Stay Close To God

We are working through the book of Galatians right now. It is a theological gymnastics course with Paul trying to change the way that these new Christians (many of them were Jewish Christians) believed the way to follow God looked. He's theologically trying to help them see by looking back at the Old Testament, by explaining what Jesus did, and by showing them the reasonable argument that he's making. He's doing it with reason and Bible and circumstance. He's taking everything at his disposal and a few chapters of a book to take a people group who only knew God by obeying thousands of laws. That was the way to follow God by taking that mindset and turning it on its head and saying, "No longer is it by the Law."

I want to begin by reading just a few verses out of chapter three and what he's done now in chapter 3, we talked a little bit about last week where there is this idea that, “Why would Christ have even died if we could do this on our own?” That was his argument last week. And then he goes on and sets up and he looks back even specifically at Abraham and he talks about the covenant with Abraham. He talks about the promises that God made to Abraham, and it basically is going to say this promise was made to Abraham, that his offspring was going to be blessed, that there was going to be good for the people that in faith follow the ways of Abraham, which was a man who believed God so much that he went into the wilderness to follow him; that he left behind everything he knew and he said, "I'll follow and go wherever you tell me to go."

And so it often says throughout Scripture in Old Testament and New Testament passages, that are looking back, it says that that faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.

This idea that faith is credited to us as righteousness is old. It is as old as Abraham. And the way that it's going to look in the New Testament is the clarity that it is faith in a person that would die for our sins and that person is-

Jesus Christ.

So what Paul is saying is, “All of you who are putting all these laws on these new Gentile believers that aren't circumcised, that don't eat clean meat, that aren't following the same rituals that we follow because that's how we were raised in our Jewish tradition, do not be cumbersome with laws that distract from the message of the cross, from the good news that we are preaching, which is this: It is the grace of God credited to us as righteousness by believing, by the faith in Jesus Christ, that we would believe. And so the phrase that over and over again has been spoken to me from sermons, from seminary, that I've heard over and over again is-

“It is by grace, through faith. By grace, through faith." By the grace of God through the faith that is welling up in me. That I believe in God.

And I just want to simplify it so much because what he's saying, he's trying to do that for these new believers. He's saying, "I know all these people are coming and telling you that you must do many things to be saved, that you can't follow God and please God unless you do all these things." And he's saying, "No, no, no. Don't you understand? The same way that you were saved by grace through faith is the same way that you're going to live out all the things of God."

It's not that you're going to will yourself now that you're saved to do all these things right because that's not what got you into this gig in the first place. It was by grace through faith. Now it's going to be the same way.

How am I going to obey every day? How am I going to stop drinking too much? How am I going to not sleep with my boyfriend? How am I going to not pursue selfish gain every single time I step out the door in my own career, in my own life? How am I going to care about the welfare of other people more than myself? How am I going to lay down my pride when I feel like I didn't do anything wrong? How am I going to turn the other cheek? How am I going to do all these things that God is calling me to do? By grace, through faith.

It is a whole other way to obey God. By the grace of God through my faith that he can change me. Through my faith in him and the power that he has in my life. Guys, we've ultimately forgotten how much power God issues us in himself day by day; not just for big movements, not just for Auburn baptism moments, but for the everyday moments where I'm trying to die to my flesh and be kind to my husband when he's making me crazy. It's by grace through faith in that moment as well.

We are not willing ourself. I mean that's why he describes everything about what is happening to the believer in terms that put ultimately the power to change on God instead of us. You see it in the fruits of the Spirit. It says that, "These fruits are going to grow out of you when you abide in me." John 15 talks about when you walk with God, when you're with him, when you're in a relationship abiding with him, which it means just to be with him, to just hang out with him, to spend time with him, when you're walking with him, praying to him, he's speaking to you, you're in his word.

All of that is going to produce fruit, it says. But it's the power of God that's producing the fruit.

We're just the branch. He is the vine and the vine dresser, and he's pruning things and he's causing all these things to happen. Over and over again in Scripture, specifically in the New Testament, you see that it is God's power that is going to change our lives; but we really do tend to, once we've accepted Christ by grace through faith (that's how we receive Christ), then we kind of put on all this work.

And what Paul's trying to do is go, "No, no, no. Let me prove to you." In six chapters he's proving to these new believers, he's saying, "No, no, no, they're wrong. I'm right. Let me show you why. Let me show you how." Because in this verse, "Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God?" He's beat up the Law so badly that now he's having to justify. He's having to go back and go, "Is the law bad? Am I saying it's bad?" He's saying, "Of course not. Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be the Law.” He's saying, "If law in itself could have saved everybody, Christ wouldn't have had to die." And then he says, "But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe."

He's basically saying the gift of Jesus wouldn't be a gift that we would want to unwrap unless we understood, unless the Law made clear to us our sin.

Until somebody said, “Sleeping with somebody else's spouse is wrong,” which Scripture says; until it is spelled out for us in the Law, we don't even know that we need a savior. We don't even know that we've screwed up. We maybe have some built-in from the Lord conviction that maybe that's wrong and that's right, but ultimately, with the Law, it was spelled out for us. It makes it so clear. We are condemned, we have failed, we have screwed up.

And then Jesus comes, as I've talked about, and makes the bar even higher. He sets it even higher. Don't just not murder. Don't even look on someone with hate because then it's as if you've murdered them.

What Jesus was doing was setting the Law so high as a gift for us so that we would see our need for him.

Because until we see our need for him, we're never going to call to him. We're never going to want to be saved. We don't even know we need to be saved until we see that we are so far from the standard.

So, let me just tell you what this looks like. You could be the most gracious person on earth. Why? Because you look at the Law and you go, "Man, I could never hit it. I need a savior today, not just seven years old or seventeen, when I was saved. I need a savior today. I need God's grace again today because I didn't hit the Law again, but I don't have to sulk about it and I don't have to be imprisoned by that.

I get to enjoy the freedom that Jesus is offering because he says, 'I didn't ask you to measure up. I just wanted you to know that you didn't so that I could meet the need for you, so that I could be your righteousness. And I'll do it perfectly and you don't have to stress about it. I'll cover you. I've got you.'"

He has us. It's the beauty of the gospel. It's the power of the gospel that we get to be free from a life of striving, a life of pressure.

I feel this currently in my life when I think, even - I'll just take this as an example, even this podcast today - I feel ill-prepared to teach this, right? And yesterday I had a lot of different types of work and the day before that a lot of different types of work. And so, when I came to today and I was ready to film, I looked at the passage and it was so theologically packed, and I've been trained in seminary and so I carry with me more Bible than any human should have been blessed with. I just am so blessed to have trained and know the Bible. But when I looked at it, I was like- "Man, I don't know if I can do this well enough the way that this book deserves to be unpacked."

Even in that, I'm saying that I cannot achieve a certain place to where I am qualified enough to even get to talk to you about the word of God. Guys, this is a girl who's been trained in seminary for three years. This is a girl who reads her Bible for a living. I know my Bible and I'm disqualifying myself before I even go live. I think this is what he's talking about. He’s saying, “Listen, there's a different way to live than you striving.” And I'm not saying we don't prepare and we don't do the work of understanding and knowing our bibles, but I've done that.

I'm saying that we trust in the Holy Spirit to let him use us in any moment that we're given rather than to instantly start to say, "But this ... But that ..."

We rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to use us and to cause good to happen and thriving to happen.

Where we don't have to feel like it all rests completely on our knowledge, our ability, our giftedness, all of that. That's never how God has worked. God chose fishermen. He chose untrained fishermen. There were few, like Paul, that had been trained in the Law, in Torah, and they had a unique role in the story.

So, I'm not saying that there aren't places for professors to give their entire life to studying the word of God. And certainly that is partly what I've been called to in teaching and equipping. But I am saying that ultimately, even today as I am doing this, it is not my seminary training I stand on. It is not my knowledge of preparation of Galatians and the word of God that I stand on. It's the power of the Holy Spirit through me in a given moment doing what he's called me to do. It's the power of God to help me study. It's the power of God to help me understand the word of God to begin with.

It's a whole different way of thinking. And therefore we don't walk around holding back. We don't walk around being scared. We walk around wise and shrewd, but we do walk around very sure that we contain God and that we can give him away at any moment to anyone because he's going to help us do it. Because we have the word of God and the Spirit of God. And so, it's a freeing way to live. It's to not live afraid all the time.

What are you afraid of all the time? What do you walk around and think, "But, this… But, this… I can't do this…" What are those messages that you believed and does this really shift the way you live? That it is continually by grace through faith. It is by grace through faith. And Jesus was always showing his little fishermen this principle, he was showing them this with a few fish and loaves. Everybody has to eat and he knows it.

He looks at them and says, "Bring me what you got, and I'll multiply it for many people."

But we don't live this way. We don't believe this, and we don't believe in the power of God and the abundance of God and his ability to take small things and make them great. And so we hold back when he's not asking us to be great. He will be great through us. All it requires from us is faith and for us to abide and stay so close to him that when called upon for anything - Conversation with a neighbor, to help someone through suffering, to meet with someone who might need discipleship - whatever it is for you that God's calling you to big or small, that he is going to, in his abundance, be able to help you achieve it and accomplish it.

I remember in seminary when we were talking about all the things that happened at the point of salvation, somebody asked the class, "Well, what do we do? What's our part?" And the professor kind of laughed and was like-

"Not much. We just showed up. There was a knock on the door, we opened the door. That's really it."

And that's how I live every single day. There's a knock on the door and I open the door. When I'm making a decision, when I am tempted, when I need to apologize or make something right or reconcile, there's a knock.

There's an opportunity for me to obey God, to show up, to be present, to bring the God in me to this situation. And am I going to open the door and say yes or not?

That's the series of life events, and that's our real place in this story. And yes, sometimes that place is to open the door and to choose to be disciplined, to choose to wake up and to spend time with God. Sure, but ultimately, why? What is your motivation? And it is to be close to God, not to do something great for God, but to be close to him so that you can hear him, so that he can do something great through you.