It is important for us to be together. I know it is a trial, and it was a double trial this morning with the software breaking down, but I think it is very important for us to try to be together and not to give up in these trying times.
Yesterday, I was driving down the road, and I drove by a denominational church. They had a nice marquee out there, and it said, “All services are canceled till July 10th.” So I guess they just gave up. But praise God, we have not given up. I think it is good for us to persevere in a trial.
This morning, I want to look at a letter written by a brother who did not give up in a trial, and that was the Apostle Paul. All the things he had been through, and all the things we read about—he did not give up. In all his frustration with the churches he ministered among, he did not give up. So let us not be giver-uppers.
Let us look at Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Remember how I said before what a great thing it is to write a letter? Maybe we should all write letters during this time. But we have this letter left with us. Let us see what Paul had to say to the churches of Galatia and how it might really help us.
To move quickly here today, I have five points for organization, if you are taking notes:
As we start, I want us to be thinking about where we are going. I want to read to you a Sparks quote. Sparks has a book called The Gospel According to Paul. In most of those chapters, he addresses one epistle, and at the end he has a conclusion. His conclusion for Galatians is: “Christ liveth in me.” That is good news, and that is hope.
So that is the burden for today.
Paul addressed this letter to the churches of Galatia. The commentators say, “Well, maybe it was here; maybe it was there.” He wrote the letter to the churches of Galatia, the churches he ministered among. Probably Galatia was a Roman province in what is today Turkey.
You ever think about Turkey? You ever think about some of these countries? I cannot even relate. Dr. Oz is from Turkey. But anyway, I cannot even think what Turkey is. But Paul was very upset with them because they were abandoning the gospel he preached for another gospel.
He said this was not a gospel at all. Galatians is a twin letter to Romans; a lot of the same ideas are in those two letters.
Actually, I think Galatians is perhaps the most important book of the Bible. How many times have people said a book is the most important book? But this one really is. It was a letter that God used to deliver His church from the Dark Ages. It was where He started the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther said, “The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am, as it were, in wedlock. It is my Catherine.” Catherine was his wife, so he was married to this epistle. It has been called the charter of Christian liberty.
It brings us out from living under the law to living under grace—or, better yet, to living in the Spirit.
Why was Paul so upset with the Galatians? Let us read Galatians 1:6-10.
Often Paul gives a long introduction that says, “Oh, I really enjoy you,” but here he says, “Okay, guys, here I am, and guess what?”
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel;
which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.
As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.
Strong, huh? He was totally upset with them.
Remember in 1 Corinthians, we noted that the Corinthians were messed up. Paul was upset with them, but he really appealed to them as Christians. He appealed to them in spirit, and he was upset with them because they were carnal; they had not grown up. But still, they were Christians.
But not this time. They were learning a different gospel, and he was afraid they were going to follow another gospel. It was not the gospel of grace, but self-effort—coming under the law in self-effort. It was not even Christianity.
In 1 Corinthians, he preached Christ and Him crucified. It was the gospel that led to eternal life with God, and the other gospel was really quite eternally hopeless.
I think one of the reasons Paul was so upset with them is because he had been there. He had been under the law, and he had been quite successful at it. But because of his experience, he had seen the absolute futility of it. Having come out from under that, he was begging them not to go there.
Just as an aside, I thought several times in considering these things that we can make a law unto ourselves. We can make Christianity a law unto ourselves. So we need to be aware that we do not say, “If you do this, you just have to do this to be a good Christian. You have to do this; you have to do that.” That becomes a kind of law unto ourselves. So let us avoid that.
Paul’s burden was that these were Christians—people who had been set free from the law. Not only that, but they had been set free unto Christ, new creatures in Christ.
We need to understand that being set free from the law is not the end. It does not lead us into license and gross sin—not greasy grace. We have been set free from that law, but we have been set free to be new creatures in Christ.
In John 3:6, the Lord told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” Then, in Galatians 1:16, Paul says that when God called him through His grace, He was pleased to reveal His Son in him. That is Paul’s gospel.
Paul expresses his whole burden, his complete burden, in one short passage with which we are all familiar: Galatians 2:19-21. If we were all together, I would ask somebody to read that verse.
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly.
That is really the whole thing: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.”
We have been delivered from the law, but we have also been delivered unto a new life in Christ—a new life source. We have a new spiritual life source deep within us.
I have mentioned A. W. Tozer numerous times over the years, but he says in the opening of one of his books, “The argument of this book is the essential interiority of true religion.”
The Judaizers, in Paul’s mind, were the great externalists. But Tozer says, no, it is the essential interiority of true religion. Of course, Brother Sparks says, “Christ liveth in me.” That is good news. That is hope.
I think this message—not law, but grace; new life in Christ—is very essential and very helpful to us in the trials we have been through these last months. It used to be weeks; now it is months.
We can be undone. How many are undone? Okay, some of the people here are undone, but I do not know how many at home. I think we are all undone.
But Christ in me can be the answer to our undoneness. It is hard to go on, you know? It is hard to find the strength just to get up and go on when there is all this stuff in us and over us. But we have a new life source.
May we, in these days of trial, when we come to the end of ourselves, find the all-sufficiency of that life source in Christ. It is a very practical gospel.
Why did Paul have to defend himself? Paul was probably under a great amount of assault, right? He had been an attacker of Christianity. If not active in it, he had been an active bystander as Christians were put to death. So it was quite a thing that he would be out preaching this gospel. That is why he had to defend himself.
Here was a man who had actively persecuted the church. He says in Galatians 1:12:
For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
This is something totally new. This is a new gospel. This is different, so listen up. “I did not receive it from man. I did not go up to Jerusalem and get instructed in it. I did not study a number of good books to learn about it. The Lord revealed it to me.”
It is as if he was saying, “I came to the end of myself on the Damascus road, and God was pleased to reveal His Son in me.” He obviously came to the end of the old ways, the old life. That is why he was defending himself so much.
We can all have days of trial. We obviously have a great deal of trial, but it is a perfect opportunity to call out to the Lord and rely on His Spirit-life within us to live our lives.
I think as the days go forward, things are going to get more and more difficult for us to exist in our natural strength. So Christ Himself, our life and our satisfaction, is the answer.
What was the gospel that Paul preached? Again, we mentioned before that there is a great summary of that gospel in Galatians 2:19-20.
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Christ lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.
It is a moral transformation, but it is also a very practical transformation and a change of life.
A while back, Mac brought a message of encouragement, and perhaps some of Jeffries’ messages also. That great encouragement, which is encouraging to me, is: “God is with us. God is with us. Praise the Lord.”
But also, Christ is in us. Christ lives in us—with us and in us.
John 14:17 says:
That is the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him;
but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
So the Lord abides with us, and He is in us. Praise the Lord.
We know this is a difficult transition. It requires coming to the end of ourselves, but let us read a passage that we have all been reading: 2 Corinthians 4:7-12.
This is Paul’s testimony. May each of us personally find encouragement from it.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So death works in us, but life in you.
The power, the strength for our lives, the strength to go on—it is of God and not from ourselves. Perplexed, but not despairing, because the life of Christ lives in us. Christ liveth in me, and that is good news. That is hope.
May we not miss the opportunity in these days of trial to gain Christ.
We had a next-door neighbor. We have probably told you about this, but we had a family from Kenya living in the country for a year. They had four children. The wife was working as a nurse at night to make ends meet, and the husband worked in the real-estate industry.
He was home with one of the children one night, tripped over the child, and fell. He fell backward and got a pretty bad concussion. They called the ER. The firemen came and hauled him off, and it was a bad injury.
She thought he was probably going to die, and Sharon ministered to the family during that time. Maybe this is something you all have heard before.
But she told Sharon, “Sharon, our test has become our testament. Our test has become our testimony.”
So I wonder if this test we are living in right now might become our testimony. The only way is by Christ, our life.
Let us see what fruit we might get out of this trial. Let us read Galatians 5:13-24.
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Paul is talking about the application of this: no longer I, but Christ lives in me.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;
against such things there is no law.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Paul is encouraging us in this passage to live by the Spirit and not the natural man. The deeds of the flesh are very gross here, but some things of the flesh in these days are anxiousness, nervousness, fearfulness, and frustration.
We might be experiencing all those things, but we do not need to live under them as Christians. We have the life of Christ in us, the strength for today, and the bright hope for tomorrow. We have an uncreated life, an unnatural life in us to persevere.
It is interesting: the deeds of the flesh are numerous, and I do not want to talk about them. But fruit is a different word. Deeds of the flesh are natural; fruit is something we bear.
We do not only bear this fruit for others. Paul talks about taking care of one another, but I think this fruit can take care of us, too. These are not just things to express; these are things to experience internally.
I am just going to read a couple of these thoughts on the fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentions and leave it to all of us to go home and think about it. See what encouragement we can get from this fruit.
Love: the love of God filling our hearts in these trying days. The love of God filling our hearts. Praise the Lord.
Joy: Paul, in his trials, in Philippians—I do not know, how many times did he say joy? “I rejoice,” from a jail. “I rejoice.”
So we have a life to rejoice in. We have eternity in view, and we have the life of Christ to live through and live by today. So we need to be people of joy.
Peace: not only do we have peace with God; we have the peace of God as our inheritance.
Patience: often, days like these are times to endure and to develop patience.
Living in this society, living in this world, we want instant gratification. We do not want to bear and forbear. But I believe the Lord would work patience in us.
Kindness: remember what they said in 2 Corinthians—encourage one another. Encourage one another in the trials we are in, because we go through these trials so we can encourage one another.
Kindness, goodness, faithfulness: are we faithful even in trial, in these days of trial? Yes, faithfulness.
Gentleness: it is trying in the families when you are home all the time, is it not? Gentleness. But that is the peace of God, the fruit of God borne out.
Self-control: I had a thought about self-control, and that is that we do not, in days of trial, kick against the goads.
Remember, Paul said he did not kick against the goads. That is the oxen—the farmer would have a goad, a pointed stick or piece of wood, that he would poke the oxen with to keep them moving.
I think in these days of trial, we could kick against the goads. We could resist the opportunity God has given us to lay hold of His life.
So what have we said here? I think this letter of Paul can be a great encouragement to us. He was concerned that they were trying to live their lives out of law, out of a formula, out of the natural man.
May we not miss Christ, our full salvation. In Galatians 2:20, Paul said that Christ lives in me, and the life I now live is by faith in the Son of God. Might we live by faith in the Son of God—the life we live.
In days of trial, we may find it difficult to endure, but Paul has a word for us: if we come to the end of our strength, then we can come to the beginning of His strength.
We can experience what Brother Sparks said: “Christ liveth in me.” That is good news. That is hope. Christ liveth in me. We have strength for today and hope for tomorrow.
So let us close in prayer.
Lord, we thank You that You have given us hope in these trying days. Lord, You are God of all hope. We give You our lives afresh this morning and pray that we might be quickened deep in the inner man.
May we not take our circumstances under our own control and try to improve them and get out from them, but may we gain Christ. May we know that resurrection life, the life of Christ lived out within each one of us.
We pray that we might know that strength of Spirit, that we would not cave in on ourselves, but that we would be strong in the Lord, in the strength of His might.
We thank You for these days and pray that You would bless them, in Jesus’ name.