SPEAKER_00 0:06

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North. I want you to think back with me if you're of age to do so. Um that's a weird way to put it, but think about when you were learning how to drive. Uh has anybody been teaching your kids how to drive recently? It is a faith-building exercise. But I it was the same way for my parents. I remember when I started to drive in Memphis, Tennessee, age 15, you get your permit. Very intentional. 10 and 2, check all the mirrors, and your heart's just racing. You back up slowly, you take off, so it's just wow, this is intense. And there's danger to being a new driver, right? Because of an experience. And um, you may have experienced that as well, and that's why you wish they had brake uh pedal on the right side of the car as well. But you do the best you can. But after years go by, you gain more experience. I remember in Memphis when I was learning how to drive, and then I started driving on my own. I was going up a ramp to get on the interstate, and it was kind of confusing because a car was barreling down, going the wrong way right at me. And uh I scooted over to the side, they finished, and I just kept going. But you log it in, and it's like, okay, that's what you do in those situations. And praise be to God, they didn't ram into me. But as you get older, you start having danger in a different way because you have familiarity. And so you start driving, you don't have to do 10 and 2. I'm notoriously uh I don't do it anymore, but I used to drive with my knees. I'd not on turns, but just it's like I got people do that. Don't do it, it's not safe. Um, so that was my self-driving car before they existed with my knees. But you know, back before there were cell phones, I remember my thorn in the flesh for driving. I would want to get a new CD to put in the CD player. So I'd make sure there's no cars around and then I'd go digging. So you go on the floorboard, you're looking through, it's like, I don't want that one, I don't want that one. And you can look down for half a second, andor even shorter than that, and then you look up and you're like, whoa, I drifted, I drifted. So that's why we don't text and drive young people, right? Keep your eyes on the road. But it's the familiarity that can lead to danger. And so sometimes it's not until you're woken up by hitting those bumpy things on the side of the road or hitting the grass, and then you get scared back into like, oh my goodness, this is terrible. And that's what's happening in Galatians chapter 3. Paul is like those little side things on the road where you hit it and you start vibrating and you're like, oh man, we're off the road. We've drifted. And what Paul's doing is he's saying, you've drifted, not because you haven't learned anything new, but because you've forgotten what is. And he goes into this section today as we continue in our journey through Galatians, and he says, You have moved from the purity of the gospel. The very thing that brought you into faith is what carries you on, and you're trying to add to it, and you have drifted. And I love, I've just been so blessed by digging into Galatians each week. And it tells us again, like as you get older and you go through seasons of life, scripture, you'll never plumb the depths of it. There's newness in it all the time to apply to your life and new things to see. And uh it's beautiful. That's why we continue to return to it over and over again. But in today, today's passage, he takes them back to their story, then he takes them back to the bigger story, and then he looks at Jesus. And so, with that in mind, if you wish, you may stand for the reading of God's word. This is Galatians chapter 3, verses 1 through 14. Paul starts strong in this passage. He says, You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? I only want to learn this 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 the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing, if in fact it was for nothing? So then, does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law? Or is it by believing what you heard? Just like Abraham, who believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. You know then that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons. Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaim the gospel ahead of the time of Abraham, to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you. Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith. For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith, instead, the one who does these things will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith. This is the word of the Lord. May be seated. So this passage it starts with a strong word, and it's for a good reason, because it's a very severe situation. It's a severity of the drift that's going on. Last week we looked at Paul talking about him having to rebuke and confront Peter, and we talked about it, wasn't the young Peter he was confronting. It was Peter the pillar, the same Peter who had spoken at Pentecost, the same Peter who was just known throughout the whole Christian world as just the rock. And Peter drifted, and it was a reminder to each of us we will drift. You will drift. It just happens. But the desire is that as the drift takes place, that we can come back. So the drift doesn't lead us farther and farther away. And so he talks at the end of Galatians 2, Galatians 2.20, for I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. It's all rooted in the foundation of his love. And today he's talked about Peter, and now he's confronting directly the Galatians. And I even wonder about the grace of Paul's heart, the grace of God to say, hey guys, I'm hitting you hard, but I had to hit Peter hard. I have to be hit hard sometimes. And so he takes them back, the first point, to their story. He says, Remember how you began. In verse 2, he asks this rhetorical question: I only want to learn this from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? So he kind of has a two-point movement in this. The first thing he says, How did salvation come to you, my Galatian brothers and sisters? How did it come to you? Was it from doing stuff, or was it given to you by grace and you believed it? And the answer to it is like, of course it was by grace. It was by faith through grace. That's how you came to know Jesus. That's how salvation came to your life. And now he moves a second way. He says, Salvation came to you like that. Why would not the rest of your life be lived like that? Why would you go backwards and say, I have to work for God's approval when He has given it graciously to us? And so thinking about your story, thinking about my story, does that sound familiar to you? Can you think back to when you came to know Christ and you heard the gospel and it warmed your heart and you realized I cannot earn my way. I'm in need. And then you hear the message of Jesus Christ that He bore our sins so that we could be forgiven. And he washes us clean and we receive it. And in that moment we we say, I believe. But like all of us, there are come there come times, and especially if you grew up in a tradition that taught legalism and it was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it's natural for the human heart to become legalistic. It's natural. It's natural for us to want to put boundaries and rules on things so that we can control things. It's natural. But Paul's saying, remember how you were saved. We're not going to change that. Now it's time to live. We cannot change this gospel that came from God. And it's like Paul knows that we forget our own story, and so he's reminding them of their story, but he also knows we forget the bigger story that we're in. And that's point number two. And I love this because Paul says, This is how you came to be in relationship with God. Guess what? It's been the same all throughout history. It looked a little different in the old covenant because Jesus had not yet been crucified and raised again. But they were believing in God for the hope of what was to come. So Paul takes them back all the way to Abraham. And in these verses, I have a slide right here. This is, and don't have to copy this down, but if you have a cross-reference Bible, this is, these are the verses that Paul is relating to. And I love that God redeems Paul's story. Remember, he studied the Old Testament. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. They memorized the whole thing. They were experts in it. And now that he knows Jesus, God slowly reinterprets the Old Testament over these 14, 17 years before he starts this ministry approved by the Pillars. But he's going all the way back to Abraham in Genesis 15. And he's saying, this is how God has worked all along. He's referencing all of these things. And so I'll just leave those things behind. But if you want to dig into those things this week, it's beautiful because it goes way back. And do you remember the descendants of Abraham? Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob. He was the deceiver. God renames him Israel. He has his sons. And then Joseph gets sold into slavery by his brothers. And he gets sold into slavery, taken to Egypt, and because of him being there, God rescues the world from famine because of his faithfulness. Then there's 400 years of decreasing authority in Egypt to where there's a Pharaoh who doesn't remember Joseph, and then the Israelites are put into slavery, and then they're oppressed for generation after generation. And then there's Moses, and then there's the Exodus, and then there's the law. So he's saying, the law came and it's pointing to something, but what predates all that is trusting in God, believing in God. It was counted to Abraham as righteousness. And he says, the promise comes to Abraham through God. And I want to read it again, verse 8. Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. Let's slow down, okay? The Scripture saw in advance all of the Old Testament's pointing forward. All of the Old Testament's pointing forward. I believe it's apostle to the epistles that Peter wrote, where he's talking about the Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets about what is to come, and the angels long to look into these mysteries. And now we have those mysteries that were once concealed, now revealed in Jesus Christ. So the scripture saw in advance that the whole world, Gentiles, anybody who's not Jewish, the whole world would be blessed through the seed of Abraham. And that's the story. Genesis 15, 6, and then we'll leave the slide behind. Abram believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Alright. So as we move on, we think about this. God's saying, this is it. This is it. Trusting me, having faith in me and my plan. You don't belong because you performed your way into something. You belong because I chose you. I care for you. I love you. Paul says, is there a new way to do it? He's like, no, the same way you're accepted, the same way Abraham was. And now here's a beautiful thing. Abraham was called a friend of God. Jesus in the upper room, John 15, and I'm so excited about Holy Week. I want to talk about it in a little bit. But he calls the disciples his friends. Can you imagine that? The creator, the king of the universe, is like, you're my friend. Not in a disrespectful way of like, I can call Jesus my homeboy. It's like, nah, you don't have to do it like that. It's like Jesus is my friend. He knows me. He cares for me. He knows you. And there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Paul says, you belong the same way Abraham did by believing in the work of God, because it's him, not us. And that leads us to the final point. We're moving right along. Y'all are listening fast today. This is good. Remember what Jesus has done. And this is where I want to camp out and go slow just for a little bit. Because there's a saying we've been saying for years. It's it's preach the gospel to yourself every day. And this morning, as I was looking over my notes, I was thinking about Saturday Night Live back in the day in the 90s. There was a character named Stuart Smalley. And if you're young, you can look it up. I think it's age appropriate. And he would look in the mirror. He was like a self-help, it was mocking self-help, but he's he would look in the mirror and say, uh, I actually wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. Well, I did so I did somewhere. This way, I'm good enough. Well, we know it. This is like scripture, right? I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and people like me. And I thought about this. That's that's we we don't stand in the mirror and say that, you know, and it was mocking that, but we can stand in the mirror and say, I've been chosen by God. I'm redeemed by Him. Nothing can separate me from Him. I'm God's precious child. It reminds me when I was a traveling youth speaker, I'd have these t-shirts I've shared with you before, and they were black, and I had these iron-ons that said rejected, worthless. On the back, I turn around and say loser. And I had a couple of those that I had just with these negative statements that live within us that are external sometimes when people say, Hey, you're a loser. Sometimes the harshest critics are ourselves. And those voices live inside, and they can be so powerful. And what I'd do is I'd say, because I'd I'd be teaching on Paul saying, get dressed, like dress up in these things. So I take off the black shirt, and I'd always have shirts underneath. I wasn't exposing myself. I'd have a layer of shirts on, but I'd take that shirt off, and I had this white shirt that I'd put on that I had the decals, chosen, adopted, precious child. I had many things for identity all over this. And I said, This is what we get dressed in every day. This is what is your reality, no matter what you feel. We want our feelings to catch up, but we're not locked into saying, my feelings have the ultimate say. I hope they don't, because my feelings, my goodness, it's roller coaster. But there is something solid, like Brian was saying, our God is unchangeable. The song he started with, indescribable, I haven't heard in many years, but I used to have that CD talking about drive. I was probably looking for that CD in my floorboard, almost about to wreck. But I would put that in and play it over and over again. Proclaim. You are the God who calls me by name. Just like the stars in the heavens, not one of them is out of place. They're all named by God. If you study the universe, you can't even put a number on the stars. Even in the Milky Way galaxy, they used to say 100 to 300 billion. And now they say, like, that's way too low. That's one galaxy amidst 100 billion more. Now they're saying that's too. It will make your head hurt. God speaks all of that into existence. This is the God who says, look at what I've done. And we can't say, well, I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna do this, because it's better from a human perspective if God only knew. It's like, no. Remember what Jesus has done. The good news is only as good as the bad news is bad. If you give me a gift certificate to the cheesecake factory and I'm hungry, that's good news. It was bad news I was not, I was, I didn't have a gift card and now I have one, I'm happy. But if I'm starving in the desert and I don't have anything to drink and I'm about to die, and a helicopter shows up and brings me and takes me to the cheesecake factory, they gave me water on the way so I wouldn't die, so in this analogy. But think about how good that news is. It's life-saving news. The gospel is not that Jesus came so that you could have a better life. The gospel is you were dead in your trespasses and sin. You're part of the domain of darkness. You are under a curse. But God, because of his richness of mercy and his great love for you and me. There's something interesting in this passage when Paul says, cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree. That's referring back to Deuteronomy 21, and it's saying, in that context, don't let anyone be hung on a pole or a tree or a wooden structure after they're dead, because that's cursed. They've already died a horrible death. Don't do that. And here, as we look to the cross, it's not just about Jesus dying, it's about the way he died. He did die as a sacrifice for us, but he died under a curse. On a tree hung public display, judgment, exposure, rejection. And the early Christians couldn't miss this. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. That's what Paul writes. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And here's what's hard to take in Jesus did not just feel cursed. He entered the full weight of what it means to stand under a curse. And he absorbed it. And in doing so, it is dissolved. It is finished. And if you slow down long enough to sit with that here this morning, along with me, it's that this absorption of the curse for us, and then Him giving us His righteousness, His right standing before God, all the fear that cripples us and exaggerates what's at stake that says, You got to do this, you got to do this, all of the guilt that tells us you must do this, all the shame that says there's something wrong with you, all of that was placed on the cross. Those messages can still rotate around us, they can still have such power. But, brother and sister, you're no longer enslaved to them. They do not have the ultimate say. All of that's been carried. All of that's been exposed. It's already been named, it's already been dealt with. So the cross is where sin is forgiven, yes. But it's also where the curse is exhausted. Nothing left. The curse is exhausted, it is dissolved. Which means you and I are no longer standing in that place. We're free. We're free. Paul's saying, if that's true, why would you go back and try to earn something? Why would you add, why would you even think about adding? The illustration that came to mind is if you had a billion-dollar debt and you were in prison and you couldn't pay it off, and someone paid that debt for you, and you came out and you thanked the person who redeemed you, and then you said, Hey, I'm gonna go get some monopoly money, let me work for a few years, and then I'm gonna pay you back with this monopoly money. It's like, that doesn't even make sense. It's like it's not real. It's it's like, no, just accept what's what I've given you. I did this because of love. The Christian life doesn't move forward by trying harder, but about remembering more and remembering more deeply. And as we do, we will move forward. So it's about returning over and over again. I put this insert in your bulletin. I'd like for you to pull it out. It's nice and purple to represent royalty. We come to Holy Week. We've got Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. Like Chloe mentioned, this is just a simple invitation that I wrote up this week of you to walk with Jesus to prepare your heart. There's so much more you you can do on Maundy, Thursday. We don't typically talk much about it, but you can read through the upper room discourse and see the communion take place and Jesus washing the disciples' feet. There's a lot during this time. But as we come next Sunday, it's it's uh fifth Sunday, so the Sojourn kids will be in here. We'll be all together. It'll be wild. Um, we'll have the fellowship hall opened if things get too wild and you can go back there and color. Um but we're gonna have youth participate. We're gonna have some palms that we're gonna hand out that kids can wave around and bring up, and it's gonna be fun. But we want to remember this is how Jesus came. And he knew, if you can read in Luke, he weeps over Jerusalem at this point because he's like, if you only would have come, if you would have known what would have brought you peace, but you didn't. And so he goes through this coming in, and they want an earthly king, but he refuses to be that. And then on Good Friday, we're gonna have at 7 p.m. a service of reflection, and we're gonna darken the windows, and we're gonna have some lights. It's called a tin embrace service, where after we read different passages, we'll extinguish a candle, and it's a service of reflection. And we want to feel somewhat the weight of what Good Friday felt, and we'll leave in a spirit of reflection. And then on Resurrection Sunday, Easter morning, we're gonna come in and we're gonna celebrate. We're gonna declare he is risen, he is risen indeed. Let's declare it together. I'm gonna say he is risen. You say he is risen indeed. This used to be my job at Sojourn. They were like, You're the risen indeed pastor. All right. He is risen. That was too good. We're gonna do it louder on Easter Sunday. But this is why we're free. You are free. And that's what this table is for. Remembering, remembering your story, remembering the greater story that we're in, remembering that Jesus is saying, Come be with me. And that's really my application for you this week is where do you feel like you're living under the curse? Because the curse is been taken care of. Remember how you began. Remember the story you're in, and remember what it cost Jesus. And remember that it gave Jesus great joy to walk through this for you and for me. If you're a Christian here today, I'd invite you after I pray to come, and you can take some of the juice and the bread back to your seat, and we have some gluten-free crackers as well, and just hold it there, and I'll come back up and we'll participate together. But come remembering. Come remembering. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the beauty of this passage. Thank you for the beauty of how you have just woven into the entire story, all of the beauty of your care, your redemption, your choosing, your drawing, your protection over and over again through so many seasons. How the redemption story, if it was up to us, it would have failed over and over again. But because it was yours and your covenant love of faithfulness is unbreakable, you brought it through to completion. So as we participate in communion today, as we continue this service, help us remember. I pray for my brothers and sisters as they come up that they would remember your salvation for them. I pray for those who may be sitting here today that have never embraced you as their Savior, that they would lay down their rights and all the things that they've been holding and come to you for forgiveness. I pray that we would remember the huge, vast story that we're part of that has been all throughout past and is now and will be forever. And Jesus, may we come remembering you demolishing the curse, crushing the head of Satan, sin and death by your amazing sacrifice of great love for us. Lord, move in our midst, and we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.