This week, we continued in our Eviction Notice
series. We studied Galatians 3:1 and
following. The background is that the
new church mostly Jews and some Gentiles converted. After the church was established by Paul, the
Judaizers would come in and tell them they needed to obey the law, including
circumcision (yikes!). He calls the
Gentiles foolish for going back to the law after receiving grace. Foolishness means you know the truth but don’t
do it.
We also took a look at Luke 24:13, the story of the
people on the road to Emmaus after Jesus has risen. Again, Jesus calls them foolish for not
understanding who Jesus was and what He
was supposed to do. Cleopas was the name of the only person of the two
whose name was mentioned. His name meant
“of a renowned father,” which means he himself was a person of influence from a
renowned family.
Back in
Galatians 3:5, we see that we receive salvation by faith and grace. For some reason, it’s very easy once we
become born again to be led to believe that everything from then on is based on
our works. God is pleased with us
because you are His child and have acknowledged it. He may not be pleased with everything we do,
but He is always pleased with us (just as most parents are with their
children). True, you can’t live in sin
and be effectively used by God, but we receive the miracles and the Holy Spirit,
which allow us to be effectively used by God, because of what Jesus did and not
because of what we do or do not do. We
don’t need to be perfect to be used by God.
Then, when we understand that, we become more perfected as God’s grace
teaches us and works within us.
In verse 6, it
emphasizes that instead of the law written out to guide us, where then man has
to interpret it, we have the Spirit in our hearts to guide us. Man couldn’t do it all and was under a curse
because of it. Even now, if we rely on
the law, we are under a curse. Jesus did
what we could not. He fulfilled it,
completed it, did the work we could not do, and extended to us what He
inherited by doing so.
We then went
to John 14:15 to explore the promise of the Spirit. The contingency was what Jesus commanded
(love God, love others, love yourself), not obeying the law fully (that is
important). He then promises the Spirit
of truth. We can then hear what God has
to say to us directly. The verses
following flesh out the promise of the Spirit.
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php. To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee,
visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
