In the book of Galatians, Paul writes to a collection of churches in the Galatian region who had been led astray by a false gospel. Specifically, he addresses churches in the region of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. A group known as the Judaizers (Phil. 3:2–6) had claimed that salvation depended upon works of righteousness. When the Galatians believed that keeping the law could save them, they were removed from Christ and all the blessings of His presence in their lives. The cold reality of claiming that salvation can be obtained by works, is that you are left alone to justify yourself. 

So here we are in Galatians, let's pray before we start Lord we thank you for teaching us your ways for taking us in directions that are different from our hearts and especially this instruction to the churches in Galatia that you would help us to have it in our hearts and to remember it to trust in it amen okay Galatians you could You could talk about Galatians as a letter to people who were in danger of being removed from Christ. Perhaps the pivotal verse in Galatians is Galatians 6.14, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and me to the world. So that's really the heart of the matter in Galatians, and it's about liberty. It's about the loss of liberty. You know, we just celebrated the Fourth of July, and it's easy to remember Patrick Henry's great statement, give me liberty or give me death.

And imagine a life without liberty. Imagine having some measure of liberty and then losing it. And Galatians is a book about a people who were losing a sense of their liberty in Jesus Christ. And the prospect of their losing their liberty really meant that they were being removed from Christ. And imagine what that could possibly be like.

You know, the Lord Jesus Christ, He's the light of the world. He's the bread of life. He's the water of life. He's the way and the truth and the life. He's a good shepherd.

You know, we have redemption in his blood. We have peace with God. He's our advocate. He's our intercessor. He's our redeemer.

If you think about the blessings that there are in being in Jesus Christ. And then to lose the liberty that all those things bring about in your life. You're talking about just a breathtakingly tragic situation that the Apostle Paul is dealing with. So to be removed from Christ is the most dangerous thing that anybody can do. And so Paul is writing to a collection of churches in in the Galatian region, not just one church, but many churches in that area, and they have been affected by a false gospel.

False teachers have come in, and Paul is speaking to these different churches in these places that you read about in the Bible, Iconium and Derbe and Lystra and Antioch. The Judaizers, which you can read about in Philippians 2, 3 through 6 and other places, they claimed that salvation was dependent upon fulfilling certain elements of the Old Testament law. And Paul is addressing these issues here like he does in many other places in his letters. He spoke to the Romans about the exact same thing, and in Romans 4 he makes it very clear that salvation is not by the works of the law, not by ordinances of the law or anything like that. And as a result of these false teachers who were influential, they were being removed from the blessing of Jesus Christ that he had given to them.

And they actually had entered into an accursed life where the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ was being dimmed. And so they are, you know, they're cast off. They're being justified by themselves and justified for themselves. And so the danger of these false teachers was being addressed by the Apostle Paul. You know, if the Apostle Paul came to America today in the 21st century, would he say that there are churches here that have been removed from Christ?

Would he say that there are those who believed another gospel here in our land? And would he say that they were accursed? And, you know, as it happens, there are manifestations of Christianity by name, which are really a mix of truth and error. It's a mix of light and darkness and that's exactly what you had in in Galatia. You know, in America I think it's easy to say that We're a land that is rife with false gospels.

51% of the people claim to be Protestant, and 23% claim Catholic. But how many of those have embraced false gospels? I read just this week, or maybe it was last week, a survey, I think it was 83 or 84 percent of Americans say that they are Christians. You think that's true? You think that's possible?

You know, if it is, how in the world do you get a society like we have today? And so I just want to, you know, propose that America is full of false Gospels, full of Gospels that people have believed, and those Gospels never changed their lives. Maybe it was nice news, but it wasn't such a good news that actually transformed them. And there are always gospel-destroying principles that work their way into religion. They are counterfeit gospels.

And the apostle Paul here makes it clear that even an angel from heaven can give you a false gospel. You can have someone appear to you and give you a false gospel, so you can set aside a lot of your experiences if those experiences have brought a false gospel to you. So in the first 10 verses of chapter 1, the Apostle Paul lays the whole groundwork for this. I'd like to work through it and then move into the rest of the book. But in order to understand Galatians, you have to understand there are five major players in the book of Galatians.

As you read it, ask yourself, who is the Apostle Paul speaking to? Who is he speaking of? And first of all, there's God. He is a prominent player, the God who raised his son from the dead. And then secondly, there is Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself.

Then there's the apostle Paul himself, who was taught by Christ, seemingly one-to-one without any other people involved the gospel. And then the fourth player is you and those are those who are embracing a false gospel. And then the fifth kind of person that's referred to in Galatians is characterized by the word they, they, those guys. Well, those guys are preaching a false gospel. They're not bondservants of Jesus Christ because they are pleasing men.

So you have to understand exactly who's who and all in the book of Galatians. Now if you look at Paul's greeting, his greeting is just full of the Gospel. Paul an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. And all the brethren who are with me to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. To him be glory forever and ever." Now the first thing that the apostle does is he gives praise to God for raising his son from the dead.

And, by the way, another thing you'll notice in Galatians, when Paul mentions the name of Jesus Christ, he can't help but praising him. You'll see that. It's a very beautiful thing, but he just he can't help but to praise the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, he first establishes his authority. He says, I'm an apostle not of man but of Jesus Christ who raised him from the dead.

This is one element of the gospel that God sent his Son to give his life as an atonement for sinners and he would die and he would rise from the dead. Paul talks about his companions, all the brethren who are with me. There are a lot of people that traveled with Paul. There was Sosthenes and Apollos and Timothy and Titus and Tychicus and Epaphroditus and Onesimus, lots of travelers. I don't know exactly who was traveling with Paul in the Galatian region, but perhaps he had had a team of men with him.

And notice in verse 2 he writes this to the churches in Galatia. Now the Ephesian letter was written to the Ephesian church. The Corinthian letter was written to the church in Corinth. This letter is different because it's written to multiple churches in a particular area and he calls them churches. These are assemblies.

These are local assemblies that God has called out of the world to gather together, to worship, and to obey, and to involve themselves in embracing the truth of the gospel and to proclaim it. So these were various churches in this region. Now, the Apostle Paul tells the story of his evangelism there in that region because he went into the Galatian region and he preached the gospel in specific cities and he was persecuted viciously, He was stoned, left for dead, dragged out of cities, persecuted in one city, you know, beaten half to death and walking right back into the city. He was a tough guy, you know. He wasn't easily turned away by trouble.

But you can read about this in Acts 13 and 14. So let me read this to you. Now it happened in Iconium that they went together to the synagogue of the Jews and so spoke that a great multitude of both Jews and Greeks believed. So this was the establishment of the church. He goes into the synagogue, he preaches, and many Jews and Greeks believed.

But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren. Therefore, they stayed there a long time and speaking boldly in the Lord who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude of the city was divided, apart-sided with the Jews and part with the apostles. And when a violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews with their rulers to abuse and stone them, they became aware of it and fled to Lystra and Derby, the cities of Lycaenia, and to the surrounding region. And they were there preaching the gospel.

So they go into this one city, there's a huge uprising and they have to leave. And they go into these other cities. But what do they do there? The same thing. They preach the gospel.

And they're speaking of the Lord, they're bearing witness to him, and God's granting them signs. And So when they leave and they go to this other place, there's this account of what happened in Lystra. And in Lystra, a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never walked. This man heard Paul speaking. Paul observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed said in a loud voice, stand up straight on your feet.

And he leaped and walked. Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices saying in the Lyconian language, the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. And Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates intending to sacrifice with the multitudes. But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard this they tore their clothes and ran into the multitudes saying, men why are you doing these things?

We are also men with the same nature as you and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all the things that is in them, whom in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. So what a scene. They go into this city and then the people, they start worshipping him. They want to do sacrifices to them and they stop it. But Paul says a really interesting thing to them.

He says in generations past, God allowed men to walk in their own ways. In God's providence, this is what he does. He allows men to walk in their own ways. And then at some point they hear the gospel and they're converted and then in verse 19 it says then the Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there and having persuaded the multitudes they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. So, you know, if you can imagine what it would be like to die that way, to have your head crushed by big rocks, I mean, this is brutal.

And So they have dragged him out of the city. They're supposing he's dead probably knocked out cold and and then verse 20 the disciples gathered around him and he rose up and what did he do? He goes back into the city. It's remarkable. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derby and when they had preached the gospel in that city and made many disciples they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch strengthening the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith saying we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.

So when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So, it was a time of church planting. Church planting and a lot of violence at the same time. Paul wasn't afraid. And it's amazing to me that the disciples let him go back into the city.

They probably were trying to restrain him. That would be my guess. That's what you would do. That's what most people would do. Don't go back in there.

You know, you're going to be dead next time. You were left for dead. What's next? Dead. But Paul was so bold and trusting in the Lord.

And so you have this huge motivation that was driving the Apostle Paul. And I think that it really, his motivation is alluded to in just the first few verses of Galatians 1. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever." Paul really believed that there was grace in Jesus Christ. He really believed there was peace. He really did believe that you could be delivered.

I mean, he believed that you could be changed. And all the things that had been hurting you, damaging your soul and your relationships, he believed those things could be changed. And so he was willing to be stoned because he believed that God was a God of grace and peace. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's really the key to life And Paul begins his letter that way.

You know, the Lord Jesus said something similar. He said, my peace I give to you. Not as the world do I give to you. There's a kind of peace that only God gives. There's a certain kind of peace you get from the world, but it's nothing compared to the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Paul's passion to deal with the Galatians in their setting aside the grace of God was so critical to him that he would be willing to die. And so you see this conflict underneath the surface in the whole book of Galatians. And notice how it is that that grace and peace is secured through Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins. And so this is the gospel, that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, suffered and died for our sins. He bore our sins in his body.

And He came to enemies and he made them friends and The sin that sinners have committed is that they have killed Jesus Christ they Their sins were the reason that He was put to death so that He would be the atonement for our sins. There's this defection to another gospel in verse 6, if you can look at that verse in chapter 1, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. And as we have said before, So now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. So he says, I marvel, I marvel that you're turning away.

And what is this gospel? Well, it's a, it's a gospel of mixtures. You know, here's how you get a false gospel. You know, these two words, false gospel, You still have some gospel in it. All false gospels have some gospel in them.

That's the tricky part. And we preach false gospels by either adding to the true gospel or we subtract from the gospel. That's how you get a false gospel. So you can you can have a false gospel that mentions Jesus Christ and things like that. But it's false because it either adds or subtracts something of Jesus Christ.

And, you know, there's some really interesting language that Moses uses in Deuteronomy 4 and John uses in Revelation 22. At the very end of Revelation, Jesus says, cursed are those who subtract or add to the law of God. Well, it's dangerous because it gives you a false gospel. Anything you add to Christ, anything you subtract from Christ, puts you in danger. So the Judaizers were adding to Christ by demanding that circumcision was required in order to be a Christian.

So you had Jesus plus circumcision. A requirement of being a Christian was was demanded and that was was circumcision and you you read about this in Acts chapter 15 verse 1 in Romans 9 verse 30 through 10 verse 3, you see this false gospel that the Judaizers were promoting. It's just easy to get a false gospel. Adding your little pet ideas to Christianity is a way that you get a false gospel. There are practices, there are beliefs that are not of Jesus Christ, that are always dangerous and that's why he said but even if we are an angel from heaven preaching another gospel, then let him be accursed.

So the sternness of the warning is really clear. So Paul is denouncing a false gospel, and he makes it clear that they can come from both angels and men. Now, there are various other elements of false gospels, and first of all, you have a false gospel if you have a false view of God. You have a false gospel if you exalt man and his works, and that's exactly what you had in Corinth, and they were, you know, they were speaking very clearly a different gospel. Now, what are the false gospels that are alive today in the world?

I'm gonna give you a few. I'm gonna give you 17 of them. I'll go very quickly. But there's no end to false gospels because there's so many different personality types. There's so many different you know, matrixes of weakness in the human soul.

There's so many ways to misconceive God. Because of that, there are many false gospels. First of all, the Gospel of Universalism. This gospel claims that Christ saved everyone on the cross and everyone will be in heaven someday. That's a false gospel.

There's the false gospel of sacramental salvation. Theologians call this sacerdotalism, and it maintains that salvation can be had by a sacrament or a deed or a decision. This is very common in Roman Catholicism, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass, baptismal regeneration in Roman Catholicism that is also promoted by the disciples of Christ and the United Pentecostals. I think the decisional salvation problem in evangelicalism is a false gospel. That you're saved if you make a decision.

The Bible doesn't say that. And how do you know if you have been saved? You know, you don't become saved by praying a prayer. And there are many people that think they're saved because someone had them recite a prayer. They recited a prayer and the evangelist said, You are saved and that's a false gospel.

Raising your hand in an evangelistic meeting, any active man added to the gospel gives you a gospel of sacramental salvation. The prosperity gospel. This adds prosperity. You're not saved unless you're prosperous. You're not saved unless your prayers are all answered.

You have all kinds of people who've embraced the prosperity gospel. If they don't get healed, they think it's because they're not saved. Or if they don't become prosperous, there's something wrong with their faith. The preachers of this false gospel spend their time, you know, talking about temporal success and character development and financial acquisition instead of personal sanctification by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. There's a social gospel, number four.

This false gospel is growing by leaps and bounds in the younger generation right now. They care more about earthly deprivation than they do eternal deliverance. And this gospel says that you're saved by doing works of social righteousness. And if you save society, then you will be saved. If you clean up yourself and clean up society, you'll be clean.

This is the heart of Unitarianism. And some of the proponents of the Social Gospel think that if you recycle or if you stop global warming or you stop AIDS, then you will be acceptable to God. You know, I think we're very well aware of that tendency. Number five, the signs and wonders, the signs and wonders in tongues gospel. These groups teach that you're not saved unless you speak in tongues and prophesy or get slain in the Spirit.

And if you've gone to a church like that, you've encountered a false gospel. You know, I've had quite a number of discussions with people who claim that you're not saved unless you speak in tongues. This is a signs and wonders, tongues gospel. Number six, the self-esteem gospel. The self-esteem gospel teaches that salvation makes a better you.

And it's the gospel of Joel Osteen in Houston. And, you know, you have thousands and thousands of people show up and instead of being shown that they're sinners, they're told that they're part of this you know factory of human potential and you're just so beautiful. You are so wonderful. Come and discover the beautiful you that resides inside and instead of explaining how bankrupt we are and how needful we are of the grace of Jesus Christ, the self-esteem gospel wants to build you up so that you can be more effective. It's a false gospel.

The Roman Catholic gospel. In Roman Catholicism, Christ is not our only mediator and the propitiatory sacrifice for sin must be offered by an invention of man. It must be offered by priests. The Eucharist must be taken. But the Bible says that Christ is the only mediator.

But in Roman Catholicism the church is the mediator between God and man. In Vatican II we learn that the sacrifice of the priests is in the name of the whole church and that serving of the Lord's Supper achieves salvation. This is a false gospel. There always have been attempts to bring the Roman Church together with the Protestant Church. It really, in America, began by Billy Graham.

Billy Graham began to have alliances with the Roman Church long, long ago. He began a very dangerous alliance with the Roman Church. Number eight, the lawless antinomian gospel. The lawless antinomian gospel rejects the words of the Lord and the Apostle Paul on the matter of obedience. And it's exemplified by people who continually sow in the flesh and they think that they are saved, they do not view the gospel as something that transforms your life and that you're To be set free from the law means you can do anything, say anything, be anything you want.

And by the way, all the letters to the church totally contradict this. Galatians follows the same pattern. The first part is about the power of the gospel. The second part is about how obedience to Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit changes your life. And you don't lie like you used to break the commandments of God.

Then there's a pluralistic love gospel. I'm just going to mention several. Number 10, there's the family gospel. In this gospel you're saved because your father is saved. And there's this whole idea that salvation follows the family line.

And there's some Presbyterians who embrace this by baptizing their children and believing that they're saved. It's a family gospel. There are many different kinds of gospels. There's a man-centered gospel which presents the gospel in a way that's palatable to the people. People's ears, tickling their ears, making them feel good, giving them what they want to hear.

You know, hundreds and hundreds of churches were founded on this principle. They're called secret-sensitive churches. They pretty much started by saying, hey, what do the people want? We'll give it to them. It's a man-centered gospel.

There are gospels of angels, there's just many, many different kinds of gospels. I'm not going to list all of them, but there are enough gospels for every personality type in the world. The devil is wise in that sense. But if you step back and look, the core of false gospels is that man seeks for grace and peace apart from Jesus Christ. And they add a little or subtract a little to suit their fancies and In the end they don't get grace or peace of the Lord Jesus Christ but they get a cheap substitute of it.

And it doesn't have that sweet taste that the true gospel does, that the Apostle Paul was talking about when he said grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's the first 10 verses and then let's just keep moving on we're going to work work our way through the rest of the book here. You'll see an outline in front of you in the second section here, Making Known a Gospel Not of Men, which begins in chapter 1 verse 11 and to chapter 2 verse 10. Here in this section, Paul tells the story of his conversion and how the gospel was made known. He says, but I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.

For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ." In other words, the gospel that Paul is speaking of did not come to him from man. The Lord Jesus Christ gave it to him personally. And then he speaks of false brethren that have come in who are spying out their liberty that they have in Jesus Christ. And Paul talks about how vigorously he opposed these who were bringing that false gospel. In this verse where he said, we did not yield submission even to an hour that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

So Paul opposed this false gospel vigorously. And then in the next section, there's an identification of the conflicts from this false gospel. And Paul tells the story of him having to face Peter with this hypocrisy because Peter was countenancing the law more than he ought, and he was actually trying to fit in with his brethren. And the apostle Paul confronts him there. The key verse in chapter 2 is in verse 16.

And this is one of the really critical verses in the entire book that brings the whole message together. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, Even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified." So this is the classic central verse for justification by faith that exposes the critical element of every false gospel. Every false gospel believes that you can be justified by the works of the law, by doing some good thing. But he says, no, no man is justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

And then verse 20, just below it, is also really critical. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who 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 for me." And so here he's speaking of the absolute sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And where does any good thing come from?

It comes from Jesus Christ alone. Christ who lives in me. And he says, in the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. I don't live by faith in myself. I don't live by faith in my performances.

I don't live by anything that I do. I trust in Jesus Christ and Him alone. His sacrifice is sufficient and no works of man are necessary to achieve salvation. And if you look at the major world religions, you'll always find works of the law as the things that justify. And then he speaks of their being bewitched by another gospel in chapter 3 verse 10 in the fourth part of your outline.

He says, "'O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth?'" Now think about how radical this language is. I mean, all they did, they just added a little bit to Christ, right? Christ was still there. They were still talking about Christ and still quoting the Bible, but he says, who has bewitched you? And we should be like the Apostle Paul in this sense.

We should not be playing patty cake with the cults and flattering them in any way at all. Even when they quote Christ, the Apostle Paul says, who has bewitched you, oh foolish Galatians. Any time there's this mixing, you have to recognize it is foolishness and it is a bewitching that's taken place. And then in verse 5 he explains why, therefore he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles in you, Does He do it by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith? And He's just making this, or asking this question that has an obvious answer.

And the answer is that no, No miracles happen in your life. Nothing has changed at all unless it's a work of faith. And all the good deeds and all the good intentions of the cults are totally meaningless. So that's why he says, oh foolish Galatians. And then he gives the example of Abraham.

And he gives the example of Abraham to prove that God has always saved people in the same way. God didn't save people in the Old Testament in a different way than he saved them in the New Testament. He didn't save them by the law in the Old Testament, and then by grace in the New. That's a completely wrong proposition. And so that's why he says, just as Abraham believed God in chapter 3 verse 6, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

In other words, it was his belief that God made him righteous. It wasn't because of his works, it was by faith. He believed. Therefore, know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, In you all the nations shall be blessed.

So Abraham's salvation, before the law was given, right, Abraham was before the law, He was justified, not by the law, but by faith. And everyone who's ever been saved has been saved by faith, just like Abraham. And people who want to make too clean a division between the Old and the New Testament have to recognize that salvation has always been by faith. And Abraham is the proof of it. And he says here The Gospel was preached to Abraham.

What was the Gospel? Faith. Not by works, but by faith alone. And then he says in verse 7, Therefore know that only those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham. And what is the Gospel that he's speaking about?

Well, it's the Gospel through which all the nations shall be blessed. The promise of Abraham. The promise of Abraham foretells the outpouring of the Spirit and the power of the Gospel among the Gentiles. So Abraham was saved and his salvation was a foretelling of the way that the Gentiles would receive the Gospel by faith, by faith alone. All the families of the earth shall be blessed and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in verse 8.

So this in chapter 3 is a prophecy of salvation of the Gentiles. And then the next element in your outline, chapter 3 verse 10 through 26, This is the whole subject of being redeemed from the curse of the law. And verse 9, he says, So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue in the things which are written in the book of the law to do them, but that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evidence for the just shall live by faith." There it is, the just shall live by faith. And that was true of Abraham and it's true of every person who has ever been saved.

And then he speaks of the purpose of the law here and he speaks of the law as a tutor in the Old Covenant, but again he's speaking about the fact that man is not justified by the law. And he speaks of this misuse of the law. The Judaizers were misusing the law. They were pretending that you could get some kind of favor from God by keeping a law of God. And that was their great heresy.

The purpose of the law begins to be spoken of in verse 19, it was added because of transgressions. Why did God give the law? Because of transgressions. Because the law convicts the heart of sin. The law speaks to your life and exposes who you really are.

That's the value of the law. It compares your heart with God's heart because God is the one who gave the law. Every law is good like the Apostle Paul said to Timothy. He said the law is good if you use it lawfully, But it's good when it convicts the heart. It counteracts a corrupt conscience.

The Word of God is designed to reshape your conscience, which has been corrupted through sin. And the law is like the Rosetta Stone. It's the thing that you translate everything else from and to tell you how far off you are. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ said, do not think that I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law until all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven." So if you break the law and you teach men to break the law, you're least in the kingdom of heaven. So the purpose of the law is to expose sin. And then he says, but I say to you, unless your righteousness succeeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Well the righteousness of the Pharisees was based on their law keeping, not by faith.

That's the whole point. The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 verse 12, he said, the law is holy, just, and good. The law is good and it's holy. It's perfectly pure, but it has its purpose. And you know this is why the Apostle Paul said in Romans 7 22, he said he delights in the law of God because of its power.

Its power to expose sin and to drive him to Jesus Christ. The beauty of the law is that it convicts, but it also points you to Jesus Christ, your only hope, because nobody ever was able to keep the law. The Bible says if you break one law you've broken them all. So you're hopeless to achieve any righteousness by the law. And that's why Paul said, I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" So the law is good for one thing, to convict you of sin and turn you to God, and particularly to show you the depth of your sin so that you understand that you're hopeless without Jesus Christ. When you read the law and you're convicted, it should just show you that you're hopeless without Christ and you flee to Christ. That's the purpose of it. A theologian of the English Revival in the 18th century, Charles Simeon, said this, In order to establish the perpetuity of the law as a rule of life, let it be remembered that the law is a perfect transcript of the mind and the will of God. Now, where did the law come from?

It came from God. Every law is good, every law is a law of love, and the Apostle Paul is dissecting these things in the book of Galatians. You know, what is law and what is grace and how are the two harmoniously working? And he speaks of this harmony between the law of God and the promises of God in verse 21. Is the law then against the promises of God?

Certainly not. All the promises of God are in agreement with the law. They work hand in hand. The law convicts and the promises save. The law shows you how bad you are.

The promises show you how good God is to save you. And this was God's promise to Abraham. The just shall live by faith, not the works of the law. And the law doesn't give life. Look at verse 21 in that same chapter.

For if there had been a law given which would have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. So the law doesn't give you spiritual life. It does teach you how to obey God, but it doesn't teach you how to be saved, except that it drives you to Jesus Christ. So the law shows us sin, it terrifies us, it constrains us, it teaches us how to hate sin. You know, The law in some way is a way of sort of keeping us imprisoned until we come to Christ.

The law teaches us not to do evil and it constrains us. And it constrains us there until we come to Jesus Christ. And it protects us from foolish things that would harm us for the long term. In verse 23 we learn that the law keeps unbelievers under guard. You know God gives his laws, they constrain evil, and it guards unbelievers.

But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law for, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed. So the law, The law even keeps unbelievers from doing things that would mess them up. And, you know, of course this is the purpose of many of our civil laws. They keep us from doing things we shouldn't do so that we don't harm ourselves and others, mainly others. So then in chapter 3 verse 27, this whole matter of redemption that we are redeemed as sons, and this beautiful statement in verse 6 of chapter 4, And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father.

Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." What a remarkable picture of something that happens to the believer. The Spirit of Jesus cries out within you saying Abba Father. If you're a Christian you know this, you know. You know, you fall into bed and you say, Abba Father. You review your day and you, you know, you may regret different things, but you cry out to God and you say, Abba Father.

It's the spirit that He gave you that does that. When you have that happening, it bears witness that you're a Christian because your spirit is crying out to God as Father. In chapter 4, 22 through 31, there's the whole idea of casting out the bond woman and He's speaking of two covenants the old covenant and the new covenant The old covenant symbolized by Ishmael who is the flesh he's unbelief He despises the covenant of God with Abraham. He's out of control. He's his own man.

That's Ishmael. Ishmael is the son of the bond woman. And it's a family who's obedient on the outside but has no faith on the inside. That's what Ishmael is symbolizing. There are always two sons in the Bible.

There's Cain and there's Abel, there's Isaac and Ishmael, there's Jacob and Esau. And, you know, you have the formalist Son on the one hand and the Son who really believes with all of his heart and has joy inexpressible in the things of God. You always have these two kinds of sons put before you. And so you've got this language of the bondwoman and her son. In chapter 5 there's this appeal to stand fast in the liberty of the gospel by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again into the yoke of bondage.

So he's speaking about this idea of being entangled, but then he turns to how the law is applied, and how it's a law of liberty, and he says in chapter 5 verse 13, don't use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another. And then he says, for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law is fulfilled in one word, love. Every word of the Old Testament, every word of the New Testament is fulfilled with this one single word, love. You might read a law of God and think, that doesn't sound like love to me.

You're wrong. The reason it doesn't sound like love to you is because you're so corrupt. You don't understand the mind of God. Because in the mind of God, he delivers his law, and every law is a law of love. And then he speaks about different ways that the law of God is broken.

If you bite and devour one another, you'll be consumed by one another. And then he speaks of the deeds of the flesh and the deeds of the Spirit. And the deeds of the flesh are the breaking of the law of God. The deeds of the Spirit are fulfilling all the laws of God. And then in chapter 6, there are various really practical things about walking in the spirit of the gospel.

And it begins with a reality that you observe in the church, and that is the reality of someone who's overtaken by sin. And he says, Brethren, if any man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." And so there's a way that we deal with one another when we fall into sin. There's a spirit of gentleness, and there's also a spirit of humility. Look to yourself.

Recognize how you've sinned that same way. And then there is self-examination in verse 4, let each man examine his own work. And then he speaks of behavior toward those who teach you. Let him who has taught the word share all good things with him who teaches. Then doing good to the church, therefore as we have an opportunity in verse 10, let us do good to all especially to those who are of the household of faith.

And then the apostle ends with what really is a summary statement of everything he's been saying in verse 14. But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. But as many as walk according to this rule peace and mercy be upon them and upon the God of Israel and then he concludes it by saying brethren the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

And so the Apostle Paul ends with what is the heart of Christianity, the cross of Jesus Christ. That's why he said God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not boasting in my works, not boasting in my wisdom, not boasting in anything that I've ever thought or done, not thinking that my superior thoughts, not thinking that my Superior passion for God saves me. It doesn't. You see your lack of passion for God, recognize your only hope is the passion of Jesus Christ.

God places His passion upon yours and sees you as passionate in that sense because He imputes His righteousness to you and He did that on the cross. While the law has power to condemn, it does not have power to save. But the cross and the cross alone is our hope for peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And so what do we say about all this? One thing, Jesus Christ is the only worthy object of our worship.

And when we think about our sins, when we think about our lives, It's so critical that Jesus Christ is the center of it all. Your works is not the center of your faith. The kind of church you go to is the center of your faith. It's Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. That's why Paul said, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of Christ.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for sending your Son. We thank you that it was His work done on the cross that has secured our peace. Oh Lord, that you would draw us near, that you would fulfill all of your law in us, and that you would give us strength to trust in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, and that we would believe in Him, that we would trust in Him for everything that we are. Amen.

So there is Galatians, liberty, the perfect law of liberty. Delivery.