Some people think the Bible is like an Ikea® instruction manual. How is that? Pastor Philip talks about that in today’s sermon.
Scripture Reference
Galatians 2: 15-16
Sermon Audio
Sermon Notes
(Transcript)
I love Ikea®. I love everything about the store from their Swedish meatballs, to their funky lights, to their $1 frozen yogurt. Not to mention their furniture is cheap and pretty awesome. The only thing that frustrates me is putting their future together. There instructions are basically only pictures and maybe some words. Also, it seems like their instruction books have like a million steps. It takes forever to put together what you bought so that it looks like furniture that you saw in the store. Instruction books are great. They tell us what we are to do, how things we build are to look, they show us the right picture of what we are building and the right way we are to act. Sometimes we look at our Bibles as instruction books. As rulebooks in order for us to look right in the eyes of God.
Church, how many of you believe that the Bible is a rulebook? A book of pictures, steps, that as you go along life you check things off. You move to another picture after you completed the previous picture. How many of you believe the Bible is a book of laws that tell what to do and what not do? That governs how you should live your life in order for you to be right with God? And if we just try our hardest to follow all the laws, and follow all the instructions we will be pleasing to God?
Honestly, search your heart and truly answer this question: Is the Bible a rulebook? I want to hold off on answering that question till later. I’m sure if we polled all the churches that are located on Old Bridge Rd they would have similar answers to this question.
The last couple of weeks we have been walking through the book of Galatians and I want to Just to recap the book of Galatians since we started it all the way back on April 8th. The book of Galatians was Paul’s first letter her wrote. It was written to the church of Galatia. In Galatians 1 Paul sets up really why he wrote this letter. Which we see in Galatians 1:6-7
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
We see right from the start that the church of Galatia is turning to a “different gospel.” So what is this “different gospel” the church of Galatia was turning to? We see a group of teachers in the Galatian church were insisting that the Gentile Christians practice all the traditional ceremonial customs of the Law of Moses, as the Jewish Christians did. They taught that the Gentile had to observe the dietary laws and be circumcised for full acceptance and to be completely pleasing to God. They had to do some work, follow some rules, in order to be truly Christians. This story of a group of teachers teaching them a different gospel might resonate with us some. In churches across America people are teaching a “different” gospel.
Paul addresses this issue with an abiding, all-important truth. He taught that the cultural divisions notice this is what Pastor Brian talked about last week; in the Galatian churches were due to confusion about the nature of the Gospel.
The church of Galatia and the 21st church aren’t very different. You see church even today in America churches have become confused on the nature of the true gospel. This is happening in a lot of churches, ours included. We preach the gospel of works, instead of the gospel of Christ. We preach that we must do something in order to have eternal life. That it is all about me and what I have done. The me me gospel.
So how does Paul confront the church in Galatia and how does he confront the church in 21st century. For that we turn to Galatians 2:15-16
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
These verses are really a continuation on Peter and Paul’s augment we talked about last week. Peter was guilty of hypocrisy because, thought he had been happily living like a gentile, he was now requiring gentile Christians to observe Jewish table requirements. We see Peter basically saying ya’ll is different, therefore you need to do some things in order to be like us, then you will be right with God. “Do some things.” Here is the instruction book you must go through first before you’re allowed to sit with us. So we see one verse Paul lays out the true Gospel not just for the Churches of Galatia but also for the churches in the 21st century.
So this morning we are going to unpack the “True Good News. The Good news that gets everyone right with God” We are going to see how Paul contradicts the “different gospel” that was circling around Galatia and that circles around today in God’s churches.
It’s important that we define with the word justified means here before we unpack the rest of the verse. It has nothing to do with the horse Justify. In a nutshell the word justified means to be declared or made right in the sight of God. It means that we can stand in front of God and he counts us righteous, accepts us and welcome us into his fellowship for our joy forever. It’s a legal reference. It’s the idea of what a judge does in a courtroom. It’s a declaration that a defendant is found innocent, because there is real innocence. The defendant is declared just, because he is found to be just.
If we think back to the Old Testament “justified” means to be clean. It means following all the Jewish ritual and dietary laws. Clean enough to be able to worship God.
It’s important not to be confused with forgiveness, which is the fruit of it or with atonement, which is the basis of it. Rather it is the favorable verdict of God, the righteous judge, that one who formerly stood condemned has now been granted a new status.
It means standing before God and being right in his eyes. That’s our working definition.
Notice Paul then goes on to tell us what doesn’t justify us. The works of the law. Which Peter is requiring the Gentile Christians obey in order to be right with God. This happened in the church of Galatia and it’s happening today in the 21st century church.
Within one verse Paul repeats himself three times! So obviously its important what Paul is saying! So first it’s important that we unpack the phrase: “Works of the Law”
When Paul is talking about the law he is talking about the sum of specific divine requirements given to Israel through Moses. What Paul is saying is that the law cannot produce a right standing before God. He is saying that the law cannot make you clean it, cannot justify you. He is saying that we can never fulfill the entire law, and because of that we will never be justified. We have broken God’s law. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to follow the law you cannot. Your effort on following the law is futile because you will work so hard and hard, but yet still fall short.
He is specifically talking about the laws Peter is trying to make the Gentile Christians follow to get right with God. Paul challenges Peter.
The entire burden of Paul’s argument in Galatians was to show of the law cannot produce a right standing before God.
So what does make us right in the eyes of God? How are we able to stand before a holy God and he look at us and declare us innocent? Paul says it’s about faith. Specifically faith in Jesus Christ.
If we turn to Romans 1:17 it says
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Faith is what makes us right with God. It’s a radical gift from God, never mere human possibility.
Ephesians 2:8-9:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Faith and works are completely different. They’re on opposite sides of the spectrum. Works is all about me, what I have to do in order to gain favor with someone. If I miss a birthday or an important date I immediately start working hard to make it right with that person. Faith on the other hand is the one attitude of the heart that is the exact opposite of depending on ourselves. Faith is the instrument through which justification is given to us. Its our response to what took place on the cross.
So in order for us to be made right in the eyes of God we have to put our faith in who? Jesus Christ.
Paul will show in Galatians 3, the law was given by God in order to play a special role in the divine economy of salvation, namely to lead us to Christ. The law highlights are sinful nature. It points out our need for a savior. It leads up to the edge, but in order to get over it we need to put our faith in Christ. We need to stop thinking I must do something in order to be justified, and start thinking it has been done for me. The price has been paid. The wrath has been satisfied. Nothing I do will ever make me right with God because it has already been done for me.
You cannot make yourself right with God. We can never declare ourselves innocent, we have all sinned, and we are guilty. Romans 3:23:
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Earlier I asked the question is the Bible a book about rules, and now I want to answer that question by reading from The Jesus Storybook Bible
“Now some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainty does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.”
It doesn’t matter how hard we try, doesn’t matter if we sit in our houses locked in our rooms and never moved, we still have sinned. We can do nothing I repeat nothing in order for us to be justified in the eyes of God.
In fact the good news church is that it has already been done for us. Standing before God on the basis of efforts, on the basis of works will never work, because the work has been done for us. God has taken the whole affair into his hands, he sent his own son to die on the cross for our sins.
The Gospel is not a story of what we should do and shouldn’t do. It’s not a story that shows us how we are to work hard in order to achieve right standing with God. It’s a love story about God sending his Son in the world, dying on the cross, shedding his blood to cleanse us from all our sin. So that when we stand in front of God he looks at us and he welcomes us into eternity with open arms. It’s a story that is echoed throughout all scripture. It’s a story that changes our hearts and transforms our lives. It’s a story for every Jew, Gentile, and every one of us.
I want to end with a story.
In 1505 21 year old Martin Luther walking toward village of Stotternheim when sky became overcast. Raging storm blew up and a bolt of lightning lit the sky with a flash, knocking Martin to the ground. “St Anne help me!” he cried “I will become a monk.” Martin had grown up in a medieval culture filled with talk of devils and demons and angels and heaven and hell and the great judgement day. Culture of great fear. He thought the lightning had been launched at him by God as a message, a glimpse of the terror of Judgement Day. Martin knew he needed to preserve his soul and the best way to do that was to become a monk. So off to the monastery he went to seek God’s grace and mercy. At the end of his first year he was made a priest and invited to celebrate his first mass. Martin’s family came for the occasion, the chapel was filled, the psalms were sung. Then Martin took his place behind the altar and began. But just moments in he was struck by sheer terror – here he was, in his own words, “a miserable and little pygmy…dust and ashes and full of sin” daring to speak to the living, eternal and fearsome God.
Martin got through the mass and kept going as a monk, but those experiences capture his terrible internal burdens. He got to the point where he was convinced that God was so pure and holy no-one could ever hope to be saved. All would be abandoned to the torments of hell. “More than once (I) was driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!”
And then in 1513, 8 years after that thunderstorm, 7 years after that terrible mass, Luther had a third great religious experience. He was lecturing on the book of Psalms at the University of Wittenburg, then in 1515 on Romans, then in 1516 on Galatians. It was during those studies Luther discovered a life transforming insight from the gospel – that God’s requirement for us is not perfection but faith. “My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him…Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith…whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love”