Transcript

Five Questions and A Clarification

Galatians 3:1-9
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Pastor Randy Smith

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Have you ever been called a fool? As far as demeaning comments go, few are more cutting than this one. I mean you can be called ugly or stupid or uncoordinated and simply shrug it off as a heartless comment coming from an inconsiderate person. After all, even if any of them are true, you didn't ask to be born that way! It's not your fault! But to be called a fool implies your life is a silly waste. It's an attack on your core heart values. It's an attack on your worth as a person.

The word fool is frequently found in the Bible. It does not speak of someone who is unintelligent, but rather someone who is unwise. Specifically a fool, according to the Bible is someone who has never learned that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Pr. 1:7). This person has rejected God's guidance in favor of their own wisdom, a wisdom often derived from feelings, experience and worldly values. Foolishness as the Bible describes it is the primary reason for our dysfunctional societies and dysfunctional families and dysfunctional lives. Nothing could be worse than to be a fool according to the biblical definition and no consequence could be greater. It is a rejection of God!

For the last four weeks we have been studying chapters 1 and 2 in Galatians. The Galatian churches (modern day Turkey) received the true Gospel of free grace. Unfortunately after being influenced by false teachers known as Judaizers they began to think their works, their efforts, their good deeds needed to be added to the salvation that is found in Christ alone. This prompted the apostle Paul to write this letter. By way of correction and warning he writes with a tone of disappointment, love and perplexity.

Up until this point Paul pleaded with these churches in Galatia as to the authority of his apostleship and the nature of the true Gospel. Yet now as we turn the page to chapter 3, Paul turns the page on his approach. He goes from the defense to the attack. Twice in the first three verses he calls them fools.

This morning as we prepare for our seven baptisms we're going to see why Paul comes down on this church so hard. We're going to see why the epitome of all foolishness is to reject the true Gospel of free grace. And we're going to see if there are any traces of foolishness in our lives.

1. Five questions

Verses 1-5 are all rhetorical questions intended to provoke a response. Let's examine each of these questions individually.

The First Question (verse 1)

The first question is found in verse 1, "You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?"

The Galatian people received Jesus Christ. Receiving Jesus Christ means accepting His death on the cross as the complete payment for one's sins. Because God is holy and we are sinners and sin will never be permitted in His presence, God the Father in His love sent God the Son to the cross to make atonement on our behalf. When we embrace Jesus through faith and repentance we receive His gift of forgiveness and eternal life with Him. John 3:16 says it best, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." This is salvation received as a gift of free grace - Jesus alone!

The Galatians received this messaged and then thanks to the false teachers believed they needed to add works to the message. Add works and you imply Jesus' sacrifice was not enough. Add works and you forever wonder what works to do and how often to do them. Add works and you live in doubt, confusion and guilt. Add works and you've accepted a false Gospel. This is the road the Galatians took and you can see why Paul is outright perplexed. You can see why he says they were "bewitched." You can see why he calls them fools!

It really does speak to the foolish nature of humanity. These of all people were taught personally by the apostle Paul. He lived among them. He suffered for them (even stoned in their town - Ac. 14:19). As he says in verse 1, even "publicly portrayed…Jesus Christ…as crucified…before [their] eyes." Through Paul's commanding preaching, while they sat as his feet, as MacArthur said, "Could almost hear the ringing of the hammer as it drove the nails into Jesus' hands and feet. They may have been able to visualize the blood flowing from His thorn-pierced brow and wounded side. They were convinced of Jesus' atoning death, convicted of their sin and ushered by grace through faith into the kingdom" (Galatians, p. 65). They saw the meaning and beauty and power of the cross and then turned their back on it in favor of trying to work their way to God through silly and meaningless rituals like circumcision.

The Second Question (verse 2)

The second question is found in verse 2, "This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?"

The Bible teaches that the moment we come to Jesus, the Holy Spirit takes up full residence in our lives. God no longer dwells in buildings as He did in the Old Testament. He now lives in our hearts. The best indicator that we are a Christian and the most unmistakable evidence of God's favor is that His Spirit now lives within us. And with the Spirit within us, we now have a desire and ability to obey God, read the Bible, pray, go to church, recognize and overcome sin and produce spiritual fruit in our lives. There are no additional comings and baptisms of the Spirit. When we come to Christ the Spirit comes and the Spirit never leaves. He serves as the down payment of our salvation.

So Paul's point, "Why all the works to try and earn God's favor? He gave you the Holy Spirit when you simply believed, didn't He? Doesn't that imply that He accepted you and saved you and promises to forever be your God? All the good deeds in the world will never bring the Holy Spirit. You received Him by faith alone. Why are you going back to works 'this I want to find out from you?'"

My friends it comes down to two philosophies: For the nonChristian, obedience, they wrongly assume, will bring God's love. Or for the Christian, God freely gives His love in Christ and that leads to obedience. Works done the former way are an offense to Him. Works done the latter way are His delight. Or we can say, you can try to clean yourself up and then hope God will accept you or you can come to God as you are, be accepted by Him and then allow Him to clean you up. Which have you chosen? Again, only one acceptable answer and one foolish answer.

The Third Question (verse 3)

The third question is found in verse 3, "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?"

There is that foolish word again! And foolish it is to begin our Christian life by God's Spirit and then seek to live it out by our own efforts.

I believe many Christians today still fall into this trap. I did it when I was first saved. They start off trusting in God for salvation, but then believe it is now their responsibility to crank out the Christian life apart from God. I am not denying that obedience to God's Word is important, but what I am denying is the need to do it apart from the Jesus Christ who both keeps us saved and empowers us for that obedience. Remember last week's sermon from verse 20? "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God." Every day we are trusting the Gospel. Every day we are living by faith in Jesus Christ. Because every day we are reminded, "[We] have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer [we] who live, but Christ lives in [us]." The very One who "loved me and gave Himself up for me" is the very One who is the center of my life. Far from getting saved and then leaving Jesus on the shelf, Jesus is my life and the life I live is Him living His life through me. He directs and empowers and then He gets all the glory. Jesus is all we need! In preparing for Sunday school I read last night in Colossians 3 that "Christ is all" (Col. 3:11). Paul calls the Galatians "fools" for not understanding this!

The Fourth Question (verse 4)

The fourth question is found in verse 4, "Did you suffer so many things in vain - if indeed it was in vain?"

Paul now goes to their experiences. Perhaps he is referring to suffering persecution although not much in the context would suggest that. Most likely I believe he is referring to their experiences (another way we can translate that word). Of all they have learned and gone through and enjoyed, why in the world would they want to pursue God in a different way?

Think of it like this: Imagine you had a natural spring behind your home. Every day it provided cool crystal-clear water at no charge. You loved its refreshing resources for two years. Then one day you are found offering your neighbor money to scoop water out of the clogged gutters on his roof. Like the defection from the faith by the Galatians, this would make absolutely no sense.

Was all they experienced in vain, Paul asks?

The Fifth Question (verse 5)

And then the fifth question is found in verse 5, "So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?"

This question parallels the third question from verse 3. As the verse makes it clear, their works did not contribute to receiving the Holy Spirit. Rather God provided the Holy Spirit as a gift when they received the Gospel by faith. And once the Spirit came, the verses said He worked miracles among them. The Greek word for miracles is "dunamis," it is where we get the English word, "dynamite." God's Spirit was active among them displaying Himself through powerful deeds. Perhaps it was the power of miraculous events or perhaps it was the power to overcome sin and Satan and the world. Maybe it was both. But what matters is they not only received the Spirit when they believed, they also saw evidence of the Spirit's work as well when they believed. Paul's point, what can you expect to gain from discarding faith and trying to obtain God's favor through works? Could anything possibly exceed the work of His Spirit?

So take it from Paul's perspective: He comes to Galatia and preaches the Gospel. He publicly portrays Jesus Christ as crucified. They hear the true Gospel and receive the message of salvation by grace. They receive the Holy Spirit and witness His power in their presence. All this was on account of their faith and now they want to abandon the true Gospel and adopt some man-made righteousness because they have been duped by some false teachers. They were insane! Ignoring their experiences? Trying to earn God's favor? Disregarding grace? Starting with the Gospel and then reverting to law. That's not going forward, that's going backwards! How could they be so foolish?

2. One Clarification

Before we go to the baptisms, let me briefly move to our second point this morning. From "Five Questions" we move to "One Clarification" and it is found in verses 6-9. "Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'All the nations will be blessed in you.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer."

Based upon these comments, Paul is still on the offense and attacking something the Galatian church obviously accepted from the false teachers. None of us were there to hear the specifics, but it's seems fairly simply to reconstruct the Judaizers' claims. It probably went something like this: "Galatian churches, if you want to be saved you must do the Jewish works of the law, especially circumcision. And if you need an example, consider Abraham. He is the father of the Jewish nation. He participated in circumcision. Therefore if you wish to become his children, the covenant people of God that God promised Abraham, you too must be circumcised."

In verses 6-9 what Paul does is turn their own argument against them. First Paul in verse 6 quotes Genesis 15:6 which says that Abraham was declared righteous when he "believed God." There were no works involved prior to this point. He was an old man with an old and barren wife. He received a promise that he would have a son and be the father of many nations. Abraham believed that promise and was declared righteous - no circumcision yet! Just like Jesus today. God made a promise of salvation in the Son, the ultimate Promised Child. Believe the promise like Abraham believed the promise and be declared righteous. The faith of Abraham in God's promise pointed to the Promised One that would take our sins upon Himself and give us His righteousness. From the beginning of time, it has always been faith in the faithfulness of God's promises.

Second, yes Abraham was circumcised (Gen. 17:10), but his circumcision came some 14 years later and it was only intended as a sign - a sign that sin must be cut away from the heart. And since that promise was fulfilled in the New Covenant we are no longer even under that shadow since the reality it pointed to had arrived. And if the Judaizers want to bring the law into the discussion, they must remember that it came with Moses some four hundred plus years later - an argument that Paul will make in verse 17.

Third, it's not about having to be a Jew to be saved. Verse 6 in personifying the Scriptures says they preached the Gospel that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. It was never about two different groups. It was about God using the Jews as a means to create one family of God. Even God told Abraham in Genesis 12:3 (verse 8), "All the nations will be blessed in you." Therefore, verse 7, "It is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham." And verse 9, "Those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer." In other words, the true children of Abraham are not of physical decent, but of spiritual rebirth. Not of following a law, but by trusting with faith. These are God's people and these are the ones, verse 8 and 9 that will be "blessed."

This is why, as we learned last week as well, that we must forever keep Christ crucified before our eyes. We must believe in His work on the cross and then live every day in light of the great and complete salvation that He purchased for us at Calvary.

In a moment we will see seven adults enter the waters of baptism and then another six in two weeks. There is not much emphasis today on circumcision like there was back then. Yet people today still continue in the Galatian heresy, but insert a different work - baptism. We ask people, "Are you going to heaven?" They reply, "Yes, I was baptized." That's no different than what Paul had been attacking in Galatians - just a different flavor. Baptism is not about works but a sign of what has already happened in a Christian's life. It points to the fact that Jesus alone has washed us clean on the basis of faith in His work. From the time of Abraham, God has always forgiven and justified His people on the basis of faith. Not any old faith, but faith in His promise, namely that He is love and He forgives through grace alone.