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Our reading from the New Testament is taken from the book of Galatians, chapter 5, verse 1 through 12. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. For we, through the Spirit, eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love. You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in you and the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off. This is the word of the Lord. We are on our third sermon in this very pivotal passage. And the focus of this sermon will actually be verse 7 through 9 with a major emphasis on verse 9. Verse 9 reads, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. That is something of a stinger to the three verses. It's the maxim. And it is what has caused verse 7. In verse 7, something has happened to the people in the churches of Galatia And Paul summarizes it with, you ran well. Your practice of religion was commendable. You were walking in the Lord's ways mentally, emotionally, and in your actions. You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? You are not doing that now. You were doing it. That's what running well means. You were obeying the truth, but you have become hindered from that. How did you get hindered? Well, Paul tells you how you got hindered. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. This is the principle that has caused the hindering, and this is why the Christians of Galatia are no longer obeying the truth and no longer running well. And it passes through verse 8. There has been an outside force come in with a certain influence. Where did that influence come from? Well, in verse 8, Paul tells us where it didn't come from with these words. This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. Throughout Galatians, Paul has presented God as calling the people who are now in the Christian churches of Galatia, he has been personally calling to them by his manifold ways of working in the world, and specifically calling them by the grace of Christ. Paul has identified the call of God as presenting his gracious nature in and through what Jesus Christ does, he is very definitely the focus of the one calling them, and now Paul says, this persuasion that has tripped you, that has caused you to not run well, it does not come from God. There are various persuaders in the world. God is sovereign over all, but it is not only his voice you will hear, The world is filled with persuasion, and the persuasion that you are now walking in is not from God. It's not from the one who has been calling you by grace. This persuasion is like leaven. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. In using this imagery, the apostle is echoing a theme that his Lord had said in the flesh a number of times. A survey of the gospel shows that this image is something that Christ himself would often turn to. In Mark chapter 8, and beginning at verse 13, we read this. And he left them, and getting into a boat again, he departed to the other side. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then he charged them, saying, take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, it is because we have no bread. But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up? And they said to him, 12. Also, when I broke the seven for the 4,000, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up? And they said, seven. So he said to them, how is it you do not understand? He used the image of Levin. They took it a little too straightforward. But the imagery is very powerful. And if you go to the Gospel of Luke, what we just read is mirrored in chapter 12, where we read In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. You'll notice that in our English translation, it says he began to tell them that. It's communicating a Greek verb tense that says, this is something he's saying over and over again. So this is a theme of Christ. Levin is an image that's very important. You need to hear this. And then when he talked about the kingdom of God and used Levin in a positive way, we read this just a chapter over in chapter 13 of Luke. And again, he said, to what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. Anyone who cooks from scratch and who makes bread is fairly aware of what leaven is. It's a change agent. In this particular case, it changes the whole experience of bread Bread begins rough and crackery. It's hard. But when leaven is added to it, and it doesn't take much leaven at all, when a small amount of leaven is added to it, this thin and crackery substance, which is very edible, is transformed. And it becomes fluffy, and it becomes smooshy, and it is very much unlike what it was. In the time of Christ, cooking at home was kind of a given and his hearers ought to have kind of got the image. He's talking about an agent of change and it shows up throughout scripture. Back at the time when the Israelites are delivered from Egypt and they are brought to Mount Sinai, leaven becomes a sacramental image in a negative sense, because they are fleeing from Egypt and they want to get out as quickly as possible, so they leave their leaven, they don't use leaven, but it's also symbolic of the influence of Egypt. Egypt, if their influence is allowed to take place in the life of the Israelites, will change and mold that life. It will change it from what God wants it to be. So the Israelites at the first Passover are not to have leaven. They're not to eat leaven because it's a symbol of how Egyptian thought would change and morph them. That's sacramentally with us as well because the Lord's Supper is a continuation of the Passover. It takes the elements of the Passover. We have unleavened bread and wine because that comes out of the Passover. And the lack of leaven talks about the lack of the influence of the world, the lack of the influence of the true king of the world, which is Satan. Leaven, in this sense, represents a bad thing. But it is not always presented as a bad thing. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about salt and light and leaven, and he applies it very positively to the disciples and the gospel they will bear. He says, you are to be the salt of the earth, you are to be the light of the world, you are to be the leaven. In both cases, the issue is not exactly whether change is good or bad because change can be good or bad depending upon the context. The focus is it's a change element. Something comes in and radically transforms what you have into something radically different. If that change is the pagan culture of the Egyptians, it's bad. If it is the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil, it is bad. If it is the gospel, it is good. But the symbolism is change. And leaven changes things, and it does not take a lot of it to change. Just a little leaven, it is in fact a small bit of ingredient You don't need much. What is this change rooted in? Paul says you're not following God the way you were supposed to, you've been changed, leaven has come in. Where did that leaven find its purchase? What did it change? The Amplified translation for us gives us four ways that Paul may be talking about change, and they are not mutually exclusive. And quite frankly, because of Paul's fairly broad way of addressing the text, all of them are probably intended. Verse 9 in the Amplified reads as this. A little leaven, a slight inclination to error, or a few false teachers, leavens the whole lump. It perverts the whole conception of faith or misleads the whole church. Now, there's commentary in those brackets, but legitimate commentary. What is the leaven? It could be, within the believers themselves, a willingness to accept just a little error. We don't want to be closed-minded. We don't want to be narrow. We don't want to be concrete thinkers. I could throw in other adjectives, other descriptors. These are the things the world says about us. We don't want to be that, so we'll be open to allowing a little what the Anglicans call latitudinarianism. We will allow some breath of thought. Or it could be a focus on the error itself. It's not so big. It's not huge. It's just a small change of emphasis or doctrine. And the change could be focused on the gospel of Christ, and likely that is what's on Paul's mind, because that's the language he's been using. He begins in chapter one saying, I'm surprised that you so quickly turn from him who calls you by the grace of Christ to another gospel, although there can't possibly be another gospel. It could be just a slight change in the gospel, not big, Or it could be that this change will leaven its way through every person in the church because leaven changes things and you don't need much of it to change. However you take it, it doesn't look big. It doesn't look significant. It looks like a small accommodation. But Paul says this is like leaven. Take a little bit of it and you will have transformed everything. You will have transformed the message. You will have transformed the life of the church. You will have transformed your hope of heaven. Everything will be changed by just a little bit. This is the principal focus of these three verses. The point that Paul is trying to drive home, I've just given you. Just a little error, just a little changing of the gospel, just a little accommodation, just a little reasonableness, just a little open-mindedness, just a little compassion to creative thinking. and you will have lost everything, the texture, the shape. One thing will have become another. As much as the alchemist wanted to turn lead to gold, you will have turned the Christian faith to something else. That is Paul's major point. This is why we who are reformed are so utterly fussy and fastidious, so close-minded, so narrow, so focused on getting doctrine right, it's not because we are, the terms I'm thinking of are clinical but really shouldn't be used from the pulpit, we are not sticks in the mud. We understand that the scripture has just told us A little change of doctrine, a little change from the way God has presented his message, just a little accommodation, and it will work like leaven through the entire thing and change it. That is why we are so adamant. That is why throughout history we've been called rock-ribbed. We have been called God's frozen chosen because we are absolutely solidified in the need for a right doctrine because we know a small little accommodation, a mere tip of the hat to the devil, and he will own your entire house. I have experienced that firsthand. Years ago, it was my privilege, by God's grace, to be used of him to deliver a church out of the PCUSA, ultimately into the E-Free, although passing briefly through the PCA. If you've been here for a while, you know that story. What you might not know is the estate of the church that I inherited when I came to the pastorate. It was a evangelical church. the day I entered it, and it was an evangelical church the day I left it. By the descriptor of evangelical, it deserved the title. But evangelicalism is a very, very, very broad title. And what had happened was it was a reformed church years ago, but liberal unbelief had come in at the higher levels, at the level of Presbytery and General Assembly and that sort of thing. And the churchmen had rightly resisted it. They had seen that what the leadership was teaching was obviously not true, not the gospel. They had more and more shut themselves off to those authorities. They had effectively become their own show, even though they had the title of Presbyterian. They had a love of spiritual things. But this shutting out has a consequence. Liberalism had not been able to pour its poison in, but liberalism had been able to shut them out from a godly presentation of what the true gospel is. And the end result was every family in that church had kind of been left to their own devices to say, I think God is like this. And that's exactly what happened. An example could be the session, the elders that served with me. It's a Presbyterian church, but four of them are overtly Arminian. One of them is Pentecostal and believes that Jesus Christ personally in a vision shows up to him on a fairly regular basis and talks directly to him. One claims to be a Calvinist but believes in the entire Darwinian scheme of origins. Consider how broad that is. And that's the eldership of the church. Now consider how that goes down into the body. Consider how that works its way out. The end result was a study of chaos. It was an assembly of people who kind of claimed to love the Lord and believed in spiritual things, but they had no foundation to stand on at all, but they all were kind of under this banner of evangelicalism One of my elders was actually pre-millennial dispensational. He was always telling me how wonderful the Jews were, and I asked him, have you ever met one? Because we're in the middle of Iowa, and he said, no, I've never met one in person, but they're great. Okay. It's a study of chaos. The gospel brings together a group under it, under Christ, under the true Christ, And only under the truth can the church of Jesus Christ really grow and thrive. And Paul says, a little leaven leavens a whole lump, you have been hindered. What have you been hindered in? You've been hindered in obeying the truth. The truth. That's a powerful concept, isn't it? It's not a popular one today. Today, one of the things that you will be assured of in any academic setting is that there is absolutely no absolute truth. It's been pointed out many times that that is an absolute contradiction, but that's what you will be told. There is absolutely no truth. We invent our own truth. Truth doesn't exist. If you hold that, you hold it to yourself, But what you don't do is walk where the scriptures walk. The scriptures are totally different than that. The Bible insists that there is a, the truth, a singular truth, an absolute truth, and it's possible to miss it. And Paul says, what hindered you from walking in the truth? The modern reaction from most people, and including most Christians, would be to say, with Pilate, what is truth? And to shrug their shoulders and walk away from Christ, because that's what Pilate did. And we're likely to go there. And in fact, we're likely to go there in a very pietistic, holy, sanctimonious way. Well, I don't really know the truth, and nobody really knows the truth. What is the truth? We ally with Pilate when we do that, and we walk with him away from Christ. But the question has weighed upon humanity since humanity was thrown out of the garden. What is truth is actually a very good question. The answer has a lot to do with where you place your authorities. In the latter part of the Reformation, after it effectively was mostly over, John Wesley introduced to the church the concept of the Wesleyan quadrilateral. He had modified something that had existed before. It had been called the Anglican Triad. But Wesley, an Anglican, wasn't quite satisfied with what he had received. And so he added a fourth element. The Anglican Triad had been scripture, tradition, and reason. The Anglican reformers had said, The authorities that man have to be able to know the truth are the scripture, which comes from God, reason, God has given man a mind, and tradition. The church has done things in certain ways, and tradition gives the past a seat at the table. Those are the authorities. And Wesley said, that's not really quite all of it. There's a fourth link, and that is emotion and experience. And Wesley took emotion and experience and smashed them together and said, that's one thing. I don't think they're one thing, honestly. I think the quadrilateral is flawed in that. But regardless, it passes down to us from John Wesley. And Wesley said, man has four ways of knowing things, scripture, tradition, reason, and emotion and experience. He's talking to the issue of epistemology. And the word epistemology means, how do I know? And how do I know that I know? And how do I know that I know that I know? It has to do with the whole study of being assured of something. And generally speaking, inside of the Christian church, the quadrilateral has generally been the presentation. These four things are authorities, and we all use them. We use our minds. We use our emotions and experience. We use tradition. And if we are Christian, we use the scripture. They're all legitimate authorities. But the big question in human life is, what order do you put them in? Because that determines your whole approach to the question that we're now dealing with. Paul says, you were walking in the truth and now you are not walking in the truth. Can Paul legitimately say that? Well, it depends upon the order you put them in. I always ask my students at the beginning of the year, here is the quadrilateral, who are you? Put these four things in order of the authorities that you hold them in. And I mark them down when they describe themselves. Overwhelmingly, they will mark emotion and experience as their number one authority. Now, reason will come in a close second, but it's always second. Every now and then I will have a brave Christian who will mark scripture as the highest authority, but they're truly a minority and I have never had anyone mark tradition. Tradition and scripture compete for the bottom level. But that's who they are. Overwhelmingly, the authority that they follow to understand what the truth is is emotion and experience, and then secondly, human reason. When I taught human reason for Midway College, it was called critical thinking, but that's what I was teaching, one of the principles that I had to, hammer home for my students was that to believe in reason, you had to have faith in reason because you couldn't objectively determine objective reason. But be that as it may, they have a very high view of the human mind and an extremely high view of the human emotion experience. And that's what truth is for them. What would life be like if that were true of you, if emotion and experience was your highest authority. Could you lay hold of something called the truth? Could you believe in an objective truth? I think it'd be rather tough. How does the Calvinist order these things? Well, I would say the Calvinist orders them as scripture is number one, Secondly, for us, it would be reason. Third, it would be tradition. And fourth, it would be emotion and experience. Now, if we are going to falter, if we are going to commit a sin against the truth, it will likely be elevating reason above the scripture. As Reformed Christians, we have always emphasized the life of the human mind. We believe in reason. And quite frankly, most of our sins are when we lift reason above the scripture. That will be our idolatry. But if we are true to who we are, we put the scripture first, we put reason second, we put tradition third, because we do have a tip of the hat to tradition, and then emotion and experience is last. That's another reason they call us the frozen chosen. If you are a Pentecostal, what order do you think you would put these in? Now, a number of Pentecostals I know will claim to love the scripture and I don't disbelieve them. But my guess would be, if they're truly honest, and sometimes they are in my class, they'll say, well, you know, emotion and experience is really the highest because, you know, we have the experience of the Spirit, and we are filled with love for God, and we're just swept away in religion. So really, it's kind of emotion and experience, and after that, scripture, after that, reason, and then finally, tradition. Although I'd flip those two, but that doesn't matter. What about if you're a Romanist? I have here the New American Bible, the St. Joseph edition. This is their premium study Bible, and they have an article here about scripture and tradition, and this is what they tell you. Sacred scripture was produced by a believing community. The Holy Spirit acted through Israel and the early church community to produce authors who wrote down the books we call sacred scripture. Yet the Holy Spirit also works through the Church to reveal God's truth to her through her interpretation of sacred scriptures, a responsibility given to her by the Holy Spirit, and through tradition, another form of God's revelation. This is why we should read scripture in the context of our Catholic community, lest our individual interpretation not be elevated in light of the Holy Spirit's guidance through the magisterium of the church, and why we should not discount beliefs because they are, quote, only tradition, for God also works through tradition. So this is their study Bible. What did they just tell you? If you're a Romanist, truth begins with tradition because everything else is going to be filtered through it. The scripture is going to be filtered through it, so is your experience and your thinking. That's how a Romanist would put it. How would these false teachers put it? They are the ones bringing the false message. If we look at Galatians, is it possible to look and see what they would say? Well, the likelihood is they would say that tradition is their highest authority as well. And the reason for that is in Galatians 1 in verse 14, Paul says, and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. Why is Paul telling us this? Well, it's true. That's one of the reasons. But another reason is the false teachers are highlighting tradition. Just like the Romanists, they're saying, God works through tradition. That is a major authority. That is the highest authority. Christians are transgressing it. You should return to tradition. That's not actually their highest, though. As we get to the end of Galatians, as we get to chapter 6 and verse 12 and 13, we will read Paul saying, As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised, only that they might not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For not even those who are circumcised keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh." So the Apostle actually shows what is the highest authority for these false teachers? It's emotion and experience. They don't want to experience persecution. They don't want to be out of step with culture. They don't want the powers that be to come in and fine them or take their children or shut down their businesses or close their assemblies. Their highest authority is their experience. We don't want that to happen. And so for them, it would be tradition, maybe reason next. No, well, yeah, the scripture, and then finally emotion and experience for them. How do we see the apostle addressing this, though? Well, we have walked here through the book. We're now in the last third. And I would put to you that what I see here is I see the apostle Commending the truth, presenting the truth, and the way he does it is he begins with the scripture. What did he do when he wanted to share the gospel with us? He took us to Abraham and he walked us through Genesis. He took us to Abraham's relationship with Sarah and with Hagar, and from the scriptures he asked us, you who commend the law, do you not hear what the law says? And if you look at the very heart of Galatians, the apostle of Christ argues solidly from the scripture as the foundation of truth. That is the final authority. But it's not the only authority he appeals to. He does appeal to reason. Think about the question. You who commend the law, do you not hear what it says? That's a reasonable question. So second, Paul is reasonable. He wants to interchange with us and make us think. And then thirdly, Paul actually does appeal to emotion and experience. Paul talks about the Holy Spirit a lot. In chapter 3, he says, God gave you the Holy Spirit, and he worked miracles among you. Did he do that from your keeping the law or did he do it from the hearing of faith? He appealed to their experience of the Spirit and their experience of emotions from that. The joy, the wonder of the Spirit. Paul himself in the first chapter says now you remember I used to be a Jew just like the false teachers really want you to become and I was very very zealous but a change came over me when I met the Lord Christ and it became something totally different. The Christians heard that the one who had been persecuting us now is preaching the gospel and they rejoiced because of me. That's actually an appeal to emotion and experience. And then finally tradition. Who you are is determined by what authority you place these things in. In the New Testament, scripture is the final authority. It is the authority over your emotions. You may dislike what God says, but God said it, and he said it objectively. Your reason may say, I don't like what God said, I think this is better. But your reason, according to scripture, is connected to your sinful fallenness, and one of the things that you have fallen in is not just holiness and righteousness, you've fallen in thought too, so your reason is flawed. And where do traditions come from? They come from human thinking and human feeling. The scripture is over all of that. Effectively, the clash between these false teachers and apostolic teaching is where does the truth lie? And Paul demonstrates the truth lies in the scripture above all things. The scripture says things that Christ wants you to believe and do that will get you persecuted. There is an offense to the cross, and Paul mentions that. He says, if I were still preaching circumcision, why am I still persecuted? The offense of the cross will be gone. The cross brings the world's ire. The cross is the centrality of the grace of God, and the redeemed will embrace it, but the unredeemed and unsanctified will find the cross an offense. If being beaten up by your neighbors and held as a concrete thinker and being mocked and ridiculed is not something you're willing to do for Christ, you need to know the highest authority for you is not scripture, it is not God, it is emotion and experience, and you have no foundation for truth. But that is where most are. And Paul demonstrates walking in the truth is walking according to scripture, it is walking even if it's hard, even if persecution comes to you, Paul never says, you know, here's the gospel. Hold on to the gospel. Believe me, everything's a blow over. He never does that. He says, this is the gospel. And a little change to the gospel makes it no gospel. And if you accept a little change to the gospel, you are out of the gospel. And the question is, do you want the world to hate you or do you want God to hate you? It's your choice, but somebody going to hate you. Such it is.
Hindered From Obeying the Truth
Series Galatians
Galatians 5:7-9
You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Sermon ID | 83021233341572 |
Duration | 39:49 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Galatians 5:7-9 |
Language | English |
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