In the sermon 'Bewitched by Another Gospel' by Scott Brown, the speaker emphasizes God's mercies in helping believers overcome their weaknesses and the importance of maintaining faith over works. He describes how God aids believers by breaking harmful patterns, relieving fears, and transforming hearts. Specifically, the sermon addresses the issue faced by the Galatians, who had been 'bewitched' into thinking salvation came through the works of the law rather than through faith in Christ. The speaker highlights Paul's argument in Galatians, which distinguishes between works-based salvation and grace-based faith, using the example of Abraham to illustrate how righteousness is credited through faith. The sermon discusses the five questions Paul asks the Galatians to awaken them to the true understanding of grace and salvation, and it warns against the dangers of thinking salvation is earned through the law. The speaker concludes by urging believers to rest in the grace of God, particularly on the Sabbath, and to embrace the transformative power of the Spirit for sanctification.

Here before us is another wonderful reminder of all the different ways that God in His mercies helps us in our weaknesses. How He comes to us and He pulls us out of holes that we've got ourselves jammed into. He comes to us and over a long period of time, he helps us to break patterns that need to be broken, that have built up over time. He comes to us so often and he relieves us of all of our fears by giving us sometimes even just a word of scripture to help us to be able to see our way. He takes often bitter, angry spirits, resentful hearts, and he melts them, and he turns them to forgiveness and love.

And here he breaks a spell. He's desiring to come to the Galatians and to break a spell, a bewitchment really. And so here God, in his characteristic pattern, is a kind and Heavenly Father who comes to relieve His people from their problems. And we here again find what we have found so many times in this life of the faith, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

His faithfulness is great. We find that this morning. We find a faithful God coming to His people in time of their own falling into their own hole that they have created for themselves. And what we find here is God coming to the Galatians and giving them a message that would help them to turn them back to the childlike faith that they once had, to recognize again that it was by faith that saved them as sinners and it is by faith that will transform them into the image of Christ to keep them from thinking that salvation was by the works of the law. I'll never forget a moment I had here in this church.

We had we had had some meeting, some preaching or something. And we finished and the man came and said, I'm overwhelmed. I'm totally overwhelmed. I don't know how I'm going to do all of this. And my immediate thought was, don't be overwhelmed.

God is able. God will sanctify you by His Spirit. There's not a reason for any of us to be overwhelmed. Cast yourself on the grace of God. It is the grace of God that saved you and it's the grace of God that will sanctify you.

God is able. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies are new every single morning. And so for us to be overwhelmed is to sort of stray really from the grace of God. So it's important that we call one another to the right state of consciousness.

And that's the consciousness of the grace of God and the ability of the Spirit of God to sanctify his people. Because Paul is making it very clear here that we are neither saved nor sanctified by the flesh. But we have to admit there's nothing like being bewitched to be so blind that we would use the law wrongly and that we would be blind to the power of the resurrection. And that's exactly what Paul is attacking here. Blindness to the right use of the law and blindness to the power of the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit that was unleashed by it.

So this is the subject. Now these nine verses are very simple in their structure. They're very easy to outline. They're basically two parts in verses 1-5. There are questions.

There are five questions that the Apostle Paul asks. And these are questions of interrogation. And they're designed to wake the Galatians up to the grace of God for their salvation and for their sanctification and they're pretty tough questions and then the second part which runs from verses 6 through 9 is the the flourishing of an example the example of Abraham So there are five questions and then an example. That's how Paul's working here. So he gives in his characteristic form a wonderful way of teaching.

He peppers us with questions, but he helps us to see what it looks like in a real person's life, a real person in history. And I love the simplicity and the clarity of this passage because it's so helpful in the way that Paul has structured his argument. And all of it is to say that works-based salvation is not the way that God works. And one of the things that I want us to recognize here is that in the midst of the questions and in the midst of the example, the Apostle Paul is putting his finger on a wrong view of God and a wrong view of life. He's exposing this wrong view of God that makes him one that forces his children to work for their salvation.

God doesn't do that. God doesn't make his children work for their salvation. God gives it as a gift. That's the kind of God he is. That's the kind of God you serve.

He doesn't make you work for your salvation. You do work out your salvation. You do obey for many reasons that are actually some of them revealed in this text. We don't set aside obedience, but God is not the kind that makes His children work for pay. And that's a wonderful relief.

I pray that that relieves us today. That you cannot pay God back by being good or by performing any work of the law. So he makes many arguments against a view of God that makes him a taskmaster that works for pay. Got that? I think that's a really important thing here and Paul works this throughout the book of Galatians but you really see it here as well.

Now what had happened to the Galatians is that they had exalted the importance of their works and they diminished the greatness of the grace of God. Those are the two things that they did. At the same time, Paul, Not for a minute, anywhere in the book of Galatians, does he ever denigrate obedience to the law. In fact, in the midst of talking about freedom from the law, he speaks of obedience to the law when he says, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you to not obey the truth? He never takes obedience off the table ever for a second.

But he does take it off the table as a work for salvation. So this is kind of how it's structured. Now let's move in to these questions, these amazing questions for the bewitched. Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. So here in this first verse we find that Paul is very stern.

You notice his tone, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? These are very tough things that you might say, but these are questions that are designed to un-bewitch the bewitched, to pull them off of this terrible bondage that they have fallen into. So he is actually very stern with them. We need to understand that God is constantly stretching out his hands toward his people in mercy. He is constantly calling them to come.

He's spreading out his hands in fatherly love. But here what he seems to be doing is he seems to be recognizing that the Galatians in a way had become like wild beasts and they needed to be yanked back, they needed to be whooped back in a way. So he's whooping them honestly and he's in his fatherly love, he will not allow them to go. So he uses a sternness, as Calvin said, he uses roughness to show us our unthankfulness to the end that we might learn, to be ashamed of it. So he uses very tough language here.

The church often needs words of comfort and consolation and sometimes the church does not need sweet words of comfort and consolation. Often the self-image of a church needs to be disturbed and it is the role of God's prophets and teachers to disturb the self-image of the church. And if your self-image is not disturbed as a church, you might actually be found in a place that you shouldn't be. Your self-image should be disturbed as a church. And the Apostle Paul is doing just that.

He is bringing very disturbing language, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you. So the seriousness of his tone is very evident here. And it's so important that we find this voice in church life. In Titus 1, verse 9, we learn that the role of a leader in a church is to point things out in this way, that we be holding fast the faithful word as has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. That's what the Apostle Paul is doing now.

He is confronting and convicting those who contradict sound doctrine. So he says, oh, foolish Galatians. Notice Paul's choice of words here is amazing. Foolish. He is calling the people in a church foolish.

And what does he mean? Well, the word often means mindless, not acting on knowledge but emotions, you know, stirred up by other things than right thinking. They're just acting stupidly. Their brains are in a fog, That's what he's saying. You're not thinking clearly.

And then he says, who has bewitched you? And here he's using language that comes out of occultism in many ways. It sort of pictures a person who's mesmerized. The pendulum is swinging back and forth, and their eyeballs are fixed on it. And they've lost a sense of what else is out there.

They're zeroing in on one thing, and they're not thinking rightly at all. They've lost the whole picture by a mesmerizing bewitching of tick-tock, tick-tock, and they don't see what God has for them. The issue though is obedience. Like I said before, Paul never throws the baby out with the bathwater. He does not throw obedience out with the grace of God, never for a second.

Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth? The problem was their disobedience. Their understanding of grace was wrong and their understanding of obedience was wrong. And so he says that you should not obey the truth. People think that legalism is obedience, and that's not true.

Legalism is thinking that you are saved by any work of the law, by any work of obedience. That's legalism. Christianity is that God causes people to obey, but their obedience doesn't buy them anything with God. What buys anything with God is the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what bought them their salvation.

They didn't buy it themselves. So here, here in Galatia, faith had shifted from God and his sufficiency to man and his works. So he says later on in the letter in 5, 4 through 9, you ran well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? Now he mentions a number of things just in this first verse. The first verse is really full of all kinds of really wonderful truths for us, and I wish we could spend the whole time there.

But one of the things that he says here, he says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? So he says something here that is really important for us to understand. And that is that they had they had slipped away from a vision of the centrality of the cross and the crucifixion of Jesus that was what had happened to them but their eyes but before their eyes this was clearly portrayed And it was portrayed to them by preaching. It had been preached to them. And what Paul is saying is that the crucifixion should have been so real to you that you never should have slipped away from it.

The crucifixion was portrayed among them through the preaching of the Gospel. They didn't see it with their eyes. They didn't see it in a movie. It was preached to them. That is the way that God saves sinners.

He uses preaching, the foolishness of preaching, to portray the crucifixion of Christ, to help them see, to help people see their sins, how the suffering for their sins was laid upon Christ, and Christ was the sacrifice for their sins. And that happened through preaching. So what Paul is saying is the crucified Christ was placarded before you. It was displayed vividly among you through the preaching of the gospel, but you turned aside from it. And so What we find here is that Christ has done everything necessary for salvation for sinners.

And what Paul is saying here is that the Christian life begins the same way that it's lived and it ends the same way that it began. Do you get that? That's really what Paul is saying in a nutshell. The Christian life begins the same way that it is lived and it ends the same way that it began. You get that?

That's really what Paul is saying in a nutshell. The Christian life begins the same way that it is lived, and it ends the same way that it began, all by grace. It began by grace. It's lived by an outpouring of the Spirit of God for your sanctification, and it ends the same way. It's all by grace.

And so Paul asks these five questions. These are interesting questions now. Have you noticed already the nature of the questions? Well, they're not really tough questions. They're questions that everybody says, no, no, no, no.

That's it. It's not like saying, who are the four main characters in the Book of Esther? What is the Feast of Purim? No, these are not questions like that where you have to think about them for one second. They're obvious questions.

That's the character of the questions. Are they rhetorical questions? No, they're not rhetorical questions. But they're the kinds of questions like rhetorical questions in that you know the answer the second you hear it. The answer is absolutely no.

You're not justified by a work of the law and you're not sanctified by the work of the law, not in a million years. They're not really very profound questions, but they're helpful questions to help us understand the grace of God. So the first question is, who has bewitched you? So this is a question that asks, who did it? Who done it?

Who is it? Because there are people that help them with their bewitchment. This is an appropriate question. Who is it that did it? Who is it that taught you something that was wrong?

You need to understand that. And you need to identify who it was and what it was. And that's what Paul is doing. Who has bewitched you? Because false teachers had come in.

They had crept in and they were trying to spy out people's liberty and do all kinds of things like that. And this sounds like what Paul already said in chapter 1 verse 6 where he said, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you by the grace of Christ to a different gospel. And He said that there are people, some who have troubled you to pervert the gospel of Christ. But he says, but even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel than the one which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you other than what you have received, let him be accursed.

So Paul is sort of refreshing what he said in chapter 1, that there will be people who will preach another gospel, let them be accursed. Who has bewitched you? Who are they? Who are the accursed ones that preach this thing? And you need to know that.

So there's this implication that there's specific people who have bewitched. There's this hypnotizing teaching, the ball swinging back and forth that make the eyes glaze over. And a knowledge of the grace of God is lost and you're no longer you're no longer left with a heart so full of gratitude and joy at your salvation you're just worried about how you can't do this and you can't be that. But there's something greater and that is a sufficient Christ who paid for all of your sins and is sufficient for all of your sanctification. So who has bewitched you?

That's the first question. And one final thought about this. I was having lunch with a friend who's a local pastor here in the area. We were talking about this verse. Here's what he said about this verse.

The preaching should have been enough for these people, but it wasn't. The placarding of the crucifixion was all that God had provided, but they wanted something more. They wanted a work of the law. They wanted something else. They rejected the preached word, and they did not obey it, even though it should have been enough to tell them that Christ was crucified and it was no longer they who lived, but Christ who lived in them.

Okay, then the second question in verse 2. The second question has to do with receiving the Spirit. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? How did you do that? So he says, this only I want to learn from you.

Just one thing. Just one thing I want to know. And honestly, this first question might be all that's needed, although he has more. He says, this one thing I want to learn from you, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Now there are many wonderful things to contemplate here that I hope we can understand.

One is that God pours out His Spirit on sinners who are undeserving. God pours His Spirit out upon sinners who are dead in their trespasses and sins by the hearing of faith. Just like that. They hear it and God is so kind that they don't have to clean up their life. He will clean their life up.

But they don't have to clean their life up, but to hear by faith and trust Him that He is sovereign and He is deserving of all of their worship and He is worthy to receive their confession of sin. And so God pours out his Spirit on sinners who are undeserving and it happens by the hearing of faith. Here's I think we should recognize how simple and how easy it is that God has made salvation. It really is very simple. There are not a lot of hoops to jump over, really.

He has made it alarmingly simple by the hearing of faith. The ears hear and then something happens in the heart and there's faith. And that's it. You know, this is very consistent with what we read all over Scripture. Isaiah 53, 1, Lord, who has believed what we have heard?

Salvation begins when you believe what you have heard of the gospel. Habakkuk 3.2 says, Oh Lord, I heard the report of thee, and I was afraid. So It comes with a hearing, a fear, and then a turning to God. It's very simple. Obadiah 1.1.

We have heard tidings from the Lord. Romans 10.14. How will they believe in Him whom they have never heard? Matthew 11.15. He who has ears, let him hear.

You know, here we find a God who has tidings of joy. And how will they hear without a preacher? But here's the truth. God pours His Spirit out into those who hear, and they have faith in their heart. And he doesn't demand that their whole life gets cleaned up.

They don't have to do a penance here or this or that. But they hear, faith wells up in their souls, and they're saved. It's a remarkable thing that God has done. Imagine how complex it would be if we had to clean up all of our idols before we were saved. Imagine that.

I was telling a brother just yesterday, I was saying, you know, I hear I'm in my mid-fifties now, and I continue to find new idols that I didn't know were there. I'm so glad God did not wait until I was able to identify all my idols. He hasn't done that. He's been so kind to me. He took me as I was.

He showed me many idols right away. He did. He showed me many sins and idols that I needed to turn away from. I needed to turn away from dead works. I needed to repent of my sins.

But he never revealed all of it to me. I suspect that on the day that I die, some of you may witness it, on the day that I die, I'll die with some idols. But the grace of God is the source of my salvation, not the works of the law. And Paul would never say, therefore your idols don't matter. Paul never says that.

But he does say that you were not saved because you recognized every idol that you had in your heart. So it comes by the hearing of faith. And he's talking about the giving of the Spirit. The Spirit of God was poured out upon you when you were converted. That's what happens.

When you have faith in Christ, the Bible says that the Spirit of God is poured out in your heart and you now have a new resource that you never had before. You have another helper. Jesus said, I will give you another helper, another just like me. That's what Jesus meant. Jesus said that he was giving a helper that was like him.

He said to his disciples, behold, I'm going away. But don't fear, I'm sending another helper, the Holy Spirit, who will be with you forever. So what the Apostle Paul is saying is that we received the spirit apart from the works of the law. We were converted and he sent his spirit into us anyway, even though we were still messed up, even though we still had many sins. We're determined to read portions of George Mueller's biography.

And George Mueller tells the story of his conversion. He tells the story of how he was trying to be sanctified by the works of the law. How He was trying to make resolutions. He was trying to look good on the outside. And then he was converted.

Here's what he says about his conversion. I now no longer lived habitually in sin, though I was still often overcome, and sometimes even by open sins, though far less frequently than before, and not without sorrow of heart. I read the scriptures, prayed often, I loved the brethren, I went to church from right motives, and stood beside Christ, though laughed at by my fellow students. I love the line that he writes here because it speaks of the moment of salvation. God does save sinners.

They're not perfected in a day, but he still sends his Spirit into them. He still does, and he takes his time to clean them out one year after another. And it's a beautiful picture. But notice this. He didn't send the Holy Spirit because you fixed yourself.

He sent the Holy Spirit in order to fix you. That's why. And he didn't wait. He sent it immediately. He sent the gift in order to cleanse, to bring help that was needed.

And that's what the Spirit does. The kindness of God is displayed here in that He would give help by the Holy Spirit before, long before you were worthy. And that's why the apostle Paul said to the church in Ephesus in Ephesians chapter two verses four through nine where he said, but God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace.

Why did he pour his spirit out in the sinners? To show the exceeding riches of His grace. It glorifies God to pour His Spirit out upon sinners who don't deserve it. Why did He do that for you? Why did He pour His Spirit out upon you even though you still had a thousand things still wrong?

It glorifies Him. He's trying to show the exceeding greatness of His mercy. For by grace you've been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God lest anyone should boast. And so there we have it.

That God pours out his grace upon sinners. So the first question is, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law? Did you? No way! Everybody knows that.

You received the Spirit long before you were accomplishing hardly any of the works of the law. And that's a blessing. And then there's the third question in verse 3. Are you so foolish? Here we have that word again.

Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? So now is Paul saying that sanctification is not by works? Yes, that's exactly what he's saying. Sanctification doesn't happen by works. It happens by grace.

Yes, God does use obedience to bring about sanctification, But it's a work of the Spirit. The Word of God is the voice of the Spirit of God working in the saint of God in order to sanctify Him. That's what happens. But you're not sanctified by your perfections. You're not sanctified by works of the law.

They are really results of works of the Spirit in your life. Notice he says that, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? So there's this process that is spoken of here. This is progressive sanctification where there is the continual cleansing as a believer turns toward God, as a believer reads the Word of God and desires to obey it. There is a sanctification that takes place.

But sanctification is not dependent upon the works of the law. It is dependent on faith. And so he asked this question, Are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit? Because they began in the Spirit, but then they drifted off and they began to think that their law keeping was everything. And it wasn't everything.

You know, this is why the Apostle Paul could say in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 10, For by the grace of God I am what I am. By the grace of God I am what I am. By the grace of God I am what I am. So the giving of the Spirit according to the sovereign will of God determines our sanctification. Yes, we can quench the Spirit.

We can slow down our sanctification by quenching the Spirit of God in us, by rejecting the things that God has said to us. You quench the Spirit by disobeying God and it has an effect on you. So what we know, though, is that Paul was not impressed by the works of the flesh. And what the Apostle Paul is attacking here is this inordinate view of the flesh that makes you and everyone else proud of how well you're doing, and it's very deceptive. One of the things that one of the men said in our Bible study on Tuesday is that outwardly the works of the flesh might look the same in the believer and the unbeliever at the same time.

The works of the flesh can be applied and they might look the same in the person who is doing them by faith and the other one who's doing them by works. So you can't always tell but God always knows. God knows if there's anyone in here who believes that they are being sanctified by the works of the law. God knows if any of you are proud of yourselves. God knows if any of you are proud of yourselves and are not very proud of others for their sanctification.

God knows. God knows if he's exalted the works of the law or understood the hearing of faith. So we have this whole tension of the outward and the inward. Now, later on in this letter, we'll read a list, a very detailed list of what the works of the flesh are. Now what is he talking about?

So he's answering the question, What do I do to make myself righteous? Am I doing this as a work of the flesh or a work of faith? Is it a work of joyful submission to God, or is it a work of obligation? This was the issue that Jesus was constantly dealing with with the Pharisees. They looked at themselves as righteous, And they believed that their righteousness was a direct result of their circumcision and their law keeping and all the different things.

The ceremonial law, the moral law, every law was what justified them in the sight of God. The Apostle Paul is saying no. So this question, this really very easy question, it should be a very easy question. Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? No, doesn't happen that way.

There's something more. It's a work of the spirit through the hearing of faith. And then the fourth question, have you suffered so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? So Paul is now talking about their experience in life. He's really asking them to consider what has happened in their life as a result of their conversion.

You remember the persecutions that the apostles suffered in the Galatian region. They were stoned. They were left for dead, walked right back into the city, and persecuted again. It really is a story of amazing fortitude and courage in Acts chapter 13 and chapter 14, which describes what happened when they were in this region. The Judaizers came in, they stoned them, and then they went away.

Now the Judaizers are back. When the Galatians, when many in Galatia were converted, the Judaizers were back to persecute them again, and they suffered for it. That's why he says, have you suffered so many things in vain? You're converted and you suffered. Why did they suffer?

They suffered because they believed that Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again on the third day. And that he was the sacrifice for their sins. That's why they were persecuted, because they believed in the death and the resurrection of Christ. You say, well, that's an overreaction. To persecute people for believing that, well, that's the kind of world that we live in, where people are persecuted for believing that.

And so they suffer because of the crucified Christ. What happened to them, they suffered for it and then they backed off. Maybe they got tired of the suffering. Maybe they just wanted a little bit of relief. Maybe they just wanted to fit in a little bit more with the Judaizers.

But they did want to fit in. A lot of people wanted to fit in. Even Peter wanted to fit in. Even Barnabas wanted to fit in. It was a big temptation.

And so they suffered, and then they fell back. And I think the apostle Paul is saying, hey, was this just a phase you were going through? Was this real? Did you really believe in the crucified Christ? Was this just something you were going through or did you really believe it?

And he's calling them back to that time. And what I think Paul is saying is, brother, you did believe it. You did, but you had fallen into the fear of man. Just like Peter did, just like Barnabas did. I think Paul is actually affirming their faith in a way.

Because then he says, if indeed it was in vain. It's almost like he's saying, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was real. It was real, brother. Return.

Believe in the crucified Christ. Your works are nothing. Let your joy again fill your heart that Christ was crucified for you and no longer do you live but He lives in you and you live it by faith and you trust completely in all that He's done for you and you can rest in your works and leave your salvation as something that has been accomplished by Christ on the cross. I think Paul is really sort of encouraging them. It wasn't in vain, was it?

You really did believe, but you've slipped. So he's using the strong rebuke to bringing them back. And then the fifth question in verse 5, therefore, he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Here he's amplifying verse 2. Remember verse 2, the second question was, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or the hearing of faith?

He said that in verse 2. Now he says the same thing, but he adds something else. He adds miracles to the list. Did you receive miracles and the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing of faith? And again, the answer is no.

Every miraculous work of God happened by the Spirit of God, not because you were a good person. It happened by grace. God chooses when he's going to do his miracles. God chooses when He's going to do His miracles. God chooses when He's going to pour out His Spirit upon undeserving sinners.

He does it, and it's not dependent on the works of the law. If you think that the good things that have happened to you in life are because you are good, think again. Not true. The miracles that God will perform in and around you have nothing to do with your goodness. Often people envy one another because they think that somehow because they did this, they got that.

And it's not true. And Paul's saying, no, neither miracles nor the supply of the Spirit happens by a work of the law. But it happens, again, by the hearing of faith. Isn't that amazing? You hear and you believe and God works.

He does it by his own sovereignty. So now we've just come through the first part here. These searching questions, these unbewiching questions that Paul gives, these really easy questions where the answer is nope nope nope nope nope five times five times no no all to prove one thing that God does not save by the works of the law but by the hearing of faith and that if you believe that you are bewitched It's a devilish idea to think that. OK, so now let's move into the second part of this, where the example of Abraham is given. So five questions to prove this.

Now he gives a living example, a person that we can study. One of the wonderful things about this week for our family is that in our reading of the Bible through the year, This week we were reading the whole Abraham narrative. So we got to refresh all these things and we got to see Abraham in all of his glory and in all of his degradation because Abraham was not perfect. Yes, he did have faith, but he wasn't a perfect man. And we got to see that again.

We saw really the beautiful childlike faith of Abraham where God says leave your country and go and Abraham goes even though he doesn't even know where he's going. He's a man of faith. It was beautiful childlike faith And we've seen a number of demonstrations of Abraham's faith, beginning in Genesis 11 and then on. But here now we have the example of Abraham. So, Verse 6, just as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, 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 then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. So what was it that brought salvation to Abraham? Verse 6. Verse 6 tells you how salvation was brought to Abraham and the way the salvation was brought to Abraham is the same way the salvation has always been brought to all human beings and it was brought by a legal transaction.

And here we find again in this living example that is an illustration of what Paul's already said about the hearing of faith. A person is saved by the hearing of faith. And now Abraham is an example of someone who hears by faith. Abraham had a heart to believe, and God granted him salvation. And into his heart flowed the riches of salvation.

And Abraham was not required to go through a two-year program to understand the gospel before he was saved. He didn't have to line up a number of works before he was saved. God took him right where he was. Paul here explaining Abraham's salvation, he actually uses an accounting term. Accounting is a wonderful discipline, it's a wonderful business, but he takes a word out of the daily activity of an accounting firm, Logizomai, to explain how we are saved.

It was accounted, meaning that something was put into Abraham's account. In other words, there was nothing in his account and then something was put in it. Some of you have nothing in your account. Imagine if millions of dollars just flowed instantaneously into your account, wouldn't that be great? You could write checks and all kinds of things you can't do now, but your account is a picture of a bankrupt account nothing in it at all and then Instantaneously the account is full Logizomai it was accounted And riches are poured into an account.

That's what salvation is. It was accounted. Funds were put in the bank. They were moved from Christ's account to your account. According to the riches of His grace, how rich is that?

How big was it? Greater than any of your sins are mine. Greater than all the sins of the world. God's riches are greater than anyone's sins. No one has enough sins to dwarf God's riches.

No one does. His grace is always greater than your sins. And that's what this word speaks of. That you have an account with nothing, and then all of a sudden it's filled up with the grace of Jesus Christ. It's enough for your past.

It's enough for your present. It's enough for all of eternity. It's enough for your sins tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. It's the riches of His grace. And then not only is an account made full, but a change of relational status takes place.

You become something different than you were. You become a son, verse 7. Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. We'll get to the doctrine of sonship later on. This is the beginning of it.

This is the beginning, brothers and sisters. This will be a very sweet time when we begin to talk about what it means to be a son, redeemed to be a son. That's not too far around the corner in Galatians. But now the idea of sonship has been introduced. You're a son of Abraham.

Your whole status in life has been changed. You've turned from a slave to a son. You've turned from someone who has no future to an heir, a co-heir of Christ. Your whole status in life has changed. When you are converted to Jesus Christ, you become a son of the living God.

Everything has changed. Yes, you still have an earthly father and a son, but guess what? You have a father. You have the father of lights. You have the father with whom there is no shadow of turning.

You have Almighty God as your father. And so by faith Abraham obeyed. When he was called to go to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, he went out not knowing where he was going. He had that childlike faith. And Abraham is a beautiful example of someone whose bank account was made full and whose status was changed and he became a son.

That's a wonderful picture. We read in Genesis chapter 15 that God had Abraham out in the open air at night. And he came to him in a vision and he said, do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield and your exceedingly great reward. But Abraham said, Lord, what will you give me?

I have no sons. I have no children. And God says, look, look up toward heaven. And count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be.

And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness. Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land and inherit it." And so here we find that the gospel was preached to Abraham in anticipation of the justification of the Gentiles. And Abraham believed God before he had any works. Now notice this. This is very important to understand about Abraham's salvation.

And it's the point that Paul's trying to make all through this. Abraham had his account filled up before he was circumcised. Abraham was saved before he had any work at all. No circumcision happened, no works happened before his salvation. And this is why the apostle Paul is saying don't have any confidence in the flesh because your salvation comes before your obedience.

Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that helpful? Wasn't that necessary for us? We could never have been saved if we had to do it by the works of the law. And it's so kind of God to come to sinners like that.

And so Christ came to die for sinners. He gave everlasting life to those who did not do any good works. He loved us and gave himself up for us. And then in his working in us he began to add evidences of our faith and the work of his grace. And that he made us pass from death to life.

And the Spirit bears witness that we are the children of God. And He is here now in this passage to help do two things. One, to banish doubts, banish doubts about your salvation. If you're slipping back into thinking that your salvation is by works. And also to terrify you for how dangerous that is by saying, oh foolish wake forestinians, who has bewitched you?

Have you lost the joy of your salvation? Have you forgotten how good God is? Have you forgotten how merciful He is? Have you lost touch with how merciful He was on the day of your salvation? And He still is merciful to you the same way.

Have you lost the happiness that there is to know that you're free? Have you lost that? Has anyone bewitched you? Is it possible? Have I bewitched you?

Has anyone bewitched us to think that our salvation would be by works of the law rather than by the hearing of faith? Do you see the amazing mercy of God in that? So it is God's plan to justify by faith. What is the gospel? That's a long discussion, but he says that the gospel was preached to Abraham.

It's a popular question, what is the gospel? This is one element of the gospel, that in you all the nations shall be blessed. That's part of the gospel. That God desires to bless the nations by hearing faith. That's the gospel.

So then they are blessed with believing Abraham. Now, let's turn to some application to this. We've just walked through a passage of scripture that has defined for us a mistake of bewitching. It's a devilish thing that can wash over the mind of a believer and what we've really seen is it's a man-centered, it's a spirit-deprived, it's a foolishness producing kind of religion. That's what it is.

It's all it is. And so what about today? What about today? Let's begin with today for this application. God gave us a whole day to celebrate His rest.

And we learn that the Sabbath is all about rest. We cease from our labors, we cease from trying to make our own way in the world, we stop making money, We stop buying and selling. That's what the Sabbath is for. We know that there are a number of purposes for the Sabbath. But one of the purposes of the Sabbath is to remind you that you can rest, that you can rest in Christ.

This is a day of rest from the bondage that you might feel in your heart regarding the works of the law. Yes we should repent of our sins, yes we should obey the law, but we should be very careful that we can rest in Christ on this day. So we can apply this in a very special way today, because this is the Sabbath day. This is the day of rest, where God rested from all of His works and we do the same thing. And we've spent a lot of time defining what that means, so I'm not going to take the time to try to qualify it in ten ways.

But let this be a day of rest. That God in Christ has done all of your work for you on the cross and it's finished. His work for your sins is finished. Here's a question. Paul has given us five questions And I'd like to give a couple more that I think are sort of follow-up questions in this manner.

Is it in your heart right now that you are more thrilled with the mercy of God than you are, how far behind you are. I ask that question because, you know, his commandments are not burdensome. And God does desire his people to be free in this way. Now this doesn't mean that we set aside confession. In fact, in the communion service where we celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ, part of it is self-examination.

So we're not setting aside self-examination. But what God has done is he has allowed two things to exist together. Self-examination for obedience and freedom. He's actually called us to both, not one or the other. I would just say that It's a terrible misunderstanding to take either one of them away.

If you take away the self-examination and the obedience, then you've been left with something that can't stand on its own. And if you take the other away, you've done the same. God gives us both. But what Paul is attacking is the idea in our hearts that says that we're more acceptable to God by our works. And so the question is, Are you thrilled by the goodness of God or are you burdened?

And if you're burdened, I just ask you to come before the Lord and ask him to help you see the greatness of his mercy and his grace for you today. And then in this whole matter of bewitching, Their bewitching made them blind to the use of the law and blind to the power of the resurrection. Blind to the use of the law and blind to the power of the resurrection. And that's the divine balance. And so I would just ask this next question.

Where are you in this? Have you unrighteously set aside obedience for grace or the other way around? In a few minutes we're going to sing a song of these words. And it has everything to do with the bewitching and the un-bewitching questions that the Apostle Paul brings to us. Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul.

Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. But who can? The resurrected Christ who deals with his people on the basis of hearing faith and That's the blessing of the faith of Abraham Would you pray with me Lord?

I thank you for these words that you've given they're very beautiful They call up so many remembrances of your kindness. And I pray, Lord, you will now use them in our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.