SERIES Galatians: The Gospel for Everyday Life
TEXT: Galatians 3:1-9
MESSAGE: Gospel Growth: Seeing Jesus in All of Scripture
“There are basically two ways to read the Bible — as a book of law, or as a book of promise. Our natural religious psychology wants to read the Bible as law: “God is explaining here how I can win his favor.”…But in Galatians 3 Paul explains that he reads the Bible as a book of promise, and he wants us to as well. He sees every page of the Bible as gracious promise from God to undeserving sinners…Every page [in the Bible], most deeply understood, shines forth as a promise of grace to sinners in Christ.” — Ray Ortlund
Q: Do you see Jesus & the gospel when you open your Bible?
“Don’t you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text of Scripture there is a road to Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, now, what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if ever I do find one, I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.”— Charles Spurgeon — Lectures to My Students
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” — 1 Corinthians 2:1-2
“Paul was a man who had the equivalent of two Ph.D.s in theology by the time he was 21 years of age, a man who wrote with great insight on the whole scope of theology. Nevertheless, he said that the focal point of his teaching, preaching, and ministry among the Corinthians was simply “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” — R.C. Sproul
TEXT: Galatians 3:1-9
Q: How does Paul help us to see Jesus when we open the Scriptures? By understanding: (1. The Content 2. The Correction 3. The Cornerstone)
1. The Content (v. 1-2)
“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”
“Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction” — 1 Thessalonians 1:4
“Many Christians live with a truncated view of the gospel. We see the gospel as the “door,” the way in, the entrance point into God’s kingdom. But the gospel is so much more! It is not just the door, but the path we are to walk every day of the Christian life. It is not just the means of our salvation, but the means of our transformation. It is not simply deliverance from sin’s penalty, but release from sin’s power. The gospel is what makes us right with God (justification) and it is also what frees us to delight in God (sanctification). The gospel changes everything!” — Bob Thune & Will Walker
“This, then, is the gospel. It is not a general instruction about the Jesus of history, but a specific proclamation of Jesus Christ as crucified (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2). The force of the perfect tense of the participle is that Christ’s work was completed on the cross, and that the benefits of His crucifixion are forever fresh, valid and available…” — John Stott
2. The Correction (v. 3-5)
“Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith…”
“By listening to the false gospel of the Judaizers, the Galatians were denying their own verifiable experience of having received the Spirit with all his power and wonders. They must understand that this move represents a backward step…”— Moisés Silva
“God, have mercy upon them! It is better to be too credulous than to be carnal and to be smug and dead.” — Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones
3. The Cornerstone (v. 6-9)
“…just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? 7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
“Grace is not earned. Abraham simply believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. He didn’t do anything; he believed something. More appropriately, he believed Someone—God.” — David Platt and Tony Merida
TAKEAWAYS: How can our vision for Jesus & the gospel grow? By asking…
1. Is the cross shrinking or growing in my life?
2. Is my progress through my performance or God’s Spirit?
“The way to progress as a Christian is continually to repent and uproot these systems in the same way that we became Christians—by the vivid depiction (and re-depiction) of Christ’s saving work for us, and the abandoning of self-trusting efforts to complete ourselves. We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him.” — Timothy Keller
3. Is the gospel how I interpret Scripture?
“Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done. Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all…No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story…The Story of how God loves His children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every story in the Bible whispers His name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle-the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.” — Sally Lloyd-Jones
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” — Galatians 3:13-14