Will you turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Galatians? Or in your bulletins, we're reading chapter three verses one through nine, Galatians chapter three verses one through nine. All foolish Galatians, who have bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this. Do you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Do you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supply the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture foreseeing that God will justify the Gentiles by faith Preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed, along with Abraham, the man of faith. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that we have faith in you because you gave it to us. We thank you that you are the one who opened the eyes of our hearts to see the truth of the gospel. We thank you that you are the one who brought us close to you, that you are the one who gave us the understanding of the spiritual things, because they are only understood through the power of the Spirit. And we thank you, Lord, that as we read these verses, we can rejoice and praise your name for what you have done. It is all by your grace and we praise you and glorify your name for that. May you help us, Lord, in our meditation of your word. Help us, Lord, to read these verses and to take them in our hearts. We pray, Lord, that you give us understanding and also faith to trust in what we have just read here, which is your word. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. If there is something that make the letter of Galatians remarkable or different to the other letters that the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches is that the way he speaks to them is very direct and is very strong. I mean, you can compare the letter to Galatians or to the Galatians with the letter to the Corinthians. which we know that when we read Corinthians, we know that there were serious problems there. There were serious moral failures and difficulties and all kind of things that they were facing there. In fact, when we think about, when we want to put an example of a church with a lot of problems, we say, well, this church might be like the Corinthian church. But not even in the Corinthians letters, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, Paul spoke the way he spoke to the Galatians. And that tells us the seriousness of what was going on in the Galatian church. that as serious as moral problems are, as we saw that Paul addressed, for example, the issue in 1 Corinthians chapter five of a man living with his stepmother, as serious as that was, what was happening in the churches of Galatians, it was a very serious matter. Because it was that they were departing from the message of the gospel. And I think that if there is one particular verse that has stayed in my mind as I've been studying Galatians, is that one that we read a few weeks ago from chapter two, verse five, that say, to them we did not yield in submission, even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. And if you remember the context of these words were that Paul is coming with Titus, and there was this pressure for Titus to be circumcised by the Judaizers. And he's saying this about the situation that they didn't yield in submission even for a moment, that they did not circumcise Titus in order to preserve the truth of the gospel for the Galatians. Remember that this incident happened before Paul have planted the church in Galatia. Therefore he did not even know the Galatians brothers and sisters when he was preserving the truth of the gospel for them. It means how serious it is that Paul and even Christians today, we don't yield in submission to any wrong doctrine because we are preserving the truth of the gospel for the next generations. And that's why Paul speaks to the Galatians the way he speaks. Because the way, the things that were happening there were really concerning. Sometimes as Christians we might think that there are some theological issues that might not be as serious as some, again, moral failures in the church. And yes, moral failures affect the body of Christ and the testimony of the church outside. But the truth is that they are serious things when they are affecting our understanding of the gospel as it is written in the word of God. Now what is the issue that we have in front of us and why is Paul writing these words to the Galatians the way he write it to them? There were some men who came from Jerusalem who were called Judaizers who were preaching a different gospel. Or they were actually suggesting to the Galatians that the gospel that they had was a incomplete message. John Stott will summarize their theology in this way. So you might have a clearer picture of what the Judaizers were preaching. They did not deny that you must believe in Jesus for salvation. These were the Judaizers. They did not deny that you must believe in Jesus for salvation. But they stressed that you must be circumcised and keep the law as well. In other words, you must let Moses finish what Christ has begun. Or rather, you yourself must finish by your obedience to the law what Christ has begun. You must add your works to the work of Christ. You must finish Christ's unfinished work. So then you can see how serious it was what the Judaizers were preaching in the Galatian church. The problem is not that the Judaizers were preaching that, but that some Galatians, some of the brothers and sisters of these churches, have believed what the Judaizers were preaching. We don't have examples here that through the letter that says, and this and this person were circumcised, and they now were starting to follow the dietary restrictions, et cetera. But we know that that was happening because of the words that Paul write in these particular verses. Now we'll see in these verses that Paul is trying to help the Galatians to return to the gospel. by confronting them with the truth of the gospel, by confronting them with what they used to believe. And in order to do that, Paul asked them a series of rhetorical questions. That's the first thing that we'll see in this test. He asked a series of rhetorical questions to the Galatians. Look, he could have started to reteach the gospel again and again, to them again. He could have go to teach them doctrine and what they have already heard, but he did not do that because Paul knew that they knew the gospel. And Paul knew that what they have done is that they have departed from something that they heard, believed, and experienced in their own lives. So he knew that all that he needed to do was to ask them questions that they knew the answer. So that's the first part that we see in this section, verses one through five. And the second part that you will see is that Paul is gonna present to the Galatians, and even to the Judaizers, a case study from the Old Testament. He's going to present to the Galatians and to the Judaizers a case study of the Old Testament of someone who was very important, who was saved by faith alone. He wanted to prove to the Galatians and to the Judaizers, see this person that we'll is one who was saved by faith alone. So let's look at first at the rhetorical questions. So there are at least like four or five questions that you see in verses one through five. But you can combine some of them and come up with three questions that Paul, three main questions that Paul is asking to the Galatians. First of all, he start calling them all foolish Galatians. Have you ever write a letter to one of your friends? Oh foolish Mark. Oh foolish Peter. And even worse, have you ever thought about somebody writing a letter to a church calling them foolish? Well, that's a very strong way to address somebody you call your brother or sister in Christ. But why was Paul calling them foolish? I think he explained that to us in the following sentence when he says, who has been with you? In other words, what Paul is saying here, who has hypnotized you? But Paul is saying, I cannot believe that you have departed from this gospel that was proclaimed to you. The only explanation that I could find is that somebody have hypnotized you, that somebody have done a magic trick that has confused you, because it doesn't make any sense that after believing what you believe, now you are where you are. Now, what did they believe? What did the Galatians believe? It is stated in what he said afterwards. He says, it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. This sentence is a compact, condensed version of the gospel of justification by faith alone. because the Galatians were not there when our Lord Jesus Christ was being crucified. But what Paul is saying here is that the gospel that we preach to you was about Jesus Christ being crucified. It was not a message of Jesus coming to set a good example, to teach good lessons, to help people to see this is the way you live a godly life. This is not a message of a good messenger or a good master or a good teacher. It is a message of somebody who was crucified. And the reason why Christ was crucified was precisely for our salvation so that we could be safe that he could pay for our sins. Remember in previous verses we learned that if salvation is by works Christ died for no purpose. The whole purpose of Christ coming and dying on the cross is that he will receive the punishment that you and I deserve Therefore, salvation is by trusting in the work, the complete work of Jesus on the cross. This is why Paul is saying, you foolish Galatians, who have hypnotized you, who have confused you with a message that is so contrary to the message of the gospel. To add one word One work needed from our part to the message of the gospel is to change completely the message of the gospel. The gospel is Christ plus nothing equals everything. It is in Christ alone. And here is where Paul starts with the series of rhetorical questions. You could combine the question that you find in verse two with the question that you find in verse five and come up with one question because they share language. These questions, these two questions together, I read the two verses and then I combine them together. The two verses says, let me ask you only this, did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Verse five says, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? The combination of these two questions is actually, did God supply and you received the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? This is the question that Paul is asking the Galatians. And you know what is the answer, right? The answer for them should be obvious. No, we did not receive And God did not supply the spirit by works of the law, but by hearing with faith. And why is that? It's simple. The Galatians knew that there was nothing in them that God could have seen that would have made him to supply the spirit of God to them. The salvation was by grace just because they knew who they were. They knew who they were. And because they knew who they were, they knew that God did not supply his spirit based on what they have done and what they were in their works. But also, the Galatians knew that they did not do anything in order to receive the spirit of God. That when Paul came to them and preached the gospel to them, He said, well, now you have to do this, this, and this, and that, and then you will receive the Spirit of God. But the gospel was proclaimed to them, they believe, and they experience regeneration, and so the work of the Spirit. How do we see that? For example, you see it in verse five that says, that's he who supply the Spirit to you and works miracles among you. They witness the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and they were not required circumcision or this or that in order to receive it. I think that a good example or a good example that we can compare with what the Galatians experienced is what Cornelius experienced. You remember God gave this vision to Peter and sent Peter to preach the gospel to a uncircumcised man, a Gentile. And when Peter went and preached the gospel to Cornelius, Cornelius and his family received the Spirit of God. By what? By faith alone. That is what moved Peter afterwards to go and tell the Jews, God is doing things among the Gentiles. They have not to convert to Judaism in order to receive the Spirit. That's why Paul could ask this question to them, this rhetorical question. He didn't have to say, now let me teach you about this. It's something that you already know, that you are a believer, not because you did good works, that God didn't give you his spirit because you were a good person or you did this or that. He gave it to you by faith, by grace alone. So that was the first question. The second question is what you find in verse three. Are you so foolish? He reminded him again. Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? In other words, Paul is saying, did you begin by the spirit to end by works? Because this could have been another way of the Judaizers to teach the Galatians to introduce a wrong doctrine. Yes, okay, Paul was right to say that you could receive the gospel by faith, but now you have to continue keeping it by works. And that's not an unusual theology to hear, around. I heard many times back in Colombia from some of my charismatic friends who would say, yes, God saved you by grace, but it's your responsibility to keep your salvation until the end. That contradicts what Philippians 1 says that the one who began the good work in you will take it to completion. Then Paul is saying, again, You receive the Spirit now, you are trying to complete the incomplete work of Christ by your works. And you know the answer. And the Galatians knew the answer. The answer was, no Paul, it is only by faith from the beginning till the end. It's by faith alone. And the third question that you can get from these verses is what you read in verse four. Did you suffer so many things in vain? Is indeed it was in vain? You know, for me that was the, but it looks like the easiest question from all of them, but for me was a little bit the difficult question from all of them, because I was trying to figure out how this question fit with the other questions. This word that we have translated in our Bibles as suffer, epathete, has been translated in two ways. Some versions or some people will say, argue that the meaning is to suffer, and the others will say that it's to experience, to experience. And that makes a difference between one way you translate it to the other. In one way, Paul is saying, do you suffer so many things in vain, and if indeed it was in vain, referring to as you and myself, Paul, went through so many things in life because of this message of the gospel. We suffer all these things. Was it in vain? And he said, if indeed it was in vain, he's like, of course it was not. Or the other possibility is, did you experience So many things in vain is indeed was in vain. Which I think that it would make more sense with the context of what Paul is saying here. Because what were the things that they experienced? They experienced the regeneration of the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. They saw the miracles of the work of the Holy Spirit around them. And Paul is saying, Were these things in vain? Because if they were going back to works, or if they were trying to perfect the salvation that was given to them by grace, basically they were saying, well, these other things that happened before, they were in vain, whether they were sufferings or experiences. So the answers to all of these questions, as you know, Paul was expecting the Galatians would confront themselves with the reality that they received the message of the gospel that was justification by faith alone from the beginning till the end. But then Paul needed to address the issue of the Judaizers as well. Because the Judaizers were coming and saying, well, Paul's message is incomplete. And how do you actually say that what God used to say in the Old Testament is one thing and now he's saying something different? Well, Paul uses the example which is the case study from the Old Testament of Abraham. And he quotes two passages from the Old Testament. The first one is Genesis 15, one through five. Let me read it to you. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham, or to Abraham in a vision. Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield. Your reward shall be great. But Abraham said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless. And the heir in my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abraham said, and Abraham said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir, and no member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward the heaven. And number the starts. If you are able to number them, then, he said to him, so you shall your offspring be. And he, Abraham, believed the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Verses of Galatians says, just as Abraham believed God, And he was counted to him as righteousness. You know that Abraham is before Moses, right? Therefore, Paul is telling the Judaizers and telling the Galatians, here is the father of our faith in God. He was justified by faith alone. Because when God told Abraham to look at the sky and look at the stars of heaven, he was pointing to the fact that there will be a Messiah at some point that will come, will die on the cross, and those who will believe in him will be counted sons and daughters of Abraham. So you and I who are believers were some of those stars that Abraham could not count. when he looked at the heaven. But what is important here is that that faith that Abraham had in that promise of God was counted to Abraham as righteousness. He was declared as just based on that promise. That was looking forward to the coming of the Messiah who will actually pay on the cross for his sins so he could be saved. Of course, Abraham would not understand the whole magnitude of the things that were looking forward in the future, but they were pointing to that promise. That's why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. The second passage that Paul quotes is Genesis 12, one through 13. It says like this, now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonor you, I will curse. and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now let's look at what he says in Galatians. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. Remember, those of faith are those that are the starts, that are the offspring of Abraham. And the scripture foreseen that God would justify Gentiles by faith, that the scriptures were proclaiming from the Old Testament what has happened in Paul's time, that Gentiles will hear the gospel, they will trust in that message, and they will be declared as just, Then the scripture preached the gospel to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. In which way all the nations are blessed in Abraham? Because that promise that was given to Abraham was that to his offspring, and we'll see in the following verses, meaning that offspring mean Christ, in Christ, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Because that promise given to Abraham was pointing again to Christ. Therefore, the scripture was announcing that justification for the Gentiles was by faith alone. So then those who are of faith are blessed alone with Abraham, the man of faith. What Paul is saying here is, so you Gentiles, who have faith in Jesus for your salvation are blessed. And this word blessed is important here because the first time it appears is in verse eight at the end when he say the nations be blessed. But if you read what he says at the beginning of verse eight, he says the scripture foreseeing that God will justify the blessing is justification. The blessing is to be declared as just before God the Father. So those of faith, Gentiles who have faith, are blessed with Abraham. Now hear this from the perspective of a Judaizer. He has just destroyed the Judaizer's argument against salvation by faith alone. Because it's proof to them that even Abraham was saved by faith alone. But also he helped his brothers and sisters who were Gentiles, who were confused by the Judaizers to see that the Judaizers' argument was wrong. Because salvation was by faith alone. Now you might wonder and you might think, well, This is great, this doctrine that we're reading here, affirm my faith in justification by faith alone. But this might not be addressing an issue that we have right now. You might say, we don't have Judaizers around who are coming into town and preaching a different gospel. Well, certainly there has been other theologies around, like the new perspective from Paul and others that have tried to present a different version of the gospel. But maybe you even have no heard about them. You don't know even what is the new perspective on Paul. And even those, because I talk with some of them who share this, are a little bit confused about what is actually the new perspective on Paul teaching. But the reality is that we all face one common enemy, which is that in a sense we all have a Judaizer inside of us. Somebody who is telling us that we began by grace but that we continue to be accepted before God based on our works. Somebody in our hearts that is moving us to look down on others and judge others as if they were also saved by their works rather than by the grace of Christ. This is why we all need to preach the gospel to ourself again and again and again. In fact, I think that this passage or what we are reading here is a good example of questions that we need to ask ourselves. Did I receive the Spirit of God in those moments when I am tempted to feel disqualified by God? Did I receive the Spirit by works of the Lord or did I receive it by faith? Did God supply the Spirit to me by what he saw in me or by faith, which is in fact a gift from God? Did I begin my Christian journey by faith and now am I trying to finish it by works? These are questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to return to this message that Christ came and died on the cross precisely for our salvation. That if salvation could be by works, Christ died for no purpose. That is in Christ alone, by faith alone. And that, brothers and sisters, should give us great joy. should give us great peace, should give us assurance of salvation, today and forever, until we die. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for your work on the cross. And we thank you that you send your Holy Spirit to give us faith in this work that you did on the cross. We thank you, Lord, that we recognize, Lord, that if we have faith today in you, Lord Jesus, it's because you have opened the eyes of our hearts. And we thank you, Lord, that it was not that you supplied the spirit because you saw something good in us, but because you saw us with eyes of mercy, love, and grace. And we thank you that in your word you have promised that you will complete what you started on the cross. Help us, Lord, to have this faith. Help us, Lord, to stand firm in this faith. And Lord, we take this opportunity to pray for relatives, friends, Neighbors that still don't know you, may you open the eyes of their hearts so they could see the gospel as well. We pray that you give us wisdom and love to share this good news with them as well. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.