I thought when this earthquake took place this
morning, there was an earthquake at the crucifixion
of Christ, there was an earthquake, the resurrection,
and that marked the beginning of a new
age in the world and a new day.
And if it can be like that for
us, a day of resurrection, of the old
finished and the new beginning, that will be
really wonderful.
So let's turn to Galatians and chapter 1,
freedom from the law.
This is the subject of Galatians.
He speaks about another gospel in those who
preach a gospel contrary to the one which
we have preached, verse 8.
So another gospel is a gospel which keeps
Christians bound to the law, to try to
be saved by rules and regulations.
And man has a great tendency to become
a legalistic Christian than a Christian who lives
under the Holy Spirit.
It's a terrific tendency and particularly Christian leaders
and preachers can feel that if we preach
grace too much, people will just live loose
lives and begin to live as they like
and live in sin.
So they begin by introducing a little bit
of law, some rules, some regulations to control
people so that they don't become loose.
But that is not God's way because it
brings people into bondage.
It never brings people into freedom.
It's very important for us to understand the
difference between law and grace.
And I just like to say a few
words on that before we go into Galatians,
which is basically dealing with that.
He's always dealing with being free from the
law, right from chapter one, right on to
chapter six.
See, the law could keep a person clean
externally.
It's like the Ten Commandments were like tying
ten chains to a pig.
And if you take a pig through dirty,
filthy areas after it's been scrubbed clean, if
you keep these ten chains on it, it'll
remain clean.
Because every time it goes to this side,
you pull, it goes to this side, you
pull.
And you can take it right through the
filthiest area and you can keep that pig
clean.
And the pig can boast when it came
out after a two-mile walk through a
filthy area, I'm clean.
But it was clean because of all these
chains.
And if you can be kept clean only
by rules and regulations, you're still under the
law.
And you'll only be clean externally.
You see, that pig is clean externally.
Inside, it's still the same filthy old pig.
But if you send a cat through that
two-mile walk, it doesn't need any chain.
It just avoids everything dirty and comes out
clean without chains.
This is the difference between law and grace.
Grace gives us a certain nature.
And that's what makes the difference.
So God's desire is not to keep us
under chains.
One of the contrasts brought out in regulations
is the difference between children and sons.
We'll come to that in a moment.
Now, in the first few verses, he's talking
about how these people have gone away from
that gospel which he had preached.
And he relates it to seeking to please
men.
You know, we could also say that those
who live under law are in some sense
seeking to please men.
And those who live under grace fully are
seeking to please God.
Because after that initial section where he speaks
about being under the law, he finally ends
up in verse 10 by saying, am I
seeking to please men or God?
That's the essential issue.
Are you seeking to please men or God?
In verse 4, he says, Christ gave himself
for our sins that he might deliver us
from this present evil world and its opinions
and its approval and its rules and its
regulations.
Deliver us out so that we might live
according to the will of God.
So Jesus died not only to forgive our
sins, not only that our old man might
be crucified with him, not only that Satan
might be defeated on the cross, not only
that we might no longer live for ourselves
but for him, but also, here's one more
reason, he died that we might never be
part of this world system.
Have you understood that?
The people who become legalistic are usually people
who want to live in this world system
as Christians.
Throughout my life, I have seen legalistic Christians
love money and are worldly, very worldly, not
on the outside.
They may dress simply, but their mindset is
worldly.
People who come really under grace become free.
So Jesus died in order to deliver us
from this world system.
Every religion in the world has got rules
and regulations.
No religion in the world preaches free forgiveness
without your doing anything.
Every religion teaches you got to do this,
you got to do this, you got to
do this, you got to do this, all
that, then only God will accept you.
And whenever Christianity moves in that direction, you
can be pretty sure it's false.
So it's related to, as I said in
verse 10, seeking to please men or seeking
to please God.
Why?
Because a righteousness of the law is external.
And we usually want an external righteousness to
impress people that we are very holy.
But the righteousness which comes through grace and
from God is primarily inward.
And if I'm only seeking to please men,
I will not care about my inside.
Jesus spoke about to the Pharisees, you people
clean the outside of the cup and the
inside is dirty.
This is how it is for those who
are legalistic.
Their outside is clean, but inside is dirty.
So that's related to pleasing men or pleasing
God.
So what Paul is saying is, if you
really want to be free from legalistic Christianity
under the law, you must deal with the
root of it.
And the root of it is, deep down,
you need to decide once for all in
your life, do you want to please men
or do you want to please God?
And here it says in Galatians 1 10,
and I believe this is a very, very
important verse for anyone who seeks to serve
the Lord.
If I try to please men, I cannot
be a servant of Christ.
It's absolute.
The measure in which you try to please
somebody in your church, your relatives, your colleagues
who believe in a certain way, you can
never, never serve the Lord.
Do you know the number of people today
in the world who think that they can
serve the Lord, even though they are trying
to please men?
I believe you should examine the decisions you
take, the things you do, and ask yourself,
am I doing this to please men or
to please God?
You know, so many questions people have in
the Christian life.
Can I watch this television program?
That may be just to please myself, not
to please God.
Can I wear ornaments?
Well, I never have a question about that.
I say, you ask yourself, are you doing
it to please men or to please God?
And the answer becomes very simple to you.
And we don't have to judge one another.
In everything in life, am I going here
and doing this to please some man?
To impress some man?
Am I doing this type of service, so
-called service for the Lord, to please God
or to satisfy myself and satisfy other people?
When it says please men, it includes myself.
I'm also a man.
We are human beings.
We have an alternative.
Either we seek to please ourselves and other
men, or we seek to please God.
There are only two alternatives.
And if you decide once for all in
your life, I'm only going to please God.
Wherever I see I'm trying to please myself,
I'm going to deny myself.
Wherever I see I'm seeking to please other
men, I'm going to deny it.
You'll find, gradually, you become free from this
legalistic Christianity.
And your life becomes full of the joy
of the Lord.
And you begin to serve under grace and
the power of the Holy Spirit.
And you become more concerned about your inner
life than your outer life.
Now Paul is, first of all, defending his
ministry here.
He says this gospel.
Remember, Paul is writing at a time when
the New Testament was not written.
A lot of the books in the New
Testament were written after Paul died.
So when Paul wrote this, there was no
New Testament available in different places.
And even after the New Testament was written,
there were just a few copies available.
So Paul is writing to people.
Very often you find Paul has to defend
his apostleship.
To the Corinthians, he defended it.
And here also he defends his apostleship.
Why?
It's exactly like we would defend the Bible
as the word of God when we are
trying to speak to someone who doesn't believe
in the Bible.
We would try to explain to him why
we believe the Bible is God's word.
Otherwise he'd say, why do you accept it?
In the same way, in those days, the
apostles had to defend their apostleship so that
people would take what they say as the
word of God.
We don't need to do that today as
servants of God.
We don't have to defend ourselves because we
are not giving our word.
Today we quote the scripture, but Paul did
not quote the scripture when he said that
we are justified by faith.
There was no Old Testament verse.
That clearly said that if we trusted in
Christ we'd be justified or that the law
is being abolished.
And so he was laying down scripture and
therefore he needed to defend his apostleship and
that's why God confirmed his apostleship with many
signs and wonders and miracles in a way
that in a sense is not needed today.
Except perhaps in some remote area where the
gospel is going for the first time.
So we must keep that in mind and
that's the reason why we don't see so
many miracles today in our midst as Paul
and Peter saw in their time.
They were establishing the word of God and
God had to confirm that, that this is
my word.
Now we deal with a word that's already
been laid down and established.
And here we see, if I seek to
please men I cannot be the servant of
Christ.
And then he goes on to say that
the gospel he preached he did not receive
from man, verse 12, but by a direct
revelation from Jesus Christ.
And he gives his history how he was
very zealous once upon a time for the
law.
He says I'm not preaching against the law
because I was once upon a time promoting
it myself.
But when God revealed his son in me
I did not consult with flesh and blood.
Verse 16 and 17, when God revealed his
son in me, I went to Arabia, verse
17, and three years later, verse 18, I
went to Jerusalem.
First of all, he started out very zealous,
verse 14, more than his contemporaries, more than
all the people of his time.
He was advancing, it says in verse 14,
in Judaism.
He was advancing in promoting the law and
in the ancestral traditions.
But when Christ was revealed to him on
the Damascus road, you know what he did
next?
We don't read of that in the Acts
of the Apostles, but he says he went
off to Arabia for three years.
Why did he go to Arabia for three
years?
Because perhaps he had spent three years in
the Bible school in Gamaliel, under Gamaliel in
Jerusalem, and he had acquired all those wrong
concepts of the Judaistic religion, of how salvation
would come under the law, you know the
way the Jews taught it.
And he had acquired all that tremendous amount
of knowledge, which is not going to help
him to preach the grace of God.
So he needed to go alone in Arabia
to get all that chaff, which was in
his head, out of his head, so that
he could get the wheat, so that he
could get what God was saying in the
new covenant.
Now Gamaliel, as far as we know, was
a God-fearing man.
We read in Acts chapter 5.
But he did not have revelation of the
Holy Spirit, and so he could not lead
people in his Bible school to the revelation
of the Holy Spirit.
All he had was intellectual knowledge of the
Jewish system.
And Paul had to go alone before God,
and spend years before God, to understand.
And that's where he got all this revelation
on the basis of which he wrote scripture.
See, Paul had a unique calling, and he
needed to be clear that God was really
saying this.
But this word, reveal, you know we've looked
at it often.
It comes often in the New Testament.
Revelation.
You never see that in the Old Testament,
because they didn't have the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament it was meditation.
Meditation.
In the New Testament, the word is revelation.
Now if you meditate, and you don't get
revelation, you've missed what God is trying to
show to you.
When Peter could recognize Christ as the Son
of God, Jesus said to him, blessed are
you, because you got revelation.
Here Paul says the same thing.
Verse 16.
He got revelation.
And that's very, very important for all of
us when we study the scriptures, that the
Holy Spirit reveals this truth to our hearts.
It's not enough that we believe it and
understand it.
There are a lot of people who believe
it and understand it.
The devil believes it and understands it.
It doesn't change his life.
And we can believe and understand and memorize
scripture, and it won't change our lives.
How do you know when scripture has become
revelation to you?
When it changes your life.
When it changes your ambitions.
When it changes your attitude to money.
When it changes your attitude to your enemies.
When it changes your attitude to sin.
Then you know scripture is not just knowledge,
but revelation.
But if it hasn't changed your attitude to
sin, and to the world, and to money,
then all your knowledge of scripture is useless.
You know, you can be a very immoral
person and be a first class teacher of
chemistry.
And you can be a very immoral person
and a first class teacher of the Bible.
Why not?
It's a book, like a chemistry book.
If you've got intelligence and you study it
and study all the references and books connected
with the Bible, just like people study books
connected with chemistry.
You can get a doctorate in chemistry or
a doctorate in the Bible.
It's just the same.
It's a question of intelligence.
But, and your personal life, the chemistry teachers
and the Bible teachers can both be immoral.
Both may live for money and ambition and
everything else.
Neither of them has got revelation.
Not the Bible teacher and not the chemistry
teacher.
Revelation is something that changes our life.
And that is what we need from God
if we are to serve Him.
Now we go to chapter 2.
In chapter 2, we read about how Paul
defends this gospel even before Peter.
Now, I want you to see something here
which Paul did, which is a very healthy
attitude that all of us should have.
Now I've spoken of the importance of revelation.
Now it's possible some people, and you see
that also happening today, that you know Christianity
is full of people who have gone to
extremes.
There are some people who are totally intellectual.
They don't believe in the revelation of the
Holy Spirit.
We can say they are dead, spiritually.
Then there are others who believe in revelation
and have taken it to such an extreme
that they don't care what anybody else believes
on these things and just go off on
an extreme.
And they are the extremists and cultists today.
And they begin to speak about special revelation
which is not even in the Bible.
So these are the two extremes very often
we find in Christianity today.
An intellectualism without the power of the Holy
Spirit and a fanatical extreme where other spirits
take over.
Because there are other spirits in the world.
So here we see a healthy corrective to
that.
That when Paul went alone and got alone
in Arabia and he began to preach that,
it says verse 1, after 14 years he
went to Jerusalem and it was because of
a revelation that I went up.
So he first went to Arabia and got
revelation on the things of God.
And then God said, He gave him another
revelation that you should go to Jerusalem and
submit this gospel which you are preaching in
private to those who were of reputation there,
that means to the godly leaders there, to
find out whether what he was teaching was
right or wrong, or whether he was going
off on a tangent, as we would say.
Whether he had been running emptily.
He said, Brother Peter, Brother James and Brother
John.
James is not the apostle.
This is the brother of Jesus.
These three are mentioned in verse 9.
These were the three pillars of the church
in Jerusalem.
He went to the three godly leaders of
that church and said, Brothers, this is what
I'm preaching.
Please, what do you think about it?
What is your opinion?
About this revelation I have.
Whenever you get some new revelation, I would
encourage you, dear young brothers and sisters, go
to some older godly brother or brothers and
check up with them, whether your revelation is
scriptural, because you may not know, there may
be other aspects of scripture that you have
not considered, and it's a safety for you.
It's a safety for younger people to go
to older people and confirm the revelation they
got from God.
And that's what I meant here of a
healthy balance, a corrective to false teaching.
And then it says, not even Titus, who
was with me, who was a Greek, was
compelled to be circumcised.
But it says here, there were false brethren
who came to spy out our liberty and
try to bring us into bondage again.
Verse 4, chapter 2.
But we did not yield in subjection to
them for even an hour.
But from those who were of high reputation,
verse 6, what they are makes no difference
to me.
God shows no partiality.
But those who were of reputation contributed nothing
more.
They recognized, first of all, that what Paul
was preaching was right.
You see, the great issue those days was,
do you have to be circumcised in order
to be saved?
Now today, there are many things like that
which people have added, saying, you can't be
a part of our church, you can't break
bread with us unless you are baptized, or
unless you take off your ornaments, or unless
you wear white clothes, or unless you get
rid of your television set from your house.
It's the same old story.
It's gone on for centuries.
Always something more to be added to simple
repentance and faith.
Throughout the years, churches, church leaders have added
their rules and regulations.
And do you know what is the end
result?
Look at the condition of those churches today.
Are they spiritual?
Far from it.
Now, these may be godly standards.
I'm not saying that, I mean, a person
may have a conviction in his heart that
I should do these things.
All I'm saying is, these are not the
essentials for salvation.
That's what I'm saying.
When God accepts a man, he doesn't see
whether the person's wearing white clothes or whether
he's got rid of his television.
He sees whether he's repented and believes in
Christ.
He doesn't even see whether he's baptized.
He doesn't see whether he speaks in tongues.
These are not the things God sees.
That is the issue in Galatians.
Are you adding something else as necessary in
your church before you accept a brother in
fellowship?
Theoretically, you may say, well, it's true.
It's only repentance and faith that are required.
But in spite of saying that, you may
find church leaders, when it comes to actually
welcoming a person to fellowship, they say they've
got to add something else.
But they have no scriptural backing for it.
It's a tradition of the elders.
And do you think the traditions of the
elders are found only in the mainline denominations?
There are just as many traditions of the
elders in the extreme other wing of the
church, of separated churches.
As many traditions of the elders.
It's both sides.
You find traditions of the elders and you
ask them, where does it say that in
scripture?
They'll quote some verse out of context and
tell you that's where it says.
So you find this is very relevant to
our time.
And Paul was a man who fought for
the freedom of the gospel.
And a true servant of God will fight
for the freedom of the gospel.
And that's where that verse we started read
at the beginning comes into play.
Galatians 1.10. Are you seeking to please
men?
Are you in a system where the top
leaders believe something which you believe is a
tradition of the elders?
And you know the word of God calls
you to freedom.
But these elders are bringing a whole lot
of people in that church into bondage to
some rules and regulations.
How many people are there who have the
courage like Paul to confront that elder and
say you're wrong?
Paul did it.
It says here in verse 11.
Peter came to Antioch.
I opposed him to his face.
Now remember, Peter was the man who recognized
we read in verse nine that God had
given a ministry to Paul, Peter, James and
John.
There's something wonderful you see about them that
this junior brother much younger than Peter, James
and John was coming up with an anointed
ministry.
And Peter, James and John had the grace
to recognize that that man had an anointed
ministry.
It's very rare that you find older people
today who have the grace from God to
recognize an anointing on a younger brother.
But if you're a godly person, you'll recognize
when God's anointing is on a person much
younger than you.
And yet this younger brother, Paul, confronts the
older senior top leader of the church, Peter,
and says, Brother Peter, you're wrong.
This is like some junior worker confronting the
top man of the denomination today, saying you're
wrong, brother.
That's not right.
How many people are there like that, like
Paul?
Why are they not like that?
Because they seek to please men.
Most Christian workers are diplomatic.
Most Christians are diplomatic.
They think that is gentleness and humility.
When it comes to the truth of the
gospel, there's no question of gentleness or humility.
Truth is not my property.
It's God's, and I have to defend it.
If it's your property, don't defend it.
Let anybody take it away.
But what do Christians do?
They fight tooth and nail for their own
property.
If somebody encroaches on your property, what will
you do?
Will you sit quietly?
No, you'll fight for it.
You'll take him to court, perhaps.
But when God's property, truth, is being stolen,
so many Christians are just quiet.
That shows that right from the beginning of
their life, they are lovers of themselves.
They don't love God, they love their own
property.
They don't love the truth.
But Paul loved the truth.
If somebody was just taking Paul's shirt or
coat, he'd say, okay, take it.
But when somebody tried to rob people of
the truth of God, he fought.
And I believe that's how a godly man
should be.
You take my property, I'm not going to
fight with you.
But if you touch God's property, the gospel
and the truth, I'm going to stand up
for you, and I don't care what you
think of me.
You can call me hard, you can call
me what you like, but I'm going to
stand up for God.
A man of God must be like that.
He cares more for God's truth than for
his own property.
And I want to encourage all of you,
if you can value God's truth at least
as much as you value your own property,
you'd have progressed quite a lot.
But even after years and years of preaching
this, I find that there are very few
people who are willing to take a stand
like that.
They are all pleasers of men.
And therefore God cannot make them the prophets
He wants them to be.
You see, you can never be a prophet
of God if you're trying to please men.
That's impossible, and God will test you in
different circumstances.
God was testing Paul here.
Is he going to please men?
Is he going to please people?
Is he going to please even Peter?
Just because Peter is a senior person, Peter
is doing something wrong.
Because it says here in verse 12, he
used to eat with the Gentiles, and then
when certain people from James came, he got
afraid and he withdrew.
And Paul stood up to Peter.
And so why is that?
It says, even Barnabas, verse 13, was carried
away by their hypocrisy.
Even Barnabas, who was senior to Paul, he
was a gentle, gracious type of person.
Oh brother, Peter is a senior person, let's
just keep quiet, let's leave him and not
disturb him.
He's a godly man.
Paul said, nothing doing.
It's not a question of whether he's more
godly than me.
I'm not comparing myself with him.
This is contrary to the gospel we are
preaching.
What do you mean that you can't eat
with the Gentiles?
What's wrong with that?
Why should we be afraid of somebody who
has come from brother James?
They're going to report to brother James that
Peter was eating with the Gentiles?
Are you ever scared like that?
When some brother, senior leader from your church,
sees you doing something which you feel free
to do, but your church does not permit
you to do, and you're afraid that he
will report it?
This is exactly the situation.
And Peter got scared.
Even Peter got scared.
So he didn't eat with them anymore.
And Paul said, what are you doing?
He was not going to be like Barnabas
and just keep quiet.
And it's because we had men like Paul
in the first century that we have the
gospel today.
It's because we had men through the centuries
who stood for the truth of the gospel
and did not seek to please men that
we have the gospel and freedom today.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have had it.
Thank God for such men.
Verse 20.
Here's the secret of Paul's life.
Why he could stand up like that.
Here's the reason why many people today cannot
stand up like that.
I have been crucified with Christ.
He says, this Paul, this gentle, mild person
who is only interested in his own property,
is dead.
There's another person living here now.
Christ lives in me.
Now, many Christians who have understood the way
of the cross, and I want to give
you a warning here.
If you have understood the importance of the
way of the cross, here is a warning
for all of you.
Most Christians that I have met who have
understood the way of the cross emphasize the
negative aspect of it.
Death, death, death, death.
I have to die.
But that's only one side of it.
The most important thing is the other side.
But I live, and it's no longer I,
but Christ lives in me.
It's not I dying that must be emphasized
as much as Christ living.
The resurrection more than the death.
In other words, it's not that I just
die here, but Christ must live and manifest
his life through me.
This is the most important thing.
So, that's a wonderful verse that we need
to think about.
In chapter 3, he speaks about the basis
of the gift of the Holy Spirit is
not works, but faith.
He says, did you receive the Spirit, verse
2, by the works of the law?
Was it a result of doing so much
of work that you received the Holy Spirit?
Some people think today God will give them
the Holy Spirit if they fast, if they
do this, if they do that, if they
do the other thing.
No.
Did you get forgiveness of sins because you
fasted and you prayed and you did so
many good works?
No.
Do you know forgiveness of sins and the
gift of the Holy Spirit are given on
exactly the same basis?
By grace, without works.
And he asked these Galatians, how did you
receive the Holy Spirit?
Was it by works?
No.
It was by faith.
And do you think that if you started
your life by faith, now you're going to
perfect in the Spirit, you're going to perfect
it by the flesh?
Is it going to be by human effort
that you're going to become perfect?
No.
It's got to be the same work of
the Holy Spirit that brought salvation into your
life that's going to make you holy.
It's not laws and rules and regulations that
will make you holy.
If you've understood that, you've understood the message
of Galatians.
You did not receive the Spirit by the
works of the law.
Perfection does not come by the works of
the flesh.
It's by the work of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, it's more by your submitting
and opening yourself up to the Holy Spirit
and listening to the voice of the Spirit
whenever He convicts you to set things right
and not do this and not do that.
That's how you are kept holy.
It's not by a lot of fasting and
praying.
That's a mistake.
I've seen a lot of people who fast
and pray who also quarrel and fight and
lust.
All their fasting and praying hasn't helped them,
which is the clearest proof that you don't
become holy with all that.
You have to allow the Holy Spirit to
work in you.
Verse 5.
What about the miracles that God does in
you?
Are miracles done because you've done a lot
of works?
No, it's by faith.
When God does a wonderful supernatural thing for
you, it's not because you deserved it or
you did so many good works.
It's purely on the basis of faith.
And then he goes on to speak about
Abraham.
How Abraham was justified by faith.
Verse 6.
And not only justified, he was made a
blessing to the nations.
All the nations, verse 8, will be blessed
in you.
And now, he says, this blessing is for
us.
Jesus, verse 13, when he hung on a
cross, became a curse for us to remove
all the curse of the law away from
us.
You see, there's a curse in the law.
The curse of the law is, if you
don't live according to this, you're cursed.
And all of us have not lived according
to the law.
And you read Deuteronomy 28, there's a whole
lot of curses there for those who don't
live according to the law.
For example, madness, blindness, and all types of
things.
And here it says, Christ has taken that
curse when he died on the cross.
Here is the verse that tells us that
some wrong thing that my ancestor did, that
curse cannot come down to me because that
curse was broken at the cross.
And when I accepted Christ, it was broken.
I don't have to do anything now.
If I've been placed in Christ, that curse
is gone automatically.
I don't have to live in any fear.
There is no curse on anyone now if
he is in Christ because Christ has become
a curse for him.
And now, the opposite of that, the blessing
of Abraham, verse 14, can come upon us.
And that is that we receive the promise
of the Holy Spirit through faith.
So what is the blessing of Abraham?
We saw that in verse 8.
All the nations will be blessed through you.
All the families of the earth will be
blessed through you.
And that is why we read in verse
14, God has given us the promise of
the Holy Spirit through faith.
So the purpose of the Holy Spirit coming
into your life and mine is that every
person you meet, you should bless.
All the families of the earth will be
blessed through you.
This is the blessing of Abraham.
Do you know the mark of a spirit
-filled person?
Here it is.
He is a blessing to everybody he meets.
He goes into a home and he blesses
that home.
There are some people who go into a
home and bring confusion into that home.
You see these cult leaders, these cultists.
There are cults operating all over the world
today.
Wherever they go, there is confusion.
They bring division and all types of things.
But a godly person brings a blessing.
Initially, one person in that home may be
converted and there may be a little bit
of a disturbance, like Jesus said.
But gradually, the blessing comes to the whole
home and more and more people are converted
in that home.
This is the blessing of Abraham.
Everybody we meet, we are to be a
blessing to with words and goodness.
That's our calling.
In the rest of chapter 3, he speaks
about again the difference between the law and
race and how the promise was given to
Abraham before the law which came more than
400 years later.
In chapter 3, towards the end, he says,
verse 24, the law was like a tutor
to lead us to Christ.
The law served a purpose.
It showed us that no matter how holy
you are, you can never rise up to
God's standard.
It's far too high.
Pass marks are 100%.
You can't reach it, no matter how much
you try.
In fact, most of us get about 10
% and 100% is pass marks.
So the law, you try, you try, you
try.
1500 years, Israelites tried.
They didn't succeed.
So the law says, okay, you know, you
can't make it.
And once you realize you can't make it,
like those disciples were fishing, fishing, fishing and
couldn't make it.
Finally, they came to Christ who filled their
boat with fish.
So when I come to Christ, what happens?
This 100% requirement is first of all
put upon me.
I'm given grace marks.
That is justification.
Justification is like grace marks.
I got 0, but the teacher gives me
100 grace marks and I get 100%.
And the other fellow who says, no, I
don't want grace marks, he lives with 10%,
even though he got more than me.
I got 0, he got 10.
But because I accepted the grace marks from
the teacher, I got 100 now.
This fellow is too proud to accept the
grace marks, he lives with 10.
So I get promoted and he fails.
This is the gospel.
This is justification.
To be humble enough to say, I got
0, but I'm glad to receive these grace
marks from you and I get 100.
So then I reach God's standard.
The righteousness of Christ is put to my
account.
I'm imputed.
But God doesn't leave me there.
Gradually, He works in me so that my
quality, my educational ability improves so that from
0, I grow up to 10, 20, 30.
I'm pressing on towards this 100% actually
in my own life.
The righteousness that is imputed to me is
then imparted to me.
Slowly, it becomes part of my nature through
the Holy Spirit.
That is only through the Holy Spirit.
It's not by any amount of your fasting
or praying or gritting your teeth or keeping
the law.
That's essentially the message of Galatians.
And he says, it doesn't make a difference
who you are.
You're all sons of God.
Nobody is better than another.
In Christ, there is no Jew, there is
no slave or free man, male or female.
Three groups mentioned.
You know, there are many Jewish men who
used to have this habit when they got
up in the morning.
They would say, Lord, I thank you that
I'm not a Gentile, I'm not a slave,
and I'm not a woman.
They were so proud.
I thank you that I'm not a Gentile,
I'm not a slave, I'm not a woman.
And so those are the three things.
Paul knew that.
People boast about that.
So those are the three things he takes
here and says, it doesn't make a difference
whether you're a Gentile or a Jew.
It doesn't make a difference whether you're a
slave or a free man.
And it doesn't make a difference whether you're
a man or a woman.
In Christ, you're just the same.
We've got to accept the basic equality of
all people once we have come to Christ.
If you look down upon another person of
another community, you haven't understood this freedom in
Christ.
You're back under law again.
The law divides people into communities, and that's
another way to find out whether you're under
law.
If you think that your community and those
who speak your language are spiritual, and people
of another community are not so spiritual, and
you cannot fellowship with them, something is wrong
with you.
You're under law again.
In Christ, there's no difference.
You know you're broken free from the law
when you can look at every brother in
Christ, irrespective of his language, community, education, background,
and say, he's my brother, he's my sister,
and I can have fellowship with him.
No matter what background he comes from, he's
just the same to me.
Because in Christ, all differences are eliminated.
In chapter 4, he points out how there
is a difference between being a child and
a son.
You see, children, under the law, God treated
us like children.
And he says there's no difference between a
child, verse 1, and a slave, because he
can't really own anything.
But under the system in that first century,
when a child came to a certain age,
I don't know whether it was 12 or
something like that, they were placed as sons.
They were said, okay, from now onwards, you're
not a child, you're an heir.
And that's called here in verse 5, the
adoption.
Whenever you read the word adoption in the
New Testament, remember, it's not referring to the
type of adoption we have today where you
adopt a baby that's not really born in
your family and adopt that as your own
child.
No, here the adoption, the correct word is
placement.
You're placing him as a son.
It's your own child, but now he's come
to the age where he's a son.
And Paul says, this is something of the
difference between law and grace.
In law, you were treated like a child.
In grace, you're treated like a son.
That's why under the law, God had to
tell you every little thing.
If a lizard falls into your pot, what
should you do?
If you find a bird along with its
little ones, what you should take and what
you should leave behind?
And so many laws in the Old Testament
about lepers, about uncleanness in houses, so many
things like that.
But in grace, you don't find so many
detailed rules, you find only principles.
And that's how we do with children also.
Small children, we have to tell them to
get up at such and such a time,
brush their teeth, pack your books, go to
school, come back, now sit down, do your
homework.
And we have to hold their hand, now
look left, look right when you cross the
road.
You've got to tell every little thing to
a child.
But when the child becomes an adult, you
don't have to tell him to brush his
teeth in the morning, you don't have to
tell him to pack his books.
He knows how to do all that on
his own.
But you would give him principles for life.
And that's another difference between law and grace.
That's why in the New Testament, you don't
find detailed rules, but principles.
And when Christians take those principles and again
make them into detailed rules, they have become
Pharisees.
And you find them in every denomination in
Christianity.
I have seen Pharisees in every single denomination,
in every single group, including my own.
Everyone.
The tendency towards Phariseeism is in every group,
because what is proclaimed as a principle, people
take that principle and make it into rules
and regulations and bring people back under the
law.
They treat them again like children when God
wants to treat them like adults.
If God treats a brother like an adult,
brother, you better treat him like an adult
too.
Don't treat him like a baby.
That's the important principle here.
Galatians 4.13 tells us that the Apostle
Paul preached in Galatia for the first time
because he was sick.
We saw that in Acts chapter 16.
He didn't plan to be in Galatia, but
he was sick.
And he says, because I was sick, I
stayed there and I preached the gospel to
you.
So you see, sickness, even though brought by
the devil, accomplished a tremendous purpose.
It established a church in Galatia.
If Paul was not sick, he would have
traveled on.
But we read in Acts 16, he was
forbidden by the Holy Spirit to travel because
he became sick and he had to stay
in Galatia.
And the result was a lot of people
came to visit him and gradually preach the
gospel to them.
And there was a church there.
So like the old saying goes, disappointments are
his appointments.
So when you face a disappointment in your
life, remember that is his appointment for you.
A sickness, a delay, a missed train, a
missed bus.
God can do amazing things.
And then further, we read in verse 19.
You see, Paul is like a mother here.
He says, I long, I'm in labor, like
a mother is in labor to produce a
child.
Paul says, I'm in labor spiritually.
He's talking about prayer.
That's a labor.
Until Christ is formed in you.
He was saying, you know, I don't know
whether you've seen pictures of babies inside the
mother's womb when they are in the stage
of an embryo or a fetus.
They look more like tadpoles or lizards, not
like human beings.
Some with a big head and a small
little thing that looks like a tail.
Actually, it's the body.
And they don't look like human beings at
all.
But you wait nine months and when that
baby comes out, it's so beautiful.
And Paul says, you Christians are like that.
You're like this.
You don't look like Christ at all.
The seed is there.
You're looking like a little lizard right now.
Such a big head, so much out of
proportion, so many things in your life.
And I'm praying and I'm longing and I'm
in labor that Christ will be formed in
you, that you'll come out as a beautiful
baby, perfectly proportioned, exactly like Jesus.
That is the burden of any true servant
of God for other people.
We move on to chapter five.
There are many other things there.
You will understand it if you understand the
basic overall picture of Galatians.
It was for freedom, verse one, that Christ
set us free.
Jesus has come to set us free.
Don't let anybody bring you into bondage again.
Don't follow the silly rules and regulations of
your denomination.
You come to freedom.
But he says, don't use your freedom, verse
13, to commit sin.
Some people take this freedom and say, yeah,
I'm free.
And they end up worse than being under
the law, being under the flesh.
So here he speaks about being under the
flesh, being under the law and being under
the spirit.
And if you get away from being under
the spirit, then you better be under the
law.
Otherwise, you'll go even lower and come under
the flesh and live in sin.
And that's why he says in verse 16,
I say walk by the spirit, which is
over here, up here, and then you will
not descend to the level of the flesh.
And if you walk by the spirit, verse
18, then you're not under the law.
We can say these are three levels of
life.
One is led by the spirit.
Below that is led by the law.
And below that is led by the flesh.
Now, if you say, I am not led
by the law because Jesus has abolished the
law.
Good.
But you better be led by the spirit
then.
Otherwise, when you throw away the law, you
will descend to the level of the flesh.
That's what happens.
You see, something like this.
Here is the ground floor.
The lower floor.
On top of that is the second story
and third story.
Let's call it first story, second story, third
story.
And if the second story floor is being
broken up, that's the law.
If you climb up to the third story
before that, you're okay.
But if you stay on the second story
and say, well, the floor is being broken
up, but I'm free from this.
What will happen?
When the floor is broken up, you'll descend
to the first story.
That's the law.
That's the flesh.
So here is the top level spirit.
Below that is the law and below that
is the flesh.
And if you break away the law and
you haven't come to life in the spirit
above, you'll descend to the level of the
flesh.
This is exactly what has happened to multitudes
of believers.
They've read in the scripture, we are not
under law.
We are free.
But they have not come to life in
the spirit.
And the result is they are living according
to the flesh.
And that is why you see Christian leaders
today doing a hundred times worse things than
people who lived under the law.
How is that?
This is top is grace, then law, then
the flesh.
How is it that people say we are
under grace, but they're living like people under
the flesh because they have thrown away the
law.
So what it says is if you are
led by the spirit, then you're not under
law.
Don't ever throw away the law without first
determining that you're going to let the Holy
Spirit guide you.
Otherwise your life will be worse than every
godly man in the Old Testament.
Every single godly man in the Old Testament
will be a million times better than you
if you throw away the law.
The law is excellent.
The law is excellent for those who don't
want to be led by the Holy Spirit.
The message in Galatians is not throw away
the law.
The message is throw it away when you
come to life in the spirit.
That's where God wants you to live.
But if you don't want to live in
that third story, you want to then at
least live in the second story.
Otherwise you'll descend down to the ground of
living in the flesh.
And then he describes what life in the
flesh is like in verse 19 to 21.
And you find a lot of this among
believers.
Impurity, idolatry, the worship of money and people,
enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger.
You think these are only found among unbelievers?
Disputes, dissensions, factions, jealousy, envying, so many things.
How is it believers practice all these things?
Because they've thrown away the law without coming
into life in the spirit.
So after saying in the beginning of Galatians,
listen, we're not under the law, we are
free.
He goes on to say, but don't use
this freedom as an occasion for the flesh.
Learn to live in the spirit.
And he says, if you don't, you'll descend
to this level and you won't inherit God's
kingdom.
Verse 21.
But on the other hand, if you move
up higher to life in the spirit and
you're led by the spirit, what will happen
in your life is described in verse 22
to 24.
This is what will come forth from your
life.
Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.
Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such things, there is no law.
You've moved up to the third story.
Now you don't need the second story.
Let them demolish the second story.
You're quite safe in the third story.
The pillars support you.
The floor of the second story has been
demolished and you'll never sink down because you're
living life in the spirit on a higher
level.
So if we live by the spirit, as
you say, let's also walk by the spirit.
In chapter six, first of all, he says,
if you see a brother has fallen away
from the standard of life that I'm describing,
don't just criticize him.
If you're a spiritual man, go and help
him.
You can also fall like he did.
And the only brother who can help another
brother who has fallen is one who recognizes
that he himself can also fall.
You can never help a brother, listen to
this, according to Galatians 6.1, unless when
you go to counsel him, you recognize, Lord,
I am capable of exactly the same sin
that this fellow fell into.
Only such a brother can help another brother.
But if you say, well, I'm not, it's
not possible for me to fall like this
fellow, you're never able to help him.
You'll be hard.
You won't have that gentleness that's spoken of
here.
The spirit of gentleness spoken in verse one.
This is a burden that brother is carrying.
Bear it.
That's how you fulfill the law of Christ.
Verse three, if anyone thinks he's somebody great,
not like these fellows down there, he's actually
a nobody.
He'll be useless in God's service.
When you see a brother fall, don't think
you're a somebody and he's a nobody.
You are just like him.
God's grace kept you from falling.
That's all.
Don't forget that.
And he says, don't boast about yourself.
Just examine your own work.
See what God has accomplished in your life.
Like the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 11,
we must examine our life.
It says here we must accomplish our work.
What has God done through you?
Don't criticize other people's work when you have
not done anything like that yourself.
You know, I today find Christendom full of
people who are criticizing others who've never done
anything like that themselves.
They find this fault, this fault, this fault,
this fault, and this fault in that person.
Okay, agreed.
But have you done even 1% of
what that brother has done to reach people
for the Lord?
No.
Then brother, please keep your big mouth shut.
What have you done for the Lord?
Nothing.
Then don't criticize another man who is doing
something for the Lord.
That's a very important principle.
Examine your own work first.
Verse 7 and 8.
What a man sows, he will reap.
The way you live on earth, if you
live according to the flesh, you'll die.
If you sow to the spirit, you'll reap
eternal life.
One last verse.
Verse 14.
Again about the cross.
He speaks about the cross thrice in this.
1 in 2.20, I am crucified with
Christ.
5.24, those who are Christ crucify the
flesh with his affections and lusts.
And 6.14, the world is crucified.
Self, the flesh, and the world.
Three things in these three verses are all
crucified.
I've died.
I've no more interest in the world.
I live on the higher plane of life
in the spirit where the world is dead
to me.
So he says there's a close link between
life in the spirit and the way of
the cross.
That's what we need to recognize.
Freedom from the law comes through life in
the spirit closely linked with choosing the way
of the cross.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, apply these truths to our lives,
we pray, that we can live not by
rules and regulations, but by the freedom of
the Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus' name.