started fussing.
Ziesendorf really showed himself as a leader.
He moved out of his estate and had a small Hut built in the
village of Hernhut, and there he began to visit people daily.
He began to pray with people daily.
He began to teach the word of God daily.
He called them into a covenant of how to live together.
It was called the Brotherly agreement.
Nothing seemed to really be changing though until August
13th, 1727 and they were in a worship night together.
And they were. They liked worship nights too.
They were in a worship night together and the Spirit of God
moved among them and they began to weep and repent of their
heart heartedness and there was a fresh move of the Spirit of
God among them. They got so excited about it
that they began to organize themselves differently as a
community. There's lots to tell you about
it, but not for today. Here's the main thing I want you
to know is that they knew they were part of an ongoing story,
and so they organized themselves into prayer 24 hours of the day.
They organize themselves into 24 groups of prayer for every day
for 100 years. And out of that was born the
modern missionary movement among Protestant churches.
We're part of an ongoing story. Appreciate your church,
appreciate the churches. Beware the move to just
criticize, to disassociate, to feel embarrassed, to feel like
you always have to defend. Just admit the truth and then
say, our Father, there's an ongoing story.
That's great. Heavenly Father, I really thank
you. For the patience of my brothers
and sisters here today as we made our way through what feels
like a really difficult text, but it gives us glimmers into
how Paul wanted them to appreciate the church again.
And maybe we need a fresh touch. We need a fresh move of your
spirit to really appreciate each other and the church and what
you're doing that together we're part of an ongoing story.
So Lord, even now, we, we thank you for Jesus and we're we've
been baptized into Jesus and we're now clothed with Jesus.
We're clothed with the righteousness that Jesus
delivers to all. And we thank you as we come to
this table as a church where status doesn't play, where
degrees and pedigrees don't play, where being male or female
doesn't really play out in the standing before Jesus in the
cross, whether we were slave or free, where we're an
entrepreneur, we an employee, we know we stand a level ground of
the cross. And we say thank you for this
grace. Let's stand here.