Thank you, Orchestra. When I was in the seventh grade, I entered a new school. I had gone to a country school, a one-room country school right out of the little house on the prairies kind of a moat. And I went to town school. Now that may give you the picture of a Moundsview High School or some large gigantic place like that, but my class had 30 people in it. But for me, that was a huge, huge class and a whole new set of people to get to know. It was pretty intimidating.
I remember the first fall that I was in that school. It was a brand new student. One of the athlete bullies in the class said an emissary to me. And he said to me, Jim, who was the bully, wants to fight you and he wants to meet you after school tonight. And my response was, no. Now it wasn't that I was so afraid of Jim, although I was rather intimidated of him, but I was more afraid of my mother. You understand what I'm saying?
Because I knew what would happen when I got home if I got into a fight. Over the years, I've learned, however, a basic lesson about fighting. Avoid it if you can. But if you can't, win. Did you agree with that? There are different kinds of fights. I was looking at my library shelf yesterday and saw a book called The Battle for the Bible written by Dr. Harold Linzel back in the 1970s. Dr. Linzel was a part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Now at that particular time, the Southern Baptist Convention in its institutions, its seminaries, the colleges, and so on, had been largely taken over by liberal theologians who did not adhere to the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Dr. Linzel understood the threat that that posed to their theology and to the Southern Baptist mission of evangelizing the world and establishing Southern Baptist churches.
And so he wrote the book The Battle for the Bible in which he raised the flag for the inerrancy of Scripture. And there followed for the next number of years quite a brouhaha in the Southern Baptist Convention. And gladly, from my perspective, those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture managed to wrest back the control of the Convention at all of its institutions so that today the Southern Baptist Convention solidly stands in its leadership right on down for the inerrancy of the Scriptures.
It was a battle that was worth fighting. They took a stand, and by the grace of God, they won. Now Paul was in a similar fight when he wrote this book of Galatians that we have begun studying. He was in a battle for the soul of the Galatians, but there was another battle larger than that. It was a battle for the nature of the gospel, what the gospel really is. Now Paul knew when to walk away from conflict in order to keep peace, and he knew when it was necessary to stand and fight.
He knew that he had to win this one, or the consequences would have been devastating to the gospel. Paul was vigorous in his defense of the gospel. The first thing he had to do was to defend himself and his apostleship, and so as we have studied chapters one and two together, we have observed Paul's sturdily defending himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ, because the message that he had as an apostle, the gospel of Jesus Christ, depended upon his authority as an apostle.
But now Paul is going to enter a new argument in his epistle. It is his argument for the gospel itself, that it is salvation by grace through faith. Paul was aggravated with the Galatians. We've seen that in chapter one, but we see it again in our text in chapter three. He was absolutely astonished at the defection of the Galatians from the message of the gospel.
He began by stinging them a bit with words, and now he does it once again as we begin reading in Galatians chapter three and verse one, as soon as I get there. All right. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish?
Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer probably better? Did you experience so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he then who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Even so, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.
The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, all the nations shall be blessed in you. So then, those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer. For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. What is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them. Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident.
For the righteous man shall live by faith. However, the law is not of faith. On the contrary, he who practices them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For as written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. I invite you to pray with me.
Now Spirit of God, you authored these words through the Apostle Paul. You spoke through him to the Galatians who were tempted by false teachers to leave the gospel of grace and to return to the law as a means of being right with you. Just as you authored these words, I pray that now you will illumine our hearts. Teach us what we need to know.
And Father, if there be some friend here this morning who does not yet know what it means to be right with you, have the assurance of knowing that they are on their way to heaven. I pray this morning the gospel will be clear and that you would call that friend of yourself as your child. In Christ's name, amen. I tried to read this text as I think Paul would have read it to the Galatians.
Because you see in here his strong words, Paul strenuously argues that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the promise of justification by faith apart from works. And by the way, that is the same message that we preach today, and it is the only message that saves sinners. That salvation is by faith apart from works. Paul initiates this idea back in verse 16 when he says, this is in chapter 2, a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.
Now remember, that was the message he had preached to them when he was first there. But false teachers now had come in. We called them Judaizers who were trying to tell the Galatians that Paul did not preach the full gospel, that it was fine to preach faith in Jesus, but they said you also have to keep the law of Moses. You have to keep the law of Moses and add works to your faith. That's the full gospel, they said.
Paul argues strenuously against that when he says a man is not justified by the works of the law. But through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Notice how many times he uses that phrase, works of the law, in verse 16, three times. He uses it again in the text that we've read today.
Because the false teachers were saying you need to do something as well as believe on Christ. You must keep the works of the law and obey Moses' teaching. And so Paul uses now in chapters three and four a series of arguments to prove his claim about the gospel, to defeat the false teachers. His goal is to rescue the Galatians from their theological error. Well the first argument we find in verses one through five, and that is the argument from their profile.
The apostle Paul reminds them of what they had experienced, their own spiritual journey, the way in which they themselves had come to know God when he had preached the gospel to them. He asks them the question, was it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? When Paul had gone to Galatia on his first missionary journey, he had made a public announcement of Christ. He had portrayed Christ openly to them. He explained to them Christ crucified, Christ who delivered Himself up for our sins.
He had preached to them the message of God's grace. He had not set the gospel of grace aside, but they may have, he says at the end of chapter two, he says, for if the righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly, you foolish Galatians. Their experience with Christ is really captured in two questions that he poses to them. The first one is in verse two, and it points to their past. He said, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?
Now, to receive the Spirit, Paul is equating with salvation. He says back there when you believe the message that I proclaim and you receive the Holy Spirit because you trusted in this gospel, did you receive the Spirit because you worked and performed and did the works of the law or because you simply heard what I proclaimed about Christ and believed? Well, of course, the answer is obvious. He asked the second question in verses three and four.
He says, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected, that is brought to maturity by the flesh, by the works of your human nature? He says, did you suffer so many things or experience all of these things in vain? He says in verse five, does he then who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Here the question points toward the present.
He says, the Spirit who now is at work in you, bringing you to maturity, the Spirit who is doing powerful deeds in your midst, in your church, in your congregation, is He doing this by the works of the law or because of faith? Of course, again, the answer is obvious. You see, the Galatians were forgetting what they should have known. That's what he means by being fools. He's not saying that they are deficient in their minds. He is saying they're simply not using them.
He says, you have forgotten what you should know, that it's all by grace through your faith in the promise of God. And so Paul's point here, as he argues from their profile, is that you cannot experience the reality of the Holy Spirit through law keeping. The Spirit's presence and His power in your life, in your church, are in response to faith in the promise of God. It is that faith then that connects you to the eternal one. Paul then proceeds to a second argument.
It is the argument from the patriarch, because he refers to the patriarch Abraham, whom the Galatian Christians would, of course, revere, and especially the Judaizers, the false teachers. They also would look back to Abraham. And so he brings Abraham forward as his witness. He draws upon the example of Abraham to show the continuity of this notion of salvation by faith apart from works.
Now, in setting forth his argument, the apostle Paul quotes two significant texts from the life of Abraham in Genesis. The first is a text from Genesis 15 and verse 6, which sums up Abraham's saving experience. It is that when he heard God's word, he heard the promise of God, he believed. And God therefore declared him righteous. Abraham did not do anything. Abraham was not himself circumcised at this point, which was an important point to these Judaizers.
The law had not even been written in Abraham's day, and yet Abraham believed and was justified, declared righteous before God. The word believed back in Genesis is the word amen. Abraham amen'd God. That is, he affirmed what God said. And therefore God made a verdict regarding Abraham. He said, Abraham, you aren't righteous. Abraham, you're coming out of a pagan, Gentile background. You are a Gentile. But Abraham, you have believed me. And therefore I declare you righteous in my sight.
In doing this, God was not only saying to Abraham, you are no longer guilty of your sins, but I accept you, Abraham. I accept you as righteous in my sight. So Paul says, before there was a law, before there was the right of circumcision, Abraham simply believed and was saved. He quotes another text in Genesis 12 and verse 3 when he says, all the nations shall be blessed in you, God's promise to Abraham.
Paul's point here is that the Scriptures foresaw that God would do the very same thing that He did for Abraham for other Gentiles. This was a part of the gospel that was given to Abraham, which he believed, which led then to his justification that God would one day bless all the nations, the Gentiles of the world, with this gospel of salvation by grace through faith apart from works. Now as he calls Abraham forward to give this witness, Paul points to two groups of people in the text.
He points first to those whom he labels, those who are of faith. Do you see that phrase? It's in verse 7, again in verse 9. Those who are of faith, who is he referring to? Simply those who believe God's promise to them, just as Abraham believed God's promise to him. Now he says, all of those who are of faith, who believe the promise of God are included with Abraham in the blessing of salvation, and they become by their faith the descendants of Abraham.
They're the descendants of Abraham not because of their lineage or because they have performed some ritual upon themselves, such as circumcision. And this was the big claim of the Judaizers, we're the descendants of Abraham. Paul says, you Gentiles who have believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, you who are of faith are the true spiritual descendants of Abraham. The other group he labels in verse 10 as the many who are of the works of the law.
Paul is including in this group all of those who want to add works to the gospel of grace, like the Judaizers were doing. Those who followed this false teaching that we have to add our own human efforts to what God has done for us at the cross. Paul warns that those who do this place themselves under the curse of the law because they are not able to perfectly obey its regulations. And here he quotes in verse 10 from Deuteronomy chapter 27, the 26th verse.
He says, those who are of the works of the law need to understand something. Yes, they can be justified by the law if they abide by all things that the law says to perform them. If they perfectly keep the whole law, then they can be justified before God. Paul acknowledges this. But what's the problem? No one can do that. Not even these Judaizers could do that. And he says, therefore they place themselves under the damnation of the law.
The judgment of the law, it falls upon all of those who fail to keep it perfectly. It condemns them before God. And so his point is this, it is not those who preach circumcision and the works of the law who are Abraham's descendants and who are right with God. Indeed, they have placed themselves under the condemnation of the very law that they seek to uphold.
Rather, it is those who believe the promise of God in Jesus Christ and who forsake their own works and rule keeping as a means of earning righteousness before God. It is they who are Abraham's true descendants. And finally, in verses 11 to 14, the apostle brings forth a third argument. I call this the argument from the prophet. He's still going back to the Old Testament, but here he goes to the prophets and specifically to a statement by Habakkuk.
He quotes him in verse 11 as saying, the righteous man shall live by faith. Habakkuk 2 and verse 4. And we need to think about the historical context of this prophet for a moment. Habakkuk prophesied in Judah at the time that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, was about to invade Judah for the first time, which was approximately 605 B.C. Now in this book that Habakkuk wrote, he had two significant questions that were eating away at him. And he records them for us and gives God's answer.
His first question was this, why, God, do you not judge the evil of your people, Judah? It just seems to go on and on. God, why are you not judging them? And so God responds in the last part of, or the next part of chapter 1. And God essentially says, I am about to judge them, Habakkuk, and I am going to bring the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, to judge them. Well, this raised a second urgent question on the part of Habakkuk. He says, God, how can you do that?
Because the Babylonians are worse than we are. Surely, Lord, you will not bring the Babylonians to judge Judah. God says, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to bring Babylon to discipline my people. And then in the second chapter in verse 4, God says, see, he is puffed up. His desires are not upright, but the righteous will live by his faith. Who is puffed up?
Well, in the context, it seems best to understand it's the Chaldeans that Habakkuk sees as being puffed up in their pride. And their desires were not right. Nonetheless, God would use them to discipline his people. But God says, the righteous will live by his faith. That is, those who are in a right standing with me, the righteous, shall live by their steadfast waiting upon me. Now, when this word came to Habakkuk, it likely had mostly a temporal meaning.
In other words, I am going to bring judgment upon Judah, but the righteous need to know that I have not forsaken them, that they will live by their steadfast trust in me, and I will bring them through that. I will deliver them. I will be with them. But Paul is led by the Holy Spirit to take that statement from Habakkuk's context of temporal salvation from judgment, to apply it to salvation broadly and generally. And he does that twice, maybe three times, if he wrote Hebrews.
As the verse enters into the New Testament in Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews in a significant way, the just shall live by faith. Paul is saying, even the prophet said this. It is the just who live by faith, not by the works of the law, but by steadfast faith in me. They are saved. But it goes on to say the law is not of faith. The law is not of faith, he says, because it is predicated upon performance.
Verse 12, here he quotes from Leviticus, which says, he who practices them, that is, the demands of the law, will live by them. Do and live is what the law says. Someone has written a little poem that says, do and live the law demands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. A better word the gospel brings, it bids me fly and gives me wings. You see, the law says if you want to live, then do, do, do, perform, perform, perform. And if you do that perfectly, God will accept you.
But we sinners don't have feet and hands to do that. We are born in sin and cannot keep the law. Those who fail, the law pronounces a curse upon them. And of course, that's all of us. For we all fail. We are all sinners. The way of law keeping or works leads ultimately not to God's acceptance, but to His judgment upon us because we fail. When Paul writes about a curse here, that is a strange sound to our pluralistic ears, isn't it?
This postmodern culture in which we live does not think that God ever judges. They like to see God as one who is accepting, a God who promotes tolerance, a God who will accept anyone because they believe that all truths are equal. But that is not the message of the Bible. Our society today has created a God in the image of its confused ideas.
The God of the Bible who has revealed Himself is a God who is not only loving and gracious and kind, but a God who is severe and just and holy and righteous. And God says, the sinner who seeks to be right with me through His works only places himself under my just judgment. But the good news, says Paul, is that Christ has redeemed us from this curse. How? By becoming a curse on our behalf.
By dying under the law, not as a law breaker, but as the only one who has ever lived on the face of the earth as the law keeper. He nonetheless was crucified for our sins and was hung upon a tree. And he says, the law says, cursed is anyone who hangs upon a tree. Now the Jews never crucified, but for particularly heinous crimes after stoning, they were known, it was customary sometimes to put the body up on a pole to display the body to show he's cursed under the law.
That's the meaning of that text, cursed is anyone who hangs upon a tree. But Paul applies that to Christ, who was nailed to the cross alive and who suffered and died there, that he might deliver us from this present evil world. Paul says, the law brings a curse, but the prophet says that the righteous will live by faith. The justification and the gift of the Spirit come by faith apart from works.
And he concludes the text that we've read this morning by saying there are two purposes, two coordinated purposes that come from what Jesus did for us. The first he says is that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. The blessing of Abraham refers to justification by faith. The Lord Jesus died so that even the Gentiles might be justified by faith in him. Secondly he says, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
So he goes back to where he began really, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. You receive the Spirit, he works in your midst, don't you understand that that was all by faith? So he concludes in verse 14 by saying we receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And to receive the promise of the Spirit is equivalent to becoming a Christian. Now I want to close quickly with just three thoughts. The first thought is this, that the successors of the Judaizers are with us yet.
There are still those today in our world in the realm of Christendom who mix works with faith. There are those who talk about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and faith in Jesus Christ who then go on to talk about other things that we must do in order to be justified. Sometimes it involves the sacraments of the church. Sometimes it involves being a good and moral person. Sometimes it involves being baptized.
Some people relate baptism to circumcision and they say you must be baptized as well as believe on Christ. That's why I'm saying that the Judaizers, their descendants, are still with us. Beware of them. Beware of them. Because these doctrines lead people to unexpected damnation. They think they are right with God. They think somehow that their faith in Christ and their good life together is going to make God accept them into heaven. And they're wrong.
That's why the Proverbs says, there's a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Yes, I know people are very sincere in believing this. Maybe you're sincere in believing it this morning. But I want to say to you based upon what God says, that you can be right with God only through your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all that it takes. You can get off the treadmill of your own works and trying to perform to impress God. You don't have to do that.
You can't do that. The second thing I want to say is this. The descendants of Abraham are those who believe. Not those who seek acceptance with God through their works or their religious duty, but those who trust in the promise of God. And of course for us that means the promise of eternal life through the death of Jesus Christ. Believing that His death is sufficient for our sins, that nothing more needs to be done that God accepts us completely in His Son.
We who are the descendants of Abraham inherit the blessing that Abraham knew, which is being justified by faith that is being right with God, our works aside. And finally, the gospel of God is justification by faith based upon Christ's death for sinners. That is the only hope for a broken world in need of healing. Chuck Swindoll wrote, through Paul we learn that Christianity is a religion of done and that all other faiths are religions of do. You stop and think about that.
Any other religion in the world has the human being up front doing his thing, trying his best, performing his duty. But Christianity says God's already done all that needs to be done because His Son has paid the price. Therefore proclaim it. You and I have an opportunity to do that next month. You may notice in the bulletin today this flyer regarding the seminar regarding faith. It's not just for those who are in the Friend to Friend training. It's for all of us.
I hope that you'll come even if you can't find a friend to invite, but hopefully you can approach a friend that you're praying for and invite them to be there for those three Tuesday nights, to be here for those three Tuesday nights. It is going to be powerful teaching regarding why the Christian faith makes sense, why it is the truth. The gospel that we preach is the gospel, the only gospel that works. It is the only good news there is out there. That's why we must proclaim it.
Let's be about our Lord's work. We have to close. With our heads bowed, I wonder this morning if you have claimed salvation, if you've claimed this blessing as one who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. If not, if you've been working your way toward God, if you've been trusting in what you can do, will you this morning understand that God has done for you all that's necessary what He requires of you is simply to accept that free gift to believe on Christ, to claim that blessing. Will you do it?
Pray in your heart something like this, Lord Jesus, I lay aside my works, my failed righteousness, and I come to you believing that you died for my sins, that I might be forgiven. And I receive you by faith into my life to be my Lord and Savior. I am trusting in you alone that I might be right with God. And friend, that is a message that if you believe it, if you claim it, you too will enjoy the blessing of Abraham and all of those who believe.
And if this morning you've prayed that prayer, that is your heart's desire, I invite you to come here to the front after the service. I'd like to talk with you a little bit further. Let's stand together, please. Father God, in these closing seconds, will you write upon our heart the joy of the gospel of grace? Will you also just clear out our minds from all the garbage and the confusion of our culture?
And help us to see the singularity of this message, not only the claims that it makes, but the power that it has to change the life of every sinner who trusts it. And we pray together that you will be powerfully at work in our midst by the Holy Spirit whom you've given us, that you will change us as your children into the image of Christ, and that you would use us in our world to reach those who yet need to hear this gospel. And it's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen.