This morning in our sermon I want to look with you at Galatians chapter 5 and Five ways legalism will damage your soul. How legalism undermines a Christian's ability to live the Christian life and to enjoy the grace of God. Now, this is your first time with us this morning. I welcome you. We're in the middle of a fairly lengthy series in Paul's letter to the Galatians. And this whole letter, of course, is really about this subject of legalism and how it undermines and abolishes, in fact, the gospel. We, as Christians, believe that salvation comes through grace alone, because of Christ alone, by faith alone. That God's favour toward us is not based upon anything that we do. and it's not based on anything that is done to us or done in us or done through us or done by us. It's based entirely on what Christ has done for us. Our sins are forgiven and our Our bank accounts on earth, our spiritual bank accounts are filled with the righteousness of another. A righteousness that exists in heaven above us. We can't get our grubby hands on it if you like to undermine it or pollute it or corrupt it. It's there for us outside of us. heaven. And that is the basis, that's the ground on which we stand and the ground from which we move and live and have our being. in our Christian life and experience. And legalism says, no, that's not true. You must do certain things. And if you don't do certain things, God will be mad at you. He won't forgive you for your sins. He won't receive you as one of his sons, and he'll hold you at a distance, and you will not be saved. And... That doctrine, there are elements of truth in legalism. The law matters. It's important that we obey God and so forth and so on. But where it goes wrong, of course, is that a legalist believes that God's favour towards him hangs in the balance. each day and depend in some shape, form or fashion, not just upon Christ, but on himself and he must make a contribution onto the scales of justice in order that God will be pleased with him and smile upon him. and it's a soul-destroying doctrine. And Paul writes the whole letter of the Galatians to attack that doctrine and undermine it. But in chapter 5, Paul is on the attack again and he's showing us five ways that legalism damages Christians. And here they are. First of all, legalism distracts a Christian from the gospel, number one. Number two, legalism hinders a Christian in his growth. Number three, legalism separates a Christian from his saviour. Number four, legalism robs a Christian of his freedom. And number five, legalism leavens the church in its entirety. Let's work three of these together as God helps us this morning. First of all, legalism distracts a Christian from his Saviour. Look at verse 6 again. We dealt with this briefly last week. Christ Jesus. Paul's describing here our union with Christ, that we believe into Jesus and we become part of him, he becomes part of us, and by the same logic that a husband and wife can open a joint bank account or file a joint tax return, the Christian and his Savior are regarded by God as one and all of our sins become Jesus's and all of his righteousness becomes ours. his place in the Father's heart and all of our place in the Father's wholeness, the Father's children and heaven and the throne even that Christ sits upon. All of these things are shared with us through union with Christ. Now how does that union happen? And Paul says it doesn't happen through circumcision or uncircumcision. What's he mean by that? Well, he's describing circumcision as a buzzword to describe the circumcision party, the legalists in Galatia, who believed that circumcision was a key part in our acceptance with God. You could have Jesus, but if you didn't have circumcision, you wouldn't be received as one of God's children. Your sins wouldn't be forgiven and you wouldn't be saved. that in some sense, circumcision, law keeping, Sabbath keeping, family worship, Bible reading, all these things, this long list of do's, contribute to our acceptance with God. And Paul says, no, it counts nothing. It counts nothing when it comes to you entering union with Christ. Now, neither does uncircumcision contribute. Now, Paul's describing here people on the other end of the spectrum, people who are saying, you know, well, if keeping the law doesn't get me favor with God, and if my sins can't undermine my favor with God through Christ, then I can just kind of lean back and have a, I call it a grace religion. I just don't really care too much about living the Christian life, praying, reading my Bible, you know, keeping the Sabbath, sharing the faith, memorizing scripture, fasting, you know, all those things, family worship, those things don't really matter. We just call it laid-back grace religion. It's just like a vacation mentality, kind of Caribbean, mellow kind of Christianity. And Paul says, no, going to the opposite extreme doesn't get you into union with Christ either. What matters, Paul says, is faith working through love. believing in Jesus Christ, the empty, dirty hands of faith, reaching up and taking from Christ everything we need for our relationship with God. We are saved by faith alone, but that faith that saves us is never alone, it always works, Paul says, through love. And so when it comes to being in Christ, Paul says, the key moment, the key first moment is to forget yourself, forget your law keeping, forget your good works, forget even your repentance, forget even the activity of your faith as if that would contribute to justification. We think we bring faith and God gives us mercy. No, no, we don't do anything. We just come with nothing, which is the one thing most men don't have, and God gives us everything in Christ. Not circumcision or uncircumcision, but faith, working through love. It's like in my drawer back at my desk in my study, I have a little box and in that box there's little knickknacks, my student ID cards from the time I was a medical student back in Belfast, all kinds of things. But in that box is also about 20 dollars, 20 pounds, sterling and change, notes, British currency. And I forget about it. Why? Because I can't use it here. It's not legal tender in America. It's just there. And likewise, Paul says, when it comes to being in Christ, forget about your righteousness. Forget about your religious emotions. It doesn't contribute anything. You can't use that as legal tender. You come with nothing. Christ brings everything. You believe in him and you have everything in Christ. And legalism stands diametrically opposed to that. It says you must bring something else, and it distances you from the gospel, as if the gospel wasn't really enough. That's the first problem. The second problem with legalism is that it hinders a Christian in his growth. It hinders a Christian in his growth. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love, You were running well, Paul says, but who hindered you from obeying the truth? Paul describes here a healthy Christian who's running the Christian life. And running the Christian life basically means faith, working through love. And Paul says there was a time when that was going pretty well. And then suddenly the burdens of legalism began dropping onto your shoulder and crushing you down, Paul says. And you became unhinged and you began to slow down like a person carrying a rucksack in a marathon. It hindered you, it slowed you down. Or someone wearing big baggy jeans and a big warm sweatshirt. The heat, the weight of the clothing hindered you and undermined your athletic experience or ability. And so I want you to see this morning what it means to grow as a Christian. That growing as a Christian is faith working through love. Now how does that happen? It's faith in an all-sufficient saviour. It's faith receiving the grace of God and the unconditional love of God without any strings attached. There's not a quid pro quo, you do this for me and I love you, no, we just come empty, naked, dirty sinners and God in his largesse, his mercy embraces us and brings us in as well-loved children. It's faith receiving the expulsive power of a new affection. We lay hold of the love of God, and as that love fills our heart, we find our love affair with ourselves, our love affair with the flesh, our love affair with sin is decisively broken, and increasingly so. And out of that new affection, we find ourselves able to love God and to love others, even to love our enemies. And Paul says anything that gets in the way of that faith alone reaching up to God and then sucking the blessings of God down into our soul and then working out in love, anything that gets in the way of that is a hindrance. And what I want you to see here in this point is that it really is impossible, listen to me now, it is impossible to love God or to love your neighbor and certainly to love your enemy without faith. And I want to explain that to you. That faith alone in Christ alone is the essential foundation, the taproot of Christian love. And without faith alone in Christ alone, you can't love God and you won't love your neighbor, and here's why. Let's think about that, first of all, in terms of the impossibility of loving God without faith. Without faith, we have no access to the love of God. Remember, faith is the hand of the soul that reaches up to take the love of God. Faith is the eye of the soul that sees Jesus upon the cross as the great evidence that God did not spare his own Son for us, but freely delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Paul says in Romans 8. And without faith, the eye of the soul is blind, and the hands of the soul are crippled and withered. and you've no access to the love, the goodness, the mercy, the kindness, the patience of God. All you will see is the wrath of God and his justice. You only see aspects of God's character. You're like a person listening to a movie at home, but the surround sound system is broken, and all that works is the subwoofer. Now, the subwoofer's giving you real sounds from the movie, but it's not giving you all of the sounds from the movie. All you're hearing is the thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. In a war movie, all you really hear and feel are the explosions, not the dialogue. There'd be no tenderness there, no birds singing in the trees, just a thump of explosions and howitzers going off and so forth and so on. Without faith it's a little bit like that with our relationship with God. Without faith we can't see His love, His mercy, His kindness revealed at the cross. We're blind to it and all we see are the thud of His wrath and the certainty of His justice and it's terrifying. Think about it like a husband, maybe, or a wife, and maybe she can see her husband's bank accounts online and he's got two credit cards. One credit card uses for bills and the other credit card uses for nice things like buying her presents and so forth and so on, but she only has access to the password for the bill account and maybe their anniversary is coming up and she wants to see what he's got planned and she goes on to online, looks at the account and sees mortgage, power bill, gas bill, insurance for the cars and so forth along with the bills and she goes, what a coot, he doesn't love me at all. But she can't see the other account, and in that account he's planned a trip to Barbados, and all expenses paid, vacation at the Sandals Resort, and flowers at a restaurant, and all these things planned for her anniversary. And she can't see that though. And without faith, we can't see the love of God. All we see is his inflexible justice and wrath, and it will be frightening. So if you approach God that way without faith, do you see, all you will see, as it were, are the debit cards of the law that will be saying to you, you need perfect, perpetual, personal, perfect obedience. Without faith, you can't see Christ saying, I've done all this you should have done, what you could have done but haven't done, and you'll feel condemned. And some of you are like that. The God you approach is a God who only sees your imperfections. And it's a soul-destroying affair, it's very discouraging. It'd be like, imagine men, if you bought your wife flowers for Mother's Day, and you bring the flowers home, and maybe you got them at Fresh Market or Lowe's or somewhere, Costco or somewhere. And you bring them in. And you know when you buy flowers, roses especially, there's always some of the roses have little brown bits on the edge of the petals. It's very difficult to get perfect roses in a grocery store. But your wife is thankful for them because they come from her husband. But imagine you're the kind of wife, and you brought the roses home, and she looked at them and went, hmm, that rose is crushed. That petal is a bit gringy. Those stems are a bit wilty. No, I don't like them. It'd be a soul-destroying affair if your wife only saw the faults in the roses you brought her, and not the heart behind them. And that's what it's like if we come to God apart from the cross. We come to a God of strict justice who can't see anything but our sin and the faults in us, because his eyes are too pure to behold evil. And our conscience reminds us of this constantly. It's what Paul says earlier in the chapter, that we used to be slaves and dealt with God as slaves, but now we come to God as sons. Let me change the analogy a bit, we'll keep the flowers going for a second. Imagine a woman receives flowers from two different people and what a difference it makes. The first person is a florist. She is hired to make flowers or provide flowers for her daughter's wedding. And the florist brings flowers and they're a bit dry, they're a bit old, they're a bit wilty and they're a bit crushed. And the mother says to her, listen, sorry, I paid for these and I expect them to be perfect and they're not perfect. Please go away and get better flowers. And the flowers goes away a bit disgruntled that her efforts weren't good enough. But they weren't, right? And they go away. There's no fault with that. That's totally normal. When you buy flowers and you pay for a reasonable amount of perfection, you expect to get what you paid for, right? Woman goes away unhappy. Five minutes later she's in the kitchen making lunch and in walks her five-year-old little boy with a bunch of flowers. he picked from the garden, and dear love him, he picked a few roses and a few rhododendron blossoms and so forth, and azaleas, and some of the blossoms fell off on the way in the house, and the petals are a bit crushed, and one of the roses' stems has been fractured, it's kind of limp-wristed, sitting there, and there's some weeds in the bouquet as well, but he couldn't tell the difference, he grabbed some dandelions and some other weeds, and he brings them into her, and now how does she respond to that? Does she look at that and say, Those are not good enough, take them out of our... No, because he's a son, and he's coming with love, bringing his wife a present, his mother a present, and his mother sees him and says, oh my little son. And in the gospel, it's even better than that, because as we come through the door with a little bouquet of our good works, Jesus meets us at the door. and says, our elder brother says, hold on a second, before you bring those to the father, give them to me. And he pulls out the weeds, and he pulls out the bugs, and he pulls out the snail, and he pulls out the dandelion, and he fixes the broken rose, and he brings some of his own tulips, and his own roses, his own lilies of his righteousness. He mixes them together, wraps a big bow in, and the bouquet, and he goes, now, you bring this to the father. and you as the father's son bring in this bouquet and the father's heart explodes with love for you because of who you are in Christ your son and because of what Christ has done for you that hides all of your imperfections from view. And you see the difference that makes? You're not slaves. You're a son. You're a son. And so, When you come to God without faith, it's really impossible to love God because you're overwhelmed with a sense of condemnation. You have no sense of his love for you. You just feel a disappointment and nothing is ever good enough. And you'll come with shame and guilt. you'll not feel welcome and your capacity to love God is undermined because the false gospel of legalism, which is no gospel at all, is telling that you must bring perfect flowers and you must bring perfect this and perfect that and if you don't, God will never receive you as a son, you'll still be a slave. And that's no foundation for a loving relationship with God. And that's why some of you really struggle, because in your mind, God is always waiting with a smite button, just waiting to punish you when you forget your devotions, or you miss family worship, or you don't keep the Sabbath, or something happens, and he's just waiting to smite you. Because you think God's smile depends on something you do, rather than on the everything Christ has done, do you see? Now, it's often not just impossible to love God without faith, it's also impossible to love your neighbour without faith and let me explain that to you as quickly as I can. Because without faith in Christ and the inspiring, soul-melting experience of God's love for us in Christ, not because we feel it because God promises it and we receive it by faith, God loves us freely, fully, finally, forever, and nothing I can do can disconnect my soul from the Father's love. Without that inspiring sense of love that sends us out to be imitators of God as a beloved child, and to walk in love just as God has loved us, without that sense of imitating God's dealings with us, we cannot love our neighbour. And what's more, when we go out to meet our neighbour, and especially our enemy, we'll have this sense of, I'm a disappointment to God, I've not done enough to please God, and you'll have this sense of, I'm so, and, and, when you meet your neighbour and he disappoints you, you'll have no way of overlooking that disappointment. If God has not found a way in Christ to overlook the way you disappoint him, which he has, you'll have no way to overlook the disappointment that others bring to you. The most unforgiving people in the world are those who can't forgive themselves, and not that the reason we forgive ourselves is because of God's forgiveness. And if you can't get there by faith, you'll not ever be able to show forgiveness because you can't give what you haven't got. You must receive forgiveness from God before you can show forgiveness and grace and mercy to others. It's like the elder brother in the Prodigal Son. Here he was, in his mind, slaving for his father all these years. He never got that from his father. And then the father, in his grace, brings back the prodigal son. And the older son is just filled with rage. So legalism destroys that, you see, because it teaches you that God shows you favour if you deserve it. And that will then be the way you treat everybody else. I show them favor if they deserve it, and if they don't, I won't. And so do you see, it's only as we, you know, when we deal with God and as we reach through the curse that we deserve and lay hold of the gospel that Christ has deserved for us, our soul warms. It's in that logic, that movement that we then develop the skill when people disappoint us and they deserve our curse, we reach through the curse they deserve and lay hold of the grace that we have received and in that moment we can show them grace and mercy and forgive them and not allow their sins to embitter us. And so, through the love of God received by faith, we love God, we're also able to look at people who hurt us and say, I'm not going to hurt you back. And people who wrong us, I'm not gonna wrong you back. People who curse us, I'm not gonna curse you back. I'm gonna trust myself to God, and I'm gonna be kind to you, because my heart is no longer law-based and law-driven, but it's tasted the goodness and the mercy and the grace of God. And so, The first two points we saw this morning then is that legalism is bad for your soul because first of all, it separates you from the gospel. And secondly, it hinders you in your Christian growth because Christian growth comes as faith works through love and that's only possible as faith receives the love of God and then radiates that love back again to God and radiates that love out again to others. And so if you believe that the law gets into that and your law keeping contributes to that, it'll entirely hinder you, it'll burden you down in your effort to run the Christian faith. As Paul said at the Galatians, you were running well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? Thirdly, legalism separates a Christian from his saviour. to save your sweet voice in the gospel. Verse 8, this persuasion is not from him who calls you. It's not from him who calls you. Jesus, you see, never calls a Christian to fool he focus us to forget law-keeping in terms of as if the law no longer mattered, he calls us first and foremost to focus on him, to remember him. That I gave my life for you, Jesus says, when you gave me nothing but trouble. That I recognised you when you rejected me. That I called out to you when you ran from me. that I searched for you when you hid from me, that I died for you when you wouldn't live for me, that I washed you when you defiled me. And the call of Jesus is a call to look at him, not to focus on the law, not to forget the law, but to focus on him. Here's the illustration. Little girl's trapped in a burning building, and the fireman is hoisted up to her in a cherry picker, one of those big, long cherry pickers, and he's up there in the air, and she's standing, and he's only a few feet away from her, and he's reaching out to her, but she's holding on to the ledge on the burning building, flames coming out the windows beside her, and she's terrified. And he says, jump into my arms. And she says, I can't, it's too far down, I'm frightened, I can't do it. What's he saying? He says, don't look down, look at me, look into my eyes. His warm, tender eyes, his strong, rough but gentle hands, reaching out to her. And looking at him, she jumps, and he catches her, and she's safe. And it's like that in Christian life. The law says, look at all of the things you have to do. Look down. Look down at the sexual purity you must maintain. And look down at the Sabbath you must keep. And look down at the family worship you must organize. And look down at the honesty you must keep, the perfect honesty. Look down at the hard work you must do in your daily job. Look down at your Bible reading that must be done every single day. Look down at how much better everybody else in the church knows their Bible than you do. Look down at how often you should be in prayer, how pathetic your prayers are. Legalism calls you to look down at the law and focus on these things. Look down at the burden to keep tithing when times are tough financially. Now those things are not unimportant. But Jesus never tells you to look down at those things. look at me, look into my eyes, look into my hands that were pierced for you, look into my brow which is still stitched with the scars of those thorns, look into my side that was run through for you, right up into my heart, look at me, And looking at me, you'll find that it's not hard to give up that extra glass of wine in the evening that you know is too much. It's not hard to give up pornography. It's not hard to lay aside maybe sport or other things in the Lord's day that would get in between you and your desire to seek the Lord. It's not hard to give up a few pounds to a poor person on the side of the road who has nothing. When you drive past him, you think, I should give him a few dollars and you open your wallet and there's ten dollars there and you think I'm not going to give him that much and then you think, you look at Jesus and what he gave for you and your heart melts and you drive over and you open the window and you give the man five dollars or ten dollars and you say this is a gift to you from the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know how you're going to use it, I pray you'll use it well but this is a gift to you and you see looking to Jesus separates you from the hard edge and demand of the law, not that the law no longer matters But that the law is no longer the main thing, it's about knowing Jesus. And the legalist says, no, no, it's about the law. It's about you having a big enough Bible. It's about you being orthodox enough. It's about you having this or having that. But how orthodox you are, how reformed your theology is, how well you know, all these things, those things are important. wants you to focus on those things. And Jesus says, focus on me. This persuasion is not from him who calls you. Now, the antinomian, the other side of the coin, he's saying, forget the law, just live, just kick back and kind of, you know, enjoy life. It doesn't matter. No, it does matter. Jesus says, don't focus on law, don't focus on liberty, focus on me, Jesus says. Here comes our fourth point. The first point was legalism is bad because it separates the Christian from the gospel. And secondly, legalism is bad because it hinders the Christian's growth. And thirdly, legalism is bad because it separates the Christian from his saviour and the sweet call of the gospel. Well, fourthly, legalism is bad because it separates or it robs the Christian of his freedom. Now the Christian has been set free from sin and been set free for God. He's received the love of God, the free love of God. And that love of God has acted like the expulsive power of a new affection in his soul, that famous sermon by W.G.T. Shedd. And this expulsive power has driven out his love affair with the flesh. He no longer wants to live for sin. He's not the best part of him. Yes, there's that struggle. As Paul says, the good that I want to do, I don't do, but the evil that I hate, I practice. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, I'll deliver you. And by faith, we receive that deliverance through the Holy Spirit, by the word, and by the spirit we put to death the deeds of the flesh. And we live, as Paul's gonna talk about that in the rest of this chapter. But that liberty begins by faith alone, in Christ alone, because of grace alone, that we don't beat the flesh down to earn the favour of God. And this is where the legalist goes wrong, of course. The legalist, a man who's forgotten the gospel, or never knew the gospel, To him, he really does live for himself. We all do. We're all sucked into the gravitational nexus of our own desires, our own lust for pleasure and profit and position and ourselves. Sin doth make narcissists of us all. Ask my wife, me included. But the legalist hears the law. Do this and live. And he thinks, I'd really rather not, but I don't want to go to hell. He doesn't hate his sin, he hates hell. And so in his mind he thinks, okay, what do I have to do to escape hell? To get God off my back? And he comes to the law, and the law says, read your Bible every day. Tick, pray. Tick, go to church twice on Sundays. Tick, sing with all your heart in church. Tick, read your Bible when the pastor does in church. Tick, Feather confetti bit with gusts of tick. Be orthodox in your theology. Tick, keep the Sabbath day perfectly. Tick, have family worship most days of the week. Tick, have your devotions every day. Tick, and so forth. There is going on and on and on and on and on. Those things are all good things, don't get me wrong. But the legalist is doing those things to try and escape hell and to get God off his back, or at least to try and earn the smile of this angry God who's always mad at him, right? And he's pursuing these things and he's... But not out of love. And then he hears the gospel of free grace. And it always has one of two effects upon him. Either he finds it incredibly offensive. Paul speaks about offense here. He says, listen, if I, brother, verse 11, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offence of the cross has been removed. What's the offence of the cross? That you do nothing. Christ has done everything. And the legalist finds that tremendously offensive because he's thinking in his mind, I've been slaving all these years, like the elder brother in the story. He's been slaving at home and God never gave me the fatted calf and along comes this prodigal prostitute using waster. He comes back and God kills the fatted calf for him. And that's not fair. And he finds it very offensive. And in saying those things, he shows he doesn't know the father's heart. He doesn't love the father's heart. He's concerned with himself, not his father. He doesn't see the father's joy in bringing back a lost son. He just thinks about what he hasn't gotten, what he has lost. That's the cold, hard bondage of legalism. And legalism robs you of the freedom to be killing the flesh. and from the gospel that alone gives you the power to kill the flesh. So the legalist hears the gospel and it's either offensive or it sounds like an opportunity. He thinks, wow, if I don't need to kill the flesh in order to earn God's favour, then I jolly well won't bother earning the flesh. He's like the older brother looking at the younger brother coming back and thinking, well, you know I've always eyed the prostitutes downtown and the girls and the pubs and the bars and I really wanted to go there too but I didn't because I wanted to keep my place in the father's household but here's this boy coming back and he he had he sold his wild oats and he comes back and he gets welcomed and there's an aspect of the older brother's heart I think that might be saying well if he can do it I'll do it too. And that's why Paul says, you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. That the freedom of the gospel is not a freedom to love sin. and to indulge sin because Christ takes it all away from you. It's not a freedom for sin, it's a freedom from sin and a freedom for love. Not to love sin and the flesh, but to love one another, Paul says. You are called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to the flesh, but through love, serve one another. That it's only through faith alone, by grace alone, that we can love one another. And the legalist needs to realise that he has never really obeyed God. He doesn't know the freedom of obeying God out of love. Because he doesn't love God, he just hates hell. Hates the consequence of sin, but doesn't love the God who caused him from sin. And when he's thinking he's spending all his life obeying the law, keeping the Sabbath, doing all these things, and really working, working, working, he's never even begun to begin to obey. Because you don't begin to obey God until you love God. And the legalists, as I've said before, knows nothing of love. And if you embrace legalism, you lose your freedom. You'll lose the freedom that God has given you from the flesh. You'll lose the freedom God has given you to obey, and you'll lose the freedom God has given you to liberate you from that always-get-what-you-deserve attitude, always-claim-your-rights attitude, that is the foundation of all of the squabbles and fights that ruin our home and that can threaten our fellowship. People who are always, always give me what I deserve, treat me as I deserve, and if you don't, there'll be hell to pay. That kind of attitude wrecks marriages. And only the gospel can set us free from that, as we spoke about earlier. And that's why Paul says, for you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but three loves serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another. Here are these legalists in Galatia, and they're pointing out everybody else's sins, and how they're all wrong, and how they're not good enough, and how they don't really understand the gospel. They don't understand the law, and critically, they're fighting and they're squabbling. Because legalists are always like that, they're always nitpickers and t-crossers and dot-dotters and they have this litigious fighting spirit that shows them nothing of liberty. And maybe that's you in your marriage today, maybe you squabble and you fight with your husband or with your wife or with your children or with your parents and the reason is you don't understand the gospel, you've never been set free from demands. I want justice. My justice. My self-centred vision of justice. I want my rights, don't you see? That's why there's always fighting in the home. because you've never been set free by the gospel. You've embraced this long mindset that everything's got to be about justice, and just anger is justice on fire, and the reason why you're angry all the time is because you don't believe you've got justice. And the gospel says to you, you want justice? You want justice, you're going to hell. Or you're going to the cross, but there's no other way. You either go to hell for your sins, or God sends Christ to hell for your sins. You go to the cross and learn a better way of doing life than demanding law for yourself. And you be thankful to God that God didn't give you law and justice. He gave it to Christ and he gives you grace and mercy and freedom. And the gospel robs you of the glorious, wonderful world of grace where the birds sing and the breeze blows and God smiles. and all is right with the world, the law brings you back to Sinai where there's thunder and that bass, bass beat of judgment. And it'll embitter your soul, it'll destroy your soul. And it'll destroy your marriage and your family as well. And lastly, And briefly, I'm sorry, this has been a long sermon. This is now, I think, the fourth time I've tried to preach this sermon this week, and each time it comes off the reel. So this is the final edition, as God helps us. Legalism leavens a church in its entirety. It separates the Christian from the gospel. It hinders the Christian in his growth. It divides the Christian from his savior. It robs the Christian of his freedom, and it leavens the church in its entirety. Paul says in verse nine, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. That when one person or one family embraces legalism, it spreads. and they can destroy a whole church. It makes churches harsh, censorious, critical, judgy-judgy, look down your nose at other people. Self-righteous. where the main thing in churches is never Christ and the greatness of Christ and the goodness of Christ and the beauty of Christ. He's never the focus. The focus always drifts onto something else. The style of the worship, the orthodoxy, the five points of Calvinism, the doctrine of the end times, theonomy and how the law can fix what sin has broken in America, whether the worship should be traditional or rock and roll, whether the baptism is full immersion or just a little bit of sprinkling on a child's head, that whether children should go to homeschool, public school, private school, what female modesty looks like and female submission looks like or feminism looks like. Those become the focus in churches that take their eyes off Christ. and think of another law or another liberty that becomes the focus, rather than on Jesus. And Paul says that spirit destroys, not just Christians, but it destroys whole people and whole congregations. And many of those things are good. Baptism is good. Worship is good. Having the right kind of worship is good. How we school our children matters. Those things matter. but they're good servants, they're terrible masters. They become the masters, they cut us off from Christ and the gospel, liberty and everything else, and they destroy us from the inside out. And if Christ's covenant church is known for anything, anything, there's anything that characterises our congregation, anything that characterises me as a man, and you as people, and our fellowship grace in Jesus Christ. When you're back in the 19th century in India, there was a famous Christian called Sundar Singh. Now before he was a Christian, he was actually a very well-known holy man. And he was converted in a moment, no time to go there now, but he was converted in a glorious moment. And he went, he spent the rest of his life going about India preaching the gospel. And there was one time he was at this Hindu school in India, and one of the professors there, one of the holy men there, were angry and bitter, and they said to him, You left Hinduism, what does Christianity give you that Hinduism didn't give you? And Sundar Singh said, it gives me Christ. No, he says, the professor says, no, no, that's not what I'm asking. What particular doctrine, what particular practice, what particular joy, what particular freedom, what particular anything has Christianity given you that you didn't get in Hinduism? Alexander Scheng says, the particular doctrine, the particular freedom, the particular glory, the particular thing that I get in Christianity is Jesus Christ. And when you understand that, and we understand that, and we keep understanding that in this church, you'll finally understand the thrust of Galatians. And to whoever you are, elder, deacon, member, visitor in this congregation this morning, I want to point out to you, I want to say, there is only one name under heaven given amongst men by which we can and must be saved. And God has said he will be preeminent above all things. And all the strands of truth find their terminus ad quem in him. And you look to Jesus and God says, it's enough. My son is so good, he's so great. His work is so all sufficient. When you have him, you have everything. Your spiritual quest is over. Your sins are finished. Your debts are paid. Your life is safe. Your reputation is shored up by infinite righteousness. And you're my child now. and you'll be my child forever, safely a son, in the Son of God himself. Amen. And may God bless you through the reading and preaching of his word this morning.