Freedom: Galatians #1 “The Gospel of God” – Gal. 1:1-12 Dr ... · it is the gift from God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast. We will look at this one word

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Freedom: Galatians

#1 “The Gospel of God” – Gal. 1:1-12

Dr. Matt Cassidy – 1/4/2015

Good morning, everyone, and a Happy New Year.

We will start this year off looking at the book of Galatians. You can read along in your Bible and we will

have slides up to read along in the same version.

We will look at Galatians for eleven weeks. This is my favorite New Testament epistle. I love this

book! It has been likened to the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. For our country, it would be like the

Emancipation Proclamation. It says that we are free. We are free. Free from what? -- free from the wrath

of God, free from the fear of God and knowing whether or not we have His favor, free from anxiety as to

whether we can know Him or where we will spend eternity. Is that good enough? Are we going to make

it; the last lap around life – I don’t know where I will spend eternity. You are free from that worry

because of the doctrines that are taught in this book particularly. It is such a powerful thing. What do you

do with that freedom?

The tapes that we play in our minds, things we hear over and over again, that are lies or hateful

things or just flat out wrong from people who actually meant ill to us or they accidentally said some

things. But we go to those messages first and foremost. However, we could go this book of Galatians

instead. We could hear what God says about us, how He feels towards us, and what He has done about

that.

Even some of the things that are true (not just lies that are painful) and they are painful, that we

know about ourselves, or someone has revealed to us. Because of the gospel and the power of

reconciliation with God, we can lean into those truths and accept us for how we are and then allow God’s

Spirit to change us. We would not be threatened by the requirements of the need to change.

So, in our country currently, people think that the gospel is something that provides Heaven after

death.

Our hope is through these eleven weeks that the gospel would take root in our souls, and its sap

would reach every branch, every leaf, and every appendage of our souls, to affect our personality, our

temperament. Our hope is that the gospel would put a halt to self-destructive thoughts, and that the way

we treat other human beings and our life-long fears would finally subside, and that the relational

difficulties and inadequacies we have would begin to disappear. The gospel can do all that. It is not a

simple little thing you do once and put over here; it is something that constantly is invading the parts of


life that God is revealing to you which says: We have to work on this. The gospel has the power to change

you.

What is the gospel? The word gospel is going to be used throughout this book because that is the

point of contention. So, for about seven minutes, let’s assume very little and I will explain what the gospel

is so that for the rest of our series on Galatians, when we refer back to it, we know we are talking about

the same thing.

In one succinct sentence, you will see these highlighted words we will look at.

Ephesians 2:8, 9 For by GRACE you have been SAVED through FAITH; and that not of

yourselves; [it is] the GIFT of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

That in a sentence is the gospel. It is by grace you have been saved through faith – not of yourselves – but

it is the gift from God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast.

We will look at this one word at a time.

“Saved” – You have been saved from the wrath of God. You have been saved from the cost of

having to pay eternally for your sins, in the Bible that means now and forever.

We are dead in our relationship with God. As a matter of fact, the most dynamic change that is

imaginable takes place as a result of the gospel in this idea of being saved because we change from being

an enemy with God to being a child of God. That is the distance that occurs when a person goes from

being an enemy with hostility towards God, to being a child of God -- And you call Him “Abba”, daddy.

That is what saved means.

How does this salvation happen? By grace. You are saved by grace.

“Grace” – What is grace? Today, I want to take away all the church words and make this

definition of the gospel as concrete as possible. Grace means gift. It is almost a perfect synonym. You are

saved by this gift.

It is a present. It is not earned.

If you pay for the gift, it is not a gift – it is a purchase.

If I give you this gift and you pay me back, it is not a gift – it is a loan.

A gift is a present that you receive – because it is a gift.

We didn’t get the biggest box we could find for nothing. [prop of gift box on stage] I want you to see that

grace is a gift.

What is the gospel?


What is the gift? The gift is this promise that was foretold that there would have to be a

miraculous gift provided, that would pay for the cost of our sins. God promised that to:

Adam at the Fall. How do we get out of this? There will be a gift.

Abraham – there will be a gift.

David – there will be a gift.

The prophets – there will be a gift.

John the Baptist – there is a gift coming.

We open up the gift and it is a check, which is paid to the Father by the Son Jesus Christ for the payment

of our sins. Death for sin. That is Good Friday. And on Resurrection Sunday, Easter, it reads “Paid in

Full.” The gift is Jesus Christ coming, reconciling us to God, making us right with God; it is the check.

We are saved by a gift and the gift is the payment of sin through faith.

“Faith” – What does faith mean? Faith, trust, belief, hope – are all action words. You have to do

something or it is just hypothetical and theoretical and it is not even real – it doesn’t count for you. You

are just throwing words around which is very popular today.

Here is a concrete example, #1. I am on the third story of a building and the place is burning down

around me. There is a team of firefighters below me and they have that little trampoline out; they are


yelling at me to ‘jump’. I am going to be saved from this burning building. So I have to jump. Now,

staying up here (on the ledge of the building) and acknowledging that the firefighters have adequate

training, and they have a sufficient number of people to distribute my weight that if I jump and probably

approach a speed of about 40 mph, they could catch me, that is not trust.

Intellectual understanding is not trust. I know you got points for that in school but knowing

something is not just being able to recite it or understand it. Instead, knowing something is the ability to

do follow through and do something about it in the Bible.

So, if you could take a Blue Book test on car repair and pass it, but you could not get your

knuckles dirty, you don’t know anything about cars.

Faith, trust, hope, belief – those are action words.

This is not faith [Standing on stage with one foot poised forward to jump but one foot is still

firmly planted on the ‘ledge.’] Almost – hedging my bet. What is faith? Faith sometimes is not confident

but it is doing something. It is jumping. [jumps off the stage] Now I have faith. Now I proved my faith. I

did something.

Do you believe we can catch you?

Yes.

Then jump.

No, I believe you. I trust you

You are not trusting until you are airborne. You can be airborne and crazy, screaming but at least

you are airborne.

The confident, intellectual standing here, doing nothing is not a person of faith, belief, or anything.

They are making great grades in school but they can’t do anything because they are not active in

it.

Let’s get more concrete. So, I am saved from the fire by the trained firefighters, by trusting them.

How did I trust them? I jumped. That is just a review.

Another example, #2. Say I have a heart condition and I am saved from that by a pill – the thing –

and I trust it by taking the pill. I am staring at the pill. I trust that pill and it could help me. That is not

trust. I have to ingest the pill.

Example #3. I am sitting in a very uncomfortable chair inside an aluminum tube, going 530 mph.

You don’t want to overthink this. Because of some engineering drawings, maintenance crews, and pilot

training, I believe and hope that is all safe and true. I showed that hope by boarding the plane. Boarding


the plane scared is better than standing here and intellectually telling you all the details about how

aerodynamics works. I have to board the plane.

When I board a plane and the crew asks: How are you doing, passenger? I think: Who cares? How

are you doing? How is it going up there in the cockpit? Is everybody getting along okay? Your marriages

are good and no one is thinking bad thoughts? Did everybody sleep well last night? I am putting my hope

in you guys right now. I hope the mechanical crew is getting along – team sport – because I can fly

because of a plane. I show my hope by doing something.

I am saved and made right with God because of a gift of payment in full. How do I trust that, I

make this statement where I put my soul in the hands of God and I say: It is done. I am believing that the

payment in full is legitimate. I am not going to do anything about that. It was God doing the work through

Jesus Christ.

It is by grace alone – the gift alone – through Jesus Christ alone – and my faith, trust, hope, my

belief is in that alone.

What happens to a person who believes in aerodynamics and in planes, they end up flying. The

person who believes in that pill, gets their heart fixed. The person who will jump off the burning building

into the trampoline gets saved from the fire.

The person who puts their faith in this gift, they rest. They are at ease. There is no more wrestling

with God about certainty of their acceptance, and love, and ultimate ends. At the end of the day, He is

King of the Universe and He calls me His son. So, there is this palpable peace that is overwhelming. God

goes from our Adversary and a Judge in this transition all the way over here to our Protector and Father. I

experience that by actually putting my faith in that.

So, where do good works come in? That is the key to this book. What about works? Well, it said

in our passage, Ephesians 2;8-9, especially verse 9 that there is no boasting, no bragging about what you

are doing. For a lot of different reasons, we are going to look at that today, but you cannot add to this gift

or it ruins the gift. There is no goodness that you bring to this that you ought to be talking about.

Good works do follow this gift. When you get this gift of salvation, that is paid in full by Jesus

Christ, you put your faith in that, then good works happen for at least two reasons. One, now the Holy

Spirit has the ability to reside in your soul and you will grow a conscience in a hurry. You will do good

things. Two, overflowing with gratitude would cause that to happen. If you were doing time legitimately

What about good works?


and were on death row for killing someone and another stepped in and said: I’ll will pay for that myself.

You would be grateful. – So, good works follow real faith --- but good works do not cause real faith.

Faith alone saves – but real faith is never alone.

We have to move on for the sake of time and my seven minutes is up. But if you have questions

about this – because this is fundamental and elemental – you have to grasp this. It would be great if we

could go back and forth; this is a dialogue but I turned it into a monologue. But there is a dialogue that

takes place here. You can start any Sunday. There is a new class called FAQ, Frequently Asked

Questions, which meets at 10:45 a.m. in the Center Point Building across the patio. They visit for 15

minutes and meet each other, so they feel comfortable to ask any question imagine about the basic

theologies/topics that are taught in the Bible. If this is still new to you and you don’t grasp it yet, please

consider going to FAQ next Sunday. It provides a great dynamic.

Before we get into the book of Galatians itself, we want to touch on the mood of the book.

The mood of Galatians is different from any of the other letters in the New Testament that Paul

writes. This is his most animated and passion-filled book that Paul writes. He is not happy. There are a lot

of emotions and very few of them are good.

First of all, Paul is shocked because he cannot believe that people he taught this gospel – grace

alone through Christ alone – and he is shocked that they would reject it. Why would you reject that gospel

now? So quickly after you believed it but now you rejected it.

Then Paul feels betrayed because they were all going along with him. It is not personal, betrayal

towards him but they betrayed the gospel itself. They betrayed this message, this gift. It is like they

returned the gift and said: I bring this back and I want something worse. – What?

Paul is spitting mad about this thing. He is livid towards the teachers of this false doctrine of it

being a gift + works. They were saying: You get the gift and that is a good start. Now, get going and start

doing good things because you have to in order to keep the gift. – That is their teaching. Paul realizes that

changes the whole dynamic. Paul will call them names and cusses. I will be cussing in just a few minutes;

it is great for ratings.

Later on in the book, Paul hopes they hurt themselves in a personal way. Paul is stupefied. He is

bewildered because he cannot figure it out, especially since he is a scholarly Jew. All of these rituals of

the Old Testament, feasts and sacrifices, were pointing to the GIFT. For 4,000 – 10,000, certainly 2,000

years of Jewishness, it was all pointing to this GIFT. The Passover, the Day of Atonement, all pointed to

The Mood of Galatians


the gift is coming, the gift is coming. The gift shows up and everybody is going back to the little arrows:

Wow, that is a neat arrow. We should keep talking about the arrow. – Paul goes: The arrow is pointing to

the gift. – So, he is stupefied that they don’t understand the power of the gift. Now you don’t need arrows

any more.

My point is, when you read the book of Galatians, you have to turn up the volume on the emotions

and hear Paul yelling. If you don’t, you are not reading it right.

Let me give you a summary of chapter 1 and then we will hit the ground pretty hard.

First, because Paul’s credentials are in question, he will authenticate himself as an Apostle. This is

part one, a few verses, 1-5. Paul tells us about himself and why he has the authority to speak on this

subject.

Then Paul gives at least three reasons why this fake gospel is wicked and from hell.

Then he tells us why the gospel + good works is from hell. Then he gives us two attributes or ways to

know that the gospel Paul taught is the real thing.

We don’t have time to cover verses 1-5 but in verses 1 and 2, Paul is establishing his credibility as

an Apostle.

Gal. 1:1, 2 Paul, an apostle (not [sent] from men nor through the agency of man, but

through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead, and all the

brethren who are with me, …

In the first five verses of this chapter, Paul will use the name of deity five times: three times he says “God

the Father” and two times he says “Jesus Christ”. Why? Paul is dropping names here. He says: I am an

Apostle and I did not get appointed to be an Apostle by a guy over here. I am not an Apostle by a

committee of people, an agency of men. I am an Apostle because God, God, God said so. I have this rank

because Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ gave it to me. So I have a platform to speak about. – He is giving a

resume here. He is showing his authority.

After he does that, he says: Let’s talk about this fake gospel. It isn’t even real gospel. He gives

us three things that describe this.

Paul’s Introduction of Chapter 1

Chapter 1:1, 2 – Paul’s credibility as an Apostle

Chapter 1:6-7 – Descriptors of the False Gospel


The first thing Paul describes is that the fake gospel – Gospel + Works – is:

1. Desertion.

Gal. 1:6 I am amazed (some translations read: shocked, astonished) that you are so quickly

DESERTING Him who called you by the grace of Christ, …

I can’t believe how quickly you are deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ. The word desert

there is a military term. So, let’s use a military analogy.

The post you are supposed to guard is by grace alone, by Christ alone through faith alone. It is by

grace, through faith, through Christ alone. That is what you are supposed to be guarding as a soldier. Paul

says: What? Did you hear gun shots two miles away and you abandoned this? You betrayed not me, Paul,

but you are betraying Christ – it says. You deserted this. You are a deserter of God Himself. You have

stabbed this gift in the back.

2. Different in Kind.

The next thing he says is very interesting. It is not even a gospel any more. So in verses 6 and 7 he

says.

Gal. 1:6, 7a I am amazed (shocked, astonished) that you are so quickly deserting Him who

called you by the grace of Christ, for another (another of a different kind) gospel; which is

[really] not another (another of the same kind); …

You have deserted Christ for another of a completely different kind. It is not even a gospel any more.

There are two words for another in Greek that will help us, because Paul is trying to be sure we don’t mix

this up.

I have two pieces of fruit. Allos means “another of the same kind”. I have a Red Delicious Apple

and a Macintosh Apple. They are both apples – fruits of the same kind.

Heteros (we are familiar with heteros, where we get heterosexual; I am interested in people who

are different than me) means “another of a different kind”. Here is an apple and an orange. In logic, we

say “difference in degree, not in kind.”

What Paul is saying is that if you take this gift and you add works to it, it is not difference in

degree like: Oh, it is a little bit off. Oh, he started a new denomination. – No, you started a cult. It is a

different kind of gospel and it is not even the kind that we are talking about. It is not a gospel; it is not

good news. Gospel literally means good news; how could it be good news if we are back to the same

treadmill? How could you so quickly desert for a gospel that is not even a gospel of a different kind? How

did you do that?


Let’s go back to definitions of terms.

Grace means gift. If you add to grace, it is not a gift any more – because it is a gift.

Grace means gift. If you have to pay for the gift, you earned the gift. It is a purchase, not a

gift any more. How do you keep it as a gift? You just take it and put your wallet back in your pocket.

Grace means gift. If you received the gift and paid it back, it is not a gift any more. It is a

loan. Thanks for loaning me the money to buy this present for me. I will pay you back. It is not a present

any more. A gift is a gift.

God gives us His Son to pay the price for our sins. He resurrected Jesus Christ to prove that it was

a payment in full. That is the gift. If you add anything to this, it is no longer the gift.

So, besides deserting and then ruining the very definition of the term gift – and it is not even a gift

any more, but now you are distorting it.

3. Distortion

This false gospel is distorting things.

Gal. 1:6, 7 I am amazed (shocked, astonished) that you are so quickly deserting Him who

called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is [really] not another; only

there are some who are disturbing you and want to DISTORT the gospel of Christ.

Let me explain how this is distorting the gospel. The word distort means to create an unclear picture. The

gospel by grace alone, through Christ alone, through faith alone, is like this Super HD perfect picture of

the nature of God. The conflicts we have on the nature of God are difficult to contain in our minds that He

is absolutely just and holy, and yet He is loving and merciful. Yet look at what happens. The gospel does

that. This gift does that. King of the Universe nailed to a tree – the righteousness of God – we cannot

stand the radiation of His holiness. It is quenched in this gift. For God so loved the world … The pure

gospel has this Super HD perfect picture of the nature, the face of God Himself …. Then when we add

works to it, put our slimy, oily, dirty fingerprint right over the face of God, and now we can’t see certain

aspects of Him. I don’t see that He is all that holy. Or, I don’t see that He is loving – because I have to

keep working here. – See how it distorts that.

If you add to the gift, it is no longer a gift.

This fake gospel – you get this gift and now you get out there and get busy. [I think that is the

motto of some churches. Receive the gift and now get busy until Jesus comes back. That is a false gospel.

It deserts God; it is not even real anymore – we are re-defining terms now that are not based on reality,

and it distorts the image of God.


How does Paul feel about the people who are promoting the false gospel? This is where he gets

mad. He says: They can go to hell. There is the cussing. You stayed and you heard it. Paul says: Go to

hell. That is a summary statement found in verses 8 and 9. It didn’t take long for him to get riled up. Let

me show you that it is not all that inflammatory – in other words, it is not cussing. Paul says:

Galatians 1:8, 9 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel

contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so

I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he

is to be accursed!

“Accursed” in Greek is anathema – it is hell – it is final, ultimate, eternal judgment and damnation. Paul

is not talking trash. He is not losing his temper. Paul is stating facts. He is just doing the math here.

If you believe in a gospel that says grace (gift) and then add all your good doings and rituals and

your attendance and your checked boxes, that is not the real gospel anymore. It is a difference in kind and

that will not get you to Heaven. So you will go to hell and you will be accursed.

Paul is especially hard on teachers and rightfully so. If you are a tour guide and you are leading

people, saying: Oh yeah, this is the gospel. You get this gift and then we do all this other stuff. I will tell

you when to stop. I hope you did enough. That person who is teaching, oh he is going to hell. Let him be

accursed.

Paul is not taking himself and his friends out of this declaration.

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, teaches a gospel different than the one you were taught, they

are going to be accursed.” This is ultimate. These are hard realities going on here and they have

consequences. That is all Paul is saying here. He says it twice and he says it for good reasons. It is just

facts. Grace + works is death.

So, Paul establishes his authority; he gives us three reasons why this other teaching is heretical and

is cultic; and now he will say: Here are two things that you can know are true about the gospel – that you

are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, through Jesus Christ alone. Here are two signs of the true

gospel.

1. The true gospel is offensive. Three times Paul says I am not trying to win friends here.

Gal. 1:10 For am I now seeking the FAVOR of men, or of God? Or am I striving to PLEASE

men? If I were still trying to PLEASE men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

Paul’s summary – Gal. 1:8, 9

The True Gospel – Gal. 1:10-12


I am bound by my servitude to Jesus Christ to not care what other people think about me.

This message is offensive. How so? Why is the gospel offensive? It is a gift. I love gifts. I am not

offended by your gift.

Well, there is an assumption that precedes the gift and that is why it is rejected. It is about the

nature of your soul.

We want to give concrete examples. Let’s pretend your soul is an automobile. I will use huge

generalizations. There are three types of people out there.

One type of person might say my car (my soul) looks like this. There is a flat tire. I am not all

that broken. I can fix this. I am a good person. I am doing my best. God loves me and I have all these

Hallmark cards that say so. So, it is all good.

See, this person is not offended. Wait until they hear the real gospel. This is called self-

righteousness. This person does not have a clue what the gospel says.

Most of people who go to churches like ours, and most people around, would have the second

view is that they see their car (their soul) as a car wreck but it is more like a fender bender. It is broken

but with God’s help, we can get this thing working. Nobody is perfect. I am broken and I sin but

everybody sins. Right? So, I have received this gift from God and we will work this thing out and I am

going to try to get my life together so that I am worthy of the gift. – Now it is not a gift. – That person

might have a mildly bad self image and they realize they need some help but they don’t get it either.


The reason the gospel is so offensive is because this is how the Bible sees us. Our souls are totaled. That

thing ate a tree and they had to cut the roof of the car off to get the people out apparently. You take this to

a junkyard and you have to pay them to take it. There is nothing on this that is salvageable. Even the

circuits are blown. You can’t sell the fuses on this thing. There is nothing about this automobile that has

merit towards God.

(Romans 3:10-12) There is none righteous. There is not even one. There is no one who understands. There

is no one who really seeks God. Our mouths are open graves; our tongues practice deceit. Our mouths are

full of cursing and bitterness.


Sometimes in God’s severe mercy, He will expose who we really are and we will see ourselves as

this totaled wreck. We will drop our little hammer and we will drop our sand paper – like you need a little

sand paper. Get out of the car, pal. You are not going home in that Corvette. You will go sit on the curb

and cry and all you will have in your despair is a glimmer of hope that God would come and give a gift.

He is not going to fix that car. God will give you a new one.

That is what is offensive about the gospel. There is this dramatic assumption of self-realization

that God’s Spirit allows you to experience so that you realize that: “If I don’t get a gift that pays for

everything – Paid in Full – I don’t have any chance.”

Paul is saying: Am I winning wins by teaching this? Not really. I am just listening to God.

2. Here is the other thing that is absolutely profound. He spends about a chapter and a half trying

to explain this. The gospel is not invented but it is discovered. Think about this. The true gospel is

discovered, not invented. Look at how Paul is appealing to that.

Gal. 1:11, 12 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by

me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but [I

received it] through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

I got this message from outside. I did not come up with this message; I did not reason myself into this

message; I did not reflect on it and now: Oh, this makes sense. I have come up with this passage.

If you take a religion class at a university, they will say that Paul wrote the theology of the New

Testament. He invented Christianity. --- No, this gospel message: grace alone, Christ alone, faith alone –

that is something you discover, you don’t invent that.

Pythagoras: Did he discover or invent that A2 + B2 = C2? It is named after him. He discovered it.

Then he submitted to the truth of the Pythagorean theorem. He received it from outside, from the Creator

of triangles. He came with the triangle.

Isaac Newton: Did he invent gravity? Did he invent the rate of gravity on planet Earth? No, he

discovered it and then he had to submit to the reality of it because it came with the planet, from the

Creator.

What Paul is saying here is that you are saved by grace through faith is a message I received from

outside; I did not come up with this. The Creator gave it to me.

Let’s put a bow on this and review.

Paul says: I have authority from God, from God, from God, from Jesus Christ, from Jesus Christ.


This other gospel out there is not another gospel. You are deserting your post to what is true. Not only

that but you are distorting the image of God. You are distorting the holy nature of God by doing this. It is

not even the real gospel. The real gospel is offensive and it is not from here.

This good news – gospel means good news – if you apply it to the aspects of your life, if you take

it for more than a ticket to Heaven and you allow God to reveal to you areas of your life where ‘doing and

working harder’ is not working any more – and you let God’s grace, God’s gift, work in your life, you

don’t have dreams wild enough to anticipate what God will do in your life.

It is a strange thing in American history. After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by

Lincoln and after the Civil War was over, there were many slaves who would not leave their

masters/owners. Some of them did not want to leave because they had nice and kind ones and they were

trying to provide a safe place. But there were other slaves who were beaten and misused and abused in

harsh and ungodly ways. Yet the freed slaves stayed with their harsh masters because they knew of no

other life.

My prayer for this series in Galatians, where we will study for 11 weeks, is that the gospel, the gift

of Christ, the gift of Jesus alone, through faith alone, would be like yeast in dough. You just add a little

yeast in a corner and it has the power to infect the entire dough. That is what we want to happen to us.

We want you to tap in on this. Let your roots grow into this gift, this grace, and that it will saturate

the trunk, the limbs, and every single leaf of your life. So, your personality and your temperament and

your perspective on life is overflowing with gratitude and generosity and patience and courage.

The only way that will happen is that you must be brainwashed. You have to think on this grace

more than anything else. For this week’s homework assignment, this is what I am asking you to do. You

are to read this short little book every day for 30 days.

This had a profound effect in my life. I think this might be one of the reasons this is my favorite

book. I read it 50 times. The guy who challenged me to do it said: Oh, it gets really bad from the 25th to

the 40th time but then things happen and you get inside the mind of the Spirit of God.

30 days. You can try multiple translations of the Bible. It is easy to go on line and get different

translations. When you get tired of one, go to another. So, here is my challenge for you. 30 days, for the

month of January, read Galatians every day. Come back and we will study it together for 10 more weeks.

I am pausing because I want you to think about it because I am going to ask you to raise your

hand. Who is going to do that? Who will read Galatians every day for 30 days?

Conclusion


Let’s pray for some brain washing. No kidding.

Lord Jesus:

I ask first of all that those who do not understand this, or maybe there would be a new way they

would understand that it is by grace that we are saved and made right with You. It is through our faith that

we do that, a faith that acts out, that trusts completely, that is reckless and jumps without a net, and it is

not of our own doing. We have nothing to boast about – and that we would understand this good news,

this power of grace, this power of gift giving by your Spirit, and that it would penetrate our souls, like

yeast, that it would saturate every aspect of our lives.

Lord, would your Spirit reveal to us a guarded area that we think is too painful, or too difficult, for

your powerful grace to invade. Give us that as a project, to see the power of grace in our lives?

Let this song be true in our lives, that you are this grace, this gift of Jesus Christ, is the cornerstone

that we build our whole lives around. Let us be a church like that. We pray this is Jesus’ name. Amen

Documents

Freedom: Galatians #1 “The Gospel of God” – Gal. 1:1-12 Dr ... · it is the gift from God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast. We will look at this one word