This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Book of Galatians. This is week two, day four of
our look through the New Testament. We're going to focus on Galatians today.

I know we're going through these books very fast, but I'm hopeful that this
broad view is helping you to see all that God has to teach you in his word and
is giving you a greater love for his word than you've ever had, whether you've
been reading it for decades or you're just starting. If you're caught up in the
confusion of what's really true, Galatians proclaims the certain security of the
good news of Jesus Christ. If you're bound up in old rules or in the legalism of
self-instituted, self-empowered styles of Christianity, Galatians proclaims the
fresh freedom of life in Christ.

Warren Wiersbe in his introduction to Galatians calls it a dangerous book. It
is. Galatians is dangerous to false ideas of faith.

It destroys them. It's also a dangerous invitation to real freedom in your life.
It's a dangerous invitation to break out of the box of a faith that's only as
big as your life and to discover the real life that Jesus can give.

So today as we look through this, let's look at Galatians in our introduction to
the whole book as if it were a play and look at the characters, the setting, and
the plot. The first couple, the characters, are found in Galatians one, one, and
two. Paul, an apostle sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God
the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers with me to the
churches in Galatia.

So there's three characters in Galatians. Paul mentions two of them here. First
himself, Paul, in this letter, we need to especially remember three aspects of
the person of the apostle Paul of his character.

First, he says here, he is an apostle. An apostle was one who had a certain
closeness to Jesus. They actually saw Jesus, they actually walked with Jesus.

Paul calls himself an apostle born out of time, born later 'cause he saw and
walked with him on the Damascus road out in the desert in a different way than
the other apostles. An apostle was also one who had a certain authority from
Jesus because he'd heard his commission personally. No greater honor or no
greater responsibility could be entrusted.

And they were entrusted to pass this on to somebody else. So Paul writes as an
apostle. He also writes as a missionary.

He'd gone to the Galatians first as a missionary. He had a missionary heart
towards them. He had a missionary interest in them and love for them.

He also writes, as you see in the book of Galatians, as a parent. In chapter
four, he says that he labored for them as a mother for a child. He has a deep
commitment to these people.

And so he talks, as a parent would talk, to a child in danger. And they are,
they're in spiritual danger. So there's urgent tones, there's strong conviction
throughout this book of Galatians.

Second character is the Galatians. He says the churches in Galatia, Galatia was
a region, maybe like we think of a county now. The cities of Antioch and Lystra
and Derby were there.

So he wrote to all of these churches. This is the place that Paul had gone on
his first missionary journeys, writing back to them. And he'd heard that the
Galatians were deserting the good news that he taught them to follow the law
again.

As if that could bring them to genuine faith in Christ and growth in Christ. And
as an apostle, missionary parent, you see these three reactions to the Galatians
from the apostle Paul. He's angry, he's angry at those who were attacking his
children.

He's surprised that the Galatians had fallen into this trap and he's urgent. He
knew the destructiveness of this doctrine of following after the law. What I can
do, rather than following Christ, what he can do.

The third character isn't mentioned in these first verses, but is talked about a
lot in the book. And that is the Judaizers. This is this group of Christians who
were also Jews, just like Paul, but they were causing problems with his false
doctrine.

Now, what's the difference? Why did these, this group, why did they become
troublemakers while Paul becomes a disciple maker? Well, this group, the
Judaizers, sought to make their experience the church's doctrine.

'Cause they'd started with the law and they'd then come to grace. They thought
everybody needed to do the same thing. They taught that Jesus was an addition to
the truth of salvation and not the sum total of the truth of salvation.

Paul couldn't accept that. And they also fought by means of personal attacks on
those who they disagreed with, specifically Paul. That's why Paul says they're
false teachers, you can't follow 'em.

So that's the characters in the book of Galatians. The setting, it's written in
about AD 49 to 50. Paul just returned from his second missionary journey.

And here's the news that these Judaizers have swayed the Galatian church, that
it's beginning to accept their teaching. So he sits down, it feels like very
quickly, to write a letter. And out of that, you get the plot of the book of
Galatians.

And Galatians chapters one and two are historical books. They tell the history
of what had happened, the history of Paul's relationship with Galatians. And
they build towards Galatians three and four, which are the theological chapters,
as the chapters that lay out the arguments for why grace and faith are always
greater than law and depending on myself.

And those chapters, chapters three and four, build towards Galatians five and
six, which are the personal chapters, which talk about how do I live this life
of faith? How do I walk in the Spirit? How is the fruit of the Spirit to be seen
in my life?

When you look at the book of Galatians, if you think about what does it have to
teach me for everyday life? It's a book about how to win the battle for personal
freedom. How do you, in your everyday life following Jesus Christ, how do you
live with a sense of freedom?

Rather than feeling bound up or feeling filled with guilt or feeling like I
must, I should, how do you feel a sense of freedom in Christ's love? And live
out of that grace and that kind of faith. What does it take to live that kind of
way?

If you're living with a lot of guilt, if you're living with a lot of regret, if
you're living with a lot of feeling like the anvil of God's anger is hanging
over your head every moment, if you're feeling that way, Galatians is the book
for you. It's the book about God's freedom. And this book tells us throughout
the book and the outline of the book that freedom is based on three things.

It's based on God's word, it's based on God's grace, and it's based on God's
Spirit. It's based on those three things in your life. To win the battle for
personal freedom, you must do these three things.

First, you trust in God's word. Chapters one to two, Paul talks about this. And
in chapter one, verses 11 and 12, he says, I want you to know, brothers and
sisters, that the gospel I preach to you is not something that man made up.

I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it. Rather, I received it by
revelation from Jesus Christ. Well, we have what he received in the New
Testament.

The New Testament is God's word. And when it comes to freedom, man's word
enslaves you, but God's word frees you. So what are you trusting in?

When I talk about man's word, I'm obviously talking about false teaching that's
out there. You can find it in a lot of books. One of the favorite man's word
false teachings today is that you essentially are God.

That whatever you feel, whatever you think within yourself, that is your God.
And so that's what you have to trust in. It's a very psychological, very
personal, very selfish, very small God.

That's man's word for today. Don't trust it. There's the false teaching of man's
word, but there's also the false word to you on a day-to-day basis.

What are you going to trust in? You may not trust in that kind of false teaching,
but if someone says to you at the office some unkind word about the work that
you did, that begins to overwhelm you. That begins to worry you.

That begins to fill you with anxiety. And all of a sudden, you're living by that
anxiety. You're living by man's word in that case.

You would never believe in a false teaching, but that false word about you, it's
caught you up. So what do you do? How do you get set free?

You trust in God's word about you, God's word of his love for you, God's word of
his never condemning you, and you lean on that. What they say about you is not
going to last. What God says about you is going to last for eternity.

So you trust in God's word. You trust in God's word in the Old and New
Testament. That's how you live in freedom.

Second thing that Paul talks about in chapters three to four, if you're going to
live in freedom, you gotta live by God's promise. You gotta live by faith in the
promise of God's grace. In chapter three, verse 26, "So in Christ Jesus, you are
all children of God through faith.

" Now, if you want to go and read, I hope that you will read chapters three and
four. You're going to find out they are multi-layered chapters. Paul creates many
arguments against the law and for faith and grace in these chapters.

He argues from experience, he argues from scripture, he argues from history, he
argues from logic, he argues from love, personal love, and he argues from
allegory. He goes through that list in order and tells them why faith and only
faith can cause us to come to know Christ and grow in our relationship with
Christ. So it's all by grace.

It is not by what we do. And once we become a follower of Christ, all of a
sudden we can't switch and say, I became a follower of Jesus by grace, but now
I'm going to live by faith in myself. It just doesn't work.

So the truth that Paul is sharing in these chapters is, the law enslaves you.
Faith in God's promise frees you, God's promise of salvation, God's promise of
grace. That's what frees you.

Sometimes we try to make ourselves feel more Christian by the good things that
we do. That's good to do good things, but you're in a trap if you're trying to
make yourself feel closer to God by the good things you do. That will never
work.

It's faith in God's promises that frees you. It's important to know what you
have faith in, faith in God's promises. Faith in what is always the question.

Faith by itself gives you no promise of a better life. There's people out there
who act like just have faith. Well, faith in what?

Faith in yourself, faith in the government, faith in your schooling, faith in
what? It's not just having a feeling of faith that gives you a sense of security
in life, that gives you freedom in life. No, it's faith in God's promise.

Faith in the wrong thing will destroy your life. It's having faith in God's
promise that frees you. So you trust in God's word, you live by God's promise.

And then number three, chapters five and six, you walk in God's spirit. And in
these chapters, Paul lays it out very clearly. And he says the flesh enslaves
you, the spirit frees you.

The New Testament word flesh, it's about our selfish nature. It's about our
sinful nature. It's us without God.

And if you want to put the word selfishness there, it's not a bad word to put in
for the flesh, all that that entails. If I'm depending on myself, that's the way
to slavery. It's only the spirit that can free me.

Now there are Christian ways, by the way, to depend on myself. The more ministry
I do, the more I feel that God loves me. That's the flesh still enslaving you.

There's a lot of people who attend church every week, do a lot of ministry in
church that are still enslaved because they've never found this freedom of
walking in the spirit. In the freedom that you have from walking in the spirit,
you're going to find that you can say no to doing some things because God wants you
to do this instead. When you're enslaved by the flesh, you tend to say yes to
the things that other people will notice.

When you're walking in the spirit, you tend more often to say yes to something
that no one else will ever know about. But you're free to do it because you're
free in Jesus Christ. Knowing him is the true freedom.

And the source of that freedom is the truth that's proclaimed in Christ. And so
in these chapters, Paul talks about what it means to walk in the spirit, to live
by the spirit. He talks about the fruit of the spirit that comes out of that.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control. The freedom of that kind of life only comes by walking in God's
spirit. And Jesus came to unlock the door to set us free, to let us walk in that
freedom.

We are set free from ourselves of darkness and guilt and legalism and hate when
we walk in the spirit. When we trust in, we rely upon God's word. When we count
on, we put faith in God's promises.

That's where the power comes from. Galatians chapter five and six, the freedom
of the spirit builds towards life in the spirit, builds towards walking in the
spirit. And that's living free in Jesus Christ.

Galatians five starts by saying, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free. "
Let's pray together. Jesus, we want to live this kind of life and we need to
grow to be there.

We've got a lot of growing to do, but we want to grow to be there. So we ask
that we would. We look to God's word instead of man's word.

We look to your promise instead of the law, what we can do. We look to your
spirit instead of our selfish spirit, because we know that's where freedom is
found. Help us to live in those ways, to walk in those ways, to trust in those
ways.

In Jesus Christ, we ask for this strength. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to look at
the book of Ephesians and the six choices for making the most of what God has
given you.