In the sermon 'How to Stand Fast in the Liberty of the Gospel' by Scott Brown, the speaker delves into Galatians chapter 5, marking a transition in Paul's letter. The sermon outlines how Paul defends the Gospel, beginning with his apostleship in chapters 1 and 2, moving into the doctrine of justification by faith in chapters 3 and 4, and finally addressing the application of the Gospel in daily life. Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of standing fast in the liberty provided by Christ, which frees believers from the bondage of the law. The sermon warns against two dangers: legalism and licentiousness, and discusses the significance of the Spirit in guiding believers. The speaker highlights the futility of relying on legalistic practices like circumcision for justification, urging believers to recognize the true freedom that comes from Christ alone. The sermon urges listeners to identify and reject false teachings, maintain hope in righteousness, and not use Christian liberty as an excuse for sin. Ultimately, the message encourages believers to embrace their freedom in Christ by living a life of love that fulfills the law.

So with Galatians chapter 5 we come to a transition point in the letter. And what we've been going through so far is the Apostle Paul's defense of the Gospel of Christ. And he defends the Gospel in a number of ways. First of all, in chapters 1 and 2, he defends his apostleship, and he's establishing his authority as an apostle to preach the gospel and to interpret it. And so chapters one and two are biographical.

And in those chapters, he frames the problem. And he does it in the telling of the story of his own life. And then in chapters three and four, Paul defends the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And this is really sort of the theological section of Galatians. And he's explaining the solution to the problem that he's already presented in the first two chapters.

So you can see how Galatians is arranged. It's really in three chunks of two chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are biographical and explain Paul's authority as an apostle. Secondly, the next two are theological, and they really explain the doctrine of justification by faith, and particularly the distinct purpose of the law to drive us to Christ. The law is like a dog that yips at our heels to drive us to Christ, to show us how sinful we are.

It makes it like we're totally bankrupt. And that's what the law is supposed to do. And so now, the apostle turns to the application of everything that he's said up to now. So now this is the application of the Gospel. And the focus is on what do you do with the law?

How do you apply the law? How do you apply the Gospel in everyday life? And so where we're going with this, we have just four more sermons left in Galatians. Today is this whole life of freedom, that we're free. We'll spend the whole time today just talking about what does it mean to be free from the law.

And then In verses 14 to 26, it's a life that's controlled by the Spirit. And here we find that the Spirit of God enlivens us and shows us how to obey the law. And then in chapter 6 verses 1 through 10, it's a life of love. And then in the final section, it's a life of boasting in the cross, verses 11 through 18 in chapter 6. So that's where we're going.

A life of freedom, a life in the spirit, a life of love, and a life of boasting in the cross. That's the rest of Galatians. So that's where we're headed here. And in all of this, what we find in this last section, it becomes very clear that there are two dangers in the Christian life. One is legalism, and the other one is licentiousness.

And the Apostle Paul holds both of them before us. It shows us the problems of both. That's the book of Galatians. So today we're asking the question, how do we apply the gospel? How do we apply the gospel?

And you have an outline in front of you that'll help you walk through this thinking. The first way that you apply the gospel, and this is so exciting, this is so wonderful, you stand fast. You stand fast in the liberty that makes you free. In verse 1, Paul says, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Now look, you know, as we try to do every time we're together, let's look at the sentences carefully.

Let's look at the words. Let's pick out the important words that help us know what the logical progression is and what Paul is trying to accomplish. Well, of course, again, as we see so many times in Paul's writings, we see the word therefore. Stand fast, therefore. Now, what this means is Paul is now summing up.

He's now, this verse here is kind of a transitional hinge point verse that collects everything up before and then it sort of states it and then casts a vision for what's coming. So 5-1 is a hinge point in the book, and the subject matter is kind of changing, and Paul is now saying, okay, here's what you do about it. And so the message this morning is all about what do you do. This will be the question we'll ask every week until we're done with the book of Galatians. What do you do with the law?

What do you do with the grace of God? And that's what Paul is answering here. So he's explaining what kind of liberty We have. He's already explained some of this already. That We are liberated from the bondage of a bad conscience.

We're liberated from wrath. We're liberated from sort of a lifeless life of just going through the motions. But we have something more. We have the Spirit of Jesus Christ in our hearts, crying out, Abba Father. He's in us.

He's crying out. And it means that we've been set free from not having that voice in us at all to help us to bring us along. And so he says that we're safe from all these things, and he says that we should not be entangled again. Do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. And he uses a word that little boys I'm sure would love, a word entangled.

It has to do with being caught by a net or a cord. You know, if you've ever tried to catch something with a net, have you ever tried to catch chickens by a net? I have. Once you throw that net over the chicken, he's history, unless he gets away again. And then you're running.

But he gives us this image of capturing something with a net, throwing it over, and then now it's hard to get out. So he says, don't be entangled like that anymore. I love the way the second London Baptist confession explains the freedom from the law. It's so beautiful and I'm just going to run through the way the second London Baptist confession explains it because it's not only accurate but it's so wonderful the way it is explained. Paragraph one.

The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the severity and curse of the law. It is a deliverance from this present evil world. It's deliverance from bondage of Satan. It's deliverance from the dominion of sin. That's what it means to be free from the bondage of the law.

It's deliverance from evil affections. It's deliverance from the sting of death and the victory over the grave. They quote 1 Corinthians 15, 54 through 57. So then this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which give us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." They go on and say that it's deliverance from everlasting damnation. And quoting 2 Thessalonians 1 verse 10, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe, because our testimony among you was believed in that day, delivered from damnation, promised glorification.

They say that it also gives us free access to God and delivers us out of slavish fear. Quoting Romans 8.15, you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry out, Abba, Father. And so the second London Baptist confession goes on and on explaining the kind of freedom that God has given us. And so what the Apostle Paul is saying is don't be entangled with this kind of bondage. The bondage of discouragement that you cannot keep the law.

The bondage of fear of death. The bondage of fear of condemnation. That's the kind of freedom that Christ has set us free for. He hasn't set us free to do our own thing. He set us free from the bondage of death and the condemnation of the law.

Because the Lord Jesus Christ kept the whole law for us, and because he did, then we're free. That's the basis of our freedom. I read a number of commentaries on this text this week and the commentators wax eloquent in this whole matter. They go on and on about what we've been set free from and what we are set free to do. One commentator says, what kind of freedom is it?

Liberty to pray, Liberty to enter heaven. And how did He set us free? By His merit. By His blood. And so here what we find in this first exhortation is to Stand fast in the liberty.

Stand fast in the liberty so that you would truly be free. He gives a picture of, it's like a soldier standing guard. We have to always guard our hearts for slipping back into the idea that we can be justified by any point of the law. You know, there are so many ways that people try to justify themselves. They try to hide their guilt, they try to push it down.

There are so many ways. I don't know if you read in the news last week, in New York, a criminal was abducted, and the evidence was in his hand. It was a flash drive. And he took the evidence of his guilt and he swallowed it. He swallowed the flash drive.

He swallowed his guilt and there it was in his stomach. And believe me, they got it. They got the evidence, okay? But the evidence will always come out. You can't swallow it.

You can't push it down. You're guilty. You're damned without the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's why you're free, is because He shed His blood. You've been trying to swallow your guilt.

Forget it. Let Christ take that guilt away. So what kind of freedom? It's a beautiful freedom. But all again, you know, the apostle is, he's instructing us how we apply the gospel.

And the first is that we stand fast. Secondly, we apply the gospel by facing a really important reality. And that is circumcision profits nothing. Now circumcision is code. It's code for everything, everything that you might use to try to justify yourself before God.

It might be your baptism. It might be the aisle you walk down. Whatever it might be, whatever you do to try to justify your salvation, if it's not Jesus Christ and His blood alone, it profits you nothing. So Paul says you apply the gospel here by facing this fact. And so he says, indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.

And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace." Now those are very terrifying things that he's saying to these dear Galatian believers. But what he's saying is that anything, your baptism, your circumcision, your niceness, whatever it is, is nothing. It's absolutely nothing.

And you know, this is very clear already to us in the Old Testament. We know that both Isaac and Ishmael were both circumcised. It didn't do Ishmael a would-of-good to be circumcised spiritually. So were Jacob and Esau. There you have, in these two families, the believers and unbelievers both circumcised.

It did them no good. What are the modern equivalents of circumcision? You need to think about that. Or what are they in your own heart? Maybe the popular ones are not the ones for you that you try to hang your salvation on.

Some think that they were saved because they prayed a prayer. Some think that they were saved because they prayed a prayer. Some think that they were saved because they walked down an aisle. Some think that they are saved because they've always kept the Sabbath, and they've had a good attendance record at their church. These are salvation by the elements of the world.

This is the salvation of Islam. This is the salvation of Mormonism. This is the salvation of the Church of Christ, which believes that you're not saved unless you're baptized. This is that same Galatian idolatry in the church today. You see it in the world religions and you also see it in subsets of what is so-called Christianity.

It's not Christianity. You see it in the United Pentecostal movement, which believes that you must be baptized and you must speak in tongues or you are not saved. The United Pentecostals, they have a full baptism tank in their churches at all times and they threaten people, say, if you don't get baptized, You're not saved. Don't leave here without getting baptized, because that will save you. This is the Galatian heresy.

This is the same old thing warmed over in modern religions, which have millions of adherents. But it's not so simple as that. We've already learned from Paul that the Galatian heresy is in all the pagan religions as well. The pagans live this way too. They do whatever they can to justify themselves, to shine themselves up, to make themselves look cool enough, to feel good enough about themselves, so that they know that they're really the good old boys.

But the Apostle Paul says, it prophets you nothing. It absolutely prophets you nothing. The Apostle Paul uses this term 25 times in his writings. And So what he is saying is that if you believe that circumcision profits, it profits you nothing. What Paul is saying here is not that it's wrong to circumcise.

What he's saying is that if you believe that circumcision profits you anything, you are sadly mistaken. And that's the same thing with baptism. If you think your baptism saved you, if you think your baptism added one single thing to your salvation, you are sadly mistaken. Does that mean that we don't baptize? No, we're commanded to be baptized.

But what Paul is saying is if you think that because you're baptized, you're saved, think again. And so Paul is not rejecting circumcision, but he is rejecting the idea that trusts in it in any way. If you walk the aisle and you think it merited you something, you're mistaken. If you go to church, it'll profit you nothing unless your salvation rests entirely on the blood of Jesus Christ. If you dress modestly and obey God in that, it profits you nothing.

It's a good thing. It ought to be done, just like baptism should be done, but It profits you nothing. It's only an application of the Gospel. It's not the Gospel itself. He says here it makes you a debtor to the law.

And Paul is saying that if you get circumcised and you think it makes you righteous, it really throws you into having to keep the whole law, and you can't. You're a debtor to the whole law. If you think that one thing will help you, then you have to think that everything helps you, and you can't keep everything. You are headed for hell if you trust in any of these things. And what he says here is that it makes you estranged from Christ.

That's how serious it is. In verse 4, he says, you become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. He's saying that you are falling from this principle of the grace of God. And that if you're working for your salvation, you are estranged.

I would just say If you're working for your salvation, you were never saved in the first place. We know that we are elect for all eternity and we cannot fall out of salvation. And that's why Jesus said, I give them eternal life in John 10, 28, That they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and the Father are one." Jesus makes it very clear that when you are elect, you are elect for all eternity.

Here though, there were people who were pretending to be justified, but they were not justified at all. And they appeared to be falling out of the faith, but actually they were into something that was not faith at all. Paul repeats this at the very end of Galatians. Go ahead and look with me at chapter 6 verse 15. Because Paul comes back and he underlines this at the very end of the book.

He says, For in Christ, Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. And as many as walk According to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." And that's how he ends the letter. So he begins this discussion, this last area of application, and really ends it with the same theme.

So how do I apply the Gospel? First, I stand fast in the liberty. I am so aware of what God has delivered me from. And secondly, I face a really important reality, in that there's not one act of righteousness that can add anything to my salvation. And He gives circumcision as the example for that.

And then how do you apply the Gospel? Number three, that you hold on to a sure hope, and it's the hope of righteousness. It's the hope of final glorification. You see yourself in your sins. You see yourself trying to justify yourself, but you know your only hope is the redemption of Jesus Christ on that last day.

And so you have hope. There's hope for you. You may have thought many times this week, there's no hope for me. I can't keep the law. There's no hope for me.

Not true. And so the Apostle is helping you try to apply the Gospel. You apply it by maintaining this hope, this eager waiting for hope. He says, for we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness By faith. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.

Here's the life of waiting. Right? We're waiting. Have you ever just got so frustrated with yourself and you said, Oh Lord, how long? When is my head going to clear up?

Why am I such a lughead? Why am I such a sinner? Why do I keep repeating these things? And here the Apostle is saying, here's how you apply the Gospel. Remember the hope.

Remember what God is doing. He who began a good work in you will perfect it. He will complete it. And here he makes it very clear. We're eagerly awaiting for the hope of righteousness by faith.

And so this has to do with our whole disposition about life. If you find yourself crushed by the law, then you're not thinking about the law right. If it steals all of your hope, then there's a sinful way that you're looking at the law. And so the Apostle is saying you apply the gospel by holding on to the hope and to remember that our transgressions have been totally blotted out to remember that it is by faith that we were saved not by any work of the law and so then how do you apply the gospel you identify false teachers. That's the next thing that Paul moves to.

You identify the false teachers. You put your finger on what is wrong, where the false doctrine is. And here the Apostle Paul gets pretty tough. So he says in verse 7, You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off.

Now Paul is using really dramatic language here, okay? I mean, you ran well, who hindered you? First thing that false teachers do is they hinder you from obeying the truth. And Paul takes a word from the running games in Greece to help explain this. He takes the pagan Grecian Olympics and an image and a word that was used there to explain what he means.

Now, he says that they have hindered, somebody has hindered them. Who has hindered you? And he's asking them to identify that person or those people. Who is hindering you? Now, in the Greek games, the running races weren't run on oval tracks, like we're familiar with, but the runners would run to a post and come around it.

And so the apostle Paul is using a word that runners had to consider when they were getting around that post and trying to win the race. Cutting in is the word. Who was cutting in? And so a runner would often cut in in order to win the race and knock his opponent down. We've even seen that in modern Olympics, where somebody trips over someone else's foot.

That's the idea. Who cut in? Who cut in and hindered you and knocked you out of the race? That's the idea that he's communicating here. So you would try to get around the post to gain advantage.

You would cut in. So it's the idea of cutting off. So he's talking about getting cut off. And someone that entered into the picture that cut you off from the knowledge of the gospel of the grace of God. And he's saying, what is the truth?

What is the truth that they did not obey? It's the truth of the mercy of God. Those who cut the Galatians off would not let them remember the overwhelming grace of God for all of their sins. And they are obsessed with this point or that point of the law and when it was broken. And that's why the apostle says, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth?

That's why he said, I'm afraid for you. You've fallen from grace. He says all these very staggering things because somebody has cut in. Somebody has hindered you. Who has hindered you?

We've already mentioned some of the great hinders, the very popular hinders of our times right now. The United Pentecostals, the Church of Christ, the Mormons, and then all the great pagan religions like Islam and Hinduism. Buddhism is nothing more than the Galatian heresy warmed over. It's the same thing. Make sacrifices, control your mind, Get it together.

That's the religion of Tiger Woods. The religion of Tiger Woods is, I'm going to try again next time. That's his religion. But The religion of Jesus Christ is, I'm saved by grace alone and by faith. I am helpless.

Only God can change me. Only God can atone for my sins. That's the religion of Jesus Christ. So here, the false teachers are hindering, and they're hindering the obedience to something. And that is obedience to the grace of God.

And then also false teachers do something else. They introduce leaven. He talks about the leaven, that leavens the whole lump in verse 9. And what is leaven? What is leaven?

Well, leaven is disobedience, overwhelmingly, in the testimony of the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy chapter 16, verses 2 through 4, we cover this already in our studies in Deuteronomy, that 11 is a symbol of sin, and it represents the spread of sin. You know how the Jews would try to identify sin in their households. They performed a symbolic ceremony to help them get rid of sin. Because we should be getting rid of sin.

That's the right thing. Because a little bit of sin causes sin to run in a family. So what Hebrews would do is they would take leaven and they would sprinkle it on the house. And they would use it to teach the whole family that there is sin everywhere in this house. And then they would sweep it up.

The family would sweep up the leaven, these impetuses of sin that are there. They would identify it, They'd sweep it up, and they would take it out and burn it. And that was a symbol of the sinfulness of sin, the destructiveness of a sin. And it's right that families should look for every sin that's in their family. But what do they do with it?

They take it and they burn it. And so the apostle here is using this idea of leaven. And just a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. That's what he's saying. Just a little bit of false doctrine, Just a trace of it.

And particularly in this area of the Gospel, leavens the whole lump, and it makes it all sinful. You probably know people who say doctrine doesn't matter. Maybe you know people who say, I used to be in a church that was doctrinally oriented, but I no longer have use for doctrine. All I want is love. These people are completely wrong.

Because doctrine does matter. Because a little leaven leavens the whole lump. It matters. And anytime someone says that to you, go to Galatians chapter 5. Because what Paul is saying is that a little bit wrong in the doctrine of grace makes sin out of the whole lump.

And so he's speaking of the enormous significance of false doctrine. There are a number of these appearances of leaven in the modern church today. There's the leaven of the federal vision. They've just changed justification a little bit. They said, you know, the Reformers were all wrong about justification.

Let us tell you about it now. And they're redefining the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It's leaven. It's leaven in the church. And it leavens the whole lump.

The Apostle Paul said when he was dealing with this in chapter 2 verse 5 of Galatians, he said, we did not yield for even one hour. Not even for one hour. And that means that we have to be about defending the Gospel, or ever it's misunderstood. We defend it with Scripture and Scripture alone. The false teachers here are bringing this leaven into the church.

And they are also troubling, it says in verse 12. They are troubling you. I wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off. Now, Paul is using a very violent and crude illustration here. And he's talking about those who think that they're saved by circumcision.

He says, if you think that you're served by circumcision, just cut it all off. Just go the whole way. He's mocking them. It's kind of like if you think that plucking your eye out is going to make you whole, just chop your whole head off. That's the idea.

If you think circumcision does it, just completely emasculate yourself. That's the idea. And he uses also a term of a riot, of an urban uprising. Not only does he use this very startling illustration of cutting these things, he also talks about those who would trouble you. It's a very dramatic term that he uses.

It's used in Acts 17 verse 6 and Acts 21 verse 38. And it's the image of a riot in an urban setting. It's an image of a gigantic uproaring in tumult. Who has troubled you? These things are of enormous significance for Paul.

And then he says this. He talks about the persecution that he's getting over all these things. In verse 11 he says, "'And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution?' Then the offense of the cross has ceased." Now why did he say that? Why did he say that? Well, there are a number of reasons that he brings this up.

One is the Jews were offering immunity from persecution if you got circumcised. That was your card to get out of persecution. Hey, I'm circumcised! You could be in the church, you could worship with the family of God, but you could escape the persecution of the Jews by getting circumcised to make yourself acceptable to them. How often does that happen?

How we try to escape persecution by some outward thing that we're doing. And that's what the Apostle Paul is talking about. And, you know, walking in liberty doesn't mean that everyone will love you. Walking in liberty often means that people will hate you and persecute you. And this is what was happening to Paul.

You know, on the contrary, if you believe in the true grace of God, then there will be persecution. The world will hate you. The sons of the bondwoman, as we learned last week, are always persecuting the sons of the free woman. That will never change. If you think that Liberty in Christ means there's no persecution.

You've made a wrong connection. Because Liberty in Christ means you will be persecuted. Because the sons of the bondwoman will persecute you. And So he speaks of the offense of the cross. He says the offense of the cross has ceased.

Why does he talk about the offense of the cross? He uses, again, another dramatic word. The scandal of the cross. It's scandalous. And Why is the cross so scandalous?

And why do people hate the cross? The people hate the cross because it tells them how great of sinners they are and how great a Savior Christ is. The cross means that all of your sins were nailed there. The cross means that you are despicable. The cross means that your sins are wretched.

The cross means that you sent Jesus to die and hang and bleed for your sins. That's what the cross means. See, the cross isn't very flattering. The cross doesn't say, I'm okay, You're okay. The cross says, we are all hopeless.

And that's why people hate the cross. And that's why it's so much easier to just go get circumcised, just go get baptized, just pray a prayer, Just walk an aisle. But that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is that you are despicably wretched and your only hope is the blood-bought life that Christ brings. So he uses this whole idea of the scandal, the stumbling block, the offense of the cross.

Now, here he's really pulling out all artillery to defend the Gospel of Christ. He's talking about the leaven. The leaven that leavens the whole lump. The misunderstanding of the Gospel that is so devastating. And just a little bit changes the whole lot.

That's the whole context of this idea of identifying the false teachers. You have to be able to identify the false doctrine that is in the Church. Today is a day as well, in the same way as it was in the days of the Galatians, where we must defend the true Gospel of Christ. The greatest battle in the Church today really is a battle for the Gospel, because we've traded the true Gospel for a false one. And so many of the problems in the Church today are related right back to a false Gospel that has been communicated.

It's a man-centered Gospel that's believed in the church today. It's not a gospel that exalts Almighty God and His omnipotent power to save men, but it's a gospel where men save themselves. It's a cheap substitute because it fails to show man who he really is. And it's designed to exalt man. If you go into most churches today, you're going to get a Gospel that exalts man.

It exalts man's needs and tries somehow to meet them. It brings him improvement. A false gospel is just constantly trying to bring something to exalt man, to bring about his happiness, to make him feel better about himself, to fix his marriage. Of course, the commands of God are all for that. But the salvation of God is none of that.

And so we have a Gospel today that says that man has the ability to receive Christ whenever he wants to. That somehow the only one who's movable is man. That God doesn't move, that God doesn't reach out and save, but man reaches to God and saves. That's the Armenian Gospel. And The difference between Arminianism and Calvinism is that Arminianism says that God enables man to save himself.

Whereas Calvinism says that God saves and God alone. That's the difference. Arminianism makes man a contributor to salvation. J.I. Packer explains it this way.

Where the Arminian says, I owe my election to my faith, The Calvinist says, I owe my faith to my election. These two concepts of election are very far apart. One is man-centered. One is man-activated. One is man-secured.

The other is totally of God. The other assumes the total bankruptcy of the human heart. While Arminianism assumes that there's something that man can do, that he can somehow accept Christ, that he can make that decision, that God is not sovereign over his salvation, that God has not elected him from the foundation of the world, but that somewhere along the line, God is waiting with His hands wringing, oh, please, come. The Arminian says, I decided for Christ. I made up my mind.

I checked it out. I did my research. The Calvinist says, "'Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast-bound in sin in nature's night. Thine eyes diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flamed with light.

My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee." And so we preach the false Gospel when we flatter sinners so much to say that they can choose God, that they can be saved if they want to. And we flatter ourselves when we say, if I just would say it this way, if we would just give them a certain experience, they would be saved. If they could just hear a certain kind of preaching or have a certain kind of entertaining package.

That's a man-centered gospel. Somehow God is frozen. He can't do anything. Poor God. He needs you.

He needs you to save yourself. At the same time, we find in parallel the urgent call of the Gospel. We see from Scripture That we must appeal to one another to be saved. That we call and we beg God to bring salvation to sinners. And we look one another in the eye and we say, be saved from this perverse generation.

Those two things are the true gospel. So we're not like the hyper-Calvinists who say, we say nothing. We make no appeals. That's wicked. That is so sinful.

There's the universal appeal to the gospel, to all men and women. Only God knows who He will bring, but the call must be given. How will they hear without a preacher? That's the other side of it. We appeal to men, but only God can save them.

We always appeal. We always cry out for salvation by grace alone. And we should never be silent about that. And never ever think, if I keep my mouth shut, they'll be saved anyway. Again, we have this antinomy of the sovereignty of God.

Two things seem to be contradictory, but they're not. They are consistent, and they're both necessary. Both God is sovereign in salvation, and also we must appeal for salvation. That's how our evangelism should work. We should always, when we're with someone who doesn't know Christ, we should have the confidence that only God can save them.

It's not us. At the same time, He's given us urgent appeals to cry out to God and preach the Gospel, both of those at one time. The false Gospel is seen in many different expressions in the church today. And what the Apostle Paul is saying is, identify it. Identify the false teachers.

And he asks the question, who is it? Who is it? The second time he's asked, first time, who has bewitched you? Now he asks it again. So, how do you apply the Gospel?

Well, you identify the false teachers. How do you apply the Gospel? Lastly, don't let Your liberty give an excuse to serve the flesh. Don't let your liberty give you an excuse to serve the flesh. This is in verse 13.

For you brethren have been called to liberty, only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. And so here the Apostle Paul, he identifies what you've seen so many times. People have said, I'm free from the bondage of the law, now all I have to do is whatever I want. God is teaching me in my heart. I don't need to be governed by scripture.

I just need to be governed by my heart. To be free from the bondage of the law means that I don't need it anymore. That's a heresy. That's false doctrine. This verse alone is enough to destroy that false doctrine.

When you hear someone say that, go to Galatians 5.13 and then read the rest of Galatians, because what the rest of Galatians says is that following the Spirit means you're keeping the law. And so he's identifying this whole way that we mangle our liberty, and we turn liberty into whatever is in our own hearts. And what we know about our hearts is our hearts are deceitfully wicked, And they are desperately evil. Who can even plumb the depths of the evil of our hearts? Don't follow your heart.

Several years ago, a very popular book came out written by John Eldridge called Wild at Heart. The whole proposition of this book was be a man, follow your heart. It was Arminian and antinomian to the core. The thing about the book that was so compelling, the first part of it was as good an analysis of the destruction of manhood I've ever read. It was unbelievable.

But then the rest of it is pure heresy. So don't let your liberty give you an excuse to the flesh. Again, the 2nd London Baptist Confession, would you bear with me to read it? They who upon pretense of Christian liberty Do practice any sin or cherish any sinful lust, as they do thereby pervert the main design of the grace of the Gospel to their own destruction." That's pretty clear. And then they quote Romans 6, 1 and 2.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace should abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? And then the confession continues.

So they wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him. And then the confession quotes Galatians 5.13, where we are right here. And then it quotes 2 Peter 2, 18 and 21. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, They allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean, escaped from them who lived in error. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

The confession speaks of this fact that liberty does not mean that we turn from the commandment, but that we turn toward it. We've been set free to love, And that's the purpose of it. And that's what Paul is saying here in this last verse of our text. The libertines think that liberty gives them license to quench the Spirit. That's really the bottom line.

They would never say it that way, but that's what it is, and that's what they do. They reject the law of God. They reject everything from Genesis to Revelation, except a few verses about, I'm free. They totally misrepresent what it means to be out from under the bondage of the law. They do not understand the book of Galatians.

They've never read it carefully. They've not gone from it line from line. They've not seen the dozens and dozens of times how the law is used to prove that salvation was never of the law. And then, they don't understand the last part of the book, which calls us to obey all the law of God, because all the law of God is summed up in the word love. We must obey the law, because it is all love.

Every single commandment is a definition of love. And so the Apostle Paul brings it full circle. He's taken us on this long journey to explain the difference between law and grace, how helpful the law is to show us how sinful we are. And then it takes us to a place where we're helpless, except by the help of the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit and the work of the Word of God as we attempt to apply it in every area of life. Paul is quoting Leviticus 19, 18 in doing so here.

Again, proving the legitimacy and the continuity of the Old Testament to the New Testament. William Perkins, an English Puritan, writes amazing things about this section of Scripture. And he says, here are the abuses of liberty. He gives three abuses of liberty. Are you ready?

Three ways that people abuse it. Number one, when men make more things indifferent than God ever made. Got that? It's an abuse of liberty when men make more things indifferent than God has. Thus, the Corinthians used fornication as a thing indifferent.

Remember, the Corinthians weren't dealing with sexual sin in their church. They were acting like God was indifferent to that. But he wasn't indifferent to it. He says, thus, all abuses of meat, drink, apparel, all rioting and gaming and dicing and carding are excused by the names of things indifferent. In other words, what he's saying is that there are certain things like cards and this, they're not mentioned in the Bible.

Therefore, God's indifferent about them. And in the 17th century, William Perkins is saying, no. Abusing liberty means pretending that something that God really has something to say by principle is that God's indifferent about it. And that's wrong. That's what he's saying.

He says number two, the immoderate use of the gifts of God. Thus, many gentlemen and others offend when they turn recreation into occupation. When they turn recreation into occupation. Number three, in respect to the callings and conditions of men, for every man is to use the gifts of God according to his place and condition." What he's talking about there is living above your means. God's giving you a condition, you're trying to live above your condition.

Deborah and I lived in Dallas for a year, And I've never seen so many thousand dollar millionaires in all my life. People who are just living way above their means. Just, it was glitz and glam everywhere. Just look good. That's all that really matters.

You know, the whole economy is collapsing. People are giving their houses away and they're buying Rolex watches on credit cards. That was Dallas when we were there in the middle 80s. It was wild. I just got back from an economics conference, a family economics conference that Kevin Swanson just put on.

I've never been to a conference like this. And I had to give messages that I'd never given before. So I had to learn a lot before I got there to give these messages. My messages were applications of the parable of the talents. You remember the story of the parable of the talents in Matthew chapter 25 where a man comes and he gives talents to three men.

He gives five talents to one man, he gives two talents to another man, and he gives one talent to another man. And then he leaves, and then he comes back, and he finds out that the man with five multiplied it to ten. The man with two multiplied it to four, but the man with one hit it in the ground and didn't multiply it at all. The whole point of the parable is to work. Work with what God has given you.

What have you been given? Work with that. Take it. Multiply it. I was so excited to give some of these messages.

All my messages were really just applications of this one parable of the talents. And so, you know, here's how you apply it here in family entrepreneurism. Here how's you turn your family into an economic unit. That was one of my messages. Another one was a family work ethic.

What is a biblical work ethic for a family? What defines it? That was a whole other message. They were applications. What about daughters?

There's this enormous resource of daughters. How do you disciple daughters for the greatest impact for the kingdom of heaven? Those were my messages. Then I had one message for pastors. What are the hot, you know, hot spot economic issues in a church that elders have to deal with?

But really everything that I had to say had to do with this principle of the talents. You've been given something, and it may be five, and it may be two. Be satisfied with what you've been given, but always multiply it. Multiply everything God's put in your hands. The children, the gifts that you have.

Take your car, your house, your internet connection. Use everything for the glory of God. Multiply it. Build it higher and higher. Don't just sit there.

Don't hide it in the ground. If you hide it in the ground, you're an unbeliever. That's the point of the parable. And there's a judge coming back, and there will be a reckoning for what you've been given. That's the point.

That heaven and hell are real, and you can tell the real believers by what they do with what they've been given. They're not saved by it, but you can tell who they are. And so here, you know, the one abuse of liberty that William Perkins is talking about is not being satisfied with what God's given you. Yes, we are to multiply, but He also calls us to contentment. So Christ has liberated us from these abuses of liberty.

And we're constantly abusing our liberty in this life, aren't we? I mean, We're falling back into traps where we're abusing liberty. We're turning our liberty as an excuse for licentiousness. We struggle with that every day. I struggle with that every day.

I am so thankful for the grace of God, but often it makes me so lazy. I make myself lazy. So Christ has liberated us. Now, our text today, beginning in verse 1 and then ending in verse 13, begins and ends with the exact same principle. Look at it with me.

Verse 1, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. And then verse 13. The bookends are there. For you, brethren, have been called to liberty, only do not use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. And from now on, till we get to the end of the book of Galatians, we'll be talking about love and how love fulfills the whole law.

And we'll see, we'll see the beauty of the law. We'll see the beauty of Deuteronomy like we've never seen it before. Because every single word in Deuteronomy is for one purpose, to fulfill the law of love for those who've been set free. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we pray that you would come and give us great energy to fulfill all of your law and to be so free in Christ.

Amen.