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*LEGALISM VS.
LOVING OBEDIENCE*
 
Donald Grey Barnhouse tells this story in his book /Let Me Illustrate/:
 
around 1928, I led a Bible conference at Montrose, Pennsylvania, for about two hundred young people and a few older people.
One day two old ladies complained that some of the girls were not wearing stockings.
These ladies wanted me to rebuke them.
Looking them straight in the eye, I said, “The Virgin Mary never wore stockings.”
They gasped and said, “She didn’t?”
I answered, “In Mary’s time, stockings were unknown.
So far as we know, they were first worn by prostitutes in Italy in the fifteenth century, when the Renaissance began.
Later, a lady of the nobility scandalized the people by wearing stockings at a court ball.
Before long everyone in the upper classes was wearing stockings, and by Queen Victoria’s time stockings had become the badge of the prude.”
These ladies, who were hold-overs from the Victorian epoch, had no more to say.
I did not rebuke the girls for not wearing stockings.
A year or two afterward, most girls in the United States were going without stockings in summer and nobody thought anything about it.
Nor do I believe that this led toward disintegration of moral standards in the United States.
Times were changing, and the step away from Victorian legalism was all for the better.
“Legalism” and “legalist” are terms we like to use for others, not ourselves.
“Legalist” is a pejorative term, an insult, a negative label.
We are quick to think of others as legalistic, but often blind to legalism in our own thoughts.
The word “legalist” is greatly misused and over-used; some people will just use the label legalist to identify a church or individual that has stricter views than we do, but today we want to look at what legalism really is, what it is not, and how we can pursue loving obedience of God instead.
Some of you know it was in September of last year that the elders invited me back to GCBC as prospective pastor, and this time to bring my family.
A week before our second visit to GCBC, Sept. 14, 2006, Pastor Dale emailed me:
 
Phil, for your Sunday morning messages, we would like to have you preach on \\ "Legalism".
That does not have to be the title of your sermon, just the \\ subject of your study and message.
Of course, what the Bible has to say on \\ the subject … If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call me or email me.
I would have normally expected to be assigned a passage of scripture, as my usual preference and pattern would be to preach expositionally verse-by-verse through a passage of scripture rather than topical preaching.
This request threw me for a little loop and I wondered why this topic, what is the background?
Of course, ultimately, my concern was not where the church was coming from but where God’s Word was coming from and what the Scriptures had to say.
So I went for it and preached boldly, trying not to worry about offending anyone except God, and later in September the elders extended a call to me to be their pastor, and the Lord brought us marvelously together.
The word “legalism” – I found in my study – means different things to different people, and takes different forms from how the word was originally used.
Chuck Swindoll tells a true story:
I was conversing with a man I greatly admire.
He is a Christian leader in a position that carries with it heavy and extensive responsibility.
He said he was grieved on behalf of a missionary family he and his wife had known for years.
The legalism they had encountered again and again on the mission field from fellow missionaries was so petty, so unbelievably small-minded, they had returned to the States and no longer planned to remain career missionaries.
He said it was over a jar of peanut butter.
I thought he was joking, to which he responded, “No, it’s no joke at all.”
I could hardly believe the story.
The particular place they were sent to serve the Lord did not have access to peanut butter.
This particular family happened to enjoy peanut butter a great deal.
Rather creatively, they made arrangements with some of their friends in the States to send them peanut butter every now and then so they could enjoy it with their meals.
The problem is they didn’t know until they started receiving their supply of peanut butter that the other missionaries considered it a mark of spirituality that you not have peanut butter with your meals.
I suppose the line went something like this: “We believe since we can’t get peanut butter here, we should give it up for the cause of Christ,” or some such nonsense.
A basis of spirituality was “bearing the cross” of living without peanut butter.
The young family didn’t buy into that line of thinking.
Their family kept getting regular shipments of peanut butter.
They didn’t flaunt it, they just enjoyed it in the privacy of their own home.
Pressure began to intensify.
You would expect adult missionaries to be big enough to let others eat what they pleased, right?
Wrong.
The legalism was so petty, the pressure got so intense and the exclusive treatment so unfair, it finished them off spiritually.
They finally had enough.
Unable to continue against the mounting pressure, they packed it in and were soon homeward bound, disillusioned and probably a bit cynical.
What we have here is a classic modern-day example of a group of squint-eyed legalists spying out and attacking another’s liberty.
Not even missionaries are exempted.
He adds:
“If I were asked to name the major enemies of vital Christianity today, I’m not sure but what I wouldn’t name legalism first … it is a killer.
It kills congregations when a pastor is a legalist.
It kills pastors when congregations are legalistic.
Legalistic people with their rigid do’s and don’ts kill the spirit of joy and spontaneity … [and] drain the very life out of a church, even though they may claim they are doing God a service” (from /Grace Awakening, /77)
 
 
S.
Lewis Johnson said it this way:
one of the most serious problems facing the orthodox Christian church today is the problem of legalism.
One of the most serious problems facing the church in Paul’s day was the problem of legalism.
In every day it is the same.
Legalism wrenches the joy of the Lord from the Christian believer, and with the joy of the Lord goes his power for vital worship and vibrant service.
Nothing is left but cramped, somber, dull, and listless profession.
The truth is betrayed, and the glorious name of the Lord becomes a synonym for a gloomy kill-joy.
The Christian under law is a miserable parody of the real thing.
-- (“The Paralysis of Legalism,” /Bibliotheca Sacra,/ April–June 1963)
 
Even more important is the words our Lord in Matthew 16, who twice warns his disciples, “Watch out and beware [pres.
tense] of the /leaven /of the Pharisees”
 
The “leaven” according to Matthew 16:12 is their teaching, the essence of which was legalistic.
After Jesus confronts their legalism in traditions in Mark 7, in Mark 8 he warns his disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.”
Luke 12 also has the same warning and says the Pharisee’s “leaven” is also hypocrisy – the twin sin of legalism.
Leaven to the Jews was seen as a bad thing, an /evil influence/:
-         It infiltrated and permeated and affected the whole lump of dough
-         It doesn’t take a lot for it to spread, a little will leaven the whole, not just a part.
-         It fermented the dough, which the Jews associated with putrefaction, which to them stood for everything bad and rotten.
-         Soon the little leaven is spreading and growing , it is permeating and pervading and the whole is corrupted.
We need to take the word our Lord very seriously in this warning.
In Galatians 5, Paul dealt with the problem with these words:
v. 1 "/Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”
/
v. 4 “/you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.
//For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
//For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything …”/
v. 8 “/This persuasion /[about circumcision, or works for salvation or sanctification] /does not come from Him who calls you.//
//A little leaven leavens the whole lump.//”
/
 
The leaven of legalism was not only a threat to the Galatian church, it also was a threat to the Roman church, from what we can tell in Romans 14.
In my own life, it’s caused serious problems in some of the fundamentalist church circles my family have been in,  and it’s something no church or individual Christian can assume they’re immune to.
In 1 Corinthians 4, where we’ll spend some time today, and later in Corinthians, the result of legalistic leaven has to be addressed in the Corinthian church (see chaps 8-10 about disputes over food, drink, conscience, etc.).
If this could happen in apostle-founded churches, /beware/.
!
BEWARE OF LEGALISM
/ /
We need to start by defining legalism.
I’m going to cover a lot of the same ground from that original message last year, but I want to begin differently.
To help us with our definition, let’s start with a quiz.
QUIZ – True or False
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A Christian school is legalistic if they require students to attend 2 church services each week, chapel services (only 8 absences per semester), under-classmen curfew of midnight, no cable TV in dorms, no going to clubs, drinking, etc. 
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A Christian father is a legalist if he enforces strict rules for his home (no playing cards, alcohol, tobacco, no R-rated movies, no single dates for teenage children in the home, etc.)
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