Please turn with me to the letter to the Galatians again, chapter 3, page 824 in the Pew Bible. We're looking at this great New Testament letter on Sunday mornings, and this morning we come to chapter 3, verses 1 to 5. Let me just read again verse 1. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. The letter to the Galatians was written so that the charge of being foolish foolish, might not be brought against any Christian here in Grace Baptist Church this morning. Now, I know very well that it wasn't about us that Paul was thinking. He was thinking rather about certain first century Christians in the Roman province of Galatia who were giving him great cause for concern. But it's also the case that this is no ordinary letter. Paul was moved by the Holy Spirit to write this letter. And he was guided by the Holy Spirit in all that he said. And as a consequence, this letter to the Galatians is not only Paul's letter containing his thoughts and his words and his particular style. It is the Spirit's letter. When the Galatians heard it read to them one Sunday morning, they were listening to nothing less than the word of God. And God had more than just the Galatians in mind when he enabled Paul to write to them. He knew that the teaching of this letter would be needed by the Christian church as a whole. And he knew that it would be needed by the church right up until the second coming of Christ. And it was for the supply of this broad need and this long-continued need that God moved Paul to write what he wrote to the Galatians, which brings us inevitably to ourselves. In the wisdom and kindness of foresight of God, this letter to the Galatians was written for our benefit too and specifically in the light of this morning's text so that the charge of being foolish, foolish might not be brought against any of us. Now you sense from the Apostle's language here that he is aghast at their falling, thunderstruck It seems incredible to him that considering what they had seen and considering what they had experienced they could be doing, what they were doing, it was as if they had been bewitched. Who has bewitched you? asks the apostle. It's as if some evil power has cast a spell over them. So foolish has their conduct become. Paul knew of course that what had happened in Galatia was that the believers had come under the influence of certain false teachers. And he knew that these false teachers had done their work not by enchantments but by very persuasive words. Nevertheless, he also knew that behind the activity of these false teachers was the activity of that deceiving spirit, Satan. And it may just be that in his question, who, singular, who has bewitched you, Paul is hinting at his activity. The focus, however, is very much on the Galatians' folly. They had taken teaching to heart that they should never have dreamed of taking to heart. They had taken beliefs on board that, considering all that they had seen and all that they had experienced, should have been dismissed out of hand. They were foolish. And Paul, in holy frustration and righteous anger, rebukes them for it and labours to correct them. Well this morning we're going to listen very carefully to the Apostle as he does so and for precisely the reason that has been given. This text is the Word of God to us and it is the will of God that we should pay heed to it so that the same charge of being foolish might not be brought against any of us. Now we naturally ask the question What were the Galatians doing that was so foolish? And the answer is they were endeavouring to mix together two things which, like oil and water, just do not mix. At the outset of their Christian lives, they understood that salvation was by grace through faith. But through the influence of certain false teachers who had infiltrated their ranks, they had come to believe that observing the law was necessary too. And these two things just do not go together. You cannot fuse them into one way of salvation. Salvation by grace through faith and salvation by obedience to the law of God are two such different things that each excludes the other. And the consequence was that far from having made spiritual progress by their new beliefs and practices, these Galatians were on a highly dangerous downgrade. In chapter 1, Paul describes them as guilty of an act of spiritual treachery. You are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. They were acting the part of spiritual turncoats. And here in chapter three, he denounces what they have done as an act of spiritual folly. You foolish Galatians. Well, in order to bring home to them their folly, the Apostle Paul reminds them of two things. He reminds them, first of all, of what they had seen, and secondly, of what they had experienced. And for our own preservation, or perhaps for our deliverance from the Galatians' folly, we are going to look together at these two things in turn. Well, first of all, what they had seen. Galatians chapter 3 verse 1, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. Reflecting in another of his letters on his ministry in the city of Corinth, the apostle Paul could write this, I resolved to do nothing whilst I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Right at the heart of what Paul preached in the city of Corinth was the cross of Calvary. And it was the same in Galatia. And Paul reminds these believers here that before their very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. His reference is to his preaching of the cross. And his language indicates, doesn't it, that it had been done with great clarity and fullness. One writer paraphrases it like this. The message of Jesus as Messiah who died on the cross was plastered up on the billboards before your very eyes. No doubt as to what it was all about. Well, there are basically three parts to such preaching. Three things that are plastered up on the billboards. History, doctrine, and application. Obviously and most foundationally of all there is history. Our Christian faith has its roots firmly planted in actual historical events and at the heart of these historical events is the cross. Jesus, God's son, came from heaven and died upon the cross of Calvary. And then there's doctrine. or more simply, explanation. I wonder if we really properly appreciate how dark, how mysterious, how utterly perplexing an event the death of Jesus Christ would be if there were no explanation. Why, of all people on the face of the earth, did the sinless Son of God die? Why was it that he actually came from heaven to die? Left to ourselves, we could not possibly guess at the answers to these questions. And mercifully, in the light of apostolic teaching, there is no need for us even to try. Paul and his fellow apostles explained. And with their teaching before us in the Word of God, we in our capacity must endeavour to explain as well. Let's take just as one example the text that you will find on the front of your bulletin that's already been quoted to you. Here is one of the great statements, one of the great explanatory statements in the New Testament of what the death of Jesus Christ is all about, and it comes from the pen of the Apostle Paul in Romans 5 verses 6 to 8. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What's the apostle telling us? He's telling us that the death of Jesus Christ is the most glorious of rescue missions. We were powerless, he says, helpless, utterly unable to deliver ourselves from the wrath of God on account of our sins. and put ourselves right with God. But in the surpassing love of God, a Rescuer came, a Savior, who took our place and died for us. And in a whole host of other scriptures, we are taught why. It was so that we might be saved from our sins. so that God, the righteous God, could at one and the same time be just and uphold His honour and the honour of His law and be the justifier of ungodly men and women who believe in His Son. So in the portrayal of Jesus Christ as crucified there is history, that's the foundation, There is doctrine, that's the superstructure or explanation, and at the climax of it all, there is application. In the preaching of the cross of Calvary, the apostles always went beyond the basic facts and they endeavoured to show their hearers how they might benefit from what Christ had done. How as sinners they could come into the enjoyment of the salvation from sin that had been obtained for them at such a tremendous cost by the death of the Son of God. And here the key word is the word faith. God in his loving kindness has done it all. Through the cross of his dear Son he has provided a perfect atonement for sin. And there is now nothing for us to do but to look to the son for the salvation that we need. Nothing for us to do but to take the humble position of a recipient receiving from him as a free gift the salvation. that he obtained when a jailer in the city of Philippi asked the Apostle Paul on one occasion what he had to do to be saved. Paul's answer was this. Believe in the Lord Jesus. Take the place of a humble recipient. There's nothing you can do to earn your salvation. Nothing for you to do but to look humbly to Jesus. so that on the basis of his finished work you might be saved. Now when that application was made to the Galatians, they responded in the very way that they were instructed to do. And by grace, through faith, they were saved. They looked and lived. By the exercise of faith in this crucified Jesus, Without any thought of observing the law, they came to be clothed with a justifying righteousness, forgiven all their sins and made heirs of eternal life simply by believing. And yet, and it's here that we come face to face with their folly, having begun so well on the proper footing of grace, looking only to the crucified Christ for their salvation. They were now looking to the law and to their obedience to it for their enjoyment of salvation. Through the influence of these false teachers, they had come to believe that to look to the crucified Christ was not enough. There were other things to which they had to look. All these many details of the Law of Moses, they had to look to them as well. And Holy Scripture leaves us in no doubt whatsoever as to how foolish a course of thinking and action that is. For it's either or, not both and. Salvation by grace and salvation by the works of the law cannot be fused into one way of salvation. If we adopt the one, then we necessarily abandon the other because they are mutually exclusive. It's either holy by grace and our indebtedness to God is complete or it's by works of the law in which we take the credit to ourselves. And as we have noted again and again in recent weeks it really does matter which of these two alternatives you choose. You stay on the footing of grace and you look to Jesus Christ and to Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. and you will be saved. That is an emphatic and repeated promise. But by contrast, and this is equally emphatic and equally repeated, by observing the law, no one will be justified. So we come back to the cross of Calvary. It is God's loving provision for the helpless. And if you would enjoy the benefits of the Cross of Calvary, you must take up the position of the helpless and you must remain in that position. You must look to Christ to be your Savior, always and only to Him. He, He, from the beginning to the end, must be the sole ground of your hopes of eternal life. And if anyone should tell you differently and say to you that more than this is needed, that it's not enough just to look to Jesus Christ, that in order to be sure of eternal life, there are all kinds of good works and religious practices that you have to add to your faith in Jesus Christ, you turn a deaf ear. to all such teaching. It's not by looking to yourself, it's not by looking to the law, it's not by looking to the church, it's not by looking to the priest, it's not by looking to the Pope, it's by looking only to Christ and continuing to look only to him that we are saved. And the great example here is the Apostle Paul himself. In verse 20 of the previous chapter he says, I have been crucified with Christ. And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And it's particularly the second part of that verse that I want you to notice. How does Paul live? Now that the old life, the sin-controlled, self-righteous life that he once lived Now that it's over, I live, he says, by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Faith, in other words, was not just something that belonged to the outset of Paul's Christian life. It was ongoing. It was the very element in which he lived and breathed. He was constantly looking to Jesus to be his Savior and Lord. holding on to him by faith, abiding in him by faith, depending upon him day by day for righteousness and life, never making anyone or anything other than Jesus the ground of his hope and confidence before God. And that is what we must do as well. If you're not a Christian here this morning, you need to begin by faith. And you need to renounce all dependence and everything else, and you need to give yourself wholly to Christ to be saved by him. Look to Christ, the crucified one. And then having done that, go on looking to him, and to nothing else, and to no one else, only to him, making him always and only the sole ground of your confidence. But let's return to the text. Paul, in seeking to bring home to the Galatians their folly in the first place, reminds them of what they had seen. And then secondly, he reminds them of what they had experienced. Verse 2. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law? or by believing what you heard, verse 5. Does God give you his spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you heard? The apostle here is appealing to their experience and in particular to their experience of the Holy Spirit. They had received him. He had come to them at the outset of their Christian lives. had brought them into the enjoyment of salvation in Christ and now lived in their hearts for their sanctification, their preservation and their empowerment for Christian service. And it's absolutely no different with us. If we are Christians at all, we have received the Holy Spirit and we have done so, verse 5, because God himself has given him to us. Now his presence may not manifest itself in the miraculous way that it evidently did in first century Galatia, but it's nevertheless real. There is a giving and receiving at the beginning of every Christian life and in all kinds of different ways the spirit who has been given and received makes his presence felt. Now here's the critical question. How did it happen? Did you receive the spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard? Verse 2. Does God give you his spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you heard? Well, the Galatians know the answer very well. At the outset of their Christian lives, they were completely ignorant of this teaching which had now so tragically impacted their lives. The idea that they had to obey the law of Moses in order to attain salvation, that at that time was utterly unknown to them. They had Paul as their preacher. And Paul had directed them to Jesus. And when they believed in him, they received the Holy Spirit. And again, it's absolutely no different with us. If we are Christians, we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts and he is there because we are believers. If you enjoy the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit, it is not as a reward for your obedience. You enjoy the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit because at the moment of conversion, you looked to Jesus Christ to be your Saviour and God at that point graciously gave to you the Spirit as a gift. Our footing therefore, once again, is that of grace. Just as with the blessings of the cross in general, so with the presence and ministry of the Spirit in particular, we are holy on a footing of grace. There is nothing that flows from Calvary, whether it be righteousness, forgiveness, eternal life, or the presence and ministry of the Spirit, that comes in any other way than by grace through faith. In our helplessness, we look to the crucified. And of his abounding free grace, we receive blessing after blessing after blessing. And yet, and here again we come face to face with the Galatians' folly. For all this rich personal experience that they had had of the grace of God in relation to the Holy Spirit, Paul can write this to them. Verse 3. Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? What's the Apostle saying? He's saying to them, you have stepped out of the realm of grace. You are not continuing as you have begun. These Galatians no longer feel the helplessness that they did at the first. That helplessness that caused them to look to the Lord to supply all of their spiritual needs. They're looking now to themselves. and the foolishly endeavouring to carry on and to complete the work of salvation by their own efforts of obedience. And Paul is just dumbfounded that having experienced what they had, they should now make such a radical switch. You may say to me this morning, I can't identify with these Galatians. I don't know anything about this kind of beginning by receiving the Spirit and faith and then trying to progress in the Christian life by my own obedience and hope that I will merit God's blessing by that and that may be so. But we can learn from these Galatians and God has given us this text this morning so that we will learn from these Galatians. What's the lesson? The lesson is that we must continue exactly as we began. We progress in the Christian life in exactly the same way that we begin the Christian life, by grace, through faith. We look to the Lord and we go on looking to the Lord for the supply of every spiritual need. We look to him for righteousness. We look to him for forgiveness. We look to him for life and we look to him to go on working in us by his Spirit that we might be able to live the Christian lives that we ought to. Think about it like this. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is never something that we earn. We do not perform acts of obedience to God's law and then, as a reward for that obedience, secure the Spirit's powerful influences. We never, in other words, put God in our debt. It is we, rather, who are always in his debt. The ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit is just like the initial gift of the Holy Spirit. It comes to us and is enjoyed by us on a footing of sheer grace. We look to the Lord just as we did at the first and we go on looking to him day after day, year after year until the end. It is by that means and that means alone that the saving, transforming influences of the Spirit continue to flow into our lives. And so we go back to the Apostle Paul himself and what he tells us in verse 20 of chapter 2, I have been crucified with Christ. And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Now you remember his past. Paul was a man who had had painful personal experience of the kind of law-relying life that so alarmed him to see in the Galatian converts. In the days before he became a Christian, he had striven with all his might to attain righteousness through the law. It was all up to him, or at least so he thought, and he certainly had given it his best shot. And then there comes this change, and he is crucified with Christ. And the old life comes to an end and he enters upon a wholly new life, a life lived by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him. And it was such a different way of living from the way he had known before. No longer was there a dependence upon himself. There was no attempt in any way to be his own Saviour day by day, hour by hour, he looks to the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him to supply him with everything he needs. His dependence is absolute. I look to him for righteousness. I look to him for forgiveness. I look to him for life. I look to him for the supply of every spiritual need that I have. I look to Him to work in me by the Spirit by whom He Himself has come to live in my heart so that I might grow in grace and serve Him well and glorify Him on the earth. He is holy in the realm of grace. and gladly. This man has quite obviously not moved a single step from the position of personal helplessness to which Jesus Christ reduced him on the road to Damascus. He is constantly at the feet of the crucified, looking to him constantly by faith for everything that he needs, never seeking to merit it, to earn it in any way. And that's where we must stay as well. Trusting in him for pardon. Trusting in him for deliverance from final condemnation. Trusting in Jesus for the continued enjoyment of eternal life. Trusting in Jesus for everything that we need. to see us safe to heaven. And if that is where we do stay, then all will be well. We were thinking last Sunday morning, boys and girls, about a paradox. And a paradox is something that sounds as if it couldn't be true, but is. In the first half of chapter 2, verse 20, Paul says that he no longer lives. And then in the second half of the verse, twice over, he says that he does live. Dead, and yet he lives. It doesn't sound as if it really could be, does it? But it's true. And not just for Paul, but for every true Christian as well. There is an old way of life that has come to an end. It's over. and in its place there is a new life. We are dead and yet we live. Well, here is another paradox. It is when we are at our weakest that we are at our strongest. It is when we most feel our helplessness that we are actually safest and strongest. Now that doesn't sound as if it could be true, does it? But it is. It was true for the Apostle Paul, and it's true for every Christian. What does the Christian do who knows that he's ever so weak and ever so helpless? Who knows that unless Jesus remains his savior and supplies every spiritual need, he cannot continue as a Christian. What does he do? He looks to the Lord for help. He doesn't try to make it on his own because he knows that he can't. He looks to the Lord day by day, hour by hour, for the supply of every need. And that is why we can say that it is when the Christian is at his weakest that he is actually at his strongest. That when he most feels his helplessness, he is actually safest in the face of false teaching and strongest. Because then that believer finds himself looking to his Savior, living by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him and out of his infinite fullness. That loving Savior will not let that believer down, but will richly supply every need and pour blessing after blessing after blessing into his life until he is safe in heaven. You foolish Galatians, says Paul, we must learn from them to be wise and we must learn to be wise by fixing the eyes of our faith on God's beloved Son and keeping them there. Let's pray together. Our gracious God, we pray that you will help us. We thank you for Jesus Christ, your son, and for his perfect work upon the cross of Calvary. We thank you that he has done it all. And if we look to him, and keep on looking to Him, we will have everything that we need. And we pray that we will never shift from a fitting of grace. May we never cease to feel our absolute dependence upon Him. May we never be so foolish as to add our own works to his finished work and to depend even a little on what we ourselves can do. Give us grace to look wholly to him. Have mercy, we pray, upon any who have been misled by the modern equivalence of these false teachers in Galatia and who have begun to look to other things and to other people as the foundation, in part at least, of their hope of eternal life. Have mercy, we pray. Help them to see how serious a matter that is and bring them back to that footing of grace on which they stood at first. And we thank you for an all-sufficient Saviour. And we thank you for one who never turns away from his people in their felt weakness and helplessness, but always comes. and supplies their every need. Do bless to us your word, we pray. Be with us through the remainder of this day. We thank you for it and for the privileges that it affords to us of communion with you and fellowship with your people and worship and service. May it be a most blessed day. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.