Immanuel Sermon Audio
Galatians (48:66)
All right, grab your Bible if you don't have one, grab one in front of you, and find Galatians. If you have trouble remembering the order of some of these books that all sound the same, all you have to remember is go eat popcorn, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, G-E-P-C, go eat popcorn. So you can remember those. You'll never forget them. And we're going to be in Galatians, number 48 of 66. And maybe of all the letters that Paul wrote, I told you last week when we looked at 2 Corinthians that 2 Corinthians was the most personal just because of how much history he had with the church in Corinth and the highs and the lows and the ups and the downs in that relationship. So it's a very, very personal letter. Galatians is probably the most serious of Paul's letters. And I don't mean that to say that his other letters are silly or flippant or trite. But when you read Galatians, there's just not a lot of uplifting things that Paul is saying to these guys. When you read Galatians, he doesn't jump in and commend them for anything, which is kind of remarkable when you think about just where we were a few weeks ago with the church in Corinth. He was a crazy church and they were getting drunk at the Lord's Supper and they were fighting about preachers and they were suing each other and there was open sexual immorality and on and on and on and on and on. And in the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to him and he calls them saints. Holy ones, ones who have been set apart to God and he has some nice things to say about them. You're very gifted in spiritual gifts and he commends them about different things. And then you read Galatians and Paul just doesn't really have a whole lot to say that's nice to these guys. And when we talk about the reason he wrote the letter, that makes a little bit more sense. So here's a map of Roman Empire sort of territory they controlled. These are official Roman provinces. And so you can see Italy in the middle there and you know the layout of Europe and North Africa. And the right right in the middle of what we call Turkey is the province of Galatia. And when Paul writes the book of Galatians, one thing that's a little bit different about it is that it's not to one church individually. Like when he wrote to the Corinthians, he was writing to the church in the city of Corinth. When he wrote Galatians, he's writing to the churches in that red area. All the churches sort of in this province had the same sort of issue going on. So he's writing to this group of churches. Just so you know the occasion, these are churches that Paul started, okay? So he's on a missionary journey. He goes in. He preaches the gospel, he gets a group of believers together. They form a church. He installs elders, pastors, leaders in the church and then he moves on somewhere else. And as Paul moves on through this area, a group of Jewish guys called Judaizers are coming right behind him, almost just trailing him everywhere he goes, it sounds like. And Paul leaves town and these guys come in right behind him and they sort of approach things like this. Hey, was Paul just here? Yeah. Hey, are you guys believers in Jesus? Yes. Hey, did Paul talk to you about how you need to keep all the Old Testament laws to be a follower of Jesus? Well, no. He talked about faith and he talked about grace and he talked about Christ fulfilling the law and he talked about these things and they say, "Well, you know, I know he had to rush off, I know he had to hurry, let us just fill you in on some things that maybe Paul didn't tell you, right? Paul didn't give you the whole message." And they opened their Bible, their Old Testament, and they start quoting Bible verses to these new believers and these brand new believers who heard the gospel from Paul by God's grace through faith in Jesus, you can be forgiven of your sins and brought into God's family and have eternal life. They've heard that message and now these Judaizers are coming behind and they're saying, "You know, that stuff about Jesus is great. We really, really like Jesus and we want you to have faith in Jesus. But you also know that you do have to be circumcised, right? Paul mentioned that. You have to be circumcised. Look, I can show you the verse, there's a Bible verse about that. And you've got to eat certain things and not eat certain things. Did Paul talk to you about that? Because I can show you a verse right here in the Bible that says that. And there's certain rules about the Sabbath and celebrations and holy days that you need to observe. Did Paul talk to you about that? And all this stuff is sort of new to these Gentile believers who don't understand the intricacies of the Old Testament and what the law is supposed to do. And they just sort of fall into this trap of believing, "Well, Jesus is good, but there's also some stuff that we need to do, some things we need to obey, and we need to eat these foods and not these foods, and we need to recognize these days as special and do certain things and not do certain things on those days. We need to make sure circumcision is practiced among us because apparently you have to do that if you want to be in God's good graces and the list goes on and on and on and on." And then Paul catches wind of it and he's writing back to these churches basically saying, "You've totally gone off track. You've missed it. God, I shared with you, and these guys coming behind are not teaching you the truth." That may seem like an old, ancient, antiquated situation, okay? But let me just tell you this. We have Judaizers, maybe they're not biologically Jewish, but we have Judaizers in Odessa, Texas. I've met them and had lunch with them and talked to them, and they look at me and they say, "Hey, I love Jesus as much as the next guy, but you know that you're supposed to worship on Saturday, not Sunday, and if you do that, you've got to do it the right way." And you understand that circumcision is mandatory, and you understand that you have to keep these festivals in these feasts, and you understand that you have to eat these things and not these things, and they just tick off all these things that Judaizers were talking about. And here's the dangerous part. The people who are in this camp can show you Bible verses, and if you don't know what's going on, you just sort of say, "Well, you know, it's in the Bible." I guess that sounds good. In Galatians is a very, very helpful book for people who are talking about these sort of things. One thing we don't know about the book is exactly where Paul was when he wrote it, and in the date that he wrote it for, wrote it from, or wrote it in. There's a lot of argument, and the argument really centers on Acts chapter 15. You remember what happened in Acts chapter 15? Acts chapter 15 is the Jerusalem Conference. And in Acts 15, you had a guy named Peter, one of the apostles, who had a vision earlier in Acts, and he was sent to the house of a Gentile named Cornelius, and he preached the gospel to Cornelius, this Gentile. And the Bible says, "When Peter's there, the Holy Spirit falls on Cornelius in his family when they believe in Jesus, and they speak in tongues exactly like the Jews did on the day of Pentecost." And Peter walks away from that saying, "Wow, that's amazing. These guys didn't keep any of the Old Testament laws, but God saved them just like He saved us." And how did Peter know that that happened? He knew it, because in a unique, special, particular circumstance, this group of Gentiles received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues just like the Jews did on the day of Pentecost. So when you fast forward a little bit, and you get to Acts 15, you have this same argument. Do you have to obey all the Old Testament laws to be a Christian, yes or no? And Peter's there at the meeting, and Peter pipes up and says, "Well, here's my take on it. No, you don't have to." And here's why. I went to Cornelius' house, and I shared the gospel with him, and the Holy Spirit fell on them, and they spoke in tongues. They were saved exactly like I was saved. There was no difference, but they didn't keep any of those laws. And Peter says, "God's not showing favoritism at this point." And this is something of the past, and Paul stands up, and Paul talks a little bit, and the argument is basically, did Paul write Galatians before or after Acts 15? And we're not going to get into all the questions about that. Here's the really important part, the things that Paul says in Galatians fit perfectly with the decision that was reached by the Church Council on Acts 15. Peter and Paul were on the exact same page, on what the gospel was, on who could be saved, on how salvation was to be received, and all of these issues. So we're going to see in Galatians the same things they talked about in Acts 15. Here's the outline of the book, and I didn't put this on your notes for the sake of space, but these are the headings all the way through the book of Galatians. And so they're on there, they're just not all there together. There's a short introduction, and then for a little while Paul's going to argue that, yes, I am a true apostle. And then after that, he's going to say, "This is what the true gospel is," to clear that up, and then he's going to say, "This is what the Christian life ought to be like," and then he's going to wrap it up with a conclusion. So we have time tonight, because this is a shorter book, we're just going to sort of walk through this section by section. We're going to read not all of Galatians, but some pretty good chunks of it, and talk about it as we go. So let's look at the introduction first. When you look at the introduction, you see that the whole message of Galatians is summed up in the introduction, in these first 10 verses. The whole message of Galatians is summed up or summarized in the introduction. And just look at the first couple of verses here. He says, "Paul, an apostle," that's the thing he's going to argue in the first section of the book. "I really am an apostle," so he says that right out of the gate, "I'm an apostle, not from men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me." Two, the church is, see it's church is plural, not just one, the church is in Galatia, "Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age." Right there, you have the rest of the book summarized, right? The true gospel is a message that Jesus gave himself for our sins. The true gospel is not a message that you need to obey all these Old Testament laws if you want to go to heaven someday. That's not the gospel. Because this is what it is, Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins. Why? To deliver us from this present evil age, meaning that's the Christian life. That's that third section of the book. He didn't give himself for our sins just so that you could go to heaven someday. He gave himself for our sins so that you could be delivered from the evil that you know and you've experienced in the present age. So he says, "Grace to you in peace from God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever, amen." So that's the introduction, pretty simple. He basically sums up the entire book. And I mentioned this earlier, it's just worth saying one more time. From that introduction, verse 6, he jumps in and says, "I'm astonished." This is like a parent when the kid does something stupid. And it's one thing for the parent to say, "I'm really angry at you." And it's another thing when your mom looks at you and says, "I'm really disappointed. I cannot believe. I can't believe that you did that." And when you hear your mama say that, you know, "Oh, man, I have really fouled it up this time." Paul, the guy who started these churches right out of the gate, "Nothing nice to say. Not I miss you. Not I remember the good times we had together. Not I wish I could see you one of these days. Not I've heard great things about you." He just says, "I'm shocked. I'm shocked. I can't believe the things that I'm hearing. I'm astonished." So, in this first section, Paul talks about that he is an apostle, okay? As an apostle, the first thing Paul says here is that he preached the one true gospel. There is only one true gospel. And so, look what he says, starting in verse 6, Galatians 1, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." Now, you hit time out on that and think about how that sounded to the Galatians. These guys weren't getting rid of Jesus. They weren't worshiping Satan. They weren't converting to Buddhism. They just held on to Jesus and added some other stuff to it. We believe in Jesus, but we also believe we need to do this, this, this, and this to be saved. They still talked about Jesus in church. You understand that? Every Sunday in Galatia, when you went to church, you heard something about Jesus. But you also heard, "If God's going to love you and you're going to be saved, you need to," and Paul says, "No, no, no, no. If you're adding to Jesus, you are deserting the one who called you." It doesn't matter if you keep talking about him. You have deserted God who called you in his grace and you are turning to a different gospel. He says in verse 7, not that there is another one, right? I mean, let's be clear. The gospel you're now preaching, it is no good news. It's bad news. There is no other gospel, but he says, "There's some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we did preach to you, let him be accursed, right? Whatever would come to you, me, Paul, or an angel from heaven or anybody in between, that would come to you and say something that is different than the gospel, the one true gospel we preach to you, let that person be accursed. Literally, let that person be damned, eternally. We've said before, so now we say it again, "If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed." Paul says, "I am an apostle, and as an apostle, I have preached to you the one true gospel." There is only one, and we're going to come back to this idea of being accursed in just a minute. Here's the second thing Paul says. He was set apart to be an apostle before he was born. In other words, the fact that he's an apostle is not his idea, but it's God's idea. He says that in chapter 1, he's talking about all these great things he's doing as a Jew and as a Pharisee, and he says in verse 15, "When he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles," and then he talks about what he did after he met Jesus Christ. God set Paul apart before he was born, he called Paul by his grace, he revealed Jesus to him also that Paul might preach him among the Gentiles. So he talks about being set apart before he was born. Third thing he says as an apostle is that his ministry as an apostle was approved by the pillars, and by pillars he's talking about the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. And so basically he's saying, "Look, I realize that I'm not one of the original twelve." Remember Jesus called twelve men to be apostles, and they followed him around and they spent time with him, and then Jesus sent them out. That's an apostle, one who is sent out. And when they lost Judas, they replaced Judas and Acts, but do you remember the requirements? We've got to pick somebody who's been with us since the beginning. Somebody who has seen Jesus and heard Jesus, that was one of the qualifications. So they replaced Judas. And Paul realizes, "Look, I know that I wasn't around for all that, but I really am an apostle. I really did see Jesus on the Damascus road. I really did hear Jesus on the road to Damascus." And he says, "I went and got it approved by the pillars." And so you can read in the end of chapter one and chapter two, he talks about Cephas, who is Peter. He talks about James, the brother of Jesus, who was pastor of the church in Jerusalem. He talks about John, Jesus' best friend, John the apostle. And so he's talking about all these guys in chapter one and two, and he's saying, "Look, all these guys approved of me and my ministry is an apostle and the message that I was preaching." So he says he was in with the pillars. Number four, he says, "None of the apostles were infallible in all things. This is one thing that sets our faith as Protestants apart from, say, the Catholic church and even some Orthodox branches, is that we look back to these guys, these apostles, and we say, "They were great guys. They did some amazing stuff, but they were not infallible." They said things sometimes that weren't right, not in the Scriptures, because these things are inspired by God, but Paul made mistakes. Peter made mistakes. He describes one of those in chapter two, we'll just read it real quick. Chapter two, 11. Cephas came to Antioch, and Paul says, "I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned." Before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. Peter was sitting down and having dinner with Gentiles, like it was no big deal. But when these guys from James came, Peter drew back and he separated himself, fearing the circumcision party, fearing the Judaizers. Peter and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Paul says, "When I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before all of them, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?" Basically saying, "Look, if you're going to eat with Gentiles, you ought to do that regardless of who's here visiting. If James, or his guys, or the Judaizers, or any of these other people from Jerusalem show up, that shouldn't change the way you treat Gentiles." And so he calls Peter out on this. These guys are not infallible. One last thing about Paul and him being apostle, before he became an apostle, he became a Christian, and he talks about that in chapter 2, and he also talks about it in chapter 1. Before he went to preach and to teach, he spent time growing as a follower of Christ. And so that's Paul defending his apostleship. Here's the heart of the book, beginning in chapter 3, is when Paul starts to argue about what the gospel is, what is the good news. This is really important because I've shared this with you a couple of times in different contexts. In the United States, there's been some really solid sociological research done among people who identify as Christian. And the research has been done to say, "What do you really believe? You self-identify as a Christian, but what is it that you believe?" And a guy, a famous sociologist, has done this study, and he says, "Basically, people in the United States are moral therapeutic deists. They believe that there is a God. He's up there somewhere, but he's really not involved with us so much. That's the God of deism. He's up there. We believe he's up there. Most Americans believe that. But day-to-day stuff, he's not so concerned with that. He's up there. He's letting us do our thing down here." So deism, moral in the sense that God basically wants you to be a nice person and you'll go to heaven someday. That's not just American. Our mission teams see that exact same thing in Kenya, but it's all over the United States. And you know how I know it's all over the United States? It's because I've been to a lot of funerals in the United States. And you know what gets said at most funerals? He, she was a great guy and they are with Jesus today. And pastors are careless with their words and they may not believe that that person worked their way into heaven, but when you say it that way, "Oh, he's a great guy. Now he's with Jesus." Everybody sitting out in that room thinks, "Well, that's how you get to be with Jesus. You'll be a great guy. Be a nice person and you get to go someday." And so we have this idea. We just be a pretty good person. Like moral therapeutic deists, because what we really believe as Americans is that God exists to keep us comfortable. He's like our therapist. He's like our therapy doll. You go to him when you're frustrated and you can vent and he's supposed to keep you warm and healthy and happy and safe and secure and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so in our country, we really need clarity about what the gospel is. And we're going to talk about a few things here and I'm going to show you some video clips in a minute that I think help explain some of the stuff that Paul's talking about. So here's the first thing Paul says about the gospel. If you begin by faith, you finish by faith. Meaning the Galatians hear Paul, the believers in Galatia, they hear Paul preach and they say, "Yes, we will put our faith in Jesus." Great. Here come the Judaizers. Remember, they don't say get rid of Jesus. They just say, "Okay, the faith stuff is good. The Jesus stuff is good, but now you need to do works in order to really be in." In our day and age, we sometimes as Christians, as church-going people, we think about this as, "Look, I'm saved by faith, but I'm sanctified by works. I'm going to become more holy and more sanctified by doing more things." And Paul says, "That's really not how it works at all." In your relationship with Christ, if you start by faith, you finish by faith. So look at chapter three, verse one, "Foolish Galatians," remember he called the Corinthian saints. He says to the Galatians, "You're a bunch of fools. You're a bunch of idiots. Who has bewitched you?" It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Meaning, I preached to you in such a way that I explained to you Jesus crucified and all of that. I mean, it was right there, public and open. Let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? And the answer was by faith. We heard by faith and we received the Spirit of God. We were saved. Are you so foolish? Are you so dumb? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? That's a foolish thing, Paul says. So if you start by faith, you finish by faith. Here's the second thing he says about the gospel, just to really make this point about how important faith is. He says Abraham was saved by faith. All these Judaizers coming around want to talk about the Old Testament, Paul says, "Let's talk about the Old Testament." It all starts with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, the first Jew, the first Hebrew, and he says, "He was saved by faith." And so look what he says here, chapter 3, verse 6, "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness." That's a quote straight out of the Old Testament, Genesis 15, 6. So Paul says, "Look, I can quote the Old Testament too." You want to quote all these laws? I'll go back all the way to Genesis 15. Abraham, he was saved by faith. He believed God. Verse 7, "Know, then, that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham." You remember at VBS singing the song, "Father Abraham," had many sons, many sons had fathers. Do you ever feel weird singing that as a white person or as a Hispanic person or as a non-Jewish person? Because the reality is your DNA says you are not a son of Abraham. You are a son of some Hispanic guy or some white guy or whatever. But Paul says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not talking DNA here. If you have faith, you are a son of Abraham." It's those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the Scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, "And you shall all the nations be blessed." So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Okay, you start by faith, you finish by faith. You want to quote Old Testament? We go all the way back to Abraham and we talk about the importance of faith. It's always been by faith. There has never been two different ways to be saved, one in the Old Testament or one in the new. Abraham was saved by faith. Jews today are saved by faith. Gentiles today are saved by faith. Paul's saying that's the way that it's always been. Here's where I think Americans sometimes go off track. We start to think that the power of salvation rests in our faith. We have to believe enough. We have to believe strongly. We have to believe firmly. And then when we sort of stumble in our faith, or we have doubts or questions, we say, "Man, are you a believer?" Well, I don't know if I have faith. I think I have faith. I'm not sure that I have enough faith. I know I have some faith. How much faith do you have to have? And we turn this into a faith game when what's really not so important is the amount of our faith but in who our faith is in. And so here's a really short clip. It's from a Canadian guy named D.A. Carson, and this is one of the smartest guys on the planet Earth, and he's just talking about faith and what it is and what it's not and how a person is saved. So little clip from D.A. Carson, picture two Jews by the name of Smith and Brown, remarkably Jewish names. The day before the first Passover, having a little discussion in the land of Goshen, Smith says to Brown, "Boy, are you a little nervous about what's going to happen tonight?" Brown says, "Well, God told us what to do through His servant Moses. You don't have to be nervous. Haven't you slaughtered the lamb and dobed the two door posts with blood, put blood on the lintel? Haven't you done that? You're all ready and packed to go? You're going to eat the whole Passover meal with your family? Of course I've done that if I'm not stupid, but it's still pretty scary when you think of all the things that have happened around here recently, you know, flies and river turning to blood, and it's pretty awful. And now there's a threat of the firstborn being killed, you know? It's all right for you. You've got three sons. I've only got one. I love my Charlie, and the angel of death is passing through tonight. You know, I know what God says and I've put the blood there, but it's pretty scary. I'll be glad when this night is over, and the other one responds, "Bring it on. I trust the promises of God." That night, the angel of death swept through the land. Which one lost his son? And the answer, of course, is neither. Because death doesn't pass over them on the ground of the intensity or the clarity of the faith exercised. But on the ground of the blood of the Lamb, that's what silence is the accuser. The blood silences the accuser of the brothers as he accuses us before God. He silences our consciences when he accuses us directly. How many times do we writhe in agony, asking if God can ever love us enough, if God can ever care for us enough after we've done such stupid, sinful, rebellious things, after being Christians for 40 years? Where do you want to say, "Well, you know what God, I tried hard, you know? I did my best. It was a bad moment." No, no, no, no. I have no other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. We overcome him by the blood of the Lamb. There is the ground of all human assurance before God. There is the ground of our faith, not guaranteeing intensity of faith so fickle are we. It's not the intensity of our faith, but the object of our faith that saves. They overcome him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. You're not saved by the intensity of your faith, but by the object of your faith. And that's true because of Galatians 1, 4. Jesus Christ gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God our Father. So that's what Paul's talking about when he says, "It's faith. You began by faith. You finished by faith. Abraham was saved by faith. If you want to be saved today, it's by faith." Okay? Here's the next two things Paul says about the gospel. If you trust in good works, you will be cursed. You will be cursed. He says it pretty plainly in Galatians 3, 10. All who rely on works of the law are under a curse. And he talks about it again below in about verse 19, this idea of being cursed. And right along with that, the next idea in Paul's gospel is this, Jesus Christ became a curse so that sinners could be saved. Galatians 3, 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. I don't know what you think of when you read that word cursed, but I think most of us, if you're at all like me, it's sort of like almost a silly thing, almost like I'm jinxed. I'm cursed. It's just sort of like, ah, it's a bad thing, but I don't think we feel the weight of what Paul is talking about when he says that Christ became a curse for us so that we who have broken the law of God are not under God's curse. And so I'm going to show you one more video clip. This is a preacher, an author named RC Sprawl, also a really smart guy. The video I'm going to show you is excerpts of a sermon he preached and it's one of the two or three best sermons I've ever heard in person. I was there when he preached it and you can find it online. RC Sprawl is talking about the curse motif of the scriptures and there's just some excerpts from that message and some pictures in the background. They didn't have, whoever did this recording didn't have video. So there's some excerpts and the reason I show you this is so you feel the weight of what Paul's talking about when he says, if you rely on works of the law, you're cursed. But there's hope because Jesus Christ became a curse for you so that you could be saved. So this is about a six, seven minute video. We'll watch this and then we'll wrap up. Where in this country you see automobiles with bumper stickers that read, "God bless America." After 9/11, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell suggested that perhaps the events of 9/11 were God's judgments upon America and the outcry and outrage of the press was so severe they had to recant their musings on that point because we believe in a God who is infinitely capable of blessing people but is utterly incapable of cursing them. May the Lord curse you and abandon you, may the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace, may the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever. The apostle Paul says that the whole creation groans together in travail waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. We live in a planet, dear friends, that is under the curse of God. If there ever was an obscenity that violates contemporary community standards, it was Jesus on the cross. When in the cross, not only is the Father just as satisfied by the toning work of his son but in bearing our sins, the Lamb of God removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. How does he do it? By being cursed, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Listen to this, not simply by being cursed for us, but becoming a curse for us. When you take that in, he who is the incarnation of the glory of God now becomes the very incarnation of the divine curse. As it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree. As after he became the scapegoat, and the Father imputes to him every sin of everyone of his people. We see the most intense, dense concentration of evil ever experienced on this planet. Jesus was the ultimate obscenity. Bearing the full measure of the curse, Christ screams, "Aly, ama subakana, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He didn't just feel forsaken, he was forsaken. For Jesus to become the curse, he has to be utterly, totally, and completely forsaken. And here's the reality that we must make clear to our people that they will either bear the curse of God themselves, or they will flee to the one who took it for them. Instead of God, the Father turns his back, and tells that moment that my sin was placed upon him, and the one who was pure was pure no more, than God cursed him. It was if there was a cry from heaven, "Excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say, 'God, damn you,' because that's what it meant to be cursed, to be damned, to be under the anathema of the Father." As I said, I don't understand that, but I know that it's true, and I know that every person in this room and every person outside in this hotel and on the street and across the world who has not been covered by the righteousness of Christ right this minute draws every breath under the curse of God. If you believe that, you will stop adding to the gospel and start preaching it with clarity and with boldness, because, dear friends, it is the only hope we have, and it is hope enough. Galatians 3, 10, "All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written curse be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. It is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not a faith, rather the one who does them shall 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 hanged in a tree," so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. If you trust in good works, you're cursed, and Christ became a curse so that we could be saved. One less truth on the gospel. When you believe in Jesus, you are united to the Son of God. You are joined to Him. This is the doctrine of union with Christ, and you see it really clearly, beginning in Galatians 3, 23. Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. I know you don't read some of the books that I read, but there's a lot of liberal theologians, feminist theologians who hate this translation of Galatians 3, 26. You're all sons of God through faith. So that is so male chauvinistic. Why would you not translate that as you are all sons and daughters? Why would you not translate that as you are all children? Be more inclusive, and they go on and they say, "Keep reading." Many of you were baptized into Christ to put on Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. There's no male and female. You're all one in Christ Jesus. And if you're Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise, and they say you should not say sons of God, you should say children of God. If you change that translation, you miss the whole point of the idea of being united to Christ. When you have faith in Jesus, you are united to the son of God. And when he looks at you, he doesn't see Gentile sinner. He sees his son perfectly righteous. That's the point of the verse. It's not that you're just so lovable, he brings you in as a son or a daughter. That's not it at all. So when you put your faith in Jesus who was given up so that you could be delivered from this present evil age, you're united to him by faith. And when God looks at you, he sees you as his son, as the son. You are all sons of God through faith. Why are you all sons? Because through faith, you're united to the son of God. That's Paul's point. When he talks about it, it doesn't matter if you're slave or free or Jew or Greek or male or female, there's no distinction. You're united to him by faith. And that means that you're your God's son. He talks about this in chapter four as well. Real quick, the Christian life, this is pretty simple. The Christian life should be marked by freedom from sin. So in Galatians 5-1, he says, "For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore, do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." And then look what he says over in chapter 5 verse 13, "You are called to freedom, brothers. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." In verse 1, he's saying to them, "Don't go back to those laws, to that bondage, to this old covenant. Don't go back to that." But he knows that some people are going to hear what he's saying and saying, and they're going to turn around and go, "Well, it sounds like if we have faith in Jesus, we can do whatever we want to do. God sees me as his son. I've been delivered from this present evil age. I have faith in Jesus. I believe that he did these things. Now I'm going to do whatever I want." And he says, "No, no, no. You're not going to use your freedom as a license for evil. You are free from sin." Second thing he says about the Christian life is those who walk by the Spirit will not display the works of the flesh. If you are a believer, you will not walk in these works of the flesh and we're going to read them in just a minute. And then he follows that up on the flip side and he talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Believers will display the fruit of the Spirit in their life. So look quickly at Galatians 5, verse 16. He says, "Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. The works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." That's a verse that's missing from American Christianity. American Christianity says, "Well, if you prayed the prayer to invite Jesus into your life, you're going to inherit the kingdom of God." And Paul says, "No, if your life is marked by this, you're not going to inherit the kingdom of God." It's pretty black and white as Paul spells it out. Verse 22, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires." So if you're walking with the Spirit, if you're a believer, you're not going to display works of the flesh, you will display fruit of the Spirit. Last idea about the Christian life is this. Believers need the community found in a local church. You can read this last chapter, chapter 6, especially verse 1 to 10. He talks about church discipline. If somebody falls away, someone's caught in a transgression, somebody from church should go and bring that person back. Again, we don't get that in our culture. We say, "Well, you're meddling. You're sticking your nose in somebody's business. You're being judgmental. You're being hateful." Paul says, "Well, that's what we need. We need somebody to do that." He talks about bearing one another's burden. He talks about sharing in the body of Christ, material things. He talks about not growing weary of doing good, especially doing good to everyone, especially verse 10 to those who are of the household of faith. So his point here at the end is if you're going to walk with Christ, you must do that in the context of a local church. Here's his conclusion. It's really simple. He ends by exposing the motives of his opponents and his opponents or the Judaizers. And he explains in verse 13, "They just want to boast in how many people they can convince, how many arguments they can win. They want to be right. That's what they really care about." And Paul talks about in verse 14 and 15, what he really cares about is boasting in the cross, boasting not in things that we do, but boasting in a new creation, what God has done in us. So to me, here's the takeaway when I read Galatians. It's helpful in the order that we've studied this to look at Corinthians and then to look at Galatians. You look at these two churches. In Corinth, everything looked terrible. It was a mess. There were fights and all sorts of crazy things that you would be shocked. If it was going on at a manual, you would not come to church here. It was bad, bad, bad, bad, terrible things happening in Corinth. And Paul writes to them and he loves them and he calls them saints and he's encouraging them and he's patient with them on and on and on. We can work on this. We can fix this. Here's how you need to change. Here's how you need to repent. Then he writes to a church that looks very good from the outside. If you looked at the churches in Galatia, you would say, "Man, these guys have it all together." They're upright. They're moral. They're decent. They're following God's laws. It looks like they're on the right track. And Paul writes to these guys and says, "Your fools, you've missed it. You've totally missed the gospel. You received it with joy, it seemed like, but then you've turned to something else that's not going to save you and it's not good news." And so I look at this and I say, "It can be tempting to look at ourselves and to say, 'Well, we are so much better than the Corinthians. We don't have this going on. We don't have that going on. We don't put up with this. We are pretty darn good. But where we live in the United States and the Bible Belt, it's always a temptation to slide away from what Paul defines as the good news of Jesus Christ. Salvation by God's grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone that changes the entire orientation of your life, that you walk away from the works of the flesh and you begin to walk in the fruit of the Spirit. And there's a million ways that we can change that gospel message. And it's striking to me that with one of those situations, the Corinthians, Paul is patient and he's kind and he's like a parent trying to encourage them along. And with the Galatians, he has zero patience for that. You've totally missed it. You're all a bunch of fools, he says. And I think you walk away from Galatians and you say, "One of the things we've got to be rock solid on is what is the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is the good news that we're preaching to people? When people walk in this building each week and we tell them, 'We have good news for you, are we getting it right or are we getting it wrong?' So that's Galatians. And we'll end with prayer and pray that God would help us to learn these lessons and apply him here at our church. So let's pray. Father, we love you and we're grateful for your word and we want to be serious about the things that you're serious about. We want to care about the things that you care about. And Father, if there are parts of our church life where we have missed the gospel and what it is and what it's not, Father, we pray that you would expose those things. We pray that we would repent of those things. We pray that we would preach the good news of Jesus Christ to saint, to center, to believer, to lost person, to everyone who walks in these doors and to everyone we come in contact with when we leave this building, that we would take the true good news about Jesus Christ crucified for our sins. Jesus Christ becoming a curse so that we could become new and alive in him, that we could be called sons of God, despite our sin, despite our stubbornness and our rebellion, we could be called your sons. Father, what an amazing thing. Help us to never lose our wonder at what you have done for us through Jesus Christ. And we also pray that you would help us again to be faithful as we preach and teach and share this gospel with the folks that we come in contact with. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.