Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Back on the Friday before last we went up to the Sykesville Ag and Youth Fair for the evening.

It was demo derby night, and so when we pulled in we saw a line at the gate stretching clear back along the road.

And that was pretty much the whole night—waiting in line for the rides, waiting in line for food, waiting in line for the bathroom.

And you always get to see at times like that how intensely conscious everyone is about where they are in line, and where the end of the line is, and so on.

Isn’t it funny how as soon as someone cuts in a line somewhere, everyone else immediately reverts to their 8-year-old self!

Maybe not out loud, but inside you’re going, “Hey!

No cuts!

We’ve been waiting here all this time—it’s not fair for you to cut in!” Pay attention, and you’ll see this attitude everywhere in our society.

Everyone is acutely aware of what they deserve (and what other people don’t!)

People grumble about “government handouts”— “I worked my whole life for everything I ever got—those people don’t deserve the same as I have!”

And on the other side people say, “Well, you don’t deserve all your ‘privilege!’ It’s not fair for you to have everything you have!

Our whole world revolves around demanding what we deserve.

And I think that helps us understand what is going on in the book of Galatians, and why Paul wrote it.

You see, when the church began in Acts 2, it was exclusively comprised of members of the Jewish people.

They all came to faith in Jesus out of that Old Testament context of faithfulness expressed in Moses’ Law.

They kept the commandments, they practiced circumcision, they observed the Sabbath, they kept kosher—all of it.

So the notion was that Jesus was the Savior promised to the Jews, so in order to be saved by Him you had to either be a Jew or become a Jew.

So as long as everyone in the church was Jewish, this was a non-issue.

But then when non-Jews began coming to faith in Jesus, it created a real crisis of faith in the church.

In Acts 11 we read the story of a group of Gentile believers who received the Holy Spirit the same way the Jewish believers did in Acts 2. As Peter is relating the story to the rest of the disciples, he says:

This was a bombshell for the Jewish believers’ worldview: that Gentiles could come as Gentiles for salvation in Christ, apart from the righteousness of Moses’ Law!

In some ways, it’s like the Jews had been standing in line for thousands of years, faithfully carrying out Moses’ Law waiting for the Messiah.

And then, these dirty, rotten Gentiles just cut in line and went straight to Jesus!

They didn’t observe the Law, they didn’t keep kosher, none of it!

It wasn’t fair!

And so this led to a backlash among some of the Jewish believers—if the Gentiles were going to come to Christ, they had to go to the back of the line and go through Moses’ Law first!

And some of these teachers had made their way to Galatia and had gotten into the Galatians’ heads, saying that it wasn’t enough just to believe in Jesus for salvation; they had to earn the right to believe on Him by starting off as Jews, by obeying the Old Testament Law first.

And so Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian churches to show them that

If you reject the grace of God and demand what you deserve instead, you are demanding your own damnation.

They had already been given salvation in Christ!

He had freely and graciously forgiven all of their sins, paying for them by His death on the Cross, and instead of resting in that grace, they were demanding that He give them what they deserved instead!

Imagine a drunk driver, pulled over on the side of the road by a state cop.

The officer decides not only to let the driver go, but to call a cab at his own expense and send him home in it.

Simply unimaginable grace, right?

But now imagine that the driver insists that he wasn’t drunk, and insists that the cop give him a breathalyzer to prove it!

By rejecting the officer’s grace, the drunk lands himself in jail instead!

That is what Paul is warning the Galatians will happen to them if they reject the grace of God and insist on getting what they deserve instead!

And so here in the introduction to the book, Paul is setting the stage for his argument by reminding the Galatian believers of what they have in the Gospel of grace that they would lose if they turned back to the Law.

First, Paul wants to remind his readers that

I.

The Gospel of Grace Brings Life from Death (v. 1)

Look at verse 1:

Now look at how Paul identifies himself in this verse: He is an apostle—literally, one who is “sent with a message”.

And he is not sent merely by men (like the false teachers were)—he was sent from God Himself.

He was called “through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead”.

The Good News of the Gospel is not that Jesus died to make bad people good—He died to make dead people live!

And Paul himself draws on his own past to illustrate the difference between living under Law and living under grace.

Because under the Law, Paul was a monster!

Look down the page to verses 13-15 of Chapter 1:

Under the Law, Paul was not a good person!

He was full of violent, murderous hatred against Christians (as we see in Acts 9:1).

He was far from being righteous—in fact, he was dead in his sins against God!

But the grace of God in the Gospel means that Paul was

Delivered from a heart of death (Gal.

1:13-15; Acts 9)

Think of it!

What did all of Paul’s righteousness according to Moses’ Law produce in him?

A heart of life and peace and righteousness?

No—obedience to the Law resulted in a heart of hatred and murder and death.

And when Jesus appeared to him on that road to Damascus, it wasn’t because Paul was righteous enough under the Law to be saved—it was because Jesus was gracious enough to save him!

The Gospel of Grace means life from death—Paul was delivered from his heart of death, and further on we see how Paul was

Delivered from isolation in death (cp.

Acts 9:26-27)

Look at verse 2:

Now, if we just skim right past this verse we might take it to simply be a statement from Paul that there are a lot of other Christians who are “with him” in affirming the grace of God over works.

And that’s true—but think for a moment who these “brothers” are.

Surely many of them were Christians before Paul came to faith, right?

And so what does that mean?

It means that some of them were his former enemies!

And in fact when we read the account in Acts, we see that Paul was not trusted by the other Christians when he first came to faith:

Paul was isolated because of his past sins—the other Christians thought he was just trying to lure them into letting down their guard so that he could trap them.

It wasn’t until Barnabas—who had formerly been Paul’s enemy—showed him grace that Paul was delivered from his isolation!

Paul knows what it is like to be dead in sin, and he knows what it is like for the Gospel of Grace to deliver him from his heart of death, and to deliver him from his isolation in that spiritual death.

He knows that if God had related to him according to what he deserved, he would still be dead—dead in sin and headed for eternal death.

And so he writes to warn the Galatians that if they demanded what they deserved from God, they were demanding their own damnation!

Because only the Gospel of grace can bring life from death!

In verses 3-4, we Paul goes on to remind his readers that

II.

The Gospel of Grace Brings Freedom from Bondage (vv.

3-4)

Look at these verses again:

There are two glorious realities in view here: The first is that “Jesus gave Himself for our sins”.

This is the fundamental truth of the Gospel—that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins against an infinitely holy God.

Think of it for a moment: God is unceasingly and unendingly holy and righteous, isn’t He?

He is infinitely righteous.

And so when we sin against that righteousness—the smallest lie, the least motion of unrighteous anger, the tiniest hint of lust or greed or hatred or envy—that sin (as insignificant as it seems to us) is an offense against God’s infinite holiness, and is therefore an infinite sin.

And even if that one sin were the only sin we had ever committed our entire lives, it would be enough to earn God’s eternal wrath against us in Hell!

Because the only way to atone for an infinite offense is by an infinite sacrifice.

And how will a small, finite creature like you accomplish that kind of sacrifice?

There is no amount of good works, no “turning over a new leaf”, no “I promise to do better next time” that will take away that infinite guilt before Him!

You will spend your life in bondage to fear that your “good works” will never be “good enough” to satisfy His infinite righteousness!

But the Gospel of Grace

Delivers us from bondage to our works (2 Cor.

5:21, p. 966)

The only solution to an infinite offense is an infinitely perfect sacrifice: And this is what Jesus Christ did on the Cross!

You are free once and for all from this world’s tyrannical system of earning your salvation!

All of that guilt, all of that shame, all of that fear of God’s wrath against you is gone forever when the Good News of the Gospel of Grace does its work in you!

And Paul wants the Galatians to know that, if they turn their back on this grace, they will be going back into that bondage of guilt, shame and fear!

The Gospel of Grace delivers us from bondage to always working to earn our salvation.

And the Gospel of Grace also