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We’re studying in the book of Galatians, so you take your Bible and you open it up to the book of Galatians. This is a very interesting portion of scripture. All of it’s interesting, but this year, portion really kind of is hard to grind on, you know, trying to chew. There’s a few statements in here that makes it very, I guess, kind of hard to explain. But that’s okay, we’re going to give it a stab, and if we come out all right, well fine, if we don’t, well, y’all keep studying this.

Remember, when you go to the Bible, Always go with an attitude to listen and to learn. As much as possible, to set aside any of your preconceived ideas or notions that sometimes we want to simply use the scriptures to verify what we believe or what we think, and it may not be true at all. So then we begin to manipulate the scriptures to make it say what we want. But if we could take our little brain and set it aside and only approach it, let God say what He says and then just believe it.

We would come out with so many more jewels, I believe. But here in the book of Galatians I’ll have to admit, there are a few places here that kind of gives me, it’s like chewing on a gristle. You just can’t get it all the way through, you know, and you just know on it. But hopefully we can explain a few of these things and it’ll make some sense to you. Look at Galatians in chapter 5, Galatians chapter 5. He says, Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty, where would Christ has made us free?

Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Be whole, I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. Protestify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole loan. Christ has become of no effect unto you, whosoever you are justified by the law, you are fallen from grace. Are we through the spirit? Wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision of a letting me think or on circumcision, but faith with which a work is by love.

You did run well. Who did hinder you? That you should not obey the truth. Now in this little portion of scripture you have to tie to the side. Are we talking here about the lost man? Are we talking about the saved man? We talk about how a Christian at Paul said he led him to the Lord To believe that they are saved and they have a problem with Understanding salvation or is it the Christian life that they’re having trouble with and He says you did run well, but now you’re not running like you used to is because they Don’t understand how to serve the Lord What is the problem?

What is the solution? Now, a little bit further on in the chapter, it talks about the two natures. See there in verse 16, look at verse 16. He says, this I say then, walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So in this verse, when he says this I say then. So this is referring to the old birth and the new birth. the old nature, the new nature, is talking about how Christian is supposed to live, understanding the flesh and understanding the spirit.

But this portion of scripture follows what we just read. And what we just read talks about falling from grace. Now is it the lost man who rejects salvation by grace? Or is it the Christian who rejectsmination by grace? Well, it’s interesting both ways. Because if a man believes that you’re saved by your works, then Christ profits nothing. If you believe you have to keep the works or the works of the law, well retaliation for a lost man, it’s impossible.gars do ye any good?

And so if you look there in the last part of verse 2, Christ shall profit you nothing. And then if a man does want to keep the law to be saved, well how much of the law must he keep? Well verse 3 says, he is a debtor to do how much of the DISTRICT. The WHO lawiew. So if a lost man is seeking to be saved, well then the scripture is still clear that you cannot save yourself. And if you put yourself under the law to say, I’ve got to live in such a correlative deserve, regardless of whatever those laws may be.

A man made laws or the God given laws, but if you put yourself under the law, then you’ve got to keep all the law.sych. And then how much of the law? All of it? For how long? Wherever. All your life. And so that’s why he says in chapter three, in verse 10 for you that want to keep the law, he says you’re under a curse. For a curse it is the man that continues not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

And it wouldn’t limit itself just to the moral law of the 10 commandments but the ceremonial laws and the sacrificial laws. Boy, you really got your hands full. How do you separate all that stuff? So then that means you got to go back to your heaven, study all the law and fulfill it all perfectly. Well, if it’s for salvation, we know what that is false. Is that what these Galatians were not believing? Or did they believe that they had now, once they were saved, they had to keep their salvation by keeping the law?

You know, now I’ve got to do this in order to keep my salvation. Well, if you do that, then what you’re saying is you’re not yet saved. So I’ve got to do this in order to be saved. So what you’re saying is I am not yet saved. Well then that doesn’t make any sense. So there’s people that were becoming troubled in their mind because he says in chapter one and verse six, he says, I marvel that you’re so soon removed from him.

They called you into the grace of Christ into another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that would trouble you and pervert how to change the gospel of Christ. This is the though man preach unto you any other gospel even on angel, letting be a curse separate yourself from anybody that teaches any other message other than the salvation by grace and grace alone. So the Christians, people that knew the Lord, were getting messed up. And so some were thinking that they had to keep now the ceremonial laws.

They had to do the sacrificial laws. They had to do the moral laws. They had to be circumcised to be saved because in 1st the book of Acts in chapter 15 says this is what they were told. So now they’re getting all of that. So Paul says here if you are seeking to be saved, look they’re in verse 4, Christ has become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law or you’re seeking to be justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace.”

Now, is the lost man who sets grace aside and can’t be saved? Or if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ died in vain. So, the lost man can’t be saved by keeping the law, but neither can the Christian stay saved by keeping the law. Because, see, if you put a lost man under that and say, this is what the lost man has to do. And then you say, well, for those who trust Christ is Savior, now you’re saved by grace, but you’re now under the law and Christ will give you the strength and the grace to keep the law, to help you perform for the rest of your life.

And there’s a multitude of churches that teach that. So they believe that the lost man has to keep the law and now they say, and that you’re saved by grace, but you gotta keep the law to stay saved. And if you don’t live it, then you lose it. Or as the sign, you never had it to begin with. And all that is in error. None of it’s true. You’re saved by grace, and you and I are supposed to live by grace.

Remember this. A good way to understand him. The lost man in the flesh. God gave the law. The law was to govern the lost man, the man in the flesh. To restrict him from doing what he would normally just do according to his old sinful nature. So there’s consequences. And those consequences like being stoned to death might keep you from doing something you shouldn’t do. But when you remove the consequences, then what to constrain the old nature of man.

So that’s why in our world today, we have people that are passing laws to remove the restraints, the consequences of doing it, not your fault. It’s a society’s fault. Society is the reason why you’re the way you are. So we’re just going to set you free, but in setting you free, they have only made you a slave. But people can’t get it. They don’t understand so look what he says here. He says in verse Or ye are fallen from grace If it’s talking about a lost man a man reject salvation By grace remember I use an illustration.

There’s the water pipe brings the water or by Grace the water pipe or you saved it brings the water and And so when you believe on Jesus Christ, see, you get the water, but it’s by grace. You reject the water pipe by grace, you can’t get the water. So there’s people are trying to save themselves by their works. That won’t work. So the believer, when he is saved, he is no longer under the curse of the law on the lost man.

And that’s because the lost man died. You see, when you die, the law can’t touch you. Law cannot condemn a dead man. So when you believe Christ died and was buried and rose again for you, then you died and you were buried and you came back from the dead. So God sees you as a new person, a person who has already died and paid for your sins. The law can’t touch you. You’re free from the law. Now you’re a child of God and you’ve been raised to walk in newness of life.

Now this is how God wants us to live. We should live as though we don’t even have a sinful nature. We should live like, there’s only the Lord and I’m a child of God and my new birth and that’s what I want. But see, if I didn’t have an old sinful nature, I would automatically serve the Lord because I loved him. But I wouldn’t love the world. I wouldn’t love the flesh. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, wouldn’t be a problem to me, because see, I would only have a new birth, and it has no corruptible seed.

And so therefore I would just naturally serve. But see, in reality, even though judicially, this is true, I still have this old man, and he just follows me everywhere I go, and he never leaves me alone. And so what I have to do is realize the new person is not under the law. The law was called the flesh, the first birth. Christ says, I am now under the law of love. I serve the Lord. I do whatever I do because I love the Lord.

And so I live and serve by grace. God bestowed his love upon me. That was by grace. So now as a child of God he wants me to live this way. But if I as a child of God put myself back under the law, then what I’m saying is that I have chosen to live in the flesh.

And to live in the flesh is to be under the condemnation of the law. So he says, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. You’ve been set free from it. Don’t go back under it. Mean don’t walk in the flesh. When you walk in the flesh, you placed yourself back under the law. See, that’s never been changed except judicially when Christ died and paid for your sins. But you see, God did not destroy the law, people fail the law.

And so that’s why he says in verse 16, there is this choice that you and I have. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Verse 16 is the answer to verse 1. When it says, stand faster for in the liberty where with Christ has made us free, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage, mean for you and I not to place ourselves back under the law. And how do you do that?

By choosing to live in the flesh. Where it is I, me, my, I will perform, I can do this. And we don’t walk and trust the Lord to work through us. You’d be surprised how much we can do if we just yeet. to the Lord and let God do things. But we’re always trying to sometimes manipulate God and it won’t work. So when he talks to the Christian, can a Christian fall from grace as a principle by which to live?

Yes, he can. I can reject the love of God to motivate me to serve him. And I can choose that I can do whatever I want according to how I think and place myself under the laws so I can live according to my own rules and regulations. You’d be surprised how many people will tell you. You serve God your way and I’ll serve God my way. But their way isn’t God’s way. But in their mind their way of living is they approved it.

It’s acceptable to them. Therefore, get off my back, leave me alone. I just don’t live like you do. And I don’t believe exactly like you do. Oh, wait, wait, wait a minute. If I’m doing it God’s way and you’re doing it God’s way, how come we can’t agree? Somebody’s not doing it God’s way. And so you have a battle that goes on in your Christian life. So the lost man can reject salvation by grace. Christian because this verse is here to the believer in falling from grace and If a Christian rejects living for the Lord Because he loves the Lord Then he’s going to find himself Yielding to the flesh and when you yield to the flesh there’s going to be certain consequences in your life So what Paul said he says he did run well Well, you knew this, you understood that you ran well.

But what happened? Where is this joy, this happiness? Where’s this blessedness that you spake of? Well, some Judaizers came down here and told us that we have to do this and we have to do that. See, now, instead of coming to church because you love the Lord, you come to church because you have to. For example, let me give you an idea. We just finished vacation Bible school, right? I tried to do my dead level best not to make anybody do anything, but I tried to create an environment where everybody wanted to do something.

Now that’s between them and God whether or not their motives is pure, right? I can’t judge people’s motives. I don’t know. I gave up on that long time ago. But I was very pleased with how they yielded themselves. Those that worked in the kitchen, those that helped put up the wall pictures and all that stuff and those that built a country store and all the items that had to be done, somebody had to get the hay and then we had our wonderful beautiful magnificent Firehouse Five.

Did I make you come every night? Jim, did I make you do that? Yeah, I had to make him do it. Why did he do it? Because he wanted to. I mean, Why did anybody do anything? Why did the teacher do it? The team captains who we had, I didn’t make anybody do anything because they want to. It’s a lot better way to serve the Lord. So a lot better way to live than trying to make people do things.

I can’t, and I don’t even try to make anybody do anything anymore. It just don’t work. It puts pressure on a person, then they do it just to please you. All I’m saying is you love the Lord, get involved, do something. And I think we had more people involved had kids, I don’t know. But on the last night, I think we had between 130, 140, something like that. It was in there somewhere in that arrangement. We didn’t have any count.

We did the night before and it was about 133. And I think we had more of the last night. But it was good in well-attentant. And whether or not it’s just like Mary Ann over here working on the sound system and then Lee gets ready to do his thing and scaring all of us half the death with it. But you know, but everybody has a job and some people were just kind of watching the park and lot making sure nobody came in here and you know getting harmed anybody and things like that.

But all the different people. It’s a lot easier and a lot better when people just love the Lord and everybody gets along. There’s always a few little bumps in the road but that’s because we’ve got no sinful nature and we don’t think of everything, we don’t work out everything in advance and we had to deal with some problems as they come up. You can’t always figure out everything that’s going to happen. I wasn’t even sure how anything was going to happen.

Just do it. Just do it. We got camp coming up now. That’s our next big thing. And I thought, I’m going to have to transport the whole five house five over there. Who’s going to be in your car? I don’t know. I don’t care. We’ll work it out as we go. You see, that’s called faith. You can just trust the Lord with it down there. And don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about things. He says, that got anything to do with what we’re talking about, everything.

This is what he’s talking about. Or you can just, just trust the Lord. God, God’s in charge. And you just learn how to walk with the Lord. See, there’s probably times in your life when you did run well. As you’ve been times in your life when you didn’t run so good. And the problems of life, and it seems like somebody just stuck a the cog in the wheel, won’t roll. Well sometimes the transmission gets shot and they just don’t want to shift gears like we used to and we get older.

Whenever I was singing some of the songs in here for the adults, I put them in the kid D. But we had all the kids in here. What kid did I put it in? G-V. It’s a little bit higher. I can do them a little bit faster and it’s a little bit better for the kids, but as you get older, your voice gets lower. So I’ve learned how to adjust. That’s what a transmission does in your car, to adjust.

And as times in your Christian, you’ve got to learn how to adjust according to the speed. You can’t always go the same speed all the time. Otherwise you’ll wear yourself out and you can’t do it. Learn how to do what you can do and learn how to trust the Lord and go with it. Now when he says here, you’re fallen from grace, you have rejected grace as a principle by which the serve the Lord. You see grace look up here.

The flesh, the lost man under the law, the new birth under Christ, law of love. This is because of what he hath done for me. this is because of what I have to do. And so this is done and this is what I got to do. This is all based upon what Christ did. This is based upon what I got to do. And see, you’ll fail. You’ll get burned out. This is burned out. I got a guy that just emailed me.

He’s ready to commit suicide. He’s burned out. I’ve known him for about 35 years. And then on top of that, when I got a phone call from another guy who’s going through it and he used the same word, I’m burnout. He’s something thinking about the commit. So just in one week, two people, I let him both through the Lord years ago. Sometimes I wonder if they were my converts or gods, but people don’t learn how to just walk with the Lord and trust him.

They placed themselves back under the law. start making unwise decision, walking and living in the place. And whenever you do that, you get all tangled up in your mind. Get all balled up. And that’s why he says, be not entangled again with this yoke of bondage. It’s so much freedom to know that I can just, I can trust the Lord for anything and everything. I don’t have to see how God’s going to work everything out. He don’t have to explain anything to me.

I used to think God owes me an explanation. I always say, why? Why? Why? Why? I have an inquiry in my mind. I want to know why you owe me. Of course, that shut up. Have you ever told your kids, you just do it because I’m dead. I said so. Sometimes God says, because I said so. I gave you my word. You see, we think God has to explain everything to us before we obey Him. That dog won’t hunt.

Now look what he says. In verse 7, you did run well. Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth or to keep running well? Remember, all of God’s children would keep running well if they didn’t listen to something that causes them not to run well. There’s something wrong in a person’s theology. You got to learn what the word of God says and believe it and hang on to it and just don’t move. So he says, this persuasion come up not of him that called you.

In other words, this isn’t from God. God didn’t tell you to do this. God didn’t put you back under the law. God says, my yoke is easy. So so hard to serve the Lord. Well, what yoke you got on? You got either a yoke, go iron or his yoke is easy so you can put your yoke of iron on and say it’s just so burdensome you don’t want to live like that that’s why she says don’t get entangled with that And the way you get entangled with the law is trying to be happy, to be pleased, to be blessed by walking in the flesh.

So that’s why he says in verse 16, this I say then, that word then you ought to underline it because it refers to what’s written before this. Talking to the believer. Is verse one talking to the believer? Yes. Is verse 16 talking to the believer? Yes. So then chances are what’s written before it is talking to the believer. And then he talks about the battle that goes on in the flesh and the spirit. In verse 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

But look up here very quickly in verse 9. A little 11th, 11th, the whole lump. Now we know that when you add just one word to the gospel, it destroys the gospel of grace. True? What if you added a little 11 and 11 is a type of what in the Bible? Sin. That’s why whenever we have communion we have unleavened bread so that there’s no yeast in it so that it doesn’t rise because that takes time. They had unleavened bread because of the immediate preparation to leave.

That’s why it was unleavened. They didn’t want to take time for anything to rise so they had to eat it without yeast and yeast with a type of sin. It says a little leaven leaven at the whole lump. Now it’s also mentioned in the book of Corinthians in chapter 5 about this word leaven and about the Passover. But what about in a Christian’s life? Let’s just suppose that you tolerate just a little sin in your life. much just a little bit.

Is it possible that just a little bit of leaven in your life accepted? Can it permeate your whole life? Sooner or later that one little gate you left open, you’re gonna lose the whole herd. You can lose all of your virtue, all your character through one little gate not guarded. So for a Christian, should you guard every area of your life? every area. What about your thought life? What about music that you listen to? Movies that you watch. Is it true you got to watch everything?

I mean they don’t take much. Here he makes a statement. In verse 10 I have confidence in you. So he said over there in chapter 4 he says I stand in doubt of you. Let’s Christ be formed in you again. Then up there in verse 11 of chapter 4 he says I’m afraid unless I have bestowed upon you labor in vain because they were not maturing in the Lord like they should. Now whether he questioned their salvation or not, I don’t know.

He might have, I don’t know. But I do believe that it’s written to those that he believes were believers. And he says, I have confidence in you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded. In the Lord, he says, when I sit you straight on this, I expect you’re going to listen to what I’m telling you. that you’re going to make whatever adjustments you meet. I’ve got confidence in you. That’s why I’m telling you this. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr.

Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771. 771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage.

If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold.

Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. we will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, and just keep looking up.