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Father, we thank You tonight
that we can say, not us, but You, to be glorified, exalted,
held up because of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself
on the cross for our sins. We pray tonight that You would
help us to seek more and more to exalt you, to exalt your cross,
to exalt ourselves less, so that you may have preeminence in our
life. Pray for the service tonight that you would be seen, that
you would guide my thoughts, that you would guide my words.
It may not be me standing up here, but we can see Christ tonight
through your words. In your name we pray. Amen. Go ahead and take your Bibles
tonight and turn to Galatians chapter 6. We'll be in verses
12 through 16. We'll get down and read that
here in just a second. But I want you to think about
one word with me tonight. I want you to think about the
word glory. And what comes to your mind when
you think of the word glory? You know, maybe you think of
a great leader. You think of the president. You
think of past leaders. You have the three men who were
leaders of their countries at the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt
and Stalin and Churchill. Or we think of Margaret Thatcher
who just passed away recently. You know, maybe you think of
a military man, such as the German fox, or the desert fox, the German
military man, Erwin Rommel. Eisenhower, MacArthur. Or maybe
you do like I do, when I think of glory, I think of sports.
I think of Michael Jordan and six NBA titles. I think of Michael
Johnson and his golden shoes. I think of Michael Phelps and
his 22 medals and his 18 gold that he earned in the Olympics.
And I think of Muhammad Ali, who proudly proclaimed, I am
the greatest. And I know those are all examples
that maybe a guy only thinks of. But there's a lot of places
in our world where we get glory, right? And we think of people
gaining glory for themselves. And Paul concludes his message
to the Galatians in this epistle with a short little lesson about
glory. And he warns against glorying in the flesh and calls for Christians
to glory in the cross of Christ. And he contrasts these two ways
of living. He gives reasons for both of
those, glorying in the flesh and glorying in the cross. And
he gives results when we do either one of those. And we're going
to read that passage and delve into it. But before we do, I
just want to give a short history, if I may, on the background of
Galatians. Paul had written the book of
Galatians to the churches in the area of Galatia. And he had
written it with one purpose, and that was to correct a major
doctrinal error that was going on in the churches of Galatia.
You see, they had gotten away from the true meaning of salvation. Some false teachers had come
into the church, and they convinced the people there that salvation
by faith alone in Jesus Christ wasn't enough. You had to add
works on top of it. Now, specifically, they pushed
the idea of circumcision, but it could be anything. They said,
grace is not enough. You must have law. Paul shows the Galatians, though,
throughout the book, the proper place of the law. Which he says,
it was given to convict men of their sin. It was never given
to save men, because God commands perfect obedience, something
we as people, as men, cannot do. It was given instead to show
the need for a Savior. That was Jesus Christ. Paul talks
about in chapter 2, he even had a confrontation with the Apostle
Peter over the same issue. And all throughout the book of
Galatians, one theme is clear, is that true freedom comes only
through Jesus Christ. Nothing else can bring us spiritual
freedom. Nothing else can bring us freedom
to eternal life. In the first part of Galatians, Paul talks
about freedom from the punishment of sin, which is justification,
salvation. And then he makes a turn and
talks about not only freedom from the punishment of sin, but
freedom from the power of sin in sanctification. No longer
does sin have to have the rule over your life. But instead,
you can live a life through the Spirit of God that pleases Him. And in the last two chapters
of Galatians, Paul sets his sights specifically on these false teachers
in Galatians. And really in chapter 5 is where
he hammers them the most. And he levels his sights on their
heresy of legalism, which is keeping the law in order to keep
God happy. He says that's not necessary,
while warning at the same time not to fall into antinomianism,
lawlessness, and saying that, hey, we can sin because God forgives. And he talks about the ugly war
between the flesh and the spirit. And he gives the fruits of the
spirit that come from walking the spirit. And in Galatians
5.16, that's where we find. The only way to live the Christian
life, which is walking in the Spirit, and the word really carries
the idea of walking every day, every hour, and every minute.
It's not a one-time decision to walk in the Spirit. It says,
be walking in the Spirit. And then we turn into chapter
6. And Paul, in this last chapter, gives some very practical Christian
advice. The beginning of the chapter, he talks about restoring
a sinning brother, a sinning believer. He then talks about
the law of sowing and reaping. And then here, at the end, he
talks about this last thing, which can be summed up in this
question I have on the slide tonight. Where is your glory? Look with me at Galatians chapter
6, verses 12 through 14. It is those who want to make
a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised,
and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross
of Christ. For even those who are circumcised
do not themselves keep the law, but the desire to have you circumcised,
so that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it for me to
boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which
the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For
neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this
rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of
God. We'll divide the passage up tonight.
We'll cover the first two verses here, and then we'll cover the
last four. And first we'll talk about tonight is glorying in
the flesh. And there we go. Okay. Glorying
in the flesh. And Paul, first of all, gives
us reasons for glorying in the flesh. Why, specifically, do
these false teachers glory in the flesh? Why do we, as Christians,
glory in the flesh? And he tells us, first of all,
is to have something to show. To show for what? To show for
salvation. That first part of the verse
again. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh
who would force you to be circumcised. And it's kind of a reminder of
the lesson that Paul taught in chapter 5. He says, those who
are teaching these things, such as circumcision, or keeping the
law in the church, these false teachers, are doing it in order
that they have a good showing in the flesh. They're not interested
in grace alone for salvation. They're not interested in solely
leaning on Christ. They have to have something to
show for their salvation. And we know that salvation is
based on one thing and one thing only, and that's Christ's atonement
for our sins. How that He came to earth to
live the life that no one else could live, in order that He
could die the death that no one else could die to pay for our
sins. And God saved us because of His
love when we were unlovable. Think about how unlovable we
were before God. We were going through life not
caring what God, our Creator, the One who gave us life and
breath, who gave us the world that we live around us, we didn't
care what He thought. We didn't care about his loss.
We didn't care about pleasing him. But yet, he still sent his
son to die for us. Now, I know that the thought
that comes to the mind of many, if not all of you here tonight,
because I can understand, I have the same thought almost. I wasn't
really that bad of a person before I got saved. Well, I grew up
in a Christian home, and I was a good kid, and I got saved when
I was five. And so I hadn't murdered anybody. I hadn't gone out and
shoplifted. OK. See where you're coming from. I mean, I've been there. I grew
up in a Christian home. But then think about this. Think about
so many times after you're saved, when you're supposed to be living
for God, and you don't. And yet, God, who is omniscient,
who knows everything before it happens, still loves you and
still saves you. You know, if you were going to
save someone, You know, maybe they were drowning, or they were
in a car wreck, and you knew, before you went and saved them,
that after you saved them, they'd turn around and stab you, and
might kill you. Would you save them? If you knew
that your spouse, before you married them, would cheat on
you, would you still marry that person? God, who knew that we
would turn around and stab him in the back with our sins, who
knew that we would cheat on him with our sins, and not serve
him fully, still offered us the free gift of salvation. But yet,
we struggle, we want to have a reason that God saved us. We wanted something, we want
some spiritual accomplishments, right? Even as we're Christians,
to pad the spiritual resume a little bit. To say, yeah, God saved
me, God's doing great things, see? Because I did this and this
and this. Nobody was ever saved because
they were extra spiritual and God couldn't stand to send them
to hell. They were saved purely out of God's love. And we quickly
forget the words of Isaiah 64, 6, where he says, we have all
become like one who is unclean. And all our righteous deeds are
like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and
our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. And even the good
things we do, Isaiah says, are like filthy rags, are like polluted
garment. Because in these good things
we do, they're tainted with pride. They're still tainted with that
sin in our lives. And anything that God has done
in our life, or continues to do in our life, is only because
of His grace. But yet we glory in the flesh, because we want
to have something to show. But Paul gives a second reason.
Because not only do they want to have something to show, they
glory in their flesh, they do these things that add law to
grace, to have something to show, but also to avoid persecution. Back in that same verse, the
second half. They would force you to be circumcised, and only
in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ."
These people were enforcing this, the Jewish right of circumcision.
They were adding to the salvation by grace, or adding law to it,
so that they would not be persecuted. Because if they knew that they
taught something different from what had been taught, if they
started teaching salvation by grace alone, this was a new concept.
This is a new thing. And they started striking on
their own, such as people like Paul and the apostles had done.
They would suffer persecution. So in order to avoid persecution,
they began living under the old law, saying, yeah, that salvation
by grace, that's a great thing, but you might want to add something
to it. You know, just to make sure it sticks. And so they wouldn't
look like the complete weirdos. You know, they were still teaching,
they were still teaching the law. That's not to say that doing
things a certain way is always wrong. We know that Paul and
Timothy, had Timothy followed this Jewish rite of circumcision,
Acts 16.3, but it was only to further the ministry of the gospel
in the early stages. It was not to avoid persecution. The Christian life is not easy. Ask the Apostle Paul. who ends
up saying at the end of this passage that he bears the mark
or the marks of the gospel. Paul was persecuted. And the
Christian life is not a walk in the park because it is a battle
between the flesh and the spirit and against the world. And people
in the world today, they see Christians, they see something
different. Or at least they should see something
different. You know, they see these people that go to church
on Sunday mornings. They get up and miss the best
golfing day of the week and go to church. They don't come and
hang out in the clubs on Friday night. They don't go watch the
same movies that we watch. They don't post the same things
on Facebook and Twitter. They don't listen to the same
kind of music. And they see that and it's just a little weird.
And sometimes that turns into persecution. And Paul, in 2 Timothy
3, 12, told Timothy that, indeed, all who desire to live a godly
life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And our lives as
believers should be different. But we should not do things or
say things or listen to things that are like the world. And
yet, we convince ourselves it's OK. Because, you see, we don't
always do things that are exactly what other people do. We just
kind of do things that are kind of like that. Right? Because
we would never, ever, ever say that. But this is okay. And we'd
never, ever, ever, ever, ever take God's name in vain. But
we might say this, and that's kind of close, and it's not really
sin. So, yeah, I could say that. It's close. We'd never, ever,
ever watch this movie, because it's rated for this. But we could
watch this, because it's only rated for this. And we try and we try
to not really sin, but just see how kind of close we can get.
Because if we were too far apart, they'd look at us and say, yeah,
what a weirdo. Look at that holy roller over there. He's so different.
Yeah, we're going to be persecuted for our faith. But in reality,
what is our persecution in light of today's standards? You might lose a friend on Facebook.
The guy you eat lunch with might not want to eat lunch with you
anymore. They're not lining the streets
of Greenville with the burning bodies of Christians. They're
not crucifying anybody up on Paris Mountain. We will face
persecution. But yet we choose the glory in
our flesh, so we don't. And we say, why? Everyone else
does it. Everyone else wears it. Everyone else watches it.
Everyone else listens to it. Why can't I? Well, you can. You have
a free will from God. But should you, as a changed
believer? I'm not talking about tonight
that we all go out and say, yes, because. Someone gets up in church
and stands up here and says, hey, we ought to not do these
things and these things, that we do this. God's not interested
with us following the good Christian checklist for our life. You know,
read my Bible, took sermon notes, gave a testimony. He's interested
with our heart attitudes and a heart that's seeking to become
more like Christ. The free gift of God's grace
and his salvation is more than a get out of jail free card.
so that we can pass by hell, get to heaven, and just do whatever
else we want in life. Salvation is a call, a commitment,
and a commission to a new lifestyle in Christ. And it's a lifestyle
that's consumed with honoring and imitating our Savior. And
only an attitude of wanting to please God in all that you do.
And looking at everything in your life in light of that, pleasing
God, And weaning out that which does not bring honor and glory
to your God results in living a Christian life that pleases
God. You know, Ken Carter always says, just two choices on the
shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self. Do we glory in ourselves
or do we glory in our God? And so, Paul gives these two
reasons. This is why we glory in the flesh. We want to have
something to show. We want to say, look, this is why God saved
me. This is what I have done. And we want to say, look, I just
want to do this. I want to kind of do this so
I don't get looked down on. And I can have a better witness
that way if people don't look down on me. And Paul says the
result, then, of glorying the flesh is this. Look back in verse
13. For even those who are circumcised
do not themselves keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised
that they may boast in your flesh. And Paul reminds the Galatians
that there's a hypocrisy here of the false teachers. Sure,
they enforced some of the law, but they didn't enforce all of
it. And the Bible tells us, and Paul tells us, that if we're
going to keep some of the law, we better keep all of the law,
because that's what God commands. So not only were these people,
these false teachers, were they cowards for not wanting to be
persecuted for the cross of Christ, but they were hypocrites. And
the result of glorying in the flesh is we make ourselves hypocrites,
misrepresenting the holiness of God. Because we're called
to be people who are different from others. Holy, set apart. You know, we're talking about
that on Sunday nights with pastors here, being different, set apart
to God. And when we as believers live
a life that says we're the same as everybody else around us,
we make ourselves a hypocrite, we misrepresent our God, our
Savior, and our King. Paul closes out a passage on
separation with a quote from the Old Testament in 2 Corinthians
6, 17. He says, Where to be separate?
Where to be different from the world? When we make ourselves
not different from the world, or not that much different from
the world, we make ourselves to be hypocrites,
and we misrepresent our God who is different, who is holy, who
is above the world that He has created. So this is glorying
in the flesh, and this is the result of that glorying in the
flesh. But Paul gives a contrast. He says you can glory in the
flesh, and this is why people do it, and this is what happens.
But we have glorying in the cross as well. And first of all, we
have the reasons for glorying in the cross. Look at verse 14
here. Paul says, but far be it for
me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. And Paul starts this verse with
one of those great words, but, showing contrast. And the reason,
first of all, we glory in the cross is because it gives freedom
from the world. And I love this verse. This is
the verse I've taken as my life verse, Galatians 6, 14. And it
says, it should be far from him. Paul says, it is far from me
to boast in the cross, except in the cross of Christ. And really
think about that. If anybody had any reason to
boast, it was Paul. I mean, he was a learned man.
He had studied in the synagogue. And he had been a great Jew by
their religious standards. And he had been very, very zealous.
He had persecuted the church, those who were teaching something
different. He went after them. He oversaw the stoning of Stephen.
But he had no interest in being accepted by man because he had
done certain things. He had no interest in avoiding
persecution. Instead, he welcomed all of that
because he gloried in the cross to Christ. And Paul lists out
his accomplishments in life in Philippians chapter 3, but he
ends the list with a statement in Philippians 3, 7 and 8. He
says, but whatever gain I had, I counted this loss for the sake
of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as
loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord. For his sake I have suffered
the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish in order that
I may gain Christ. Paul reveled in the finished
work of Christ on the cross, and he credited everything done
in his life to the work of Almighty God. Because this Almighty God
had saved him, and brought him along the journey of life, and
turned him into the greatest missionary to the Gentiles that
the world has ever seen. And more than that, Paul counted
anything that he had accomplished with his life before then, he
counted as loss. Because that's what kept him
from knowing his God. And the more we get caught up
in our accomplishments, and the more we get caught up in the
things that we've done, The less we credit to God, the less we
know our God. And Paul, he said, it's worth
nothing to me because it brings me no closer to my God. And we
have no merit of our own to hold up and say, look what I've done.
But we look and say, look what Christ has done. And Paul gloried
and he reveled in the cross because it was by that work on the cross
that he had been set free from the world. This world system,
the cosmos, He was freed from the world's simple pull on his
life and the internal death that it incurred. Paul, if anybody,
as well as have the accomplishments in life, he could have been haunted
by his past as well. How much he had persecuted the
church. All the things he had done. Someone once painted the
picture to me just recently. Can you imagine Paul? He dies
there in Rome, and he goes to heaven, and he walks into heaven,
and the first person he sees up there is Stephen. And Paul walks up and says, hey,
Stephen. Hey, Paul. And they stand there,
and Paul goes, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't even know what I was
doing. Paul could have been haunted by this, right? Of these people
he had persecuted, he had killed. But Paul says it's because of
the Christ, because of Christ's cross and his death there, that
the world was crucified to him. Paul reminds us that we are to
glory in Christ's work on the cross, and we crucify our old
ways. We crucify the way we used to
act. We crucify the things we used to listen to. We crucify
the things that we would watch if we were a part of the world.
We crucify on and on and on. And it should lose its appeal
to us, because we have a higher calling. And we welcome, as Paul
did, any persecution we may suffer Because we glory in the cross. Because we are changed and we're
renewed in Christ. That leads over into the second
point. Not only that we glory in the cross because it gives
freedom from the world, but because it alone grants God's acceptance. Verse 15. For neither circumcision
counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Paul says
that no religious rituals, no keeping of the laws, no anything
that we do can change our status before God. We're all sinners. Those who accept Christ as their
Savior are still sinners, but sinners saved by the grace of
God. There's never been a person in this world who needs to be
less saved than someone else. And Paul says that only a new
creation is what's acceptable to God. And how does one become
a new creation? By gaining the acceptance of
God. Through trusting in Christ's
work on the cross, His death, His burial, and then His resurrection
from the grave. And not only is a new creation,
then, acceptable to Christ, just being recreated, but a new creation
implies new actions as well. Those who accepted Christ and
His gift of salvation, not only glory in the cross of Christ,
they revel in it, They live it out in their everyday life. And
this is not, as we said, to curry favor with God, or to gain things,
or keep our salvation, or even to fulfill robotic new creation
duties. But it's because there's a new
purpose for living, to become more like Christ and glorify
Him in His work in your life. We're to live it out every day
to glorify God. Why do you live your life as
a changed believer? To glorify God. Why do you do
this and this to glorify God? Why do you do it to glorify God?
That should be the answer to everything we do in our life.
Why do we do it? To glorify our God. To lift up
the name of our Savior. So, Paul gives these two reasons
for glorying in the cross. But then, of course, he's going
to give us the result of glorying in the cross. He says in verse
16, And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be
upon them and upon the Israel of God. And Paul says that real
joy and peace in life, there's real joy and peace in life through
salvation. Those who accept the finished
work of Christ receive, Paul says, peace and mercy. When we
lean on Christ for salvation, we find true peace. A peace that
comes from the inside, of knowing where we spend eternity when
we die. If you meet somebody who's working their way, trying
to work their way to heaven, And you say to them, hey, do
you think you'll go to heaven when you die? They look at you
and say, what? I hope so. You know, when I die
and God, He looks at my good things and my bad things, and
if I have more good things than bad things, I'll go to heaven.
Or, you know, whatever the percentage is. That's not peace. I can't
imagine living life that way. A real peace is for those who
have accepted this gift of salvation. It's the peace of God in the
hearts of believers. And secondly, Paul says they
received mercy. Mercy. God not giving us what we deserve.
Because when we accept Him as Savior, we no longer have to
pay the price for our sins that we earned. We earned hell. Right? Romans 6, 23, the wages
of sin, the payment for our sin, is death. Eternal death. And
it's coupled all the time, not here in this verse, but it's
always coupled with God's grace. God takes away what we earned
and gives us what Christ earned. Makes the exchange. Our sin for
His perfection. And we find true joy through
this. Right? We find real joy. Joy
in knowing Christ. in knowing who we can glory in
and knowing where we spend eternity. And all who accept Christ as
Savior, Paul says, become part of the Israel of God. And while
we may not be direct descendants of Abraham through blood, we
are in a spiritual sense, we're true children of the promise
and spiritual descendants of Abraham. And just as Israel is God's chosen
nation, as Christians, we are God's chosen and special and
set-apart people, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. So tonight,
as we look at glorying in the flesh and glorying in the cross,
just ask yourself this, who has the glory in your life tonight? Who's getting the credit for
the things that occur and the improvements that might be taking
place in your life? You know, it doesn't have to
be pre-salvation, you know, getting the credit for your salvation.
It can be as you become, sometimes we say, as we become a better
person, as we become a more spiritual believer, as God changes us from
the inside out. Are you glorying in the flesh,
hoping to have something to show for your efforts in the area
of salvation and Christian growth? Or are you glorying in the flesh
just hoping that, you know, if you keep your head down enough,
that nobody will notice that you're a little bit different? That you go to church? You know,
if I do this and this, well, nobody will really know, and
nobody will give me a hard time. We want to avoid judgment by
the co-worker, by a relative, by a friend. Glorying in the
cross is the only way to live the Christian life, for it is
by the cross alone anyone is accepted before God. Give the glory and honor to Him
with your life, and live a changed life. The story is told of a
mouse and an elephant. They were friends. You know,
I don't know if he stepped on his toe, or it's a flea. It was
a mouse and an elephant. And they were friends, and they
were walking down the road one day. And as they were walking
down the road, they came to a canyon. And they had to cross the canyon.
And the only way to get across the canyon was this suspension
bridge. But it was a pretty nice bridge,
so they decided they would just go on. As they walked across
the canyon, they took a look back at this bridge, and it was
shaken up and down. And the mouse looked at the elephant,
kind of bumped him, and said, hey, look what we did. Did the mouse do anything? If
the mouse walked across the bridge by himself, would the bridge
even move? No. It was the elephant that shook
the bridge. And how many times do we go through
our Christian life And we look back at God and say, hey, look
what we did. Or hey, we talk to our friends
and say, look what I've done. Look what God's accomplished. Look what I've done in my life.
Look what I've done with my life. We should look back and say,
look what God has done. What God has done to change me,
what God has done to make me not what I was back then, but
what I am today. A sinner, saved by grace, who
can glory in the cross of Christ. Let's pray. Father, again, we
thank you that we can glory in your cross, that we can glory
in the salvation that you have given, that we can look back
on our lives and say, look what you have done. Look how you have
changed us. Thank you for being willing to
save us. Thank you for being willing to not only save us,
but then to change us, to give us victory over our sins, to
give us real power through your Spirit. that we never lose sight
of the gift of salvation, of how great it is, how great your
mercy is, how great the exchange was, that you took our sin upon
you and gave to us your righteousness. And may we live lives that seek
to please you, that seek to glory in you, that we would live it
out before others, so they may see something different in our
lives. And when they ask us, we say, not I, But Christ be
honor, love, exalted. And we ask that you would be
with us this week as we go out. And you help us to make these
truths a reality in our lives. In your name we pray. Amen.
Where is Your Glory?
| Sermon ID | 5271310945 |
| Duration | 32:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 6:12-16 |
| Language | English |
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