Galatians 3. The book of Galatians is against the Judaizers. These are Jewish Christians who thought that you had to become Jewish to become a Christian. Some of it makes sense from their viewpoint, but Paul's trying to set them straight. Basically, you can summarize it, faith, not works. That's how we're saved. Faith, not the law. This chapter is gonna give us well-reasoned arguments. I like those. That's part of what I'm gonna do this summer. I'm going to give you this summer, at the Sunday evening services, I wanna help arm and prepare you with well-reasoned answers so that we can be Christian soldiers. I want to equip your tool belt so that you have something that, if you're put on the point of question, that you have an answer. Elaine, I think it was two weeks ago, Said, hey, here's a podcast you need to listen to. And it was Charlie Kirk, if you've never listened to Charlie Kirk or watched him debate online or his, he's got a ministry, I'll give you the name of his ministry. Turning Point, yeah, where he goes around to high schools and colleges and represents the faith. And in this one, he was just taking questions on a college campus, and somebody asked him, why are you a Christian, why do you believe? Man, boom, without hesitation, rattled off the things that he believed. We were like, yeah, that's what we need. We need to have that ingrained, and I have some tools like that, and so I wanna try to put that in you. Paul's gonna give us one this morning where we might have a wrestle. He's gonna give us a well-reasoned, good tactics to use on others if they are wrestling or if they are trapped in these things, works versus faith, or works, righteousness, that they are trusting in something and not someone. This might be their actions, their good deeds, their good outweighing their bad, how they behave, because they were baptized or remember a certain church or whatever, it might be their lineage or something. No. This is also good tactics to wrestle with ourselves. Because there's things that in me I still fight with. I know the answer and how it is, but man, sometimes, the devil lost us. when we repented of our sins and we converted to Christ. But that doesn't mean he quits. Okay, I lost you. You're one of his. So now he wants to make you useless, doubtful, a coward. He wants to put you on the sidelines. In war, weapons are designed not just to kill, Some are meant to cause you to suffer and to maim you, because they found out that if they can shoot you and it doesn't kill you right away, that takes out two people, because now someone's gonna care for you, maybe three people, that have to carry you and get you off the battlefield. So just killing one of you, there might be a tragedy and spur on the others, but oh, now they've got an injured person that we've gotta care for, get back, and how are we gonna get out of here and bring them all around this way if there's more? You've taken more people out. Evil's evil, or war's evil, and people strategize these things and they think about it. And so it takes more to care for them. The devil wants us like that. You know, distracts the fighting forces if there's injuries that are going on and it upsets you. The devil does that to the churches. He wants to distract us. He wants to bring up wounded warriors that aren't effectual. You know, all of a sudden, now the church is spending all their time trying to heal a hurt with them. Like, oh, you know, how can we do this for you? Instead of being on the front line. I want us to move from dealing with wounded warriors to being on the front line more, to go out. Shell-shocked believers, I just don't know, I just don't know, I just don't know. Hurt believers, that the church is full of those, someone who's been injured, had church hurt in some way because of someone acting in selfish ways and not representing the church rightly. That's a caution for all of us, right? Remember, we represent Him. Are we gonna take who we are and what we're doing enough to injure God and his reputation to stand up for something because you wanted it that way? There's a lot of dying to self and as we care for another. Charles Spurgeon said, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting his boots on. That's true. A lie spreads faster than the truth all the time. We know how it is at school. There's a rumor that goes around or at work. Have you heard this? Versus truth. A lie roots in deep too and it doesn't let go. And even if we deal with it, a falsehood or a lie or an untruth will revive itself again and again. It's kind of like Hydra. You cut the head off and two more grow back. It seems like it gets worse or it tries to spread in that way. That's why we are to learn truth so that we know it. We are to study truth. We're to wear it like a belt, Paul says, right? We are the belt of truth. It's what holds all things together. It girds you, it makes you stronger. Weight lifters, you know, you watch them go on, they're gonna lift this weight and they put on this belt, right? It holds them all in, it puts it all together, it gives them strength and power, you know, to get that belt tight and on there. We should have a tight belt. You know, something that holds us and gives us strength. So we rehearse with it, we practice with it. We take it and we capture every thought captive and we wanna know and test all things and hold fast to that which is true. The law for the Jews was instilled in them. It was, it was how it was designed. And it did its job well. It governed who they were. It governed what they did or didn't do. It told them what to eat and what not to eat. What they could touch and what not to touch. where they went, and when they could go, and what time they could go, or how much they could go, or how far they could go, or all those things. What they wore, you know, when they went to bed, you know, just everything. It was all described around the law, it was there for them, you know, they are observing, you know, it's like, oh, you know, the Pharisees would be like, oh, I picked so many herbs, I have to give a 10th back, and they would separate the leaves all out, you know, going down to all this little minutiae that the Bible talks about. Now Christ has come, and they're supposed to let all that go. It's kind of driven who they are, right? And so it's hard for them, you know, when a Gentile gets saved, like, you probably understand our background a little bit. You ought to become circumcised and become Jewish and understand all these things so you can see what's built there on, was the wrestle. And sadly, it's not just them. There are many here today that wrestle with things that were instilled in them from their youth. Clothing. that they need to wear at church. The music you're supposed to listen to or participate in and whether it's good, right, or just, or your hairstyle, or the entertainment that you have, on and on and on. All these things are put upon us that are rooted deep and hard to get out and hard to break free from. Wrestles that we deal with because of some wrong teaching or some way that we perceived it at a young age or something like that that comes. The world's Logic is enough for us. Just in how the world and their general sense of what they think religion is or what they think we're doing in this room is like, oh, it's works. Christians, you all do works. You are to do good. It's a do, do, do. No, that's why we say Christianity is done, done, done. It is done by Jesus Christ. And Paul's gonna give us a well-reasoned answer. Here, verse one, chapter three. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? that you should not obey the truth, before who eyes Jesus Christ hath evidently been set forth, crucified among you. A few things going on in here. He starts out strong. Oh, foolish Galatians. Paul doesn't mince words. Now, he's not calling them dumb. He's not calling them stupid. The Greeks have a word for moron. He's not using that. He's not doing that. Foolishness here means you have intelligence, but you're not using it. That's a pretty good definition of foolishness, right? I have intelligence, but I'm not using it. That's what he says that you're doing. And then he says, it's like this, he goes, oh foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? That's like you've been bewitched. We don't use it too much like that in our culture. When you think of bewitched, we think of wiggling your nose on the TV show. But he's saying, did someone charm you? Did someone put a spell on you in that way? They kind of had the evil eye. We use that some in our family about them giving you the evil eye and stink eye or something like that. But think basically the best way I could describe it for something I think probably most of us has all seen, if we go back to Jungle Book, you know, Mowgli, is that his name? And the snake comes up, he's like, come to me. And he's got his eyes doing all sorts, and he's luring him into a stupor so he can come in. That's that spell. It even means, you know, the definition, like a snake, you know, kind of put you under a spell. Or Dracula, when he would give the mesmerizing look. I'm gonna come and now you've invited me into your house and I can drink your blood. You know, it's that kind of a thing. Someone put a spell on you that mesmerized you and they put you in some kind of stupor where you're not thinking now. You know, you're not using all your intelligence as you're supposed to. Because he was shocked. Because he's like, I covered this with you. I'd gone over this before. Why is this a wrestle? And this is saying something coming from Paul, who was a Pharisee of Pharisees, who studied under Gamaliel, this great, famous teacher. But I guess when Paul said he counted all that but dung, he meant it. He's like, I broke free. We talked about how Peter struggled. Paul doesn't. Judaizers, like I said, they were trying to require that the Gentiles would keep the law. See, the problem is the law doesn't work. It never did. That wasn't his point. It was a teacher. It was a mirror. It was to show us that we can't keep it, that we can't do it, that we needed someone who was perfect. It was to show us that we are not perfect because you can't keep the law. maybe for a minute, maybe for a second, but how many times have you left here? I'm gonna go forth and I will not sin anymore. And then what, go to lunch and someone cuts you off or you get the wrong fries or whatever, your anger, all these things, it just multiplies. We don't make it very far. We don't make it very far. We cannot keep the law. We cannot save ourselves. See, if you go back to the story of Ruth, Boaz wanted to redeem her. But he couldn't, right? Remember, he's like, ah, there's a near kinsman. That near kinsman was the law. That's what he represented. And the law was like, I can't do it. She's a Moabite. I can't take her in. I can't do all that. And that became the great marriage certificate when he took his shoe off and gave it to Boaz. Yes, now I can do it through love and grace and mercy and kindness as a kinsman redeemer. I can redeem her. The law couldn't do it because of restrictions. That was the whole type and the picture in that whole story. Paul says, I've gone over this. We cannot save ourselves. Matter of fact, he goes, I went over it in such great detail. He says, before your eyes, I set it forth, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He goes, I described it in such a way, it should have been like you saw it. And this is kind of funny for us, for him to go into this detail, because we live in a day with photographs and images and movies and portraits and paint. It's like, we are very visually driven. That's how we do a lot of things. And he says, I evidently set it forth. Basically it was like, it was like I invited you in and I showed you the passion of the Christ. It was like you were there. I described it in that kind of gory detail, the things that Jesus Christ had gone through for you. I evidently set it forth. It was like Jesus Christ was portrayed here in our midst. I discovered that. I mean, this is shocking for their time. It was like I had a photograph of it. We're like, yeah, we understand. They didn't. He's like, but imagine if I took a picture of Christ on the cross that day and put it there in front. It was like I did that. I described it in that kind of detail. The New Living Translation puts it as if you had seen a picture. I described it as if you'd seen a picture or the ESV says you'd seen a portrait. Someone had painted the crucifixion. I described it in that kind of detail. You understood that. Why was he dying? Remember I painted this whole picture of Christ dying? Why was he dying? To pay for your sins, right? Remember we covered all, did you forget all that too? No, it was to pay for your sins. It was to suffer in your place. He was sinless, but now he is the Lamb of God dying on your behalf. He is the sacrifice. He is there to redeem us, to purchase us out of people who were not a people. He was there to to reconcile us to God. We were at enmity and we had separation from God. Now he's joined us together. We are no longer separated. We can be one and reunionized with God. Jesus Christ had done all that. And it's by how? By grace. Because who deserves it? Nobody. Who keeps the law? Nobody. So who deserves it? Nobody does. We'd have justice, we would all have damnation, right? Because we violated, violated, transgressed, we'd sin. No, it's grace. It is a gift given. Nothing that we have earned. So here we go, verse two. This only what I learned of you. Receive you the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith. He's like, oh, okay, wait. Instruct me. Would you please teach me? I would like you to teach me how did you get the Holy Spirit, Galatian Christians? Did you get it by law? By keeping the law? Or did you get it by faith? Remember when you got the Spirit? It's transforming, it changed who you are. We call it being born again, it's that drastic. When the burden of your sin rolled away, and God Almighty took up residence within you, it's a big deal. All these years of law observance that they've been doing. He says, when did the Holy Spirit come when you were keeping the law? They just had to be staring at their shoes right now, I don't know. Well, he goes, was it the day you didn't trim the edges of your beard, then all of a sudden, oh, the Holy Spirit came? Was it the day when you said no to extra bacon on your hamburger, that you're like, oh, I kept the law, I didn't eat bacon, so oh, now I've got the Spirit. He goes, was it when you went to the synagogue, is that when you got the Spirit? Was it when you, Washed your hands correctly at the right time. Is that when you got the Spirit? Was it when you didn't step on a grave? Is that when you got the Spirit? Was it when you said Shema to your children out loud? Is that when you got the Spirit? When did you get the Spirit? Which law did you keep that all of a sudden ushered the Holy Spirit into your life? You have to say, when I saw that I was a sinner and I repented of that sin and I cried out to Jesus Christ to save me. That's when I got the Spirit. Oh, how was that? Was that by faith, because you believed God? Because you trusted and believed that Jesus Christ was the Savior, you believed that He died for your sin, and you confessed it with your mouth, and you asked, is that when the Holy Spirit come? When you believed, when you had faith? Is that when you got it? Not through the law? I may have to say, yeah, that's right. Why are you wrestling with the law? The law didn't give you the Spirit. The law didn't bring it to you. Do you remember the day you confessed your sin when the burden of your weight rolled away, the sin rolled off like Pilgrim's Progress and Christian Soldier, all of a sudden the burden kicks off, rolls down and is buried in a tomb, never to be remembered anymore? Don't you remember that freedom, the lightness that came into your life when all of a sudden you knew that you were clean? And it wasn't because of anything you did, it's because you humbled yourself and you asked in faith and you believed and you trusted. That's when you got it. Not by law, not by being dunked in water, not by joining a church, not by any of those things. It was sudden. You were clean, you were accepted, you were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now he tips you under some, don't do that. Don't go there. You're not keeping law, you're listening to the Spirit. You're being led by the Spirit. So why wrestle? Verse three. Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit and you are now made perfect by the flesh? Your works, your do's and your don'ts. Did any of that save you? No. Did any of that bring the Holy Spirit? No. But now you think you can perfect yourself by keeping the law? You can make yourself better by keeping the law? By your works and by your actions? They couldn't save you but they're gonna make you better, make you more perfect in Christ? No, no, see a lot of their problem is that they thought that they were better because they had a head start because they were Jewish. because of their bloodlines, because of their genetics. None of that saved them. None of it didn't save them then, it doesn't save them now. But they thought works, put them up on the scale, a little bit higher, and so, hey, if you wanna catch up with us Gentiles, start acting like a Jew, and then maybe you can gain some spiritual ground. No, the works just showed we were lost. The works were just rehearsals and showing us that we needed Christ. What brought you into a relationship with God? Was it worship? No, it was faith. It was believing in Jesus Christ. He died and rose again, trusting him. So Paul's like, so do that more. Believe God more, trust God more, have more faith. That's what grows you, not works. Not rules that you keep. Not things that you've set up in your mind or someone in the past set up in your mind and said, how long's that skirt? How long's your hair? Whatever those, it's not that. Trusting God. Remember, if you go back early, he said, even in the book of Romans, the ones who are the weaker brethren were who? The ones who had the laws, right? They had all these restrictions. Who had all this against them. And again, this isn't licensed. It's like saying, oh, now I can just go out and sin. No. This is about obedience and believing and trusting and having faith, trusting God all the more. So quit trusting in your actions and start believing more, trust God more, surrender more to God. He's not gonna let you participate in sin. Again, a good rule of thumb, it's like if you're about ready to do something, I don't know if it's sin or not, well pray and ask God to bless it. And if he can't, you get your answer. Verse three. Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit? Are you now made perfect by the law, or by the flesh, sorry? Have you suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? It says your whole life working did not work. That experience of knowing that it didn't work, Was it in vain? Do you need to learn that lesson again? Do you have to go down and do that whole thing again? Have you learned nothing, is what he's asking. He goes, have you not learned that works didn't do it? Works won't do it. Hey, future, it's not going to do it. Faith, trusting Jesus Christ. Salvation is by grace through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. There's no boasting in heaven. Look what I did. We're all gonna be saying the same thing. Look what Christ did. He saved a wretch like me. I'm the worm the song talked about. Sinner such as I. Paul's gonna make another practical point here. So here he's kind of made that up. He's just saying, when did you get the Spirit? Was it by keeping some law or was it by trusting in Jesus Christ? And now he's gonna give us another thing to help us wrestle with ourselves over someone else who's trapped in works righteousness. He's gonna make another practical point. And we're gonna call this tactic taking off the roof. That's what they call it in Christianity. It's exposing a faulty logic by making something absurd. It's used in debates and apologetics where we defend our faith. And the best example I could give you right now before we get to this one is in the pro-life debate. And then this one, we're gonna use a special tactic called trotting out the toddler. This is a taking off the roof tactic. It's for pro-life versus pro-choice. So they give their argument. Does a woman have the right to choose to take the life of her child? You know, that's the big debate, right? We have it all everywhere. And they, let's just apply their arguments. Well, you know, I'm the one who feeds it and sustains it, and so it's my life, my body, my choice. Or it can't live without me, it needs me, it's just a parasite, and so my body, my right, my choice. Or it's dependent upon me, so it's up to me, it's my body, my right, my choice. That's their arguments, right? That's some of their big arguments. So now let's trot out the toddler. Let's just trot out the newborn. So now you have a newborn baby. Can it feed itself? No, so should we kill it? Did something happen in the magical six or seven inches it travels through the birth canal that makes it a human? No, it's a human at conception. It's a human then. When's it life? It's life at conception. It's life now. And so you make it absurd. And so maybe in Virginia and a few other states, like, oh no, you've got a couple of different weeks that a baby can be alive. They'll still call it an abortion if they kill a baby after two weeks. You're like, yeah, we really don't want it. And they kill the baby in the United States of America. So let's trot out the toddler. Oh, you got a three-year, four-year-old. Can he feed himself till they go to work? Do they have a job? Can they do all that? Well, no. Can they live without you? Can they provide themselves shelter and have someplace to live and healthcare and be able to take care of themselves? No. Are they dependent upon you for everything? Well, yes. Is it right to kill a toddler? It probably goes to some teenagers, right? Are they dependent on you for everything? Yeah. Do they need you for food? Yeah. Do they need you for household and child? Yeah. And so should we kill them? You just make it absurd. Take their same logic, you know, from what they're trying to say by something in a cell, which is, it's not a fetus, it's a baby. It's always a baby. Nobody gives birth to an elephant or a cow or anything. It's always human. You know, so ridiculous, foolish people in America, they have intelligence, they're not using it. So just try to get them to stop and think at the ridiculousness for a minute by extrapolating it out, by taking off the roof and letting them look inside and say, see how dumb that is? And it works. Ray Comfort has his movie where he says, this compares it to Nazis. Oh, okay, so the Jews are not Jews because they don't want a piece of paper. So he killed them, and 180 is the name of that video. He gets them to turn around within a few minutes by just using some well-reasoned logic and getting somebody to stop and think on their own. So Paul's gonna give us that. Okay, so we're just trying to make things absurd and she'll point out the fallacy. So Paul says, what law did you keep that gave you the Holy Spirit? None, right? Now verse five. He therefore that ministers to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you, doth it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Miracles, they had miracles. This was early on with the apostles could do things to validate them. We'll see that in the book of Acts. We still have them today. God still does miracles, not through a man, not through some mass gathering and throwing out some pixie dust and knocking people down and smacking them and doing whatever, all that shenanigans, the Holy Spirit kick to the gut or whatever some of those guys do that's ridiculous. God does things not through a man. Because he wants to. Can we pray? Do we do that? Yeah, we have those parts. I've seen it work. I've been a part of it. Nothing with me, that is for sure. It's God when he just chooses to do it out of his goodness and his kindness and his mercy. Well, what work made that miracle? Saves them their time. Oh, I washed a pot, now this lame man could walk. Is that how it worked? Paul's like, you know, he's trying to make it ridiculous. Oh, I honored the Sabbath day, now I have the power to heal and give this man sight. Is that how it worked? He goes, what work was it that you did that made this miracle now possible? No, it was the Holy Spirit by faith about asking, trusting, and believing, and pointing to Jesus Christ, it's calling on his name. by the power of the Holy Spirit, come out of her and be ye clean, something like that, right? We cry out those, we don't cry out, let's do some works and drive out the demons. That doesn't work. We cry out Jesus' name, Jesus' blood, something like that and get it to go out. Prayers answered by faith, by asking through Jesus Christ, our mediator, to do those things on his request, out of his kindness and out of his mercy that we can do it. And so you're not like, oh, I sang a hymn, or I gave in the offering box, or I had a certain haircut. Now I'm able to perform miracles. It's ridiculous. He's taking the roof off. He's trying to show you none of that works. None of that makes miracles happen. None of that gave you the Holy Spirit. So why the works then? Why are you wrestling with this? It's by faith. It's by trusting in God, trusting Jesus Christ as the Messiah, asking for his mercy. No law kept, does it? So then another deep rub in the Jewish faith was their heritage, their genetics. We're descendants of Abraham, you know? We go back to Abraham. That's a lot of their logic. Verse six. Paul goes, okay, I'll go there. Even as Abraham believed God as it accounted to him for righteousness. That's Genesis 15, six. Where Abraham believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. When did that happen? Oh, long before laws had been given, long before there were circumcision, Abram believed that it was counted for righteousness. Long before any of that, long before Moses, long before any of those things were there, so how could works save him? It wasn't by works, it was by what? Faith, that's what the whole verse is in Genesis 15, six. It was by faith, because he believed God. He trusted him, he had faith in God, and God's like, I count that as righteousness, I will now make you a people. As a matter of fact, It happened when Abram was a Gentile. He didn't become Jewish, or they weren't Jewish until later. Abram was called out of the Ur of the Chaldees, a pagan country, worshiped between a pagan god, a Gentile nation. And he says, now I will make you a people. So in all actuality, he was a Gentile until God changed and converted him and made him something different by faith. Not by anything that he performed or anything that he did. And so, ooh, that's a rub against him. And Paul kinda likes to go there sometimes. Like, okay, you're gonna get, I'll take you Gentile. I'll give you Abram before he was Abraham. Verse seven. Knowing ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. Huh, so if you believe and trust in God by faith, by faith through grace, not of works, we are children of Abraham. That's why we can all sing the song, right? Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. Because of faith. Not because of works. Not because we are Jewish. Not because of the laws that we keep. not because we're kosher or those things, it's by faith. By faith, faith is the heritage. Faith is the thing that unites us all, believing and trusting the finished work of Jesus Christ. All nations, he says here in verse eight, and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham saying, and these shall all the nations be blessed. All the nations can now believe and be saved, not being Jewish, but because of faith, because salvation is available for any, for all who would ask it, for whomsoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Jew, Gentile, Roman, Greek, barbarian, anybody can have it. Anybody can have it all. Verse nine, so they then, they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. We are counted in that. That's why the early name for heaven was Abraham's bosom. You're in there. You're with him. We are his descendant. We are part of that. So we need not think too much of ourselves as an outsider. Now I understand, I like studying the Jewish heritage and Jewish traditions and Jewish laws. They are insightful, they are enlightening. They teach us, I'm not to keep them. I don't keep them as in, oh, this is now making me holier. That is a trap. They can make me wiser, make me smarter, and they can make me, my faith grow, and I can see how God's hands are in all these things. They are pictures, examples. They are there to show us and extrapolate and make things make more sense to us so that we can use our brains and not be, oh, foolish Americans, but we could be, oh, use our intelligence for logical things. You know, we could do that. And so, yeah, we can study them in that way, because God has taught them in their calendar is their catechism. Verse, When I read nine, so then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Verse 10, for as many as are the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book, and have the law and do them. Verse 11, but though no man is justified by the law and the sight of God, it is evident, for the just shall live by faith. How do the just live? We live by faith. By works? By faith. By faith. By faith. It's our faith. It's believing. It's trusting God. You wanna grow spiritually? Believe God. Trust God more. Have faith more. Trust in him more. This completes the trifecta. From Habakkuk two verse four is where this verse comes from. The just shall live by faith. And Paul, when he writes it, he writes three books to talk about it. We studied Romans, where it told us who the just were, how that we could be just. By repenting of our sins and trusting in Jesus Christ, we have the Roman's road. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whether you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe that he had raised it in from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For by grace are you saved through faith, not of works, lest the image of boastless Ephesians. but for wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Those things, you know, shows us who the just are, the ones who repent and believe by faith in Jesus Christ. The book of Hebrews, we studied it a while back. Hebrews 10 38, he quotes the same verse, and he tells us what it's like to have faith. By faith, Abraham. By faith, Noah. By faith, you know, he goes through by faith, by faith, by faith. There's a whole hall of faith, right, that we read and we study and we know. It's like, this is how you're eating. Here's examples. Moses was offered the opportunity to be king of the world and he turned it down and he said, I'd rather he esteemed the reproach of Christ better than me. ruling the world as Pharaoh. And so he tells us the better choices and it's by faith, by trusting in a country that is not yet, that will be. We are to have faith and believe God. And Galatians now is telling us how to live. How are we to live? Us just people that have been made just by repenting and trusting Jesus Christ. Is it by the law? Is it by keeping works? No, it's by faith. We are to live by trusting God, by believing God. and depending on him all the more and not ourselves. We'll end there for now. We'll pick up with that as our launch point for next week as he gives us more. So hopefully we can use these in our own life. If you're starting to be trapped in legalism, like things that you ought to do and not do, remember, that didn't get you the Holy Spirit. That didn't get you the Holy Spirit. It's not works. It's believing in Jesus Christ. It's trusting him. Believe him more. Confess it and ask him. Give you the strength, he'll do it. He will do it. If you've never done it, do it today. You can't earn it. You can't be like, well, let me just clean up this little bit. No, you can't touch anything. Matter of fact, that's the way it was in the Old Testament. If you laid your hand to it, like if they were gonna build an altar, if you tried to alter one stone by making it fit a little better, make it flatter on that one side, you defiled it. Men touch it, we defile it. It has to be as God has made it intended and God has given us salvation through his son Jesus Christ. We don't touch it. We just cry out for it out of mercy. Begging for his grace. Begging and trusting and believing in faith that God is able. So I hope you grow in your faith and I hope as we go through the rest of Galatians we are able to strengthen it and to trust in it all the more. Let's close in prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for this word that you gave to Paul. for the struggles that they had there in Galatia. They're still around today. Lord, like I say, a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. These are things that are still plaguing us, what we wanna do. And Lord, instead of resting in what is done, we feel like it's our actions that justify us with you, when it's you who justify us with you. Now, do we wanna please you? Yes. Do we wanna be obedient? Yes, but it's priorities, it's motive, it's keeping things right in our mind. and set free from the law. Lord, help us. Some of this gets hard. How do we make this practical? How do we do it? Lord, help us to keep our motives pure and trust in you all the more. Lord, if there's one here today who's never repented and trusted in you, I pray that this would be the day that they would do so. That they would quit battling and quit trying to do it and trying to justify themselves or make themselves more worthier or more available. They just need to surrender, humble themselves, and ask Jesus Christ to save them, and then he will do the work within us. We can't do it, he does it. Transforms us, grows us more into his image. And Lord, I pray that you'd be with all of us who are on that path, that we would surrender more to you and less to us, that we'd be obedient more, that we'd be trusting more, that we'd be believing more, that we would step up and we would speak up in faith, not thinking that we have to have the answers or reasons or, Now it's good to be armed and be prepared so the Holy Spirit has tools to pull, but Lord, help us just do what you've called us to do, knowing that you'll give us the words. Lord, just be with us, prick our hearts today in what we should do to confess our sins, come clean before you. And Lord, for again, if there's any here today who don't know you, that this would be the day they'd come and say, I need to have my sins forgiven. Lord, just be with us, speak to our hearts now. In your son Jesus' name we pray this, amen.