This week Pastor Jermaine continued with our series on Galations with a message out of Chapter 2, verses 15-21. Justified by Faith.

Pastor begins the message by setting up the scene: the Jewish teachers had come into Galatia and began teaching old Jewish law to the church. In this passage, Paul comes in to tell the church of Galatia that Jesus has done it all and there is nothing we could do to add to our salvation, like the Jewish leaders were saying.

Verse 16: “We have been justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law.”
Justification: Legal term, duty of the court to give justice.
Acquit: to relieve from a charge of fault or crime; to be deemed not guilty

Paul says the Torah and the old system of the law’s purpose was to expose his sin and the prevalence of sin in man.
Romans 8:3- “For what the law was unable to do, God sent His own son as a sin offering.”

Verse 18: Jesus’s death did away with the old system and the law. His work on the cross satisfied the Father’s justice and righteousness. There is a new covenant- we are now one with each other and with Christ because he tore the veil of the old law and created a new covenant. We have died to the law when Jesus died on the cross and are now alive in Jesus Christ.

Verse 20: “I have been crucified in Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Verse 21: “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”
There is no religious duty or sets of moral guidelines we could follow that would make us righteous, except Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross.

Pastor closes with the story of the thief on the cross in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus is suffering on the cross, feeling the weight of sin for the first time and He is praying for the ones who are beating Him. The thief next to Him asked Jesus if He was the Son of God, why won't He get them down? The other thief says, “this man is innocent, we deserve to be on this cross, Jesus, will you remember me in paradise?” And just like that, Jesus says he is justified and he will be with Him in paradise. Jesus saves and justifies the righteous requirements of God for us all.

This week, Pastor Jermaine continued with our Galatians series with a message out of Chapter 2 titled “guess who’s coming to dinner.”

After Paul had left the region of Galatia, other people had come into the region to teach and spread false doctrine. This false teaching included the command to be circumcised.

Within this passage, Paul calls out Peter because he refuses to eat with Gentiles in front of Jews. This was a racial, a spiritual, and a relational issue, as he was not applying the Gospel to every area of his life. Just like Peter, we can have the right doctrine and incorrect practices.

Within Galatians, Paul does not avoid conflict but instead examines his own heart – and then confronts the issues at hand. Sometimes confrontation is inevitable and necessary to enact and live out the heart of God.

The Bible is written in black and white but must be read, interpreted, and understood in color.

Join us as we're back with Pastor Luke talking about GRACE and Paul making the main thing the main thing.

This week, Pastor Luke preached the second sermon in our Galatian series with a message titled ‘keeping the main thing the main thing’ out of Chapter 1: 6-10.

Paul opens the book of Galatians very differently than all his other letters. In this book, he opens with shock and astonishment; not pleased with how the Galatians have been keeping hold of the faith. They had not kept the main thing the main thing, and instead were being swayed and influenced by additional and contrary thoughts and ideologies.

Pastor Luke made three primary points:

1. The MAIN thing for Paul is the Gospel.

The Gospel means “good news” and Paul went all over the ancient world talking about this good story. A fundamental part of understanding the Gospel is understanding grace; the free and undeserved gift that God has given to us on the basis of faith, and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When the reality of grace seeps into our souls, it brings life and utterly transforms us.

2. When grace gets hijacked.

We can tell that our grace is being hijacked when it’s joyless, fruitless, and faithless.

Paul is very passionate about the separation between works and grace, and that is because his main thing is the main thing: for Paul it must be just Jesus, and anything else added to that is wrong and offensive.

How do we know if grace has been hijacked in our lives?

a) Performance is burning you out.

We do not have to earn or prove ourselves to God before He will love us. The Gospel is the Gospel of grace, and we become sons and daughters solely based on the finished work of Jesus in our lives. It has nothing to do with our own efforts.

b) Shame is destroying you.

We do not understand grace if our identity is rooted in shame.

c) You make it about you.

Christianity has one title in it – Christ. It’s about Jesus, and not about us.

3. The expulsive power of a new affection.

In order to separate ourselves from the love of this world; we must take our greatest love and attachment and put it on Jesus: this is the message of the Gospel. Jesus must be the only one at the top of our lives. He must be our Lord and our love, and from that place our obedience becomes an overflow our who we are – and not out of performance or a works-based faith. Our love is both a decision and a feeling, and we need to put it fully, completely, and only on Jesus.

Join us as we kick off the new summer series on Galatians with Pastor Luke. We dig into the context of Galatians, the importance of context, the fivefold ministry, and how EVERYONE is called to be missional.

This week, Pastor Luke launched our nine week Summer series on the book of Galatians.

Paul wrote the book of Galatians:

1. Paul the missionary

Paul had a radical conversion through an encounter with Jesus Himself. Paul was tri-cultural; a Jew, a Greek, and a Roman, and this influenced the way he went about his ministry. He operated in all three cultures, which made him perfect for the job of planting churches.

It’s important to recognize that we will have the greatest influence within our own culture, and if the Lord calls us to minister within another culture – it’s extremely important that we learn it. Paul is famous for becoming all things to all people so that he might win some, and we should do the same.

Paul strategically changed his name from Saul to Paul to reach more people. Saul was his Hebrew name, and in Roman culture it meant to prance, or to waddle. He changed his name in order to be more effective – he was not about his preference, but instead he did everything he needed to, to reach as many people as possible for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Galatia is a region that Paul visited on his first missionary journey, and thus the book of Galatians is not written to one church but a region of churches.

2. Paul the Apostle

Apostles plant churches, go to the nations, and never want to sit still. They are ones who want to go. As part of the Antioch network, we are an apostolic people.

We are all called by God to go and be His witnesses wherever and through whatever we are doing. We all have a holy vocation to be His representatives wherever we are. We are a sent people.

3. Paul the defender

In the book of Galatians, Paul is defending himself, his apostleship, and the church in Galatia. Paul’s Gospel message is that it’s Jesus alone who comes on a rescue mission to free the world and bring them to salvation.

4. Paul the light in an evil age

Just like Paul, we too are living in an evil age. The spirit of the age is always going to push us away from Christ.

Pastor Luke ended his message by giving us five questions to think through and answer:

Have you actively and intentionally put your faith in Jesus?
What’s your mission in life?
We are a product of what we read and what we watch. Assess it. Is it sinking you?
Our behaviors are reinforced by our beliefs. What do you really believe? Do your behaviors reflect Jesus, His Kingdom, and His values? Trace them to the root.
What things do we love and hope for? Is it what matters to Jesus or not?

Alex and Pastor Matthew dig back into vision for 2022 and what God has called Waypoint Church to this year.

This morning, Pastor Matthew preached a sermon with the title “2022: the light has come.”

The church is God’s plan A and there is no plan B because God is the only one who can transform the hearts of men and women. Transformed hearts are the only thing that will make a true difference. The hope for this world lies in the hearts of men and women who have been transformed by the Lordship of King Jesus. We need to be people who submit every single area of our lives to Him.

The best thing we can do for our nation and our world is to obey Jesus and the Great Commission.

If we are going to follow Jesus, we must deny ourselves – take up our cross and follow Him. To follow Jesus is a path of death, suffering, and self-sacrifice. We need to give away our lives, make disciples, and invest in one another for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Pastor Matthew gave us three application points:

1. Increase the heat of the boiler room.

We need to be people who pray, listen, and obey.

2. Get involved with EveryOne.

We need to be people who proclaim the Kingdom of God. It’s not us, it’s Him – His power. We are not responsible for what soil the seed falls on, but we are responsible to sow.

3. Be generous.

Where we spend our money and time is a great indication of where our heart is.

Join Alex and Hunter as they interview Bec Isaacson and listen to a special, short episode of her podcast "How to live with the Rich" which is now available on all platforms. Bec addresses Jesus' words "the poor will always be with you" and digs into the context of the passage.

This morning, Bec Isaacson led us in the second of a two-part sermon series titled “how to live with the rich” that talks about the Christian, Biblical response to the global poor. This week was all about examining the goal of poverty alleviation, and how we can apply that theory to our practical lives.

The narrative and summary from last week’s message was:

1. We are very rich.
2. We can not serve both God and money, and
3. We are called to live as sacrificial stewards by caring for those in need.

This week, Bec built onto that narrative with two major points:

4. We are not the definition of life success.

It is very important to have a poverty alleviation goal, because without it we can not find any solutions to the poverty problem, nor can we measure any form of success.

The goal of helping those in need can not be to make them the same as us, because as a whole we are neither happy nor healthy from a Biblical perspective. Our culture is not the standard of what it means to live a successful life, and so we should not invite the global poor to become like us – materially focused, individualistic, wealth driven consumers.

Instead, we need to invite all people (including ourselves) into God’s narrative for their lives.

5. Human beings flourish when their mind, affections, will and body enjoy loving relationships with God, themselves, others, and the rest of creation.

This begins when we worship God and embrace whole-life transformation for others and ourselves. Poverty is not simply a material problem, and we have the potential to do great damage to others and ourselves when we mistakenly see it as such.

Our economy says that’s greater consumption = better life, but Jesus says that greater service, greater generosity and dying to self = better life both now and for eternity.

The second half of the sermon provided practical steps to action this information, including:

We need to raise our expectations and pick a problem. If we are going to see any significant change within our lifetime, we need to develop a righteous anger that pushes us to put action to our beliefs. We can all pick one problem, and run to the pain.
We need to use our wealth wisely; both in how we give it away, and in how we use our purchasing power. We need to be generous people, and we need to be strategic.
We need to be good stewards of our lives. This includes volunteering our time and stewarding our resources well.