Invasion of Legalism Pt 1
Galatians 5:7-12 · Randy Peterman · Sep 19, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 38
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926215355041

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, well we're going to be taking a look at Galatians 5, 7 through 9. The last several weeks Bob and I taught through 1 through 6. Anybody want to try to recap for us Galatians 1 through 6? If you've been in the F8 or the Q&A class, bonus points if you can tell us what happened. It's just Galatians 5, 1 through 6.

It is part of God's Word. You might have read it, so you probably have a chance of knowing it anyways. Or you could have listened online. But Paul has cornered these believers, and I say cornered in the nicest way possible. Paul has cornered these Galatian believers who have been distracted and led astray by legalism. And why has he cornered them? Why would we say that he has cornered these Galatian believers? Does he want to pounce on them and take them out? They thought they were doing alright, but they had made a mistake and fallen towards legalism.

How many of you have ever been to a debate of any sort? In a debate, what's one of the things you need to try to do in a debate? Anyone who might have that experience or watched a debate? You throw the other side off, but you also want to be able to counter-argue their position. If you spent the whole time just being rhetorical, if you spend the whole time and you don't actually address the topic head-on in any way, then people will be able to dance around the logical points of your position.

So Paul has actually repeated the argument against the error of legalism over and over and over in the book and in chapters 5 and 6 he's going to go into some of the depth of being honest. These believers need to be honest about where they have come. Where did they get to in being honest about that? So when we take a look at 5, 7 through 9 this morning, Paul is going to be really blunt and frank with them and say, okay, let's be honest about your position. He's going to summarize some things to build on what's coming up when he talks about the fruit of the flesh and fruit of the spirit and the things that are part of Galatians chapter 6. So, let's take a look at the text there.

He says, you were running well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion did not come from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Alright, so the first verse there in 5.7 is, You are running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

Now he uses this concept of running and he's used it before in Galatians 2.2. He talked about that he had run He uses the analogy of running to present the truth of the gospel to the Galatians, and he didn't want to have run in vain. So he used the concept of running there, and he used it in other passages. If you've got your Bible, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9, starting in verse 24.

He says, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it, and everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. Thus I fight, not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others I myself should become disqualified. The analogy of running is an interesting analogy because it was not a Jewish thing to do a lot of running compared to the Greeks.

Now why would he talk about a Greek concept? Because the Greeks loved the racing compared to the Jews. Why would he talk about a Greek concept to these primarily Judaized believers? Because before they were Judaized, Yeah, well they're primarily Jewish in background, but they were in a Greek colony. They were sent by the Romans into this area to colonize. Yeah, so they had been influenced by these Greek ideas.

There was actually, the Greeks love philosophy. I don't know, you probably know that, but just in case you didn't, they did. The Greeks love philosophy and the philosophers actually liked to tie everything together and they considered physical training and running was a major part of that, to be part of things that they would philosophize on. Which is really kind of funny to me because the Greeks loved to philosophize and not actually practically apply it. Except for in running, apparently they did. And they really liked the physical form of the human body and to a certain extent I understand why Paul would write in the book of Romans that they had given up the creator for the creation. They loved the human body. So the Greek and Roman mindset was to really look at this body and love the form that was there, and so they would spend a lot of time with this running, trying to basically refine their body into pure perfection.

We do that now with steroids, but we don't understand that they have steroids at this point in time. That's not why I have the Rockies on the board here. We're not talking about steroids in baseball. But I would mention the Rockies. How many of you have been keeping track of the Rockies this season? Alright, okay. I'm not too surprised that it's not the entire class. One of the things that happened during the Rockies season is they had the break for the all-star break and they came back and how did the team play? Does anybody remember?

It was really disappointing and they kind of dropped off. It's kind of like they took the spring break and everybody went out and saw a hypnotist to help them learn how to not play baseball. I've got a baseball addiction. I need to stop except for your professional baseball player. So they dropped out It was like they were not running the race for the World Series. They just dropped out. It was as though they had been deceived. But in this case, it turns out that they've turned around and September's been a good month to them. So let's get off the Rockies for a moment.

He asked them, or I want to point out, and I have intimacy on the board, how could he say that when I left you, you were running well. Because he left before the all-star break. Yeah, he did leave before the all-star break. How would he be able to say that with confidence? Because they were doing okay until then.

Well, okay. But if I tell you that Evelyn has been really well-behaved this week. I can't quantify that from between yesterday at about 11 o'clock when I dropped her off at the airport and today. But I had a relationship with her that was intimate and daily. Evelyn's my four-year-old, just in case that's ambiguous. There was a level of intimacy.

Paul went and he stayed with the Galatians. He knew them, he walked with them, and he had an understanding of how they were walking. The other part, I think, was until the Judaizers came along, they were running the race well. They were walking in the Lord Jesus. They were not focused on law.

But then the Judaizers came along and said, well, what about this? What about that? What about that? Well, maybe I should do that. Maybe I should do that. So that influence of the Judaizers really kind of got them off on the wrong track. Tom, did you have something you wanted to add? Oh, OK. All right. Well, no, you had raised your hand. Excuse me.

So they came along and he had a level of intimacy and relationship with them so that he could say confidently, hey, I know that you guys are running. Would he have left them? Let's ask this important question. Would he have left them without any way to be equipped? Was that part of Paul's approach in general?

If we look through the book of Acts and we look at his letters and what he tells Timothy and Titus. Okay, let's get these people started off on a foundation, started off running the right race. When I left, you were running. Just to stick with the Rockies analogy, Paul had left just at the point he left the Galatians to take care of other business. They had more W's and L's in their family. Yeah, lots more wins.

And taking on what he said in 1 Corinthians, they were striving towards the finish line, which for us as believers is what? Being conformed to the image of Christ through the Holy Spirit by abiding. They were setting their mind on things above. And he left them that way. And then he asks them the important question. He's trapping them. He's asking them, let's be honest.

Who hindered you? Who hindered you? Not the Dodgers. Yeah, okay. But let's ask this important question. What does this lead them to have to do? Using the debate analogy, what does this lead them to have to do? Who hindered you? They have to answer that question and they have to ask. So you can't ask that question in an interview and then have them say, they do the Adam and Eve thing.

It's this woman you gave me, Lord. It was the serpent. Eventually you run out of things to point to and he's cut those off. He's logically cut those things off. I've got a list of number items here. He says, I said, the Galatians would not be able to squirm out from the realization that the Judaizers had pushed them to this position. The Judaizers had come in and they tried to reason with them and logic all their way back into legalism. They had compromised the truth and replaced it with the philosophies of the Judaizers who had expanded on the law beyond its 613 items. Okay, so the Judaizers had come in, not only did they have the original 613 items of the law, but they'd expanded on it, creating a whole system of life that would buffer them away from the Greek ideas that were there, and the people had bought in. Yeah, that makes sense. If you grew up with the law, it's familiar. How many of you grew up with parents that were strict? Don't answer that, Ruth. I was being silly. I said, don't answer that Ruth, your parents are here. Oh, I'd like to know. Oh yeah. Was I strict or not? The thing I found is that humans respond to law different ways. Some people really embrace it and want to secretly come up with ways to get around it. And some people can really revolt against it.

My favorite moments of Bible study, actually on the Thurstonette Bible Study, when we're not doing the study of God's Word, One night April Tracy came and shared with us things that her brother Matt did. They went to a super legalistic college. And her brother Matt figured out ways to not break the rules and do completely insane ridiculous things. So they had the law and they would just bypass the law and do things that were just insane. I'd share stories except for this is going to go on the internet. I don't want to get anybody in trouble. It's alright, I think Matt probably uses those to teach when he's teaching the youth camp.

The Judaizers, or the believers, they would have recognized that legalism was disobedience, even though obedience to the law was the message of the Judaizers. And that's an interesting thing. The Judaizers wanted obedience, but Paul says, but that's disobedience to Christ.

And that's a tricky thing because we hear obedience and we're going to get into discussing obedience as a concept. When you hear obedience, do you immediately think of law or rules? We've got to reconcile that here in a moment. And they would have to recognize that truth was absolute and they had abandoned that. So Paul, who has hindered you from obeying the truth? We have obedience and we have truth that we need to take a deeper look at. So how do we reconcile this problem of obedience and legalism? Tom. That is a good answer. For those of you not familiar with Pavlov's Bell, Pavlov's Bell is a condition to response, but it's not relationship. And so what Tom is referencing, I believe, is the concept of relationship.

Is obedience to the law versus obedience to the Spirit? Maybe we might say that legalism versus grace. Obedience and grace is going to lead me to do things that are outside the scope of the law. If you have 613 things that you can and cannot do, that's the Old Testament law, righteousness is going to be shown in a very rigid way. If the Holy Spirit comes into your life as a believer, which He does as a believer, and He impacts you, He can show the righteousness of God in ways well beyond the number 613. In fact, His righteousness can be shown in an infinite number of ways in your life. It will be obedience due to relationship, and that's a very, very important concept that Paul wants them to recognize. It's obedience to the truth.

Roger. Ray, there's another interesting thing. I think it's in this verse. The word obedience, really, if you look in your vines or whatever, it actually has the meaning to listen under. It's always helped me in terms of distinguishing law and grace. Because I listen under the truth, and that's a wonderful thing. I listen, well Lord, this is what you want me to do. It's not like, this is what I must do. This is what I want to do because I realize who it comes from. Grace is different. It's listening to the truth, and that's called obedience, but that's a wonderful obedience, because why wouldn't I want to do the truth? Why wouldn't I want to execute the truth, the power of the Holy Spirit?

Listen, honor, that's a really good point. It's always good when you get those things. I always like it when Roger brings out the Greek stuff because he's got Greek training. Now I've embarrassed you, I apologize. No, no, that's good. Then the next question we have to ask after we have this concept of obedience is we have this concept of truth.

By pivoting On the truth, what has he done for them when it comes to things like the gospel? He's already built up. He started the book on saying, hey, you've abandoned this for another gospel. What does it matter if he says, hey, you've abandoned the truth? Any thoughts? How about, let's step this out.

The Jews had, and actually it's part of the Semitic culture, there's a concept, if it is true, you do it. The Greeks, the Western mindset, if you had something and it was true, that was nice, but it didn't really impact your life necessarily. You might notice that happens often in Washington, D.C. I consider that to be part of our Western thinking and Roman heritage. Just because it's true doesn't mean you do it right. Hey, you know it's true, but that's It's not convenient for me right now. Stan?

Also the fact that the Judaizers were putting themselves, it's like, it's where the Jewish people fell before. Because they're asking the Galatians to focus on the Judaizers for the truth and not for God through faith. Which is exactly what happened when they were under the ceremonial system. They were supposed to depend on God. They were supposed to practice faith. They were supposed to look toward God for how to live their lives. But man took God's place and they become proud and they expanded the law and all the rest of it. So, it's no longer faith, but it's flesh.

Absolutely. And so, Paul's saying, you know, this is really, really dangerous because if you start focusing on these people and what they're telling you, it's error and it's going to take you away from faith in God. Absolutely. Which is what Roger said, being under and knowing that God is giving you the truth, not them. Yeah.

So they had walked away from the truth of scripture and living by faith and walking in relationship with God and gone to rigid, man-focused theology. So there's a real important thing for them to understand that as believers, this is very obvious hypocrisy, or walking out an opposite life to which you're attached. 613 clogged cranks and as you crank it hard enough out comes righteousness Yeah, it was just a do-nothing machine at that point in time if it's if it's of the flesh So so we have them being put forth in a situation where they have to be honest.

And Galatians 5.8 emphasizes this to the next level. He says, this persuasion did not come from him who calls you.

And recently, two weeks ago, at the Doyle Bible Study, Mike went over Romans 8.38 and 39.

Paul says, for I am convinced or persuaded That neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And that one memorized, don't ask me to recite a lot of other Bible verses.

I have a song. The thing about that verse is he says, I am persuaded, or I am convinced. And when Mike taught about that, it was honestly, and I hate to say this because it makes it sound like maybe he doesn't teach it as well sometimes when I say this, but it was honestly one of the best lessons I've ever heard Mike teach. It dug into the verse and brought out the heart of Paul. I've been persuaded by the Holy Spirit that these things are true. In this case, Paul says, you've been persuaded that these things are true. Erroneously. It's a mistake. But Paul is pointing out the influence, the outside sources.

I've got a list of seven things. Seven was, I could have probably kept going, but I'll stop at seven because I figured that it would be clear. As we've been going through Romans, Paul has been pointing out the errors of the Judaizers and the errors that the Galatians had bought into. So I wanted to look at these and kind of list through them. Randy? The other day I was reading through Mark and it's interesting because I don't know where the passage is right now.

But even Pilate saw the error of the Jewish people, because he said, or it said there, that he knew it was from envy that they wanted to crucify Christ. It wasn't the fact that they didn't know that he was the Messiah, or that he was the Son of God, or that they didn't understand now, or the fact that he was truth, or he had the truth. But the fact that they put so much pride and emphasis in themselves and in their flesh, that they would turn against God in human form because of envy and jealousy. That's just the height of ignorance. And for Pilate to be able to see that, the man who said, what is truth?

Yeah. Well, every time you look at what Pilate did, he's a very minor character in the grand story, but he had played obviously an important role. But he was really weighing things out. There are some really interesting observations about him. If you knew God was standing there, and you would want to destroy God so that you would have a higher position, How does that make any sense?

Yeah, well, he was a skeptic. No, I didn't think the Jewish people would do that. Yeah, but they had rejected him. They thought he was a blasphemer. It's a pretty radical position, but when we take a look at this list of deceptions, you're going to look at the intellectual buy-in that these believers had from the influence of the Judaizers. So let's take a look at this.

In Galatians 1.7, He says they have obfuscated the truth of the gospel. Why have you believed another gospel? A different gospel? What does that word mean?

Obfuscate means, I'm sorry, I'm a programmer, we use that all the time. And actually, I should have changed it in the handout, because I thought about that last night. Obfuscate means to change and hide something so that it looks like it's the same character, maybe. It obviously has to, in software, has to execute the same function or else your program breaks.

But it's less obvious. Okay, so we have this change. How many of you have ever talked to somebody who shows up at your door dressed in a black suit with a name tag that says Elder? And they use the same words that you use, but they mean something else. That would be a form of obfuscation. That would be to deceive somebody by using vocabulary.

Hey, you guys know the law? It's the righteousness of God. Wait, I like the righteousness of God. Well, you just got to do this law thing over here. You got Jesus. That's all cool. Listen, he's a good teacher. Come over here and do the little song and dance about this other gospel with a little bit more legalism. OK, so so we have obfuscation of the truth of the gospel.

OK, and then they went and they they referenced the law as a Jewish tradition. Well, you need to do it because it's a Jewish tradition. You're abandoning your heritage. You guys are already a colony, you're already being pressed by all these crazy Galatians and the Greek and Roman ideas and the less sophisticated people that had been there more indigenously, if you will. So it was easy for them to woo them in with these principles of culture and preserving your heritage. And then the third one, they redefined vocabulary such as justification. Paul has several times mentioned in Galatians justification.

How are we justified? Is it by the law? No, it's by grace. Justification. But they redefined terms like justification, and we still do this culturally in Christendom as a whole, and I say that very loosely. How many of you can think of people you know who will say things like, well, that person's not a good Christian. Their justification is not quite solid. That's basically what that implies. Are you justified or not? Were you identified with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating or not? Did Jesus pay for all your sins or 95%? Which 5% do you need to work? So they redefined vocabulary like justification and these believers had slowly, they've already redefined the gospel. They've already brought in culture.

So buying these things slowly, it's a slow transition. I'm going to woo you away from this thing, but it's not going to be fast. It's not going to be a big problem because you're going to be like, oh, I'm comfortable here. It's like boiling the water. You put the frog in and the water gets warmer and warmer and then it's dead. But he didn't notice it right off.

Stan? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're using justification in present tense. Yes. Well, yeah, they're treating it as a conditional sense instead of a positional sense. Ongoing, continual, that you have to work toward justifying yourself. Yeah. This works by the law, and so justification is personal and by the self rather than biblically in the New Testament. and in the Old Testament where justification is by faith. And it's a point in time where it happens once, for always. And I already mentioned it earlier, but the next one I've got here is that they lessened the personhood of Christ. To live is Christ, to die is gain. That's a big deal. Unless Christ isn't who he is in the scriptures. If the Judaizers come in and say, hey, listen, he was a good teacher. How many of you have heard that from not Judaizers in today's culture?

I was in a Barnes and Noble in Texas and there was a guy leading some kind of spiritual group there. And I was actually in the Bible and Theology section, which was pretty weak at best, but we'll go with that. That's where I was at, looking for something that had any meat to it. And this guy is sitting in a group of seats with a group of people just eating out of his hand.

And he's saying spiritual things like, Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha all taught the same thing. No, they didn't. You clearly haven't read what they said. But he was lessening the personhood of Christ. Is he fully God? Is he fully man? That's called the hypostatic union, where the two are one. He's 100% of both. But if the Judaizers had not outright said Jesus was wicked and evil, which is probably the position of the Jews, that's why they killed him, but they kind of lessened it.

We're going to woo you in with these small changes. They elevated the role of man in the process of sanctification. That's again tied in with the justification. They linked the law to Abraham instead of faith. Abraham is our heritage, but he's the one through whom Our line came through the law. And the law came through that line. And the law is good. What does Paul say in Romans and Galatians?

What did Abraham represent for us? Salvation by faith. Not by genes. Not by genes. Not genetic. But that's a big deal. So they'd slowly brought these people in and they'd reasoned them and used logic to bring them in here. And then they repurposed God's promise. God's promise to Abraham was salvation by faith. But they repurposed God and the things that God said. All these things building up, slowly wooing these believers in to legalism. So they had been persuaded by the Judaizers, and they had been persuaded to these things, but they were persuaded, he says, that it did not come from him who calls you. They were called to what? What's the eternal calling? How about that? What were they called to? Eternally. To be with Him. To relationship.

Conditionally and positionally, we're still called to fellowship. Positionally, we're secured in that fellowship constantly. Conditionally, on this earth, we get distracted. You know, just like the fish with that shiny hook comes swinging by. You're like, what was that? But we need to be abiding. We need to be beholding the Lord and setting our minds on things above.

If you're setting your mind on things above, is it going to be easier to identify the distraction? Because you're going to recognize immediately, hey, that's the wrong source. My source is up there. And somebody comes from down here, you're going, boy, that's the wrong angle. I'm not much into geometry. But I can tell you that I know the difference between something that's vertical and something that's horizontal. In my house, I have some walls that are not quite either. They're almost vertical, but not quite.

And we won't go into that. But the thing is, as you look at these things, Paul is saying, hey, you've been called to this. God called you to relationship. And you've abandoned those things. You've slowly been persuaded away from this calling. Why? And of course, I'm not, you know, I wasn't there. I can't actually, I would love to have been able to have seen the letter back from the Galatians. Geez, Paul, we're real sorry. You know, let me explain. You know, Paul didn't really want the explanation.

He wanted to have them understand and have a change of heart and mind. But it became clear that they were influenced by the philosophies of mankind. And there was a strategy. the Judaizers had executed it. In our own day-to-day lives, we just need to be aware, as believers, of these kinds of things. I mentioned the Mormons. The Job's Witnesses do the same thing.

They show up, they have an outward presentation of righteousness. I mean, how can you not be wearing a black suit and be the holiest guy on the planet, right? I'm wearing the right clothes. I'm using the right words. So does a word search. The long way. Well, exactly. I love a man in uniform, right? But the problem that we have is that they have an executing strategy that they use. The world has a strategy that it uses. It comes to you and it argues the same thing.

You know, Ruth is making a decision. I hate to pinpoint you here. I don't hate it that much, but Ruth has a an opportunity to work with CEF and she's going to be ministering in part to children, probably primarily to children. She has the opportunity to set a foundation for them to start understanding life in a Christian context and equip them so that when they grow up, what? Will they be able to hopefully tell the difference between vertical and horizontal? Will they be able to recognize, your suit looks really mighty fine, your shirt is ironed just right, I can't believe you haven't sweated that suit out on your bike.

That's a lie! That differentiation, that distinction of truth from error and knowing it Is this a form of Gnosticism? I'm just curious. Or was that Greek? Judaizers were not Gnostics. The Gnostics were Greek. A lot of things are similar because they have more knowledge than anybody else.

And so, because they have this special tradition and knowledge and everything else, it's something that you should desire and strive after, right? It's a classic cult technique, basically. Every cult has basically said, we have special truth. Even the mystical religions, the myth religions that were common in the Roman culture at the time that the gospel was spread.

Why does Paul say I have mysteries over and over? Because he was saying I've got mysteries and I must share them. The cult religions would say we've got mysteries and you've got to be on our inside circle and make sure you got your 10% tithe or whatever your magical formula is for awesomeness and you bring that in and I'm pretty sure they didn't use the word awesomeness like that, but It was a classic cult technique We have truth you don't and you got to come in and be part of our group or else you're a loser And or you're going to hell which is even worse than loser the centuries of history with the Jews and all the law system and all those laws they had to do and follow and going to Passover year after year.

To have some person who actually was one of those guys turn around and say all that that you used to know is bogus I was away for three years, I've come back with the truth. I can see them wondering, how can this guy have the truth when everything we've ever known and believed is 180 degrees out of phase? And what's interesting is that Paul came in and he said, I have the truth, but he didn't say, I have the truth, it's all new.

He was able to teach an exposit from Genesis all the way through the prophets and the law and say, look, this was pointing towards this. When you look at Christ, when he's talking to the stranger, or he is appearing as the stranger on the road to Emmaus, it says he explained from Moses on. That would have been the most amazing walk you had ever been on, I guarantee you that, because you can walk with Jesus, that's pretty awesome. But he's explaining all the way from Genesis forward, and he is doing so, bringing it up to the point to where then he reveals himself as Christ, and they go, whoa, that's you.

And these people have the same thing. Bob is going to get to teach next week on where Paul is actually going to bring that out, that Christ was presented to you. That's a big deal and it's important. Stan? And that goes along with what I said earlier about the envy.

Because who were the people that Jesus attacked most frequently? I mean, not literally attacked, but actually had ongoing discussion with, telling him that they were wrong. It was the religious leaders of the time, the Herodians, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and whoever other sees.

But he was telling them, and they had all this pride, and they felt that they were right. And here comes this man out of the blue, literally, and says, you're wrong. and constantly keeps saying that they're wrong, and he's smarter than they are. He's very precise and accurate. No wonder they were so upset with him and the fact that they wanted him dead. Their whole system that they had created, he was tearing it down. But the real system that they missed, He was building up. So that's exactly what the answer was. And Pat said that before too. These people must have really been confused. Who's this Paul guy?

The amazing thing about the New Testament doctrine is so much of it is founded in the Old Testament and is clearly taught. The difficulty would have been that you hadn't been taught that for so long. And even though they could so clearly teach, look how obvious this is. Look how obvious this is. You've got a lot of social pressure, and that does have a big impact. And he just mentioned the Passover.

Let's take a look at Galatians 5.9. He says, huh?

Randy, I'm wondering, just before the Galatians 5.9, it looks like you didn't complete your sentence. A person had what? I'm sorry, where? The sentence just above where you have Galatians 5, 9 on the sheet.

Oh, I did. That's a special revelation right there. It must have been followed by obfuscation. Oh, yeah. Okay, so a person, let me jump back into the text here. No, I didn't. I didn't skip a line. The problem is that I was jumping ahead, believe it or not. He says, I have confidence in you. I'm sorry.

Starting at 5.9, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. And what I meant to say, a person had infiltrated and influenced them, and I cut that off, so apologies. try to read these things before I print them out and I missed that one.

So in Galatians 5.9 he's using an analogy that the Jews would understand.

Every year for Passover there's a tradition and it's rooted in Exodus. There's a tradition that you get rid of all the leaven in the house and it's funny because we went to listen to a guy who's a believer named Steve Gerr who does Sojourner Ministries, and he did a special Passover presentation.

And he talked about growing up in the Jewish community, every year, they would get this leavened bread. And they would, the mom would go out and they'd hide lumps of this leavened bread throughout the house. And it was kind of like their version of Easter egg hunting. And dad would lead the kids around and they'd scurry through the house and he would get all the leavened bread out and they'd throw it out and be like, yay, the house is leaven-free. Not kidding. But that was part of Exodus. The Lord said you've got a week of unleavened bread. No leaven in the house for a week. And so Exodus 12, 15, and 19 say that.

But Paul's using this euphemism or this description of the leaven, this illustration, to remind them that you can't just have a little bit of law. You can't just take in some of these ideas from over here and these ideas over here and just mush them together a little bit. I like that, because Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha all taught the same thing, right? So we're gonna take a little of this, a little of that. And so you've got this concept of pollution. It's really what it is.

You have pollution and you can't just have a little bit of pollution and then just say, well, we'll cut that out. How many of you have ever cooked things and you've gotten to certain ingredients and discovered that that ingredient is polluted? That's really frustrating, especially when you're in the middle of the recipe and it's like, oh, shoot, now I do not have flour, you know, or whatever the thing is that you need. It's a real bummer if you're out of flour, but that's, Didn't they take the leaven out at Passover because God said, I don't remember exactly, but it was something to the effect that they were not going to have time and things were going to be moving rather rapidly, so the leaven or the yeast had to leave the bread, right?

So in a sense, that's kind of a picture of the fact that they're leaving behind Egypt, which is a picture of the world and all their rules and regulations and the good food and stuff that they had when they were in Egypt. And so this leaven, a teaching of the world and rules and regulations and all the things that we depend on, and God's telling them, leave the leaven behind and depend on me. Because when they step out from Egypt, and that was one of the things that they really had a hard time learning, they were then totally dependent upon God. with the manna, and the renewed sandals, and all the other things that were happening, all the miraculous events, the water, and Myra, and, you know, it was all faith. From this point in time, God's saying, you leave the leaven behind, and now you're depending totally on me through faith, and I'll take care of you. Tough lesson for them. Well, sure, it is by faith. The biggest thing that they saw... It's easy to just want a little bit, just a little bit of rules, right?

The thing with the leaven is that in Exodus he says that this will be an ordinance for the house of Israel. Now why is it that if this is an eternal ordinance for the house of Israel that the believers are no longer underneath this ordinance of no leavened bread. They're Jews, right? So why are they no longer underneath us? Christ fulfilled the law. More so, what happens when we believe? Are we still our old self and Adam? Or what happens? We're a new creation.

We died to our ethnicity. That's a big deal. In our culture today, there's a lot of tension about ethnicity. There's a lot of tension about heritage. There was obviously tension for these people who were influenced by the Judaizers. Hey, you're Jews, don't forget your Jewishness.

There's an interesting song from the play South Pacific. there's a song that says, you have to be carefully taught. And it tells about her ethnicity. It says, you have to be taught before it's too late, before you're six or seven or eight. And did all the people in your relatives say, you have to be carefully taught? You know, that is, I always love it when there's clever words in songs like that.

The song almost stopped that play from being done. I can imagine. And in Boston they said, as long as that song is in there, the financiers are going to pull out of the play. And Oscar Hammerstein, who was a Jew, said, we will not pull it out of the play.

It is one of those things where you do have heritage and culture things that are taught that way, and it does get carried on. Paul spends several sections of scripture saying over to the different recipients of his letters, there is no Greek nor Jew. He says it in Colossians. He says it in Ephesians. And he has to emphasize it in Galatians as well. He does it in Romans. I mean, he says over and over and over again, quit being worried about whether or not you're circumcised, whether or not you're a Jew.

All of these things are of earthly concern. And those were leaven, if you will. Those were things that were distracting them and keeping them from walking by faith in the Lord. Tom? And the best way to summarize that is, put aside the old leaven and put on the new leaven of sincerity and truth because Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed. Yes. He's quoting Paul. That's why it's the best way to summarize it. Paul meant what he said. So, we can take a look at these things. There are some unanswered questions.

How do we reconcile this concept of racing and striving, that's the concept that racing brings, and resting in Christ? Those are two what appear on the surface to be conflicting ideas. How do we reconcile those things? How do we reconcile the concept of racing and striving, Paul uses that word in other places, with the concept of resting and grace and not works? Is there a real tension there?

Some people have seen the concept of racing and the concept of striving as being an admonition to work really hard, to be that better Christian. Is that what Paul is talking about? When he uses the illustration of racing, what is he really drawing that the Greeks and the Romans would have understood? What is he drawing from? Does an athlete Focus. Does the athlete set his mind on the finish line?

If you're setting your mind on things above, which is what I believe the illustration is for, that racing is not a striving of your own works and your own flesh. It is actually focusing and setting your mind on things above so that you can have rest. So instead of being contrary ideas, they're actually intimately related.

How many of you are familiar with Lance Armstrong? Lance Armstrong trains hours and hours and hundreds and thousands of miles. He's probably ridden more in a month of his life than I have in my entire life on a bike. In miles. Maybe not hours, but miles for sure.

The guy is really focused. He's been doing it and he stays focused. Athletes, aside from things like steroids to build those muscles and do things like that, must stay focused. So when we look at Paul using the illustration of running, he's not talking about your works.

Do it! Work harder! For Jesus. Gail? I don't know that I'm legalistic. But I'm going somewhere with this. Sure. And I'm not a runner. Okay. And I'm not disciplined in anything of that nature. Sure. Because I've never been sport-wise inclined. So there's no discipline of any of that sort.

It comes to me that it's truly about focus. And every person, I think, the Word tells us to put aside that which hinders. And the athlete is a prime example, I suppose. But for every one of us, whether we're athletes or not, there are things that hinder us in our focus which affects our intimacy with the Lord, which affects our joy, which affects growing in Christ and being conformed to the image. And I think my job, or duty, or whatever you want to call it, is to try to be aware of what's hindering me today, and I've done a lot of this this week, being hindered this week, and it's attitude about this circumstance or that event or this person's whatever is going on with that person. If my focus remains at any one of those things, I think I can safely say that I am hindered in my walk with the Lord and I need to be aware of that and fix the situation.

That's absolutely where Paul is going to go with this in the passage. Obviously, well in Galatians, no you're right, that's why when we get into the second half of chapter 5, Paul says these are the fruits of the flesh. You need to recognize them so that you know, hey you're not focused on the Lord. This is the fruit of the Spirit, you'll know, honey, that those things kind of match up. That's exactly where Paul's going to go so you know you're not far off. You take a step farther and you go into bad habits and addictions. Okay.

Because those are hindrances as well. Absolutely. And they're very difficult hindrances. Because addictions are extremely difficult. They're stubborn patterns for sure. Yes. At the very least. And they are very fleshly and they take your focus. that we are probably not even aware of. Sure.

And which is why we're called to be setting our minds on things above. I've never met a person who doesn't have a problem. That's right. But I have never met a person where the problem of the flesh cannot be reconciled by abiding and setting your mind on things above. Because if you don't address the problem of setting your mind on things above, Or, I'm sorry, address the problem of sin with setting your mind on things above. What have you really done? Where else can you set your mind on? It's not things above, it's you. And you couldn't fix the problem in the first place.

So it is this principle of setting your minds on things above and staying focused on the Lord. That's the running without the hindrance. What is the first step that a believer has to do to be hindered? It's almost the opposite of what we just talked about. Stop setting your mind on things above. First thing, when you stop looking at the Lord and you start looking down at what's going on around me and what can I do to fix it, you've already been hindered.

That's the first step. Now you're just looking for the Judaizer to come by and say, hey, I've got this really good deal for you. You're going to get to heaven faster than anybody else. And so the first step is to just try to do something. Take your mind off things that are above and try to do something.

Boom, now you're hindered. I do this, Stan said, Gail said, we've all at different times probably said, I do this. I have this problem. I've been hindered, but I keep moving around and you keep being right behind Roger's head, I apologize. But you've been hindered and it's Roger's fault. No, I apologize. But the idea of being hindered is there.

The idea is that we have to be setting our minds on things above. Have to be setting our minds on things above. It's like Paul was trying to tell us something. So, how could the body in Galatia have avoided some of these things. How could the body of Holly Hills avoid some of these things? Let's bring it to 2010. I would say that it's probably, you know, in God's plan that they didn't.

First of all, you've got the Book of Galatians. Well, yeah, the Lord can use it. Second of all, Paul came and talked to them the second time. We grow. just like the old worm on the pole that falls back one inch and goes up two. And so we grow through the process of making mistakes and learning from them and becoming stronger and bolder. So sure, they could have probably avoided it by keeping their mind on what Christ said and what scripture said and practicing faith. But all in all, I'm glad that they didn't.

Well, I ask that question, it's really a lead-in to Chapter 6. So the first question, Chapter 5, or the second half of Chapter 5, is what Gail brought up. That we have to identify that this is not of the spirit, but of the flesh. And the second half is that as a body, how do we work that out? In Chapter 6, he's going to go over how do we work that out as a body. That's part of Chapter 6, not Chapter 6.

But as we look forward, as we study through the next coming weeks and months, if the Lord doesn't take us home to be with him, the rapture would be awesome. I would not be disappointed by that. As we study over those things, remember he's going to be answering the questions of how does this really impact your life and how does this impact our life as a body. That's all we've got for this morning. Did the second bell ring? I thought so. I was like, I'm cutting into my tuning guitar time for music.

Let's go before the Lord. Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless the time that we have in the main service with setting our minds on things above and worshiping you and learning about intimacy with you. Thank you for your grace and your mercy. And Lord, thank you so much for my brothers and sisters that are here this morning who can relate to this text and be encouraged and encouraging with this text. We thank you so much in Jesus' name. Amen.