The Demands of the Law

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Transcript:

Well, turn with me to Galatians chapter 2. Galatians chapter 2. Some of you saw me right before the service started.

You saw me carry my guitar in and I heard people say, is he going to sing tonight? No, I’m not. You’re off the hook.

I am going to show you something with the guitar a little bit later, but I’m not going to sing tonight. Galatians chapter 2. We’re going to pick up where we left off last week and working our way through the book of Galatians where Paul explains the two great themes of this book, which are freedom and faithfulness.

Freedom from the law, freedom from sin, freedom from bondage, in order that we may be faithful to Christ. He doesn’t give us freedom just simply so we can live as we want and do what we want. He gives us freedom for a purpose. And if you’ll recall back to last week, Paul had had an altercation with Peter, if that’s the right word, where Peter, as a result of some Judaizing teachers that had come up from Jerusalem, had drawn back from his previous position ever since he’d had the vision with the sheep and the animals and him being told to kill and eat, and realizing that he was not to call unclean what God had called clean, and realizing that that was a sign from God to go and minister to the Gentiles, Cornelius in particular, and then from there on he reached out to many others.

Peter had ministered to the Jews, to the Gentiles, it really didn’t matter. But as a result of these Judaizing teachers coming up from Jerusalem and bringing with them the idea that because they were Jews, they were superior to the Gentile Christians unless and until the Gentile Christians adopted Judaism in addition to their faith in Christ. Up and until that point, they were superior to these Gentiles.

And Peter, whether he agreed with them or not, or whether he just did it to try to pacify them because they were louder and we know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, whether he did it because he really believed it was right or whether he did it just to pacify them, He gave the impression, he gave the appearance that he adhered to this idea that the Jewish Christians were somehow superior to the Gentile Christians, because all of a sudden he would no longer have anything to do with them. He wouldn’t eat with them. He wouldn’t do these things.

And Paul called him on it, and rightfully so, to say that if you as a Jew are not forced to live as a Jew, if you as a Christian Jew or a Jewish Christian, if you as a Jewish Christian are not required to live by the Old Testament law, then why do you insist that the Gentile Christians live by the Old Testament law in order to be Christians? And they argued about that. I don’t know that they argued.

Peter appears to have gotten the message and straightened out. But we continue on with that tonight. Not so much him talking.

He doesn’t go back and tell us anymore the details or the history behind the disagreement that they had. But he goes on to talk to Peter and talk to the churches in Galatia some more about the demands of the law. This law that Peter appeared to want to go back to, the law that the Judaizers wanted to go back to, he straightens them out as to what it is.

Now, again, why am I talking so much about the law and legalism and self-righteousness? Number one reason is because it’s in the text, and we’re going through the text piece by piece. Second of all, because it’s a big problem.

Just as self-righteousness, I talked about last week, is a big problem in churches where we’re more concerned, and I don’t mean us specifically, but churches many times are more concerned with proclaiming to the world how righteous we are as opposed to telling the world how righteous Christ is and how far short we fall in comparison. So it’s also a problem in the world around us and even some people in churches that have the idea that by adherence to some law, maybe not the Old Testament law, but whatever moral code they think they follow, that perhaps they can be saved if they can just be good enough. That problem is not limited, excuse me, I’m very tongue-tied tonight, is not limited to the Judaizers in the book of Galatians.

It’s not limited to those I’ve run into who today still insist that you must follow the Passover, observe the Passover, you must be circumcised, you must do this, you must do that, in accordance with the Old Testament law. This idea of righteousness, of following the law in order to be saved, is not limited to them. Most of the world’s religions are based on the idea of doing enough to be good enough for God.

The Roman Catholic Church is a religion based on works. It is not the religion of the Bible. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, is a religion of works, not the religion of the Bible.

Islam is a religion of works, not in any way, shape, or form compatible with the Bible. And even whether they preach it or not, even within Protestant churches, within Baptist churches, within evangelical churches, there are numerous people that sit in the pews, especially on Sunday mornings, who still think, despite what they may or may not hear, that they can be good enough to earn God’s acceptance. Maybe by following the Old Testament law, maybe by following some moral code, but if they can just be good enough.

I’m trying to remember the exact number, but I believe it was a study released by Lifeway when they surveyed their Southern Baptist churches, and I believe the number was over 50 percent, they thought, of people that sit in their pews on any given Sunday morning are lost. I think at that point I was a Southern Baptist, and I thought, surely that can’t be right. But a lot of the churches, Southern Baptist, a lot of even BMA churches wouldn’t have the problems that they have, except for there are people sitting in the pews that are church members, but they’re just as lost as they can be. And folks, if we proclaim no other message, it ought to be the gospel.

And an important component of the gospel message is the fact that works cannot save us. And so maybe you’ve heard it before from me and from other preachers. Maybe you’ve heard it in different orders.

Maybe you’ve heard it from different perspectives. But until we get our churches, until we get our society, until we get the world to understand that works has nothing to do with salvation, it’s incumbent on every believer to proclaim the message that works does not save until we’re blue in the face. It bears repeating.

We’ve heard it before, but we need to hear it again and keep hearing it and keep hearing it. Well, they’re just not getting it. Well, then keep saying it.

It’s like with Benjamin or my dog, either one. They’re going to get dirty again. why bathe them?

Well, you keep after it. As a matter of fact, last night they were both dirty. Threw them both in the tub.

Christian had run an errand. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that or not. But I killed two birds with one stone.

Just threw them both in the tub. Fighting a losing battle. They’re both dirty again today.

We keep proclaiming the gospel message and we have limited success. That doesn’t matter. We keep proclaiming it because it’s right.

Tonight we’re going to talk about the demands of the law and what the law cannot do. And Paul takes a little bit of a more conciliatory tone toward Peter as though he has probably learned his lesson, and Paul includes himself. You’ll notice about verse 15, where we left off and where we’re going to start tonight, he goes from saying, you, if you don’t do this, if you don’t do this, from saying you to Peter to saying we.

He brings it around to if we as Christians. He’s no longer discussing their disagreement. He’s just making sure that Peter and the churches at Galatia really understand what’s at stake here.

Starting in verse 15, he said, we who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Now when he starts out, it almost sounds like he’s agreeing with Peter. He says, we who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles.

He’s not saying that they are not sinners. He’s not speaking here from a divine perspective where God says we are all sinners. But even the Israelites throughout history who we know from God’s perspective are sinners could look at the Gentile world and they’re being wholly given over to paganism and wickedness and idolatry and say they were a sinful group of people.

Now in terms of their standing before God, we are all sinners. But there’s some people who act the part a little more. And so he’s saying, we who are Jews by nature and not, he says, we are not the same as the wicked Gentiles out there, and yet even we who are Jews by nature, we know that a man is not justified by the works of the law.

If anybody, if works saved, if the law is saved, if there was any chance of being saved by our efforts, if anybody had a shot at it, it would have been the Jews, because they had the law of God. And many of them throughout history tried to keep the law of God. If anybody could have been saved by works, I believe it would have been Paul.

Being a Pharisee and being zealous of the law, he boasted about it only then to say that all the things he had going for him were worthless. But those who were Jews by nature, if anybody had a shot at it, it would have been the Jews, not those wicked Gentiles over there. He said, but even we, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, he says, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we, even those Jews who had the law, who followed the law, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. Simply by believing and exercising faith in Jesus Christ, a man is justified, not by the works of the law.

And not by the works of the law, nor by the works of the, for, I’m sorry, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. This is not a new idea even in the Jewish religion. I want to say it’s Psalm 143 verse 2.

It says that in God’s sight shall no man be justified. This is a direct quote of that passage. And he says, yes, that includes by the law.

Speaking of a man and his actions, no man will be justified in God’s sight. And Paul brings that Old Testament scripture back to mind and says, for even by the works of the law shall no man be justified. If that sounds like a, not to insult anybody’s intelligence, I’m sure some of you know what the word means, but it’s also one of those church words.

I want to make sure we’re clear on what it means. Because if we went out on the street corner and said, by the works of the law, no man is justified, they might have no clue what we’re talking about. Justification is essentially wherein God wipes our slate clean.

When it says we are justified, it means that by Christ, by our faith in Christ, the slate has been wiped clean and we are held innocent of all the charges. When it says no man is justified by the works of the law, It means that the works of the law, following a moral code, doing enough effort, is not enough to make a man innocent before God. That’s essentially what justification means.

When we do something and we say we’re trying to justify our actions, we’re trying to make it okay, we’re not guilty. You ever get a speeding ticket and, well, I didn’t see the sign, or I was running late, or I had to go to the bathroom, or something like that. We’re trying to justify ourselves to the police officer.

We’re trying to make ourselves not guilty. Well, that’s what he’s talking about here. Human effort is not enough to make a man not guilty in God’s eyes.

No man will be justified by the law. Verse 17, but if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? As they sought to be justified by Christ, they were going to sin from time to time.

And there would be people who would claim to be justified by Christ and who would misuse that and who misuse that still today and say, well, I’m justified by faith. I can do whatever I want. And the question he asks here is probably the question that was on the mind of some other people in that time.

Well, does that mean Christ is doing that? Does that mean that’s what he’s justified you for? And Paul’s answer is an emphatic no. He said, God forbid.

If a man claims to be justified by Christ and is found to be a sinner, does that mean Christ is the minister of sin? Does that mean Christ made him to sin? Does that mean that’s what Christ’s justification does?

Does that’s what Christ justified him for, and he says, God forbid. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. Now, what has Paul destroyed?

Paul has spent his ministry up to this time destroying the idea that works save. He spent his time up to this point destroying the idea that there was something about the law that could save us, that could make us righteous before God. And if he goes back and tries to build again what he destroyed, which is essentially what Peter was trying to do there for a while.

He said, if we’ve spent all this time tearing down the notion that we could be saved by the law, and then we go back and try to build that up again, and convince people that they could be saved by the law, well, what about this time in between when we haven’t followed the law because we were teaching that we didn’t have to? We’ve made ourselves transgressors. We’ve gone back and said, oh, by the way, we were wrong.

We’ve broken the law. And so in trying to go back and make themselves righteous, they prove themselves to be unrighteous. For example, if I tried to teach you that the speed limits didn’t matter anymore.

I’ve heard of a lot of preachers who try to teach people the speed limits don’t matter anymore. If I were trying to teach you that the speed limits don’t matter anymore and that you could leave out of here and go 65 on crossover. I know this is not a perfect analogy.

You can go 65 out of here and cross over and be fine. Speed limits gone down to 45 by the way. That you could go 65 and you’re fine and I spent my time tearing down the idea that the speed limit signs matter and then all of a sudden I say wait a minute we’ve got to follow the speed limit signs again.

And all this time I’ve been going 65, 70, whatever my little heart desired out here on crossover. And then I come back and say, wait a minute, it’s wrong to break the speed limit. We’ve got to follow the speed limit.

We’ve always been required to follow the speed limit. And all this time I’ve been preaching it was wrong. It was the speed limits were wrong.

It was okay to break them. And I’ve been breaking it myself. I proved by my very preaching that I was wrong before.

And I make myself a transgressor of that law. It’s not a perfect analogy, but that’s essentially what’s going on here. Oh, well, if we’ve got to follow the law again, here I wasn’t keeping it, so am I wrong now or was I wrong then?

Makes himself a transgressor. For I through the law, I love this verse, for I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. And we’re going to talk a little more in depth about what these verses mean.

But essentially, reading this passage, reading this verse in context of this passage, and the rest of the book of Galatians, what he’s saying here is that by applying the law to his He realized that he could not be justified by the law. He realized what the law was for and that he wasn’t required to follow it in order to be justified. We’ll get back to that in just a minute.

But through the law I am dead to the law that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. He said that he was crucified with Christ. If you read into the book of Romans, he talks about being dead to sin. And he carries that picture here with him into Galatians.

Actually reversed that. He wrote it here first and then he expounded on it in the book of Romans later on. I’m crucified with Christ. He’s died with Christ and nevertheless he says he lives.

But not him, but Christ who lives within him. Christ has made him alive. And the life which now I live in the flesh, that doesn’t mean he’s living in the flesh in the sense that he’s living a wicked life and following after the flesh, but talking about the physical life I have.

Spiritually, I’ve died with Christ, and now He lives in me. And now this physical life that I have, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. He only lives because of Christ. I do not frustrate the grace of God.

I could see the accusation that would be there from some of the Judaizers and some of the other false teachers that Paul just frustrates the grace of God. Because Paul was insisting that people did not have to follow the Old Testament law. Well, he’s just giving people a license to sin.

He’s just putting grace out there so that people can use it and abuse it. That’s not what Paul was teaching. And yet even today when we preach what the Bible says about salvation, we’re accused of abusing the grace of God.

We’re accused of giving people license to sin. Folks, if we really understand eternal security, it’s not a license to sin because our want to would change when we’re born again. And if a man’s not born again, he doesn’t have eternal life or eternal security.

I do not frustrate the grace of God, he says, For if righteousness came by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. If it was required that I follow the law to be righteous before God, if I could, by following the law, ever hope to make myself righteous before God, then Christ died in vain. And folks, the answer there, what he’s saying here is the same thing that we say to every group that says we can earn our way to heaven today.

To every group that says you’ve got to be good enough. The answer that I give to the Catholic, to the Mormon, to the Muslim, everybody else who preaches works salvation, especially those who preach works salvation while claiming to reverence the death of Christ, claiming that His death had something to do in their salvation, while works at the same time, is that if we could ever earn our salvation before God, if we could ever be good enough to be righteous before God, what was the point in Jesus Christ dying on the cross? Because when He said, if there’s any other way, let this cut pass from Me, if it was possible, God the Father would have said, oh, well, they can just be good little boys and girls, and you can come on back home.

That would have been easier. And yet that wasn’t the answer God gave it. He submitted himself to God the Father and said, Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.

And he went to the cross willingly. If he went to the cross and suffered everything that he did and made himself the sacrifice for our sins, the only acceptable sacrifice for our sins, and yet there was another way, then he and God the Father both made the most gross miscalculation in the history of the world. And the God that I see in the Bible is not a God of gross miscalculation.

So the answer is no, we cannot be righteous. We cannot make ourselves righteous apart from the righteousness of Christ. If righteousness comes by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. Now that we’ve gone through the passage, we’re going to go back through here and look at four things that the law cannot do, that the demands of the law cannot do.

We’ll try to move through this briefly in just the next few minutes. The first is that the demands of the law cannot be kept. You realize that?

I didn’t realize that until a few years ago. I understood that I had sinned. I understood that Christ had died for me.

He’d done for me what I couldn’t do. But I thought we as Christians still should try our best to follow the law, not so much the ceremonial law, but the Ten Commandments, the moral law. And folks, I still think those are a good idea.

God gave us those principles for a reason of his moral law. But I thought, oh, if you’re a Christian, you’re very immature in my faith at that point. I didn’t realize until, I say a few years ago, probably ten years ago, before I started preaching, that we cannot keep the law.

He says in verses 17 through 19, he lays this out. If we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also. .

. Sorry, verse 18. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

By trying to follow the law again, by trying to justify himself by the law again, he proves that he’s a transgressor of the law. He proves that he broke it in the first place. For I through the law am dead to the law that I might live unto God.

He talks about being dead to the law. The law cannot be kept. Man can’t be justified by the law because the law can’t be kept.

He talks throughout this passage and throughout the book of Galatians of the fact that the law is a schoolmaster. We’ll talk about that more in the next few weeks, but the law essentially was there for the purpose of showing mankind their need for God. When I realized the law can’t be kept, you almost think, what in the world?

I know God doesn’t make mistakes, but why in the world would God give us a law that cannot be kept? We have a wrong impression of the law sometimes in our society, of God’s moral law. We have a wrong impression of it.

I’m going to show you a couple things to kind of illustrate what I’m talking about tonight. I have this. .

. Where did it go? If I can remember what I did with stuff.

I have this neat little app on my phone. I have a guitar tuner, but it’s just too many things to carry around with me, so I found one on my phone that will tune the guitar. And I thought about actually trying to tune it.

I’m not sure if it’s out of tune or not. And quite honestly, the way I play it, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was in tune or out of tune. But I take this tuner, and I turn it on, and it hears the noise, and I pick the string, and it reads the vibrations, and it tells me whether you need to make it go higher or lower, and you turn the knob as a result of what the tuner tells you.

It measures, and you react accordingly. And by using this and following this, you can retune the strings, and you can get the guitar in at least close to perfect tune. You can get it where it sounds nice, in the hands of somebody that knows what they’re doing.

In Brother Brady’s hands, it would sound nice. In mine, so-so. Folks, we think the law is like that, that we take this standard and we hold it up to it and we can tweak and we can tune and we can get everything in line.

We cannot get our lives in tune with the law of God by our own effort and try to live up to the standard that He set for us. The law of God is not like a guitar tuner. And yet so many times Christians think, if I could just be a little better, if I could just do a little better job, God will love me more.

Or if I mess up, God’s going to love me a little less. Folks, as Christians, as people who’ve trusted Christ, it’s not our righteousness in the first place. It’s not our righteousness that earned us God’s forgiveness.

There’s another standard, there’s another measurement tool that I’ve only had to approximate because I didn’t have one. But I think it better illustrates what the law of God is like. What we have here is a pair of scissors tied to a piece of yarn.

And what I’m trying to approximate here is something called a plumb line. Again, I thought of this right before church, so I didn’t have time to go out and find a plumb line. But usually it’s this brass or bronze or whatever they use, some kind of metal weight that’s shaped like a bullet that they put on the end of a cord.

And they use it in masonry and maybe some other things. I don’t mean free masonry, but the actual going out and building things. They may use it in masonry.

Who knows what goes on in those places. They use it in masonry and construction. It shouldn’t be spinning like this, but you get the idea.

It’s essentially a weight on the end of a cord that will make sure the cord stands perfectly straight when it stops moving. It’ll make sure the cord stands perfectly straight, and you can hold it against a wall, and because gravity’s not variable like that, you don’t have gravity pulling it sideways over here like this, you can tell whether or not the wall is perfectly straight. I can hold it up to this wall here, and if it was more exact, if it was an actual plumb line, I could tell you that the wall was straight or not straight.

The problem is, you use it once you’ve built a wall. I mean, people use it in order to build walls and make sure it’s straight. But if I took it and held it up against a wall that’s already built here, if that wall was off, if it was crooked just a little bit, this would tell me.

But you know what? There’s no amount of holding this up that’s going to make that wall straight. The purpose of this at this point is to tell me that this wall is not straight.

And for me, there’s nothing I can do about that, unless we just torch the place and start over. This right here does not straighten my wall. The guitar tuner can put things in line when they’re out of line.

This just tells me what’s already wrong. Our view of God’s law has been too tuned to this idea over here of it being a guitar tuner where we can tune it and get things back in order. When God’s law, as presented in the book of Galatians, was given to us essentially as a plumb line to show where we’re crooked.

And once that masonry wall is built, we can’t fix it. The law cannot be kept. So if God gives us an impossible law to keep, what’s the purpose of it?

It’s the fact that it’s impossible. God puts together this moral law to say nothing of the civil law and the ceremonial law that were given to the Israelites. And says, here, here’s your law.

And not one of them could keep it. And they had to go in as a result and make these sin offerings. And we talked about offerings a few weeks ago on a Wednesday night.

They’d have to go in and sacrifice things and atone for their sins before God. And it taught them the fact that they were sinners before God. And even today, His law teaches us, if we will pay attention to it, the lesson of the law is not keep it and be good little boys and girls.

The lesson of the law is we can’t keep it because we are fallen short of the glory of God. And the world thinks, and folks, a lot of sermons in a lot of churches telling people be good boys and girls and go on and have a good week have not helped the matter. The world thinks if they could just get a little more in line with God’s law, they can be justified.

And Paul spells out for us that the demands of the law cannot be kept. even if they could be kept. Second of all, the demands of the law cannot bring forgiveness.

The demands of the law cannot justify. He says it here. I don’t know how this could be any more clear than he makes it.

He says it several times that by the law, no flesh is justified. Justification does not come by the works of the law. Justification meaning being, not ignorant, innocent before God, having the slate wiped clean, being forgiven.

Justification. The works of the law cannot bring justification because they’re impossible to keep. If we try to get our salvation by following the demands of the law, if we try to be justified by following the demands of the law, we can try very hard.

And we can come out looking like some good, moral, religious people, but we still fall short because we are still sinners. And doing a little good over here is not enough to excuse the wrong that we’ve already done. The demands of the law cannot bring justification.

Third of all, the demands of the law cannot give spiritual life. There are a lot of good people. There are a lot of good people that are spiritually dead as they could be, that have never been born again by the Spirit of God.

And they think that by following rituals and following religion and going to church three times a week and saying their prayers and being good boys and girls and not cheating and not stealing, that they’re somehow going to be good, that they’re somehow going to have this spiritual life, and it doesn’t work that way. Paul tells us in verse 20, I’m crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. He doesn’t talk about I’ve followed the law, and so I live.

He doesn’t talk about I’ve done works and therefore I live. He talks about being crucified with Christ. Now we know Paul was not literally crucified with Christ. But in a spiritual sense, he had died to his old self. He died to his old self when he was born again.

The old passed away and he was made a new creation in place. It may sound girly, but I love butterflies. Because they’re one thing, they’re that icky old caterpillar.

I know some people like the caterpillars. I think they’re gross. But they’re the icky old caterpillar and they go into the cocoon.

The chrysalis, I think, is the fancier name for it. They go into this thing, and essentially, the caterpillar dies and becomes something else altogether. It emerges as this butterfly.

It’s a picture of what. . .

I think God is very clever that way. It’s almost demeaning to God to say he’s clever. It’s an understatement.

But God’s very clever that way. I think it’s a picture for us of what goes on in the spiritual earth. Again, it’s not an exact picture.

But something happens, and the old man dies, and we’re born again, and Christ makes us into something completely new. He says, I’m crucified with Christ. I’ve died and nevertheless I live. Not I, but Christ who lives within me.

Paul has this spiritual life. The life which now I live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

He talks about living again this spiritual life that he’s got as opposed to the dead works of the law. And the spiritual life came through his faith in Christ, not by the works of the law. And we can see the distinction there between the two.

With the law, you’ve got these dead works that can’t justify the flesh. And yet when he was justified by Christ, by the faith of Christ, he says, I was crucified with Christ and nevertheless I live.