SPEAKER_00: We would like to invite you to open up your Bibles and turn to our scripture reading for this morning, which is found in the New Testament book of Galatians, chapter 3, and we'll be looking at portions from verses 1 through 14.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have your Bible with you, there should you be able to find a Pew Bible in front of you, and on page 973, you'll find our scripture reading.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3, beginning in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?
SPEAKER_00: It was before your very eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you only this: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
SPEAKER_00: Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
SPEAKER_00: Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?
SPEAKER_00: Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
SPEAKER_00: And then skip down to verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.
SPEAKER_00: Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: But the law is not based on faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them.
SPEAKER_00: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
SPEAKER_00: For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
SPEAKER_00: Here ends the reading of God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: Well, last week we had a uh question and answer time.
SPEAKER_00: You all were allowed to come with um questions off the cuff to Pastor Dave, who's on vacation today.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we we thought it was only right that uh the pastors should today be able to circulate through the uh the congregation and ask you questions off the cuff.
SPEAKER_00: Not really, but actually I did think that would be a great idea for a sermon today.
SPEAKER_00: Really, the sermon today is gonna be a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's different than I planned, and it's different than what um maybe we would normally uh have here.
SPEAKER_00: Um as I was working on uh this text, and uh I really had, you know, kind of a usual kind of plan for attacking it, and um you know, I really had the sense that I wanted to do something a little different.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do something more practical with this text.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to take some of the application of this text and to bring it home in a different kind of way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this summer we have been, we have been looking, if you were in uh some of you were in a sunny summer school, uh sorry, a uh a summer Sunday school for adults, and together we were just on this journey of looking at some of the dynamics of real spiritual growth in the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: What does that really look like?
SPEAKER_00: And we we contrasted that a lot with what we have been taught, and not only that, but a lot with what really goes on under the cover of the um of the facade that we have and that we put on, and we we we began to delve into that a little bit, and um it was a time of really an eye-opening time for me as I journeyed with uh you all in that class.
SPEAKER_00: And what I'd like us to focus on this morning in this text is this this key phrase that you find in verse 3 of chapter 3, where Paul tells the Galatian Christians, are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe I'll just take a minute and um and just kind of set the stage for what that phrase really means.
SPEAKER_00: There is a world of meaning in that phrase that is important for us.
SPEAKER_00: Um basically the Galatians were a group of Gentile Christians who had been converted by the Apostle Paul at a time in history when Gentiles were just now becoming converted in a way that they were equal with Jews on the same footing.
SPEAKER_00: Um the gospel had been proclaimed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had died, he's risen from the dead, and Paul had gone around proclaiming that truth, and now Gentiles were becoming believers.
SPEAKER_00: And uh some of the zealous Jewish uh people uh began to feel deeply threatened by that, and began to feel like, wow, these these new these pagan Gentiles, um, they are not uh going to be accepted before God just on the basis of faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They need to become Jews, they need to start following the law, they need to do the things that God has said in the law of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And um so they began troubling these new believers, and some of them were actually beginning to just start uh trying to obey the law to please the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul writes this one of the most shocking letters in the New Testament, and he's very forceful about how he he deals with this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I want to say.
SPEAKER_00: That's really all I really want to say about that.
SPEAKER_00: I want to just say, beginning by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: What that means is coming to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's a work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That is an absolute miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Scripture says.
SPEAKER_00: No one just reasons in their own mind and comes to a logical conclusion on their own that Christ is the way.
SPEAKER_00: There's a brokenness and a conviction and an initiated work that God works in us that brings us to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we're awakened.
SPEAKER_00: Our eyes are opened.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to see and taste the light and that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: So beginning by the Spirit, these Galatian Christians began to be on a road.
SPEAKER_00: They were choosing a road of being perfected by the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And in Scripture, the flesh means our own unaided power and strength, our own desires that belong to us, that we were born with, that have developed the sinful habits and nature that is the real us uh deep down, apart from the Spirit of God or apart from any power of God on us.
SPEAKER_00: The flesh, it's just what we do in human strength, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's using our gifting and it's it's using um it's working it, it's working what we have to make our way in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Galatians, they were trying, uh really, let's put it in some different terms.
SPEAKER_00: They were looking to grow as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: They were looking to come close to God now that they initiated this relationship with Him by the works of the flesh, by their own strength, by what they were going to do, by obeying laws, uh, by conforming to externals.
SPEAKER_00: And um, Paul will have none of it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord will have none of it.
SPEAKER_00: This is not an isolated problem with the Galatian Christians.
SPEAKER_00: So here's where we're going to try to go today.
SPEAKER_00: This is a huge problem today in this location right here.
SPEAKER_00: It's been a problem all through church history.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a problem in my heart today.
SPEAKER_00: It's a problem in your heart today.
SPEAKER_00: This is a massive structural dynamic problem that we have, even as Christians, as redeemed men and women, that the scriptures are in so many places highlighting for us and pointing it out and leading us to go in a better direction.
SPEAKER_00: There is just uh there is just something in the DNA of our of our fallenness that has just wired us.
SPEAKER_00: That even as we've come to faith by a work of God, there's something in us that's wired to try to advance that by our own effort.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure some of you are hearing me now, and there's something that's um that's beginning, some energy maybe that's starting to create inside of you, and that's good.
SPEAKER_00: Just let that energy percolate there and begin to see where that's really coming from.
SPEAKER_00: Because when I hear this kind of language, I start getting a little defensive.
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, God calls us to be doing things, he calls us to obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't call us to just hang out under the tree.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he calls us to be moving and acting and using, right?
SPEAKER_00: And serving and loving.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things reflect a component of human effort and human work.
SPEAKER_00: And we're called to that.
SPEAKER_00: But the dynamic that's going on in this text, and this twisted dynamic that our fallenness brings us into, um, takes us, it takes this whole thing in a different direction.
SPEAKER_00: And it causes enormous harm.
SPEAKER_00: It hinders us in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: It puts us in a place that you could say, man, I've been a Christian for 30 years.
SPEAKER_00: I can say this, and standing here in front of you, I can say, you know, I've been a Christian for yeah, more than 30 years now.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been a pastor for two decades.
SPEAKER_00: I've been to seminary, um, I've done all kinds of things to grind it out, to be in the race.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord has used a lot of that.
SPEAKER_00: But I have missed, I have missed for so long so much of what is really the core, core, core of what we're called to do and be as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a wearying road and journey.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you, maybe many of you here today, are on that road.
SPEAKER_00: And you are so tired.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you have given up on that road.
SPEAKER_00: You completely given up.
SPEAKER_00: You are here this morning, who knows why?
SPEAKER_00: But you know in your spirits, you have given up.
SPEAKER_00: You really have.
SPEAKER_00: It's not working for you.
SPEAKER_00: What you heard in the scriptures promised, these um these living waters, uh, it just hasn't been your experience.
SPEAKER_00: And others of us, others of you here, you're you're not ready to give up yet.
SPEAKER_00: You're still working it.
SPEAKER_00: And you still have hopes that you're gonna you're gonna conquer and you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna get on top of this thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this thing of of really what amounts to living by the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: So let me begin to try to try to unravel this a little bit and put some skin on what I'm really talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: There were two things that struck me this summer, and um both of these relate to our text profoundly.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is the weakness of the human will.
SPEAKER_00: How weak is the human will.
SPEAKER_00: The human will is profoundly weak.
SPEAKER_00: The flesh, it's profoundly weak.
SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely powerless to do what the Lord asks us to do on its own.
SPEAKER_00: And that's even true for the redeemed Christian.
SPEAKER_00: That's even true for someone who has the spirit of the living God inside of them, who has a new nature, if you want to put it in those terms, who has new instincts and new desires and new hungers.
SPEAKER_00: You we still have something called the flesh that is profoundly influencing who we are, and it is so incredibly weak.
SPEAKER_00: It is untamable.
SPEAKER_00: Someone said this in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison.
SPEAKER_00: No man or woman or young person can control the tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: Can't you just say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I am gonna get a handle on my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of saying toxic things.
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of saying angry things, hurtful things, bitter things, um dark things, evil things, brutal things, cutting things, sarcastic things.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just sick of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's ruining my life.
SPEAKER_00: I am going to focus on this sin this year, and I am going to get a handle on this tongue of mine this year.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of you have ever tried that journey.
SPEAKER_00: Those kinds of things, but that's happening below the conscience.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we may not think that's what we're really doing, but deep down inside your heart, ask the question is that really what's going on in the structure of how I'm living my Christian life?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's not the tongue that's an issue for you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's um, maybe it's worry or anxiety or lying or any number of other kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: The human will is so incredibly weak.
SPEAKER_00: I've also been reading this summer in Deuteronomy, and I am blown away.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I've never had Deuteronomy hit me like it's hit me this summer.
SPEAKER_00: What God asked the Israelites to do in the law, the giving of the law of Moses, is really clear.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could not say this more clearly than Moses says it in um 20 plus chapters over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: What God is looking for in the law of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: So let me let me just read a summary here for you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd like you to kind of think, try to picture yourself sitting with Moses as an Israelite in and hearing these words and knowing this is what God has told Moses to tell them.
SPEAKER_00: Moses is just a mouthpiece, this is straight from God.
SPEAKER_00: And try to imagine yourself hearing this, these words, and try to think what would be going on in your mind when you're hearing these.
SPEAKER_00: And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?
SPEAKER_00: But, and I love that but it's amazing, but just this.
SPEAKER_00: But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I'm commanding you today for your good.
SPEAKER_00: That's all the Lord has asked of you.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, to the Lord your God belongs the heavens and the heaven of the heavens, and all that's in them.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, not only is God the creator of everything and at the top of all things, but the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them above all the peoples of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You owe it to him.
SPEAKER_00: He put his love on you and passed over everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: So circumcise your hearts today and no longer be stubborn.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, and he's great and mighty, and he's awesome, and he's not partial, and he takes no bribes.
SPEAKER_00: What are you thinking when you hear that?
SPEAKER_00: You're at the foot of the mountain, or you're, this is a recapitulation from Moses years later of uh before they're getting ready to enter the land.
SPEAKER_00: This is Moses' farewell address to the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: There is no possible way that the Israelites could have obeyed that law.
SPEAKER_00: Is it the law's fault?
SPEAKER_00: It's not, because God's holiness is immense.
SPEAKER_00: That's who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And our weakness in no way diminishes who He is and what He requires.
SPEAKER_00: But there is no way on the planet that the Israelites could even begin to follow these laws.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly where the New Testament begins to go over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: What was the purpose of the law?
SPEAKER_00: It was to reveal sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's the law of God that opens up the door for us to see failure.
SPEAKER_00: We fail the law.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in that failing is where the growth is.
SPEAKER_00: If we have eyes to see it.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the failing is where the growth is.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites, you know, they who knows all the different structures that were going on in different people's minds, but the Israelites are like, yeah, okay, we'll do this.
SPEAKER_00: We can do this thing.
SPEAKER_00: Let's roll.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you know the history when you read the Old Testament, it's wearying.
SPEAKER_00: It's wearying to read over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And then not only this, but God set something up.
SPEAKER_00: He said, When you come into the land, after they wandered 40 years, they're coming into the land, they're going to take the land, right?
SPEAKER_00: Flowing with milk and honey.
SPEAKER_00: I want to split up the tribes, half the tribes on Mount Gerizim, the other half tribes on Mount Ebal, these two mountains, kind of low plateau mountains, and a big valley in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: And they were to speak blessings and cursings related to this law.
SPEAKER_00: And half the tribes were to say, blessings.
SPEAKER_00: If you obey the law, the Lord is going to do this for you and that for you, and it's all going to go so well for you as a nation.
SPEAKER_00: And the other people were to pronounce the curses of the law.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Paul quotes in Roman, I mean in Galatians, in our text today.
SPEAKER_00: At the summation of all of these curses.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed are you, Israel, if you don't do this, if you don't do this, if you do cross this line and cross that line.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed are you.
SPEAKER_00: And at the very end, cursed is everyone who doesn't abide by all things in the book of the law.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed.
SPEAKER_00: A curse of God upon you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in some sense, when we become believers, we have an understanding of this.
SPEAKER_00: Because we wouldn't be believers if we didn't.
SPEAKER_00: When we become Christians, there is something that the Spirit of God moves in us.
SPEAKER_00: He works a certain kind of brokenness in us.
SPEAKER_00: We do come to the end of our rope.
SPEAKER_00: At some level, we we really give up.
SPEAKER_00: We own our stuff at some level.
SPEAKER_00: And I say I'm putting qualifiers here because the whole Christian life is a journey in understanding just what we really were saved from.
SPEAKER_00: And when we become Christians, we don't know the very first part of it.
SPEAKER_00: But to the degree that we know, we we we come to the Lord and we cast ourselves on his mercy, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then we start the Christian life, and it's it's great.
SPEAKER_00: We've tasted forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that it's just amazing?
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord gives us his Holy Spirit, and we have a new desire implanted inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: And we start on that road of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: And there's the law of God.
SPEAKER_00: Not the law of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: That's done away, that's nailed, man.
SPEAKER_00: That's nailed on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God, that's gone.
SPEAKER_00: But we have the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And if anything, the law of Christ is even more.
SPEAKER_00: It's even more in one way, as far as laws go, because the law of Christ highlights what maybe was implied in the law of Moses, and that it's the heart, it's the sins in the heart that's our real issue.
SPEAKER_00: And that what God was always calling his people to was to love.
SPEAKER_00: That's why loving God and loving the people summarizes all of the law because love gets down deep into who we really are.
SPEAKER_00: And if we what it what does it take to love someone?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let that just let that uh unwind this week in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: What does it take for you to truly love someone else?
SPEAKER_00: Or to love God.
SPEAKER_00: It requires something profound within us.
SPEAKER_00: But we begin this Christian life and we have the law, and somewhere early on in this life, a transition starts to happen with many of us, maybe all of us.
SPEAKER_00: The commands are out here beckoning us.
SPEAKER_00: We're hearing it from the pulpit, we're hearing it in our Bible classes, we're hearing it on Christian radio, we're reading in our Bibles that God is calling us to a high level of obedience, right?
SPEAKER_00: Make no mistake about it.
SPEAKER_00: God is all about our coming into conformity with his word and with his own heart, which is what his word is.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God is all about.
SPEAKER_00: There's no minimizing going on here in my mind this morning, that the commandments of Scripture can be kind of laid aside in some kind of way.
SPEAKER_00: But what the Galatians didn't understand and where we have trouble is we began to think ever so subtly, below our conscious level at many points, that we can do this in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: We can do this in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: We can quit saying toxic words if we put our mind to it, if we are disciplined enough, if we do the right studies, but there is no amount there's no amount of human effort that will change my toxic tongue.
SPEAKER_00: It won't happen.
SPEAKER_00: Because the tongue's not the problem.
SPEAKER_00: It's the deep inside hidden heart that is the problem.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no lever or switch for the heart.
SPEAKER_00: The heart just comes out, right?
SPEAKER_00: It just comes out.
SPEAKER_00: And the language we use, I picked this up from uh John Coe, who's just influenced a lot of uh our study this summer on this.
SPEAKER_00: He used this language of leaking.
SPEAKER_00: How often does it happen in our lives that all we need is just the right trigger?
SPEAKER_00: And out it comes.
SPEAKER_00: It just like the snake in the can, right?
SPEAKER_00: It ja but we can't even stop it, and it's on the table.
SPEAKER_00: We leaked.
SPEAKER_00: We just leaked.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the heart, and it and it leaked out, and it and it's out there on the table now.
SPEAKER_00: And so this this leads me to a second a second thing that um that I've been really struck with.
SPEAKER_00: The first was the weakness of the human will, it is so incredibly weak.
SPEAKER_00: Our yes to God is so much weaker than what is in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: It is so much weaker than the flesh and the depravity that lives within our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And we are fooling ourselves to think that we can will to do the will of God in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: So the second thing that really strikes me, it just builds on this, the instinct to hide and cover and repress the truth of my bad.
SPEAKER_00: There is just this instinct that is in us when we leak, to close the door on it, okay, to not go there, to not investigate it, to not bring it before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We hide it from ourselves, we hide it from God, and we hide it from other people.
SPEAKER_00: That's why blame is such a big deal, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we what did the first our first parents do in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: They leaked, if you will, but they they were perfect prior to that, and then they sinned, and what happened?
SPEAKER_00: Just immediately, they're covering, they're covering everything physically as a symbol for what they're really doing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're covering inside, they're going, they're submerging and going underground with God, with each other, they're blaming.
SPEAKER_00: They're they're like, we can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and it ends up in the Christian life that we do this, we are such masters at this, aren't we?
SPEAKER_00: And it leads us in our lives to begin to focus on what is good.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we can focus on, right?
SPEAKER_00: We'll focus on the good to do, and we won't focus on what's really in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: And um and so, sermon after sermon, book after book, study after study, we hear these principles.
SPEAKER_00: And we go in a different direction than the direction we really need to go.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we just don't really want to know how bad it really is down there, do we?
SPEAKER_00: We'll feel a lot better about ourselves if we'll stay at the surface level.
SPEAKER_00: And we might even go, we might even kind of do a halfway approach to this.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, this is what the author I mentioned earlier, what he calls prayers of magic.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's really repression.
SPEAKER_00: That bitter word comes out of our mouth, we've leaked, and what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Father, take away my bitterness.
SPEAKER_00: Take it away.
SPEAKER_00: I confess it.
SPEAKER_00: Honey, what's for dinner tonight?
SPEAKER_00: We won't go there.
SPEAKER_00: We just ask God to magically take away what took us a lifetime to build.
SPEAKER_00: A deep, sinful habit that is so much a part of who.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a tumor that's just it's got its roots all through our system.
SPEAKER_00: And we're just gonna treat it at the surface level, and we will not go there because we're afraid if we do.
SPEAKER_00: We're afraid of what that will say about us.
SPEAKER_00: We're afraid of what other people will think of us.
SPEAKER_00: They really won't love us.
SPEAKER_00: We're afraid we won't measure up with God if we actually own this with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: People won't respect us.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the exact opposite that we're called to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's the exact opposite of what's in our text today in the language that Paul's using here.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking in this passage about receiving the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting if we had time to look.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to have time for this this morning, but if we had the time, look at the rest of Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: And those of you who have studied Scripture a lot, you know, where's the practical section of Galatians, right?
SPEAKER_00: Chapters five and six.
SPEAKER_00: Go to chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the rubber meets the road, right?
SPEAKER_00: If there was ever a place that you would expect to find Scripture saying, you know what, I want you to get a handle on this and get a handle on that and take care of this and take care of that, right?
SPEAKER_00: The law is that's where it's laid out in chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: But how's it put in chapter five?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll just do this.
SPEAKER_00: How's it put in chapter 5?
SPEAKER_00: Look in chapter 5, 16.
SPEAKER_00: But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on and says that like five different times.
SPEAKER_00: Walk by the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Our problem is we don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: We've got some kind of vague idea what that means.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: All we focus on is the commandments, right?
SPEAKER_00: Do this, don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: And we try to be good, and it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: And it is wearying, wearying, wearying.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what's going to happen to us in what happens in the church?
SPEAKER_00: Is you're going to have a kind of parting of the ways eventually.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to have this in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to see this in any church.
SPEAKER_00: The commandments are there.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to have people who are going to become, we use the term legalists.
SPEAKER_00: People don't like that terminology, but it's kind of a good term that means law.
SPEAKER_00: And it'd be people of the law.
SPEAKER_00: And the people who are focused on the external law.
SPEAKER_00: And that's all they're focused on in their lives are the externals.
SPEAKER_00: Do this, do this, don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's completely missing what God is calling us to.
SPEAKER_00: It's only like the very tip of the iceberg, and it's missing the whole deal.
SPEAKER_00: And these kind of people become very judgmental of everyone else because everyone else isn't quite measure up to what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: But it's the heart that counts, not the external in itself.
SPEAKER_00: The other people, the other reaction you can take is you can just give up.
SPEAKER_00: You can just give up.
SPEAKER_00: I've had enough of this Christianity stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you young people are right there.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you in high school and in college, your parents have brought you in.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not working for you very well.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're tired, and maybe you've been around a lot of externals in Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And you're sick of it, and you know it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: You can't stop it.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're done with it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why one reason why a lot of our young people are leaving the church.
SPEAKER_00: It's because we become a church of legal, not this church necessarily, but the church with the capital C.
SPEAKER_00: Evangelicalism is ripe with legalism in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean God's not using it and we're because we're always going to fail no matter where we are.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not the external.
SPEAKER_00: It's the exact opposite of what God wants us to do.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to walk in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to walk in dependence.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to walk in a way that relies upon a power outside of ourselves, alien to us, to do what He's asked us to do.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is we have a long way to go to get there.
SPEAKER_00: So here's an example.
SPEAKER_00: This example from yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you the freshest example I could find that I can speak about.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of examples I don't feel comfortable saying up here.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll give you this one.
SPEAKER_00: I had an opportunity yesterday to bless another family with something.
SPEAKER_00: And my wife jumped on that and said, Hey, we're going to do this thing.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, is it okay?
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, gulp.
SPEAKER_00: The law.
SPEAKER_00: You know, be loving, be giving.
SPEAKER_00: It's more blessed to give than to receive, right?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know that command.
SPEAKER_00: The command is right there.
SPEAKER_00: I know it.
SPEAKER_00: I've taught it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good now, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: We're good.
SPEAKER_00: We did this thing.
SPEAKER_00: We made the decision.
SPEAKER_00: We did it.
SPEAKER_00: We're good.
SPEAKER_00: That's not necessarily walking by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what walking by the Spirit looks like, I think.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Father, did you just feel that energy in me?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what was that?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I feel scared.
SPEAKER_00: I feel something.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're asking, this is asking a lot.
SPEAKER_00: This is big, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Feels big.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Um Father, what is that?
SPEAKER_00: What is that in my heart?
SPEAKER_00: That makes me afraid to just open-handedly give like you give.
SPEAKER_00: What makes me not value that like you value that?
SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe.
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe you're big enough.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I really don't believe.
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe you're big enough.
SPEAKER_00: You gave me this thing.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even work for it.
SPEAKER_00: You gave it to me.
SPEAKER_00: And even if I did work for it, you gave me the strength.
SPEAKER_00: And now you're just asking me, and and all I can focus on is the external.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so not good.
SPEAKER_00: Because the heart is not there.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming along.
SPEAKER_00: But I need the spirit of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: I need to open up to God and say, Lord, wow, this is not just about this one event.
SPEAKER_00: It's about all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: So it's the same with all of us.
SPEAKER_00: You got a problem with lying.
SPEAKER_00: Father, what is in my heart that causes me to think that if I don't tell the truth, it's gonna work for me?
SPEAKER_00: Why do I go there?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: What am I afraid of?
SPEAKER_00: What am I worshiping?
SPEAKER_00: And how I need the Spirit of God to move into me and to begin to show me what's going on and to open up to your love for me.
SPEAKER_00: That I don't have to, I don't have to clean myself up for you to love me and to be valued by you.
SPEAKER_00: You love me because you bore the curse.
SPEAKER_00: So we could say a lot about this, but the solution to this is found in our text.
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus bore the curse of the law.
SPEAKER_00: None of us have to be afraid to bring it all into the open with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And to begin bringing it into the open with ourselves, and to begin bringing it in the open with each other, and to relying upon the Holy Spirit of God to do a work, a long-term work in us, to begin to work on these patterns of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the way we're going to be loosened, not completely cured in this life, but loosened from these kinds of sins.
SPEAKER_00: When we begin to see, wow, I can bring this right before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I can tell him what just went in my mind and lay it there and laid at the cross and say there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus bore the curse for me.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus went up on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing symbol.
SPEAKER_00: It's the first symbol of the curse.
SPEAKER_00: When Eden was decimated.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed is the ground, God said, and it's going to produce thorns and thistles.
SPEAKER_00: And here it is, the symbol of the curse.
SPEAKER_00: But God gives us a Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us a Savior who takes the curse from Mount Ebo, the curse that proclaimed upon every one of us for not obeying the law deep down in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And he puts it on his head.
SPEAKER_00: That's the king he is.
SPEAKER_00: He's the king of the curse.
SPEAKER_00: And he's hung on a tree.
SPEAKER_00: And scripture says, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't have more symbolism than going on, and that Jesus Christ was damned for us in our place.
SPEAKER_00: And God wants us to quit trying to work out our growth by the power of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to surrender and to let it go.
SPEAKER_00: Take his obedience far more serious than you ever took it.
SPEAKER_00: Because you are far worse than you ever imagined that you were.
SPEAKER_00: But we can come before our Savior who bore that curse and exhausted it.
SPEAKER_00: He satisfied it.
SPEAKER_00: And there is no condemnation for us before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like us to just close.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to celebrate communion together.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a more, couldn't think of a more fitting way to celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: But I'd like to ask you to do some reflecting in your own heart.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to ask the Lord, what?
SPEAKER_00: What am I hiding?
SPEAKER_00: What am I afraid of?
SPEAKER_00: What's an area in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Just pick one, something practical.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, that you want me to open up to.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Holy Spirit to move in your heart and to let you see.
SPEAKER_00: Ask to be led by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: And to begin to see something, and to begin to just put that before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And to reflect on this passage.
SPEAKER_00: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.