Bible Survey - Galatians

Galatians is a fantastic book. It's definitely kind of unique within the epistles of Paul because when you look at Galatians, you see this is a letter where Paul has been maligned very distinctly, and he is addressing that. The gospel has been maligned very distinctly, and he addresses that as well. With the other books that Paul has written, There's issues where he may be being questioned. There's issues where the gospel might be part of what he's addressing. But this book is very focused on salvation by faith and Paul being an apostle.

So we're going to get a good amount of look at that this morning. I've got an outline there and one o'clock Randy forgot to put the the last set of verses there for your outline, so you'll see closing statements. It's the rest of the book, it's like five verses, but sorry that I didn't get the numbers on there properly. In the past, I've done really long detailed outlines and then tried to jam through the book, and I think that's been only sort of effective, so this morning I'm going to try to just hit highlights and hopefully that's more effective. If you don't like it, just tell me, and we'll do our best.

So to start off in the book of Galatians, Paul introduces himself in the greeting and immediately quantifies his being an apostle. And so his greeting is very direct and he immediately begins to identify himself as an apostle. So when we take a look at verse 1, he says, Paul, an apostle, and in our English verses we have parentheses. I don't know that I have seen parentheses in any of my Greek New Testaments. Not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. Close parentheses.

But in case Paul's authority was not enough, he does say, and all the brethren who are with me, just in case. So the Galatians are getting a very immediately pointed letter. None of the other epistles start with the same kind of intensity. Paul is right out the gates, ready to let them know. He means business. but that doesn't stop him from in verse three saying grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ something he writes at the beginning of almost all his letters and but but he does sneak in a little gospel-y message there in verse four who gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory and forever amen so Paul just A sentence is in, has nailed down his purpose statement. There's no question about what Paul's going to be talking about the rest of the book. And if I was a Galatian on the receiving end of this, I don't think there'd be any ambiguity where I'd wonder what was going on. So he hits in with his greeting and his purpose statement.

And then as our notes say with the highlights, let's start in verse six and we'll talk about the gospel. So verse six, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel, contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant to Christ." So, he again hits the gospel and the apostleship issue, and he's going to couple those things together. Let's ask this really, really important question. What is the gospel? If we were to tersely state the gospel, how would we say the gospel?

Go ahead, Marty. There you go. And where do we find that at? That's the right answer. It's three and four. 1 Corinthians 15 3 and 4 and I have in the handout there 1 through 4 just because it prefaces things by saying this is the gospel I preach to you just in case you weren't sure yeah so here's the gospel here's the gospel and so Paul Paul knows what the gospel is the Galatians heard the gospel and responded to it so they know what the gospel is that doesn't mean that they were holding on to it unfortunately so Paul makes some very specific but key assertions about the situation in Galatia, and I've got them in bullet points here, but we'll go over them just briefly.

The gospel that they had accepted from the Judaizers was distinguishably different. If it was not distinguishably different, he wouldn't be writing, right? But it was a distinct and different gospel. But it was not just different, it was not the gospel. So when Paul writes in verse 7, which is really not another, it's not just another, it's because there's not multiple choices.

How many people have you run into in today's modern world that have an agnostic or an atheistic worldview? If they're atheistic, they reject it outright. If they're agnostic, they're like, I'm not sure which way is the right way to heaven. I'm not going to pick one and hope I'm right. Okay, I'm going to not research it and hope I'm right. Al?

Being told that you have to do things and not do things doesn't sound like very good news to me. Well, it's definitely, yeah, when you pollute the gospel with the law. The law doesn't sound like good news when you tell me here's the standard by which you have to live. To tell me that God loves me and offers his mercy and grace and love sounds like a lot better good news. Yeah. The next thing that Paul asserts, and Al brought that up, is that it was a distortion of the gospel.

I'm a musician. Some may question that, but I like to call myself a musician. When you use a distortion pedal on a guitar, for example, it takes the sound wave and it intentionally corrupts it. So when you hear that sound on an electric guitar, and this is a really great electric guitar sound from anyone's mouth, right? that's distortion, and they actually take the sound and they corrupt it.

The Judaizers had done the same thing to the gospel. They had the pure signal of the gospel, the perfect sound of the guitar before we add the distortion to it, and it turns out that Paul doesn't like the rock and roll of the gospel. He doesn't want the distortion on, for good reason. But the idea that you would corrupt the signal and change the sound, you get a different result. What's the consequence of a distorted gospel? You lose purity and you lose integrity, and in the end, it's not the gospel anymore.

And that's pretty important. You think of the verse that says, God is not the author of confusion. And a distorted gospel brings chaos and confusion because you don't know how to balance the competing patterns. And you get division. I mean, the consequences are manifold.

The next item there is that the gospel is immutable. And I used the word immutable a couple weeks ago when I taught the main service. But immutable, just for reference, is the idea that something cannot be changed. It is not dynamic. It's not flexible.

You know, if I ask, or my dad is teaching next week, if he asks next week, hey, what's the gospel? And Morgan raises her hand and she says, that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was buried and resurrected again on the third day, and also he opened up a Chick-fil-A. You know, we'd all go, uh, no? You know, it's like, but that's a Christian organization. Yeah, not part of the gospel.

It would be strange, I use that as a very strange example because it is so obvious, but as soon as you make the gospel not simple, And maybe you've talked to people who make the gospel not simple. As soon as you make it not simple, it becomes distorted. It becomes something that can be complicated. When in the scripture it talks about having a faith like a child, my kids are older now and they like complexity in things, which is sometimes interesting and sometimes terrible, but that complexity is something that a child can't have faith in. I'm going to say complexity in the gospel. So it's important that the gospel is simple, it's unchanging, and we can repeat it. We can tell it to one another.

Al? It's interesting to think about the faith of the child. It's based on confidence in the person with whom they're dealing and not on understanding all the why. Yeah. So it's not a rational thing in the sense of logic, but it's a trust and believe relationship. My dad said it, so it must be okay. Yeah, the belief is personal.

So Paul warns that anybody who is preaching a false gospel should be eternally condemned, or will be eternally condemned. That's really key. If you are not saved because what you're believing in isn't the gospel, then that comes with condemnation, which is another reason why he's so keen on getting the gospel very clearly articulated and understood and perpetuated. The gospel Paul preached was not contrived.

It was revealed from Christ himself. in verse 12, jumping ahead outside of the original bracket of text or passage of text. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So simple as it was, it was revealed. Simple as it was, Paul didn't come up with it. He didn't go meet with the other apostles and they took a vote.

We think the gospel should be this. No. The gospel was proclaimed, when we look at Acts, when the gospel was proclaimed, and the tongues of fire come, the gospel was proclaimed, 3,000 people become believers that day. It wasn't a different gospel. It was that Jesus Christ had died, was buried, and resurrected again, according to Scripture.

So, I don't want to beat a dead horse, so to speak, but it's really important that that Paul get this message across to the Galatians. And of course, it doesn't hurt us to understand that as well. The Gospels mechanics rely on the simplicity of man's faith and God's works. Bringing more complexity to the message distorts it and is unacceptable. So Paul is not going to put up with that.

So I want to skip a A little further down into the text here, when we take a look at Paul's defense of his ministry in Galatians 1.16, he talks about the fact that Christ reached out to him.

So 1.16, "...to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach him among the Gentiles." I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood." So the gospel came to him on the road to Damascus. We can read that in Acts chapter 9. And Paul was taught by the Spirit at first.

And he just waited. Obviously a very traumatic, I would say traumatizing, but maybe that's not quite the right word, but it may have been the first couple days when he was blinded. A very intense experience. And he waits. That's one of the things I love about the story of the Apostle Paul. The Lord reveals himself to Paul, and then there's time. There's about 14 years, if I recall correctly, between when the Lord showed up to Paul and when Paul went out on his first missionary journey. It doesn't mean that he wasn't learning, it doesn't mean that he wasn't teaching with Barnabas, but there was time where the Lord was growing Paul and equipping him and preparing him. Which is why no one should ever teach the Bible until they've been a Christian for a really long time, right? Is that what he's saying? No. Stan? Yeah, you definitely need to have a mature believer.

But in the case of Paul, when he's writing here in the latter half of chapter 1, he's writing as a man who grew up in Judaism. He's writing as a well-equipped, well-trained... I mean, obviously, when he was persecuting the church, He was a Jewish zealot. He was fully aware of what was going on inside of Judaism and wanted to protect Judaism from this terrible, distorted error that was this new sect of Judaism that was called Christianity. Because it sounded like they distorted the law.

Kind of a similar concept to what he's writing about now, only from a pre-Christ-on-the-road-to-Damascus context. So we have Paul who is coming from that background, but his theology was changed and his faith was entirely in the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ. So he addresses that with the Galatians there.

In chapter 2, chapter 2 is several sections that are actually addressing the fact that he himself did not compromise and bring the law into the situation whenever Gentiles and Jews mixed. And he even corrects Peter, or Cephas, starting in verse 11 with the story, But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. And I love that that word condemned is in there, because we go, oh no, did he lose his salvation? No. His actions condemned him, and he had sinned in some capacity.

For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, if you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?"

And so we have this account of Paul even correcting Peter. And I think that that interplay is interesting here because Galatians is definitely an aggressive book. I mean, he starts out right from the gates. He's got this aggressive content, and he's talking about this disagreement with Peter, but he doesn't malign Peter.

He doesn't say, lesser apostle, doesn't say, Peter is, you know, probably kind of a loser apostle, we really need to leave him alone. It's, Peter had this error, I corrected him, and we moved on, because we knew and were in agreement of the right doctrine. Peter had the right doctrine, he'd been distracted. So he realigned with the proper doctrine and the proper application in his life, and he was walking in godliness after that. But it is one of those things where Paul had to correct him, and that's powerful.

Peter stood condemned in his condition. Yes, but not his position. So that's definitely a key thing. Now the last two verses of Galatians chapter 2 are ones that you're probably familiar with. I'm going to hope that you're familiar with if you've been at Holly Hills for any amount of time.

We should have either sung a song with the lyrics being the words to the verse, or we would have talked about it at least once or twice. But he says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. Was that two of the three verses you had to teach? Yeah, these are the verses you've got to teach. I don't know that they were the verses I got to teach. I want to say Bob got to teach these.

But the principle here is identification, actually. I was crucified with Christ. I was identified with Christ in His crucifixion. And so we have some consequences of that. One of which is that Christ lives in me. And that's one of those things where as a new believer, that's a little strange to hear. Wait a minute, Christ is in me? What does that mean? But if we are in Christ and he is in us, and there's deep intimacy between us, that means that...

How many of you are familiar with the phrase I'm in the desert. You've heard Christians say, I'm in the desert with my spiritual walk. I'm in a desert time or whatever it is. Paul's writing here in Galatians 2 brings that into question a little bit. Can you be identified with Christ and have Christ in you and be in a desert? No, but you can be not abiding. you can be not understanding your position in him. And so if you don't understand your position, it feels desert-y. A couple of things. One is that, again, position and condition is a key distinction. And the other thing is that it's faith in the facts, and the feelings follow, rather than looking at my feelings. This is a train that's led by the caboose.

What I find, at least in either my own personal experience or in engaging with others who've said that they're in a desert experience, is that usually they don't know their position, so they don't know that there's this life that is readily available in their day-to-day walk. But also, because they don't know that, they're not walking in faith in that, And it is deserty. They're waiting for the next experience. And if the experience doesn't come, then it could be weeks or months or however long.

Al? Last week, when we did 2 Corinthians, my favorite, versus now that I'm older, 2 Corinthians 4, where it says, in our body, we are perishing. The inward man is being renewed day by day by the Spirit. So back again to what your dad said about the difference between focusing on our temporal life now You can feel like you're in a desert.

I don't feel good. Bad things are happening to me. I don't have the money I need. I don't have blah, blah, blah. You start getting self-focused when you deal with the outer. And that's why the focus is on the spiritual. You have to go back into them to continue the hope of glory. Yeah, for sure.

So we have Christ living in us now, and then the next thing is that the life that we do live is by faith. I live by faith in the Son of God. Living by faith is one of those things where that's been turned into some interesting experiences for folks where it's like, oh, I need to live by faith. I'm going to have faith that God is going to keep putting gasoline in my car, or I'm going to live by faith that God is going to do That's not what he means by living by faith.

That's that moment-by-moment walk, not that we're just hoping for miraculous things all the time. It may be that we're hoping for miraculous things all the time, but that's not what he means here. There's a radio station in Nevada where I worked at the Christian bookstore and they would constantly be playing this radio station and they would read books And one of the books I read was the biography of George Mueller, and I don't know if you're familiar with that name, but the guy ran an orphanage, and he would wait for the Lord to provide the needs, and he wouldn't let the needs be known. He would just say, I'm living by faith. But the difficulty in that is that if you don't know that there's a need in the body, then it can't be filled. And you can call that faith, but that living by faith is not what this is talking about either.

There is a principle in walking by faith in the Son of God that has to do with that moment-by-moment relationship, not by the Gideon approach, where, Lord, if you want me to do this, let the sheepskin be dry or the sheepskin be wet. We don't do that every day. That's not what he's talking about.

It's that moment-by-moment relationship with Christ. I have righteousness in Christ and it is not of the law. Verse 21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes from the law, then Christ died needlessly. The law can't bring righteousness, but Christ can. So we have that identification there.

And also, and this is really, really, really important when you talk to people who like to mix a little law into their life, I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness comes from the law, which would mean that you're bringing the law into the gospel, then Christ died needlessly.

So you can't mix the two and come up with a really good mix. Like if you make a sausage and you put some beef and some pork in there, it might be a really great mix. And you can blend those. But you can't blend the law and grace. And especially if you're blending beef and pork, you're not going to be able to feed that to your kosher friends, right? But we can't blend in just little bits of the law. It's just not acceptable. It nullifies Christ's work on the cross.

In chapter 3, verses 24 and 25, he sums it up so well. The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. All of chapter 3 is a series of arguments of salvation by faith alone.

There are people who have done this. There are people who have written whole commentaries on Galatians explaining away everything Paul says about salvation by faith alone and bringing the law in. I wrote a blog post on my website years and years ago now that was talking about salvation by faith alone and not being able to lose your salvation. And this group, I don't know where they came from, they probably just do Google searches and try to find people who believe this crazy thing of security and salvation, and they jumped in, and no law for the believer, and they jumped in and left these raging, angry comments on my blog because I was such an idiot for saying that the law was not for the believer, and that I totally didn't understand Galatians. I may not understand everything in Galatians, I'll own that, but I certainly am clear on the fact that every argument in here is very precise and concise in saying, you're saved by faith, the law has nothing to do with it.

Did you send back the verse there in the beginning? I just left him alone because it was one of those things where I responded with one comment and that lit more fire and I was just like no I don't I'm not going to persuade this person in this group so yeah yeah it was not not optimal so we moved on or well I moved on and they eventually moved on but Salvation by faith, definitely important, but something that they were not particularly familiar with.

The law cannot impart life, 321b, and I just grabbed that half of it because it's so perfectly stated. For if a law has been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. So again, he's stating Again and again, the law does not bring righteousness. How many people in the Old Testament were made righteous by the law?

Al's giving me a hand gesture, which doesn't record on the internet, but it's a zero. I thought, wait, I just said hand gesture, that's not what I mean. But he's making a sign for zero. No one is saved by the law. The law only condemns. And every time we try to bring law into the gospel, we're trying to bring condemnation. So that's not an effective tool. The law became the life of the Jews because they didn't recognize its purpose. Was the law supposed to be the life of the Jews? I'm not asking a trick question. It's just yes or no. The life of the Jews. Was it supposed to be their life? Their life was still supposed to be focused on relationship with God. That's why God had put the temple together. That's why he had drawn the people to himself. It was for relationship.

The law was to separate Israel from the nations around them. To keep them wholly unto God. Not wholly unto the law. Not wholly unto themselves. But it was for relationship. But they misunderstood its purpose. And it became their whole focus in their whole life. And God wanted the law in front of their attention. That's why they had the phylacteries, and they were supposed to be, as they were walking around, talking about the law. But it was for the purpose of unto relationship, not unto the law by itself.

The sad part is that people who try to bring the law into Christianity usually end up then using it to judge others and to keep others out of fellowship with God rather than bringing them into relationship with God. Yep. The legalism brings separation. It definitely is a shortcoming of the church as we know it today that we try to bring in good standards of righteous living that are not Jesus.

So, we're going to skip ahead into chapter 5 here, and we're going to take a look at 19 through the end, I'm sorry, not 19, we all know the deeds of the flesh, 22 through the end of the chapter 26. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. And I would like to propose to you, and this is probably not that controversial, but I would like to propose to you nonetheless, that verse 25 is probably more important for us to understand than verses 22 and 23. Okay? 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

That is a whole lifestyle and a relationship focus, whereas in 22 and 23, is a list, and the thing is that I've seen people get bound up on the fruit of the Spirit, and my favorite part with the fruit of the Spirit discussions is usually then it's like a to-do list. The to-do list of the fruit of the Spirit. If it's the fruit of the Spirit, then it's not anything for me to do, but they focus on it nonetheless. But that being said, let's take a look at 22 and 23 and respect the fact that Paul wrote those for our benefit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love. What do we do with the idea that it's possible for someone to be a believer and be lacking the fruit of the Spirit? What do we do with the idea that someone could be a believer but still be lacking the fruit of the Spirit? You're not walking by the Spirit. It does tie together. It's the dependence. You're not depending on God. You're not. I was just going to say, like your dad has mentioned in some sermons, where Christ talks about I am the vine, you are the branches.

Anyone that bites in me, certain things will happen and among those are bearing fruit and bearing it more abundantly and so on. So it always comes back to that fact of what is our relationship or are preparing based on. That's based on that relationship. It's the principle of abiding. And isn't that the hard thing? I mean, if you're going through tough times outwardly, to keep that focus of thankfulness and trust to God that he's a God of love, that he's working out things for our benefit, that he's working towards some good end result, to keep that attitude, that mindset, that trust, that faith. Our part is to maintain the patience, the belief that he's God and I'm not, respect his sovereignty, the whole thing is bound up just like you were saying, it's almost like a circle with the fruit and the abiding. Well, the reason I ask that question, are you going to answer?

There's an important distinction. It looks like it's saying the same thing, but it's not. Okay. In 516, it says, I say, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That is, for all of them, individually. In verse 25, In verse 25, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. And notice he uses the week. And us.

And that walking is a different word than the one in verse 16. This walking in verse 25, he uses a word for the Roman soldiers marching in unison. So the first one is about our individual walk, and the second one is about our walking as a church body. So the fruit of the Spirit is on an individual level, but the walking is definitely, as my dad pointed out, the corporate speaking.

The reason I ask the question, how do we deal with some deficiencies in this, How many of you in your life have found yourself going, man, I am not patient. I am not... Any of these fruits that might be here, I lack self-control. All of those are resolved through the verse 16 that is the personal abiding that overcomes those things. But when we run into believers and probably most of all me, I'll own this. If I'm lacking any of these things, it's because I'm not abiding. And I might need to be restored, just maybe. And so let's take a look at 6.1.

In 6.1 we find something that would have been really shocking. if you think of this from a Jewish perspective. So put your yarmulke on and read this with me.

Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. When he says look to yourself, he's not saying look to yourself for strength. He's saying check yourself so you don't get caught up in the sin. If anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one, rather than take him outside the camp and stone him.

You who are spiritual, gently restore this person and come alongside them. If you're mixing the law and the gospel, this is not possible. It can't be done. But Paul says, hey, this is in context with the grace that we've been given, that there be restoration.

And I've had my friend... I'll share a personal story where this became very relevant to me. I used to think I was funny, and I thought I was really funny when I was insulting people. And I didn't always think that I was just being cruel, I always thought, that I was just being funny, and they would understand that I was being funny, and it was okay, and we're all laughing. So, I was dating my wife, we were not yet married yet, and we went over to some friend's house, and as we were leaving, it was a married couple, the husband came to me and he said, Randy, I need to talk to you about something. we've been watching you and the way that you're treating Jessica you think you're being funny but you're insulting her and we love you and we want you to come over to our house but you are not welcome back at our house if you don't treat Jessica properly stop trying to be funny and so my friend who is a dear friend still still one of my best friends came alongside me and gently restored me. He gently came alongside and said, Hey, here's the thing that you're doing. You think that you're doing something that is okay. You've convinced yourself it's okay.

It's not walking by the Spirit, I can tell you that much. In the fruit of the Spirit, it doesn't talk about insult comedy. That is not a fruit of the Spirit. But my friend came alongside and he said gently, not angrily, he said lovingly, here's some correction.

This is a thing you need to do differently. And it was incredibly humbling. And I asked him later on, may I please share the story? And he said, sure, that's fine. But it was very important that he did that. If he had not addressed it in a biblical way, it wouldn't have been a biblical correction. But he was able to come and see, hey, this is Randy. I do love him. This is Randy. He is trying to be a believer that is abiding, but he is stinking it up over in this corner. And he restored me in that one case, and it was really phenomenal.

I have found that a drawback in my Christian walk. If I start thinking that somehow just because I want to be a perfect Christian that therefore I'm Either I am a false believer, or else I get totally bound up in trying to be that self-effort. And I need to go back to Paul's prayer for believers that that you may grow in grace and knowledge.

Sometimes the lack of a particular part of this fruit of the Spirit is not a deficiency in the sense of not being there at all, but it's something which they haven't matured into so that it shows outwardly. Yeah, the element of the one-on-one abiding relationship is really important. When he says, you will not carry out the desire of the flesh, we tend to think of that as maybe more egregious sins, but really it's if there's a lack of any of the fruit of the Spirit. And I would argue that this list is a short list and not a complete list of all the things that are fruit of the Spirit.

But if we are abiding, the Lord I mean, there's been times when I've had self-control with my mouth, where I know it's the Holy Spirit, because I am a jerk, or I am quick-witted, and I would say the wrong thing, and the Lord would just be really clear, I'm not supposed to say anything. And that I would call the work of the Spirit and miraculous, because it is not of the strength that I had. So one of the things I wanted to draw out before I did the restoration, but I should step back into the walking by the Spirit.

The law, we know everybody here probably has the 613 number memorized, right? We've got 613 laws in the Old Testament. Walking by the Spirit may present new opportunities that the law could never address. For example, technology is not a problem for the Spirit. Technology is a major issue for the law.

We've all heard about things like the elevators that stop in the Jewish neighborhoods. They stop at every floor. all kinds of technological things where, oh, well, cooking is work in the Old Testament, so the fact that you push a button on your stove is still work because it's still cooking. So they have these technological loops that they run through, where if you push certain buttons on the Sabbath on the stove in random order, there's programming inside the stove. that has it turn on to 350 degrees and as long as the food that was in the oven already is still in the oven and you didn't push a specific button to get a specific result then you get the technological result of the oven turning on but without the legalistic approach to that's the law so there and there's all I mean just the list of hoops that have been jumped through by by people trying to comply with the law in the Jewish culture is impressive. If wasteful, but it's at least impressive. But if we walk by the Spirit, the Spirit can deal with technology without any problem. The rabbis are... I read about once a year, there'll be a rabbi that says, don't use the Internet. There's too much sin that can happen on the Internet. Don't use the Internet. We'll just cut off the Internet.

It'll stop being a problem. and then you will satisfy the law and you will be able to have God not be angry at you or something. I can surf the internet by the spirit and that's okay. It sounds funny, but it's okay. It's biblically a sound statement. The technology isn't a problem. Now, if you spend all day looking at lolcats or something like that, and if you don't know what that is, it's just pictures of cats doing silly things, It's a whole website dedicated to cats doing silly things. Maybe that's not an abiding in the spirit, lifelong pursuit, but you can use the technology by the spirit and it's okay. Alright, that is all that I had scheduled to go through. Any other thoughts? Things you wish I had talked about? I mean, I skipped a bunch of verses. I knew I was going to have to do that. Morgan?

Okay, so the fruit of the Spirit is individual, so 16 is to the individual, but 25 is to the to the church as a whole? Well, the idea is that we're walking in unison together, we're abiding. When you come and interact with me, and I'm hangry, you know, that's the new term, I guess, and I haven't had enough food, and I'm grumpy, which would have been last night at about five o'clock, my daughter was trying to make salad for dinner, and she was doing it wrong, and I was all grumpy about it. As Jessica do, step in, step in, because Randy has just lost it. It's been a long day. That's where the restoration comes in.

But as a whole, if we're constantly reminding one another of who we are in Christ, and we're constantly loving one another, and the fruit is part of our daily lives, then that walking in the Spirit together becomes really... the possibility is that it becomes normative. I would hope so, yeah. I haven't lost my temper yet, so yeah, I think we can say that, right? Yeah, you would correctly.

Come alongside. Randy, that is on the internet. Al, did that answer your question? I'm sorry, real quick, did that answer your question? Okay, alright. Well, I was going to piggyback on it as an answer, perhaps. And that is, when we read that list and sort of subconsciously self-examine and say, let's see, love, about halfway there. Patience, well... It's very easy to do a self-examination, self-judgment, a to-do list without meaning to.

And Paul here is not so much telling you Here are things you have to look for in yourself. He's saying, if you let the Spirit work in you and through you and motivate you and help you, these are the kinds of things that will be generated out of your life. And without you working on it, you will find that love and patience and holiness and goodness long suffering, whatever the various things in scripture talk about that the spirit can produce in your life. That these are things that will happen. So we are not called upon as your dad so often mentions in his messages. God's not giving us a list to put on our refrigerator for today I'm going to work on love and tomorrow I'm going to work on humility. it's just telling us that God will produce good things in our life as a fruit of abiding in Him.

He also says apple trees will make apples and grapes, vines will make grapes, so God's Spirit will make these things as natural fruits, you might say, that will walk with Him. That's the best part of the fruit of the Spirit is that it's not from me. It's not the fruit of Randy, it's the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of Randy is very obvious as well, but that's different.

So, let's close in prayer. Next week we get to look at Ephesians, which is one of my all-time favorite books of the Bible. Hopefully it's just as exciting for everybody else, but I can't wait. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just continue to instill in us this week just a reminder of the simplicity and the purity and the liberty that comes with the gospel and we just ask that you would be reminding us constantly of our of our walk with you and our life in you and that you're bearing the fruit and that we would encourage one another and that when opportunities for restoration come that they would be done gently and lovingly and biblically. And we just thank you and praise you for all that you are in our lives and all of our lives that are in you. In Jesus' name, Amen.