Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Chapter 3

Kids in the middle, most of them, and there are exceptions…all this has exceptions…but the oldest child, you remember how you raised that little kid, don’t you? You remember you worried about him from the first day. Is he alright? Is he okay? The little baby looking up at you never saw a smile. All he saw was intensity. Is that baby alright? He’s six months old; he hasn’t walked yet! You know, the second kid comes along. The kid’s hungry. You feed him; I’m busy, and you and you play with him, enjoy him. The oldest child is just always concerned. How many of you are the oldest child? Yeah. Do you recognize this at all? Now, there are exceptions to all of this, but brothers and sisters, some of us are just plain flat more vulnerable to the law than others, to its power in us and coming out of us, and others of us are very susceptible to following that kind of a nut. I want to say this to you, and of course, you would expect this from me. I would stay just as far from authoritarianism as I could. Stay away from people who adjust your life. I should wait until chapter 4 to say this, but let me tell you about Blastinius. Blastinius really feels that his experience with Christ, his particular experience with Christ, and his particular understanding of God and spiritual things should be duplicated. Duplicated.

Paul believes that everyone ought to have an experience with Christ: a living, vital experience. He has one. He believes everyone else should have one, but he’s not putting it in a mold. Can you see the difference? I know men, I have watched men, who are absolutely obsessed, and women too, with duplicating in the lives of everyone else that which God has done in their own life. That’s why, in chapters four and five, you will find Paul saying they are trying to cut you off from themselves. Find a movement that is legalistic, and you will find everybody having to go somewhere to find out what they believe, what they can do, and what they cannot do. You were set free. It is for freedom. You were set free. When I…Gene…won’t that cause chaos in the church? You bet your life that it will cause chaos in the church. And you know something, that’s exactly what elders need. How do you think your elders are ever going to get broken unless you have a church full of free people? I’d rather see the elders broken than the people broken. Because otherwise, the elders are going to break God’s people, and I don’t mean brokenness.

Dear child of the living God, consider what is being said. Nobody has any business tampering with your head or your life. Nobody. It was for freedom you were set free. Oh, Memphis, I can’t wait till the sisters start telling you that in Christ there is neither male nor female. There is nothing on earth a man is more afraid of than a woman. I read one of the most beautiful statements the other day: men really need, they have a real need, for the woman to be submissive to a man. It’s a biological need, whereas a woman does not particularly need…women in general, exceptions and all this…do not particularly need to dominate, and she’s perfectly willing to meet the man’s need and let him go ahead and be in control. But so many men can’t handle the ability to totally control another human being, and they make life hell on this earth. They forgot the other part of that scripture that says, “Love your wife.”

I wish every brother in this room would read a book… oh boy, I don’t even know the name of it. There are two of them that are very similar. Oh, the name of it is “If Only He Knew.” Have you ever read that book? It’s not what every man should know about his wife, but it is “If Only He Knew.” Isn’t that correct? Is that the name of that? I wish every brother would read that book, because every brother in this room’s got a little bit of a mean streak in him when it comes to his wife. Brother, you ought not to concentrate on your wife being under you. What you need to concentrate on is loving her. Someone told me about the church they were in, it was so obviously legalistic, so moralistic, so this-istic, and that-istic. She said, “What should I do?” And I shouldn’t have said what I said. I said, “Oh, sister, go home and do the one thing that that church needs so desperately, really needs reality. Go home and rebel.” Let them tell you that rebellion is worse than witchcraft, and go ahead and rebel. Brothers and sisters, there’s nothing in the book of Galatians about rebellion. It’s about law. It’s about men and women put under conduct that is a concept of another human being. It is for freedom that you have been set free.

Now the question before the house is, did law and rules fill you with the Holy Spirit? Have you ever been really, really happy? Gloriously happy, delightfully happy, putting one of those things on your head because somebody told you that you had to have a head covering. Did you come home spiritually filled about that? When you did not go to the post office on Sunday afternoon in fear that you might break the laws of the Sabbath, did that fill you with praise and honor to the Lord Jesus Christ? That day when you took all your bright ties out and threw them in the trash can, did that bring you exuberant joy? Remember all the laws you’ve obeyed and been under. Did it set you free to Christ and fill you with his spirit? No? Then why, having begun in the spirit, are you returning to law and ethical codes and human standards? Return to the spirit from which you found your Lord, your joy, your peace. Please say amen.

Well, you see, Blastinius and that’s point one. Blastinius came and said, “You are not the sons of Abraham, nor are you of his seed. Now you have believed in Christ, but you must also be circumcised and obey the law. And Paul of Tarsus brings out his big guns, and they are big, and they are wonderful. This is so clear in the Old Testament. I mean, Paul is on such solid ground here, and he tells the story of Abraham. I’d like to tell you the story of Abraham. May I tell you the story of Abraham? This is a large part of this chapter.

I am approximately 110 years old. My wife is 99. When I was young, God told me I would have a son. At that time, my wife could not conceive. I could, but she could not. Her body was dead. Mine was not. God promised me a son, said that my seed, which was alive in me, a seed that was in me, would be as the stars of the heavens and would bless even the gentile heathen. I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited until I also…my body died, and there was no seed. My wife longed; never in one day in her life could she conceive. Never. Her body had always been dead. And now I am dead. Nothing. Not for over a generation. Nothing. I’m dead, and she is dead. One day, God came back to me, having given me that promise, and He said, “Abraham, your 99-year-old wife is going to have a baby. Abraham, you are going to have a son, and your descendants will be as the stars in heaven, and your seed will bless the universe, bless the earth.

Now, saints, this is 430 years before anybody ever heard of Moses. This man, named Abraham, is sitting here listening to God speak while he’s eating a pork sandwich. Do you hear me? Yelling at some of his servants, ” Get those pigs out of the trough over there and put them back in the pen.” He’s uncircumcised. He’s over a hundred years old, and he is dead, and his wife has always been dead, and he’s been dead for way over a generation. God says to him, “You’re going to bear a child. Your descendants will be as the stars, and your seed will bless the Gentiles.” That’s a promise. Do you believe that Abraham? Come outside. Abraham walks outside. Look up in the sky. Look at the heavens. Look at the heavens. He steps out of his tent, and he sees the stars—beautiful, beautiful night. Abraham, your descendants will be more than that. Now, do you believe Me? And Abraham stands there, and he looks at his dead body, and he saith, “God, my Father, God in heaven, I believe that You can resurrect the dead. I believe that You have the power of resurrection and that You can raise the dead, and that uncircumcised gentile pork-eating heathen believed that God could raise the dead, and it was counted to him that he was righteous, because he believed in the resurrection. Praise the Lord.

Now, I mean, when that happened, God said, “Abraham is as righteous as I, God, am righteous.” In the eyes of the living God, maybe to no one else, but in the eyes of the living God, God looked down upon that man who had faith in God’s ability to raise the dead, to bring forth resurrection, to resurrect a dead seed. He looked at him and put His very holiness and His very righteousness on Abraham. I want you to know that’s what God saw, and that’s all that’s important. God reckoned him as righteous as God. Now was he circumcised or uncircumcised? Uncircumcised. Was he obeying a law? He had no law. The only thing that happened in this world was that he had faith in God. He believed what God had told him. And you know what God did? He raised the dead. The same thing that saved Abraham saves you.

Let me ask you something. Was Abraham outwardly changed by this? I’ll even ask you another question. Was he inwardly changed by this? Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t know that much about Old Testament believers. Maybe you do. I have never understood that, but I will tell you what God saw. He saw that man changed. He was changed…from the viewpoint of God. Now, brothers and sisters, that man was made in the right relationship with God, not by good works, but by his faith in God, which God had put in him. And now Abraham’s body is resurrected from the dead. And Sarah’s body is resurrected from the dead. And Sarah gets pregnant at the age of 100 and bears one child because God promised it, not because Sarah had done anything nice. She had not gained God’s favor, and neither had Abraham. A sister said to me last night, “You know, Gene, I’ve always felt that if I could get to know the Lord better, he would love me more.” Listen to those words. I’ve always felt that if I could get to know the Lord better, He would love me more. My dear child of God, He can’t love you more than He did when He loved you at the foundation of the ages. You got it all. You can’t get any more merit or any more love out of your God. Praise His name.

Abraham had a child, one child. That child had a child, and that child had 12 kids; he was justified in the face of God, while he was as heathen as you, Galatians. He gained his righteousness without doing one good thing in this world. He gained his righteousness by faith alone, and at that moment, God said, “I will give you the promise. I give you this promise, and I will give you, and your seed will inherit that promise, and it was one seed. Four hundred years later, those people had problems. God gave them a law. God gave them a moral standard, that the moral standard might conduct them, and we’ll get to that in a minute. Might conduct them somewhere. But they were shut up under the law until that seed arrived, and when the seed arrived, the tutor, the child conductor, was put out of business. The child is now brought to the real Father, to the real Father, and gains the inheritance. Praise the Lord.

Well, I want to talk to you about the promise for a moment. What’s the promise, please? The promise…Christ is the promise. That is correct. Now then, be careful here. What is the inheritance of those who are in the lineage of the seed? Those who come after the seed. The seed arrived, and then there were those who came after him. That’s you. That’s the fullness of time. That’s you. What’s the inheritance? Well, we’ll have to have another conference for sure. You don’t know what you inherit. Everything, everything, everything that is His. You get that. That’s what you get. Everything that is His. No, that’s not right. That is not perfectly correct. Can you think of something else, or something less, or something else, or something else, or something else, or something any, or can you think of something? Are there any qualifications for this? It is not that we get less than everything. We get more than everything. For we get everything and we get Him. All that He is. We get God in Christ. We get Christ, and we get all that He has and all that is His. You get everything, and you get all of God. That’s what your inheritance is, saints. And can you get that by living a good life, being sweet, kind, and gentle, and having a moral code? Brother, listen. You got that by faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The same thing that Abraham…same way Abraham got it. He got His justification by faith in the resurrection of his body and of his seed, and that seed was Christ. Are you clear that you cannot gain God’s merit? That it is by faith alone.