Two Journeys

 Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Galatians 5:1-5 and what it means that Christ has set us free and at what cost he accomplished this.

We have the privilege of turning back now to the Book of Galatians and we are immediately struck by this statement in Galatians 5:1, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." What is freedom? What do you think of when you think of freedom? Many people, I think, mis-define this in our culture. They don't really fully understand it. People think of it as the ability to do anything that you want to do whenever you want to do it. They see it as a complete severing of all shackles, and chains, and requirements, and boundaries. I'm thinking right now of the Australian Outback restaurant. "No rules," right? Have you ever seen that? I actually said to a waitress, "Would it be okay if I go back in the kitchen and make myself a sandwich? Would that be alright?" They looked surprised. Apparently, there are rules at the Australian Outback that you need to follow. But there's this sense of a yearning for freedom, a yearning to go wherever you want to go, and eat whatever you want to eat, and say whatever comes into your mind to say. That's how they define freedom. People define it as a yearning to win a lottery ticket, and be able to give your resignation the very next day from a job that you don't like, and then you just be independently wealthy the rest of your life.

Or think about students on the last day of school. I never forget that, fifth grade, just counting down the seconds until, at last, I could be free. Or think about, let's say, somebody that's graduated from college and has a whole summer to do whatever they want. Maybe they buy a EuroRail Pass, and they go and stay in youth hostels, and go wherever they want to go, and do whatever they want to do all summer long. They define freedom that way. Or perhaps a single person, who's free from marriage, and can pursue romantic entanglements with whoever they choose of the opposite sex. Or maybe a married couple, that both of them making a hefty income, but they're not bound down by kids. They have double income, but no kids. They're free in that regard. Or perhaps it's the individual standing on the north face of the Eiger in one of those aerodynamic squirrel suits. You ever seen those things? And they jump off, and they soar for four and a half minutes, until, hopefully, safely landing on the valley floor below. They're defining freedom that way.

Others define it perhaps more politically. They identify the 4th of July, 1776, with the Declaration of Independence and a new birth of freedom of a new nation, that then had to be earned on the battlefield. And five years later it was earned at the Battle of Yorktown. Or they define it with the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War, or the fall of the Berlin wall, or the peace demonstrations, and the freedom demonstrations in Tiananmen Square around that same time. People have all kinds of definitions of freedom. Now, the Bible has a lot to say about freedom. And as we come now, into a new phase of the Book of Galatians, we're going to be staring at this topic full on, and try to understand the freedom that Christ gave his life to buy for us.

What is that freedom? What is the nature of that freedom? Jesus defined it differently than all of the things I've been saying, because in order to understand freedom, we have to understand the bondage, the slavery that we were in before Christ came. And Jesus said it in John chapter 8, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." Truly, truly free. To me, a real picture of freedom is Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. They're actually prisoners, they're in chains, but they're singing at midnight with hearts that are set free by the grace of God, and they were more free than anyone, perhaps on the face of the Earth, at that moment. It has nothing to do with earthly circumstances or any of those things. It has to do with the relationship with Jesus Christ, the freedom that Christ alone can give, because the real bondage in this world is the bondage of sin, and Jesus alone has the power to break the chains of sin, and to set us free. But we need to understand the nature of that freedom. Is it freedom from all boundaries, and all constraints, and all restrictions, and all obligations? No rules no restrictions, no limitations? To be able to be, and do, and say, and own, and eat, and drink whatever we will, whenever we will? Is that it? I think not. If that's the definition of freedom, absolutely no boundaries, really, the freedom for self-definition, I would contend only Almighty God is free.

He (Almighty God) alone is self-existent. Everything else in the universe derives its existence from him. There can be no freedom that leaves God out of the equation. At the dedication of the temple, King Solomon was talking with a supernatural wisdom that the Spirit gave him, and he realized the limitations of the little, golden building that he had made for God, Almighty God, to dwell in. And as he was dedicating that, and as he was praying for that temple…I just loved this moment of reflection that comes on him. In 1 Kings 8:27, he said, "But will God really dwell on Earth? Heaven, even the highest Heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple that I have built?" There is no container for God, no boundaries for God. There's no place you put Him and that's where he has to stay.

All of the universe depends on God, and God alone is free to define himself, and to be what he will be. All creatures have their boundaries, all of them, and that's why we have that language Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps you've never thought of it before, but these little phrases He puts in there, He speaks of the birds of the air. Birds of the air. That's their realm. That's where they fly. Birds of the air. He speaks of fish of the sea. He speaks of the beasts of the earth. He speaks of the lilies of the field. Those little phrases talk about where they were placed by the Creator and what they are to do. An eagle soars through the air, because that's its proper domain. It feels its freedom by soaring through the air as it was designed by God to do. The dolphin swims through the sea and it feels its freedom there. A cheetah races across the field 70 miles an hour. It runs in freedom, because that's what it was made by God to do. A lily grows stationary in its place. It doesn't move, but it has a root system that sucks nutrients and moisture from the soil, and it grows up, and it's beautiful, and that's what it's free do by God. And so man also has boundaries. We are created to operate in a set of constraints. Salvation doesn't change that.

Now, Satan, when he fell, challenged his position. He challenged his boundaries, and he didn't want to stay there, and he said in Isaiah 14, "I will ascend to Heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit in throne on the Mount of Assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high," but God cast him down to the Earth for his arrogance and his pride. Also, angels that fell with him did not keep, it says in Jude 6, their proper places, their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, and so God consigned them to a pit, to be kept in eternal bonds, in darkness until Judgment Day.

Now, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted man, male and female, with the same discontent of boundaries, "You will be like God," and we transgressed. I picture this like we jumped the fence. We went across the fence that God had set up. God had given us freedom. It says in Genesis 2:16 and 17, God said to Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden." There's the scope of your freedom. "You're free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of it, you will surely die." Now, some have asked, "Why did God give any prohibition at all?" It's because he's God, and we're not, and he wanted us to know that. He has the right to limit us. He alone is unlimited as the sovereign King of the universe.

Well, the moment that we transgress, the moment that we jumped the fence, and went where we should not go, and ate what we should not eat, at that moment, we became slaves with invisible spiritual chains on us. The essence of our bondage was in our hearts and minds. We hated God and we hated God's will for us. We chafed, and yearned, and lusted, and coveted, and hated each other, and we murmured, and we were churningly restless in our assigned place. Christ came to set us free from all that. He came to liberate us from that churning, and chafing, and lusting, and coveting. He came to set us free by enabling us to delight in our limitations, and our boundaries, and find joy within those boundary lines. As David said in Psalm 16:6, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely, I have a delightful inheritance."

The Word of God describes our boundaries. The freedom that Christ gives is to allow us to run freely within those boundaries. As it says beautifully in Psalm 119:32, "I run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free." God's law defines freedom for us and He enables us to run by the Spirit in the path of those boundaries. Now, we are a nation that delights in liberty and freedom. We celebrate it as part of our national ethos. It's part of our heritage, and we delight in that, and we should. But America, I believe, is full of people who define freedom wrongly. They define freedom as the ability to do whatever you want to do, whatever your heart drive is, whatever your heart desires. I think I would define freedom differently.

Biblically, the definition of freedom is the God-given heart inclination and power to do what is right according to God's Word. Simply put, to delight in God's law and fulfill it. That's freedom. That's true freedom and that's the freedom that Christ came to give. Now, as we come to Galatians 5, we come to a turning point in the epistle. We've had four chapters, Galatians 1-4, in which the apostle Paul is taking on and destroying a false gospel, the false gospel of the Judaizers. These were Jewish professors of faith in Christ, people who had... They claimed to be Christians, but they came to Galatia to these churches that the Apostle Paul had planted, and after he had left, they came in, and they brought a different gospel, which was no gospel at all. It worked like this: You have to believe in Jesus, plus obey the laws of Moses, in order to be saved, in order to be justified. It's a combination, but it was poisonous.

Paul, in Galatians 1 and on into Chapter 2, establishes his authority to address the issue, says that he got his apostleship from Almighty God. And he says he also got his Gospel from God. And then he declares in Chapter 2, what that Gospel is, and what the heart of the Gospel is, which is Justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law, found in Galatians 2:16. And then in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Now, that's the Gospel, and he defines it very plainly. And then he establishes the Gospel in Galatians 3-4, in both experience, and in Scripture. And he proves that this idea, this doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works, is not something he made up, it's nothing new. It's exactly what saved the believers in the Old Testament. And he proves that, and he goes through all of this biblical proof.

Now, in Galatians 5-6, he turns a corner to address this probing question, "How shall we now live? What kind of lives shall we live, now that we have been justified by faith?" And he raises... As always, people raise this question, "If we're completely forgiven by grace, apart from works of the law, doesn't that mean that we can just live a dissolute life of sin, and you'll be forgiven, and go to heaven? Is that what it means, that there's total immorality and it's going to be covered by grace? Does this mean we can sin as much as we want and get away with it?" And centuries of Christians have struggled with this question, and many church leaders have responded by instituting systems of morality, laws which have put boundaries around the church, and around the people of God. And they sought to restrain total exercise of Christian freedom.

But many of those approaches have resulted in a poisonous legalism, not much different from the Judaizers. That makes the next two chapters we're going to look at, pretty vital, to understand in the Christian life, "How shall we live as justified sinners? What kind of freedom shall we live out?" In Galatians 5-6, he's going to answer, "We live as free people, justified by faith in Christ, and who also live by the Spirit, a righteous, and holy, and upright life." This is the beauty of a true Christian life, but we don't live that life as slaves, who are trying constantly to earn God's favor by our obedience. We live it as adopted sons and daughters. We live the life of the Spirit, a life of freedom, yes, freedom from legalism, freedom from boundaries, and constraints, and laws that characterize the law of Moses. But freedom, also, to live a holy life, just as Jesus did, to delight in righteousness.

In Galatians 5, we are going to unfold the glories of the Spirit-filled life, and the answer to the fears that the doctrine of justification by faith leads to an immoral life of freedom from all constraint. We're going to see that there are twin dangers and we've talked about this before in the true Christian life. You've got a third rail on both sides of the road. And you've got legalism on one side, and that's one kind of bondage. And you've got license on the other side, and that's another kind of bondage. And both of them are found to be bondage in the New Testament. We either can be enslaved to a system of rules and regulations by which you're continually earning God's favor, legalism, or you're going to be enslaved to your own passions, and lusts, and desires, and unable to break free. And that's license, but they're both bondage. The truth is right down the middle.

I was with a relatively new driver some time ago, (I'm not going to say who or whatever the circumstances), but we were in one of those turn lanes where you're waiting, and it was a very heavy traffic, and we needed to be exactly right. Do you know what I'm saying? You couldn't be halves into the thing and you couldn't be too far over, that would be head-on collision. We had to be exactly right. And so it is here. We need to be right down the middle of a Spirit-filled freedom that leads to holiness, and a delight in God's moral law, because there's danger on both sides.

Let's look at it carefully now. We begin at verse 1, powerful opening statement, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We're set free by Christ. He set us free." What an awesome thought. Christ delights in making slaves free. He loves to set the captive free. It is his joy to set you free from sin and that's what he came to do. He yearns to hear the cry of freedom, just as Yahweh, in Exodus 3, heard the cries of his people in bondage in Egypt and he came to set them free. And so also, Jesus has come. Now, we, in Adam, we are an enslaved race. If you're just in Adam, and not in Christ, you're a slave to sin, and to Satan. The Bible says this in First John 5:19, "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one." He is an evil dictator, a tyrant, a dominator, Satan, I mean. As we've already seen in John 8:34, sin itself is a tyrant, "Everyone who sins [said Jesus] is a slave to sin." Paul says in Romans 6:20, "When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness." We were slaves.

And the essence of slavery is compulsion, chains you cannot see, and chains you cannot escape. They're invisible spiritual chains, you can't see them, you can't escape from them. We felt the lash of the task master, just as the Jewish slaves did in Egypt, and we were dominated by Satan's clever and vicious poisonous temptations, and by our own fleshly nature that delighted in evil things. And we could resist some temptations, occasionally, but we couldn't be set free. We couldn't set ourselves free. And Paul uses the language of tyranny in Romans 5:21, "Sin reigned in death." Sin was a vicious tyrant.

Now, part of the bondage in the mind was the arrogance of independence. We had declared our independence from God, "We're going to live our own lives." And legalism came in, and connected with some categories of people, not everybody, but there's some people that know that they want to do better morally, but they're just every bit as much independent from God as they ever were. They are climbing a moral ladder up to heaven by their own efforts in keeping the law. It was still independence. They're lifting themselves up, and it's very devil-like. Like we saw in Isaiah 14, "I will, I will, I will ascend," and that's that moralistic legalism. But the depth, and power, and complexity, and sinister nature of Satan's bondage was hidden from our eyes, we couldn't see it. He had ensnared the human race in unbreakable cords of compulsion, we had no choice but to sin. And the essence of it was in the mind, and in the heart, as it says in Romans 8:7-8, "For the mindset of the flesh is hostile to God, because it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot do so." We couldn't keep the law, we hated it.

We were wrapped up in invisible chains and we could not break them. We needed a savior, and so Christ has set us free. It is for freedom that Christ came into the world. It was for freedom that Christ was incarnated by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. It was for freedom that Christ never sinned, so that he could give us righteousness. It was for freedom that he did these miracles of grace. It was for freedom he died on the cross and for freedom that he rose from the dead. For freedom, he did all of these things.

In Luke 11, Jesus was defending his miraculous ministry of driving out demons by the Word of his sovereign power. And they said, "It's by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that He's driving out demons." Jesus basically said, "This makes no sense. How can Satan drive out Satan?" Actually, what's going on here, is Satan is like a strong, powerful man, fully armed, who's guarding his house, and all his possessions (that means people), and he's not letting anyone out. But suddenly, someone more powerful comes, and overpowers that strong man, and strips his armor in which he trusted, takes it away, throws it on the ground, and goes, and plunders his house. We are the plunder. He rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of the Son he loves. We have been rescued by Jesus. He set us free.

Jesus said in Luke 4, at the beginning of his ministry, reading from Isaiah's scroll, He said, "I came to proclaim freedom for the captives." A couple of chapters later, in Luke 13, there was a woman. You remember her? She had been hunched over for 18 years by a spirit, it says, by a demon. And Jesus said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." And she straightens up immediately for the first time in 18 years. And then they criticize him for doing it on the Sabbath. I think He did most of his miracles on the Sabbath. What do you think? "Is it Sabbath? Okay, time to get to work." I think he just loved doing that. But he loved setting this woman free from her bondage, to just set her free. And he says this, "Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"

Well, friends, I believe that Jesus' miracles literally, physically happened in space and time. But they also give us a picture of the spiritual work He came to do, right? We can say, "I once was blind, and now, I see." "I was starving, but now, I eat." "I was thirsty, but now, I drink." Those are all not only physical, but they're metaphors for the spiritual work that Christ came to do. We were hunched over and bound up in sin by Satan. And Jesus came, and set us free. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And he set us free, ultimately, by His substitutionary death.

We are set free from the condemnation of the law. We are set free from the terrors of hell and death. We are set free from Satan's temptations. You know what? As a Christian filled with the Spirit, you never, ever need to sin again, ever. No temptation will ever come to you, with compulsion, with power, with authority to command you. You can tell them all to go away. You can resist them all by the power of God. You are no longer a slave to sin. Amen? That's your emancipation proclamation from Jesus. That's your Magna Carta of freedom. You are set free. You never, ever need to sin again, ever. Every temptation that comes your way can die. Now, they won't all die, because Romans 7 says that the flesh is powerful, and you're going to struggle, and you're going to need to confess your sins. We'll talk about that. But Christ has set you free, and we are free now, with hearts set free to delight in righteousness, and hate wickedness, and to run in the path of God's commands. And we have the freedom to love righteousness.

Look ahead at verse 6, "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith working through love." That's the freedom of a Christian. Our faith now, working through love to obey the commands of God. Christ died to give us this freedom, the most expensive substance, the most precious substance that has ever been, the precious blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish or defect was shed for sinners like you and me. But the second point I want to make is that this freedom is fragile and needs to be defended. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm then, and do not allow yourselves, again, to be burdened by a yoke of slavery. You've got to defend this freedom. You have to protect it.

You get a picture... I get a picture in my mind here, of needing to just get a good footing under me, because it's like gale force wind. Picture yourself like a mountaineer going along a knife edge, going up to the summit, and there are these crosswinds blowing, and every step you take, if it's not rooted, you're going to get blown off the mountain to your death. Satan is just going to be blowing on you the whole time, one way or the other, toward license, or legalism, but you've got to stand firm on this issue of freedom, constantly. Like someone once said famously, "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We've got to be constantly vigilant, or we'll lose this freedom, one way or the other. Legalism and license, they beckon, like grand chasms on the left and right, and we must stand firm.

Now, here I think, especially, he's having in mind the yoke of legalism. The Judaizers want these Gentile converts to bow their necks to their interpretation of the Christian life, with circumcision being the start of it. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But he says, "Stand firm and don't submit, again, to a yoke of slavery." Peter called it, in Acts 15, in the Jerusalem Council, "A yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear." Why are you trying to put that on the necks of the disciples? We couldn't bear it. It's a form of bondage, this legalism.

I want you to notice in verse 1, and this is an important point for you now to keep this in mind. If the Lord tarries, if we go on, perhaps generations from here, (this is true in every local church), every local church is responsible for the doctrine they're getting from the pulpit. You're responsible. If it's bad doctrine, throw the guy out. He's not talking to the Judaizers here, he's talking to the Galatians. Throw them out, don't listen to them anymore. Get them out of there. Say, "You have no right to teach us these things anymore." But like in 2 Corinthians 11, you're putting up with anyone who pushes themselves forward, or slaps you in the face, or puts you in some kind of bondage. He's talking about false teachers there. Don't put up with them. This is a vital principle of congregationalism. Local congregations are responsible for the teachers that they get. And if they're not teaching rightly, you need to be like a Berean, and take everything that is said back to the Scriptures, and be sure it's scriptural. And it's up to the church to get rid of false teachers. It's up to you.

My responsibility is, during the time I have, is to get you ready to recognize false teaching from true, and to embrace and delight in true teaching, and to stand firm against legalism and license. How can Christ become worthless to you? And how can he become alien to you? Look at verses 2-4. There's a threat that, if you don't stand firm, that Christ would become worthless to us. Look at verse 2, "Take note, I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you at all." He's saying, "Take note, sit up, notice. This is a severe warning. Galatians, if you walk under that door that says 'circumcision,' you walk through that door, you go ahead and let yourself be circumcised, you're going to go into a whole world of legalism. It's just the beginning. Circumcision's just the start. You're going to be walking into a whole world. You'll have to keep the dietary regulations. You'll have to keep the laws for special days, and months, and seasons, and years, and festivals, and all of those things. You'll have to uphold the animal sacrificial system. You'll have to go to Jerusalem three times a year and other things besides. You'll have to follow the Sabbath regulations according to the priests and what they say.

But even worse than all that, the whole time you're doing that, you'll be thinking like a slave, and not like a son or daughter. That's the worst part of all. You'll be thinking the whole time,  you've got to earn God's smile, you've got to earn his affection, you've got to earn his love, or he's going to kick you out. You'll be thinking of him wrongly the whole time.

Now, I want to remind you, Paul says in verse 3 what the law was. We've already been through this, but I want to remind you. Look at verse 3, "I declare, again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, that he's obligated to keep or obey the whole law." He already said this, remember back in Galatians 3:10? He says, "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law." As we said back then, "All the law, all the time, or you're cursed by God." Well, no one wants to be under that. This is a terrible, a terrible slavery. It's actually a form of debt. Verse 3 in the KJV, I love this, it says, "For I testify, again, to every man that is circumcised, that he is a, [listen to this,]"a debtor to the whole law." You owe the law, whole law. And Christ would be of no profit, but rather, the person has a debt they have to pay off. More on that in a moment. And he says in verse 4, "You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ, you've fallen away from grace."

Now, once this legalism takes root, we no longer stay close to Christ. There has come a separation from us and Christ. Remember that Christ said, "I am the vine and you are the branches, if you remain in me, and I in you, you'll bear much fruit. Apart from me now, you can do nothing." Grace is the life-giving sap that flows from our union with Christ, to enable us to flourish and bear fruit for the Glory of God. There's an ongoing sap that needs to flow, a life through the Spirit, through Christ's death and resurrection, and by his Spirit. He is moving in us to obey God's moral law, to love God with all of our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves. He's moving in us to do that.

He didn't remain high and aloof up on his judgment seat, his arms crossed…Always picturing him like, "Here's the law, do it. Here it is, do it. It's up to you and you're on your own." You have a sense that you're on your own. That's the whole legalism thing. He's not going to lift a finger to help you. That's not the Gospel. Jesus became incarnate to help us, and then gave the Holy Spirit to live within us, to help us, because apart from him, we could do nothing. The legalism thing, it's like an expert athlete telling a bunch of young people to do what he did. Picture Michael Jordan, coaching a middle school basketball team, sitting the team down. He's so frustrated with the way they played in their last game, and he puts on videos of himself, "Come Fly with Me," or something like that. He says, "Do that!" I'm thinking, "I can't do that!"  And all he is just angry, and yelling at them all the time, because they're not doing what he did. This... It's not a good analogy... life of a great basketball player.  Jesus did live a perfect life, but he does not stand and say, "Now, I did it. Now, you do it and its up to you." That's not it, that's legalism.

Rather, picture a father and a son playing with Legos, and the father says, "Okay, it's time to clean up." Now, he can go one of two ways. He can say, "Son, you're capable of cleaning these Legos up. I'm going to give you 10 minutes or you're going to get the biggest spanking you've ever gotten. I'm going to sit there and watch you." Well, look, I'll tell you, that son may do it or may not, but what is he feeling the whole time that he's putting all those Lego blocks away? He's living in fear. But suppose, instead, the son looks up and says, "Daddy, will you help me?" He says, "Sure," and he gets down, and sits cross-legged, and he says, "Tell you what, I'll do the red ones and the blue ones. You do the yellow ones and the white ones. And we'll have a race," is a whole different feel. It's a great illustration from John Piper, and ever since I heard it, I love that, the picture of God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, getting down with us and obeying his own law, fulfilling it in us.

Now, in verse 4, we have a phrase that's caused a lot of people trouble, "Fallen from grace." Have you ever heard that before? "Fallen from grace." I was raised in the Catholic church, and in Catholic theology, there's this idea that if you commit a mortal sin, you'll fall from grace. And if you die outside of grace, you go to hell. That's what they teach. Arminian theology, like John Wesley, and all the Methodists, teach that you can lose your salvation, and they'll point to this expression of "fallen from grace." Both systems employ this phrase to describe falling from grace and the implication is, you can lose your salvation. That's not what this verse is teaching, not at all.

Can I say straight out, that if you have received the gift of God's sovereign grace, and as a result of that, have been born again, and are justified by faith, that will never change. No one who's born again ever dies spiritually, and no one who is justified, and declared not guilty by the judge of all the earth, will ever have that reversed. That's not what's happening. Either you're in God's grace or you're not. Either you're light or you're darkness. But the question is your own thinking about your Christian life, and if you have been justified by God's grace, by his mercy, by simple faith, and then later, you think you now need to hold on, or make progress on your own, by yourself, you have, in your own mind, stopped thinking about grace. You're not dependent on Christ anymore. You're relying on yourself, just like he said in chapter 3, "You, having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh?" You're trying to work it out by yourself, you've fallen from grace, alienated from Christ.

No, no, no, you're a branch and he's the vine. Stay close to him, depend on him, pray to him, ask him every moment for help. That's what he's talking about. It doesn't mean you can lose your salvation. I love the verse in John 6, "This is the will of him who sent me. I've come down from Heaven, not to do my own will, [Jesus said] but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raised them up at the last day." He's not going to lose anybody. You can't fall from grace, if that's what that means, it can never happen. But the grace of God actually has transformative power and you need understand that. It isn't just to get you justified. The same grace sanctifies you day by day. God's grace is powerful in a Christian. Remember, how Paul said, "By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace, to me, was not without effect." That's a great understatement, isn't it? "Oh, his grace, to me, was not without effect. No, no, no, I worked harder than all of them, yet, not I, but the grace of God in me." God's grace is powerful inside a Christian.

John Piper talks about something called the debtor's ethic, I don't have time to go into all of this, but here's the idea. Right now, right here, where you stand in your Christian life, you can spend your life looking back at what Jesus has done and say, "He has paid a huge price for me. I owe him everything. Now, as I look forward, I got to spend the rest of my life paying it off." Have you ever felt that pressure? Somebody invites you over to eat and you feel the pressure to invite them back? Somebody gives you a gift and feel a pressure to give them a gift, as much, or maybe, even a little more than the one they gave you. You know what that is? That's just pride. In effect, you're saying, "Alright, Jesus, thank you for all that you did. I realize I couldn't have done it without you, but okay, I got it now, and I'm going to try to pay that back. I'm going to try to pay it back." Then salvation becomes like a mortgage and you got to make daily payments off it, you know what I'm saying? Payments of thanksgiving, payments of evangelism, and payments of good works, and all that. You got to pay it down and you'll never pay it down. And you're just going to keep being, it's debt bondage, is what it is. You know what debt bondage is? It's where, after slavery became illegal, the owners of the plantations, like sugar plantations, got real clever, and they gave big chunks of money to poor people to come and work on the plantation, and they couldn't leave until that money was paid off. Well, those poor people, maybe never had so much money in their lives, would use it to pay off other things or whatever, they didn't have the money. They were just no different than slaves from then on. They're paying off a debt they can never pay.

That is not the Christian life. We don't live with a constant "thank you" debt we have to pay. I'm saying we should say, "Thank you," but that's not how we live. What we need to do is say, "Lord, you have been gracious to me. Up 'til now, I have feasted on that grace. Now, give me more. Every day, I want to go deeper in debt to grace." You're going to anyway, because apart from him, you can do nothing, right? Just acknowledge it and say, "Give me more. I need more grace. I need more and more grace. I've got challenges I'm going to face today, challenges of my flesh, challenges of Satan in the world. I've got your law and I want to live up to it. I want to follow. God, give me more grace, more and more grace." I'm not paying off a mortgage here. It's a whole different way of looking at it. Instead, verse 5, "By faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit, [look at this] The righteousness for which we hope." Isn't that beautiful? That's the Christian life. By faith, not by works, but by faith. We, through the Spirit, relying on the Spirit, we are eagerly awaiting for a hoped for perfection, righteousness. And we're yearning after, aiming for perfection through the Spirit by faith. That's the Christian life. That's not legalism or license. That's Christianity, is what that is.

What application can we take for this? Well, first of all, just ask, "Do you know this freedom? Are you a free man, free woman, free boy, free girl, are you? Have you come to Christ? Do you know that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus?" You've heard the Gospel here today. I'll say it again, God sent his son, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, rose from the dead on the third day, and if you trust in him, repent, and believe in him, you'll have eternal life. You don't have to leave here a slave. You can be as free as any veteran Christian, somebody who's been a Christian for 20, 30 years, equally free to them right now. Trust in him, ask him to save you, call on him. You don't have to move, just in your heart say, "I know I'm a slave to sin, free me Jesus," and he will, absolutely.

And secondly, as Christians, are you living a life of freedom, or have you slipped in one bondage, or another? Are you legalistic? Do you feel like every time you sin, you have to do something to earn God's favor again? Or do you say, "I need more grace. Forgive me, again, I need more grace." As you face the challenges of life, are you doing it on your own, like you're paying off a mortgage, or are you looking to him, and saying, "Give me more grace. I've feasted at your table of grace. I need another meal. I need to feast again. Jesus, give me more grace," and embrace your responsibility to fight for freedom. You've got to fight for this freedom. You're going to drift toward legalism or license at every moment. Satan's going to be pulling you. There's a crosswind blowing left to right, or right to left, but it's going to try to blow you one direction, or the other. You have tendencies in one direction or the other. You probably have legalistic tendencies or you may have license tendencies, but there's going to be that crosswind. You need to embrace the fight to be free from both, through the Spirit.

And embrace your responsibility, to be sure you're getting good teaching from the pulpit, and from the teachers here. Take everything back to the scriptures, like Bereans. Now, there's a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that. Okay, it could be that you're wrong. Bring it up and ask respectfully, but just know that this church is responsible for the preaching ministry and the teaching ministry. Embrace your responsibility and fight the debtor's ethic. Don't ever think, "I have to do this to pay back Jesus." You'll never pay him back, and everything you're doing, this you're doing, he's giving it to you anyways, as a gift by grace.

Everything you do puts you deeper in debt to Jesus into grace. And he's fine with that, because he is infinitely wealthy. Fight the debtor's ethic and learn how to obey, step-by-step, by the Spirit. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the beginning of Galatians Five. There's so many things to learn in this incredible chapter. I pray that you would be working right now in this sanctuary by the Spirit, setting people free, maybe for the first time through the Gospel, or maybe they needed to hear this message. They've been drifting toward legalism, or drifting toward license, and they needed to be set free again, to get back to a life of holiness by faith through the Spirit. I pray it would happen, in Jesus' name, Amen.

So this is the last special Sunday focus on evangelism. We have... We took five weeks in the middle of the sermon series in Galatians, and today I want to just do what I can to unfold 2 Corinthians 5 to you. The Book of Hebrews is one of my favorite books of the Bible. Of course, you say to me, "All of the books are your favorite book of the Bible," and that may be true, but I love Hebrews and how it begins there.  It says powerfully, “In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.”

The awesome truth of the Bible is that there is one God, and only one God, this living God, the living and true God, creator of the universe, infinite in his being, incomprehensible, eternal, perfect and holy. Possessing life in himself, possessing all wisdom in himself, possessing love and power in himself. This one true living God speaks. He lives and he speaks. He speaks and the universe comes into existence. He speaks and his people come into existence. He speaks and salvation comes to the lost.

Now, this God, it says, has spoken in the past through the prophets at many times and in various ways. He spoke to Noah, commanding him to build an ark. He spoke to Abraham, commanding him that he should leave Ur of the Chaldees, and later that he should take his son and sacrifice him on a mountain that he would show him. He spoke to Jacob from the top of a ladder that extended from earth to heaven, he spoke to Moses from the flames of a burning bush, he spoke to Israel, the nation, the words of the 10 Commandments, when he descended in fire on the top of the mountain, and the ground shook beneath their feet. He spoke to David and moved him to write beautiful poetry in the Psalms.  He spoke to Solomon, and Solomon spoke in Proverbs in words of pithy wisdom, spoke to Elijah in a still small voice, and then later in a fiery whirlwind that took him up to heaven. He spoke to Isaiah, he spoke to Jeremiah, to Ezekiel. He spoke to Daniel through an awesome, gigantic and glorious angel, whose glory was so overpowering that it took Daniel's breath away and knocked him to the ground. God spoke in the past at many times and in various ways through the prophets. Now, in these last days, He has spoken one final word to the human race, and that Word is Jesus.

He has spoken Jesus Christ to the human race. And Jesus, “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word, and after he had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.” So Jesus is God's final word to the human race. He is a word of hope and salvation to people desperate in their lost-ness, desperate in their brokenness, people who live every lives, though they may not admit it, who live every day of their lives in terror and fear of death. They're enslaved to their fear of death.

Now, now that Jesus has ascended to heaven, now that he is at the right hand of God, and now that the day of Pentecost has come, and he has poured out his Holy Spirit on the church, ge is at it again, he is speaking through us as ge spoke through the prophets. He has poured out his spirit, and he speaks at many times and in various ways through us as though we were his ambassadors. God Himself being in us by the Spirit, making his appeal through us. As Paul says, "We implore you, we beg you, be reconciled to God." God wants to use each one of us to do that kind of appealing, that kind of begging and pleading. He wants us through the Holy Spirit to care whether people, lost people are found. He wants us on fire from within, concerning the lost-ness of the world, and the fact that the Gospel has the power to change everything. He wants us to be his ambassadors. He has called each one of us to a thrilling external journey of worldwide gospel advance. He's called on us to be in the game, to be involved. He's called on us to be warriors in this warfare.

There's a world of lost people around us every day, and it is our responsibility to bring them the Gospel. So this is the final sermon in this series on evangelism. It's not the last time you'll hear about evangelism though, we're going to be talking about it. What I want to do is I want to lift up, I think, as I've studied over the last few weeks 2 Corinthians 5, the greatest single chapter on motivations for evangelism. It's like a rich treasure box of evangelistic motivations, one after the other. Now, this sermon actually originally had three parts, I stripped out two of them, alright, stripped out the bad motivation section, stripped out the techniques and tools of the trade section that's gone too.

Now all I'm going to do is just give you 17 motivators that just flow, 17! And not only that, but I'm going to preach shorter than usual because we've got a special time at the end for individuals who are involved in outreaching ministries at FBC to make an appeal to you to get involved in their ministries. So I need to leave even more time than I usually do in preaching. I was at a church recently, and up on the wall was this motivational poster, and it said, "Impossible, difficult, done." That's today's sermon.  So we'll start with impossible, and then it'll get difficult, and then we'll find that it's done. 17 motivators that flow. And what I want to do as we go through this just treasure chest of healthy motives. I just want to just zip by them. I'm not going to be able to unfold them. I want some of the mentions, the mere mentions to frustrate you and say, "Stop, wait a minute, I want to hear more about that." I think all of them could be a great sermon in and of itself, any one of these.

But recently, a friend of mine gave me a DVD of an hour tour of Acadia National Park. Now, many of you have never been to Acadia, but it's probably one of my favorite places on Earth. It's a spectacularly beautiful national park.  And it was an hour tour of all of the best spots in Acadia. So you're taking an hour to see, take a drive along the spectacular rocky coastline of Maine, and then you've got Thunder Hole, and then you've got Seal Beach, and then you've got Sand Beach and Pebble Beach, and you're going to go along there, and then you've got Precipice, which is the closest to rock climbing any normal person will ever get, and then you've got Cadillac Mountain where you can see the sunrise and sunset, and you can see that same rocky coastline. And in Bar Harbor, there's all kinds of art shops and all that. One hour. Well, I've got half an hour to go through even more spectacular material, and that is 2 Corinthians 5. So let's look at it. And what I want to do is I'm just going to ask the question again and again, why should we evangelize? And I'm going to find answers in this text to that question.

First, we should evangelize because the resurrection body is an absolute certainty. Now, you may fail to see the connection between the fact that someday we'll be raised from the dead and that we should be active in evangelism, but there's a clear connection in Paul's mind. He begins this chapter in verse one, “Now, we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands.” He's talking about the resurrection body. Verse four and five, “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now, it is God who has made us for this very purpose.”

So the basic idea is this: because we will someday be in a resurrection body, enjoying the perfection, the fullness of our salvation, and because there is nothing that can stop that, no power in Heaven or Earth or under the Earth can stop the resurrection from the dead. What that means is that we will most certainly receive the goal of our faith, the salvation, not only of our souls, but of our bodies. It is 100% certain. So we should have inside us a glowing, radiant hope that causes us to live entirely differently, knowing that our most bitter enemies, sin and wrath and judgment and Satan and hell and death have all been destroyed, and we are free from them all.

So the great resurrection chapter, Paul draws this exact connection. Because we will most certainly be raised from the dead, we should be active in serving the Lord now. At the end of 1 Corinthians 15, he says, “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where O death is your victory. Where O death is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, here's the application of that whole resurrection chapter. Verse 58, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” We evangelize because of the resurrection of the body. We know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. We are seeking the elect, we don't know who they are, we preach the gospel, they will come to faith in Christ, and some day they'll be in resurrection bodies, and so we. That's why we evangelize.

Second, we evangelize because the indwelling Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing that future. Look at verse five, “Now it is God who has us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”  The indwelling spirit is a constant proof within us of our future glory, of the certainty of the new heaven and the new earth, the beauty of that world. We have a constant deposit, a down payment, a stipend check coming to us from our billions and billions of inheritance, and we are living off that little stipend check and it's pretty generous, and we have our hearts filled with hope through the Holy Spirit. And he is guaranteeing that future, and he constantly urges us to know that we are loved by the Father, he is the Spirit crying out "Abba, Father," and he gives us power to evangelize. The Spirit's not afraid of anybody.  He is Almighty God, and he lives within us and testifies that we are children of God and that we are God's Ambassadors, and we have a deposit inside, proving this.

Thirdly, we evangelize because as a result of all of these things, we have learned to walk by faith, not by sight. We live a different kind of life as a result of these things. Look at verses six through eight, “Therefore we are always confident, and we know that as long as we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” So in the middle of that statement, Paul talks about his confidence, and he talks about how we live as Christians in this world. In this world, we will have trouble, in this world, we are away from the Lord; that means we don't have face-to-face fellowship with him. That's why Paul says, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain," something better. So we're away from Jesus in that sense, and we're yearning and longing for our heavenly home, aren't we? But as a result of that, we have learned to walk by faith, not by sight. We don't look at the world the way everyone else does. We've learned to look at the world differently. And so we've learned to live differently. We walk by faith and not by sight.

And so, as a result, we see the purpose of our time here on Earth differently, and that's why we evangelize.  We evangelize because there are eternal issues at work here. We evangelize for that reason. And it's a strong motivation to walk by faith, not by sight. Parenthetically, our faith gets stronger and stronger the more we're in the word. The more you hear good preaching, the more you're saturating your mind, memorizing Scripture, having daily quiet times, you're going to better and better walk by faith, not by sight.

Fourthly, we evangelize because it pleases the Lord.  It just pleases the Lord. It brings God pleasure. And that has become the central motivator of our lives. Look at verse nine, “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we're at home in the body or away from it.” This is among the most powerful motivators every Christian should have for everything they do. In Ephesians it says, “We should find out what pleases the Lord.” So we read the Scripture and we find out from his word what it is that pleases him. And we yearn to please him. We want Jesus to be happy with us. We want him to be pleased with how we live, not just generally, but every day, every moment. We want him to be pleased with the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart.

And it very much pleases the Lord when we lay down our lives for others, when we're willing to be self-sacrificial and pay the price to see someone else brought to faith in Christ. The Greek word here for "make it our goal", or "make it our aim" relates to a love of honor, relates to ambition. Paul says, "I'm clamoring for the honor of pleasing Christ." That's what he's saying, somewhat like an athlete, an Olympic athlete, just yearning for the honor of a gold medal, or a soldier yearning for the honor of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Wanting something like that, there's a yearning for honor. I want the honor of Christ expressing his pleasure in my life.  I want him to be pleased with me.

And that brings me right to the fifth one. We evangelize because some day we're going to give him an account for our lives. Someday there will be an assessing of everything we've said or done as Christians. Look at verse 10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.” Let me say this to you gently but clearly, every single Christian in this room underestimates Judgment Day. We underestimate what it's going to be like when this verse is fulfilled in our case. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. This Judgment Day assessment, this Judgment Day accountability is consistently taught in the Bible.

People struggle with it too. I've had so many people quote me this verse, in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Well, it is true that there will be no condemnation for you as a Christian, but it is not true that there will be no accountability. It is not true that there will be no assessment. It is not true that you will not have to give an account for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. There's a difference between giving Jesus an account and having Jesus say, “Depart from me, you are cursed into the eternal fire...” There's a difference between those two.

And notice that it says, “We'll have to give Hhim an account for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.” So the bad breaks into two categories, things that you did that you shouldn't have done, and you have to give an account for that. But there's also things that you should have done and didn't, and you have to give an account for that too.  When he sets up an evangelistic opportunity and you don't do it because of selfishness, you'll just have to give an account for it. Conversely, you give an account for the good things done in the body. Imagine him asking, "Here you were faithful, you stepped out, you were scared, but yet you showed courage and you evangelized, and it went very badly, and you got fired, or that person was never nice to you again, and yet you kept on evangelizing. How do you give an explanation for that?" And you know what you're going to say at that point. "You worked in me, courage and boldness by your spirit. To God be the glory." You'll give him full credit.

And then you know what he's going to do? He's going to give you eternal rewards for those things that survive the fire of judgment. Read about it in 1 Corinthians 3, “But the gold, the silver, the costly stones, the things you do by faith for the glory of God, out of love for others, those things that survived the fire, you'll have them to look at forever and ever.” And you know what those Judgment Day rewards will be? Praise from God. He'll express his pleasure with you and he'll say, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done. You were bold, you were clear, you loved people enough to share with them. Well done." Hey, let's have as many of those as we can. Amen? Let's store up treasure in Heaven. Store up as many evangelistic opportunities. Just be faithful. And if you get persecuted a lot, and if you have trouble a lot and all that, store up the courage and all the times you kept going anyway. To God be the glory. But we evangelize because there will be a Judgment Day assessment.

Sixthly, we evangelize because we, alone in this world, understand what it means to fear the Lord. We know what it is to fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Verse 11, it says, “Therefore knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

Alright, by the way, that's just a check, verse 11, just to check to be sure we're not taking things out of context. Alright, we're talking about evangelism, evangelism, evangelism. Should we be, maybe there's another topic here? No, no, there's no other topic. This whole chapter is about this, it's about evangelism, reaching out with the gospel. In verse 11, he says, Because we know what it is to fear the Lord, we persuade others. Persuade them what? To repent and believe in Jesus, to be reconciled to God. That's what he's talking about, the whole chapter. Okay, so that was just a check. We're in the right area, we're not taken out of context, but the motivator here is the fear of the Lord.

“…knowing what it is to fear the Lord…” Now, what does that mean? Well, we understand the fear of the Lord in this sense: The wrath of God and the curse of God and the judgment of God, those things were motivators for us to flee the wrath, to come to Jesus. We ran to Jesus and we found refuge, and now we don't fear God's wrath anymore, but we know those thoughts. But we're surrounded by people who aren't thinking about that at all, they don't know that there's a wrath to come. We do though. So now we can fear on their behalf, say, "I'm afraid for you, I fear for you if you don't repent and believe. I'm afraid what will happen to you if you don't repent and believe this gospel. I'm fearing for us both, but I pray that God through the Holy Spirit would move you into the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom and that you'd flee to Christ."

So we know what it is to fear the Lord. Jesus said in Luke 12, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing to you. I'll tell you who to fear. Fear the one who after the death of the body has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” So we do, as Christians, we fear him, but they don't fear him, they're not afraid to die in that sense, they're not afraid. They might be afraid of the process of death, but they should really fear what happens after death, and we have to fear God for them and so we persuade others, we plead with others to flee the wrath to come.

Seventh, we are active in evangelism because the love of Christ compels us. Verse 14, “The love of Christ controls us,” “…compels us,” “…constrains us,” lots of different translations, just something grabs hold of us strongly and pulls us in a direction. Controls us, compels us, constrains us to do what? Well, to evangelize, like we've been saying, we're pulled strongly. What does it? Well, the love of Christ. Now, NIV decides it for us saying Christ's love, but I'm going to just go straight from the Greek here and say the love of Christ, because it brings us to a bit of a head-scratching mystery. There's two different ways to understand the love of Christ compels us. It could be the love that Christ displayed... So as we get to see what kind of love Christ displayed on the cross, the way he died for us, that compels me to want to imitate him, and to lay down my life as he did. So that's the love that Christ displayed compels us, or it could be our love for Christ compels us. The fact that we love Christ, the love of Christ, our love for Christ compels us.  Jesus said, “If you love me, you'll obey what I command you.” And Lord Jesus, you were seeking and saving the lost. This is what you're doing in the world. I want to be involved. I want people to love you, Jesus. I want them to... And you want them, the elect, to be with you and to see your glory, I want that too. So we love you and I want to serve you that way. Which one? Does it matter? They're both biblical themes. Let's just say the love that Christ displayed and then the love He pours out in our hearts for him, both of those things compel us and constrain us and move us to evangelize.

Eighth, Christ's death compels us to live for others, frees us from selfishness. Verse 15, “For Christ's love compels us because we're convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” Verse 15, and he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. Now, I talked about this when I preached that single verse sermon on Galatians 2:20. I don't know if you remember that. But in Galatians 2:20 it says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” What's the next part? “I no longer live.” And I talked about that for a while. I no longer live, I don't have an ambition for my own life anymore; an independent ambition, Paul is saying. I just live for this one thing: I live to please Christ. I live to serve him and to serve others. I don't have a selfish ambition anymore, that's what he's saying there.

So all of us are so selfish. That's the nature of the flesh. What's in it for me? Every day, deciding what would I like to do today? You know, the idol of choice in the West, we have so much wealth and so much free time and so many options, and so we are so tempted towards selfishness, but this verse is a heat-seeking missile towards selfishness, blowing it up. 2 Corinthians 5:15, it says, “And he died for all that those who live, that's us, should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised up.” Again, we should no longer live for ourselves, but for the lost, for suffering sinners who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. We should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and was raised again. We should no longer live for ourself for selfish reasons, but so that we might evangelize. Basically, the excuses I make for not evangelizing, they're ultimately, all of them selfish. It costs me something, it hurts me, it's difficult for me. It's just selfish reasons. I don't want to be selfish. I really want to live like Paul did, free from selfishness.

Ninth, seeing people from an eternal perspective. We evangelize because we now see people differently. Verse 16, “So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view or a fleshly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ this way, we do so no longer.” So we're trained by all of this doctrine, all of these truths to just see people differently. We walk by faith, not by sight. And so we see people by faith and not by sight. We don't see people the way that non-Christians see them. The very people that we live with, and work with, and shopped with, and watch games with, and travel with, those people are eternal beings. Every one of them is created in the image of God, every one of them, a sinner who has transgressed the laws of God, and every one of them will spend eternity either in heaven or hell, all of them.

In our natural way, we tend to look at people from a self-advantage point of view, What can this person do to further my agenda or hinder my agenda? And if they can further my agenda then they're good and I'll use them, but if they hinder, then they're my enemy and I'll oppose them and be mean to them. But that's the way a natural person sees others, we don't see people that way anymore, we've been liberated, we don't see... We don't regard people from a worldly point of view. We see people as eternally significant creations who someday are going to get separated from the others and will either be with the sheep or the goats. That's how it's going to be for them. We see them from that point of view, and therefore we're going to evangelize. We once looked at Jesus from a carnal point of view, but we don't look at him that way any longer.

Tenthly, we evangelize because like Jesus, we are new creations. You, if you're a Christian, you have been changed. You're a different person. You've been transformed. 2 Corinthians 5:17 was the first Scripture verse I ever memorized with the Topical Memory System and the Navigators packet. I had been a Christian for two weeks, someone gave me that little card and 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, the old is gone, behold, everything has become new.” And they wanted you to know right away that you've changed, everything is changing in your life, everything's different now, and so I thought it's an interesting verse to choose. Of all the verses in the Bible it's the first one to have a new convert memorized, but it's been with me ever since, and I just think about that. We are new.

Now, here's the thing, Paul already called our bodies tents that are wasting away, that's not new creation stuff. As a matter of fact, there is no new creation stuff in this world. Anything you can touch or see, whatever, that's all old creation stuff and it's going to get burned up, all of it's going away. All of it. But if you're a Christian, you have been born again and your soul, your true self is a new creation entity. It will survive the rest of your lives through judgment day and on into eternity, you are a new creation. And therefore you're free from all of the burdens and the pressures and all of the wickedness of this world, you're free from that, and you can fly above all of those depressing motivators, like a 747 pilot, breaking through the cloud cover, spending the whole day in bright sunshine when everyone else has cold drizzle, you're a new creation, you can spend your life like that.

I love that story from Howard Hendricks, he saw a new believer and the person was just so gloomy and negative. You know your personality? I know. I don't know. How are you doing? I'm doing fine under the circumstances, and he said, “What are you doing under there? Get up above the circumstances. Christians don't live under the circumstances. Break through the cloud cover. Get up above where it's bright sunshine all the time. You're a new creation, not under the same things others are.” And so we just think about life differently. People need to see that kind of hope glowing inside you so they can ask you to give a reason for it.

Number 11, we evangelize because we ourselves have been reconciled to God. Verse 18, “All this is from God…” What a great statement that is, I could spend a whole sermon on just that. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry”. We'll talk about that. But we are reconciled to God. Now, what is reconciliation? Well, it's all about relationship. If you have two individuals and they're at odds with each other, they're acting like enemies, they're in conflict, and then some things happened so that their relationship is healed, and they act like friends and they speak kindly and lovingly to one another, and they have kind thoughts in their hearts toward one another, and their love is restored for one other, that's reconciliation. That's what it is. And so it is with us. We were God's enemies.

In Colossians 1:21-22, it says, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation.” So now we are no longer God's enemies, but we are now more than just his friends, we are adopted into his family. We are sons and daughters of the Living God, we have been reconciled. Okay, how is that a motivator for evangelism? Because we want others to also have that same experience. We know how sweet it is to know that our sins are forgiven, how sweet it is to know that God is no longer angry judge, but now loving Father. How sweet that is, and we want others to experience that same thing.

And so 12, we evangelize because God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. Verse 18-19, “All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them, and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” This is an incredible idea. This is the one, this concept has just captivated me, the idea that God has entrusted this ministry of reconciliation to us and is in us now by the Spirit doing that work. That's awesome. So God sees the world and outside of Christ there his enemies, and he has entrusted to the gospel message of Christ, incarnate by the Holy Spirit, living a sinless life, dying on the cross, and atoning death, raised from the dead on the third day. That message of the gospel, that repentance and faith in him, all forgiveness of sins comes through repentance and faith in him.

Romans 1:16 says, “I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation.” What Paul would say here, power of God for reconciliation, all of that, God's like handed the keys over to us. That's awesome. Now, he is sovereign over all, that he controls it all. But he has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. So we have this call to evangelism and missions, the external journey.

Thirteenth, we evangelize because God has the whole world in view. Verse 19, “…that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ...” It's got to keep moving out, this is an eternal journey, an infinite journey. We're just going to keep going. There's always going to be more work to do until Jesus comes back. And so we care about missions, we care about others, and we care about evangelism for the same reason. This isn't a local salvation, this isn't just for you or just for us in this club, a small exclusive club, but there's a pressure, a drive to move out even to the ends of the earth with this message.

Fourteenth, we evangelize because forgiveness of sins for others awaits our efforts. Look at verse 19 again, “…that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their sins against them.” I mean, how guilty do non-Christians feel? How does their conscience assault them? How they are filled with regrets? How they are aware, at least to some degree, of the bondage and the chains that hold them back? They know that they're miserable in sin, maybe not like they should, and that we get to come and say that God in Christ is willing to forgive all their adulteries and all their fornication, and all their lies, and all their idolatries, and all their selfishness and irritability, and all the times they've shown anger, and all the bad words they've spoken. He's able to take all of it and cover it in the blood of Jesus. He's willing to take all of their sins and throw them in the depths of the sea. He is willing to move them as far away from him as the east is from the west, and that's awesome. We get to evangelize and be there at that moment when they receive the gift of forgiveness of sins.

Fifteenth, we evangelize because we are Christ's ambassadors. Verse 20, we evangelize because we have an official position in the kingdom here, we're ambassadors, we're officially credited ambassadors to this world in the coming kingdom of Christ. We represent the coming King, and we have the right to proclaim a message of forgiveness in his name. We have authority, you realize? As ambassadors, we have the authority to command people to repent. You realize that? Think about that. In Acts 17:30, Paul said in Athens, “In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” The more you meditate on that, the more courage you get in evangelism. What do you have to fear? You are out there as a representative of the King, and the King is graciously offering rebels a chance to lay down their weapons of rebellion and with amnesty be brought back into the kingdom with complete forgiveness.

We get to say that, but we are commanding them to lay down their weapons of rebellion, we're commanding them to repent. And we have the authority to announce to them whether their sins are forgiven or not. Isn't that incredible? We actually get to tell them that their sins are forgiven or not. In John 20:23, he says, “If you forgive anyone their sins, they're forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they're not forgiven.” We don't do the ultimate forgiving, we're just ambassadors, we're giving the message. And if you listen to my gospel and you don't believe it, you're still in your sins. And we have to tell people that, but if they listen and they repent and believe, we can tell them that their sins are forgiven, and that's why we evangelize.

Sixteenth, we evangelize because God through his Spirit is inside us, pleading with people, “…Be reconciled to God.” I have felt this, this burning desire that a total stranger become a Christian. I felt it, I was on an airplane and I had a great conversation with this guy, he was very interested, asked lots of questions, and at the end of that time, about an hour... Look, I only do hours with people who want it, I don't force it on people, alright? But this guy was an interesting conversation, he was asking, bringing up all kinds of objections, we were having a great time, we were in our final approach, I knew we were just about done and he said, "Why do you care so much?" 'Cause he could tell I wasn't being inappropriate, but I was into it, alright? And he could say, "Why do you care?" I said, "This may seem strange to you, 'cause I've never met you, and in a few minutes, I'll probably never see you again, but I really want you to be with me in heaven. I really would like to sit down with you at that banqueting table and look at the Savior and just know your sins are forgiven. I want to celebrate with you forever. I really want that."

And I know the reason why is that because God was in me pleading with this guy to be reconciled to God. And that's a sweet thing. It's powerful. Now, I have a lot of other verses, I don't have time for here, but God wants us to feel what it feels like for him to be God and be rejected, to “stand all day long and hold out your hands to a disobedient, obstinate people,” Romans 10. To “have the insults that have fallen on him, fall on us,” Romans 15. To have a stand outside the city gate and bear the reproach he bore, he wants that, but he also positively wants us to enjoy conversions and salvations like he does, as though God himself were making his appeal.

And then finally, because of the perfection of the gospel. Because of the perfection of the gospel. Verse 21, we evangelize because we get to preach this kind of message: “God made Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That's the centerpiece, the exchange. Our sins lifted from us and laid on Jesus, and he die. His righteousness given to us like a perfect beautiful robe and we stand in it forever. Alright, 17 motivators.

One last thing I want to say to you and then I'll be done, we're going to have some folks come up here. We yearn as elders to see a culture of evangelism develop here. We don't just want five or six people as a result of this month-long emphasis, five or six people to be converted and get baptized. Hey, look, we'd take the five or six people, we'd be thrilled about that. We're excited about that, but that we want more than that.

We want a whole culture of evangelism. What does that mean? It means that evangelism just kind of permeates the atmosphere of everything we do, it permeates the atmosphere of this ministry, that we're thinking about it all the time, we are learning all the time how to be better evangelists. We are reading books on it, we're discussing it, it's involved in the sermons.

Now, it doesn't mean that it'll be all I preach on, it doesn't mean that. I believe we must keep the two journeys side by side, I want to keep feeding the flock to grow up to full maturity so I'm going to preach verse by verse expositional sermons, but every week, as I've been doing for years, I'm going to break off and make the gospel clear to people who need to come to faith in Christ, I'm going to do that.

But meanwhile, we're going to increase our contact with the gospel in terms of evangelism, in terms of BFL training, home fellowship. I think it'd be great if every home fellowship people asked, "Who are you having a gospel conversation? Who did you have a gospel conversation with this week? What's the person's name? How can we pray?" "Well, I didn't have one this week." "Okay, how can we pray for you that you would have one this upcoming week" Say, Well, there's some pressure there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, positive peer pressure, you know? We desire to be an example to others, examples create pressure and others to do the same thing. We want to have that pressure.

And so, pleasant... Never guilt. Guilt is not a good motivator. But we say, "How can I pray for you?" It's like, "Honestly, I just am too afraid to open my mouth." Okay, can I pray that God will give you some boldness just to have a friendly conversation this week? Let's start there. Not even evangelistic, but just that you reached out and had a conversation. Culture evangelism, that we're continually praying for this person at the convenience store, this mother in the playgroup that we're with together, this co-worker that I work with, that we're talking about these things all the time. Now, I'm going to pray, and in a minute, Ryan's going to come up here and some people who are involved in outreaching ministries at FBC are going to come and talk about their ministries, and our desire is, if you want to piggyback on existing work that people have already done in which they are regularly meeting lost people, and you want to get part of that, that's a great way to grow in evangelism, and they're going to tell you different ways you can do it. Let's close in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned today. We thank you for the Word of God, and we ask, O Lord, that you would please help us to be filled with the Spirit and to be joyful, and to be effective and powerful in evangelism, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a clear gospel outline Paul provides in 1 Corinthians to equip us for evangelism. 

Well, this is again, an unusual month for us as we're focusing on evangelism. And as I think about this issue of evangelism, the topic of evangelism, I'll say that as I look at my Christian life, few things, if anything, has ever brought me as much joy in my Christian walk as being there when the Lord brings someone to faith in Christ. Isn't that an exciting moment? And maybe you've never had that experience before, but I would urge you to plead with God for that, and say, "God, sometime in the next year, I would love to be there when you save someone. I would love to be there as you bring someone and rescue them from the dominion of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of the Son of your love. I would love to be there at that time. So God, make me an instrument in your hands and the joy of that."

And as I look at various people, I know some people have the gift of evangelism and others, all of us, I think just have the responsibility of evangelism. There is a difference between those two. Friends, just because you don't have the gift doesn't mean you don't have the responsibility. I mean, you know that we all have the responsibility for Christian giving. I hope you realize that. Even though there are some with the special gift of giving, and we, all of us, have faith who are justified by faith, but some have the gift of faith. I think all of us have the responsibility to be faithful in hospitality, opening our homes to others, but some just have the gift of hospitality. And so some of us have the gift of evangelism.

And one brother I know that really just has the gift of evangelism is Mack Stiles. He's a good friend of mine. A number of you know him personally, and he's written some books on evangelism. He is the most, I want to say, natural evangelist, but I want to say supernatural evangelist I know, comfortable making friends, sharing Christ boldly. And he's written a book and I would commend it to you, Marks of a Messenger. And it's one of these rare books that as you read it, you find yourself encouraged in evangelism, not feeling guilty. You feel like, "Hey, I actually think I could do this if God gives me grace." And he just opens your eyes to see certain things. And at the end of that book, he gives a story about an opportunity that he had to lead someone to faith in Christ.

Now, Mack works in a very unusual setting in the Persian Gulf, in the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, he works there in Dubai and he has the opportunity to minister to people from all over the world. People come from all over the world to work in Dubai. It's a very international city. And he has the chance to lead many people to Christ with that gift that he has. Well, this is an individual, he talks about it in Marks of a Messenger about a man named Basanta from Nepal. And so this man was waiting for Mack at the end of a worship service there in Dubai, just standing there waiting. And Mack was just looking for someone to minister to and didn't see anyone. It's time to go and he goes around and there behind some chairs that are stacked, there's this individual. And he looked at him. He's about the age of his son, Mack's son, and really thin individual. And he's holding in his hand a tattered Bible, an old Bible. The young man said to Mack, "My name is Basanta. I am from Nepal." And without saying another word, he said some words that all of you, I think, would yearn to hear when it comes to this issue of evangelism. "Can you tell me how to become a Christian?" So ask God for an encounter like that. "Can you tell me how to become a Christian?" And Mack answered, "Yes. I can."

Just pause for a moment. Can you? Would you be able to answer that? Would you know what to say? Well, that's the purpose of this morning. I want to help you with that. I want to help you know what to say at that point. I think it's a responsibility of a local church and the elders in a local church to get you ready for such low hanging fruit. That is cake. You have to be able to know what to say then. All right, so let's get ready for those. Let's ask God for those. And he's not always going to give you that, but he may give you something like that. Can you tell me how to become a Christian? Yes, I can. He then shared a simple four-part outline with the headings we have today, God, man, Christ, response. And that's where we're going to focus on today. God, man, Christ, response. And he wrote out this outline on a piece of paper, God, man, Christ, response. And at the end of explaining the points and the issues related to God and man and Christ. And then he called him to a response. He said, "Are you ready to turn your life over to Christ?" Basanta said, "Yes, I am, but first I have a story to tell you." And Mack answered, "Okay." He said, "Do you see this Bible?" He held up that Bible he'd been holding in his hand and he said, "My brother works in Saudi Arabia. Someone gave him this Bible and in reading it, he became a Christian." Mack thought, "This is incredible. There aren't many Bibles in Saudi Arabia, and that's amazing." Well, the Basanta continued. He said, "My brother then sent this Bible to my parents back in Nepal, and both of them became Christians as well, and now they have a group of Christians meeting in their home. Then they sent the Bible to me, and my brother and my parents both say, I have to become a Christian. And so that's why I was here to talk to you today." And so Mack looked with new respect at that old Bible and thought God is using that Bible and God is using the truths that flow from the scripture.

That's one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard. I would love for an opportunity like that. But whether God gives us an easy chance like that or other more difficult chances, we need to know the content of the message that we preach. We need to know the content of the gospel, central to evangelism. True evangelism is getting the message right, getting the gospel message right. Biblical evangelism is not, in the end, finally, about technique. It's so easy to think evangelism training is about tactics and techniques and a dialogue that you memorize. And then when they say this, then you know that and all that kind of thing. Mack Stiles said in Marks of a Messenger that a man he was seeking a train in evangelism after the seminar said, “This was so incredibly encouraging to me. Usually when I'm trained in evangelism, I feel like I'm being trained to be an insurance salesman.” And Mack said, "Look, there's nothing wrong with insurance or selling insurance, but there should be differences between evangelism and being an insurance salesman. To be an effective evangelist, you have to pitch the message with a careful appeal to self-interest and promote a program with pizazz and overcome hesitancies with a winsome manner and avoid any offenses or problems in the delivery. Answer objections with humor, instill fears of losing out, manipulate the conversation, get it to a point of decision where they can sign on the dotted line with the sinner's prayer and then hone your skills at closing the deal." Mack said, "That may be fine for selling insurance or a used car, but that's not what it takes to lead someone to faith in Christ."

A number of us have seen a booklet on evangelism written by a man named C.S. Lovett, not C.S. Lewis, but C.S. Lovett. And it's right from the 1950s. It has these interesting black and white photos of these two guys in suits standing, the lost guy and the guy, the evangelist. And at one point he says, “At this point, you've shared all of the gospel message. Now you need to lead him in the sinner's prayer. And what you want to do is put your hand on his shoulder with slight pressure pushing downward. Say, ‘I want you to join with me in prayer.’ Say it in a slightly commanding tone. Look down and begin at that point to pray. He will feel, [and this literally says this in the booklet], a psychological pressure to join you in prayer.” Well friends, he may have a psychological pressure, but he may still be lost. And psychological pressure isn't going to save anyone. What saves people? I tell you what saves people, the gospel and the gospel alone. The gospel, Romans 1:16, “…is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”  We need the gospel and we need to be clear on what the gospel message is. And so that's what today is all about. 

And I'm operating from a premise, just in general, here in March, this is the evangelism training focus month or whatever you want to say that, but I want you folks to be reminded this morning of the gospel for many reasons, not just for that one. You heard what Kevin read in verses one and two,1 Corinthians 15:1-2. There, the apostle Paul says this, "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel." So just stop there. Paul felt the need to remind the Corinthian Christians of the gospel. So that teaches me as an elder of a local church, there is an ongoing need to remind the people of the gospel. So let me continue. He says, "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you." So I want to do this for multiple reasons. I want to remind you of the gospel first because it's vital that each one of you who is listening to me today believe it's message for the salvation of your souls. That issue is more important than any evangelism training we might want to do right now, that each one of you, you who are eternal beings, each one of you, man or woman, boy or girl, each one of you will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell, and you need to believe this gospel message that I'm going to preach this morning. So my first most important reason for doing this is because I don't want anyone to leave this room here today in an unconverted state. I want you to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. 

Secondly, I say to you that none of you who are Christians today will ever be done with the gospel while you live in this world. I quoted this at the beginning of my Galatians series, but Tim Keller said the gospel is not the basics of the Christian faith that you then grow up out of. We never get beyond the gospel in our Christian life to something more advanced. The gospel is not the ABCs of Christianity but the A to Z of Christianity. Now, you may be on letter C, you may be on letter J or letter Q, but you're still going to need the gospel until the day you die. You need to be under the hearing of this message. Thirdly, I believe that the more that we as evangelists are drinking in the sweetness of the gospel, the better evangelists we're going to be. When you are with people and you have soaked in the grace of God in Christ, and you have a sense of that infinite kindness He has shown you, and you have a sense of the greatness of the danger that you were in, but you have been delivered out of, and the greatness of the joy that awaits you in heaven and all of these gospel themes, you're just going to be a better evangelist. 

Fourth, because we tend to forget the gospel message. I mean, isn't that amazing? We forget things. We need to be reminded. We are forgetful. It's part of the flesh. It's part of the weakness of our nature that we forget important things and therefore we need to be constantly reminded. It's part of elder ministry, part of preaching and teaching ministry, to remind people of things they already know. I very rarely tell most of you things you've never heard before. Very rarely. I'm reminding you continually of things you already know and we forget. Fifth, when it comes to evangelism training, there is a difference between recognizing the gospel when you hear it and delighting in it, and being able to articulate it clearly yourself. There's a difference. There's a journey from yes, that's it. I believe it. I agree. All right, now say it. Say it. And so we're going to be working on that tonight in home fellowship. So we're going to try to get you folks to say these things so that you feel comfortable with it.

And sixth, we must keep hearing the gospel, and this relates to an earlier statement, but we as believers must keep hearing the gospel so that we do not drift away from Jesus, so that we do not drift away from Christ. We are under constant assault by the world of flesh and the devil. And the end of that assault is that we would drift away from Christ. So it says in Hebrews 2:1, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." What we have heard is the gospel. So for all of those reasons, we have a reminder in front of us today. Mack says in his book, in Marks of a Messenger, it says that churches can drift away from the gospel. And that's where I think we become Revelation three, we become the church at Sardis, the dead church that's living on its past reputation. I don't want that to happen. Mack says there are four stages. First, the gospel, at that local church, the gospel is accepted. Second stage, the gospel is assumed. That's a danger for FBC. The gospel's just assumed. We all just know it's message, right? Let's just assume it, and let's talk about some other aspects. Third stage, the gospel is confused. Some aspects come in, some things are left out that should be included, and the gospel gets confused. Fourth, the gospel is lost. 

John MacArthur actually gave an illustration of this progression. He talked about an old church, a country church that had a plaque on the side of the building, and the plaque had a phrase in it that came from 1 Corinthians 1:23, which verse says, "We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." The plaque on the side of the church said, "We preach Christ crucified." But there was a vine growing up along the side of the building, and little by little, part of the plaque got obscured. So as you stood there, all you could see is, "We preach Christ." The word crucified had been obscured. And then as time continued, all you could see is, "We preach." A little while after that, it said, "We." And then you could see nothing at all, which is an emblem of, I think, the lampstand being removed entirely.

So for me, I think there's value in the elders of a local church reminding the church what the gospel message is, and for you to be continually reminding yourself as well. So that's my goal. I want to both feed the sheep this morning and train the sheep while I reach out to those who are not yet Christ's sheep, that you would come to faith in Christ, that you would believe in him and repent. So that's what we're doing now. So take the insert card in your bulletins there, take it and hold it in your hand and look at it. You can take that home with you free of charge. We didn't laminate it because then it would be really expensive. But we have given out laminated versions of this for a while. These are not tracks. These are not meant to be handed to unbelievers. These are meant to remind you of what it is you're going to say when you share the gospel. You could have it in front of somebody and go through it. And if they ask for it after that time, give it to them. We'll give you some other ones. But we're going to go through this.

Now, already you've had the main headings, and if you get nothing else from this whole day, but you get this, you've gotten something, a simple four-part outline to the gospel is in these four main headings, God, Man, Christ, Response. I could go antiphonal here, God, God, Man, Man, that kind of thing. But just get this uploaded in your mind, God, Man, Christ, Response. If you get that, then all you want to say in your heart is you're sharing with somebody, you're on a plane, you're talking, you're in a conversation. It's like, all right, I want to say some things about God. I want to say some things about us as human beings. I want to say some things about Jesus and I want to call them to respond and to make a commitment. If you have that, then you have a basic roadmap of where to go. God, Man, Christ, Response. We start there. And so just memorize that. You probably already have it memorized, but just have it uploaded in your mind. 

Now, let's go a little deeper. I want to say some things that I think are helpful to say the God heading. Now, I want you to know the four spiritual laws follows the God, Man, Christ, Response approach, Steps to Peace with God does the same, many, many gospel tracks. This isn't original to anybody. Somebody probably thought of it first, but no one will know who that individual is until we get to heaven. But this is a very common four-part outline of the gospel. What follows are some insights that God gave me some years ago that follow the offices of God in scripture and keep you very God-centered, I think, in your gospel presentation, I think that's helpful. Now, you can put other things under God like, for spiritual law says God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, things like that. But I think this is maybe a little better. And the benefit of this is that you can also start from right from the beginning with someone from another country who's never heard of anything in the Bible at all, because the first thing we're going to say about God is that he is creator. God is the creator. He is the creator of all things, the creator of the universe, of everything. We're going to support all this with more detail in a minute, but I'm going through it ever more detail. That's the approach I'm preaching on today.

So first, simple, God, Man, Christ, Response. Now, the main headings without scripture support and then we'll support it, so that's the approach we're taking. 

So, God is creator of all things. Because God is the creator, He has the right to rule over it. Right? There's a logic to this. He is the king of the universe. He actively rules over it and as a subset of that, he is a law giver. He has the right to give laws by which we must live in his universe. And finally, in connection with that, he is the judge and he has the right to judge the universe based on the laws that he is given because he is the king, because he is the creator. So that's just the offices of God. You could say four offices or three offices, whatever you want to say, but creator, king, lawgiver, and judge. Secondly, we want to talk about man. Man, and now we're going to line up man with the four offices that we just gave. Man is creature or created by God the creator. Secondly, we are rebellious against God the king, as proven by, thirdly, the fact that we are transgressors of God's laws and therefore under judgment by God the judge. Do you see the logic? It's just unfolding here. So we've lined up man with God's various roles.

Thirdly, we want to talk about Christ, about Jesus Christ. And the title that we add here is God the savior. Not just creator, not just king, a law-giver, a judge, but savior. Amen! This is good news that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. Now, much of the gospel is biography. We want to go through the life of Jesus. How can they call on one they've never heard of? Right? So they need to hear about him. And so what do we want to say? Well, we want to talk about his essential nature as God-Man, his incarnation. We want to say that he is fully God and fully human. We want to talk about his miraculous life, the miracles that he did. One of my favorite parts of evangelism is telling miracle stories. I would really recommend that you memorize a good miracle story and get ready to tell it. Maybe Lazarus being raised from the dead, or Jesus walking on water or stilling the storm, the feeding of the 5,000. I love the fact that he raised the widow's son from the grave. It's mentioned only in Luke's gospel, I think, but his tenderness and compassion to that widow saying to her, "Don't cry", and how he touched the casket, and they all stood there. And then he said, "Young man, get up." And he got up. Oh, wouldn't you love to be there? The looks on faces. But as you tell these miracle stories, I don't know how you can be afraid at that moment in evangelism anymore. You're telling a miracle story and you're like, “Hey, look, I'm going to worship. Whether you do or not, I'm into this. This is awesome. Jesus is great.”

Miracles. Sinless. Jesus lived a sinless life. We have to be clear about that. He committed no sin. We'll get to that scripturally, but the sinlessness of Jesus. Then, of course, we need to talk about his substitutionary death. Jesus died on the cross in our place. And of course, we must mention his resurrection. He was raised from the dead on the third day, and he has come to give us salvation gifts, full forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God, both now and forever. He comes to offer these things, but now comes response. So God, Man, Christ, and now comes response. You must call them to respond. And I break this into two parts. What you, the hearer, the person you're evangelizing, what that person must do and what they must not do. This all comes from the Philippian jailer's statement, "What must I do to be saved?" What you must do is repent and believe, Mark 1:15. We'll get to that. But you must repent of your sins and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. This you must do. This is the work of God that they believe in the one that he has sent. This is the only work you can do as a lost person. Believe, just believe in Jesus. That's what you must do.

What you must not do? You must not work for it or wait for it. What do I mean by that? Well, don't think that you can be justified or forgiven by your works. Your works can never justify you. You must not cling to works. Why should you mention that as an evangelist? It's the number one thing that Satan's trying to sell them. If they are in any way troubled about their sins, the only alternative to the gospel is self-salvation through good works of various types. You must not do that. Good works cannot save you and you must not wait for it. So this is where, as I just mentioned in the BFL class, this is where evangelism gets a little uncomfortable. You must not leave them the feeling that it's okay to not repent and believe. It's your job as evangelists to end badly in that level. If they will not repent and believe, it's meant to feel awkward at that moment, and you are to be, as Bob put it in the class, a saver aroma of death and a death for them at that moment. “It's not okay for you. And I'll pray for you. I'm going to plead with you. I'm going to plead with you.” I have told people on airplanes that I'm going to pray that they will not be able to sleep tonight because they haven't repented and believed. We're saying that we don't know that they're even going to be alive later today or tomorrow. We don't know how much time they have. Today is the day of salvation, so don't wait for it. Don't assume that you'll have another chance.

Jack Evans told me a story that he heard a number of years ago in prison ministry of an evangelist who shared the gospel completely with someone. The person did not repent and believe. The evangelist said, "I'm going to pray that God will wake you up at 3:45 AM." Well, that evening, God woke him up 3:45 AM and a prison guard making his rounds was walking by at just that moment. The guy called out. He said, "What time is it?" He said, "Quarter to four." He said, "Is that the same as 3:45 AM?" He said, "Yeah, that's the same." Where upon he slipped down on his knees and gave his life to Christ. Okay? Well look, I'd rather they be troubled here on earth while there's time to do something about it than trouble forever in Hell where they remember opportunities, especially opportunities they had to repent and believe. All right, so that's God, Man, Christ, Response with sub-themes now.

You should be able, I think at this point, to share the gospel in one minute or in five minutes. One minute, God, Man, Christ, Response. Just go through it. God is creator. Because he's creator, he has the right to rule. Because he's a ruler, he has the right to make laws and he has made laws and he has the right to judge us. We, as human beings, were created by God and we should have been under God's rulership. He is the king of all things, but we have rebelled against him because of our sins. We have transgressed God's holy laws, and we are under God's judgment, and we have no way of saving ourselves. And therefore, thanks be to God, he sent Jesus into the world. He was born of a virgin. He was fully human. He was fully God. He lived a perfectly sinless life and he did incredible miracles. But most of all, he died on the cross in our place, taking the judgment we deserved, and then he died. But on the third day, God raised him from the dead showing that the payment had been made and was acceptable to him. And if we repent and believe, if you repent and believe, you can have eternal life. Won't you come to Christ? Come to faith in Christ. I don't know how long that was, but that's about a minute. So you can do that. Or you could expand, five minutes, talk a little bit more.

Now, I want to share with you how you can share the gospel in 38 minutes or an hour. Let's go into some more detail on this. Ok? So now we're going to go into the most detail and this will take us to the end. Let's go back over the first section. God. First, supporting scripture. God the creator. Any of you know a verse on that? I'm thinking you already have this one. This is a freebie. This is part of the original equipment, I guess. Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Start at the beginning. Why not? God made all things. God is the creator. Therefore, what does that teach you about God? I love to talk about how God's love is displayed in creation. This is a beautiful thing to talk about. Maybe one of my favorite verses on this is Acts 14:17. There Paul, in preaching the gospel to some Gentile, some pagans, speaks about natural theology, what we call just what God is doing around them all the time. So you can use this with a Chinese grad student or visiting scholar from another country, from Russia or something. People that have never heard the gospel. You can use this right away. Listen to Acts 14:17. "[God]… has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." Isn't that a great verse? God is just kind to you by giving you rain and sunshine and blessings. Talk about the kindness of God as creator.

But secondly, because God is the creator and made all things in heaven and earth, he is also king. He has the right to rule over all things. Friends, the more you emphasize the kingship of God, the more shameful sins starts to become. It's like we are eating God's food and living in God's living-room and we never give him thanks or praise him or live for him. That's wrong. This is God's world. God is our king. You see, that will make a pull on people back toward God, which is the ultimate end of repentance. They come back to God the king. So talk about God the king. And there's so many verses you could choose. I like Psalm forty-seven, seven, but you could choose another one. Just find other verses that you like better. But again, I am recommending memorization. Memorize these. Get them ready. Psalm 47:7, "For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise." Isn't that great? God is king of all the earth. That says it about as simply as you'll find anywhere in the Bible. 

Therefore, God is sovereign. That means he actively rules Psalm 103:19, "The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all." So, God is sovereign and therefore because God the creator, the king, rules over all things, he has the right to make laws by which we must live in his universe. He has the right to do that. Now, there are many laws in the Bible, but probably the most famous listing of laws in the Bible is the 10 Commandments. 

Now, I would recommend that you memorize, and I said this a few weeks ago, that you memorize a simplified outline of the 10 Commandments. It's amazing how many Christians can't recite the 10 commandments. So I would urge you to memorize it. I was well into my life as a Christian, actually beyond seminary, before I memorized a simplified outline of the 10 Commandments. We were doing catechism with our kids in Japan. And so I memorized this. First Commandment, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery, you shall have no other gods beside me." Second Commandment, "You shall not make any idols or worship any idols." Third Commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." Fourth Commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh. For God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh." Fifth Commandment, "Honor your father and mother." Sixth Commandment, "You shall not murder." Seventh Commandment "You shall not commit adultery." Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal." Ninth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." And the 10th Commandment, "You shall not covet." 

So those are 10 very well-known commandments in the Bible that God has given and he gave them to Israel, but there's a sense in which these commandments are written on the hearts of people all over the world. Jesus then went and summarized all of the commandments in the Bible in two great commandments. The first and greatest commandment is this, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." And the second commandment is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." So these are the laws that God has given us by which we must live. Now, by the way, we're still in the God section. We're just listing the laws. I tell you, if the Lord's working on them, they're already going to be feeling convicted of their sin just as they hear those commandments. It's already going to start happening.

Then you say God is judge as well. Not only is he creator and king and law giver, but he also is judge of all the earth. Psalm 96:13, "…the LORD… comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people in his faithfulness." There is a day coming called Judgment Day in which he will bring us to an account for how we have lived in his universe, how we have lived under his laws. God the judge is a holy judge. In fact, Habakkuk 1:13 is a good verse. In the version I memorized it says, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong." I love that one. 1 John 1:5 is good. "…God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." Or, Isaiah 6:3, "…Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." This is the God section. 

Secondly, we need to know some things about us as human beings. This is the Man section. First, man is created by God the creator. It says that very plainly in Genesis 1:27. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." We were created in the image of God. That means we're special to God. We're unique among all the things that God's made. We were created to be like God. We were created to have a relationship with God and we were created to serve God. That's what it means, that we're created in the image of God and we're special. However, the bad news is this. Every one of us is rebellious against God the king. We have violated God's laws. We are universally rebellious. 

Now friends, I like Romans 3:10-12 at this moment. Romans 3:23 is helpful, very well known, and you can do that. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The thing I like about Romans 3:10-12 is how specific and detailed it is. "As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." Do you see how useful that might be? No one righteous. No one's seeking God. No one doing any good. No one. And it is very clear in that language, isn't it? Not even one. We are rebellious against God's laws. So you would say, "You remember, we went through those 10 commandments? Those are familiar to you. Let me talk about a few of them. Okay? Let's talk about murder.” Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount said, “You have heard that it was said, you shall not murder.” It says in effect, “I say, if you're even angry with your brother, you're in danger of the fire of hell.” And Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that if you even look at a woman lustfully, you've already committed adultery in your heart.”

We should know from the 10th Commandment, “You shall not covet”, that God is looking at the heart. Coveting is something you do with your heart. And so Jesus is just extending it to all of the commandments. He's looking at the heart. So even if you haven't murdered somebody, even if you haven't actually committed adultery, if you've ever been angry or lusted, you're in danger of hell. And Jesus said on the day of judgment you'll have to give, Matthew 12:36, you'll have,” …to give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word [you] they have spoken." So there's going to be a meticulous judgment of what you've done. And remember the two great commandments as well. Have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart, every moment of your life, and have you loved your neighbor and poured yourself out for the benefit of your neighbor?

Well, at this point, what's going to happen as you're talking to somebody, they're going to say, "That's crazy. Nobody's perfect." And when they say that you're doing your work. Alright? You're on the right track. Do they need to be morally perfect to go to heaven? Oh yes they do. Matthew 5:48 says, "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” God is light. And in him there's no darkness at all. And if you are darkness, if you are a sinner unforgiven, you will be cast outside into the darkness, Jesus said, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. It says in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death.” And we don't just mean physical death, but eternal death in hell. So we do mention that threat as Jesus often did. 

So now we come to a key question. How can a sinner like me ever be accepted by a holy God like him? How can that ever happen? Well, now we come to Christ. Now, we come at last to the good news. And you can't share good news until we've had the bad news. You see that, don't you? They must know that they need salvation in order to cry out for a savior. So do the law work and the law work is the 10 and two. I just would recommend the 10 and two. 10 commandments, two commandments gets everybody. Everybody. All right, everybody. If you can make it through that mesh, I've only met one person that looked me in the eye and told me he was sinless. It was a man in Haiti. I thought he was joking at first, but he told me he was sinless. There's nothing I could do. I talked to him about the 10 Commandments. He basically like the rich young ruler, “All these I've kept since my youth.” I said, do you have a mother or a wife? I'd like to talk to one or the other. I'd like to just see what they might say, see what they say. But Jesus, we come to this marvelous title, not just God creator, God king, God lawgiver, God judge, but God the savior. He's the only one that can save us from his judgment. He's the only one that can save us from his wrath. And he has through his son Jesus Christ.

I love Isaiah 33:22. It's just a beautiful, efficient verse for this outline. "For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; it is he who will save us." If that doesn't get it done I don't know what does. Isaiah 33:22. But saved from what? Saved from our sins, saved from death and hell, saved from judgment of God. I love to use Matthew 1:21 here. This is the angel statement to Joseph concerning his betrothed, Mary. "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." That's what Jesus came to do, to save his people from their sins. Well, who was Jesus? Jesus was born of a virgin, that meant he had no human father. He had God as his father, but Mary who was human as his mother. So he was fully God and fully man. He was the son of God and the son of man. John 1:1 and 14 teaches this. “In the beginning was the Word…” and you find out the Word is Jesus, so we could just put the word Jesus in there. “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus] and the Word [Jesus] was with God and the Word [Jesus] was God." And verse 14, “The Word [Jesus] became flesh...” “The Word [Jesus] became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” And so this teaches the incarnation. He's fully God, fully man.

Secondly, he did miracles. So like I said, memorize a miracle story. Matthew 11:5 is a summary of miracles. You could do that too. This is what was said to the messengers of John the Baptist, remember. “The blind received sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” So just talk about Jesus' miraculous life. And then, he was sinless. We need to talk about Jesus's sinlessness because he could be our substitute. 1 Peter 2:22, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” Because he was sinless he was able to die in our place on the cross. 1 Peter 2:24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24. Again, friends, you can choose other verses if you like. I went through and found what I thought were the most efficient verses that got that point done, but there are many verses you could choose for substitutionary death. Isaiah 53, “All we, like sheep, have gone astray… and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And then 2 Corinthians 5:21, beautiful exchange verse on justification. "God made him [Jesus] who had [knew] no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And so Jesus is offering us an exchange. We take all of our filthy sin and he'll take it on himself and die under the wrath of God and he will give us his perfect obedience to the law like a beautiful, perfect robe of righteousness and we will wear it through the fires of judgment day on into eternity. We'll be welcomed as righteous just by faith, just by believing in Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5:21.

But God didn't leave him dead, on the third day, God raised him from the dead. First Corinthians 15:3-5. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised [from the dead] on the third day according to the scriptures...” Jesus has come to offer us beautiful salvation gifts, so many of them, but just focus on these two, forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Forgiveness of sins, Ephesians 1:7, “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins...” All of your sins can be forgiven, past, present, future, all of them forgiven by the blood of Jesus. And eternal life is offered. Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin as death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” By the way, on Wednesday night, Kyle Mercer did a phenomenal job sharing one verse evangelism from Romans 6:23. If you don't want to do God, Man, Christ, Response, just do one verse evangelism out of Roman 6:23. Go to Kyle Mercer and he'll tell you how to do it. But I mean it's a great verse.

All right, now we're to the response. The Philippian jailer said, “What must I do to be saved?” You need to respond to this. What you must do is in Mark 1:15, Jesus said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” Repent is a U-turn. You are going in one direction, living one kind of life, now you need to turn toward God away from sin and now follow God. And you must believe the gospel. Believe. What does that mean? Believe that it's true and believe in it for your own salvation. Think these things you're saying to me are true, but now I want to step out like as onto a bridge or stepping onto a 747 and trusting your full weight to that airplane, trusting it'll keep you safe as it lifts off the ground. You're going to trust Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and for eternal life. That's what you must do. What you must not do? Don't try to earn forgiveness with God. If you believe that you're a sinner and you know that God's laws condemn you and you can feel that guilt, the most common thing to do is to try to earn God's favor by doing good works. But it says in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast.” So, you must not work for it and don't wait for it either. 

Dear friend, you don't know how long you have to live. You don't know if you're going to be alive tomorrow. You know what I'm saying is true. You know of sudden deaths that happen and people didn't even know that that was their last day or their last night. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I'm just giving you a fair warning. It says in 2 Corinthians 6:2, “In the time of my favor…” this is God speaking to you. “’In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.’ I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now [today] is the day of salvation.” You don't know that you'll have tomorrow.

So FBC friends, evangelists, future evangelists, present evangelists, this is where you find out what their response is going to be. God offers them eternal life. There's all kinds of other verses and things you can talk about that. But at that point, you just need to stop. And I love what Mack Stiles says at this point, this is great. Mack has just a beautiful way with people. Try this. “I think that this is an urgent matter for you. I think this is urgent for you. I think that you understand the gospel now that we've had this conversation, and really, what's left for you is to place your complete faith and trust in Christ. Now, tell me what would be stopping you from doing that?” And just listen, and if they say, “Nothing”, then they're ready to believe in Christ. Could be they already have. You say, “Wait a minute, they haven't prayed the sinner's prayer yet.” Can I tell you about the sinner's prayer? Every true sinner's prayer that's ever been prayed has been prayed by somebody already justified. They were just justified a second before they prayed it. Because we're justified by prayer? No, we're justified by faith. But out of that faith will come something out of their mouth. So do I think they should pray? Yes, I do. What should they pray? Whatever they want. What do you mean, whatever? I'm on my own. No, you're not on your own. You have a savior. What do you want? You've heard all these things. What do you want? Well, I'd like to not go to hell. I'd like to go to heaven. I'd like forgiveness. Then tell him. I don't put words in people's mouth. I don't have a pre-printed prayer. And if they don't know what to say, go back over some things. I would think there'd be some things in here that would make you want something, and then they're able to call on the name of the Lord and be saved. Alright?

I have some applications here, but there are too many of them for now. I'll get to them in my fifth sermon. I guess what I would say to you is this, memorize this out. First of all, believe this, believe this, as I said. You may be here not for evangelism training; you may be here to be evangelized today. Could be that God brought you here to hear this gospel because you've never trusted in Christ. Don't leave this place unconverted. Do you know that your sins are forgiven? Do you know that you're going to heaven when you die? If you don't, then call in the name of the Lord in your heart. Trust in him. Come to Christ. But then, for you as believers, drink this gospel in. I would hope this has made you happy, joyful, powerful, thankful to God, thankful to Jesus, looking forward to heaven, thankful to be delivered from hell. All of these things just should come in your heart. And then it should make you eager to be an evangelist yourself because there's so many lost people around us. 

Memorize the outline. Just start simple. God, Man, Christ, Response. Start there. Then go sub-themes as we talked about. Be able to share the gospel in one minute. Be able to share it in five minutes. Work on being able to share it in one hour. And the way you do that last one is just start memorizing supporting scriptures. The scripture has converting power, so I recommend that you memorize scripture. Memorize scripture. Finally, I want to ask one simple application thing for yourselves. Memorize these things, whatever. Can I urge based on Ephesians 6:20 and Colossians 4:4. Paul prayed in Ephesians 6:20, “Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.” Colossians 4:4, “Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” They're almost the exact same expression, just different words. So pray that I may share the gospel boldly and clearly with some people. Ephesians 6:20 and Colossians 4:4.

Can I urge you, collect five Christian friends or family members who will pray that for you daily? Pray that for you daily. Say, would you please pray for me every day that I will share the gospel boldly and clearly with someone? I believe if we could get that kind of prayer support going for one another, there's all kinds of good things that are going to come from that. And God will answer that prayer and we'll have some opportunities. Who knows, but maybe within three or four months or less, we'll have the testimony of somebody that says, “Well, I came up to a member of your church and ask them, can you tell me how to become a Christian?” And we'll all laugh. And they'll be like, “What happened here?” Because there was a specific bunch of prayers, hundred prayers for that one. And God gave it to you, an opportunity to share. Close with me in prayer. Father, I thank you for the gospel message. I thank you for what it teaches us, for its power, for its purity, for all of the things that we can learn from. And oh God, I pray, make us evangelists. Oh Lord, help us to just soak in like we're under the rays of the sun, soak in the truth and the beauty of this gospel, but help us to go empowered to share it with others. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

At the end of his life, the Apostle John was exiled for the ministry of the Word of God, for the testimony of Jesus to the island of Patmos, a small island off the coast of modern day Turkey. All the other 12 had been martyred for their faith as they shared the Gospel, but God had a special purpose for John at the end of his life. And one of those, one of the aspect of that purpose was that he would have a revelation of the resurrected and glorified Jesus Christ. He was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and he had this vision of Christ.  Revelation 1 says there,

“I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven golden lamp stands. And among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white, like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. And in his right hand, he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And then he placed his right hand on me and said, 'Do not be afraid. I am the first, and I am the last. I am the living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the key of death and Hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lamp stands is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And the seven lamp stands are the seven churches.'"

So we have a picture of the resurrected Christ in glory, and in it seems priestly garments, moving through these seven golden lamp stands. And we're told there that these seven lamp stands represent the seven churches. And they are lamp stands, I think, because Jesus said to us, “You are the light of the world.” And they are golden, because they are precious and valuable. And he's moving through them, because he has an ongoing ministry to local churches. And in the next two chapters, which we're not going to go through. 

By the way, we are looking at John 12 today. This is all intro. I haven't forgotten that. But here's the resurrected Christ moving through these seven golden lamp stands. And he has something to say to each of the seven churches. The seven churches were real churches, but they were also symbolic as well. That often happens in scripture. Things that really happened in space and time have an eternal spiritual lesson for us as well.  And they were just across a small stretch of water, there in kind of a circular postal route, there in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, these seven churches. And he has these seven statements to make to the seven churches, and they are of a timeless nature. And it's very clear that the Lord wants us to read the other churches' mail. We're supposed to read all of the letters, because at the end of each of these letters, he says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” plural. So we're supposed to read all these seven letters, and at the end of each one, also, it gives a promise to him who overcomes. So we're supposed to read these letters and we're supposed to understand what's happening in each of these seven churches. And we're supposed to be given by the power of the Spirit the ability to overcome for his glory. And so we're supposed to learn from these. And so from... I think from the church at Ephesus, we're supposed to learn the value of doctrinal and life purity, but also the danger of forsaking our first love. From the church at Smyrna, we're supposed to learn the very real possibility of persecution, of being imprisoned and even killed for our testimony to Jesus. And though that may not be happening to us, we're supposed to be aware that it's happening to other brothers and sisters, and pray for them and care about it and be aware that it may happen to us in the future.

From the church at the Thyatira, we're supposed to understand the danger of tolerating sin, especially sexual sin. From the church at Sardis, we're supposed to understand the danger that a church that was once alive and vibrant and vital can at some point become dead, living on its past reputation, no longer vibrant and vital for the glory of God. From the church at Philadelphia, supposed to learn the value of seeing open doors of ministry and walking through them while we have the opportunity. And from the church at Laodicea, the dire warning to not become spiritually lukewarm, that the Lord would spit us out of his mouth because we're neither hot nor cold. So seven churches, but it made me wonder, and it's made the elders wonder recently, as we've thought about these things, how would the Lord Jesus evaluate FBC?

What would he say about us? What kind of letter would he write to this church? How are we to see ourselves? And as we've seen what we consider to be led by the Spirit, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities for ministry, some dangers that we face, some good things that are happening in our midst, we feel that we would like to urge the church more and more toward faithfulness in evangelism and evangelistic fruitfulness. We would love to see this church have a river of people who are brought to faith in Christ by our witness and then discipled and trained. And we want to see this happen, because we believe that it is the logical and spiritual next step of health in this church's progression or reformation, that we would see more and more individuals brought to faith in Christ. And so we are excited and thrilled not just about the next five weeks, but about what God may have for this church over the coming years, even decades, if he should not return in our lifetime.  We want to be positive. We want to be thankful. We want to be helpful. We want to be biblical and prayerful, and we want to be fruitful.

And so that's our desire as we begin this little five-week focus, but 10 years from now, brothers and sisters, I would love to see a culture of evangelism thriving here, just a kind of a warm culture of people regularly sharing their faith, regularly taking faith steps, venturing forth in the workplace, in the neighborhood with family members, with parents of fellow team members, with total strangers even. We want to see people here consistently, regularly trained very well in evangelism, so that people know what the Gospel is, and they know what to say in various circumstances. And they're ready, and they are being encouraged by positive examples from other brothers and sisters, regular testimonies of people who are sharing their faith. We long to see people brought to the ordinance of water baptism and be able to hear their stories of how this or that was brought to faith by members of FBC. Honestly, I think I can speak for all the others that we don't care who brings them to faith. Amen? Just like members of a team don't care who sank the winning shot. We just want to see it done, and we are so thrilled when we hear stories of faithfulness as you guys are reaching out with the Gospel. We would long to see this culture of evangelism just flourishing here, and I believe we're going to see it.

I believe this is something the Lord is going to work here as we're faithful and as we step out in faith, and as we hear God's word. Recently, a number of us were at a missions conference at Christmas time, the Cross Conference, and a friend of mine, Mack Stiles, who has a flourishing evangelistic ministry in the Persian Gulf with students, Muslim college students, and seeing many come to Christ very rapidly, seeing them built up in their faith in Christ rapidly and seeing them be fruitful to the glory of God. Anyway, he was able to sit four generations spiritually of people right alongside each other. This one led this one to faith, who led this one to faith, who led this one to faith. That's awesome. Wouldn't you love to see that here at FBC?

Now, that's just a rare providence that that could happen all in one, the context of one local church and that person stays there and they come to faith and are trained so quickly. But wouldn't that be incredible? We yearn to see a culture of evangelism, and so as Ashok was sharing these two infinite journeys, we want to keep them in front of you. The internal journey of sanctification, we must never turn our backs on that. We believe that's a real strength of this church that we love the Word of God. We love doctrine. We want to drink it in. We are happy to get good teaching and good preaching, and we want to grow in grace. And we must embrace that. We want to be holy and like Christ.

We also want to be faithful in the external journey, and I think this is a church that's seen numbers of people go out from our midsts to go be set up on the mission field. We want to see that more than ever before. We would like to see lots of folks coming through and being trained here, running with us for a while, but then going out to some unreached people group. The external journey breaks into two kind of sub-sections in my mind. There's missions in which you have people that are being reached that not only have they never heard of Jesus, but people around them have never heard of Jesus, and there's no church there. We just need to see those people brought to faith in Christ, and that's going to take years of language-learning and culture. That's what we call missions. But here at home, there's evangelism, and these are people who are not yet Christians, but they are surrounded by the sounds of the Gospel all the time. They have probably Christian friends and family and relatives, other people that they're aware of the Gospel, but they're not yet brought to faith in Christ. I would contend that because of that, they're hard to reach. But this is the mission field God's given us right here, and I yearn to see us be faithful in evangelism and to grow.

And I think that these two journeys are interconnected. They're intertwined. As we are embracing our sanctification and growing in maturity and our love for Jesus, we're going to want to be more and more faithful in evangelism. And as we're actively sharing our faith, we're going to have more and more opportunities to grow in grace and trust God for things. So we look on these two journeys as intertwined. We want to see it happen.

So for five weeks, I'm going to be preaching sermons, evangelistic sermons. It's the closest you'll ever get me to preaching topically. This is it, guys. So if those of you thought, "Ah, a topical sermon," that's what it is, five weeks of it. But even so, I can't help but be exegetical, so I'm choosing the five best passages. Is that okay? Good compromise. So topics, but still exposition. And this morning, it's John 12. My desire is to be biblical. I want to be practical in the pulpit. I want to talk about practical ways you can grow. I want to be encouraging.

My deep desire is to motivate people, whoever you are, wherever you're at in your walk, to take the next steps in evangelism without resorting to guilt manipulation. It's a terrible motivator. It is not helpful. And we'll talk more about that, but I don't desire to make anyone feel guilty. I want to be motivational based on Scripture's motivations, ultimately, the glory of God, as we'll see this morning.

Also along with this for three weeks, we're going to see discussion on these sermons in the evenings at home fellowship, so all the home fellowships will be focusing on these topics for three weeks. And then the final week, Sunday, we have no home fellowships tonight. On the final evening, Sunday evening, we will have a time of corporate prayer here in this room, in this sanctuary, in the evening, to just plead with God to give us fruit and that we would see people brought to faith in Christ and just a time of prayer for them. So we're looking forward to that. Along with that, I'm teaching a Bible for Life class. And if you're not presently attending a Bible for Life class, I would urge you to think about coming to the one that I'm teaching on evangelism. So we're going to go over some of these same things. We're going to try to be practical. That's Sunday mornings 9:15 AM and beyond. Along with that, Wednesday evenings, I and some others will be teaching on evangelism as well.

Now you may be wondering, "How can we do all of this teaching on evangelism and say different things each time?" I'm not promising that. There's going to be some repetition, some overlap. I have only so many ideas on evangelism, but I want to hear from you folks as well. And so those other settings will be more give and take as well, a chance for us to sharpen ourselves in that. So that's what's ahead. All of that kind of a brief sermon series intro.

Let's dig in now to John chapter 12, and let's see what kind of lessons we can learn from this on the issue of evangelism. And I want to begin just with this amazing encounter that Jesus has in verse 20 and following, 20 through 22, of some Greeks who come up to fill up in Andrew, and they want to see Jesus. And so I'm beginning. The first point I notice here are the subjects of evangelism, this foretaste of a vast harvest. Look again at verse 20 through 22:

 “Now, there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast, and they came unto Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee with a request. Sir, they said, ‘We would like to see Jesus.’ Philip went to tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.”

So these are Greeks. They're pagans. They're non-Jews. We don't even know that they would be at the level of God-fearers, 'cause John doesn't tell us that. They're just Greeks. And maybe they'd heard about Jesus' reputation, his miracles, something like that. And they had a strong interest to meet Jesus. And Jesus would have been very difficult to get to at that point, surrounded constantly by a huge crowd of people, so they went to people who maybe could introduce them to Jesus. They wanted to meet Jesus. And so Philip and Andrew together, they work together to bring these men to Jesus. Now at that time, bringing people to Jesus was physical. You could literally bring them to where Jesus was and they could have a conversation. For us, it's a metaphor for evangelism, for the spiritual work of introducing people to Christ spiritually through the Gospel.

And so Philip and Andrew are doing that with these Greeks, and it's amazing how Jesus reacts. We don't get a conversation between Jesus and these Greeks here in the text. I'm sure that he talked to them, but we don't have a record of it here. Instead, Jesus' mind goes immediately to the cross, goes immediately to his imminent death on the cross. Why so? Well, I don't know exactly what was going on in Jesus' mind, but it's not a stretch to think that he realized that these Greeks were just a foretaste of a vast and varied harvest that was going to go among all the tribes and languages and peoples and nations of people interested in coming to Jesus and believing in Jesus and following him. He knew the scriptures better than anyone else alive, anyone who has ever lived, and he knew it said in Isaiah 49:6, that Jesus would be a “…light for the Gentiles, that he may bring God's salvation to the ends of the earth.”

 Jesus was, Jesus is the light for the Gentiles. He also knew that he would shed his blood. Revelation 5:9 says there, “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” And so he had this, I think, in his mind, because he immediately talks about a kernel of wheat falling into the ground and dying and bringing forth much fruit.

So for us, the application - I'm going to just be weaving applications all the way through here - the application is that we should yearn to bring people to Jesus. We should try to live in such a way that people are hungry to meet the savior. They want to know more about the hope that's in us. They're hungry for that, and that these Greeks were just the first fruits of centuries of Gentiles, who would be fascinated in Jesus. Do you yearn for this? Do you yearn to be instrumental in bringing people to Jesus? How much would you love someone to come up and say to you what these Greeks said. "We would love to meet Jesus. Can you tell us how?"  Hey, what's wrong with praying to God for that? I don't know that God will grant you that prayer, but why not? You say that, "Pastor, that's where I'm at in evangelism. If someone comes to me and says, 'I would like to meet Jesus,' I'll tell them. But other than that, I don't know." Well, I understand that. I feel like that many days, but why couldn't we ask God for that and see what he does? And it could be that God will give you something that easy, or it could be that God will just make you a little stronger and bolder. But either way, just yearn to be an instrument in bringing people to Jesus as Philip and Andrew were.

Secondly, Jesus then brings us to, what I call, the unique but also repeated pattern of evangelism, the death of a seed. First of all, it's completely unique, utterly unique, but secondly, it's a paradigm or a pattern of example absolutely essential to the spread of the Gospel, through evangelism.

 So Jesus' mind goes immediately to his death on the cross. Verse 23, “Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.’” Jesus' immediate answer is amazing. Here are these Greeks and he says, "The hour has come." At last, the time has come. Throughout John's Gospel, we have this, "His time had not yet come. The hour has not yet come." But now it's come. The time has come. The hour is at hand. And his mind goes, I think, right to the price he's going to have to pay for Greeks just like this, a price in blood. If they're going to be rescued from hell, if they're going to be brought to heaven, he will have to pay the price. He will have to shed his blood for them. And he doesn't talk about his death directly, but he uses this glory language, “‘The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.’”

And so it's very important for us to understand what this means. To glorify God is to put God on display, to make God radiant and obvious to the people, that God's attributes would be put on display for all to see. And so there's so often this display language connected with the Gospel. It says in Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So it's a display of love. Earlier in Romans 3, we have a display of justice. God displayed his justice, because in his forbearance, he left the sins committed in the Old Testament unpunished, so he had to put his justice on display. Those two, love and justice, are just an entry way into seeing all the attributes of God, all of the characteristics of God on display in Christ crucified.  They're all there: Power of God, wisdom of God. That's 1 Corinthians 1. The patience of God, the wrath of God. It's all on display. And Jesus said, "The hour has come for that. The time has come for the son of man to be glorified," not just God, but that Jesus's attributes will be put on display.

Son of man comes from Daniel chapter 7, where we have the Ancient of Days, Almighty God, and then we have another one, one like a son of man being brought into the presence of the Ancient of Days, “…and he receives sovereign power and honor and glory, and all peoples and nations and people of every language will bow down and worship him, the son of man.” Jesus calls himself the son of man. He is the fulfillment of the Daniel 7 passage.

And this is the cost of their salvation and of ours: He must die, he must shed his blood for them to be saved. And this is glory for his own name. And so he says in verse 24, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.’” As usual, as he frequently does, Jesus uses an illustration from nature. Many of his parables are agricultural, and he's choosing out this idea of a seed. Now the seed, he says, has a hard shell on it, a protective coating, but that coating must be cracked, that protective shell must yield, and that seed must fall into the ground, and then the shell cracked and that genetic material inside that God made from the foundation of the world for the wheat plant must be exposed to the nutrients of the soil and the moisture, and up will come the plant. It must die, or else this harvest cannot come, and without it dying, then it will never bear fruit, it will remain a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.

Now, the NIV says, “…brings forth many seeds.” The Greek word there is just fruit, it's a common word for fruit, but we know that fruit has seeds in it, and the idea here is of a repeated pattern, there's going to be lots of seeds that also must fall into the ground and die. First, let's finish this one assertion, the death of Jesus is utterly unique, never to be repeated, never again will it be repeated. It's completely unique, it is complete and perfect in itself. It says many times in the Book of Hebrews that Jesus died once for all. Amen? So Hebrews 10:10, it says, “By that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” But the application of that redemption will be, it turns out, by the same principle of sacrificial, self-sacrificial dying, that the redemption was bought to begin with. Jesus won the redemption himself by himself, perfect work of redemption. But the application must be in the same way. Therefore, Jesus's death is not only unique, but it's also a paradigm example of how we also must be, if we're going to be evangelistically fruitful. You must be willing to die to yourself. If you refuse to die, you will remain a single seed. That's the idea here.

Thirdly, Jesus gives us a command to evangelize. He commands us to follow him in his death. Look at verses 25 and 26. You see how he extends it, so he's not just talking about himself. “‘The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’” Verse 26, “‘Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant also will be.’” So Jesus extends and clarifies this metaphor. His death is unique, but your death will be like his if you want to be fruitful, and in order to do that, if you refuse to do it, if you refuse to fall into the ground and die, you are loving your life in this world too much. That's the image he's giving you here, you're loving your life. It means to love your life in that sense means to yearn for a life of comfort and ease and prosperity and the respect and love of the world. To love your life means to love your reputation, to love your reputation with people and benefits that come from people's acceptance. Conversely, to use the language that Jesus uses, to hate your life is not an absolute command, it's relative. Similar to when Jesus says, “If anyone does not hate his father or mother, or his wife, or his sons, or daughters, or even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

Now, Jesus in other places, commands us to love all of those things, but compared to our love for Jesus, it must be like hatred. I think that's the same thing here. We're supposed to actually love our lives in this world and be thankful for the good things God gives us, but relative to this calling, we are to hate our lives. And if we do not, we will remain a single seed, we will not bear fruit. So Jesus, he is commanding his servants to follow him in the same pattern of dying, there is a command. My servants must follow me, there's a command in there. And so, he commands us to do this. So this is a basic principle.

The external journey, the Gospel cannot advance without suffering. It can't advance without suffering, it's impossible. Will not advance without pain and suffering, and Paul knew this better than anyone who's ever lived, other than Jesus. Paul knew it very well, and he said to the Colossians church, which he did not plant, he's writing to somebody else's church plant, but he says in Colossians 1:24-25, “Now brothers, I rejoice in what was suffered for you. So I am excited by the missionaries, the evangelists that brought you the Gospel and paid the price, and actually I fill up in my body, my flesh, what is still lacking in regard to the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church.” In other words, there's something missing with Christ's suffering.

Now there's nothing missing on the atonement, it is perfect, but now there must be additional suffering to take the message of the atonement out to those who need to hear it. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about in Colossians 1. And so again and again, the advance of the Gospel has been through suffering, the blood of martyrs has been seed for the church. Our brothers and sisters, they conquered the Roman Empire spiritually by dying, literally dying. Some of them sown in animal skins and set loose in the colosseum and packs of wild dogs ripped their flesh till they died, hard way to die. Others were put up on stakes and burned for Nero's dinner parties and other things like this. This has been going on for 20 centuries, is going on in our day as well in other countries. But there are simpler less spectacular ways of dying that are every bit as essential to Gospel advance, you know what I'm talking about. You know what everyone who has ever screwed up his or her courage at the workplace and walked across the floor to share the Gospel with a co-worker, you know that feels like dying. Doesn't it? It feels like dying. I don't want to die. It hurts, and it's hard, and it's not easy.

I remember this guy named Ron, I was trying to lead to faith in Christ, and he was this gruff older guy, he was in his late 50s, and tough to talk to, tough to work with. And the Lord convicted me, I needed to share the Gospel with Ron, I'll never forget that. Why him? Hardest guy I could think of that I regularly interacted with at the workplace, and it was lunchtime, and I was like, I don't want to do it, don't want to do it, don't want to do it, and I just don't want to do it, and I don't want to do it. So I remember going around and I was like in my mind, I was getting sweats and all that sort of thing, and I was like, I tell you what, I'm going to put a fleece down, that's what you do in moments like this, I'm going to put a fleece down. If I go around the corner to Ron's work bench and he's sitting there eating his lunch, then that's a sign you want me to share the Gospel with him. But if he's not there, then I won't. So I come around the corner and there he is eating a sandwich. Thank you, Jesus. So I walked up and I just – you know Paul said, “I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling.” And that was going on.  And he was like - I don't know what he was thinking, but I'm sure something like this - "What in the world has gotten into you?" So I just, I did a very poor job. But I basically said, "I'm a Christian." He said, "I know."  And I said, "Well, I believe in Jesus." "I know," he said. "Well, I think you need him." And then I walked away.

That's it. I don't know if Ron's going to be in heaven or not, but I don't think it'll be because of that witness. But friends, we can do better than that, but that's not my message. It's just felt like dying, it just felt like dying that day, and I didn't want to do it, and I just don't think we can really be fruitful if we're not willing to face that and be willing to step forward. It does hurt. It's not easy, it's difficult. We'll get to more of that, but Jesus is promising sweet fellowship for those who serve him. Do you see this? Verse 26, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there, my servant will be.” Sometimes I feel like there's a distance between me and Christ because I'm not more faithful in this area, that he's out there working and I'm not wanting to go there. But Paul said in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” That's what I want, I want to go, even if the price is suffering, I want to be where he is. And the same thing in Hebrews 13, “Jesus was crucified outside the city gates, let us go to him outside the camp bearing the reproach he bore.” So that's where he is, he's out there, go to him and you'll find sweet fellowship with Jesus.

Fourthly, the stunning reward for evangelism, honor from God. Verse 26, “‘My father will honor the one who serves me.’” Boy, this just brings goosebumps to me, it's staggering. Meditate on what's being said here. This is the infinite God of the universe, this is the God before whom the angels hide their faces and they cover their feet. This is the one who dwells in unapproachable light, the one who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and all its people are like insignificant grasshoppers. This amazing infinite God, this eternal omnipotent God will honor you if you serve Jesus. Wow!

This is the doctrine of rewards. At the center of reward is this one thing. Look down, same chapter, verse 43, John 12:43. This is what the honor is, it says, “‘They loved praise from men more than...’”  Look at that, “‘…praise from God.’” Do you see that? That's it. Now, it's a negative verse, but it tells us what the honor is. The honor is that God will praise you, he'll honor you, and he may even of their indication give you some emblems of that praise, such as crowns, etcetera, the crowns in which we'll glory in the presence of God, but we will cast them down, giving him all honor and praise. But friends, this is better than an Olympic gold medal for half-pipe or free style skiing or ice dancing or curling, friends. Look, I'm not mocking those sports, I'm just saying this is better than any Olympic gold medal from Sochi or any other place, this is an eternal reward from God if you serve Jesus. Now, I don't think this statement is just linked to evangelism only, any way you serve him he'll honor you. But I think the context here is hating your life and dying and bringing forth fruit, so it's home base seems to be evangelism and he'll honor those that step out in faith and trust him. He will praise you.

Fifth, the troubling cost of evangelism pictured by Jesus's suffering here, ultimately his infinite suffering. Verse 27, “‘Now my heart is troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it's for this very reason I came to this hour.’” So this is John's glimpse into what's recorded for us in Matthew, Mark and Luke at Gethsemane. Jesus there, as you know, shrinks back from drinking the cup of wrath that God hands them. “‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me, yet not my will but yours be done.’” So Jesus reveals the troubling in his soul over the pain and suffering he would undergo, it is very difficult to suffer, Jesus did not in any way minimize that, but he knew that this was the very reason God had brought him into the world. So also at a much lower level, we evangelists will suffer internal turmoil in our souls. We will be able to say, "Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father, get me out of witnessing?" No, no. No, you orchestrated this whole thing. I am your workmanship. I am created for good works. That's why you left me here. You work the other side of the equation, you've got them ready to hear. I can't say no. I can't.

So people are going to attack us verbally, we're going to be at a disadvantage in our careers probably if we're faithful in evangelism. Some neighbors will never wave to us again. I've said before, you're basically going to trade in a mediocre relationship for one good opportunity to share the Gospel, because it wasn't that great anyway, honestly. But don't be afraid to trade it in. Say, "I want to share my faith," and Jesus shows us the way out. Don't shrink back because of your fears. Feel the fear, don't expect to be anesthetized, it's actually how we glorify God. When you feel it, but witness anyway. It's the way we get to glorify him, so don't ask that that go away, just say, "God help me to push through it and be faithful, just as you Lord Jesus pushed through it and you were faithful."

Sixth, the ultimate reason for evangelism must be the glory of God. “‘Now, my heart is troubled and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No. It was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. And then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'’ Now, the crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered, others said an angel had spoken to him, and, Jesus said, ‘This voice was for your benefit, not for mine.’” I love that statement.

Alright, well, let's get the benefit from it then, shall we? Let's get the benefit, alright? There are many motives for evangelism. We'll talk more about this in a future sermon, but there are a lot of bad motives for evangelism. The worst in my opinion, one of the worst anyway, is guilt. It's a terrible motivator. It's a bad fuel, it'll make the engine cease after a while. The engine can run for a while on it, but it's going to cease down the road. It's just bad. Friends, I know we've just put a pause on Galatians, but can we not forget the lessons of Galatians? We are justified by faith in Christ alone, not by any works of the law, and that includes our own evangelism. So guilt is a very bad motivator, let's not do it out of guilt or fear that God won't bless us or things like that. Guilt and fear of that sort are not good.

How about pride? That's if you're good at it, and you're actually able to lead many to Christ and you start getting puffed up, and along with that comes the whole mega church thing, and there's power and money and all of this river of things that comes based on evangelism. Those are bad motives, fame and all that. There are good motivations, good motivations: Love for people, compassion for others, faith, as we see what's happening, what's going on, where they're all heading, training in habit can be good, it's good to have a habit of doing a good thing, obedience, these are all good motivations, but the best by far is this: The glory of God.

You are the light of the world. Put God on display. Put him on display. Make him radiant. Yearn to worship in your witnessing. Say, I serve a great God. Can I tell you about him? I'm at my best in witnessing, I have no fear at all with people when I worship in witnessing. And say, "Let me tell you how great Jesus is. Let me tell you about some of his miracles. Let me tell you about some of his teachings. Let me tell you about the greatest thing he ever did, which is dying and his resurrection." That's great. And then I'm just happy and I'm having a great time even if they're not. [chuckle] I want them to join me in my joy, but that's the best witnessing I ever do, that God would be glorified. This is how Jesus worked through his own anguish. Oh, no, not that I would shrink back. "But Father, glorify your name." Father glorify your name.

And by the way, this is pretty cool, I haven't found another example in the Bible of what's going on here. Do you realize what this is? This is the actual transcript of an inter-Trinitarian conversation, it's the only one I can think of in the whole Bible. Some verses have the Father speaking to the Son. In many places we see the Son speaking to the Father. This is the only conversation I have recorded in the Bible. That's pretty awesome, isn't it? It proves the Trinity. Separate persons able to have a conversation. So away with modalism, talk to me about that after the worship, we don't have time. But there is one God in three persons, and they're conversing, and what is the topic? It's the central topic of the universe, the glory of God. And the more you live for the glory of God, the more fruitful you're going to be in evangelism.

As John Piper put it in "Let the Nations Be Glad!", let me change it from missions to evangelism. Can I just do that? I don't think John would mind. You can tattle on me and if he gets upset, let me know. But I'm just going to re-read the first paragraph of "Let the Nations Be Glad!" talking about evangelism instead of missions. "Evangelism exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not evangelism, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, evangelism will be no more. But worship will be eternal. God is everything. The glory of God is the best." And this is what God's doing. I love God's answer, doesn't it? "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again." This is what I do, I glorify my name. So if you're weak in evangelism, start with your worship life, fan into flame your sense of the greatness of God in his glory. Have a sense of how great a God he is, get more and more of a vision through faith, through Scripture of the greatness of God and your evangelism will flow from that.

Seventh, the violence of evangelism. The ruler of this world must be driven out. Verse 31, “Now is the time for judgment on this world, and now the prince of this world will be driven out.” Jesus speaks of the judgment of the world. There is a coming wrath, dear friends. There is a coming judgment on this world. That judgment is already and not yet, the time has already come for the judgment on the world, and it will come. There is a coming judgment. There is a wrath that's now and there's a coming wrath. Now, it is because of Satan, that ancient serpent called the devil who lured man into sin in the garden of Eden, that this whole thing even needs to happen. Now, Satan was given authority over the kingdoms of this world. Who gave it to him? I think Adam did. I think Adam surrendered the world to Satan, and now Satan is boasting to Jesus, "The whole world's mine, I can give it to anyone I want to."

So that's the ruler of this world, that's Satan. Satan must be driven out, and he is driven out by the power of the Holy Spirit through the word of God, specifically through the Gospel. As we step out in faith, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the power of God, speaking the Gospel, Satan gets driven out, progressively driven out, driven out of people's lives, driven out of families and marriages, driven out of hearts and minds, and ultimately driven out of the whole world when Jesus comes back. So we need to know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, it's not against the people, but against these Satanic force of evil in the heavenly realms, and Satan will not give up his territory easily. One of the letters of the seven churches was to the church at Pergamum. And he says there in Revelation 2:13, “‘I know where you live, where Satan has his throne.’” Well, biblically, Satan has lots of thrones. Could it be that there are some thrones set up here in Durham? Could it be there are some wicked stronghold set up here of strange worldviews and perverse ways of thinking and living that are satanic and must be driven out by the beauty of the Gospel?

And we need to know where we live. Now, let me tell you about the suffering that's involved, that's different from Jesus's suffering. Christ suffered from the wrath of God, we suffer from the wrath of Satan. God isn't pouring his wrath out on us, that's not why we're going to suffer. We're going to suffer because Satan will use his people to make our lives miserable as we share the Gospel. That's what's going on. We're not suffering substitutionary deaths under the wrath of God, that's done forever. God's not pouring out his wrath on us, but Satan is giving up his territory very difficultly, and he's going to fight us and God is going to allow us to suffer for a short time. But every time we share the Gospel and someone hears it and believes, we have rescued them from what? “The dominion of darkness and brought them into the kingdom of the beloved Son.” How sweet is that? Colossians 1:13. So let's go for it.

Number eight, the sovereign power of evangelism, Christ drawing people to himself. And so we'll end with this, verse 32, “‘But I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself.’” What does he mean by that? Well, I'm going to tread on a few toes here, but it doesn't mean worship. It doesn't mean singing the song, "Lift him up, lift him up, lift the name of Jesus higher." You heard that one? It's a good song, I like it. It's good, it's just positioned on the wrong verse. Okay?

"Lift him up, lift him up,

lift the name of Jesus higher.

Lift him up, raise his banner to the sky.

He said, 'If I be lifted up,

I will draw all men unto me.'

Lift him up. All you people, lift him up."

Okay, but read verse 33, please. What is the lifting up Jesus was talking about? His death. He was lifted up from the earth on the cross, once for all. Now, I've already said, worship is a powerful form of evangelism, but that's not what this verse is talking about. What is he saying? If I die, if I shed my blood, and if I ascend and sit at the right hand of God, and if I send forth the Spirit, I will sovereignly draw all people to myself. That's what he's saying.

So if he dies on the cross, he will unleash a force in the universe and on earth for the salvation of people from every tribe and language, and people and nation. That's how it happens. By the sovereign grace of God. Jesus said this, "All that the Father gives me will... " What? "Come to me." Not 90% or 80% or 99%. One hundred percent of the elect will come to faith in Jesus. Amen? But he said on the other side, "No one can come to me unless... " What? "The Father who sent me draws them." So Jesus is called irresistible grace, God will, by the Spirit, draw the elect to faith in Christ and they will come. Not 99% of them, all of them. That gives us encouragement, doesn't it? Praise God for that.

So let's look at the summary and we'll talk about practical applications next week. The subjects of evangelism, a foretaste of vast harvest, there are Gentiles who have yet to be saved and some Jews too, praise God. Foretaste.

Number two, the unique and repeated patterns of evangelism, the death of a seed, be willing to die to yourself. His unique pattern never needs to be repeated again. His unique death, but it is a pattern.

Number three, Jesus has given us a command to evangelize. This is a matter of obedience for us, and if we do it, we will be where he is and share fellowship with him. The stunning eternal reward of evangelism is he will honor everyone who serves him. The troubling cost of evangelism, do not expect it to be easy. Jesus's heart was troubled. Our hearts will get troubled. That's how you glorify God by overcoming that. The ultimate reason for evangelism is the glory of God. The violence of evangelism is expect Satan to give up his territory with great difficulty, he's going to be seeking to beat us up. But finally, the sovereign power of evangelism is, Jesus has the power to draw people to himself. Let's close in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to understand the Gospel, to embrace it. I pray that you would strengthen each one of us. And Father, I pray again, if there are any here that have not yet trusted in Christ, that they would believe and that they would trust and look to Christ crucified and resurrected for their salvation. Help us to be faithful to share with our friends, and neighbors, and co-workers, and even total strangers. In Jesus's name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Galatians 4:21-31. The main subject of the sermon is the distinction between the ones born of the Law and the ones born of the Spirit.

Two passages are on my mind today as we open our Bibles to Galatians 4. We're looking for the second week at verses 21-31. As you do that, there are two great scriptures in my mind as we look at this topic of  Paul's allegory and the deeper meaning of scripture. The first is Isaiah 55:8-9 which says, "My ways are not your ways, neither are my thoughts your thoughts says the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts says the Lord." God's mind is infinitely above ours. The second scripture goes the opposite direction but the same basic idea. In Romans 11, after three of the deepest most doctrinally-challenging chapters in the entire Bible, Paul writes, "Oh, the depths of the riches the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgements, and His paths beyond tracing out. Who is known the mind of the Lord?" So God's mind is infinitely higher than ours and the things that he communicates are so deep we could never fathom them all.

For the second week, we are looking at some incredible verses of scripture that bring us now to consider the deeper truths of the Bible, the depths of scripture. We are looking at Paul's allegory and the deeper meaning of the Old Testament. This is in the book of Galatians, and just by way of brief review, the Apostle Paul went to Asia Minor to a place in modern day Turkey and preached the Gospel. He preached the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of sins. God blessed the Galatians by his sovereign grace and by his spirit, and Galatian Gentiles came to faith in Christ, and believed in Jesus and became adopted sons of Abraham. Even more significantly, they became adopted sons and daughters of the living God. And so those churches were planted in Galatia and then Paul left, because that was his ministry, to go to other places and preach. And after he left, some false teachers came in and they preached a false gospel. A mingling of Christ and Moses, of faith and works, which Paul would basically say is poison, not the real Gospel.

Now Paul is writing this epistle back to those churches to teach them again the foundational facts of the Gospel and how it is that sinners like us can be made right with such a Holy God, whose eyes are two pure to look on evil. He cannot tolerate wrong. Here is the question: How can sinners like us be made right with such a God? And we are, Paul says in Galatians 2:16 "Justified by faith alone apart from works of the law."  This is really the theological center of what he is trying to say. And then for two chapters in Galatians 3 and 4, he proves this doctrine of Justification by faith alone from the Old Testament Scripture. And this is the final section of that argument.  He is going back and speaking to these Galatian, Gentile Christians (believers in Jesus), and asking them, "Why would you want to be under the law?" Verse 21 says, "Tell me you who want to be under the law." Why would you want to live under the law? Aren't you aware of what the law says? And then he goes into this whole allegory, this whole teaching from the story of Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar, and Abraham and all of these things that we talked about last week.

Last week I gave you what I consider to be the “milk” of the passage, the central main idea. And if you don't get any of the things I say this week, you need to get this main idea. Paul is buttressing what he has been saying, that "we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law." And the point I made last week from this language, is that we are all like Isaac, children of the promise, that's verse 29 in our text. Each one of you who's a Christian, you are miracles of God's grace by his spirit. You are miracles! It's a miracle of God's grace that you love Jesus and that you repented of your sin and trusted in him. You are born of the spirit, a supernatural birth. And so you should live like it, and we will get into that in the last two chapters of Galatians, but you are born by the spirit.

Now, what I want to say today is the Scripture itself is a miracle of God's grace born by the spirit. And it contains deep unsearchable things that will swallow up the mind of the greatest genius on earth. So if you get nothing out of what I'm saying today about today's message, get this. The Bible is very deep and requires special and skillful handling. I want to zero-in on this issue of allegory. We get this right from what Paul says. We wouldn't even be talking about this today except that Paul does it. He brings up Isaac and Ishmael, Hagar and Sarah, and Abraham from Genesis 15-17. You can listen to the message from last week if you want to review, or just read Genesis 15-17 and find out from those chapters what Paul is talking about. But we're not going to go into the basic details, you heard that last week. But he turns to allegory, the story of Isaac, Abraham's son by grace, his son by the promise, his son by his wife Sarah. This is a picture of every genuine believer, every Christian, of sovereign grace born by the spirit. Its a picture of all of us Christians.

Ishmael is an allegorical representation of unbelievers who are trying to earn favor with God by their works. They're acting like slaves. They're thinking like slaves, and they will be cast out as Hagar and Ishmael were. They will not receive the inheritance. You cannot receive the Kingdom of God by your own works. So that's what we got from last time. But we have to go deep, we have to go into these allegorical meanings. And what I'm going to say is there are two basic ideas in the sermon today. When it comes to the Scripture generally, but specifically the Old Testament, searching out deeper spiritual meanings is essential to right interpretation. We must do it. But, secondly, from history, it's dangerous. You can go too far, and get into some excesses that we must seek to avoid. So that's kind of a two part outline of what we're doing. After that, I'm going to go back into the text, and we're going to find some more details in this allegory that are worth studying.

We are going to discuss missions. We are going to discuss the fact that physical Isaacs can be like spiritual Ishmaels, and physical Ishmaels can be like spiritual Isaacs, and how that is marvelous and amazing. We will also talk about the warning to each one of us who are spiritual Isaacs, to not live like Ishmaels, like those under the law. We will talk about the warning that all unconverted people face: eternal condemnation in hell. I think that is the warning at the end when he says, "Cast out the slave woman with her son." So that's where we're going. Whether we get there or not, who knows? But we'll do the best that we can.

Let's begin with this idea of deeper spiritual meanings. Look at verse 24 and following. Paul says, "These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants." So Paul literally says, "These things are allegories or this is allegorizing," that's literally what he says here. What does allegory mean? Well, that means to say something other than what one appears to be saying, or that there is a deeper meaning. Or, you could say more technically, an allegory is a big metaphor made up by a lot of smaller metaphors that go into the bigger metaphor. It's an extended metaphor of representational language, where this doesn't really mean that, but it means something deeper. That's what an allegory is. The most famous allegory in church history is Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress,' in which the Christian life of conversion, and then sanctification, and death, and being welcomed into heaven, is likened to a pilgrimage, from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, with all kinds of things that happen along the way. That's an allegory.

And so Paul uses this language, speaking of these things as allegories or representations of a deeper truth. So my first point is that, perceiving deeper spiritual meanings in Scripture, generally, but specifically in the Old Testament, is essential to right interpretation. Why do I say that? Because if you don't do it, you won't find Jesus there. If you don't find deeper spiritual meanings in the Old Testament, you will not find the prophecies that refer to Christ. Now, how do we know they are there? Because Jesus told us that they are there. Let's just go to one. In John 5:46, Jesus is speaking to his Jewish enemies, and he is talking about different testimonies to himself, and he spoke them saying, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me." Now, do you realize, that should just give you goosebumps. How could a man say that? Fifteen centuries after Moses died, that "Moses wrote about me?" Well, Jesus was the Son of God, and what he's saying is that God had predicted the coming of the Messiah through the writings of Moses.

Now, if you look at the first five books of the Bible, which we know Moses wrote (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), you're not going to find, for the most part, I don't think you'll find verbally predicted prophecies about the Messiah. You have to look deeper and find predictions about the Messiah in symbolic language. And if you know what to look for, then there actually many places that Moses wrote about Jesus. Jesus alludes to one himself a few chapters before that in John's Gospel. In John Chapter 3:14 he says, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Yes, that's the context of John 3:16. And the context is in the same way that Moses lifted up the bronze serpent, so Jesus will be lifted up. How? On the cross. "That everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life." By the way, that's what the word, "so" means in John 3:16. It means "in the same way." So it's a comparison. If you don't understand the bronze serpent, you won't understand John 3:16.

So what was the bronze serpent? Well, the bronze serpent is a story in Numbers 21:9 when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. They had failed to enter the promised land. They were getting sick and tired of manna and even complaining about the manna. You remember that whole story? In fact, they wouldn't have had to eat the manna except for a very short time, if they would have just crossed over by faith into the promised land. I'm starting to get upset at them again. You wouldn't have to eat the manna day after day if you just entered the land flowing with milk and honey, but they wouldn't do it. And so, now they got sick of eating manna day after day and started to complain. Well, God doesn't take complaining lightly, and he sends poisonous desert serpents in and they bit Israelites, and many died. Many of them died and they cried out to Moses saying, "We're sorry, tell God we're sorry!" And then God said, "I'm not going to remove the serpents but I'm going to put up this bronze serpent. And you send that message throughout the camp. For everyone who is bitten with the poisonous serpent bite, all you have to do is look to the bronze serpent and I will see and heal you." It was a picture of looking to Jesus by faith.

So I cry out to any of you who are here who have been bitten by the serpent of sin, and you've got the poison flowing through your spiritual bloodstreams. You have limited time before you drop dead and go to hell. Cry out to Jesus and by looking to Jesus, you will find forgiveness of sins. You trust in Jesus because that's why God lifted him up on the cross. And I'm pleading with you, don't leave this sanctuary here unconverted. But do you see what I've done? I've seen a deeper spiritual meaning in something that actually happened historically back then. And if you don't do that, you won't find Christ in the Old Testament. After Jesus died, and was buried and on the third day, he was raised from the dead, he began to appear to his own disciples, to give them many convincing proofs that he was alive. And he was with them over a period of 40 days and He taught them many things about the Kingdom of God. And one of the number one things he taught them was how the Scriptures, the Old Testament testified everything concerning himself.

So you remember Luke 24? Jesus is walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. You remember that story? And his appearance is somehow changed and they don't recognize him. And they're walking down together, and this stranger (Jesus) is talking to them and he doesn't seem to have any idea about current events, about what happened with Jesus. These two disciples were so discouraged and so downcast as they walked with the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus, not knowing it was Jesus. But they were so discouraged and downcast, "We had hoped He would be the one." And Jesus said, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer many things and then after that enter into His glory? "Then he showed them, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, everything that was explained in the scriptures about himself." And after he was taken away from them, they said, "Were not our hearts burning within us when He opened the Scriptures to us?" Do you see that word "open"? Or do you hear it? He opened the scriptures, He opened the scriptures and they hadn't seen these things before.

Later that same day Jesus appears in the upper room and he's with the disciples and he gives the many convincing proofs of his resurrection. And he says, "Touch me and see." And eats some broiled fish in front of them, and he just proves his resurrection. And then he says this, in Luke 24:44 and following, "This is what I told you when I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled, that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." [This is Luke 24:45] "Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures." Same idea, open, open. It was closed before, now do you see? Do you see it? It's here. "Do you see it? Do you see how these verses testify about me?" And he told them, "This is what is written, that Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem." That's all in the prophecy. Missions is also in the prophecy and we'll see it later in this message this morning. It's right in the prophecy. The spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. You are witnesses of these things.

And so the Old Testament is filled with this kind of typology or symbolism, pictures of Jesus, deeper spiritual meanings. Noah's Ark, the only place of refuge, as the wrath of God comes pouring down on the earth. The only place of refuge is Noah's Ark. It's a picture of Christ. The Exodus is a picture of salvation in Jesus, how we were in bondage to sin and we are brought out through the wilderness and we are brought into the promised land by the sovereign grace of God, led by the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud to the promised land. It’s a picture of our salvation journey. The Passover lamb, its blood painted on the door posts and the angel of death moving over, looks down and sees the blood and passes over and they don't die. Everyone inside the house, (like inside Christ) is saved under the blood. Everyone else perishes (all the first born). Indeed, every animal sacrifice in the Levitical system, all of the animal sacrifices were types or pictures of Jesus. All of them were.

As a matter of fact, the book of Hebrews does a great job of elucidating and opening these things up to us. It says in Hebrews 8:5 that at the tabernacle/temple, the Levitical priests serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and a shadow of the reality. So these deeper symbolic meanings point to the reality, but they weren't the thing itself, they were just symbolic. As it says later, in Hebrews 10:1 "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves." The book of Hebrews goes into a lot of details, you remember the place where he talks about Psalm 110, "You're a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek." And Jesus has become a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5). And then he stops himself and says, "You know, I have a lot to say on this topic. But I can't, because you're slow to learn. By this time you should be further along, but you need milk not meat. I want tell you about Melchizedek, but it's meat and you need spiritual teeth to get it." You see, it's a deeper meaning. And then he goes on in Hebrews 7 and just unfolds all of the analogies about Melchizedek and how is it picture of Christ.

So let me just sum up. Finding deeper spiritual meanings in the Old Testament is essential to right interpretation of the Old Testament. Without it, you will not find Jesus. Now, you may ask, "If that's so, then why don't the Jews, who don't believe in Jesus, but who study Moses and study these things all the time, why don't they see Christ in the Old Testament? I don't understand. If he's there, then why can't they see it?" And Paul answered that question in 2 Corinthians 3, you remember how Moses went up and spent time with God, and he came away and his face was shining and radiant? Remember that? And he put a veil over his face, because the people were afraid of him and they didn't want look and they were afraid to talk to him and so he put a veil over his face. Paul says that veil is a symbol of the hardness of heart of the Jews in perceiving the truth in the Bible, specifically in Moses. He wrote in 2 Corinthians 3, "Their minds were made dull, for even to this day the same veil remains whenever the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts, but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit is, there's freedom." And so the spirit comes in the new covenant and takes the veil away and you can see Jesus there. And your heart burns in the Scriptures like, "Wow, God's been working on this a long time. Wow, this is deep. Wow, these themes are rich and full." And you see it for the first time. And it's powerful, but if that hasn't happened to you yet, if your mind is dull, if your heart is hard, you're not going to see these things. You'll think they're ridiculous.

Now, generally, Christian interpreters, pastors don't use the world allegory. We generally stay away from it. We usually talk about types. Types are things acted out in history, in the Old Testament. They really happened, space and time, they actually did. But they also act out aspects of spiritual truth as well. So we believe there was a literal flood, a literal arc, a literal Noah, but it's also a metaphorical picture of salvation in Jesus. That's the way typology tends to work. We believe that animals really were sacrificed. Their blood really was poured out. It really was commanded by the law of Moses to do this, but it's a picture of Jesus. Allegorical interpretation is a different pattern. There, what you're doing is you're looking for deep spiritual meanings in every paragraph, every sentence, perhaps every word. I might say actually even every letter. At that point then, the Bible becomes like a hidden code book and you need the secret decoder ring. And if you got the secret decoder ring, and you get all the right things lined up, you can see it. But if you don't have the ring, you're not going to be able to see what I see. How can I get the ring? Well, you have to earn it. You have to become really spiritual like I am. And then I might give you the ring, and then you can see these deeper meanings. That's the allegorizing tendency.

So now, we move into the second main heading of what I want to say. That finding deeper spiritual meanings in the Old Testament is also dangerous. Historically, it's been dangerous. There's some people that go too far. They go off the road, somewhat. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, allegory was based in the ancient world, right before the time of Christ in the city named Alexandria in Egypt. It was named after it's founder, Alexander the Great who left Alexandria(s) everywhere. He just loved himself. He was just filled with a love for himself and his own name. And he set up the most famous of all of them is in Egypt. Alexandria, Egypt. Greeks were there and there was a flourishing Greek culture. And one of the two intellectual products that Greece gave to the ancient world is their extraordinary philosophers (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, ect.), and their fascinating Greek myths, their religion. Well, the myths were weird actually. They were almost insulting to some level. They were embarrassing at certain levels. But if you're a real Hellenist, you love Greek culture, you're going to try to find a way to make them a little more seemly. And so they began to allegorize and combine their philosophies with their religion and explain the awkward or embarrassing aspects of their religion by means of allegory. Deeper spiritual meanings.

Well, there was a Jew, living centuries before Christ, named Philo and he did this kind of thing. He actually did it with the Old Testament. He started doing lots of this allegorizing with the Old Testament. Now, it didn't really, in the end, catch on among the Jews, but it really caught on with Christians. And why? Well, for the reasons I've been saying since I've been up here today. There are deeper spiritual meanings. They do point to Christ. There's a whole different way of looking at the prophecies than you ever saw before. And so certain Christian teachers began just swimming in a sea of allegory and looking for allegories all the time. Beginning with Clement of Alexandria and then his disciple Origen, but then it continued after them. It flourished. It took off. Augustin and others always looking for the fourfold meaning of the text. The simple physical meaning which gave you just everyday life principles. And then on down to moral meanings and horizontal among Christian meanings. And then eternal meanings and all that. They're looking for deeper meanings in everything all the time.

The basic idea of this allegorizing approach is that God has hidden the true meaning of the Old Testament, and only the spiritual can search it out. Some likened it to the threefold aspect of the human being. You know how some say humans are body, soul, and spirit? So the text has a body, that's just the simple literal historical physical side. And it also has a soul and that's the moral side. And then it has a spirit and that's the Christ-centered or eternal side. So they're looking for these three aspects all the time in Scripture. So what were the kind of things they would do?

Origen was one of the best, he was a genius, an absolute genius. He was a heretical genius but he was a genius. And did amazing things with Scripture, alright? Some of them are kind of straightforward, similar to the things we've already done. Like the battle of Jericho. Joshua equals, come on you can figure this out, Jesus, right? The walled city of Jericho represents the world, it's opposition to Christ, okay? The seven priests who carry the ark, so Origen said, are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Jude, James and Peter. Got that?

Those are all Scripture writers, so I guess that's what he came up with. Rahab, the prostitute, represents the church, sinner saved by grace. The scarlet cord represents the blood of Jesus. So that's what he did with that. Even better is Origen's 27th homily on Numbers. He gets to the book of Numbers in the Old Testament. In Numbers 33, there is basically a travel log of the Jews as they travel from Egypt to the brink of the Jordan River. There are 42 places mentioned there. Oh, what Origen can do with that? 42 levels of spiritual ascent to full perfection in Christ, step by step. And he's got names and each level has this characteristic to it. Sounds almost gnostic or secret hidden religion but that's the kind of stuff they were doing. Or Joshua, as he fought the battle against the five kings, in Joshua 10, who attacked the Gibeonites. There are these five kings, and they captured these five kings, and put them in a cave, and put a stone in front of that. Well, the five kings represent the five senses of sight, sound, hearing, taste, and smell, obviously. And they are enemies to the things of God, ect. So this is the kind of allegorizing.

They love numbers too. If you want to hear a bunch of stuff about numbers, come and ask me later, I don't have time now. The question you would ask here is, "Why would Paul then use allegory if it's dangerous?" Well there's two different answers we can give to that. First is, it's what I call the "because I'm an apostle, that's why" approach, alright? So that would be kind of like a policeman with a siren going, or a fire truck with a siren going, or the presidential motorcade with its siren going, they can run any red light they want. Any red light. The rest of us, peons, we have to stop at red lights. So the apostle can do things that we're not allowed to do under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I don't think that's a great answer though. I think what I'd want to say is, is Paul really allegorizing like Origen was allegorizing? Or is he doing the standard typological approach of finding connections with the story of Isaac and Ishmael, that are helpful for us to elucidate spiritual principles? That's the question.

Now for us, how then should we approach the Old Testament? We must read it grammatically, understand its basic grammar, understand its context, especially its historical context, understand the flow of redemptive history. Where does this story fit in? Try to see what God was doing in redemptive history at that point. Understand God never changes and basically people don't change either. So we can draw out lasting principles about God's nature and about human nature without resorting to that kind of weird allegory. Don't get attracted to weird allegorizing. Look for deeper meanings and connections to Christ, they are there, more than are just listed. But don't get into the whole Da Vinci Code or numerology approach. I actually have a book in which somebody counted every 50th letter in the book of Genesis and found the word Torah, every 50th letter in Genesis… apparently it's in there. And they went through with all of this computer analysis and found all kinds of things in there. Like the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, in the letters of the... Don't do that! I know that's fascinating but don't do that, okay? What are the dangers of doing this, what are the dangers of this kind of approach? Well, I think first and foremost is the text, the Scripture starts to float away from the common everyday believer. Alright?

You, as an ordinary regular person under this kind of teaching, would have no hope whatsoever of understanding the text. And so why read it? It puts a wedge between the people of God and the word of God. It also is arrogant for the teachers to say, "I know and you don't. And the reason you don't, is you're not as spiritual as I am." It becomes like the emperor's new clothes where if you're as spiritual as I am, you can see what I see in the texts. If you can't see what I see in the texts, then you're not as spiritual as I am. Also there was no rhyme or reason, how did you know that the number two represented the two covenants, the number three represented the trinity, or the three days Christ was in the tomb, or the three different ways that humans can sin? How do you know that that's what it means? Where are you getting your information? And it becomes pretty scary at that point, you're under impressions from spirits and it's hard to know that that's actually even coming from the text. And it denigrates the physical world and history. History doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the deeper spiritual meaning. You're forgetting that God has ordained an orchestrated history, really doesn't matter whether there was a literal Adam or a literal Joshua, a battle of Jericho, that those things really matter.

Alright, now what I want do with the final couple of minutes I have is I want draw out a few more deeper connections here that perhaps you haven't seen before. Again let me reiterate the main idea. If you are a Christian, you are like Isaac, a child of the promise. You are born again by the spirit. You are not under the law, so therefore you shouldn't live under the law. What does it mean to live under the law? Well, at the simple level, you don't have to keep its meticulous requirements, the dietary regulations, circumcision, the ceremonies, the special days and months, and seasons and years. You're not under that anymore. You're free from that. But deeper than that, deeper than that, you are free from sin itself. The old covenant had no power to free anybody from sin. The mind of the flesh is death. The old covenant could only diagnose and condemn. It couldn't transform. But the new covenant can give birth to children who are born of the spirit, who have a whole new mind, made new in the heart and the spirit. The new covenant has transformed you, not the old covenant. So why live under the old covenant that had no power to do that? You're not under the law, meaning you're not under the law's ability to condemn you and send you to hell. Praise God, the accusations that were written out against you were nailed to the cross and you're free from them. Christ became a curse for you and you're not under the laws condemning power.

Therefore, look at Galatians 5:1, we'll get to it in April, but it says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm then, and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery." Alright, so that's the essential idea, but there are some other powerful lessons. Take a minute and go back to Isaiah 54. Take your Bibles and go back to Isaiah 54, and there you will find what Paul quotes in verse 27. What does he quote in verse 27? Well he says, "Sing, oh barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband, says the LORD." That's what Paul reaches for in the middle of his allegory. He reaches for Isaiah 54:1. Yes, what's amazing to me, look at it on the page. And I want you, just for a moment, to just lift off the chapter and verse divisions and set them aside, and just consider it a flowing prophecy from Isaiah. And find out where this celebration comes, where and why this barren woman celebrates.

Go back to end of Isaiah 52, and what do you see at the end of the Isaiah 52:13-15. "Behold my servant," the servant of Yahweh. This is Jesus, listen, "Behold my servant will act wisely; He'll be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there are many who are appalled at Him, His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and His form marred by human likeness so will He sprinkle many nations." The servant of the Lord, disfigured beyond human likeness sprinkles the nations. If you can't find Jesus there, you don't know what you're looking for. That is the atoning work of Jesus Christ that is going to be proclaimed among the nations. Jesus said it was written that this would happen and there it is. "And so will He sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of Him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand." Then it just rolls on into the most famous chapter maybe in the Old Testament. The clearest prophecy of Jesus. "He was pierced," verses Five-Six, "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our inequities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we were healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Clearly talking about the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Go to the end of the chapter, to verses 11-12. "After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied," speaking of the resurrection of Jesus. "By His knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many," very thing we've been saying in Galatians. Jesus justifies us by his work, by faith in his work and "he will bear their inequities therefore, I will give them a portion among the great and He will divide the spoils with the strong because He poured out His life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." That's Christ's atoning work. Finished now. Christ dead and has been resurrected. And now comes 54:1. "Break forth into song old Zion, old Jerusalem. Sing because now at last you can bear you children for God." Do you see the flow? Do you see the context? Now that Jesus has come, finally barren Zion, barren Jerusalem, barren people of Israel can at least bear children for God. That's why Paul reached for this verse.

Wow, that's awesome. It's awesome. Keep going though, look at Verse Two. "Enlarge the place of your tent," it's Isaiah 54:2, "Enlarge the place of your tent. Stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back. Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes." Okay barren woman? Hey barren woman, you're going to have so many children, you won't know where to put them. You're going to have to get a bigger tent. We need it bigger, we need longer ropes, we need bigger tents. Why? You know why… Because the Gentiles are coming. Not a few of them, lots of them. They're coming like a river. Now, she couldn't bear children to God in the old covenant. The old covenant never bore children for God. But now that Jesus has come, the blood of the new covenant has been poured out. Now at last, she (the Jerusalem that's above) can bear children for God. And that is awesome. It fulfills the promises made to Abraham.

Just listen, Genesis 12: 2-3, "I will make you [Abraham] into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." As He says in Genesis 15:5, "Look up at the heavens and see all the stars. If you can count them, so shall your offspring be." As He says in Genesis 17, "I'm going to change your name from Abram to Abraham because I've made you the father of many nations. Nations of people will come and be. They will look on you as their spiritual father and you will be their father and they will be your children. I'm going to make you the father of nations." He says it again in Genesis 22:17-18, "I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as stars in the sky and the sand of the sea shore, and your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed." That did not happen until Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 53. "Now at last, the people of God based in Jerusalem can bear fruit for God."

And this is exactly what Paul has been saying in Galatians, isn't it? He's been talking to Gentiles and saying "You're all children of Abraham through faith in Christ." Read about it at the end of Galatians 3. I'm not going to read it now, but he says "You're all a children of Abraham. You're sons of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ." As he says in 4:28, "Now, you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise." "You are Abraham's children." And so now this woman has at last expanded her tent. Paul's speaking of missions. He's speaking of the advance of the Gospel from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth, to the Gentiles. Can I give you a beautiful historical note here? Just because I love church history. One of the greatest sermons ever preached (better than this sermon, trust me), was on Isaiah 54:2 by William Carey.

William Carey went to this very text, Isaiah 54:2. It was called, “The Deathless Sermon,” a sermon that will never die by those who heard it. May 30th, 1792 at Friar Lane Baptist Chapel in Nottingham, England. On this text "Enlarge the place of thy tent and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy inhabitations, spare a knot, lengthen thy cord, strengthen thy stakes, for you shall, thou shall break forth on the right hand on the left and thy seeds shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited." The sermon broke into two main headings. There are two main points to the sermon. And they were: 1) Expect great things from God. And 2) Attempt great things for God. FBC, let's do that. Amen? Let's expect that God will do great things and fulfillment of these kinds of prophecies. Let's expect that he intends to save people through our witness. Let's expect great things from him and then let's attempt great things for him. By the way, as a result of that sermon, he started the first Protestant missions agency in England and he went from that to India. Right from Isaiah 54:2.

A second new application I've already noted before has to do with physical Isaacs who are actually spiritual Ishmaels. Okay? So the physical descendants of Abraham, the Jews of Paul's day, they were based in the physical earthly city of Jerusalem. And he said, that Jerusalem (the physical one) is below, she's in slavery with her children. They're in bondage because they have not believed in Jesus. They're under the Law of Moses. They're in bondage, they're slaves. They may be physical Isaacs but they are spiritual Ishmaels. How do you know that Paul? Well, I'll tell you why. Why don't you just go try to preach the Gospel there in Jerusalem. Just go and preach the Gospel of Jesus and find out what happens to you. "Do you know what happened to me?" said Paul, "They beat me and would have beat me to death if the Romans hadn't intervened." Why? Because they're in bondage. They're in slavery. They're in blindness. And it's the very thing he's saying. It corresponds to Mount Sinai in Arabia. They're like Ishmaels even though they're physically descended from Abraham.

But on the other hand, some physical Ishmaels maybe spiritual Isaacs. Now, this is interesting. What do you mean? Well whatever happened to Hagar and Ishmael. They got cast out, remember? And have you ever read that and thought, "Wow was that cold," that's cold. And God told them to do it. What did Hagar and her little son get sent out with only a skin of water and some bread or something, and that was it? And it's quoted in our text here, "Cast out the slave woman with her son." Cast her out. It's a picture of eternal condemnation. And so I was talking to a brother last week at home fellowship. He said, "Does this mean that all the Ishmaels are going to hell?" And he's clearly talking about people who live in Arabia, right? "Are we talking about all the Arabs? What do we do with that?" Well, here's the amazing thing. Abraham prayed for Ishmael. Do you remember that? He said, "Oh, that Ishmael would live before you." That's in Genesis 17:18. God answered that prayer. God didn't let Hagar and her son die.

God opened Hagar’s eyes to a well that saved their lives, and in the course of time, Ishmael became very fruitful. As a matter of fact, he had 12 sons and they are listed in Genesis 25:13. I want to read part of that genealogy. "These are the names that the sons of Ishmael listed in the order of their birth, Nebaioth, the first born of Ishmael, and Kedar. Nebaioth and Kedar." Now, take your Bibles and go over to Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60 is similar to Isaiah 54, it talks about spiritual Zion, the Jerusalem that's above. This future city, this glorious radiant city. Now, millennialist say this is the millennial kingdom, we won't talk about today, except that I just mentioned it. But, I think this is talking about the heavenly Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem that bears children for God. "Arise and shine oh, Zion for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. Behold, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples but the Lord rises upon you and His glory appears over you and nations will come to your light." If you can't hear missions on that, you don't know what to listen to. "Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.  Lift up your eyes and look around you. All assemble and come to you; your sons will come from afar, your daughters from the ends of the earth carried on the arm." This is missions. These are the sons and daughters of Abraham, sons and daughters of God through faith. "Then you will look and be radiant. Your heart will throb and swell with joy and the wealth on the seas will be brought to you and the riches of the nations will come." Verse Six, "Herds of camels will cover your land. Young camels of Midian and Ephah and all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord." Now look at Verse Seven, "All Kedar's flocks will be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth will serve you. They will be accepted as offerings on my altar and I will adorn my glorious temple." Wow. God has elect people who are physically descended from Ishmael that's why he didn't let Ishmael die out on the desert. Because some of his descendants would someday believe in Jesus and be drawn into this glorious radiant Zion. Amen and amen. So let's expect great things from God and attempt great things for God. There are Arabs coming to faith in Christ right now, Ishmaelites who are repenting and becoming spiritual Isaacs. This is going on right now and it's awesome.

Finally, the new Jerusalem is our home and we are going there, so set your heart on it. The Jerusalem that's above is our mother, and that is our future home. So set your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God and not on things below. Live as an alien and a stranger here. Read about it on Hebrews 11:13. Set your heart on a city whose architect and builder is God. That's the new Jerusalem. Read about it in Revelation 21 and 22, it is a beautiful place. It has streets of gold and it's radiant and it doesn't need the light of the lamp or the light of sun to shine on for the glory of Christ will radiate that place and you will live there. But woe to you, woe to you, if you are a spiritual Ishmael. Not a physical Ishmael, that's not the issue. It doesn't matter. But the matter is, are you a spiritual Ishmael? And what that means is trying to earn your salvation by works and by effort and cleverness and by paying for your sins yourself. Woe to you because you'll be cast out with these words, "depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angel."

Now, we have come to the time of preparation for the Lord's Supper. Have I given you some things to think about? And I'm giving it all to you. If you want the number stuff, it's right here. Anybody who wants it, come and grab it. There is always more to talk about. But we have the chance now to turn to a very rich and full symbol that the Lord has given to us of his death and his resurrection and his second coming, the Lord's Supper. I'm going to close this sermon in prayer and ask the Deacons to come help serve table. Father, I thank you for the depths and the riches of your wisdom and scripture and I pray that now, as we turn our attention to the Lord's Supper that you would bless it with the power of the spirit. The way to understand it, symbolism properly, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Galatians 4:21-31. By the allegory from Sarah and Hagar we are reminded to trust in the Lord and not in ourselves or the Law.

So this text is very deep, very difficult, very complex. It mentions an allegory, it mentions women in labor, so this morning this sermon gave birth to two sermons. What I want to do is go through the text all the way through and give you what I consider the simple interpretation of these words. Next week I want to go deeper and look more at the meat or the difficulties and the allegory that Paul brings us. I'm going to mention allegory this time, I'm going to touch on it lightly but I'm not going to go into detail this time on what Paul is doing with this allegory. What I want to do is make very plain and clear the simple lesson of these verses, what is Paul saying to you, to each one of us. And I'll just say it straight out. I believe what Paul is saying here is that, every single one of us who are genuine Christians, we are miracles of grace. We are Christians because God has interfered with our lives, has stepped into time and space by his sovereign grace and changed everything, and we have been made children of the living God by sovereign grace, and we ought to live like it.

Look with me at verse 29 this is where I'm getting it from, at the end in verse 29 he says, "At that time the son born in the ordinary way... " That's NIV. Son born according to the flesh in the simple straightforward natural way. "The ordinary son persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit." So we see the Ishmael symbolism and the Isaac symbolism leading to two realities they're just two different kinds of people in this world. There are people who are born in the natural way and then there are people who are born supernaturally. And if you're a child of God, you have been born supernaturally and you ought to know it, and you ought to give thanks for it every day and you ought to live according to that birth. So that's the simple straightforward message. Now Paul roots it in very deep things. But I want you to understand this message, if you're a Christian you're a miracle of grace, and I say it directly to you it doesn't matter how you came to faith in Christ.

I've spoken to people at the time of baptism and they need to give a testimony of how they came to faith and some who are born in good Christian families who were raised under the hearing of the gospel who never knew a time that they didn't know Jesus. Maybe their parents spoke the gospel to them while they were still in the womb, I did. Please don't think that's weird, but I did that with all five of my kids, I told them to repent and believe in Jesus... All of them. And that they needed to come to faith, and I wanted them to come to an early conversion. I wanted them to come to faith in Christ early and so it's easy for someone raised in that circumstance say, "I have no testimony." Let me tell you something if you believe that Jesus is the Son of the living God, that God raised him from the dead, if you've called on him because you know that you're a sinner, you're a child of grace, it doesn't matter how you came to those convictions, I think it's better to come to an early conversion and not run in sin for a while. Sin never does us any good. If on the other hand like me, you're converted in your adult years and you remember distinctly times when you were dead in your transgressions and sins. And you also have a testimony of grace and you're no less or more a child of sovereign grace and someone born in that other circumstance and living through that.

I just want you to know if you believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of living God, and he died on the cross, in your place for your sins, and that you have called on him, "For everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved." You've called on him for forgiveness of sins and you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the testimony that you are a child of God, you are a miracle of grace.

And you ought to know it. And you ought to live like an Isaac and not like an Ishmael. Alright that's the simple lesson of these verses. But there's nothing simple about this text. I hope some of you are having some pity and compassion on me as Taylor was reading that text, well I'm glad I'm not the Pastor. What's he going to do with this allegory? What's he going to do? What indeed? So I actually bought another week of time to answer that question, but I have some ideas. Paul in verse 21 is speaking directly to some people who apparently seem to want to live under the law.

Do you see it? Verse 21, "You who want to be under the law tell me... " He is speaking them to these Galatians to be under the law. What does that mean to be under the law? Well it means to rely on self-effort at keeping the law to rely on yourself to get into or maintain a right relationship with God, that's what it means to be under the law. John Piper puts it this way, “to look on the law as a job description for earning the wages of God's favor.” You know what a job description is? When you get a job there's some bulleted things you're going to be responsible for, if you do these things you can be a good employee of this company. You won't get fired, this is what you're supposed to do in this position. And so the legalist, a person who is under the law has in the law a job description in order to maintain a good relationship with God. You have to earn God's smile, you have to earn His favor you have earn his approval, you have to earn right standing with God. You have to come in to it by your own efforts and you have to keep it or maintain it by your own efforts that's what it means to be under the law.

Paul here calls it slavery, it's slavery, it's bondage. Why would you want to live in that kind of bondage? Why would you want to live as a slave like that? Tim Keller in commenting on this text says, I think he does a great job of just diagnosing the kind of people there are in this world. He says there are four types of people when it comes to these issues. First there are law abiding, law relying people. Law abiding, law relying people. They live in constant reliance on their own obedience to the moral standard. That has been given by God, the law of Moses. They tend to me smug, self-righteous and superior, but they also ironically tend to be deep down insecure. So they're touchy and sensitive to criticism. They're irritable. They tend to shoot the messenger if anyone comes and says there's anything wrong with them. They're devastated when their prayers go unanswered. This could be people from other religions actually who are living up to some moral standard, but also people who go to church can live like this. This describes a lot of the Pharisees of Jesus' day.

Secondly, you've got law disobeying, law relying people. Law disobeying, law relying people. These are people who have a developed religious conscience based on strong works righteousness, but they're failing to live up to it consistently. Therefore they're more humble and broken hearted than the first group, more tolerant of others, but they're guilt ridden and they're given to despair. They may attend church, but they stay on the outskirts, on the periphery of church life because they feel so worthless spiritually. They know that they're sinners, but their only remedy is to try harder and that only leads to more depression.

Third category, law disobeying, not law relying. Law disobeying, not law relying. These people have thrown off the concept of God's holy laws. They've thrown off the idea of a moral standard coming from God. They are totally secular and relativistic or they are vague spiritually. They invent and choose their own moral standards. They put it together a la carte, like a Golden Coral just putting on the tray what they want and so they put their own moral system together and then they try to live up to that standard. Thus, they are often in many ways just as judgmental as the Pharisees. By the way, are you feeling that? We're judged if we don't live up to their odd moral standards these days. If you don't stand up and give a standing ovation at key moments as it has happened even this week, you're wicked, you're evil, you're judged by this new kind of Pharisee. They're trying to earn their own version of salvation by feeling morally superior to others, but their system of righteousness is self-invented, it's self-defined, self-assessed. It's the third category.

Then the fourth category, you're hoping you're in here somewhere right? Fourth category, law obeying, not law relying. These are spiritual Christians who understand the gospel and are living out the freedom of the gospel. They obey God's moral law by the power of the spirit and the grateful joy of knowing that they're totally secure, they're adopted sons and daughters of God. They know that their failures and they do fail, but their failures are covered by the grace of God in Christ.

However, most Christians in this category still struggle and tend to see the world from time to time either as a number one, a Pharisee or as a number two, a law relying failure or number three, a secular moralist. We all struggle and go back in some ways to that from time to time and the degree to which they have these false views is the degree to which they are impoverished spiritually. That's Tim Keller. I think he does a great job of analyzing these things. Where do you fit in that matrix? And what do you struggle with even if you are in number four? So we're coming to the issue here in which Paul is addressing directly, those who apparently want to live under the law. And he uses an allegory based on the Old Testament to teach the same principle that he's been teaching, which is that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. It's not based on self-effort in the law. So let's give a little bit of review here and let's try to get our bearings.

Some of you maybe haven't been with us through all the time we've been preaching in Galatians. Galatians, one of the most powerful writings in the history of the human race. It's only a 147 verses. It's a very very short writing and yet explosive in its implications and its ramifications for the human race. It searches out some of the deepest issues of human experience, maybe the deepest one. How can a sinner like me stand in a right relationship with the holy God? How can we be in a right relationship with God? So Paul is writing to Galatian churches that he planted. He was there sharing the gospel and he proclaimed the clear pure gospel of Jesus Christ, of him crucified, resurrected of repentance and faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. They heard the gospel, these Galatians. They believed it. They repented and believed it by grace. They received the gift of the outpoured holy spirit and they began living a joy filled, fruitful, powerful Christian life. Paul left town because he was a traveling itinerating church planting evangelist and missionary and apostle. He wasn't going to stay there forever.

And after he left, some other teachers came along claiming to be Christians, but really who weren't. They're called by many theologians or interpreters the "Judaizers" and they came with a toxic brew of combination of faith in Christ crucified and resurrected plus obedience to the law of Moses equal salvation. That's what it takes. You have to obey the laws of Moses. You have to become Jewish basically. Circumcision just the beginning of that journey. So if you will be circumcised and then obey the law of Moses, you can be saved. Paul calls this a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. In Galatians chapter 1, it says evidently some people are throwing you into confusion or trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. Paul then spends almost two full chapters establishing his own supernatural calling from God, how God called him by grace and how God gave him the gospel from heaven.

And this isn't a message that man made up, it's something that God gave to him directly and not only to him, but also to those who are reputed to be pillars in Jerusalem, they're preaching the same gospel. And when it comes down to the key issue, justification. How can a sinner be made right with almighty God? He says so plainly in Galatians 2:16, "We know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus so that we maybe justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified." It couldn't be clearer. That's Galatians 2:16. In many ways that's the pinnacle of the doctrine of this book. And he says plainly with his own relationship with Christ is in Galatians 2:20, says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live and the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."

Having established his own proclamation of the gospel, his own walk with Christ, he then launches in in Galatians three and four to support this idea from scripture. He supports it first from their own experience saying, "Hey, you received the holy spirit when you heard and believed." But then he goes from that into a scriptural support of this. This isn't a new idea, this isn't a new doctrine. This is something that God established long ago. And he brings up the case of Abraham in verse 5 of Galatians 3. He says, "Consider Abraham, he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." So all you have to do is just believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ and righteousness will be given to you as a gift. This is not a new idea he's saying. Conversely, he says, "Everyone who relies on the law is under a curse. [Galatians 3:10] for it is written, ‘Cursed it is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.’" As we said all the law all the time or you're cursed. Cursed with death, cursed with hell. So if you're trying to live under the law, that's what you have.

But Christ redeemed us from that kind of life. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He absorbed the punishment we deserved on the cross. Galatians 3:13 and 14, as it is written, "Curse it is everyone who's hung on a tree." He redeemed us, verse 14, "In order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit." Now why was the law given while it wasn't given to justify us? And it doesn't change the promise. The law was giving as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ and at the right time then once we have come to faith in Christ, we become heirs of the whole estate. All of these things he's been saying, this is scriptural support. Now in many ways these verses culminate or finish his scriptural appeal. So Galatians 4:21-31 as he goes back one more time to the old testament, he's finishing up his old testament support of this idea, justification by faith alone. Now Galatians 5 and 6 is going to bring us into some awesome practical applications. And we're going to learn in those chapters how we can live out a life of faith.

How we can live out a fruitful life not doing whatever we want as people accuse those that believe in justification by faith apart from works of doing. They say that we throw off the law, we're antinomian. We do whatever we want. No, no, no we're going to find out Galatians 5 and 6 is really the answer to that. Walking by the power of the spirit, we live holy and godly lives characterized by the fruit of the spirit. We put to death the deeds of the flesh, we make a live fruit in the spirit, it's a whole different kind of life. We're going to talk about that, God willing. Alright, now let's look back at some of the historical facts that Paul is bringing us to here. The historical background, he's bringing us to the story of Hagar and Sarah and Abraham of course and their sons, Hagar's son, Ishmael and Sarah's son, Isaac, and he's drawing some spiritual principles from this history. So first of all he speaks directly to the Galatians in verse 21. "Tell me, [he says] You who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?" So he's speaking very directly, somewhat in your face here. Very concerned about these Galatians, he's making a direct appeal to them, these drifting brothers and sisters in Christ who are breaking his heart and he appeals to them very directly here.

And he says, "It seemed like you want to be slaves. I don't understand it, but it seems like you want to be slaves under the law. Why would you want to do that?" But now he makes his appeal, he says, "Aren't you aware of what the law says?" Isn't it amazing how often this happens? Jesus did this a lot. They'd come to Jesus with a problem and he'd say "Haven't you read? Are we reading the same book here? Haven't you read?" This and that. Jesus does that again and again, "Haven't you read, what David did when he and his companions were hungry? How he took the consecrated bread and he ate it." Or, "Haven't you read, that in the law those in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet they're held innocent." Or, "Haven't you read, that at the beginning the creator made them male and female…" instead of the question on divorce? Or about resurrection, you're asking me about resurrection, "Haven't you read, in the passage about the burning bush? What God says to you? "‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’" Haven't you read these things?

And so Paul's doing this, "You who want to be under the law, aren't you aware of what the law says?" You could almost say, this is like a friendly lawyer saying, "Have you read the fine print here." "Do you realize what's in this contract? Do you know what you're signing on for?" "Before you put your signature at the bottom, let me tell you. I'm your friend, I'm a friend of the family and I'm a lawyer and I'm telling you what's going to happen if you sign this." "So if you go off in this direction, I just want to tell you what the law says." That's how he's arguing here. And what he's saying here is, the big picture is, being a physical descendant of Abraham was never enough for the Jews. It doesn't save you.

There are different sons of Abraham. He has two sons in this case, we're going to look at Ishmael and Isaac. But what really matters is to be an elect son or daughter of the living God, a child of promise, a child of the spirit, that's what he's getting at here. John the Baptist, remember when the Pharisees and Sadducees came to where he was baptized? You remember he said "You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourself, 'We have Abraham as our Father' For I tell you out of these stones God can rise up children for Abraham." Very strong word isn't it? Don't rely on just being Jewish. Don't rely on the fact that you have Abraham as your Father. Jesus said the same thing in John 8 to his enemies, the Jews that were in his face and opposing his ministry. Very strong. "Abraham is our Father," they said to Jesus, remember that? And Jesus said, "If Abraham were your father, you would do the works of Abraham. You would walk in the steps that Abraham walked, but as it is you're trying to kill me. Someone who's told you the truth from God, Abraham didn't do those kinds of things. You are of your father the devil." So both John the Baptist and Jesus speaking very plainly to Jewish people that it's not enough to be physically descendant from Abraham. It's not enough.

And so Paul reminds us here what the law says, Abraham had two sons, and he's going to draw some spiritual lessons from that. We now need to go back to the tragic story of Abraham and Sarah, and Hagar and what happened with them. Look at verse 22 and 23, it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as a result of the promise. We have to go back a little bit again to that great chapter Genesis 15 in which God makes that beautiful promise to Abraham. As you remember, the word of the Lord came to him, "This man Eliezer of Damascus would not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be you heir." Then he took him outside and he said, "Now, look up at the heavens, look at the stars and count them if you can." Then he makes this incredible promise, "So shall your offspring be." It's going to be like that. And Abraham believed the promise and it was credited to him as righteousness. Key moment, redemptive history so that's the promise. But then comes Genesis 16, the story unfolds. One of the great beauties of the bible as it tells us the truth. Even about its great heroes, and we could wish that Genesis 16 didn't happen but it did. So what happens there? Well, some years are passing. Many years had passed from the starry night and nothing's going on. God is very patient, we're not so patient.

And God is waiting and then nothing's happening. God apparently is not acting on what he had promised and Sarah saw that she continued to be barren and by then she is 76 and Abraham was 86. Back then, the ages were different than they are now. People died at age 175, Abraham did and now things are different but even then pretty much Sarah said the time for me bearing children is long passed. It's over. She was barren anyway, they were barren and they couldn't have children and that have been proven for years. But now even just in the normal course of things as a woman, she's passed that time and so, it's over. What are we going to do? I believe the Lord is waiting for that. I do believe He was waiting for her to be well beyond the time of bearing children and for Abraham to be well beyond even that even an expectation, he was waiting so that the child born could be so clearly a miracle baby. He wanted the baby to be a miracle of grace. But what happens now in Genesis 16? Sarah gets an idea. She has a thought, "I think I'm going to help the situation along." And what's so amazing here is that we think God actually needs our help. he needs our cleverness, he needs us to intervene, he needs us to get involved. This is the mind of the flesh. And so, she says in Genesis 16:2, "The Lord has kept me from having children." That is true. It's true. But she drew the wrong conclusion. "Go sleep with my maidservant. Perhaps, I can build a family through her. And Abraham agreed to what Sarai said." Now, Abraham himself, at that point, acted in self-reliance according to self-wisdom. God did not commend this. Abraham was not looking to God to fulfill his promise and, as a result, Abraham lay with Hagar, she conceived and gave birth to a son, Ishmael. What the text says, what Galatians 4:29 says, "The son born in the ordinary way or born according to the flesh." It's just a normal course of events. It's the son of the flesh, the son born in the ordinary way, the son of the slave woman.

Now, the essence of the life under the law is: I'm on my own. I must think. I must act. I must choose. I must make this happen. If it's going to happen, I've got to do it. And take that to the nth degree. If I'm going to heaven, I need to do something about it, I need to change… It's the mind of the flesh. And so, this is a very tragic venture into the flesh. And Ishmael was the son born of that way of thinking. Human power on its own, unaided, doing that. And trouble came into Abraham's family immediately because of it. As soon as Hagar was pregnant, she saw that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress, Sarai. Think lowly ever, "I don't have to do that. Do you know who I am now? This is Abraham's baby I'm carrying. Who are you?" And so, there's some disrespect going on there. Where upon then Sarai starts to mistreat her and so is trouble immediately. Son of the flesh immediately bringing distress into the world.

By contrast, we have Isaac. Isaac is the child of the promise. God waits sometime. Genesis 17, God speaks very plainly. If you know what to look for, Genesis 17:1, I think is the verse very clear rebuke. "I am God Almighty," he says to Abraham, "Walk before me and be holy." So, if you know what to look for, that's a rebuke. He says, "Don't do that. Trust me and do holy things and walk before me." And he changes his name to Abraham. And then he says this in Genesis 17, God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai, your wife. You're no longer to call her Sarai, her name will be Sarah. And I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of Nations. Kings of peoples will come from her." See, very clear about what woman is going to give birth to the miracle baby. Very, very clear. Genesis 18 is even clearer about the time frame. Remember when the three visitors came and Abraham entertained angels unaware? He didn't know who they were. And God Almighty there and the Lord said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah will have a son." So now, we've even got the time frame set. We got the woman and then you've got the time frame.

So then, the fulfillment comes in Genesis 21. God fulfilled his promise by his sovereign power. By the power of his grace, he fulfilled his promise in Sarah's life. I don't know if you're there, but just listen, just listen, don't turn there, it won't take too long. But Genesis 21:1 is a God saturated verse if you know what to look for. "Now, the Lord was gracious to Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised. [Verse 2] Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. And Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son, Sarah bore him." Alright, let me reread Genesis 21:1 emphasizing God, emphasizing the Lord's activity. "Now, the Lord was gracious to Sarah." The sovereign Lord gave her grace. Just "as the Lord had said to her." In other words, based on the promise he had made. "And the Lord did for Sarah, [sovereign grace] what the Lord had promised her." It's like four times he says, "This is something I am doing." This is a supernatural, this is a miracle baby being born here. He would not be born if I weren't involved. And so the Lord showed her grace and she gave birth to Isaac.

And Abraham we are told in Romans 4, through this time, was filled with faith about all of this. And this is really the whole point here. Listen to the words of Romans 4:19-21: "Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." And if you go even a few verses before that in Romans, Romans 4:17, it speaks of the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Now, this is the whole point. What is Jesus doing for you? You know what He's doing? He's rescuing you from sin and death. He's going to raise you from the dead. He's going to give you a resurrection body. You're going to live forever and ever. Now what can the arm of flesh do to achieve that? Nothing. As we said before, what are your plans on raising yourself from the dead? This is important.

I want to sit down with you like an insurance salesman. I want to say this is important. It's more important than any financial planning you'll do. What are your plans? You're going to die. How are you going to raise yourself from the dead? What do you think about doing about that? I want each of you to face that question. What are your plans on raising yourself from the dead? Various strategies I could suggest to you, friends. Don't you see the point? You can't raise yourself from the dead. You need to trust in the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Only God can raise the dead. And so Isaac was born. He's a miracle baby. He's a fulfillment of the promise. He's born as a direct result of the supernatural work of God's grace by the Holy Spirit. He was born only to the glory of God, not to the cleverness of some human scheme or plot, or plan or act of the will. Born only to the glory of God, and this is exactly what God has said Christians are. This is what we are.

Think about John 1. "He came to His own and His own did not receive Him" [Speaking about the Jews] "But as many as did receive Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God." That's exactly what this text is all about. We're not born in the natural way. We're born by God and by his grace. As it says in John three, Jesus saying to Nicodemus, "Truly, truly, I say to you unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Whatever is born of flesh is flesh, but whatever is born of the Spirit is Spirit." And then he says in verse eight of John 3, "The wind blows wherever it wishes, wherever it wills, and you hear the sound of it, you cannot tell where it comes from and where it is going." So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. That's what he's talking about here. Ishmael then is a type of a normal human being, normal passions, normal pleasures, normal appetite, normal drives, and he will die. Unless he's converted, he will die as a slave. But Isaac is a miracle baby, supernaturally born, supernaturally sustained by the Grace of God and by the Grace of God, and by the promise of God, he is an heir of the kingdom.

So what are you? What are you? Next week, we're going to talk about this allegory. We're going to talk about allegorical interpretation. We're going to give a little bit of the history of it. This is why I said, look, I practice a sermon this morning. There is no hope of us getting an allegory right now. No hope, whatsoever. I'm on page eight of a 20-page sermon.

But let me just give you a general sense of the allegory, okay? Hagar represents the old covenant which gives birth, law gives birth to law children who are slaves for the rest of their lives and they're condemned. They're under the curse of the law. Sarah who's actually not mentioned, but she's implied here. The free woman is the Jerusalem that's above and she is our mother. And our true home is heaven, the heavenly Jerusalem. Paul actually presses it. We'll go into this next week, but he says, "The Jerusalem that's below, the physical Jerusalem, she's in bondage. She's in slavery." Do you realize what he's saying there? He's saying, "Jews who have not come to faith in Christ are no different than Ishmael." Wow, that's not going to be very popular, but that's exactly what he's saying, "Spiritually, they are Ishmaels. They are Esaus." In another verse. Alright? There's no difference. They are unbelievers and they're in bondage. This Jerusalem that's below is earthly and law-oriented and bonders, and he's speaking to these gentiles. "Why would you want to live there?"

"Let's live above, in the Jerusalem that's above. Let's live in the heavenly home that is our country. Our citizenship is where it's in heaven," And we're looking forward Hebrews 11 "To a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God." That's the heavenly Jerusalem. If I'm not careful I'll preach next week's sermon. I'm going to stop. Alright? We'll talk about the allegory.

Now application for us, verse 28, "You brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise." I gave it to you at the beginning. I'll give it to you here at the end. You are supernaturally born if you're truly a Christian, truly a Christian. Understand who you are. Understand how you got here. How did you get to believe in Jesus? It wasn't as an act of your will. It wasn't because you had more cleverness or more as God gave you birth. He sovereignly worked in your life. He took out your heart of stone and he gave you a heart of flesh. That's what happened. You should know that. You should know that. But I want to stop and say, has that happened to you? I'm speaking to a large group here. I'm speaking to a mixed group. I'm speaking even to you people on the balcony. I know I forget to look at you but I love you. And I want, I just... But I know you're there, but there's a group up and below, a big group, I don't know you all and I don't know necessarily what's happening in your hearts even if I do know you.

Has this happened to you? Have you been born again by the Spirit? Are you clinging to the promises of God and not to your own works? Are you saying, "I am saved by grace and there's nothing I can do to pay for my sins. I know I'm a sinner. I know the law has convinced me I'm a sinner, but there is no remedy for me other than Jesus, I trust in him." Has that happen to you? Are you born again? Born again by sovereign grace? And how do you fit in into Tim Keller's Matrix? How are you living? Are you living as, as a law relying so called law abiding (nobody is that way), but you think you are. Are you pharisaical, trusting in your own obedience to a legalistic standard, is that you? Are you law relying, but law disobeying? You're miserable, you think "I've got to earn my way, I've got to earn, earn, earn but I'm not and I'm failing, I'm so depressed and so discouraged all the time." Is that you? Or maybe you have friends, coworkers or neighbors who make up their own moral standards and live up to them as best they can, but they are very judgmental if you don't live up to their moral standards. Are we reaching them with the gospel?

Are you truly law obeying, but not law relying? That's a Christian, right? In order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. Romans 8, "We do not live by the flesh, but by the Spirit." We'll get into that in Galatians 5. Is that the life you're living? And Keller says very wisely, "You have tendencies toward the others." What are your tendencies? Are you legalistic? Are you depressed? Because you're not living up to that standard? Do you just not care that much what the law says, it doesn't matter to you because you're Christian and we're saved by grace anyway.

What are you living like? I know you cling into the promises, do you realize how rich we are in the promise? I've got a listing here of promises. These are amazing, and I'm not going to read them all, but think about a full forgiveness of sins is promised to us, we're clinging to that, our sins are forgiven, God's promised that. He's promised that we will be have been adopted into his family, he's promise that we will be heirs of the world, the righteous will be heirs of the world. The meek will inherit the earth. Are you clinging to that? Do you have the Holy Spirit in your heart as a deposit guarantee in your full inheritance, do you feel how rich you are as a child of God? That you're an heir of a coming kingdom. Do you have your heart set fully on that coming kingdom, even though you can't see it with your eyes, can you read it in Revelation 21? The new Jerusalem coming down from heaven as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband, and it's described in those two magnificent chapters and it's just a radiant beautiful perfect place and you know you're going to go there, you're qualified to go there because of imputed righteousness, trusting in Jesus. Praise God.

Is that the kind of life you're living? Now I'm going to talk more about this next time, but do you expect to be persecuted by Ishmael? Look at verse 29, “At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit, it is the same now.” Now we'll talk about this more next week, but the most vicious and the bitterest persecutors of true Christians in history have been religious people, religious people. Again and again right away it was the Sanhedrin that cracked down in Jerusalem and started beating and killing, who was it that killed Steven? Religious people, who stoned Steven to death and on it's gone since that time all of history has seen this pattern again and again. The bitterest attacks have come from those who have fiercely committed to religion and it's been going on all the way through. Nowadays, the most vicious persecutions of true Christians are done by religious committed people mostly Muslims, mostly Muslims. I think, nine of the top 10 most viciously persecuting nations, political nations on earth are Muslim nations. I think that's the ultimate fulfillment of the things this chapter is talking about. We'll talk about this next time, but this is the Spirit of Ishmael, the Spirit of self-salvation through legalistic works righteousness flowing right from Arabia and from the law that comes from that mountain.

It's the Spirit of Ishmael and it's what is persecuting the church today. So, what does that have to do with us? Well, just understand what it says about the present and what it says about the future. At present, your brothers and sisters are suffering at the hands of religious zealots, not just the Muslim countries but also in India. There's zealotry there as well. Let's be faithful to pray for them, let's be faithful to know their suffering, to understand what their going through and then what does it say about our future? Just expect, to be persecuted more and more here in this country because we just don't fit in, and we're going to fit in last 25, 50 years from now if the Lord tarries, we do not expect that persecution. And then finally if I could just urge you live like a free born son and daughter of the living God. Let's not have that legalistic mindset, when you sin bring it to the cross, receive by grace forgiveness and restoration, don't go legal at that moment that's our tendency, "I've done wrong, I've sinned, what can I do to make it right?" Repent and believe.

Come again to the flow, the blood of Christ for forgiveness and then by the Spirit allow that supernatural life to be working in you. Now, next time we're going to talk about allegory, we're going to talk about allegorical interpretation. We're going to say what it is, when it's appropriate, when it's not. Pray for me that I'd have better insight and clarity, but we'll have some time next time to discuss. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had today to study your word and I pray that you would help each one of us to take to heart the things that we've learned here. Help us to realize that if we're Christians we are miracles of your grace and help us to live by the power of the Spirit, not out of the acts of the flesh, In Jesus's name. Amen!

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Galatians 4:12-20 and the goal of the gospel ministry that seeks conformity to the likeness of Jesus Christ, and the pains related to the work.

One of my favorite stories when I was a child growing up, and it actually became more of a favorite as I began my life as an adult working, was the story of the shoemaker and the elves. You remember that story about this guy who was an elderly guy, poor shoemaker, and he would work all day just barely scraping out a living. And at one point, he went to bed and some elves came into his workshop and they had compassion on him and loved him. I don't know what it was that he did to gain their affection and their loyalty, but they finished a set of shoes that he had been working on and maybe some others as well. I don't remember the details of the story but I know this, he comes in the next morning and all of these shoes are assembled and ready with incredible workmanship and he sells them at a great profit. And he thinks this is incredible, and the same things keeps happening to him.

There was a point in my life when I wanted that to happen to me. Why can't it be that the projects that I just leave would be done overnight. Have you ever had that thought? It's like where are the elves? To come in and do this work for me, I would love that. Well, I was thinking about all of that in reference to a statement made by a Puritan pastor some years ago, he said the work of a pastor is different than that of other tradesmen. When a tradesmen or craftsman leaves his project for the night and goes to bed he wakes up the next morning and finds it in the exact same state in which he left it and he continues on. So you take a cabinet maker for example, he's working on a cabinet, he does some elaborate carvings and some floral pattern, all that. The day ends, he goes to sleep and there's no elves in the story but the good thing is it's right where he left it and he picks up his tools and goes on with his work.  But it is not so with the pastor.

No, actually when the pastor leaves his work and goes away, immediately Satan sends his demons to start to deconstruct all the things he's been working on. The world, the flesh and the devil are constantly un-working the work of the ministry of the word. It's going on all the time and so he doesn't find the work in the same place where he left it; it's actually more like building a sand castle sometimes, and the waves come in and he comes and finds a smooth nub where he was working, and he picks up his tools and begins to work again. And you know why, it's because of the relentless spiritual warfare that we are engaged in all the time. We have invisible enemies that are assaulting our souls. Now, that's only the negative or maybe pessimistic side, illustrated in the bible by a parable that Jesus told, the parable of the wheat and the weeds or commonly known as the wheat and the tares. You remember how a farmer sowed good seed in his field but at night while everyone was sleeping an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away, it's the same image there.

Now, there's another parable that Jesus told so beautifully of a seed planted in the soil and whether he's awake or asleep, whatever he's doing it grows. And so not only is Satan and his demons at work but God is sovereignly at work too, even apart from or beyond the work of the pastor. I'm only kind of focusing on half of the equation today, but this is the very issue the Apostle Paul is struggling with here in the text that's in front of us here. He came to Galatia and he preached the gospel, he preached it purely, he preached it powerfully, by the power of the spirit he planted churches in Galatia and then he left. And then Satan sent some false apostles, some false missionaries, false teachers to start to deconstruct all of the good work that he had done. And Paul is very aware of this kind of thing going on as a matter of fact, very aware. In Thessalonians he's very anxious about the churches that they planted there and very anxious until a good report comes from Timothy that they're still walking with the Jesus, and he's relieved and he says, "I can't even tell you all the joy I have in my heart for this good report."

In 2 Corinthians, when he's listing all of the things that brings him sorrow and suffering in his life, and so many physical assaults and being beaten with rods and being lashed and shipwrecked and all that. The capstone of all of his misery is, on top of all of this is the constant anxiety I have for the churches of Christ. That they're constantly being assaulted, they're being tempted and I'm like burning with them as I'm concerned about their souls. And do you see that in the text we're looking at today, do you see the anguish he has. And it's very clear at the very end, he says, "I'm perplexed over you," "I'm anxious over you, I'm concerned about you." It's an anguish that's come on him. By the way, if we can just speak very sweetly, and powerfully and positively here about this man, this Paul. There was a time in which he was filled with, seething with murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, hated them. How far has the sovereign grace of God taken this man? All he wants is Christ to be formed in them, that's all he cares about. Do you see the transformation that the sovereign grace of God can work in the human heart? But he is anguished over them and he's concerned over them and he's distressed and he is in a long line of God's messengers who have been in this exact same position.

How anguished was Moses over the status of Israel during the time of the golden calf, with what anguished prayer did he pray for the Jewish nation at that time. Or think about Elijah just pleading with the people to make a decision between Yahweh and Baal on the top of Mount Carmel. Pleading with them and yearning that they would come and believe in the true God. Or think about Isaiah and all of his writings pouring out his passion and his love for the people that they would repent from their sins and stop following the Baals and the false gods. Jeremiah the weeping prophet, he was the one who metaphorically, he's the one that turned off the lights after Jerusalem was empty.

And the book of Lamentations, how desolate lies the city once so full of people. And he was pleading with them and yearning for them, and why? Why all of this? Why? Because of the very thing we sang a few moments ago; "prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart Lord take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above." Our hearts are prone to wander. The people of God can be doing really well in January and not very well in February. Some have likened it to herding cats, Not trying to be insulting but that's what it feels like sometimes, because of the instability of the work that's going on here there's just a constant concern over the flock. And so we are able to look at some of these themes, we are able to look at the depths of Paul's concern over the Galatian churches here in this text today and the nature of true gospel ministry. And there's so much passion in this text and it doesn't just unfold in a kind of a logical orderly way. He's so filled with anxiety and so filled with concern for them and he is openly perplexed over you. So we're not looking for a kind of a consecutive unfolding here.

What I'm going to do is go to the end, the goal of true gospel ministry right at the beginning. And so I'm going to draw out themes not necessarily right in the order of the text, we're going to draw out themes so we can try to understand this. The goal of gospel ministry is in verse 19, "Until Christ is formed in you." Do you see that? That's really what he wants to see happen in these Galatians. Until Christ is formed in you. Verse 19, "My dear children for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you."  So this is the overarching goal of gospel ministry: total conformity to Jesus Christ. That's what we're looking for, that's the goal of the church in the lives of the people that we minister to. Now, our natural state, naturally apart from Christ, described in many places what Titus 3:3, at one time it says, "We are foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures, we lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another." That's where we start, that's us in Satan's dark kingdom but Paul says hearing Galatians through the gospel ministry, the ministry of Jesus Christ we're set free from all that. How glorious is that news?

Look again in verses 7-8 eight of the same chapter, Galatians 4:7-8, "So you are no longer a slave but a son." Oh, that's the glorious good news of the gospel, you're not enslaved anymore to passions and pleasures and all that, not enslaved to sin anymore. You are now adopted sons and daughters of the Living God. So you are no longer a slave but a son and since you are a son, God has also made you an heir. Formerly, verse 8, "When you did not know God you were slaves to those who by nature are not God's." So you are enslaved to demonic forces and to false doctrines and all that, the gospel has set you free, how beautiful is that. And so he came to preach the gospel and having been rejected in other places, persecuted in other places, and suffering greatly. This was I think the first time he was in anguish of childbirth over them. He uses the word again, the first time just to stay on the gospel road, just to even come to you, it was anguish for me, because there was so much persecution, so much satanic opposition, but I persevered and I came to your towns and I preached the gospel and we wrestled in prayer over you. And we preached faithfully and so we were in the pains of childbirth that first time, so that you could come to faith in Christ. Also is a very difficult time Paul says, "It was because of an illness, [verse 13] that I first preach the gospel to you."

So these things could have caused Paul to give up in the preaching of the gospel. Instead he soldiered on and he got an amazing result. The Galatians heard and believed the gospel, and they received the outpoured gift of the Holy Spirit and a church was planted, and churches were planted in Galatia. But that was the first time, now he's in the pains of childbirth over them for a second time. And the goal is he says, until Christ is formed in them. The parallel verse that teaches this as the goal of the gospel ministry is in Romans 8:29, and there it says, "For those God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, so that He might be the first born among many brothers." That's the goal of everything God is doing, that's the goal of the predestination, that's the goal of everything that we who are originally created in the image and likeness of God but that was marred and so severely damaged by sin, that we would be perfectly conformed in every way to the likeness of Jesus Christ. That's the goal of the gospel, that's the goal of this ministry here, and Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being (Hebrews 1:3), so we would be beautifully and perfectly conform to God himself, as he originally intended when he created us.

Transformed internally, transformed from our hearts. Ephesians 4:24, "Created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." And even physically, we'd be conformed physically. So that it says in 1 Corinthians 15:49, "Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [Adam] so we shall also bear the likeness of the man from heaven," that's Christ. We're going to be just like him in our resurrection bodies. That's the work that God is doing in the gospel. until Christ is formed in you and you are totally conformed in every way to Christ. That's what we're trying for. Now, this happens by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. A radical change of the individual from the inside out, but ongoing shepherding is needed because our salvation comes to us in stages. Comes to us in stages, we don't get it all at once.

Now, we have to be clear. Justification, which we have been focusing on here in Galatians does not come in stages, that's instantaneously. From darkness to light, from dead to alive. That's justification, but our salvation is bigger than justification. There's more to it and so the Lord is working in us to transform us. It comes to us in stages and Paul says, "Now I've got to be in the anguish of childbirth again, until Christ is formed in you." Because they have regressed in their sanctification. They have drawn back away from a healthy doctrine and a healthy lifestyle. And that's the essence of pastoral ministry. Paul has to go back to basics with them, as though they need to born again. It's weird, it's not the way it was meant to be, I don't need to be again in childbirth... No, no woman ever goes through childbirth twice. Why should I have to do this? Why do I have to go through this with you again as though you don't even know the gospel. How could this be?

Step by step in pastoral ministry, we want to see people conform to Jesus. We want to see their hearts conformed. We want to see their affections conformed. We want them to love what Christ loves and hate what Christ hates. And we want them to yearn after the things that Christ is yearning after. We want people to make choices, use their will the way that Christ did, not my will but yours be done, oh Father. We want our wills conformed to that of Jesus Christ. We want our thought life, we want to have this mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2:5. We want to think like Jesus, have the same attitude and we want an emotional healthy emotional life like Jesus had. We want to rejoice over what causes him to rejoice and mourn over those things that grieve him. That's what we want. That's what Christ is formed in you means. That's the goal of pastoral ministry. Well, how does this happen?

Secondly, the method of gospel ministry is speaking and living the truth. Proclamation of the truth, the teaching of the truth, coupled with a living out of it by role modeling and exampling, that's the essence of it. We would add also prayer, an accessory prayer, but look what He says in verse 12, "I plead with you brothers. Become like me for I became like you." We have here in this text, this whole section, a combination of words and actions. We have pleading, he's pleading with them, that's words. Also we have the teaching ministry we've seen so plainly in Galatians 1, 2, and 3, especially, 3, in which he lays out so clearly from the scriptures justification by faith alone, faith in Jesus alone, apart from work. He's done all this teaching. That's the essence of this work, this pastoral ministry work, but also there's this role modeling, become like me. So imitate me, that's the essence. Look at teaching as it's on display here in this book of Galatians. Strong emphasis on teaching the truth. It's also on display in this passage. Look at verse 16, "Have I now become your enemy,"  he says, "by telling you the truth?" Truth-telling is of the essence of pastoral ministry. It's our ministry. It's our concern as pastors, as shepherds to tell the truth coming from scriptures, scriptural truth. So the truth is doctrinal truth and spoken passionately and powerfully and it's applied directly to people's lives, especially key moments when they need to hear the truth.

If you look back at Galatians 2:14, for example, he does this. He takes the truth and applies it directly at a key moment. In Galatians 2:14, he says, "When I saw that they were not acting or living in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all…" You remember all that? Peter was shrinking back from table fellowship with the Gentiles because of the dietary regulations, and Paul steps in there and he just confronts them and says, "You're not living in line with the truth that you've learned. We're free from the dietary regulations. We should be living and eating together, there's no Jew-Gentile distinction anymore. So of the essence of this pastoral ministry is teaching the word of God. The willingness to speak the truth even if it hurts. Even if it's somewhat temporarily seems to damage the relationship. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Being willing to do that, to risk that. To risk a feeling, an odd feeling of alienation with somebody because your telling them the truth.

Martin Luther, put it clearly in terms of preaching. He said, "You should always preach in such a way that when you get done, people will either hate you or hate their sins." Well look, that's a heavy burden to lay on any individual. Which are you, do you hate your sin or do you hate me? But that's of the essence of pastor ministry, tell the truth in the ways that it needs to be said. Truly wise people made wise by the Spirit, made wise by the gospel, want to hear the truth. They want to hear the truth told, we want to hear the truth. Psalm 141:5, "Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me, it is oil on my head." We know in the book of Proverbs one of the big differences between the wise man and the fool is what happens at the moment of rebuke or correction. The wise man drinks it in like water and grows and changes, but the fool hardens his heart and turns away and is not interested in that.

Now, in ministry and the history and redemptive history again and again we've seen how much people yearn for candy-coated lies. Happened again and again. Clear example of this is wicked king Ahab, remember when he's going off to fight at Ramoth-Gilead? And he's got all of these "yes" men around him. His false prophets were dancing and jumping and saying things about how he's going to win this battle. And he's got godly king Jehoshaphat out there with him, remember? He (Jehoshaphat) shouldn't have been there. Clearly he shouldn't have been there. It's a different issue for another time but here's there and his going to go out to fight alongside the wicked king Ahab. And Jehoshaphat is troubled in his spirit and says, "Isn't there a prophet of the Lord here? Can we find somebody who'll speak for the Lord?" He said, "Actually there is one," said King Ahab, "there is one who prophesize for the Lord, but I hate him because he always says bad things about me. Never good." And Jehoshaphat said the King should not say that. A pretty mild rebuke at that point. Micaiah, son of Imlah. It's just an amazing story but he wants a candy-coated lie, which actually interestingly, Micaiah gives him right at the beginning. I think he says it sarcastically, "Go and conquer and win. Have a good time." He's like, "Well that's what all the prophets are saying, but I don't think that's what you really mean. What do you really mean?", "Well I'll tell you what I mean. You're going to die at that battle. That's what's going to happen."; "See, I told you, he always says bad things about me." It just points how we in our sin, yearn for the candy-coated lie.

Isaiah isolated this in Isaiah 30:9-11. These are some of those powerful verses on this tenancy that we have. Isaiah 30:9-11, it says, "These are rebellious people. Deceitful children. Children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the seers, see no more visions. And to the prophets give us no more visions of what is right. Tell us pleasant things. Prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path and stop confronting us with the Holy One of God." This is what the people yearn for: Candy-coated truths. But gospel ministry is telling biblical truth even if it hurts. Can I actually say gospel ministry is telling biblical truth, especially when it hurts, because that's the point where the Spirit is dealing with people. That's where the conviction is coming. That's where these stings come. That's where the cuts are. You ever had some cuts on your finger and you've been peeling an orange or grapefruit or something like that, has that ever happened to you? And it's like wow, the citric acid gets in those cuts and it really stings. But that pain is telling you, "There's some cuts there." All right?

And so it is sin that leaves us damaged and then the Word comes and it stings where it hurts. It stings there and that's where the sin is. And so gospel ministry is telling biblical truth even if it hurts, perhaps especially when it hurts. We also have role modeling too in verse 12, "I plead with you brothers become like me for I became like you." This is a big theme in the Apostle Paul isn't it? "Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:1. Probably the clearest time he ever said that. This is as bold a statement as any discipler will ever make to a disciple, or any pastor will ever make to anybody, is in Philippians 4. Listen to this. Philippians 4:9, "Whatever you have learned or receive or heard from me [as doctrine] or seen in me — put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you." Wow! Imitate me completely, doctrinally and lifestyle. So that's how it's done, that's how ministry is done. This is the method of gospel ministries. Speaking the truth and modeling and living out the truth.

The matrix of gospel ministry is loving relationship or you could say loving relationships, but I want to say especially between the individual and Christ and then horizontally between the individual and another individual. All of that speaking, all of that truth telling must be done in the matrix of a loving relationship. Must be done. It says in Ephesians 4:15, "Instead speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head and His Christ Jesus." Speaking the truth in love. It needs to be said with gentleness, with tenderness through prayer in the matrix of a committed relationship. We genuinely love each other. In some sense I would say we've earned the right to say hard things in each other's lives. Not everybody can do it equally in a local church. A lot of it comes from a developed friendship and relationship that happens because there's reciprocity. I know you love me. I know you care about me and therefore I can hear this from you. So there's a context of it. "By this will all men know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another." John 13:35.

Paul here in this text goes over the history of their relationship, do you see it? Very painful for him to look back. He says, "That was then, remember how it used to be? Remember how we were friends? When I first came remember how you were with me? It's so different now." Look at the verses 12-16. He said, "I plead with you, brothers, become like me for I became like you. You have done me no wrong. As you know it was because of an illness that I first reached preached the gospel to you. Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?"

Now, there is a lot in those verses, but what I want you to notice is how relational they are. How relational, he's got this close relationship with them and he's hurt by this. I think in chapters 1, 2, and 3, especially chapter 3, it is just like a dispassionate dispenser of truth. Just saying how it is in the old testament and all that, but here he just shows his heart. He says, "This hurts me. It's hurtful that this has happened." He loves them, he calls them brothers and he pleads with them. It's a passionate appeal. And he writes, "Become like me for I became like you." What does that mean? Well, I don't know exactly what it means but I think it has to do with missionary strategy, and he says very plainly in 1 Corinthians 9:21-22, talks about missionary strategy, he says, "To those not having the law," those were Gentiles, "to those not having law I became like one not having the law, so as to win those not having the law." "So I changed my mannerisms, my dress, my eating habits and things. I became like you so I could win you to Christ. But now I want you to become like me in my gospel freedom. I want you to imitate how free I am from legalism. I want you to become like me as I walk in this free path." That's what he's saying to them.

He reminds them of the circumstances of how he first came there, he reminds them of his illness. This shows us how God can use suffering to divert the paths of missionaries and messengers and he just does incredible things providentially. God's moving pieces on the chess board in ways we can't even imagine. He'll use circumstances. The implication of this statement is, "I wouldn't have even come to you if I hadn't gotten sick." Sometimes we're praying for health and all that, look, that's good, it's good to pray for that but, God just uses these things to orchestrate what he wants done. And he wanted Paul in Galatia to preach the gospel and establish his churches, so he made him sick. There goes your health and wealth right there. He made him sick. He orchestrated his illness to get him there. And he focuses on the relationship he had in those days, how much they loved him. Apparently, his trial, his illness was not so much that he couldn't preach or minister. I think the ministry's going on while they care for him in his sickness is going on. And so that's why they welcomed him with such joy as if he were an angel from God. As if he were a messenger from heaven. As if he were Jesus Christ himself. All that doesn't make much sense except that Paul was preaching the gospel to them, and they were loving what he was saying and they were excited to care for him.

Very much like the Philippian jailer, you remember that? Philippian jailer, who almost killed himself? Paul and Silas cry out, "Don't harm yourself, we're all here." And then he rushes in trembling, calling for lights, trembling, brings him out and says, "What must I do to be saved?" "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household." And so that very hour he believed and then immediately after that, the jailer cared for Paul and Silas' wounds and set a meal in front of them. That's powerful because his heart had been changed and he cared about them. He was every bit as in need of medical care and food before that but the guy wasn't converted yet. Once he was converted, suddenly he has a heart of love and affection for the messenger of the gospel. I think that's what's happening, these folks cared for them. Even though it was a trial to them and they were tempted to despise him. There were certain aspects of medical care that are disgusting in some ways. It could have be loathsome to you. The Greek word there is spat out. Just, Ugh! There's gross parts of it.

I was reading an account from William Bradford, of what the first winter was like when the pilgrims settled at Plymouth and many, many, many of them got sick, many died. And Bradford talked about the few handful of people at any given time, six or seven of them at any given time, who are healthy enough to care for others. And this is what he writes, "Who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains, night or day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, prepared their meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them; the sick people. In a word, did all the homely and necessary offices for them which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named, and they did all of this willingly and cheerfully without any grudging in the lead showing here and there true love unto their friends and brethren. I get the same feeling here with the Galatians. They were caring for Paul with a cheerful heart because they were so delighted in the relationship.

 But now all of that was gone. Look at verse 15, "What has happened to all your joy. I can testify that if you could have done so, you would've torn out your eyes and given them to me." Now, I think verse 15 is a very significant statement. "What has happened to all your joy?" Can I just pause for a moment and talk about joy in the Christian life? Okay? Joy in the Christian life is a fragile barometer of spiritual health. Fragile barometer of spiritual health. This book, is about legalism. You got to obey the Law of Moses in order to be saved. Legalism destroys joy in Christ. Destroys it. The people who are legalistic, they're not joyful. They're trying to earn it all the time, there's no joy. Can I go the other side and say license destroys joy, in the Christian life. If you're just indulging the flesh, indulging the sin nature, your joy is going to go. I would say look to your joy. There are other things that can hurt joy. We'll talk about them at the end of the sermon, but these extremes are joy killers.

And so, I look on joy as (I've used this illustration before, so bear with me if you've heard it) the canary in a coal mine of the Christian life. Coal miners used to bring these little birds in cages into the tunnels where they were carving out a very difficult existence, down in the depths of the earth. Down there, there were a lot of dangers but one of them are just invisible fumes like carbon monoxide and other things you couldn't even see or smell... They're odorless, colorless and deadly dangerous. What these coal miners would do, it would be bring these little birds in cages, and if the birds were singing and just doing normal bird things, whatever they are. But just chirping, singing, everything is fine and so you would look up occasionally at how's the bird doing. But if that bird was getting woozier or even worse, down at the bottom of the cage, you need to get out of there fast, because you're in trouble. I guess what I'm saying is, how's your joy in Christ? Is your life characterized by joy, the joy of your salvation? I'll return to this theme at the end but that's what he's saying, what's happened to all your joy? Joy with Christ? Joy with me? Just joy in general. What's happened?

In the next chapter in Galatians 5:15, he gives a glimpse on how they're doing with each other. He says if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you'll be destroyed by each other. They're not getting along. They're bickering with each other and all that. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. We'll talk about that next chapter as well. The Holy Spirit produces joy in the Christian life.

Now, I want to do another side just because I think it's worth mentioning, the nature of Paul's illness. Paul says a very strange thing here in this verse 15. He says, "I can testify that if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me." Now, I don't know what that means. That seems a bit odd. Now, it might be just a simple expression that we don't use anymore, but we might use something like it, like I'd give my right arm for… Very few would actually see it through, it's like "Okay, it's a deal." "Wait, I'm not sure about that. Not sure." But I think it could be something like that, I would give my eyes if you could just be healthy. But some commentator say it probably just has to do with the nature of Paul's illness, it had to do with his eyes. That he had trouble seeing. At the end of the Book of Galatians, he says, see what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hands. This is how I always write. He frequently dictated his letters through secretaries. Trivia question, who actually wrote the Book of Romans? Look it up. I know the answer, you guys can look it up. Tell me later. Who actually wrote it? It wasn't Paul, it's his secretary who slipped his name in there in Roman 16. We'll meet him in heaven. But Paul, when he was on the Damascus Road was blinded, literally blinded by the glory of the resurrected Christ. And then when Ananias laid hands on him something like scale fell from his eyes when he was baptized and then regained his sight. But some commentators wonder if he struggled with his eyesight for the rest of his life. I don't know. But it's just an interesting expression he says, "You would've given your eyes for me."

But now, the relationship has changed. Everything has changed and he says in verse 16, "Have I know become your enemy by telling you the truth." This is such a tragic display of the kinds of things that happen in gospel ministry. Paul was willing to speak strongly, even somewhat harshly to the Galatians to try to reclaim them from this heresy. To wake them up from the danger of combining the gospel of Jesus Christ with the Law of Moses thinking you need them both to be saved. He says in Galatians 1: 6-7, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and returning to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all." He's shocked at them or even more pointedly how about Galatians 3? 1-3. So there he says, "You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" Oh, now Paul, that's not nice. That's not nice.

He says in verse 3 again, Galatians 3:3, "Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh. Have you learned so much for nothing?" He's really coming on strong here. Is there a time that that's needed? Yes there is. It actually is. Now people have the tendency to love the preacher when he says the things that they want to hear. Says in 2 Timothy 4:3, "The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine."  Not going to put up with it anymore. Instead to soothe their own desires they will gather around them a large number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Well, this is exactly how the Judaizers were. They were just tickling the ears of the Galatians in some ways. Look at verses 17-18, "Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us so that you may be zealous for them. It's fine to be zealous provided the purpose is good and to be so always, not just when I am with you." The Judaizers talk like they really care about you. These one that are teaching this legalistic gospel. They're acting like they really care about you but they don't care about you.

They were fawning over the Galatians so that the Galatians would fawn over them. You know the mutual admiration society, giving each other compliments, this kind of thing, back and forth. That's what that works righteousness tends to do. It makes you proud and you want to hear some compliments coming back and you know there's human nature to it so you feed some compliments out. Get the thing going like that. They're zealous for you to win you over so that you'll be zealous for them. That's what he's saying. The use of flattery. Paul's not a flatterer. Flattery doesn't help anybody. Encouragement helps people. I think our church should be characterized by encouragement. Amen? Let's encourage one another. Let's not flatter one another. False teachers frequently use flattery. Romans 16:18, speaking of a false teachers there, it says, "For such people are not serving our Lord Christ but their own appetites by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people." Be very careful about teachers, preachers, disciplers who just pander to your ego and tell you the things you want to hear.

I always see the anguish of gospel ministry and that's the spiritual drift. Look at verses 19-20. "My dear children, he says, for whom I am again in the pains of child birth until Christ is formed in you. How I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you." This is the anguish of Paul, he reveals it fully here at the end. He's hurt by what they've done and he speaks almost like a mother. He says in 1 Thessalonians 2 that you know that we were like a mother caring for you and encouraging you and pouring ourselves, sharing ourselves with you. We're like a mother. Here, he's like a woman in labor. Now, I know you women could say, "Paul, what do you know about being a woman in labor?" And you'd be right. But, he's observed it at least. He knows, gee, it must be painful, something like that. I think that's the best a husband can do. Well, no actually he can do a lot more than that, a lot more. Different topic, different day.

But the apostle Paul says, "Like that I'm wrestling and struggling, I'm laboring over you. I care about you. It's painful." And he calls them my little children. There's a tender affection here. Diminutive in the Greek. He just loves them, says little children. Cares about them. And it's unnatural for me to have to go through this again, this anguish of child birth and the spiritual drift he says, verse 20, "How I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you." I'm at my wits end. I don't know what else I can say to you.

All right, what is the application or what are some applications we can take from this text. First, look in the mirror of the text and bigger look in the mirror of Galatians and ask this one question: Has Christ been formed in me? Has Christ been formed in me? Am I born again? Am I alive spiritually? Have my sins been forgiven through faith in Christ crucified and resurrected? Am I a Christian? That's the most important thing. Nothing can be done towards sanctification without first justification. You have to first come to faith in Christ. As Jesus said, "This is the work of God that you believe in the one that he has sent." Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Trust in him and ask, has Christ been formed in me?

Secondly, just to speak to the elders. I've been speaking about pastoral ministry here now. I want to just say a word to you few men who are elders in this church. Embrace this kind of suffering and shepherding in the ministry toward the flock. You know that were doing this. This is a lot of what we are trying to do on Monday evenings when we meet together. But let's embrace it, let's understand that the flock will need to be overseen until the Lord returns. This is an ongoing work we're going to need to keep doing this and remember the goal till Christ is formed in all of the members of this church. That is as one writer put it, and infinite journey, internal journey that just keeps going on and on.

Just keeps going on and on, all right. Embrace the responsibility that we have to this, that we need to shepherd the flock and that this is going to be an ongoing work. The time is now for speaking the truth in love and not being flatterers and not saying what people want to hear. Let's encourage one another and build one another up as shepherds, but also shepherd the flock. And let's develop the kind of heart of compassion that we see in Paul here. Do you see the passion Paul has for the flock? He didn't shed his blood for them but boy he loves them. Anguish, child birth, and all that. Let's not anticipate that kind of pastoral ministry is going to be easy. Be willing to make the difficult phone call. Have the difficult face to face meeting. Say the difficult words. Now, of course let's say them in love with gentleness. He's going to say, "If anyone's in trouble," Galatians 6, "drifting away. You who are spiritual should restore him how?" Gently. Gently. Okay, you can do as much damage trying to restore harshly. Okay, gently.

Now let me speak to the church. Yearn for this kind of elder-type ministry in your life. For the rest of your life, yearn for this. Say, "I want to be overseen by a godly men, who will shepherd my soul and pray for me and teach me the truth and organize a church that will care about me. I want this. I want Christ fully formed in me. I want to see it happening to all of my brothers and sisters that are here. I yearn for this kind of ministry." Yearn for it. Don't be offended at elder ministry that does tell you the truth. Look at verse 16 again, "Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?" That should never happen. If someone is bringing a hard message to you, ask "Is it true? Is it biblical?" Don't get offended. Don't shoot the messenger. But say, "I want truth telling. I don't want flattery. I want the oil on my head of an honest rebuke if that's what I need. I want someone to tell me the truth."

And so cherish a body of elders who is willing to grieve over the wandering sheep of the flock. Pray for them. Ask God to protect this kind of ministry at FBC. Remember in 2 Timothy 4:3 it says, "People will gather around themselves." It's really the congregation that's responsible for the kind of elder-ing and shepherding it gets. If you yearn for this and pray for it and delight in it, you'll have it. If you start to turn in your hearts, you're going to lose it. Give it a number, 5, 10 years you won't have it anymore. Yearn for this.

Fourth, let's embrace the responsibility we have as members of this church to watch over one another in brotherly love. This is in our church covenant. We've promised to do this for each other. We will watch over one another in brotherly love. It's too big a job for the elders. It really is. Number one thing we can do is to teach all of you to do it for yourselves. And we'll do some of it, we do a lot of it. We make a lot of phone calls. We have a lot of meetings with people. We interact with folks. We do that but there's just too many people. And so let's embrace the responsibility we have to notice how things are going in each other's lives. Let's notice that it's been a while since so and so was in BFL or it's been a while since so and so was at home fellowship. Let's notice, let's pick up the phone and make the phone call. I am so grieved at hearing about, "Well no one ever called. No one cared, I never heard anything." Grieved by that.

Now, there's two sides to that equation I know. But for us as a community, let's not let that happen. Let's be attentive to the people around us. We're going to watch over one another in brotherly love. Everyone here is assaulted by the world, the flesh, and the devil every day. And Satan the joy thief is going to come after your joy. He's going to come, "The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy," Jesus came "that you may have life and have it abundantly." We need to care about each other's joy. Are you joyful in Christ? Are things going well for you? Let's embrace that. Let's notice. Let's be a real community for each other. Don't take this and just run and start nailing each other, okay? Telling each other what you think of each other's clothes, "I never have had the chance until now to tell you what I really think about that outfit." Look, friends, that's not what we're doing here. We want to speak the truth in love but let's care about each other. Let's be a real community. Let me get specific. Can I urge you again, as I have many times in the past, to resume or continue, whatever verb's best, praying through the church phone list every month. Pray through, look at the names. Pray for them. Ask yourself as you're praying, "How is this person doing as far as I'm concerned?" In many cases, you'll be "I don't know." But in some cases, you'll be an early warning system to see someone that's starting to drift away. Have their attendance patterns changed? They used to be doing X and now it's different.

Let me zero in for a minute on home fellowship. I am very concerned when someone was involved in home fellowships and is taking some time off. I'm not going to be legalistic about it but I consider it a step toward the door, out into the cold, step by step by step by step. The drifting looks actual and practical in some things. Home fellowships are a major part of our church's ministry to one another. It's a major part of what we do. Now, reverse, if you've never been involved in a home fellowship, don't know what they are, get involved. It's one of the number one ways you can get into a matrix of relationships where people will know actually what's happening in your life. If you're going to say, "Hey, no one ever called, no one cared, no one came." I'm going to ask first thing is, "Were you in a home fellowship?" It just takes commitment on that part. Let's be involved in that.

Bible for life, that's a fruitful ministry. It's a good ministry, I know it's early now, really early, really really early for us. I understand that. Half hour earlier than it used to be. I know that, but here's the thing, I just want to ask you as a steward, if you're not attending BFL, is what you're doing right now at that hour better for your soul than what you would be getting it at BFL? That's all I'm asking? I think probably not. These are great classes, great teachers, you're with brothers and sisters that are studying these things, avail yourself. We don't charge tuition, isn't that awesome? That's cool. We get free biblical instruction and so many things. Let's get involved, Perhaps their attendance is fine but they're going through trials, medical trials, recently widowed or widower-ed. Lost, they're struggling. We need to be a family for each other and shepherd one another, and it's a job situation, something. Maybe they're just struggling with their quiet time, maybe they'll confess that they're struggling with some serious sin in their lives and they told you. Pray for heart of compassion for drifting people.

One final point of application, I want to just talk about joy. Smile and rejoice. I tell you what, joy is a gift of the gospel, isn't it? The joy of knowing you're going to live forever in a resurrection body free from death, mourning, crying, and pain. Jesus is giving you a place at the wedding banquet of the lamb. It's got your name on it. I believe in election, predestination. Your name there. You're going to be there, nothing's going to stop it. I frequently ask people in my life, people I know, say they're discouraged. And I know we face discouragement. I know, that's what I'm preaching about. Satan's assaulting joy all the time. What's happened to all your joy? Legalism destroys joy, license destroys joy, trials can destroy joy. A lot of things, I understand that.

But I guess what I'm saying is, there's one question I ask. Has Jesus Christ, who died on the cross in your place for sins, and who rose from the dead so you could live forever, done enough to make you happy today? Or do you need more from him? What more do you say? It's like, "Yeah, it's good, but if I could also have X then it'd be complete. It'd be fine." Really? Jesus has done enough for all of us who are in Christ to be joyful all the time. Now I know, sometimes you're going to be sorrowful. I get it. Sorrowful sometimes. But always what? Rejoicing. This church should be characterized by happiness. I do not make a distinction between happiness and joy. I know you're going to come say, "No, Pastor, joy is based on the promises of God and the deep things of God. Happiness is like nothing. It's like cotton candy." Friends, what's the difference? You're happy, you're joyful. I can tell they're both smiling, they're both up. I think it's the same thing. We can be happy about a team winning a game, or happy about Christ resurrected, but it's happiness. I'm saying let's be happy about Christ resurrected and that you're going to heaven when you die.

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for this text. We thank you for Paul's passion, his concern for the Galatians which has run through 20 centuries, and comes through to us today. Give us, O Lord a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of one another in this flock. Help the elders to be faithful to shepherd, help us to pray for one another and care for another. Thank you for the gospel that gives us joy in the midst of such sorrow and misery, that we can just be light shining in a dark place. Lights of joy shining in a dark place. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Galatians 4:1-11, and how God frees people from the slavery of sin.

One of the most powerful Christian novels of all time, historical novels, and probably one of my favorite movies of all time is Ben-Hur. It was written by a former Civil War general, named Lew Wallace, who was a strong believer in Christ. It's an amazing story of a Jewish nobleman, a wealthy Jewish man, who was wrongly condemned for attacking the Governor of Judea by a boyhood friend, a Roman friend named Messala, who had become a passionate convert to the Roman Empire and was zealous for the glory of the Roman Empire. And it led him falsely to accuse his boyhood friend. And for three years, Judah Ben-Hur was enslaved. He was in chains, as a galley slave, rowing on a Roman warship. And you have this picture in your mind's eye of what that bondage was like, what that slavery was like. A chain around his ankle and the lash of the taskmaster on his back or on the backs of the other slaves, if they needed to row faster and they weren't doing what the master wanted done.

And in the story, Judah Ben-Hur comes to save the life of his Roman commander, Quintus Arrias, a Roman tribune named Quintus Arrias, very powerful man. And in the course of events, this Roman man is so filled with love for Judah Ben-Hur, that he comes to adopt him legally as his son, as his heir. In the novel, General Wallace writes these words. These are the words of Quintus Arrias. He's speaking to his friends about this Jewish man. He said, "Good friends, this man is now my son and my heir. Who as he is to take my property, if it be the will of the Gods that I shall leave any, shall be known to you by my name. I pray you all to love him as you love me."

Now, this story may have struck many at that time as preposterous. How could a high-ranking Roman official ever adopt a Jewish slave to be his heir and his son? But General Wallace was a genuine Christian and he understood the Gospel. And he knew that something far more amazing than that, far more preposterous happens every time an individual sinner is brought to faith in Christ. Something far more amazing than that, and what is that? That the holy God of the universe, who can't even look at sin because his eyes are so holy. This holy God adopts sinners who were rebels, fighting against him, adopts them to be his sons and daughters, and makes us heirs with his only begotten Son. Heirs of the universe that he is going to make for us. That's even more amazing than anything General Wallace wrote in the novel Ben-Hur.

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of our salvation is our adoption. It's really amazing. It was JI Packer that summed up the Christian message in these very brief words, "Adoption through propitiation." By the blood sacrifice of Jesus, the wrath of God is turned away. We are reconciled through that propitiation work and we are adopted into the family of God. And it is astonishing. We get to study that today. I mean, there's no better way we can spend our time, Amen? I think this message has the power to make you Christians far happier than you were when you walked in here. Amen? And even better, it has the power to make any of you who are presently outside the Gospel, who are living in darkness, who are living in bondage, to set you free, as well. And you can walk out of this room, every bit as adopted, and every bit as much an heir as a Christian has been so for 50 years, when they walked in here today.

So let's get to it, shall we? Enough of the introduction. Probably should have just jumped right in, but I like these kind of stories. I think they set up the issue very, very well. We're looking here in verses 1-3, in Galatians 4:1-3, of a movement from enslaved childhood to free maturity. Look at the verses. He says, "What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his Father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world." So, we've got a train of thought here. We're jumping in the midst of a flow of thought. Sometimes, the chapter divisions break things up a little bit more than they should be broken up. But we're in the middle of a train of thought here.

Verse 1, "What I'm saying is... " Paul says, or to kind of unfold this thought a little bit more. So, we want to go back to Galatians 3:23-29, which I think in many ways was the climax of a lot of Paul's reasoning or train of thought. Again, to step back and look at what's going on. The Apostle Paul was a trailblazing, church-planning missionary. He was the Apostle to the Gentiles. He came to this region in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and he preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And many Gentiles, many pagans came to faith in Christ and became Christians as a result, then he left. And after he left, some other false teachers came along. Jewish people, who claimed to believe in Jesus, but also said that these Gentiles had to be circumcised and required to obey the Law of Moses, in order to fully and finally to be saved. They were called by many, not in the text, but they were called Judaizers, they were false teachers.

And so, Paul is reasoning against that, and he says that the Gentiles, these Galatians, the moment they heard the Gospel and believed it, they were justified by faith in Christ, all of their sins were forgiven. And they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, they were adopted as sons and daughters of God, they became sons of God. And they received the spirit who cries out, "Abba, Father." We see that in Galatians 3:26, he says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." Simple and clear declaration. And then, in verse 29, "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise." Now, Paul talks about it in both passages, the last one and this one, a time of confinement before the time of freedom. So we're moving from confinement or somewhat bondage, to a time of freedom. Both of these scriptures, these sections talk about it. Both passages speak of a guardianship that has now ended, both passages speak of a transition, so that we're no longer under that confinement. Both passages speak of our status as sons of God, no longer slaves. Both passages call us heirs, standing ready to receive a vast inheritance.

So in effect, he's repeating these same themes, he's going at it again. Why does he repeat it? Well, he wants to emphasize it, he wants to help these Gentile believers in Christ to realize their freedom and their status as children of God, and that they would not submit to a yoke of bondage. And he wants to do it because it's evident that they've relapsed into their old way of thinking, when they should be living a whole new kind of life as adopted children of God. Instead, they're thinking like slaves again, and they seem to be bound in servitude to a pattern of relating to God and he wants to set them free. He yearns for them to understand their status as adopted children of God and to live out that freedom in holy lives that honor God. And so, he begins with this image of a movement from childhood to maturity. Every culture has rites of passage, in which sons become men. The time of childhood has ended, now it's time of adulthood. And so, this movement from childhood to adulthood is what was well understood in those days. And also, the movement of liberation, from being in bondage to being set free, and you become a freedman, you're no longer a slave, that was understood as well.

So first, this movement from childhood to adulthood. Look at verses 1-2, "What I'm saying is that, as long as the heir is a child, he's no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. And he is subject to guardians and trustees, until the time set by his father." Now, again, we have to look at this in terms of the big picture of Israel as God's people, the Jewish nation. And he's trying to answer the question, "What then is the purpose of the Law? Why did the Law of Moses come? If it's not meant for our salvation, if it's not meant to be the ladder by which we climb up to heaven by our good works, if that's not what it was for, then what was it for?" And he's going to answer it, both in terms of the nation as a whole, and in terms of individual sinners. So why did God give the Law, only to repeal it later? Now, these are very important questions. It was God who said, "You must circumcise your sons on the eighth day." You can read chapter and verse, it's very clear and there's indications there because Moses hadn't circumcised his sons, that God was ready to kill him. It's a whole other passage. But God was serious, this was something he commanded, if you disobeyed, you were cut off from your people. This was a serious thing. Why did God put it in, only to take it off later?

The same thing with the dietary regulations. Why would he make it very clear what they could and couldn't eat, if later all foods were going to be declared clean, why? Why would God have all these ceremonies and special days and months and seasons and years and a whole calendar of religious observances if he's only going to take it off later? Why even do it at all? And so, Paul reverts to this image of childhood and then a movement to maturity, to adulthood. The Jewish nation was in some metaphorical sense the son of God, a child of God. God told Moses to say to Pharaoh these words, Exodus 4, "This is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn son. And I told you, let my son go, that he may worship me." So that's a clear statement. He sees that metaphorical connection between himself and the nation as a whole, "Israel is my firstborn son."  Then, in Deuteronomy 1, Moses talking to the Jews, says about their experience for 40 years out in the desert and how God had cared for them. He said, "You saw how the Lord your God carried you as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place." And then in Hosea 11:1 it says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called My son."

So, for an extended period of time, the Jewish nation was held under guardianship to the Law, that's what Paul's saying. The nation was subject to guardians and trustees, to these precepts and laws, and rules. And they had to obey these laws and regulations, and strictures and precepts, like circumcision, the dietary regulations, and the ceremonial rhythm of the calendar and all that. And yet, the whole time, the Jewish nation was seen by God in the big picture to be Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise, and that someday, they will come into their full maturity. Now, in many ways, Paul says, the child in a wealthy home, picture this child in a wealthy home, little different than a slave in that home. Some of you children are saying, "Amen. That's exactly how it is." I've been saying that and you're just not listening. We're just like slaves around here. But that's a different topic, different message. That's not what I'm talking about here. But in many ways, that's how it is. The child has to obey the laws, and the rules, and the regulations of the household, or there's going to be consequences, there's going to be punishments to come. The child is not free to walk away, child's not free to do as he or she pleases, child's a little different than a slave, though someday, Paul says, "They're going to come into the whole estate."

And so, also the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish nation, would someday inherit not only that patch of promised land, but as we've seen in Romans 4:13, "It was through a promise that Abraham received the news that he would be heir of the world." And how awesome is that? So, the status of the Jewish nation under the law was temporary, like that of a child who has to come to his maturity. They were schooled by the constant demands of the Law. Charles Spurgeon put it this way, "The Jewish nation of old was under the yolk of the Law. Its sacrifices were continual. Its ceremonies were endless. New moons and feasts must be kept. Jubilees must be observed. Pilgrimages must be made. In fact, the yoke was too heavy, heavy for feeble flesh to bear. The law followed the Israelite into every corner and dealt with him upon every point of his life. It had to do with his garments, it had to do with his meat, his drink, his bed, his board, everything about him. It treated him like a boy at school who has a rule for everything. Now that faith has come, we are full-grown sons, and therefore, we are free from the meticulous rules which govern the school of the child." I bet you're wishing he would just come preach a sermon and not me, right? Isn't that powerful? But Spurgeon really just makes it clear, when the heir gets to the set age, he then comes into the full status in the household, and that's a picture of salvation in Christ.

Look at verses 4-5, "When the time had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under Law, to redeem those under Law that we might receive the full rights of sons." So those under the law, at that time, were Jews, and not Gentiles. But they were locked up under the guardianship of the Law, until Jesus had made his entry into the world. Now, the same image is applied to individual Christians, as well. There's a sense of confinement, a sense of bondage under the Law, under the lash of the Law, your conscience accusing you, all of that, until you come to the freedom of faith in Christ. Same thing for the individual.

So let's go to the next section of the sermon, verses 3-8 "From slavery to adoption." The fact of our slavery is established in verse 3, "So also, when we were children, we were in slavery, [he says] under the basic principles of the world." Then, he gives us the good news of our redemption by Christ. Verse 4-5 say, "When the time had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under the Law, [verse five] to redeem those under the Law." Just like Daniel was saying about the ransom, a price paid, we're set free, not slaves anymore. Redemption through His blood, to redeem those under the Law that we might receive the full rights of sons, and then, the declaration of our status as sons. Look at verse 7, "So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has also made you an heir." Isn't that beautiful? Look at verse 7. Verse 7 has the power to give you joy in any and every circumstance of your life. You are now a child of God. So look at the facts of our slavery. Paul puts all Christians in one analogy, in verse 3, "So, too, when we were children, we were in slavery," he says, "under the basic principles of the world." The essence of slavery is bondage. No freedom, no way out. Sense of domination, especially if the master is cruel, but to what were we bound?

Paul says, in verse 3, "We are in slavery under the [NIV gives us] basic principles of the world." Basic principles of the world. ESV has, "elementary principles of the world." The Holman translation has, "elemental forces of the world." Clearly, this is an interesting idea. It's an interesting word. He's going to mention it again in verses 8-9. Look down at verses 8-9, "But in the past, when you didn't know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not God's. But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and bankrupt elemental forces?" Same word, see that? Do you want to be enslaved by them all over again?

Now, the word is a very interesting word. I don't usually pronounce Greek words here. I'm not trying, in any way, to impress you with my Greek knowledge. Just a few minutes with me and you won't be impressed. But 'stoicheia' is the word. Now, my parents are both chemists, and I learned that there's something in chemistry called 'stoichiometry.' You don't need to know this, there's not going to be any quiz, it's not on the final. But what it is, is it's a process by which chemists can figure out what elements are in a chemical, in a compound. Stoichiometry. They're able to break it apart into its elemental parts. What does Paul mean, though, by this word? Well, in Paul's day, it could either refer to the fundamental components of the universe, what we would call atoms, so the basic building blocks from which everything is made. They had elements like air, earth, fire, water, but we have the elements in the periodic table, basic elements. Or the word could refer to essential principles of some area of study, like the ABCs in a primer, like the kind of elemental lessons, the things you learn when you're just a little kid, beginning something that you're studying, like basic piano skills or something like that. Or it could refer to invisible spiritual beings, what we would call demons. All three of those are really actually very interesting, and the scholars go on and on about what they think it is. But Paul says, in any case, we were enslaved to those elemental things, whatever they were. We're enslaved by them. It could mean that then, before faith in Christ, the Galatians were all enslaved to the basic forces of the universe, the basic laws of morality they could never keep, and the demonic forces that rule the world of the unregenerate. So if the basic principles of morality are in mind, they were a cruel master, in that they could only bring death. Jews, under the Law, or moral Gentiles under their conscience, and under their sense of right and wrong. Either way, it was a form of bondage. If the elemental forces of the world were demons, they were malicious and vicious, and wanted to enslave and to beat people up because they're murderers and they hate human beings.

Now, the slavery analogy is very powerful. Apart from Christ, every single person, every sinner, is a slave. Jesus said in John 8:34, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin." In bondage to sin. And you heard Daniel read Ephesians 2:1-3, powerful words, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live, when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath."

Jesus likened Satan to, in Luke 11, a strongman fully armed who guards his possessions carefully. Well, his possessions are people. People in bondage, people in a house of slavery, and he's standing like a strongman at the door and he won't let anyone get in. Jesus says, "If I want to rescue them, I have to overcome him. I have to overwhelm him and strip him of his armor and subdue him and then, I can rescue you." And that's exactly what he said, I am doing by driving out demons. Powerful image there. Jesus, it says, in Matthew 9:36, "When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Harassed by demonic assaults, helpless to get out." It says in Romans 5:6 that we were powerless, at the right time when we were powerless, Christ delivered us. We were powerless to set ourselves free, that's the essence of our slavery. And even worse, we were in bondage to death. We were en route to death, judgement, hell. It says in Romans 5:21 that “sin reigned in death.”  Paul there personifies sin and makes sin sit like a vicious tyrant on a throne, the throne of death, and we couldn't get out, could not set ourselves free.

We were all slaves before faith came, before Christ came, our condition was desperate. No matter how we understand this word, 'stoicheia,' this elemental forces, we come up losers. We couldn't even keep the most basic moral principles you learn from your mommy when you're little, be good, do good, think good, things like that. ABCs, be generous, treat others well, don't hurt people. I mean, just the basic lisping principles of morality, we couldn't keep them. And we were afflicted by the basic human drives of human existence. We were enslaved to our stomachs. We couldn't get out, the drive for food, the drive for love, the drive for significance, all of these things, and pleasure, we're enslaved to them. And though we couldn't see this, and an atheist would never acknowledge it, etcetera, but we were enslaved to demonic forces. We had demons that were inflicting us and harassing us and crafting special temptations for us, and flogging us. Couldn't see it, but it was true. We were enslaved to sin and Satan and death and there was not a thing we could do about it.

But Christ redeemed us from slavery. Amen? How sweet is that? Look at verses 4-5, "When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." In the fullness of time, God had a perfect timetable. Isn't that beautiful, how God has worked everything out so carefully before the foundation of the world and orchestrated a timetable? I believe he did that for all of human history and he did it for your life, as well. You came to Christ at the perfect time, in the fullness of time. And so also, Jesus entered the world in the fullness of time, at the perfect time.

Now, why was that the perfect time? Well, John Calvin says don't speculate, it's none of your business. That's kind of the way he is. He just hates speculation. It doesn't say why it was the fullness of time, the perfect time, it just was. John MacArthur said it was perfect for four different reasons. Either way, I think it's interesting to look into, so with apologies to Calvin, we're going to go ahead and look at why was it the fullness of time? Well, it was the perfect time religiously because the Jewish diaspora had already happened. The Jews were scattered all over the Roman Empire. And they'd spread the idea of monotheism, and they had set up the laws of Moses that were read in the synagogues on the Sabbath every week and that was already infiltrating and there many Gentile converts to Judaism and they were aware, so it was the perfect time religiously. But the Jews had come back from dominion under Gentile power and they were still under the Roman boot and so, it was just perfect for a delivery to come, it was just the right time culturally because Alexander the Great had swept through, with his zeal for Hellenism, his zeal for Greece and everyone pretty much in that region spoke Greek. And so, as a result of that, there was a unified language. The Romans spoke Greek and the Jews spoke Greek and it was the common language and so that really facilitated the preaching of the Gospel. It was the right time politically because the Pax Romana had subdued that whole area, made travel easier, there were the Roman roads and it was just a great time for travel and for moving out.

I don't know, all I know is that's when Jesus was born and God thought that was the perfect time! God is the Alpha and the Omega, he is the first and the last. He is the beginning and the end and everything's been sequenced, down to the atom, every moment. He knows exactly the right time for everything, perfect time. God sent forth his Son. The exact same verb he's going to use to talk about the Spirit, isn't that awesome? God the Father sent forth Jesus, and God the Father sent forth the Spirit to achieve the ends of the sermon, that you would be liberated from bondage and adopted as his sons. This is God the Father doing this and he sent forth his Son into the world, as an ambassador. The idea here is of a missionary or emissary or an ambassador. Jesus was a heavenly missionary sent from heaven to Earth, a heavenly ambassador from the heavenly country, down to this rebellious land, and he came. God sent his only begotten Son into the world to save the world from sin, says in John 3:17, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world would be saved through Him." And it says he was born of a woman, marvelous phrase. At Christmas time, we celebrate this, but we can celebrate this year-round, amen? I had the thought that I might line up my sermons with Christmas, but we're what, we're five, six, seven weeks off, sorry. I just love the details, there was no chance we're going to preach this at Christmas time, but here we are, we can still think about it, can't we? We celebrate the incarnation of Jesus, the mystery of the God man, fully God, fully human, born of a woman.

The deity of Christ, very plain, the humanity of Christ, also very plain. John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." And verse 14, "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we have seen His glory, glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."  The incarnation, focus here, is specifically on Jesus born of a woman, and I think that must hearken back to the first prophecy about Jesus, back in the Garden of Eden, you remember? How the serpent came with his subtlety and guile and approached the woman, Eve, and deceived her and led her into sin, and she gave some fruit to her husband, who is with her, and he ate and then God comes in judgment to deal with the situation? And as he deals with the serpent, as he deals with the snake, who we know is Satan, he's taken on this deceptive guise, as he always does, God judged the serpent directly. To some degree, the serpent had made kind of a deal with the woman, kind of a pact. And God came and severed it in a beautiful way. He says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head and you will bruise his heel."  It's a clear prophecy for us of Christ, isn't it?

Jesus is the seed of the woman and it's very unique because of the special movement of the Holy Spirit on her body, so that there was no human father and this is the mystery of the incarnation. Mary wrestled with it first, really. When the angel told her what was going to happen, the angel said in Luke 1:30-35, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God, you will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the most high." There's the deity of Christ. "The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father, David," that's the humanity of Christ, "and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, His kingdom will never end. 'How will this be?' Mary asked the Angel, 'since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, so the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.'" So Jesus was born of a woman specifically because he had no human father. There was no human father in this amazing conception of Jesus, but Mary was fully human and so Jesus has connection to the genealogy of David, his father, as he was called Son of David, was through her, he was born of a woman. It also says he was born under the Law and how beautiful is this?

Jesus came from absolute freedom on the throne of the universe and put his neck under the yoke of the Mosaic Law. It's just amazing to think of the humility, the condescension of Jesus to do that. He was under the yoke, it was said a yoke that neither we nor our fathers are able to bear. Jesus, this mighty Samson, really comes and he can bear it. This moral Samson, this powerful ruler, who comes and puts his neck under the meticulous precepts of the Law of Moses and fully obeys it, perfectly obeys it. He was completely obedient to the Law of Moses. Now, in many ways, Jesus is the only one that really perfectly fulfills the words that Paul gave us at the beginning of this text. Look again, verse one and two, this is really of Jesus, I think. "What I am saying is that as long as the heir," read Jesus as the heir, "as long as the heir is a child, He's no different than a slave, although He owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees, until the time set by His father." Isn't that true of Jesus? Jesus is the heir of the world, He's the heir of the universe, Son of God, but he submitted to his parents, right? Submitted to Joseph and Mary, didn't he submit to them? Says he was submissive to them, in Luke 2. He obeyed all of the laws, submitted to that. He was under guardianship until the right time, perfectly law-abiding. Jesus alone, fulfilled his own summary of the Law. Remember that, the twofold summary?

The first and greatest Commandment of the Law is this, "You should love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength." Only one man has ever done that. Jesus obeyed that. He loved God every moment of his life, with every fiber of his being. And the second is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The cross, really, is the measurement of Jesus's love for his neighbor. He was willing to die for us. Perfectly, day by day, healing infirmities, feeding the hungry, counseling those that needed wisdom. Jesus loved His neighbor perfectly, He was submissive to that. He actually obeyed all of it, every minute detail. Those are just the summaries.

He obeyed it all, all the 10 Commandments, perfectly obeyed. Some scholars have counted 613 commandments given in the Mosaic covenant, he obeyed them all. All of them. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:17-18, "Do not think that I've come to abolish the Law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest jot or tiniest tittle, the little pen stroke of the Law will pass away, until everything has been fulfilled." Jesus was under every jot and tittle, every little minute, meticulous law. And Jesus's perfect obedience to the Law won a righteousness in the sight of God, that He then offers you as a gift. Isn't that awesome?

His active obedience to the Law for those 30 plus years that he lived under the Law, wove a garment, everyday that he lived under the Law of Moses, another thread in the loom of a beautiful, radiant garment and he just hands it to you in the Gospel and says, "Here, put this on. You're going to need this on Judgment Day. So put it on and I will see you. God, the Father, will see you as perfectly righteous in me." We are not saved, except by the active obedience of Christ, under the Law, day by day, plus the passive obedience of Christ to take the curse of the Law on himself. Both of those are essential to our salvation.

Tim Keller beautifully put it this way, "Jesus lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died." It's beautiful, isn't it? To redeem, it says, those under the law. The word 'redeem' here fits this context perfectly. We were bought out by the payment of a price. Says in 1 Corinthian 6:19-20, "You are not your own, you were bought at a price." It is so vital for us to remember that. We don't own ourselves. Jesus shed his blood, says in Ephesians 1:7, "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." So by Christ death, the Law no longer has any claim on us, in that sense. The Law does not stand over us any longer to condemn us to hell.

We are free from the accusations and the condemnation of the Law through Jesus. Roman 6:14 also says, We are not under sin at all. "Sin shall not be your master because you are not under Law, but under grace."  It's a whole different way to live now, we are free. We're not under what once bound us, we are redeemed from tyrannical masters. We are set free. But free to what? Free to what? Free from the Law and all that, now what? We're on our own? Think about how it was with the slaves here in America. After the war was over, millions of them instantly set free. For what though? Some of them had nowhere to go. Some of them actually stayed in the same plantation and worked in much the same way because they had no other... Now, they had to be paid. But they just didn't... Into what kind of life were they being freed? Now, definitely, it was superior to slavery, but there's a question.

The text says we are not merely set free, we are also adopted by our Father, who will now take care of us and provide for us and protect us the rest of our lives. We have been adopted, not just set free, not just emancipated. And so we have verses 5-7, the full rights of adoption, "To redeem those under the Law that we might receive the full rights of sons, and because you are sons, God sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts, the spirit who cries out, 'Abba, Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has made you also an heir." This is the most astonishing aspect of our privileges in Christ, we are adopted, adopted sons and daughters.

Now, our status as sons and daughters is not by nature, but by grace. You could say, in one sense, there's only one natural Son of God, what we call only begotten Son of God, and that's Jesus. Forever, there'll be an essential and infinite difference between Jesus and us, in that sense. He is the only one of his kind, only begotten. The Son, Jesus, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, that's what Jesus is. We are adopted by grace, what was our nature? Well, you know what our nature was. How about this? Titus 3:3, "At one time, we too are foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envied being hated and hating one another."  That was our nature.

Contrary to our nature, by grace alone, we are adopted now, as sons and daughters of the living God. This is a supernatural work, something only God could do. We are born of the spirit. It says in John 1:12-13, "as many as received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of human nature, the will of the flesh, but born of God." It's a supernatural... Every Christian is a miracle, supernatural movement of God's grace on you. And when he did that, then God sent forth, like he sent forth Jesus, he sent forth his spirit into your hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!' Crying out, 'Abba, Father!' It's almost like a homing mechanism, a beacon going inside you, saying, "Father, Father, Father, Father," or you could also say, "Heaven, Heaven, Heaven. I'm coming home, I'm coming home." And the spirit is leading us along that beam, right to that celestial city. How awesome is that? The spirit in our hearts crying out, 'Abba, Father!'

By the way, Abba, the very same thing Jesus called his father in Gethsemane, daddy, in Arameic, "Abba, Father," he said, "All things are possible for You. May this cup be taken from me." But that intimacy, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of sonship is in us. Crying out, not just whispering, crying out, "Abba, Father!" And it's so awesome, the Father now in Christ loves us as much as he loves his own son. It's incredible teaching, but Jesus prayed that. He said, in John 17:23, "I, in them and you, in me. May they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that You have loved them even as You have loved me." That's awesome. And that spirit testifies, it says in Romans 8, "With our spirits, that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings, in order that we may also share in His glory." And we are infinitely rich in that. Infinitely rich, as adopted sons of God, and we are going to be made rich. It says in Revelation 21:7, God has made this clear promise, "He who overcomes, will inherit all this." New Heaven, new Earth, new Jerusalem, and "I will be his God, and He will be my son."

Alright, so that's what we are. Do you not see how insane it is to live like a slave? Do you not see how insane it would be for us, who are redeemed sons and daughters of the living God, to live like slaves? Look at verses 8-11. "Formally," it says, "when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not God's, but now that you know God or rather are known by God, how is it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You're observing special days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you." He's talking there about their former life as pagans. Ignorant of God, they did not know him. They didn't know his holy ways. Living in lust and pagan revelry. Sacrificing to pagan deities. Living under the dominion of demons. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:20, "The sacrifices of pagans are given to demons." They were enslaved by those who, by nature, were not God's: Demons, wicked, hostile, restless, murderers. That was your former way of life, oh Galatians. That's the way you used to live. "Now that you know God, and even more importantly are known by God," how sweet is that? We love. Why? Because He first loved us and you know what? We know him. Why? Because He first knew us. It's vastly more important that God knows us than that you know God, just so you know. It's so important that on Judgement Day, he claims you as one of his own children. And so he claims, everything has changed for you now. You know God and are known by God. This God, who it says in the Psalms, "Oh Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You know when I come in and when I go out. You hem me in behind and before." This God knows you intimately and loves you completely. How can you now go back to your old way of life? How can you turn back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you want to be enslaved by them all over again? You're observing special days and months and seasons and years.

Now, I want you to listen carefully what I am about to say. It's probably one of the most explosive things in this whole sermon. Here it is. The implication of that statement is this, that by going after legalistic Christianity, in which the Law of Moses dominates, it's no different than it was before the Gospel ever came to their town. Let me go a step further. Christless Judaism is every bit as demonic as paganism or animism or anything else. They're equally demonic. We tend to think, "Well, you know, it's monotheistic, at least. It's a step closer to it." No, it's just the deception of the devil to ensnare people with moralistic, legalistic principles and teach them that they can save themselves by their own good works. It's just demonic. So Christless Judaism is every bit as demonic as animist or paganism or pantheism or any of those things. There is a beautiful circle of light and that's called the Gospel. We stepped inside of it because everything else is darkness. And Paul says, "you're going back to the same thing you had before I came to your town and preached. I am afraid, I fear that somehow, I may have wasted my efforts on you."

So what application can we take from this? Well, first, understand the spiritual condition of every non-Christian around you, enslaved to these demonic principles and they can't get out. They can't set themselves free, there's nothing that they can do. There's only one power that can set them free and that's the power of the Gospel. It is the power of God to salvation for all who believed. Secondly, understand the gift of redemption through faith in Christ. Blood redemption is full payment for our sins. Understand the joy of that, freedom from guilt and condemnation. Trust in Christ, all of you, trust in him. You may have been Christians for decades, trust in him still. Look to Christ and trust in him. Don't lapse back into legalistic patterns, trust in him at every moment. Those of you who walked in this place outside of the Gospel, come in now. Come in while there's time, come into the circle of light, come into freedom, come into adoption. Then you get to celebrate your emancipation for the rest of your life.

So I can just say this to you Christians, celebrate. Smile, not just because the sermon's almost done, because it is. But celebrate, celebrate that you are set free from sin and bondage and demonic forces, celebrate that. Be joyful and delight in the privileges of your adoption as sons and daughters. You have a Father now who loves you, you have security in his family. He will never kick you out. He will provide for all of your needs until the day you die. He will protect you from all attacks, nothing can harm you, accept what passes through his hands and it won't harm you. All trials come from him. You have discipline. If you sin, he's going to discipline you, he's going to treat you like a son. If you sin, he will discipline you. You have free access to the Father in prayer. The spirit cries out within you, "Abba, Father!", so pray. Pray freely, pray with great confidence, pray with great zeal and energy. You have fellowship with brothers and sisters, you're in a vast family. You have now a shared family mission with the Father. He's doing some work, He wants you to join Him in the family business, we can put it that way. You have the Holy Spirit as counselor and guide. You have authority to reign with Christ. You can be called, are called by God's name. You are known by God and you can know him. So don't live like a slave.

Finally, very practically, a good number of the members of our church are excited about in the process of literally adopting children. It's a very costly process, it takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of resources. Our church should get around the people who are doing that. We should encourage them. We should find out who they are, we know who they are, I'm not going to list them right now, but we should encourage them. We should say, "How can we help?" They'll let you know, alright? But let's be financially generous to help them. Let's pray for them and encourage them, and let's just rejoice in adoption itself. It's such a great picture of the Gospel, isn't it? Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study Your word and I pray that as we close now this worship service, oh Lord, I pray that You would fill us with Your spirit, the spirit of sonship, by which we cry "Abba, Father!" and that we would walk in the joyful freedom that is ours, as adopted children of God and as co-heirs with Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Galatians 3:22-29, and the point of how God frees sinners through Christ's redemptive work.

In John Bunyan's classic allegory of the Christian Life, Pilgrim's Progress, a book that Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher read at least once a year for 50 years. And you think, how could you read the same book over and over? But it's such a powerful, scripturally saturated allegory of the Christian life. It begins with a man named Christian, who is desperately under conviction that he lives in the City of Destruction, and he's got a terrible burden on his back, and he's reading this book open in his hand, and the more he reads, the heavier his lamentations and sighs and weariness grows, and he's worried and concerned that he's going to come under the wrath of God, he's going to come under the judgment of God. And he can't find any rest, even sleep doesn't ease his heart. His wife doesn't... Actually, she makes it worse and it just gets terrible, and finally, he meets a man named Evangelist. And Evangelist points to a way to begin running to find the answers, a light in a wicket gate and he goes running, and he's got this terrible burden on his back, and he's yearning for deliverance from this.

And as he's going along on the road that Evangelist told him to go on, he meets a man named Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Mr. Worldly Wiseman counsels him that he needs to go to the Town of Morality, where he can get some help with that burden on his back. He will meet a man there, named Legality, who is an expert at helping people get those kinds of burdens off their backs. But in order to get to the Village of Morality, Christian has to leave the path that he's on and start traveling a different way. By the way, in Pilgrim's Progress, never leave the path, always big trouble when you leave the path. And so, he leaves the path and he's going after the Town of Morality and he's trying to climb up this hill. And the hill becomes a mountain, it becomes a towering mountain, it starts to loom over him, even kind of folding back over him, and he's looking up with terror, and he's distressed, and in anguish and there's... He doesn't know where to go, he's paralyzed. Can't go forward another step, as though the mountain is there to fall on him and crush him. And moreover, from the top of the mountain, there are these terrible flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, and just the terrors coming on him. He's just standing there, he doesn't know what to do.

And then comes Evangelist, again, a second time, praise the Lord. But he's not looking too happy with Christian at that moment. And he fixes a severe look on his face and he scolds him for leaving the true path. And he said, "No one ever got their burden off by going to the Town of Morality. And Legality cannot help you, all he can do is increase your burden."

Well, this has been a common journey for many that are struggling with the terror of Judgment Day. The terrors of the wrath of God, the terrors of facing a holy God covered with sin. And they try through morality, through legal observances to try to ease their conscience, but it only gets worse. In 1732, there was a man, a young student, named George Whitefield. He was the son of a tavern owner and he enrolled in Pembroke College in Oxford, England. Only 17 years old, he soon joined a club, a group of other Christians, who were very serious about their Christianity, very serious. They were so meticulous and their pursuits of the moral precepts of Christianity, that they were called the nickname, The Methodists, was meant to be an insult at that point.

George Whitefield became more and more concerned about his soul, and he started fasting, depriving himself of sleep, depriving himself of warm clothing in the winter. Laying out in the snow through the night, depriving himself of healthy foods. It got so bad that his hands actually started turning black. He couldn't get up the stairs into his dorm room, he was crawling up the stairs. People were afraid that he would soon die, which he probably would have, except that someone gave him a book, written by Henry Scougal, called 'The Life of God in the Soul of Man.' It saved not only his life, but it saved his soul. And in that booklet, it taught him the basic truths of Christianity, the basic gospel of Christ, the doctrine of the New Birth, through faith in Jesus Christ, through trusting in the finished work of Christ on the cross and his resurrection, we can have eternal life, we can be born again, and we can live an entirely new kind of life. And he was born again, and he spent the rest of his life preaching, preaching the New Birth and the freedom that Christ alone can give.

Now Tim Keller, in his comments on the book of Galatians and specifically, the section we're looking at today, said this, "Many Christians, though not all, testify that when they first became aware of their need for God, they went through a time of immaturity, in which they became extremely religious. They diligently sought to mend their ways and to do religious duties, to clean up their lives. They made tearful surrenders to God at church services. They gave their lives to Jesus, they asked him to come into their hearts. But so often, they were really only resolving to be very good and religious, hoping this would procure the favor and blessing of God. At this stage, they tended to have lots of emotional ups and downs, like children, feeling good when they made spiritual commitment and then feeling despondent when they failed to keep a promise to God, they felt a great deal of anxiety."

Now, as we come to Galatians 3:23-29, we come to the culmination of this phase of Paul's argument. On the true gospel versus the legalistic gospel of what we've been calling the 'Judaizers.' Some false teachers, who came to Galatia after Paul preached the gospel and planted those churches there, he left and then they came afterwards. They claimed to believe in Jesus and in the gospel of Jesus, but they said, "You have to be circumcised, you have to keep the law of Moses in order to be saved." And so, they're trying to mix Jesus and Moses together in an unholy recipe for salvation.

In this chapter, we've seen in Galatians 3:1-5, Paul begins with the Galatians' own experience when Paul came to their towns and preached the gospel, and how they had heard with faith the gospel. Simply hearing by faith, they believed and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. "You remember how it was," he said, "having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh?" "By human efforts at keeping the laws, is this how you're going to make it the rest of the way?"

And then he turns from their experience to the Scriptures. He proves how Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was justified by faith in the promise, not by the law. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. On the contrary, those who try to keep the law and be justified by the law, be forgiven of their sins by the law, are under a curse. For it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the law." All the law, all the time, or you're cursed.

But thanks be to God for Jesus, Amen? He became a curse for us, so that he might redeem us from the curse of the law and give us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and adoption, and the inheritance through Abraham. We have seen all of that. So now the question in front of Paul, and he's been answering it and now he continues to answer it, is what then is the purpose of the law? Why did God, centuries after Abraham, give the law of Moses? What was he trying to do? 

And so, we're going to see now, in this text, the purpose of the law, and we're going to focus, first and foremost, on how the law was a jailer and a guardian to bring us to Christ. So if the law couldn't save our souls, why was it given? Now, there are many answers to this question. I'm not saying that the answer we're giving now is the only reason for the law. There are multiple reasons why God gave the law to the human race, to the Jews and to the human race. But here we're going to focus on the issue of salvation. And he's going to bring up these themes... The law as a jailer, and the law as a custodian or guardian.

Now, according to Paul's argument here, the law had a temporary role to play, both in an individual's life, I think, and also in redemptive history. The law is here for just a while until something happens, and then, in that role, you don't need it anymore. There is that time aspect that he has here. Now, God was very wise in giving us the law. There's nothing wrong with the law, the law had a very good purpose. But the direct salvation of sinners was not one of the purposes of the law. That's not why God gave it, else God has failed, else Christ died needlessly, as we've already seen. So he's answering the question of the role of the law here.

In Romans, he defends the law a little more clearly and directly. In Romans 7:7, he says, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not." So the law is not sin. Actually, five verses later, in Romans 7:12, he says, "So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." There's nothing wrong with the law. But here, in Galatians 3, Paul is revealing some of God's purpose in giving the law. And he's emphasizing that once faith in Christ comes, the law doesn't play that role anymore. That time is over, it's done.

Now, we have to step back for a moment, and I've already hinted at it, but we have to ask a question. Is Paul speaking personally about individuals or is he speaking nationally about the Jews? It's a very important question. We have to try to understand that. In Romans 7, very plainly, Paul is speaking personally. He's talking about his own experience with the law. "Once I was alive, apart from the law. But when the commandment came," he says, "sin sprang to life and I died." He's speaking very autobiographically, very personally.

But here, in Galatians 3, it's not so clear. It seems at least possible that he's speaking more in terms of redemptive history, big picture, about the function of the law in the history of the Jewish nation. Or he may be speaking, as in Romans, about the law, in terms of individual salvation. Both of those are valid answers, both of them are valid themes. And we can see the importance of understanding each. The law had a role to play in the lives of individual sinners, Jews or Gentiles, and the law also had a role to play in the history of the world, through the history of the Jewish nation. In both cases though, once the era of faith in Christ comes, the law no longer plays those roles, either for the individual or for the nation as a whole. For the individual sinner, Jew or Gentile, the law plays a role in making the sinner despair of personal righteousness. And then, bringing the sinner, despairing in personal righteousness, bringing the sinner to faith in Christ. The law has that role. For the Jewish nation, the law played a role in preparing a setting for the Jewish Messiah to come, to set the Jews apart as a special nation with walls or barriers around them. Circumcision, dietary regulations, all of the ceremonial law, the special days and seasons and years, all of those things identified the Jews as what we would call a peculiar people, and gave a Jewish context for the Messiah to be born into.

We have to understand both of those things. Either way, once Christ comes, that time is over. That time is over. So let's first look at this issue of the law as jailer. And by the way, on the nation, we also know that even the national history of the Jews ends up being a laboratory for individual salvation. That we Gentiles can watch what happened to the Jewish nation, how they behaved under the law, how they could not keep it, how they constantly were violating it, how the Lord was continually sending prophets to warn them and bringing judgements and they still didn't keep the law. So we can step aside, just as individuals, and say, "We're the same." What person has ever read the Book of Judges and not found your own struggle with sin in that book? You're not allegorizing, you're just saying, "I have the same kind of cycles going on in my own life." And we can see that connection with the whole Jewish nation. So, they actually are somewhat intertwined. The Jews as a nation and then, individual salvation.

But let's zero in on this issue of the law as a jailer, and that's very much on the personal side here. Verse 23. Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, or locked up, some would say. Imprisoned, until the coming faith was revealed. This is a time orientation, before this faith came. So we're following the flow of the argument of Galatians. Paul is speaking of individual experience of law and salvation. Look back at verses 21 and 22. Try to get the flow here. You always want to get these things in context. “Is the law, [verse 21,] is the law therefore contrary to the promises of God? Absolutely not. For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly come by the law. But the scripture has imprisoned everything under sin's power, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” You see, it's very individual there. It's got to do with individual salvation. As individuals believe, then the promise comes to those individuals. So, the law is not the enemy of God's promise. Not at all. Actually, both law and promise work together in the providence of God and in the saving power of God to bring individual sinners to faith in Christ. They both have a role to play.

Now, the law has no power to bring about the ultimate end of salvation, has no power at all to bring about the purpose of eternal life and a blessed, reconciled relationship with almighty God. It has no power to do that. Has no power to make a single person on earth righteous. Rather, God intended in some amazing way to imprison everyone on earth, not just the Jews, under sin's power, that we would realize that we are powerless to save ourselves. This imprisonment under sin and the law would continue until Christ came and set us free. So we're locked up by the law, powerless to escape, until at last, Christ comes to set the sinner free. So verse 22 makes it plain that once faith in the promise of life in Jesus Christ comes, the imprisonment ends for those who believe. Verse 23 just picks up the flow. Verse 23, "Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned, until the coming faith was revealed." This is the law as a prison warden or a jailer. So the law functions very negatively here. It instructs us what sin is. It actually provokes and draws out sin from us and then, it condemns us for the sin that it has drawn out. That's what the law does. It defines sin. It provokes or draws out sin and then it condemns sin. That's it.

Notice that not listed in there is saves from sin, or transforms the heart. It does not have power to do those things. The law teaches us God's righteous standards. Once we have violated them, it locks us up and we are as though we are on death row, waiting for the condemnation to come. And the law cannot speak a word of mercy to us. It's not in its power to do so. It has no power to speak mercy to us. And so, the law teaches us God's morality, its righteous standards. Look at the 10 commandments. "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make any idol, neither shall you worship any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh, for God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bare false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor."  Ten commandments.

They're essentially negative, for the most part. You shall not, you shall not. For the most part, they're negative. Jesus, when asked about the law, summarized all of the law, not just the 10 commandments, but 600 commandments and more, summarized under two positive headings... Two positive headings. The first and greatest commandment of the law is this, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength." The second commandment, he said, is like it, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." So that's the law. The 10 and two. Now, these commandments describe God's righteous heart, his righteous expectations. Those commandments and hundreds of others are pure and altogether righteous, it says in Psalm 19. But we find that we cannot obey them. We cannot keep these commandments, we find we cannot obey them because the law actually draws sin out from us. It gives our wicked, rebellious hearts a chance to rebel and be wicked. If there were no law, there could, by definition, be no transgression. We'd be permitted to do anything we wanted. If we were permitted to do anything we wanted, then there would be no violations, there would be no Judgment Day, no commandments. The law comes and shows us God's righteous standards and our inner sin nature rises up to challenge his right to give us those commands. Challenges it.

In Romans 7, Paul especially speaks of the 10th commandment. I think the 10th commandment's very powerful, "You shall not covet." You shall not covet, there should be inside of you no motions of jealousy toward another human being for any advantage or benefit they have in life. You shall not set your desire on anything else, anything that belongs to your neighbor. Their spouse, their possessions, their house, their car, their... Doesn't mention cars, but you know by extension. I don't know, chariots, donkeys. I mean, anything that they own, anything at all, you shall not have motions of your heart to go out, shall not fantasize toward what it'd be like if you could live in that house or if you could have that promotion that you deserved and they got it. Never any motions of coveting.

Paul talks about what the law did to him in Romans 7:7-11, he said, "What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not. Indeed, I would not have known what sin was, except through the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was, if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.' But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me and through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life, actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me, and through the commandment, put me to death." That's how it works. Paul was free in the manner of coveting until the law came into his mind, he learned what coveting was and then, now he's coveting left and right. "Filled with all kinds of covetous desires," he said.

How does this work? Well, imagine a father brings home a big cardboard box, okay? Puts it in the corner with a bunch of other boring papers and his coat and it just sits there. Kids walk by, don't give it a second look. But say instead, he brings that box, puts it in the center of the table and puts a big sign on it, saying, "Absolutely do not look in this box." What happens then? Temptation happens next, is what happens. If it goes on long enough, someone, looking left and looking right, is going to open that box. So the commandment brings out the desire, it brings out the sin, that's what the law was meant to do. In Romans 5, "The law was added, so that the trespass might increase." It's very counter-intuitive there. We would think that the law was given so there'd be less sin, that's not what's going on. He wants you to see it. And then, the law condemns you, because all sin deserves the death penalty and you're put on death row 'cause you're not killed instantly. God and his mercy gives you time to repent, but you're on death row now and the law is your jailer. Verse 23, "Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, we were imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed."

John Stott, commenting on this, said this, "After God gave the promise to Abraham, he gave the law to Moses. Why? Well, he had to make things worse before he could make them better. The law exposed sin, it provoked sin, it condemned sin. The purpose of the law was to lift the lid off of man's respectability and disclose what he really is underneath, sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgment of God and helpless to save himself. And the law must still be allowed to do this God-given duty today. One of the great faults of the contemporary Church," says Stott, "is the tendency to soft-pedal sin and judgment. We must never bypass the law and come straight to the gospel. To do so is to contradict the plan of God in biblical history. No man has every appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it's only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth."

Our age, here in America, our culture, our age has very little sense of the law as jailer. And I fear it's because the Church is not preaching the fullness of the counsel of God here. Very few evangelists and pastors are preaching clearly the terrors of the law. The terrors of eternal condemnation for all who are judged, condemned on Judgment Day. People think of themselves as basically a good person or basically good people, but the law, if they understand it properly, exposes them as deeply, truly rebellious to the core of their being. I think we don't do it, as we're sharing our faith, because it's uncomfortable to do. It's painful to do, to show someone their sin. Now, we ought to do it as those who are under the same terrors, if it weren't for Christ. But we need to do the law work in people's hearts. So how do you do it? I would suggest, if you want to evangelize, memorize what I just gave you a few minutes ago, a simplified outline of the 10 commandments, memorize it. Secondly, memorize the two great commandments, you could do it in an afternoon, memorize the 10 and two. For extra credit, memorize the legal commentary on two of the 10 commandments by Jesus. Now, Jesus is a legal expert and his comments on the 10 commandments will be important for us. When? On Judgment Day. Why? 'Cause he's the judge that's going to be sitting on your case. Is that of interest to you? The fact that the judge who will be sitting on your case had some comments to make on the 10 commandments. Where did he make those comments? In the Sermon on the Mount.

So I would suggest that you memorize this, as well. "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'You shall not murder,' and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment, but I tell you that anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca', is in danger of the fire of hell. Anyone who says 'you fool' is in danger of the fire of hell."  Now you're like, "Who is he to make that comment? If you just say some insult, 'you fool', you're in danger of the fire of hell? Who is Jesus to make a comment like that?" John 5 says that the Father has entrusted all judgment to him. He will be sitting on your case. And he says he's not just looking for, "Did you consummate the act?" But were there motions toward murder in your heart? Have there ever been unholy motions of anger in your heart toward another human being? Have you acted on it by saying something harsh? By a hard action toward them? God, the Father, Christ, the judge, puts that all under one file, calls it murder. And says you are in danger of the fire of hell. He then goes on to talk about the commandment on adultery. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart." ,"If your right eye cause you to sin, then gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." Again, the same thing, he's intensifying the law. Now, you may say, "This doesn't seem right." But think about it. The 10th commandment, what part of you is the judge looking at, to decide whether you broke the 10th commandment? What part of your body do you use to covet? Is it not the heart? Is it not the internal part of you? Jesus is just saying the same goes for all of them. God's looking at the heart, he's looking at, "Do you have other gods?" He's looking at, "Do you take the name of the Lord in vain?" He's looking at what you're doing with the law at the heart.

Later, in that same chapter, Matthew 5:48, he sums it all up with this sweeping statement. "You must be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Moral perfection is required for heaven. Now listen, friends, future evangelists, present evangelists, if you're doing the work of the law here, you're going 10 plus two, the two commandments, who can say they've loved God with every fiber of their being, every moment of their lives? Who can say that? Who can say they've sacrificed everything they had for their neighbors and others? Who can ever say that? No one can make it through that net. By the time you get done, I've seen it happen time and time again, the person you're witnessing to says, "No one can keep that, no one's perfect." It's like, "Yes, you got it." But you have to be perfect. Now, they may disagree with that, doesn't matter. It will matter for them, but the truth is you must be as perfect morally as God to go to heaven, and the law tells you, you're not. Jesus goes beyond that in Matthew 12:36, he says, "I tell you that men will have to give an account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken." Full record of all of your words are conveniently kept for you, you'll meet it on Judgment Day. I remember witnessing to someone, he said, "I don't remember everything I said yesterday." It's like, "It's all right, God does. He's got it all down." And you get seeing people's eyes, they start getting bigger and bigger. It means you're actually doing some evangelism now.

I saw once a bumper sticker, "Christ is the answer," and then you see this sarcastic question "What's the question?" I'll tell you what the question is, "How can a sinner like me stand before a Holy God like him and survive?" Christ is the answer to that question, he's the only way we can. And so, we have to make this clear, we have to make the Great White Throne Judgement clear. Revelation 20, "Then I saw a Great White Throne and him who's seated on it, and earth and sky fled from his presence and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the Throne and the books were opened and another book was open, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death and if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown in the lake of fire."

It's our job, dear friends, as evangelists, to make these things vividly clear to unbelievers. And if you are an unbeliever, you're invited here today. It is presently my privilege to make these things vividly clear to you. The law is a jailer because it does not speak a single word of comfort to you in all of this. Not a single word, can only condemn, condemn by justice. We need to tell people the truth. This is the truth. But once someone receives the truth of the law and Judgement Day and eternity in hell, but hasn't yet understood the gospel of grace through faith in Christ, they may immediately try to earn salvation by resolutions and extreme efforts and asceticism. Church history is full of those stories. I don't think we see much of it in our culture around because the law isn't being preached like it should be. But some people not quite coming to Christ yet, they try to earn their own salvation. Thus, the law brings someone to Christ because before the law came, the sinner didn't know he or she needed a savior. So the law tells the bad news, so that Christ can tell the good news.

Verse 23, "Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned, until the coming faith was..." What? "Revealed, revealed." Faith in Christ has to be revealed, like it was to Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi. In Matthew 16, "What about you?" he said, "Who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ. You are the son of the living God." And Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven."  So the Father in heaven has to reveal Christ. Faith is a synonym for Christ here, in this verse. Until Christ is revealed. He uses faith because that's the principle by which we receive the gift of salvation through Christ, but it's really Christ that's being revealed. And it's revealed in the gospel that Christ has all the righteousness you need to survive Judgment Day and he's willing to give it to you as a gift. He uses the verb later in our text, 'clothed with Christ'. He is willing to put a robe, a beautiful robe of righteousness on you, as a gift.

2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made him who had no sin, [Christ] to be sin for us." He was clothed with our defiling wickedness on the cross, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. Or as Galatians 3 put it, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. As it is written, 'Cursed it is everyone who's hung on a tree.' He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith, we might receive the promise of the Spirit." Before this faith is revealed, though, the sinner's dead in transgressions and sins, the law makes that plain. The law is also a guardian. It's a separate word used here, interesting word. Verse 24, "So then, the law was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith."

Now the metaphor shifts a bit. He uses a second word, a different image, 'paidagogos' is the word here. From the Greek word for child and lead. One who leads a child. So like a nanny or something like that, but it's not an exact parallel in our culture. Back then, a wealthy, estate-owning individual would hire a highly-trained, maybe Greek slave, a philosopher, Greek slave, who would be the paidagogos, the guardian, the tutor, school master, etcetera, for the children who were underage. And so, he would have the responsibility to take care of these sons on a daily basis, train them, instruct them, discipline them, protect them from harm. His discipline could be quite harsh as needed. He was training them. They were children. Now, one day, they would come into their inheritance. They were sons of noblemen and they would come into their inheritance, but when they were children, they needed the guardian, they needed the school master. The idea is wanting a protective oversight given to boys, who are minors and needed protection and training. The law then kept the Jewish nation identifiable and protected and safe and not pagan, not melting away into pagan...

Remember all those things in Ezra and Nehemiah about intermarriage and the children don't even speak the language of Zion. They're not even speaking Hebrew. What's going on? The desire is to keep the Jewish nation identifiably Jewish and protected until the Messiah was born, next chapter, of a woman, born under the law and fullness of time, Jewish, okay? But once Jesus comes, you don't need circumcision or dietary regulations or any of those ceremonial laws anymore. That's done. You don't need to identify the Jews as a nation anymore, now that Christ has come. So that's what he's talking about here. So individually, then, the law serves as a tutor and a guardian, bringing immature individuals to Christ, so they can be justified. Bringing an immature nation in redemptive history to the time in redemptive history when Christ will be born as a Jew. So the law trains, it instructs, it protects, but it doesn't justify. Faith alone in Christ justifies.

So now, good news, the age of faith in Christ has come and the jailer and guardian has gone. Look at verses 25 through 27. "But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." Verse 27, "For as many of you has been baptized, have been baptized in the Christ, have put on Christ." So nationally, once the Jewish nation and redemptive history at the right time, Christ born, once that came, the nation has grown to maturity, they don't need the guardian of the law anymore. Child becomes a man. And so, when Jesus was born and grew, presented to the Jewish nation, time for the law as a shaper of Jewish national identity had ended.

The law brought the Jewish nation to Christ. Christ brought salvation, then, to the Jewish nation, but only to those who would believe in him, those were the true sons of Abraham, as he said very plainly in his ministry. So the era of the guardian is over, no more ceremonial laws. Later, Paul's going to say to the Galatians, "I'm distressed to your observing special days and months and seasons and years." "Don't you realize the time for that's done? We're not under that calendar anymore, we're not under that system anymore. It's done."

And so, circumcision is done, the time for animal sacrifice and the priestly class, all that's done. And the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile is gone forever. Isn't that awesome? There was that barrier, that dividing wall that separated Jew and Gentile. Circumcision, a very clear example of that. You had the uncircumcised Gentiles and then, you had the circumcised Jews. But now that Christ has come, that's been removed now, it's been removed. Ephesians 2:14 and 15, speaking of Christ, "He, himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself, [listen to this] one new man out of the two, thus making peace." That is absolutely fits like a lock and a key in the text I'm preaching on right now. There's no longer Jew or Gentile, there's now just Christian, they say. That's the one new man, believer in Jesus, doesn't matter whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, that's what he's saying. That barrier, the dividing wall, is gone and so once faith individually comes into the heart, the time of being under the jailer is done. The sinner comes into full, the full freedom of forgiveness. The law doesn't have power over you to condemn you anymore, you're free from all of that. You're free men and women in Christ.

The scripture testifies to our perfect righteousness in Christ and the silence of the law as accuser. Praise God for these verses. Listen to Colossians 2:13-14, "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ." Speaking of Gentiles there, in Colossae. "He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross." So God took all of the law. Like, see the commandments and then how you broke them. Commandment, how you broke it, commandment... It's all written out, written in indelible ink. God took that and nailed it to the cross and said, "Forgiven" to all of it. It's been forgiven, you're forgiven, it's been nailed to the cross.

So it says in Romans 8:1-3, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." No condemnation because through Christ Jesus, "the law of the spirit of life, [we're getting to that in Galatians 5] has set me free from the law of sin and death, for what the law was powerless to do and that it was weakened by the flesh, God did, by sending his son in the likeness of the flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh. And then later, in that same chapter, Romans 8:33 and 34, while you're doing all that memorizing, go ahead and memorize Romans 8. Amen? What a great chapter. Romans 8:33 and 34, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has justified?" Who's going to do that, who's going to stand up and charge you on Judgment Day? The implication is no, because it says, "It is God who justifies. Who dares condemn? God has justified you. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died, more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is interceding for you."  So what that means is 'baptized into Christ' means freedom from the jailer and the guardian. We are free forever from the jailer and the accuser. And that's true of all believers, all believers are equally free from this.

Look at verses 26 to 29, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs, according to the promise." This is the full glory of the gospel of grace, adoption into God's family. "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." What a wonderful message to these Gentile Christians from Galatia. You're already fully adopted into God's family. You're already sons of Abraham.

Judaizers' doctrine made them feel like second-class citizens, right? You're not really in until you get circumcised. Start obeying that Jewish law. Gotta become Jews. We're already Jews, we're already in, we're Jewish believers in Christ. We're at the highest level. You're second class citizens. Paul says, "No, you're not. You're already fully heirs with Abraham." Praise God. You're already sons of God through faith, not by law. And he speaks there about being baptized into Christ. If you've been baptized into Christ, you've clothed yourself with Christ, a powerful image here. I don't believe he's directly talking about water baptism. Indirectly, yes.

But 'baptizo', the Greek word, means to immerse, to plunge. Not trying to be offensive to any of our paedobaptist friends, but that's what the word means. It means to plunge, not to sprinkle, to plunge. Okay? That's what the word means, plunge. We are immersed, by the Spirit immersed into Christ, immersed into him. Now, water baptism is merely an outward visible symbol. John the Baptist was clear on this. John the Baptist said, "I baptize, [I immerse] in water for repentance, but after me will come one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. [He will immerse you] He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire." Because he was speaking to a mixed group, I think you can read or there. You're either going to be immersed in the Holy Spirit by Jesus or he will immerse you in the lake of fire. And if you don't think that's the right interpretation, keep reading in Matthew 3 because that fire, John the Baptist describes very plainly in a few verses. So Jesus will rescue you from the lake of fire, by immersing you in the Holy Spirit. Jesus baptized you in the Holy Spirit. Then, along comes some Baptist and will immerse you in water to show it. It’s an outward and visible sign of an immersion you've already had through the Holy Spirit by Jesus. And if you've done that, it says, "You have clothed yourself in Christ." You're clothed. You're just immersed in the righteousness of Christ. You're immersed in Jesus.

And there, in front of the cross, the ground is perfectly level, absolutely level. Look at verse 28 and 29, "There is no Jew or Greek. There's no slave or free. There's no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The Judaizers were filled with nationalistic pride, weren't they, of being Jewish. Gentiles were often called 'dogs', very disparaging and negative, but that is over now. That's over. In Christ, the foot of the cross, the ground is perfectly level. The cross of Jesus Christ is the great equalizer. Jewish Christians aren't any more sons of Abraham than Gentile Christians. They're not second-class citizens at all, but fully adopted sons and daughters of Abraham and heirs with him of the promises.

Notice that Paul extends this to three key forms of distinction in society: Racial distinctions. In Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, so race doesn't matter at the foot of the cross. Social status. In Christ, there's neither slave nor free. And then, gender. In Christ, there's neither male nor female. In other words, your real identity at the foot of the cross has nothing to do with those things, nothing to do with them at all. The only thing that's going to matter on that day is sheep or goat, frankly, believer or unbeliever. So therefore, in the Christian church, there are no second-class citizens. Jews are no better than Gentiles in the Christian church. White people, no better than black people. Black people, no better than white people. Americans, no better than Orientals. Orientals, no better than Americans. Rich people are no better than poor people. Poor people, no better than rich people. Men are no better than women. Women, no better than men. All of these things are based on pride and arrogance and they foster disunity. But, in verse 28, we are all one in Christ Jesus. And that oneness is a deep mystery. It's patterned after the mystery of the Trinity, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one."

And Jesus prayed in John 17 that we would be as one as the Father and the Son are one. So we are all one. It's speaking about unity in Christ. Now, this does not mean that these distinctions are meaningless, it doesn't. Let's talk about racial distinctions. There are such. There will be people from every tribe and language and people and nation as such around the throne of God in heaven. And they're going to look like it. I think they're even going to be dressed like it, but I don't know for sure. And that's cool because God is an incredibly diverse creator, isn't he? He doesn't want us all 5 foot 10 inches, 170 lbs. He doesn't want us all looking the same. He has made a beautiful, diverse world. In Revelation 21, it talks about the gates of the new Jerusalem standing open, so that the kings of the earth may bring diverse glory into it all the time. So God wants that diversity. This isn't talking about that, though. And the same thing was social. God created some people in society to be leaders, owners, bosses, authority figures and he upholds those distinctions. We're to submit to them in society, show them honor and respect. Parents, for example, we submit to them. Okay? But we're still one in Christ. We're equally redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

And then gender, this has to be said most clearly because there is a demonic assault on gender in our society today. Do you see it? Started with feminism, but it's gone much bigger than that. That gender doesn't matter and this is the favorite verse in the Bible for people who want to push that agenda. So here I am, right on “their turf” speaking about these things. But it isn't their turf because it's not what the verse is even talking about it. I've given a very small slice of this sermon pie to this topic because it's not what Paul is even talking about. Okay? It's not true that gender means nothing in the home or in the church. That is not true. There are differences between husbands and wives and there are difference between men and women, in terms of who can be an elder and who can't. It's very clearly taught in 1 Timothy 2. So we would not say that gender means nothing when it comes to marriage. We would not look at this verse as supporting same-sex marriages. Most evangelical feminists, who cling to this verse would reject that, but they still want to say, "In Christ there's neither male nor female." They're going too far. It's not what Paul's talking about.

He's talking about intrinsic redemption through faith in Christ. We're all equally redeemed by the blood of Christ, that's all. And then, we get the glory of being an heir with Abraham. Verse 29, "If you are Christ’s, then you're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." We get God as our inheritance. We get a resurrection body as our inheritance, we get the new heaven and the new earth as an inheritance, we get Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem as an inheritance, we get the Kingdom. "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take the Kingdom, the inheritance, prepared for you."

So what applications can we take from this? I just want you to picture right now, picture that time that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 25, when the Son of Man comes in his Father's glory, and all the angels with him. He will gather all the nations together, all of them gathered together. I don't know how to picture 10 billion people or more in one place, I don't know how to picture that. But then, he's going to separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he's going to put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. The sheep are believers in Christ, the goats are not. That's the only distinction that will matter at that time. The only one that matters. Your resume will not matter, your achievements will not matter, your racial status will not matter, your socio-economic status will not matter, your gender will not matter. The only thing that will matter is this, did Christ know you? Did you know him by faith? Did you come into a covenant of salvation by simple faith in Jesus? That's the only thing that's going to matter at that point.

If you repent and believe in Christ, you can know the freedom that only Christ can give. As Charles Wesley put it, "Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused, Christ's eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee." Do you want that to happen to you? Then repent and trust in Jesus. Do you want to see that happen in someone else's life? Then preach the law, then the gospel to somebody this week. Tell them the truth. Tell them what's really coming. Know that you are set free, if you're a Christian, you are set free from the law. Find your self-esteem, if I can speak, finally, on self-esteem. In last week's theme and this week's theme, find your self-esteem in the fact that we are all equally created in the image of God, last week's sermon, and we are all, who are Christians, equally redeemed by the blood of Jesus. That's where your self-esteem comes from. And once you give yourself that self-esteem, please give it to others, too. Those distinctions don't matter at all.

And finally, let's strive for unity, all of us, one from another. We have different roles to play, but we're one body. We have different roles to play in the body of Christ, some ahead, some a foot, some an eye, etcetera, but we're all one in Christ. Let's be one. Let's love one another. Let's be brought to increasing unity. Let's have a surprising, amazing unity in this church, racial unity, gender unity, socio-economic unity, let's put that on display for the world. Close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the truth of the gospel. Thank you that we are free from condemnation. Thank you that we're not under the jailer or the guardian anymore. Thank you that faith has come. Father, I pray that if faith hasn't come for specific individuals, listen to me right now, O God, speak to them now, open the eyes of their heart, that they might see Christ and in him, salvation. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Genesis 1:26-28 and the fact that human life, created by God, is and always will be sacred.

Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It's a day for us, I think, as a people to celebrate the great gift of life, to give God thanks for physical life and even more for eternal life, that we should be praising God for the joy of being alive. And it's a chance for us to renew our zeal for life and our thankfulness for children, just giving thanks to God for the gift of children and also to renew our zeal to protect children from the spirit of the age in which we live. You heard what I just prayed? And Jesus said of the devil that he was a murderer from the beginning, John 8:44. But the Bible says that children are a gift from the Lord, as it says in Psalm 127:3, "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward." And so we have a great reason for celebration every day, but as we focus on the sanctity of human life, we should do so with a heart of celebration. We also do so with a heart of grief. We're aware, in our country as around the world, the scourge of abortion and we should grieve over that. 

The Sanctity of Human Life Sunday occurs in a January near the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision, January of 1973. So the Roe vs. Wade decision turned 41 this Wednesday. And since 1973, the deaths of more than 54 million children have been reported in the United States alone. Every year, approximately 1.21 million more unborn children are aborted, and that's a hard number to get a hold of this morning. I was reading one website that put it this way, the bloodiest day of battle in the military history of our country was Antietam during the Civil War, 1862. Twenty-three thousand people died altogether at that battle, and I can't even imagine what it was like to be in the various communities when the reports of that battle came back. But that's basically an Antietam every five days in our country. Every five days, 23,000 more, and it's just really a great tragedy, so it's a day of grief for us, a day of sorrow and also of repentance. Always for us to come back and say, Lord, show me my sin and turning again to Christ and receiving grace concerning our sins.

Thirdly, I think for us, it's a day of hope. As we look ahead to the future, I want us to do so with hope. Christians should be filled with hope. There is no sin pattern, there is no evil in this world, in this universe, that's permanent. Amen? Jesus is Lord of all. And so it happens that this day also falls near Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is tomorrow, a day in which we celebrate one of the achievements of one of the great leaders in American history as he stood against injustice and institutional racism and for civil rights. And he, I think, had to be imbued with a special sense of hope, as well, because the odds were so great and it was so difficult, but for us, we have to face what I consider to be an even greater civil rights issue. I consider abortion to be the greatest civil rights issue of our day, the greatest since people were enslaved in our country. And whereas the Jim Crow laws unjustly deprived African Americans of rights and freedoms and access that others had, abortion deprives individuals of life, far worse in that way. And Dr. King, I think, Martin Luther King Jr. is an example of hope for us. We can be and should be, people of hope. We can imagine a day in which not only racism but abortion will be gone.

And I go beyond that, I look forward to the day when there'll be no sin at all, amen? No sin and we will be free at last and that's going to be the day of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. When Christ is openly reigning in the new Heaven and the new Earth will be free from all of those things. So Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, I think, is a day for us to celebrate life, to grieve over abortion and to look ahead with hope and with resolve. In many ways, we are winning this battle and we need to look at that. We are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of people. 

In the last three years, more pro-life legislation has been passed in our country than in the previous 10 years combined. And so what that's doing is more and more displaying and also effectively helping to change the hearts of people, younger people, people in their twenties and more and more are against abortion. They see it for what it really is. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is not pro-life, talked about the changing attitudes toward abortion on the Fox News Channel as "The Story of the Year Culturally". Called it “The Story of the Year Culturally”, and he explained why the nation has become more and more pro-life. He said, "The fact that people are becoming aware of how late-term abortions are so near to infanticide, also how new technology and ultrasounds are giving people awareness of how much an infant has developed in the womb, so the movement has stopped in that direction, actually has reversed, especially among young people." So that's very, very encouraging. We should be encouraged. We are winning the battle on this front.

Now we know the bigger battles, the battle against sin universally, and that's something that will be fought until Jesus returns, we know that. But for us as Christians, the battle must be ultimately a battle concerning truth, especially scriptural truth, and so we wanna look to the Bible and we wanna look to truth and try to understand what God says. So it's just a simple outline. This is not an expositional sermon on Genesis 1, much as I'd love to do that. You know how I love to do that. But what I wanna do is just look at this issue of the sanctity of human life, I wanna ask five questions and seek to answer them biblically. First of all, what does the sanctity of human life mean? Secondly, what is life? And talk about that. Thirdly, when does human life begin? And fourthly, what are the implications of all of that for us as Christians? That's gonna be the application section of the sermon. And then fifth, I just wanna speak a word concerning guilt and overcoming feelings of guilt. I feel like all of us need to hear that word of grace, and so that's how I'm gonna end the message.

So let's begin with this question, what does sanctity of human life mean? And I wanna begin with a painful personal story. Some of you know this story, a number of weeks ago I killed a horse. It's true. I was driving with three of my kids and we were at a four-way stop and it was dark and we accelerated and then suddenly right ahead of me was a horse's head straight on attached to the horse. Straight on, I could see both the eyes of a horse and I don't even think I had time to brake. And soon my windshield was crushed in and my car was destroyed. I've said this, a number of you, that the horse and my car took each other out of this world. So the car was gone and the horse sadly died there in the road and I felt very badly about that, but very grateful for the lives of my children and for myself. I was grateful that we were alive. I feel if we were going 40 or 50 instead of about 20, as we were, I don't know how we would have survived. 

Well, what happened after that was a bit odd. I immediately called my wife and then called 911, and I was just sitting there, well not stunned but a little bit, and just trying to think of what had just happened. My window was down and this car came by on the other side with its window down. It was a woman, and I'm gonna try to get her tone of voice, if I can. "Did you call 911?" I said, "Yes, I just made the call." "Good, because if you don't, I will." And the window rolled up and she drove off. 

By contrast, another person, another woman came a minute later and said, "Is everyone all right?" What a contrast! So that started to actually burn in me a little bit, that whole encounter, so much so that a few days later, as I was there at the men's Bible study. I got up and I just felt the need to do this. I wrote up on the white board, “People greater than animals”. I just feel like we need to say that in our culture today. I think it's a wonderful thing to love our pets, it's a wonderful thing, and I do not feel happy about having killed a horse, but I am so grateful none of my children were killed. So people are greater than animals, is that biblically true? Absolutely, it's biblically true. Jesus said it plainly in many different places. For example, in Matthew 10:31, he said, "Do not be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows." Actually, biblically, that's an understatement. But there it is intrinsically, we are worth more than many sparrows. 

And then he said a few chapters later in Matthew 12:11-12, he said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep?" So this is a clearly a biblical theme. This is the sanctity of human life, that people are special. People are unique. They're sacred. That's what sanctity means, set apart unto God as special. Set apart unto God from creation. We are worth more to God than any other thing in the physical universe. So the word sanctity means sacredness, and this comes from the text you heard Ashok read for us at the beginning here in Genesis 1. Listen to verses 26-27 again, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. [Verse 27] So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female, He created them."

So there is a sacredness to the creation of man, male and female, in the Genesis account. The flow of the narrative seems to make the moment of human creation very special day one, day two, all the way to day six. God is crafting and shaping and preparing the world really for us. And then I think the climax is the seventh day in which God... I picture it, God in effect sitting down in the throne room of the universe, reigning over all things. But clearly the creation of man in his image is the pinnacle of physical creation. We are made with a special task. I find it in the verse that's up over the mission's map there, right outside the door. Habakkuk 2:14, it says, "The Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." That's our job. That's our role. We are to fill the earth and subdue it and roll over it, and then know the glory of God that just it fills, the universe is filled with his glory, and it's our job in our minds, our hearts to know that glory and to praise him for it. And so we are given a special role in creation for that.

Now, Adam was created in the image of God, but also all of his descendants, we are also in the image of God. And so it says in Genesis 5, when Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness and in his own image, and he named him Seth. So we are in the image of Adam, Adam in the image of God, all of us in the image of God, and that's made very plain also after the flood. In Genesis 9:6, there God speaks these words, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God has God made man.” So it's lasting, it's not just Adam, but the entire human race. And this is also established in the book of James. And there it says in James 3:9, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness." So our fall into sin did not remove the image of God. It definitely marred it or defaced it, theologians would say, but we are still in the image of God. So that's the essence of the sacredness, the sanctity of human life.

Now, you can say, what does it mean to be in the image of God? One theologian I was reading, Louis Berkhof, said there are five elements to us as human beings, being in the image of God. First the soul. We have a soul, and that has God-like attributes of simplicity and spirituality and invisibility and immortality. So we're like God in our souls. Second, the mind. Our ability to think and to reason and to choose is in the image of God, our minds. Thirdly, our moral nature. The fact that God-like attributes of goodness and righteousness and holiness and love, that's in the image of God. God has those attributes. Then there's the body, our body. Though God doesn't have a body, yet our body is part of us being in the image of God, so that if you were to injure, not kill but injure another person, you're attacking the image of God. And that's where the whole eye for eye and tooth for tooth came from because it is of significance even to remove an eye or take a tooth from another human being. That's a significant thing because we're in the image of God. And then finally, fifthly, man's position in the world is God-like. We rule over the world like God rules over us and over everything. And so those are the elements of the image of God, every one of us.

And we are given a special role toward creation that no other animal has, no animal, no fish has this role, the role of ruling over the earth and subduing it, etc. In Genesis 2:15, it says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." Or literally, to serve it and protect it. God provides for the needs of every living creature. It says that in Psalm 104. “He opens His hand, satisfies the desires of every living creature.” He feeds all the whales, and that's a big job. Tons of plankton every day, and God feeds them. But we take a bit of that role, too, when we care for domestic animals and feed them and protect them and nurture them, take them in from a storm and all that, and so we're acting God-like to our animals. It says in Proverbs 12:10, "A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." So animal cruelty is not God-like, that's not God's nature.  Psalm 8 does a beautiful job of setting us properly in order. Psalm 8 says, " ." So God's majesty is set high and lifted up in Psalm 8. It ends the same way, "Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." The alpha and the omega of the Psalm is God's majesty. God is infinitely greater than man. 

And then the Psalmist David goes on to talk about how the cosmos humble us. "When I consider the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have created... " When I look up at the sun and all that. It's important for us to realize the sun, the moon and the stars were not put under us for us to exercise dominion over them. We have no such authority, we have no power, we have no ability to do that. They are above us and they humble us. So David says, "When I consider those things, I think this thought, 'What is man that You're even mindful of them?'" But then we get the statement that God has made us a little lower than the angels and crowned us with honor and glory. Why? Because he put everything under our feet, the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, everything put under us. So I love that. Above all things, God's majesty. The cosmos humbles us, too, but we have a measure of glory and honor because we were put in charge of this physical earth. So that's what I think it means when we talk about the sanctity of human life. 

And what that means, especially, is that it makes murder especially heinous. It's an attack on God, really. So the murder of another human being is an attack on God. "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God has God made man." And again, if you look at that James verse, it's not enough to just not murder. If you speak harshly against human beings, [James 3:9] "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness." Not only should you not murder, you shouldn't even curse them, because they are in the image of God. So I think that's very, very significant. So that's the first question. What is the sanctity of human life?

Then the second question is maybe even more complex. What is life itself? What do we mean by life? We're trying to celebrate life. Well, what is it? How shall we understand it? Well, first, let's just say this, life is amazing. Life is just amazing. One of the most incredible experiences I've had as a homeschooling dad is to teach my kids biology and have the opportunity of going through biology. I didn't like biology in 9th grade. All right, but I love it now. As a pastor, I love it because it just puts God on display. And life is just so complicated and yet so fragile. It really is very, very exquisitely complicated, and yet because there is death, it's fragile, too.

So how complex is life? Well, incredibly complex. Some of you are gonna like the next few minutes of the sermon, some of you won't. Okay? But I love this kind of stuff. I love looking at just the science and the amazement of the world around us, and especially when it comes to biology. The simplest free living organism that God made is a bacterium that lives in the digestive tract of primates, apes, and monkeys, and all that. It's the simplest one they found. It's got 580,000 base pairs of DNA and 482 protein coding genes. Now, a research team headed by a man named Dr. Craig Venter decided they were gonna come up with a computer model for the basic life functions of this bacterium, and so they read over 900 journal articles about this bacterium. I find it amazing there are 900 about this bacterium. But scientists, you get research grants, and off you go. Don't get me started on that one, but there it is. And so they're studying this, and in those 900 scientific papers, this research team, this computer bio-mechanical team, isolated 1900-specific parameters that seemed to govern how that cell operated. And then they broke it into 28 separate modules that governed functions that kept it alive. And then they modeled how they interfaced with each other and got the whole thing down to a 10-hour life cycle. 

That's about how long this thing lives, 10-hour life cycle until it could reproduce and die. And it took a cluster of 128 computers networked together to model this one 10-hour life cycle of the simplest living organism there is. There is no such thing as a simple living organism. Life is immensely complex. Most biology textbooks begin with the paramecium. You remember the little guy, the paramecium? Vastly more complicated than what I've just described. Whereas that one had 482 genes, the paramecium has 39,642 genes. And not just the complexity of an individual single-celled animal or us, multi-, you know, organs and systems and all that. It's how we are in a vastly complex intricate web of life with other living organisms in this whole system. Humans can't really model it. If they try to get this self-contained ecosystem, it usually dies within a short time because it's hard to get everything exactly balanced, but God has balanced everything on this planet in a marvelous web of life. Life is amazing. Life comes from God. God, our God, is alive. He is the I Am. Tell them, God said this to Moses, "Tell them, I Am sent you."

I am the I Am. I always exist. I am the I Am. And so in Deuteronomy 5:26 it says, "What mortal man has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived?" Our God is the living God, as opposed to the dead gods of the nations that are really just figments of human imagination impersonated by demons. That's all the gods of the nations are. But our God is alive. And so it says in Psalm 96:5, "All the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens." The clearest statements on life is in John's Gospel. It says in John 5:26, "As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted to the Son to have life in Himself." That's self-existence. And then John 1:1-4, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life." In him... who's the him? In Jesus. All life is in Jesus, whether those living people know him or not. All life is in Jesus, and that life is the light of men.  

So all living things are created by God. Revelation 4:11, "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will, they were created and continue to have their existence." So all things exist in God and continue to have their existence, and not only that, but all things exist in Jesus. Colossians 1:16-17, "For by Him [Christ], all things were created, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Now, there's a vast difference between nonliving things that God's holding together and living things that God is holding together. So nonliving things like basic elements; the rocks and water, and metals like gold and silver and lead, and things like fire, the sun, the moon and the stars, these are nonliving things. They were created by God for his glory, but they're not alive. Conversely, you have living things like grass and trees and porpoises, and butterflies and eagles and donkeys and human beings. We're alive. Now, life itself is a mystery, it's very, very difficult to define.

If you go online and try to get a definition, it's very hard. You can't really put it into words. So they usually talk about functions. Something that does the following six things is alive. It's really, really hard to do it any other way. And if it doesn't do these things, it's not alive, biologically. So made up of cells, able to adapt to environment, things like that. Able to promote its own survival, can reproduce, can grow and develop over time, can obtain energy from its surroundings in unique special ways like by photosynthesis or by consuming.

Now, Genesis 1 speaks of God creating living things of various kinds, plants of various kinds, and sea creatures of various kinds, and birds, and land animals and insects and beasts of the field, and just this amazing intricate array of kinds and types in the genetic code, and they reproduce along the pattern of their kinds. And all of it created by God, by the word of his power. God said, Let there be, and there was. Human life is the highest, most complex physical thing God ever made. The human brain has 100 billion neurons in it, 100 billion, that's the same number as the number of trees in the Amazonian rainforest.

And the interconnections between them equal the same number of leaves on those trees. That's in one brain. Scientific American recently did a study on the memory capacity of the brain, and they say if you use your full mental capacity, you would be able to memorize up to one-quarter of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress, in all the books in the Library of Congress. Most of you haven't reached that level. As a matter of fact, there was a Far Side thing that I came across. Gary Larson and I used to love that. What a weird thing, he had a weird way of thinking. But a kid with an unusually small head raised his hand in class and said, "Teacher, my brain is full. Can I be excused for the rest of the day?" So your brain will never be full. There's always more that you can take in, and more, you can learn. We are the most complex physical thing God ever made. And our physical life is a gift from God. As it says in Acts 17:28, "In Him we live and move and have our being." And we also ought to say, in the book of James, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.

So if it's God's will, you'll keep being alive. It says in Daniel, Daniel chapter 5, God was so greatly dishonored by Belshazzar because he was worshipping the gods of iron and bronze and wood and stone. And Daniel says, “You did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.” So for us as Christians, we honor the God who holds in our hand, our lives and all of our ways. The highest form of life there is, is eternal life, and that eternal life comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ. It's very clearly asserted throughout the Gospel of John. John's writings, I think, are the clearest on life. It's a big theme with John, he loves to talk about life. And in 1 John 5:11-13, it says that, "This is the testimony, God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have life."

So that life comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Well, what is it? What's the essence of that eternal life? In John 17:3, Jesus said, praying to his Father, "Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Do you know him? Are you alive? Not just biologically, but are you alive to God spiritually? Have you come to faith in Christ? Have you trusted in Him? It is by our sins, we died. Romans 7, the law came, sin sprang to life and I died. The Apostle Paul said that. We are dead in our transgressions and sins, and it is Jesus alone and his blood shed on the cross that can cleanse us from all sins. 

Are you alive? What is that life like? Well, you just go through John's Gospel and you find out. It's like having an abundance of the highest quality wine to celebrate at a wedding. It's John 2. It's like being born again. It's such a new transformed existence, it's like being born again, John 3. It’s like having a well of water inside you springing up again and again and refreshing you, John 4. It’s like being born blind, John 9, and suddenly you can see all the colors of the universe in their radiant, John 9. It's like John 6, having a continual feast through the flesh and blood of Jesus. Because he died, we can feed and get energy and joy from Christ crucified and resurrected. It's like having rivers of living water inside you flowing out, blessing other people. That's what life is. And it will never end. Death will not stop it. Because in John 11, Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" He asked, do you? Because if you do, you'll live forever. So we don't need to fear the ending of biological life. That will come if the Lord doesn't return in our lifetime. You will biologically die, but you will live forever, and someday he's gonna give you a new body, a resurrection body, and in that, you will live forever. So that is the gift of life.

Now, let's ask this question. When does human life begin? Thirdly, when does human life begin? Well, at the center of this abortion debate is this issue of personhood, when does human life begin? The personhood of the pre-born is everything in this debate, it's everything. If the pre-born infant is just a conglomeration of cells, then it really is a private decision between a woman and her doctor to have it removed, no different, frankly, than a benign tumor being removed from inside the body. It's elective. It's up to you. It's not threatening you, but you can have this decision and you can make this decision, that's all it is. But if the pre-born infant is truly an identifiable and genetically separate human being, it should be protected by the laws of the land. It's no longer a private decision. It's no longer a woman's right to choose. Some have suggested... and I like this, the toddler test. The toddler test. Treat the child inside the womb like you would a toddler, okay? And whatever you can do or should be able to do in reference to the toddler, then you can do to the child inside the womb.

Now, let me ask a question, does it really make a difference in reference to the two-year-old, how he or she was conceived? What if that child was conceived by rape? What if that child was conceived by incest? What if that child was an unwanted child, an unwanted pregnancy? Do you see? The toddler test means everything. If that child's a human being, killing it is not an option. Not an option. It's very, very important for us to set that up and be very clear on it. I don't like politically expedient answers. We need to go to the truth, and the truth is that child is human from conception. Now, how do you know that? How can we know that? Well, the Bible goes there first and tells us, and science is now telling us, too. So let's do Bible first because it's far more important. In Job chapter 10:9-12 and also in Psalm 139:13-14, we have clear evidence of God's direct activity in forming the human being inside the mother's womb. He is actively involved. Though from a human perspective, there are many accidental children, from God's perspective, there are none. Can you imagine God saying to the couple, "Look what you made me do. I had to make this human being because you did this."

 It doesn't work that way. God gives that child its form physically and also its eternal soul. God doesn't do that accidentally. It's an activity of God inside the mother's womb. Job 10:9-12, "Remember that you molded me like clay. Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? Did you not clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews. You gave me life." Psalm 139:13-14, "You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well." So God's directly involved in crafting every baby inside his or her mother's womb. It's marvelous. But does that mean it's human from conception? Well, again, there's Scriptural indications. Let's talk about the negative side, sinfulness. It says in Psalm 51:5, David said this, "Indeed I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me." Very significant. And again, Psalm 58:3, "Even from birth, the wicked go astray. From the womb, they are wayward and speak lies." All right, that's talking about the doctrine, the biblical doctrine of original sin.

It's clearly described for us in Romans, chapter 5, when Adam sinned, the whole human race sinned in him, and we were all condemned as sinners because we are sons and daughters of Adam, we're human. That settles the humanity of conception. From the moment of conception, we're sinful because we're human. And so from that very moment. And then as the baby develops inside the mother's womb, that we have even capacity, biblically, we have this... and when the pregnant Mary, pregnant with Jesus, went to visit the pregnant Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, and the two of them had an incredible time together, a special time. And we know this in Luke 1:44, John the Baptist leaped inside Elizabeth's womb when the greeting of Mary reached Elizabeth's ears. Luke 1:44, "As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped [and here are the keywords] for joy." Joy is a personal trait, it's a human trait, and John was really excited to be near Jesus. Ah, wait a minute. Now, where was Jesus in His fetal development? Very, very soon after conception. And so in the verse before that, Elizabeth says, "Why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come and visit me?" So the Lord is already there in the womb.

She's already a mother, Mary is, and not just a mother of anybody. We’ll see how it turns out, “mother of my Lord.” Friends, I just think biblically that settles it. Amen? I don't think there's anything else to say from conception biblically. But we're seeing this more and more scientifically. Oftentimes scientists think that they have arguments against biblical truth. I don't think they ever do. I love both science and the Bible. I am a scientist who's a Christian. You don't wanna reverse that, trust me. I'm from Boston. You don't wanna be claiming to be a Christian scientist. But I am a scientist who loves Christ. Let's do it that way. So science seems to be against some aspects of the Bible. It never is, but it's especially on our side in this one. Fetal development and all that, it just points to the personhood of the pre-born. Eighteen days after conception, the baby's heart starts to beat.

Ron Halbrooks uses that a lot. Two hearts beating, two people in the room. It's just that simple. All right, that's after 18 days. Most women don't even know they're pregnant. Twenty-one days, the heart pumps its own blood of its own blood type through a separate closed circulatory system. By 28 days, eyes, ears, respiratory systems have begun to form. Forty-two days, brain waves recorded, skeleton complete, reflexes present. Seven weeks in, photos of babies sucking their thumb. Eight weeks in, all bodily systems are present, but still developing. Nine weeks, the baby is able to squint, swallow, move tongue, make fist. Make a fist. That's a little scary, all right? Find out about that later. We're not going into parenting right now. This is just fetal development. Eleven weeks, spontaneous breathing movements, has fingernails, body systems are working, all of them. Twenty-three weeks in, 15% chance of viability, that number is probably better. These are a little bit old, these stats, 23 weeks in. That's always getting better and better. We have some amazing doctors that have even been members of this church that are involved in that. It's amazing to see, and some have benefited from their premature babies being so carefully cared for and able to survive. So science is helping to win the day.

You've seen those incredible ultrasound pictures. We actually have a framed ultrasound picture of... Daphne, is it? Okay. I think it's a little creepy, but others like it, but I think... we have better pictures of Daphne. I'm not saying you're creepy, honey. I'm not saying that. She is not pleased. She's not pleased. Help me later. Go talk to her and tell her, it's all good. So the ultrasounds really do help women to see exactly what's happening and who it is that... and Michael Card put it in a beautiful song, "The face is familiar though I've never seen it." Powerful. Face is familiar though I've never seen it, and sometimes the women they just like, it's very, very hard at that point to even consider abortion.

Fourth, what are the implications for us as Christians? Well, this truth has consequences for us. If human life is sacred and if human life begins at conception, then implication number one, Christians should hate abortion. We should be set against it. It should cause us revulsion. Our study of the Bible on this, our study of biology, on fetal development, all of this settles forever the humanity of the pre-born. We should hate what abortion does to the primary victims of abortion, and that's the babies themselves. 

We should hate it, but we should also hate what abortion does to the women who get them. They are scarred in many cases, scarred deeply, emotionally, psychologically. I don't wanna say for life, because I believe the grace of God can heal that, can heal that, but there's this deep scarring that goes on. We should hate what abortion does to every doctor and nurse and technician and secretary and advocate and politician and judge in our country, how it hardens their hearts against a spiritual truth in many profound ways. It sears the conscience and hardens the heart. We should hate abortion all over the world. We should hate abortions done for gender selection in China and India and other places. 

We should hate how abortion twists the minds and hardens the hearts of people. Our country's schizophrenic. I just talked about how premature babies can be rescued and protected, but in the same hospital also aborted. It just doesn't make much sense. In some states, a pregnant woman driving to the abortion clinic, if she gets in an accident and the baby dies, she lives, the driver can be charged with manslaughter in reference to her child. But if that doesn't happen and she continues, she can go ahead and abort the child. It's schizophrenic. It doesn't make sense. It twists, like it says, "A bribe blinds the eyes of the judge and twist the minds of the righteous." That's what abortion does. It twists our nation, makes us strange-thinking. 

Implication number two. Christians should never get an abortion. Christians should never get an abortion. One of the most tragic aspects for me in studying this are the statistics of the number of babies that are aborted to women who claim to be born again or members of evangelical churches, 110,000-125,000 a year. That's a lot of babies. Percentage-wise small but still just a huge number of babies. So I thought about, why does this happen? And it moves in two different directions. I think first, there's greater shame for sexual sin in the Christian community, so there's more of a desire to hide and to go underground, whereas there's not as much out in the world. There should be, but there isn't. And second of all, there's a misuse of grace. Satan misapplies grace and changes it into a license for sin. And he's always doing that, he's always switching the two. So that before you've committed the sin, it's like, "Oh, God will forgive, God will forgive." Then after you commit the sin, "God will never forgive." He does exactly opposite of what grace actually does. Ahead of time, God warns us not to sin, and is gracious in that way. I'll talk more about that in a moment. But afterwards, he cleanses us. 

So we have to be sexually pure. We live in a highly-sexualized culture, and we need to be sexually pure. We need to protect our hearts and minds. Sexual purity among teens and on college campus is stunningly low and it's mocked actually. Virginity is mocked. The church needs to help young people not lead themselves into temptation sexually. Willing to tread on some toes here, but I want to warn you against recreational dating. I wanna warn against recreational dating. What do I mean by that? Dating just to date. Whatever you call dating or courting or whatever, the purpose of a young man and a young women getting together is to answer a question, "Should we be married or not?" If that's not even on the radar screen, don't pair up, because all you're gonna do is lead yourself into temptation. Joshua Harris wrote a good book, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye". And I think parents need to read this book before permitting minors to date. People who have no intention of getting married need to consider this, read the book and just save yourself and protect yourself until it's time to get married. 

Now, I was asked recently, "Well, how do you know?" It's like when the time comes and the young man is able to support a wife, young woman, they're ready to be parents and all that, then you get together, you spend time together. It's dating, courting, whatever you call it. But you're answering that question. Kevin and I have talked a lot about this. We both feel very, very... we're in complete agreement. He sent out something to the youth saying, basically, a young man and young woman shouldn't do anything that they wouldn't do with their sister or brother, right? Sister or brother. I put it with my kids, "Anything that you'd be uncomfortable seeing me do with a woman, don't you do that with one another." So you know, there are hugs and then there are hugs. Okay? 

So, let's be careful. All right, sexually, okay? Grace says no to sin. Titus 2, "The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." Grace also covers us when we do sin, more on that in a moment.

Implication number three. Christians should pray daily, actively, for an end to this abortion scourge. God can do it. God's done greater things than this. It's greater to raise Jesus from the dead. Amen? Greater. It's greater to save you from your sins. So let's pray. It says in Matthew 21:22, "If you believe, you'll receive whatever you ask for in prayer." So let's believe and trust Him for that. 

Implication number four. Christians should persuade others concerning abortion. This is where it gets tough, but speak up. Be willing to speak to relatives and coworkers and neighbors and others when the issue comes up. Now, this is not more important than the gospel. The gospel is more important than this, but when it comes up, be willing to speak up. And we've got resources available. Kevin mentioned it and we've got these cards that we put for some websites you can go to. We've got books in the North Tower Resource Center. Stock up your arsenal of your mind and so that you're able to give good arguments and good defenses for pro-life. Be willing to speak up. Be willing to be a fork in someone's road. Be willing to speak up.

Implication number five. Christians should care actively for women in crisis pregnancies. We have the baby bottle blessings and we'll hear about that in a few minutes, but I do have another half hour to go, don't I? I don't? Just kidding. That wasn't my reasons for the time change. I want you to know that, but it says it's only 18 out here. So anyway, I'm finishing, I'm finishing real fast, real fast. So we should get actively involved. There are excellent, not just here in Durham, but in Raleigh as well, crisis pregnancy centers that could use your time, energy and money. Let's give ourselves to that. It is not true that the pro-life cause doesn't care for the women. That's why we're winning. It's because we have shown active care and concern for the women themselves and not just for their babies. 

Implication number six. Christians should seek to change abortion laws. And I make it plural, not the big, necessarily the big one, but just chop, chop, chop, chop, little by little, abortion gets harder and harder to get access to. There's more and more regulations on it, etc., and then just... they know what's happening. The pro-aborts know that that's what's going on. This is a good strategy, and it's reflective of the change of minds and hearts of the American people. So we should keep praying for that, and more and more restrictive laws, more and more laws like the one passed in Minnesota this past year, requiring women seeking abortion to look at an ultrasound of their baby. And it's funny. In medical areas, you always want more relevant information, as much relevant information as possible, and on this one, they don't want it. I know why. Okay?

All right, finally, how should I overcome my guilt? How do I overcome my guilt? There's plenty of guilt in this, plenty of guilt. There are sins of commission, things that people have actually done in this area, women that have actually gotten abortions, men that have urged women to get abortions, and so it has happened. Medical personnel who have been involved in the abortion industry. Lawmakers, politicians, judges, others have actually done things in this area and they feel guilty. And then there are sins of omission. Failing to get involved, failing to speak up, failing to give financially, failing to sacrifice your time to help in certain ways, just not doing things God would have you do. There's plenty of sin to go around, and so for me, this is just whenever there's those feelings of conviction and guilt, they should lead straight to the cross. It's not good to say, "I'm not guilty, I'm just feeling guilty." No, we're guilty because we violated God's laws. What we need to do is go to the cross and realize God sent his Son to die on the cross for all manners of sin and blasphemy, all manners of sin that can be forgiven by the blood of Jesus.

So let's run to the cross. Let's find forgiveness there. Christ redeemed us. Have you heard this? From the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Praise God. In Him, Ephesians 1:7, "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." What about my regrets? Bring them to Christ. Regrets are helpful now. Memories are helpful now. But you'll have no shame and no regrets after Judgment Day. When you go to Heaven, there'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Nothing will cause you any misery, no psychological pain, no emotional pain. We'll be free at last. In this life, we need those pains, we need those painful reminders, so we don't sin again. But in Heaven, you don't need any pain. We'll be free from it forever.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the Gospel of Grace, and we're able to stand and look at the spirit of the age, the enemy that's against life and against the gospel and against human beings. And we are not afraid. We thank you, oh Lord, for the joy of the gospel. We pray that these words would take root in our hearts and transform our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen.