Sermon Tone Analysis

*Introduction ~/ Setting the Context:*

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Turn in you Bibles to Galatians 5:25.

But before I even start, let me *pray.*

Jumping right in at the end of a book makes me and should make you grateful for Scott’s determination to preach through a single book verse-by-verse, front to back.

We know the context of a passage before we even show up to the sermon.

Here however, it will be important to go back and set the scene so that we can properly understand and be affected by the Word of God.

On Paul’s first missionary journey, Paul & Barnabas passed through modern day Turkey including Galatia preaching the Gospel.

They taught Christ crucified (Gal 3:1).

They taught that God came to earth in bodily form.

The One promised in the Old Testament came to save mankind from their own sins.

Jesus came and died and then was raised from the dead.

Jesus had to come because otherwise there would be no way for sinful mankind to come to God.

Jesus came, fulfilled the law, paid the punishment for our sins, and gives his righteousness to those who come to Him in faith.

They came through Galatia proclaiming to both Jews and Gentiles (those who aren’t Jews) that God was the God of all, not Jews only, and that salvation was for all, not Jews only.

The Jews had placed their hope for salvation in the law, in their heritage as descendents of Abraham.

Paul’s message was “The law can’t save you (Gal 3:11); The true children of Abraham are the one’s who have faith like he had, not the one’s who have his DNA (Gal 3:7).’

To give up on being able to be justified – to be right with God – by following rules meant that the Jews would have to admit that just like the gentiles they were sinners.

That was something they simply would not do.

They spent their whole life working to be good enough, now Paul was saying none of that could get them to God, that they were on equal playing field with the Gentiles.

They had believed their whole life that because they Jews they were God’s people.

Paul taught that it is those of faith who belong to God.

They all were in need of grace.

In response to this message, they stoned Paul, thinking they had killed him (Acts 14:19).

So a church was founded in Galatia of people who believed the good news of grace, but shortly ([[1:6|Bible:Gal 1:6]]) after Paul and Barnabas had left a Jewish sect snuck into the church.

These guys taught that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus was important and probably even necessary, BUT (and this is a critical but) you need to follow the law too.

Particularly they were teaching that you needed Jesus AND circumcision.

That is the occasion of this letter.

This little change on the gospel is tantamount to saying that Jesus’ death wasn’t sufficient.

If Jesus’ death couldn’t get you 100% justified (right with God) then Jesus’ death was for no purpose Paul argues in Galatians [[chapter 2|Bible:Gal 2]].

I want to stop and ponder for a second what happened at the cross.

At the cross, God the Son bore the entire wrath of God that Father that was earned by us in our rebellion against God.

That wrath would have kept believers in Hell for eternity; that wrath is what is in store for every member of humanity if you do not trust Christ to bear it for you.

There at the cross God poured out wrath upon His Son to punish my sin.

Jesus paid it all there.

If your hope is 100% in that payment for your sins, when any accusation may be raised against you in the throne room of God, and there are many sins for which you owe death, Jesus will point to those holes in his wrists, in his feet, in his side and cry out: “Paid!

I paid that one.

He can’t out-sin my grace, and there is certainly nothing else that he needs to earn it.

I have paid the price!

That sinner is righteous!”

In that same transaction, where our sins were given to Christ, the Bible teaches that Christ’s righteousness, without which nobody could be with God, was given to us.

Christ was made sin and punished to death; we were made righteous and given life, eternal life.

We have been given the gift of being able to be with God in heaven forever on the basis of Christ’s death alone.

The knowledge of the cross, Paul says, is sufficient to guard you, me, and the Galatians from legalism.

Remember this as throughout the rest of this message.

The sins of legalism that plagued the Galatians and the sins of legalism that plague you and me are solved when we remember the cross.

Then Paul asks the Galatians a question about their conversion.

Paul is asking the Galatians to recall their conversion when they were first told of the cross, when they were first saved.

[[3:2|Bible:Gal 3:2]], “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith.”

The instant that Christ’s righteousness is applied to you and your sin is taken away, God gives you the Holy Spirit.

Did they follow any law to receive the Spirit?

No.

They heard, their hearts rejoiced in faith, and they received the Spirit.

Justification (salvation) was by faith alone, once and for all.

Then Paul goes on and asks another question,

 

[[3:3|Bible:Gal 3:3]] “Having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh.”

Just like the answer to the first question, the answer is “No”.

We are saved by the Spirit and it is the Spirit, not following some law, that causes us to be sanctified (made more like Christ) in this life.

It’s all grace!

No law!

Grace!

Our faith: Grace!

Our salvation: Grace!

Our sanctification: Grace!

No more law, God bought us out from under the law, Paul teaches and made us part of his family, a family of grace.

In love, God did the unthinkable.

God took his enemies and made them his children.

God did this so that we could live freely to please Him, being led by His Spirit.

All of God’s children are equal before him; no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free.

We don’t relate to God as the lawgiver and judge, we relate to Him through the Spirit as our Father.

Paul then goes on in Chapter 5 to point out that if you have the Spirit, your life will look very different from those who don’t have the Spirit.

You will be free.

Not free to sin, but free to live a life led by the Spirit.

When you get the Spirit, it is no longer you and your desires that rule.

An evidence of the Spirit in you, proof that this salvation has been applied to you, is that you start to bear the fruits of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Look what God does, he saves you from the slavery of following the law and then changes into what you never could have become by trying to follow the law.

That is a quick summary of Galatians 1:1-5:24.

We now understand enough of the context I think to appreciate the importance of what Paul says starting in [[5:25|Bible:Gal 5:25]].

“If we live by the Spirit”—If our source of life is from Spirit.

If we say we believe the Gospel and believe our life comes from him—“Let us walk by the Spirit”—Let’s act like it.

Consider this reality: Everybody who God saves is a sinner.

Then God in his sovereignty and his wisdom puts all us sinners together into a church.

So the first place that our living by the Spirit must manifest itself is among the family of God, the family of sinners saved by grace.

Sinners without the Spirit, when they are together, they will be known by their envy, by their dissensions, by the pride.

Christians, when they’re together by the Spirit, they will be known by their love.

So Paul moves on in verse 26 to discuss one of the most obvious places where this change of heart will manifest itself: The church.

The way that we act and interact with each other in the church, in the family of grace, testifies about what we believe about the cross.

\\ The way that we act and interact with each other in the church, in the family of grace, testifies to the Spirit’s presence or absence among those in the church.

So after proclaiming, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,” Paul immediately and naturally turns his attention to how a true cross-centered, Spirit-led believer must interact with others in the family of grace.

So let’s unpack these verses together and be changed as God would see fit into the kind of church that he wants us to be:

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

There is an assumption in these commands, an assumption that I can’t spend a lot of time on here.

The assumption of these and all the commands in New Testament to the church is that we are together living as a family of grace.

Church is not an event, not a meeting on Sunday that you attend.

All of these commands, as you will see, require that we are together, that we spend time together, that we know each other, that we serve together, and that we love each other like family.

That’s why small groups are so important.

If you are not in a small group, please don’t leave without talking to one of the elders or with me about how to make sure that happens.