-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Welcome to the cafe today.
00:41 Today we are discussing an important topic. The one that I believe the Lord really wants us to know about, to think about, to chew on, to make sure that we have straight in our minds. And that comes out of Galatians.
00:59 The book of Galatians 5:9. A very familiar verse. Paul writing here to the Galatians, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. And if we know what leaven is, it’s like yeast.
01:13 And if you’ve ever made a baguette, I was gonna say bowl of bread, I was thinking of mixing it. But if you’ve ever made a loaf of bread, a baguette, any kind of bread, you’ve probably used yeast. And you realize that once you mix in that yeast and it activates, it’s going to affect that entire loaf.
01:34 Amen. And in the same way, Paul is writing to the Galatians here, explaining to them that they believed, and you can imagine why they might believe this being the time that it was, that Jews should be under the law. And so the idea was to be under circumcision, which is also used to describe the law as a whole.
01:59 That law would be what Bible scholars would call the Mosaic law, or the commandments from God. What people believed they needed to follow in order to be approved of by God. And Paul saying Christ died for you, you don’t need to do any of that once you accept Christ.
02:26 And he was compelling the Galatians not to let this idea creep in. Whoever was placing it in front of them, don’t let it creep in to their life. Don’t let it start to corrupt it, because even a little bit will then mess the whole thing up.
02:48 And what we see here today is that there is oftentimes a really deeply rooted desire within us, within all of us, to try to do something to earn favor with God, to curry favor with God, to reconcile ourselves to God beyond accepting Christ.
02:59 And this is a sin, as it was for those there in the book of Galatians, it is for us today. The sin specifically would be pride, something that we think we can do to earn favor, to curry favor, to merit favor with God.
03:17 And more specifically, thinking that we could be uphold, that we were able or capable to uphold God’s law, God’s rules. Not one person on earth is, no one ever has been, save Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior who came in earthly form, bodily form, but no person could ever uphold the law.
03:38 The law was there to simply show us that we couldn’t uphold it, right? And so what Paul’s saying is, don’t let this idea that you need to be following some kind of law to be approved of God creep in, because it’s going to ruin what Christ has done for you.
03:52 Because Christ made us free from the law, amen? Christ made us free from the law. Christ fulfilled the law. And how did that happen? Well, Jesus Christ, He came to earth sinless and perfect, born of a virgin, and was on this earth 33 and a half years without sin.
04:21 Again, no, no blemish, no spot, and had every reason to just go ahead and say, okay, I’m God, everyone worship me. But instead, He didn’t say any of that. He didn’t command Himself to be worshiped.
04:30 He humbled Himself. The Bible term might be condescended Himself down to man, and even beyond just man, but really to the sinners. He was a friend of sinners.
04:42 He went to the lowest of the low. He went to the publicans and the tax collectors. One of the first messages I ever preached was on Zacchaeus in the tree, and it was a corrupt tax collector.
04:55 And what did he say to Zacchaeus? Oh, how dare you? How awful are you? No, he said, I’m going to have dinner at your house, you know, I’m going to eat at your house, I’m going to your house. That’s who Christ was, that’s who Christ is. He’s a friend of sinners, but He Himself has no sin.
05:07 He’s not endorsing sin. He’s simply coming to let us know that we are incapable of solving our own sin debt, and that through His finished work on the cross, His obedience to go willingly to Calvary and to willingly submit Himself, you know, people make it look like He was under Roman control, where He couldn’t have escaped or defeated them. He could have blinked an eyelash, and every angel in heaven would have come and wiped out every Roman soldier there is.
05:41 It’s not that He couldn’t, it’s that He wouldn’t. And why wouldn’t He? Because He loved us so much. And it’s that great love that gets put in jeopardy when we start trying to earn favor or look at ourselves in a way that is not fit for how God wants us to look at ourselves.
05:58 This is why I told the story before we had our kids draw posters at church around Christmas time, and we were drawing the Beatitudes, and it was some of the Beatitudes were, you know, it’s Jesus speaking there about blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those that mourn.
06:16 It’s like, it was not that festive type of Scripture, you would think, but it’s the same idea that Jesus is speaking of there. And the idea is, blessed are those that realize their need.
06:28 They realize their need. You think about this, who are we until we realize our need? Can we really do anything for God or with God if we don’t realize how much we need Him? And how do we need Him?
06:42 How do we realize we need Him if we think we can do something ourselves? And we say, well God, you’ve given us the rules, and we can follow those, so we’re good. We don’t, you know, we don’t need you right now.
06:50 No, no, God made us, clearly engineered us to need Him desperately, desperately every day, every hour. I love it in our church when we sing the song there in the morning, I can’t even walk without you holding my hand. Oh, what a beautiful song.
07:08 How true is that? And oh, how I thought I was a mighty big man, but I can’t even walk without you holding my hand. Come on now, that’s the truth. But that’s, that singer, that person, that one that wrote that song, okay, they put that into words after understanding the premise that there was nothing they could do.
07:31 That they needed God. There’s nothing they could do on their own. That they needed Christ Jesus to die for them, and to be risen again.
07:42 And that when they accept Christ, they are now dead to themselves, their old self, and they are a new creature, born again, of the Spirit, Amen, a child of God. And because they’re a new creature, they’re going to live by faith. You’re not going to try to willingly break God’s law, right? God’s law is there for a reason.
08:00 It’s still God’s character. I’ve preached on that many times. Just because we can’t uphold the law doesn’t make the law wrong, right? The law says thou shall not kill.
08:06 Okay, well, that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, thou shall not kill, or thou shall not commit adultery, right? It doesn’t make that wrong. But then it says, if you’ve looked upon someone with lust, you’ve already committed adultery.
08:14 Well, hey, if you turn on your TV or a social media app or something, you may be an adulterer, because you’ll just see stuff you shouldn’t even see, amen? We have to walk around blindfolded in this world a lot of times.
08:25 And so, the idea that we’re free without sin, that we never lie, that we never covet. Paul wrote that he didn’t know what sin was until he realized what coveting is, and how coveting is, oh my goodness, that’s wanting anything that you don’t have, and desiring things that you don’t have, and that’s basically saying, God, you didn’t give me enough, or you didn’t give me what I want, and not being thankful for what we have. Coveting is rampant.
08:49 Coveting goes hand-in-hand with materialism. The whole materialistic culture is based on covening. I hate to say this, but you look at, you know, somebody that, I think of a teenager or a young person, you know, that has a list, maybe not even a teenager, maybe a ten-year-old, and they have a list of all these toys they have to have to be happy, and you go out to try to get them all these toys so they’re happy.
09:10 But, you know, I guess you might need to sit down with that child and say, well, has God not given you enough to be happy today? Amen? And he’ll give you more, but let’s thank him today for what he’s given you. And so, we see here Paul rebuking the Galatians, saying, a little leaveneth, leaveneth the whole lump.
09:36 And we have to look at, where is the sin in our life? What is it that we are trying to do that is corrupting our walk with the Lord? Is it that we think that we’re responsible for our own lives, that it’s not God that is our guide, and God that’s providentially leading us, and God that has a plan for us? What is it that we are holding on to? And think about the things that manifest from that.
09:54 When you start adding responsibility to yourself, then you’re corrupting the way God wants you to live, and you’re adding worries and anxieties he never wanted you to have. You know, when we trust God, and yes, we need to trust God in motion. We don’t just sit on the couch and say, okay, I trust God, I’m not gonna move today, and then everything, I’m gonna be blessed.
10:14 No, the word for that, I learned that, the word for that is called fatalism or fatalistic. Okay, the idea that we’re just going to sit here and do nothing. God expects us to work.
10:23 God expects us to live. God expects us to be, as we grow in him, compelled in him to do great things for him, as he works through us. So it’s not us doing it, but him working through us doing it.
10:34 And at the same time, we have to fully trust him, and we can’t sit around and worry about things. We can’t sit around and try to put, heap on ourselves more rules or laws than God wants us to have. That’s what the Pharisees did.
10:49 If you get to the heart of why Christ was so frustrated with the Pharisees, it came from this idea that they were in charge of God’s law, and they were polluting it, and adding to it, and manipulating it, and that is absolutely atrocious. And I believe that’s why Christ had such harsh words for the Pharisees. But what are we seeing today? We’re seeing that in all kinds of denominations.
11:09 We’re seeing some denominations watering down God’s ways, and saying, just, you don’t need to worry about anything. Just, just live your life, and everything is good, and God loves everybody. Well, that’s a perversion of the truth.
11:23 Amen. God loves everybody, and also, the Bible clearly says that he desires all to come to repentance, to come to this idea that they need salvation because they’re a sinner. So when we omit sin, that’s a big problem.
11:38 And then on the other end of the spectrum, when we’re walking around saying, hey, you know what? On our own, you know, we’re sin busters over here, and we busted out all the sin ourselves, and we don’t, we dress a certain way, and we speak a certain way, and we live a certain way, and our nose is up high, and we’re all this, and we’re all that. God hates that pride, and God hates all of that. And then you’re putting a burden on people that God knows they can’t keep.
12:03 And now, are they gonna look at you when they can’t keep that burden, or are they gonna look at him? They’ll probably look to him, and he’s even more frustrated because you created that by allowing that leaven to creep in. I hope that makes sense. So on one side, you have the very liberal living, like, okay, doesn’t matter.
12:19 That’s not right. On the other side, you have the very conservative, legalistic living. Frankly, that’s not right.
12:25 And in the middle there, what do you have? You have this moderation or temperance, which is a biblical trait, and we have that when we keep our eyes on Jesus, and we say to ourselves, it is grace plus nothing. It is what Christ did for us on the cross plus zero. Nothing else.
12:44 The only thing that we can do, the only action that we can take is have faith. We are justified by faith. Abraham was justified by faith.
12:51 It is faith or belief in what Christ did for us, and through Christ, what God the Father did to send Christ, the Son, to die for us on the cross and be risen again. And when we accept Christ and believe on him, and when we receive that Holy Spirit living within us, it’s just faith. We’re doing it by faith.
13:10 And when we have faith, then we’re not letting that leaven enter in. We’re not letting that outside corruption enter in, and we are living a very simple, peaceful life, 100% trusting Christ. Not perfect, of course, going through all kinds of trials, but trusting Christ.
13:30 Not trusting in ourselves or our works, not letting sin or pride creep in, but trusting Christ. And how about this? Resting in Christ. Resting in Christ, knowing that we’ll be presented to the Lord pure, spotless, blameless, because we have believed on Jesus Christ, and it’s not anything that we could do or could have done, but everything that he did do.
13:54 And it’s a finished work, Amen. And all we need to do is accept it and then own that promise and live by it. That’s all we need to do is just live by it. How wonderful is that? God gave it to us.
14:05 He did it for us, and we just need to believe. Thank you, God, for Calvary. Thank you, God, for your promise.
14:09 Let’s get rid of the leaven. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it.
14:14 Take care, God bless, and Amen.