The Struggle of Religion.

Steve Gentry

[0:00] Good morning. Thank you. You can be seated.

[0:03] I just want to welcome you this morning to the village. [0:06] My name is Steve. I’m one of the pastors here. [0:09] If you have a Bible, go ahead and open up to Galatians chapter 1. [0:13] We’re going to be starting in verse 6 this morning.

[0:17] Last week we started a new series on the book of Galatians. [0:20] We’re going verse by verse through the book of Galatians right now. [0:24] And we’re not going to stop until we get to the end. [0:26] This might be a little different than what you’ve done in your church before. [0:30] But this is something that we want to do to help you and to help ourselves as well. [0:35] Going through the Bible verse by verse is going to teach us how to study God’s Word.

[0:40] And also teach us how to apply God’s Word as a whole more to our lives. [0:45] Rather than going through it just kind of one verse here, one verse there. [0:49] We’re just going to go through the whole book so we can get the whole message. [0:52] Last week, if you were here, we started the book of Galatians. [0:56] We introduced this book by giving a brief glimpse into the life of the author of the book. [1:01] We started by taking a look at the apostle Paul.

[1:03] He starts the letter so profoundly by just using his name. [1:07] He says Paul, an apostle. [1:09] And last week we kind of went through his life and saw how he had gone from being a Pharisee. [1:15] A Pharisee who lived his life just steeped in religion and steeped in the law of the Old Testament. [1:20] And was doing everything he could to earn his salvation. [1:23] So much so that it led him to persecute followers of Jesus.

[1:28] It led him to the point where he was approving of the murder of followers of Jesus. [1:33] And then one day we saw last week that the grace of God appeared into his life. [1:37] And Jesus himself appeared to the apostle Paul and redeemed him unto himself. [1:42] And basically transformed him into the greatest missionary that missions has ever known. [1:47] And he took the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the entire world. [1:52] And today we’re going to cover verses 6 through 10.

[1:55] And I promise some weeks we’re going to cover more than four verses at a time. [1:57] It’s not going to take us five years to get through Galatians. [2:00] But where we are this week is really important in understanding the rest of the book. [2:05] We can’t go more than these four verses. [2:07] Because what verses 6 through 10 do is they’re going to serve as a catalyst for the rest of the book of Galatians. [2:13] Last week we covered in the introduction the fact that Paul sets for us the standard for the book.

[2:19] And he sets for us this standard that this book is going to be about the gospel of Jesus Christ. [2:26] If you have to sum the book of Galatians up in one word, you would have to use the word gospel. [2:32] Because that is what the book of Galatians is all about. [2:35] And this week he’s going to show us why the gospel is so important. [2:41] And why this message that he has to bring to the people in Galatia is so important. [2:46] So go ahead and join me in chapter 1 verse 6.

[3:18] Let’s pause right there and pray. [3:22] Father, we want to come before you right now. [3:27] And we want to offer ourselves up to you, God.

[3:32] I specifically want to offer up my mouth to you as I speak the words of your scripture. [3:38] And I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would fill me with words to give to these people, God. [3:44] That you would give your scripture to us in such a way that it changes our lives today. [3:50] That we will walk out of here changed and different than we were last week.

[3:56] God, reveal yourself to us through your gospel. [4:00] And help us to not go into any areas of untruth, but rather help us to focus on the truth of your son Jesus today. [4:07] It’s in the name of Jesus, I do pray. Amen. [4:11] He starts this section really interesting. [4:14] He starts with some pretty strong words. He looks at them and he says, I am astonished that you are abandoning the message of God. [4:22] I am astonished that you are leaving the gospel that I just gave to you.

[4:28] And he dives headlong into the subject at hand. [4:30] And he accuses the church of turning their back on the grace of Christ that they had just received. [4:38] He uses the same terminology here when he says you have abandoned the gospel. [4:43] When he says they have abandoned, he uses the same terminology that the Romans would use for soldiers that would turn their backs and leave. [4:50] Basically, you may have heard in US history of Benedict Arnold, a traitor to the cause of the American Revolution. [4:57] Well, these are the terms that Paul uses towards the church at Galatia.

[5:00] And he says you have turn coded. [5:03] You have abandoned the gospel. [5:05] You have left the cause to which you were saved for. [5:09] And in that, Paul is making a very harsh accusation towards them. [5:16] And he is saying that what they have done is abandon it for a different gospel. [5:22] Notice that the words that he uses right here are found really in Acts, Chapter 15, verse one.

[5:27] You don’t have to turn there. I’ll just kind of give you a brief summary of what Paul says in Acts, Chapter 15. [5:33] But what he says has happened is, is that men from the Pharisees, like we covered last week, are following Paul. [5:40] And as Paul goes into a church and as he builds the church, as he starts a church, these Pharisees come in after him and distort the message that he has given them. [5:49] This has already happened to him in Antioch, and it is now happening to him in Galatia. [5:54] And in Acts, Chapter 15, one, he says that the message that they are giving them is that, [6:00] but some men have come from Judea and are teaching them, unless you are circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved.

[6:11] Basically, the message that these men are bringing into the church at Galatia is, is Paul has brought you Jesus, correct? [6:17] And they would, of course, say yes. [6:19] He says, well, that’s good. He has only given you one piece of the puzzle that will lead to your salvation. [6:27] The second piece to the puzzle is that you must be circumcised. [6:31] And I don’t feel like I need to go into a really long description as to what that means. [6:36] You must be circumcised, and then you must be obedient to the entire law of the Old Testament.

[6:44] If you have Jesus and this, then you can be saved. [6:49] And the church at Galatia, the reason that this would be so groundbreaking, because you may be asking yourself, [6:53] well, wasn’t this something that the Jews understood in the first place? [6:56] You have to understand, Galatia was not a Jewish province. [7:01] The church at Galatia was made up of Gentiles. [7:05] These were people that were not necessarily familiar with the laws of the Old Testament.

[7:09] So if someone comes in and tells them you have Jesus, well, you’re doing well, but you also must have the Old Testament, [7:16] this is something brand new to them. [7:19] And what Paul is writing to them is basically letting us know that some, if not all, of the churches at Galatia, [7:25] because there were a few of them, had bought into this. [7:30] And he’s saying you have abandoned the grace of Jesus and are now following a perverted gospel [7:38] that will not lead you to salvation.

[7:44] And you may be thinking, well, they were crazy. [7:46] Why would anyone, if you’re offered Jesus, salvation by grace alone, through faith, [7:54] he died for our sins, he rose on the third day, and through Jesus, and only Jesus alone, is salvation available. [8:00] You cannot work for your salvation. [8:02] That sounds like a pretty good deal. [8:04] And if somebody comes in and says, well, that’s all right, but you also must have this where you work yourself to death

[8:11] and you maintain your own salvation, you earn your salvation by what you do, [8:17] you may be thinking, that sounds like not quite as good of a deal.

[8:22] So were these people at Galatia crazy? [8:25] But I kind of submit to you this morning that this is not a struggle that is so foreign from us.

[8:34] That this is not something that we don’t struggle with in our lives even today. [8:38] And you may be thinking, well, surely not me. [8:41] I, Jesus and Jesus alone.

[8:45] Because you see, the problem lies not so much in accepting Jesus. [8:49] The problem more so lies in the next step as to what do you do with Jesus once you are saved. [8:57] And that was the problem that the Galatian church had. [9:00] Is that they accepted Jesus, and now they feel that these Jews, these Pharisees that are coming in [9:06] and offering them another way, is offering to them what they do with Jesus. [9:12] This is the next step in their salvation.

[9:15] This is what completes the puzzle. [9:19] But what this really does is it leads to a life of maintenance.

[9:26] The big problem that they have right now is that they are dealing with religion. [9:31] Because religion strives to maintain. [9:35] And that is really the issue that the Galatian church is going to deal with.

[9:40] Some of you may have lived in an apartment, and I have, all through college. [9:43] I lived in different apartment complexes, and we always had a maintenance man. [9:47] And it was lucky for me because I am not the handiest of men around. [9:52] If my oven would break, I would call the maintenance man. [9:54] If my air conditioner would break, I would call the maintenance man. [9:56] If I couldn’t get a light switch to work, I didn’t even know how to take the cover off.

[9:59] So I would have to call the maintenance man. [10:01] If anything breaks, I have to call the maintenance man because I am helpless. [10:05] And you may be handier than I, and I may be calling you because of that if something breaks at my house. [10:10] But you call the maintenance man for things that are broken. [10:13] But realize something that maintenance men do. [10:16] Because I kind of got to know the maintenance man at my last apartment complex.

[10:20] And he filled me in that he was at my house fixing something, and I was talking to him. [10:24] And he told me that they do everything that they can to fix something so that they will not have to replace it. [10:30] Because he said 90% of the time it is cheaper to put a patch on something than it is to replace it. [10:38] Especially when it comes to an air conditioning unit or something.

[10:42] What religion does in our lives, and what these Pharisees were attempting to do in the lives of the Galatian Church, [10:48] is it was teaching them how to maintain what they already had rather than accept the new life that God had for them in Jesus. [11:00] And this is something that all of us are very, very comfortable with. [11:04] And this is why we struggle with the exact same things that the Galatian Church struggled with. [11:09] Not in the same way. [11:11] Because none of us are lining up and saying, okay, Christianity isn’t working out, so we’re going to add Judaism in here.

[11:16] And we’re going to follow the Levitical law, and we’re going to become Hasidic Jews, and maybe that will further our salvation. [11:22] Those are not the struggles that we have today. [11:24] So we’re kind of okay with the book of Galatians as long as we see it through the lens of the Jewish Church. [11:30] Because I don’t see many people in here that really want to become a Hasidic Jew. [11:34] But our struggles lie in the fact that God has a new life for us in Jesus, [11:41] but we have an old life that we’re comfortable with, that we’re okay with maintaining.

[11:47] And what these Pharisees were offering up to the Church in Galatia was a salvation that they themselves could maintain, [11:56] that they could keep in their hands, that they could check and see how their obedience was by the law of Moses. [12:03] And so they were maintaining their lives through the law of Moses, [12:10] rather than allowing God to come in and take ownership of their lives, [12:17] and giving him the ability to direct their lives.

[12:24] Because while religion strives to maintain, the Gospel strives towards progression. [12:31] You have to stay with me on this. [12:35] The Gospel is not about maintaining your life. [12:40] The Gospel is about a brand new life. [12:44] A faith that is not of your own making. [12:48] The problem with the Gospel is it does not give you the ability to define what your salvation is,

[12:55] or even what your salvation may look like. [12:58] In the Gospel, through Jesus and through salvation by grace, which is completely in the hands of God, [13:07] what we have is a message that tells us that we are absolutely morally bankrupt,

[13:16] unable to maintain our lives in a way that will bring glory to God. [13:23] In the Gospel, we have the message that only God can save, [13:29] and only God can define what giving Him glory looks like. [13:35] Through the message that the Pharisees were bringing into the Galatian Church, [13:39] what they had was a message that only you can define your salvation, [13:44] and only you can maintain your salvation.

[13:47] And you can maintain your salvation under these terms that are easily written down, [13:54] a code of ethics that is easy to follow, [13:57] these few steps that you must follow in order to have your salvation being complete.

[14:04] The only problem with this is if you are busy maintaining your life, [14:10] maintaining these dos, these don’ts, these shoulds, [14:16] you are staying in one place, patching the holes in your life, [14:22] fixing the errors in your life, and you are never progressing anywhere.

[14:29] You are staying completely still. You are never moving forward. [14:33] Because as soon as you patch one hole, after a period of time, another hole is going to appear.

[14:41] It’s kind of like you are standing in front of a dam, [14:44] and all of a sudden a pinhole appears in the dam and water begins to seep through. [14:50] And as soon as water begins to seep through, pressure goes on to that dam. [14:55] So you put your finger in that hole, but the problem is that the damage has already been done to the foundation, [15:00] so a crack begins to come out of that hole. [15:03] And then water begins to seep through from another spot.

[15:05] So you put a finger on another spot. After a while, you are going to run out of fingers. [15:12] You cannot patch all of the holes in your life. [15:17] Religion will tell you that you can fix your life if you would just do this, if you would just do this, if you would just do this. [15:25] But you are so busy fixing all of the things that are wrong with your life,

[15:33] that God never has a way into your life. [15:37] So you are never focused on Him. [15:40] Religion allows salvation to be all about you. [15:45] The Gospel makes salvation all about God. [15:51] Because you see, when we are trying to fix the holes and fix the struggles and fix the problems in our lives,

[15:58] we are focused on our lives. [16:01] God, if you would just fix this, I could follow you better. [16:06] God, if you would just help me here, if you could just help me maintain this relationship, [16:11] if you could just fix my marriage, if you could just fix my children, [16:14] if you would just fix my job, I could follow you.

[16:22] In that scenario, you have a salvation that is completely focused on you and is never focused on God. [16:31] And we can never follow God because of how self-centered our lives become. [16:38] This is the problem of religion. [16:41] This is the problem of the story that we kind of weave throughout our lives. [16:48] When we are just focused on fixing ourselves and getting better ourselves, [16:53] God never gets the glory.

[16:55] Because I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but you can maintain all you want to, but eventually the machine breaks. [17:02] Eventually age gives way to complete brokenness. [17:07] And unless transformation happens, what do you have? [17:13] You have absolute brokenness. [17:16] And if you try to maintain brokenness for too long, [17:21] eventually you will end up going completely in the wrong direction,

[17:26] while God has always said, go in that direction. [17:28] And you end up in the desert, unaware of even how to get back to civilization.

[17:37] Eventually the machine breaks down so badly that you can’t fix it because you can’t even find the owner’s manual. [17:43] You can’t fix it because those parts don’t even exist anymore. [17:48] Then you’re alone, on your own, and you have no idea what to do.

[17:55] So the question is, is there hope in this scenario? [17:59] If the gospel is about progression, where does it go? [18:03] Where does grace lead you? [18:05] Where does the gospel want you to go in your life? [18:08] If you maintaining and you fixing yourself doesn’t lead to a good life, [18:14] what does lead to a life?

[18:17] Because you see, the real issue here is that all struggles that we have are gospel struggles.

[18:25] Because you see, in the gospel, what God really wants to do is, [18:30] is God completely wants you to realize your brokenness. [18:34] I don’t know if you’ve watched yourself for very long like I’ve watched myself, [18:37] but I am completely bankrupt. [18:40] I am broken. [18:42] I am unfixable.

[18:44] I have a sin problem. [18:47] If you want to diagnose exactly what your problem is, [18:52] and why you cannot maintain the life that you want, [18:55] and why no matter how much you achieve in your life, success is never enough. [19:00] Money is never enough. [19:02] Family and love inside of that family, it just never seems to be enough.

[19:06] Because there’s always some kind of problem that comes in. [19:09] If you want to know why the reason for that is, [19:12] it is because you are a sinner just like me. [19:17] But most of us don’t want to admit to our moral brokenness, to our moral bankruptcy.

[19:24] So we continue to try to maintain and try to fix on our own. [19:31] What God has said, I’m unwilling to fix. [19:37] You see, well that doesn’t sound very loving. [19:39] The reason that God is unwilling to fix your life [19:43] is because He wants to replace it completely.

[19:49] God does not fix. [19:51] God renews. [19:55] God is not interested in being your maintenance man. [19:58] Rather, God is interested in giving you a brand new life. [20:04] God is interested in taking your life, getting rid of it completely, [20:11] and giving you His life.

[20:16] And it’s not a new life for you to break. [20:18] Rather, it is His life for you to enjoy, for you to embrace, [20:23] for you to just delight in Him, for you to experience desire in Him, [20:28] and joy in Him that is completely unparalleled. [20:32] You may say, but that doesn’t fix my relationships. [20:36] That doesn’t fix all the problems that I have.

[20:39] That doesn’t fix my family. [20:41] I still struggle in sin. [20:43] I’m a follower of Jesus, but I still struggle in sin.

[20:49] But my question to you this morning is why are you struggling?

[20:56] Struggles will continue, because I don’t know if you’ve watched the news. [21:01] The whole world has a sin problem. [21:03] It’s not just us. [21:05] It’s the whole world. [21:07] So we’re going to get hit by every angle.

[21:11] Just because we are transformed, doesn’t mean sin has left the earth.

[21:18] It means that we now exist with this new life in God through Jesus Christ. [21:24] And even though we have this nature of sin in us that kind of still wants us [21:29] to take part in sin, this new life in Jesus, [21:32] and you’ll see this later in the book of Galatians, [21:35] cries out, you no longer have to.

[21:40] Some of you are obsessed with the term, well, nobody’s perfect.

[21:45] Well, nobody’s perfect. You can’t expect perfection.

[21:50] You’re not perfect, and I’m not perfect. [21:52] But Jesus is perfect. [21:55] And Jesus wants to give you His life, [21:57] and the fact of the matter is, is He already did. [22:00] He gave you His life on the cross, and that makes some of you so uncomfortable, [22:06] because you say, well, are you preaching moral perfectionism?

[22:09] No, I’m preaching moral brokenness and godly perfectionism. [22:15] He is perfect. You are sinful. [22:19] If I told you that you could become perfect, then guess what? [22:23] That is moral perfectionism, and that is religion, [22:25] because that’s what the Galatians were hearing from the Pharisees.

[22:29] But what I’m telling you this morning is that God wants to replace your brokenness with His wholeness. [22:35] Does that mean there will be no struggles? [22:38] No, the struggles will continue, but God gives you His life so that through those struggles, [22:44] so that through those heartaches, so that through those burdens, [22:48] you can look at those burdens and you can rather turn to God and say, [22:52] Jesus is enough. Through these struggles, I will cling to Jesus, because He is enough.

[23:01] Through the burdens of my life, through the problems of my life, [23:05] I will not focus on them. Rather, I will turn to Jesus, and I will worship Him.

[23:12] Because that is the gospel. [23:16] Some of us use terminology like there are no perfect people [23:20] as an excuse for why we can go out and we can sin.

[23:28] And I tell you that that is what religion has done to you.

[23:36] Because you have refused to accept the new life that God offers you in Himself.

[23:47] You’re going to continue to struggle.

[23:51] But that struggle is a gospel struggle. [23:55] God wants you to allow Him to come in and transform you completely.

[24:04] But sometimes we prefer to live a life of maintenance, because quite honestly, that’s easier.

[24:13] It’s easier to maintain than to replace.

[24:17] That’s why the gospel is not some cheap grace, [24:22] where you simply pray a prayer and everything’s fixed.

[24:29] I’ve been saved for quite a number of years. [24:33] And I’ll tell you, my life has not become easy street. [24:37] I have more struggles in my life today than I did ten years ago. [24:41] It’s because I’m becoming an adult, getting older. [24:44] I have a family now. I have stress. I have bills. I have issues. [24:50] But we are more comfortable with just focusing on those things and saying,

[24:55] God fix, God fix, God fix. [24:56] And if God doesn’t fix, well, then we must not have God in our lives. [25:00] And if God would just come in our lives and fix all our problems, [25:02] well, that would be obvious that we have God. [25:04] What if God has a different standard?

[25:09] What if God’s standard is, is I first want to transform your heart, [25:14] then that will begin to work its way out. [25:17] And then your life may not become a bed of roses, [25:22] but you will see everything through the eyes of Jesus.