[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father again, we are so thankful.
[SPEAKER_00]: We praise you for the wonderful mercy and grace that you've given us, for the successful and safe harvest gathering last night and what fun it was and what an enjoyable time was had.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now as we come to the study of your word, I pray that each and every one of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: would have our eyes fixed solely on Jesus the author and perfect of our faith, entrust and faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we behold you, we will be transformed from glory and glory by your grace, by your power, by your life within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please bless our time and our study this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus' name we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've noticed that as we've gone through this wonderful study in Galatians, that are saints who have gone before accounts continue to spring to mind, and I continually think, wow, that's just like William Tindale, that's just like what we read about Martin Luther, and then I found out this week, which shows how slow I am exactly why.
[SPEAKER_00]: This book contains the shocking, the amazing, the unbelievable, if only just message of the gospel that absolutely is suppressed in every age and every time by those who would long for legalism or long for something far worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Martin Luther is another phenomenal example
[SPEAKER_00]: of a life that was transformed by grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're a part of our study, the thing that I found most profound about Martin Luther as that he was a man utterly spiritually and emotionally bent down and weighed down by the burden of his sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, as he was living trying to live the monastic life to seek after some sense of righteousness, of holiness, of a good right relationship with God, he said it is said that he would go to his confessor, confess whatever sins he could think of, and walk away, and not get so many feet away before he felt
[SPEAKER_00]: He had to go back and confess another one, maybe one that just happened in that fifteen feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was absolutely doubled over by the pain and the anguish of his own hopelessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: and his unwillingness and inability to lie to himself and convince himself of his self-righteousness even though this man had given up everything including wealth and money and successful career to seek after the Lord even he knew that it was all nothing and that he desperately needed God's amazing grace and it was the message contained in this book of Galatians in the book of Romans that
[SPEAKER_00]: It was this gospel grace that transformed him from being an utterly destroyed, we might even say non-functional human being, and to being one of the greatest leaders that church historical has ever seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's remarkable indeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, remember last week we left Peter and Paul in the middle of a public and rather possibly uncomfortable confrontation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to remind you, in case you weren't with us, Peter and Paul agreed earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: in counsel with Barnabas and with Barnabas and Titus, they had agreed that the gospel of grace was available to Gentile believers without putting them under or submitting them to the law, any of it, any portion of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd see night eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter later comes up to Antioch and he's enjoying wonderful fellowship with these Gentile and Jewish believers in Antioch.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's loving the time that he's spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then something happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some folks from the circumcision party smaked their way up to see what was going on with Peter and that's what we saw last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got a hold on Peter and he began ever so slowly as a matter of process to pull back.
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe at one point moving away from the table that had Gentile believers at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe continuing on towards missing out on and ducking out on engagements where you'd have to interact with them and pulling back ever so slightly but very clearly from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul Gavis is reasoning he was fearful of the circumcision party.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw what a great change that Christ and maturity had brought in Peter from being impetuous and being brash, maybe even on the arrogant side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter now fears a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We at least examined out some possibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very possible that Peter didn't want to offend these legalistic believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's quite possible indeed that he thought, oh yeah, they don't get it yet, but I don't want to offend them by as their leader by doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally,
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he was fearful of the ruckus in the stir that they would cause back home if they saw Peter eating pork, if they saw Peter eating with Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were very likely afraid of the stir that Peter was very likely afraid of the stir that would be caused and his home church, the sheltered Jerusalem church and very immature Jerusalem church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he didn't want to give these
[SPEAKER_00]: sad, legalistic, evil, sinister folks, an opportunity to tear him down before the Jerusalem church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was fearful, possibly, for his ministry, but it would get in the way that it would tear down all the progress they made.
[SPEAKER_00]: others even Barnabas, who was at that last meeting, joined in.
[SPEAKER_00]: They also were suckered into getting falling back into their old legalism, their old ways of life and worship, and plying very clearly that others must live by it or attain to the standard of the Mosaic law.
[SPEAKER_00]: in order to grow in Christ or worst yet in order to be saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we saw our big application from last week is that if Peter can be suckered into legalism and if part Barnabas can be deceived into a legalism that prohibits him and keeps him from fellowship with others, how much more can you and I?
[SPEAKER_00]: Having not experienced and seen what they've experienced and seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so that puts us in context, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians two, fourteen, and reads, but when I saw that they were not straightforward about the gospel, I said to see fist in the presence of all.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews?
[SPEAKER_00]: The policy is the situation and needs to make a public example.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is kind of weird because we might ask why he's going to make a public example and we'll talk about that as we go on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The occasion though was very, very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having Peter in town and in their church was an important occasion, undoubtedly, the believers there had heard stories about Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had heard very, very likely heard accounts from what Peter's interaction was with Christ, both before and after and certainly with the early church movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here they are with Peter sitting right at their table and you gotta believe everyone has their eyes fixed on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul saw that they were not being straightforward with the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a pastor, I get to deal with people who have these same difficulties, challenges, misunderstandings daily.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still struggling with sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that I'm saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still do these five things that there's no biblical prohibition against.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, I still wonder, I wouldn't do these things if I wasn't saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: People believers today, good believers today, who seek after the Lord, but don't know enough of his word, haven't dug into his word, are still absolutely throttled and under the stranglehold of legalism, even when we know better
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's Peter showing with his life that he's not straightforward with the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's ask, how has Peter not been straightforward?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd have said something, I think Paul would have rotated it, but he didn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he'd been changed his talk or maybe taught some sort of message on it, I think that probably would have been noteworthy enough to make it into Peter Urb to Paul's writing here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, as we've said before, it's very likely that Peter's thinking hadn't changed at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: His actions were what changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hadn't likely said anything to contradict the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hadn't declared that he was not, he hadn't declared that he was not going to associate with Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't change his teaching as far as we know.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't change his words given what the record we have here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just slowly pulled away.
[SPEAKER_00]: He slowly began to push aside the delicious crispy bacon, as it was passed towards him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can obscure the good news of Jesus Christ with our actions, and that should, I won't say, scare us, but that should be a sobering reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our actions can obscure the good news of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we do
[SPEAKER_00]: is eminently more important even than what we say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though we've got the tract, totally memorized, we've got it all figured out, and we know, and we would never say to anyone else that salvation depends on anything but faith in Jesus Christ, we might look at them and look at their life and insinuate
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way that they dress or the way that they appear to us, or maybe some thing that they're involved in, and signulate that maybe you need a little Jesus plus fix that behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you need a little Jesus plus stop associating with those people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you need a little Jesus plus Jesus plus, Jesus plus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never with our words, only with our actions, only with our insinuations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to ask the question, what does gospel reflective living look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: What manifests a life that is transformed by the gospel?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's as cute as a panda coming out of the water, but it's more important than a panda coming out of the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is a question that believers have struggled with for years and years and years and we've fallen down on the wrong side of it most of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might hear things like what
[SPEAKER_00]: What spins a believer's witness, and then we're immediately going to jump to these five sins, or these six sins, or being seen doing this, or being seen coming out of this place, and that's going to negatively affect our witness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would put forth to you that that should be very secondary in our understanding of what contradicts gospel reflective living.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything taints of believers witness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an ungraceous attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything taints of believers testimony, it's an unloving action or an unloving word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we will goof up and walk in our sin nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to, but it's pretty much a guarantee as you walk, as you're going to experience those moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say what far more so than your self-righteousness and your obnoxious parading of all the things that you don't do or the things that you do do before others.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going to make an impact is when they see you walking in sin that they hear you accepting and knowing the grace of God that is in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: To put it simply is the life of Christ within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: What had Christ spend most of his time doing teaching?
[SPEAKER_00]: Even under the administration of speaking to Israel and presenting her with their Messiah, even still
[SPEAKER_00]: He focused on God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ abhorred the legalistic obnoxious, empty ritualism that had been embraced by the Jewish leadership at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should do the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the life of Christ within us will do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He reached out to women caught in adultery to prostitutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: He reached out to drunkards.
[SPEAKER_00]: He reached out to tax collectors and thieves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And did not
[SPEAKER_00]: make them interestingly uncomfortable in his amazing glorious perfect presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what gospel reflective living will look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine it will look a lot like Christ's life looked while he was here on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that because if you are really reflecting the grace and love of God is only because it is Christ living his life out in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What stains a Christian witness, what ruins a Christian's witness, legalism, digitalism, harsh, angry, self-absorbed, self-defensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, type behaviors.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what stains a Christian's witness.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I would say that the person who never does anything wrong and no one ever sees them sin but they're proud of themselves has less of a Christian witness than the absolute motor with blood still fresh on his hands who cries out for grace to Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, moving out of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this gospel that they weren't straightforward to?
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd already set it in chapter one of Galatians.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, grace to you and peace from God or Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: quite simple this message and incredibly easy to obscure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always easy to take the pure simplicity of Jesus Christ dying on a cross for our sins that he would rescue us from this present evil age.
[SPEAKER_00]: and add to that my own little spin, my own little priority, my own little point, but that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I promise we do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does Paul choose to review Peter publicly here?
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't kind of violate the whole Matthew eighteen thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go once in private and go after that with a brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't do any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He jumps kind of right for the throat and publicly confronts Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would he do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Paul goofed up?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Paul walking in sin?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: The offense was public and so the review can the restoration also had to be public as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter's offense and pulling away had done far worse even than just saying it, he demonstrated that somehow adherence to the Mosaic law brought about a greater righteousness by his actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it had to be stated before everybody at the Antioch Church, that this was not the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter had to be publicly corrected because one, he was a position of leadership and two, his sin was public.
[SPEAKER_00]: This misunderstanding was negatively affecting everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while we don't know how many were led astray by it, it seemed that at least the Jewish sector of the congregation had been deeply affected.
[SPEAKER_00]: and certainly that caused waves and ripples throughout the Gentile portion of that church as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it had to be a public, revoke, and restoration in order to deal with the severity and the public nature of the offense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why for the sake of the gospel?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because no one's no human's pride, no human's honor matters in light of getting the gospel right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul's address is not emotional, but it's very logical, and it's very direct.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two cultural references.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you get one of these?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how many get two?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, never mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter is a Jew.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter is Jewish, and so is Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lives like a Gentile, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts ten by God's command goes under the House of Cornelius, or going to the House of Cornelius.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first portion of his time in Antioch, it seems very clear that he was living like a Gentile, possibly even expanding his diet into the forbidden foods, and certainly sharing open and warm fellowship with those uncircum-sized dogs, those Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Paul is right in pointing out very clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter, you live like a Gentile, at least when it's
[SPEAKER_00]: So why then make gentiles live like Jews?
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, it's a very nice, direct logical line.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, look, if you're living like them, why are you trying to compel them to live like we were raised?
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to point out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't know how much emotion was poured into Paul's review.
[SPEAKER_00]: But certainly from the tone of it, it sounds like he just simply confronts Peter with the facts of what had gone on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't imagine him necessarily even raising his voice at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just pointing out the inconsistent consistency that likely Peter himself hadn't noticed, maintaining a complete objectivity, which is always valuable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, this the speech continues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I will let you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are those who think the speech ends there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in that camp.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to talk about it, I'm available.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do believe that this speech goes all the way through the end of the chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: and not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a chiasm.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about chiasms before, but very briefly, a chiasm is a mirror image in writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a way to structure your thoughts and a very common one in the ancient world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you would do is you would take your first idea and mirror it with your last idea and then move your way in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a rather short one, but at the very pinnacle you would put your main point, if you like, and his main point,
[SPEAKER_00]: We've believed in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter, we aren't what we were before.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're now something new and entirely new creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if that's helpful to you in understanding the emphasis and the repetition, the other great thing this does is it gives us a sort of commentary on, well, actually scripture commentary on itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: right in this context.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very nice thing to be able to see and understand Scripture about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul then points out that he and Peter were born Jewish and had lived under the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had been down that road and both of them quite a long ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not like those Gentile sinners.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's a couple of possibilities that I think are very allowable here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's either being a little bit facetious in calling the Gentiles the Gentile sinners as if the Jews were not sinners, which he's about to point out that anyone not having the righteousness of Christ is just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's a very high likelihood that he's also talking about the advantage that the Jewish people had historically.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, just like many of us who have been raised in a Christian home can understand what an advantage that we've had by God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, I would say we can't understand how manually difficult it is or even in America to come to a knowledge and an understanding of Jesus Christ if you hadn't seen it in your home growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Jewish people had that same advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were raised hearing regularly about the truth of God, His faithfulness, His eternal character, and being in some way protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the pagan idolatry and the worldly systems of thinking, and as we see, they didn't get everything right for sure, especially as we get into the New Testament time, but that was a distinct advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Messiah came, they had years and years and years of anticipation, looking for them, whereas these Gentiles who came to hear about Jesus for the first time, they'd say, there's a Messiah?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we need one of those?
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas they had this great advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very likely that he's also drawing that distinction.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, look, we have all the advantages here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had all the advantages here.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, they know something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a knowledge by perception.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've seen it in their own lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've seen it in other's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've seen it all about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've seen it in the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man is not justified by the works of the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we've used a nice comfortable church term.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's to find it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is justification?
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone once said it's justified never sinned.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But really what it is, because that has more to do with forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be justified is to be declared righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the negative idea of sins being washed away, although that plays a part, but it's being positively declared as a righteous person or being to have been in the right or have a righteousness that is above and beyond just a neutral innocence.
[SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to do this graphically, we could do it as such.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man brings his sins, his crimes, his moral and spiritual filth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that separates him from a perfect, holy, righteous God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by putting our faith in Christ, we are identified with Him in His death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritually speaking, when you place your faith in Jesus Christ, He sees you, He awakens you, and He accounts you as being spiritually on that cross with Jesus, dying to the law, dying to the world, dying to your sins, being fully free of the penalty thereof.
[SPEAKER_00]: With Christ, you were buried.
[SPEAKER_00]: That death was final, it was actual, it was real, it paid your sins fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were risen with Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The grave could not contain Jesus and you in Him were also not contained by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Resirected and ascended, far above all the powers of this world and seated.
[SPEAKER_00]: at the right hand of God the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your spiritual position right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thus sin is no longer and never will be the positional issue that stands between you and the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are justified because you are in the just one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only justification you'll ever need is the only justification you'll ever receive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adding all of your righteous works will be like strapping and covering
[SPEAKER_00]: a perfectly clean car in filthy rags is silly to try to add to our salvation with our own righteous works.
[SPEAKER_00]: To put this another way, coming up to a sort of accounting equation, man has sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we bring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ has the righteousness of God, actually Christ is the righteousness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so God, in a miracle of accounting,
[SPEAKER_00]: moves our sin as we place faith on Him on to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And imputes Christ's righteousness to our account entirely by His grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our sin is paid for in Christ justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are declared righteous before God by faith alone through grace alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think that you're going to improve upon that, then you don't understand what has been given to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that we understand justification, hopefully, we're going to ask, how can we be justified?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Paul tells us, it's by faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, faith is a word that gets confused and really abused in our culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there's a popular, secular definition of faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's believing something, believing something, but you know is not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that faith?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gigi's given me a great face to respond to that definition.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what faith is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is trusting in what you know to be true and believe me, having looked into this book for several years and having looked into the archeology and some of the things that substantiate this book, I can say to you with unwavering confidence you have a reasonable faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your trust in this book is justified academically intellectually in every way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is faith?
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is often is actually one Greek word that gets translated several ways throughout the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith, belief, trust, and the idea is that it carries all those concepts implicitly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, we get in our way of thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might parse this out as being a sort of levels of belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that eating too many hamburgers will make me fat, but not enough so not to eat too many hamburgers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we might question, like, what do you really believe that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or did you really want to find out for yourself?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that idea isn't so much placed in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Belief in Christ is not just a mental ascent that a man died and was risen again, not even just a mental ascent that the son of God put on flesh and died and rose again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The important point is trusting that I believe that he paid for my sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: trusting like the classic trust fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it that person's faith that will keep their head from cracking against the ground?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, their faith has nothing to do with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their faith is the only thing that allows them to fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's their friends that will hold them in this case.
[SPEAKER_00]: So faith in and of itself has no power.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a good work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a righteous act.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as this person didn't do a righteous thing by jumping, however, he did put his faith in a good place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith needs an object.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is the only object our faith of our faith that can save.
[SPEAKER_00]: Putting a faith in ourselves will never save.
[SPEAKER_00]: Putting a faith in some sort of system of rewards and punishments to make the account even out will never save.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is the only object of our faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is not a good work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're all exhibiting incredible faith right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're standing here and not one of you at least seems to be worried that the roof is going to fall down on your head and kill you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're exhibiting even more faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're all sitting in those chairs and trusting having faith that you are not going to fall on the ground and embarrass yourself in front of all your friends and your spiritual family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your faith keeping the roof up?
[SPEAKER_00]: as no efficacy, no power at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your faith keeping your bum from hitting the floor?
[SPEAKER_00]: No!
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply, your faith is simply in something that is doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The chair is still doing the work, but steel girders are still doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've just simply put your faith in the right place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is not a good work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much like receiving a gift if you like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's what salvation is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, we have a very good example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last Christmas, Dawn and Sharon gave me a beautiful tie with the nativity on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the next Sunday, I wore it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone said, that is a fantastic tie.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I received it myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took it in faith that they didn't put poison on it or didn't write idiot on the back and in something that would only show up in black lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore, I feel like I can take a lot of credit for my faith and in my reception of that gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd say, you're a ridiculous fool.
[SPEAKER_00]: The credit goes to Don and Sharon for giving me that beautiful tie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is not a good work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply a trusting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply a receiving.
[SPEAKER_00]: That free gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is a receiving a gift of justification in Christ one because we trust in God's character, ability, and desire to save us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's simple, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not by words of the world law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul is emphatic in his repetition here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Justification does not come through the works of the law nor can it come through the works of the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get it?
[SPEAKER_00]: No justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: No righteousness for you according to the works of the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Paul didn't have underline.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul didn't have circling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul didn't have big bold letters.
[SPEAKER_00]: He might have written him and thicker.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what he had was repetition.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was his way of letting people know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this was important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the purpose of this chiaism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even more in fact, Paul repeats this sentiment with even more gusto.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does he say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is not by the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: No righteousness is coming to you by the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no one who is going to be declared justified before God by the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: No fallen human will ever be declared righteous by their acts, by their righteous or just acts, not just the law of Moses, but any law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any standard that you want to put out, it will never be in all of human history by the works of the law that a person could be declared righteous, save one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he's the only one in his category.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal to Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a bigger deal than if the Colorado Rockies won the Super Bowl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't that be a pretty big deal?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that'd be a huge deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're small to him wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Super Bowl.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It still wouldn't be as big a deal as this reality is spiritually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understanding that by the keeping of the law there is no right there's no opportunity for justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to understand that, everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin Luther writes in his wonderful commentary on Galatians, which was given to me by a dear friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who can judge rightly between the law and the gospel should thank God and know that he is a true theologian.
[SPEAKER_00]: In times of temptation, I confess that I myself do not know how to do this as I ought.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way to discern the one from the other is to place the gospel in heaven and the law on the earth and to call the righteousness of the gospel heavenly and the righteousness of the law earthly and to put as much difference between the righteousness of the gospel and the law as God has between heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: and earth between light and darkness between day and night in a fantastic picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that man we read about before who is absolutely doubled over with fear and legalism, who is under the tyranny of the law and trying to find any righteousness therein finally finds peace by realizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the righteousness of the gospel is the only satisfaction you'll ever have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moving on to the final verses of our study.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if, while we seek it, if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin may it never be.
[SPEAKER_00]: For I rebuild what I have once destroyed, if I rebuild what I once have destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul takes Peter to task, kind of having established all the premises that they agree on, obviously they agree on it because they put faith in Christ, each of them, Paul undoubtedly knew about Peter's experience in Acts chapter ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul knew he'd spent, he'd log some real hours with Peter at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew that he had spent some time with Cornelius.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew that he had spent time eating with Gentiles and doing all sorts of things that he shouldn't do under the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: They both agreed very soundly that justification comes by faith through grace in Christ alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ had commanded Peter to disobey the law of Moses three times three times the angels let down this sheet and show Peter all of the tasty animals he's not supposed to eat and he says Peter eat up and he says no Lord I'm never eat of those unclean animals and God says three times do not call unclean but I have declared clean if Peter were still under the law
[SPEAKER_00]: Then God was telling him to sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter enjoyed fellowship with uncircum-sized gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Peter was still under the law, then God was willing him to sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: If what Christ commands his sin, then his Christ a minister of sin, this is what Paul's bringing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is kind of a confusing passage, but it makes a great deal of sense in light of the relationship and what they're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, if they're still under the law, then Christ is commanding them to break the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, God is our Jesus Christ, is a minister of sin, who follows repulsed by the very idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is what legalism does.
[SPEAKER_00]: makes our own little fancy set of rules that we think that we can abide by today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And essentially, drugs, gods, perfect righteousness down to a level that we think is attainable so that I can feel like I'm better than you or you can feel like you're better than the next person.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what legalism does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, ultimately, always accuses God of being less than what He is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Person is justified by faith in Christ who tries to go back to law-keeping only prove themselves a sinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not trusting Christ always results in the same thing, loss, an unbeliever who is not trusting in Christ will never know eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: until he trusts.
[SPEAKER_00]: A believer who is not trusting in Jesus Christ, his life, his love, his righteousness will know only shattered relationships, will know only a shattered most importantly, fellowship with God, not broken relationship, broken fellowship with God, and will be miserable until he could return to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to ask you this morning as we go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's your gospel testimony?
[SPEAKER_00]: How is it defined?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it defined by letting all the people in your life know the things that you do and don't do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you're a Christian and you just don't go see movies like that and you just don't go do things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was defined by the love and the grace and the incredible overwhelming power of the life of Christ within you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lives that live either display or obscure the gospel and the Savior who lives in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The life you live will either display or obscure the gospel and destroy our last series.
[SPEAKER_00]: Want to know what it is that God wants to mark your life and what will mark your life as you rest in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That those are the things that mark a life in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have great news.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we could just get out of the way to share it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That life will scream forth in words as well as actions that we are not ashamed of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Paul says, for it is the power of God for salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: To everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is written with the righteous man, shall live by faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be pray with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for this opportunity to be hold your grace to glorify your name.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I pray that as we continue to seek after knowing you and digging into your Word, that we might trust in all that you are and all that you've done for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: no longer trust in our own means and devices, but seek after you and knowing you and displaying forth your wonderful, perfect life and righteousness to a world that desperately in need of that love and grace that will need to provide.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Christ's name we pray, amen.