Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Galatians: A Grace-full Life

God's Amazing Grace!

Sermon Series: Galatians: A Grace-full Life

Title: : God's Amazing Grace  Text: Galatians 1:1-5

Introduction: Christian author, Phillip Yancy, wrote of a prostitute who was down and out in Chicago. She was asked if she had ever thought about going to church. Shockingly, she replied ‘Church! Why would I ever go there? I already feel terrible about myself. That would just make me feel worse.’

 

Unfortunately that’s a pretty accurate picture of how many people see the church. Why? Perhaps because of people like the one I read about whose church was too crowded for her liking on Christmas.

 

Read: Newspaper article

 

ILL: Chuck Swindoll once said ‘Knowing grace is one thing, living it, is another.’ I believe he had something there.

 

Background

For the Christian, Paul’s letter to the Galatians ranks as one of the most significant, one of the most powerful, one of the most challenging truths in all of God’s Word. Galatians shouts to the Christian...

·       You are free!

·       You are free from bondage to the Law.

·       You are free from the tyranny of constantly trying to earn God’s favor!

·       You are free!

 

Be all too often we take our freedom fro granted. You may not be aware of it but because of the book of Galatians

·       Christians can eat ham and bacon.

·       Christians can wear clothes that are made from more than one kind of material.

·       Christians can use any pot in their kitchen to cook with.

Check out the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy to see what I’m talking about.

 

Galatians is a book of freedom...it’s a book of grace.

·       If you are struggling with religious legalism,

·       If you lack power to resist sin,

·       If you feel condemned and guilty,

·       If you don’t feel forgiven,

then I have good news for you. The Book of Galatians can change you life.

Need an example? I’ll give you two.

·       The Protestant Reformation which changed the lives of millions came about because Martin Luther let the words of the Book of Galatians touch his heart.

·       When John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, read Martin Luther’s commentary on the Book of Galatians, he found peace in his heart, and salvation, even though he was already an Anglican priest.

That’s changed lives!

 

Transition: Open your Bibles to Galatians 1:1 (pg. 886 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you) For it’s there we’ll take a journey that will reveal to us God’s Amazing Grace.

 

I. Galatians 1:1-2        Paul’s Authority

Read: Galatians 1:1-2

Paul begins his letter to the churches in Galatia by stating his apostleship....particularly that he was not made an apostle by letters of reference from other churches, but by God Himself.

This is important for two reasons:

 

·       First, because we will see next week that some people came from the churches in Israel, with letters in their hands to lend authority to what they were saying. They told the Christians in the Galatian churches that they had to follow the Law of Moses if they wanted to be True Christians. Paul was saying, their authority came from man, but his authority comes from God.

·       Second, Paul’s apostleship coming from God meant he represented God and therefore his words were in fact God’s Words. That means when you read the Book of Galatians you are reading God’s Word, to you...the very highest authority on how to live the Christian life.

 

Transition: Paul’s letter begins by stating his authority, as God’s representative. Next, he reminds them of the Good News, of life, in Jesus Christ....A life based not on our works or efforts to please God, but on God’s grace showered upon His children.

 

II. Galatians 1: 1:3-5            Paul’s Address

Read: Galatians 1:3-5

Grace

Grace...the chief characteristic of grace...is that it is undeserved. Paul used the word grace over 100 times in his letters. In the rest of the New Testament the word grace is only found 55 times.

 

In my mind. that makes Paul the apostle of grace.. Perhaps because he personally experienced God’s undeserved favor, time and time again in his life. Paul also spoke about grace so much because he  knew that the greatest danger to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of grace, is the idea that:

·       before God can forgive, we must do something

·       before God will bless, we must work to please Him.

 

Notice that Grace is the first word in his address to the Galatian Christians. It is the most important word, the Best word we can hear. Because....the Christian life, is all about God’s grace...

·       showered upon us by God Himself,

·       and shared by us with others.

 

Understanding and living, covered by God’s grace, leads to peace.

 

Peace

Perhaps the greatest longing in the human heart, is peace. We call out to God for peace so that we might be free from: the tension, anxiety and sense of failure that’s both

·       external to us brought on by the world around us

·       and internal brought on by our own thoughts and actions.

 

Peace, flows to us by God the Father and Jesus, God the Son, Paul tells us. But for us to know peace, we must first live by recognizing and experiencing God’s grace on a daily basis....that’s why Paul puts grace before peace.

 

Rescue

Why can we experience grace and peace from God? Because Jesus gave himself for us, to rescue us from the bondage of sin and death, in the evil time we live in.

·       God’s Word says we were enemies of God because of our sin and the only thing we deserved from God was His wrath.

·       But God’s love showed great grace in rescuing us, the underserved, from an eternity in Hell, the just punishment for our sin.

 

 

The very essence of the Gospel, of the Christian message, as we will see in the Book of Galatians, is that we can’t do anything to better our standing with God...ever...not at salvation, not after salvation, not ever. We are saved by grace and we live, everyday, by that very same grace.

 

ILL: I will occasionally play games on my computer. I especially like 1st person RPG ‘s where the plot is good defeating evil. But often as I play the game, evil sometimes wins and I am killed in the game. The great thing about the RPG’s is that the game can always restore you...in other words, you can always start over again after you failed to defeat the evil you were facing.

 

That’s grace! We get to start over when we fail, We get to start over when we sin...grace! God’s amazing grace! And that’s why we give Him and Him alone, the glory.

 

Glory

Glory completes the cycle of Grace and Peace.

·       Glory to God is not just the praise that comes from our mouths proclaiming God’s goodness in our lives.

·       Glory to God is a life lived in His grace and marked by His peace.

 

Conclusion         GRACE

In his book, ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace’ author Phillip Yancy says that part of the problem we have with living by grace is the nature of grace itself...he says it’s scandalous. Grace, God’s graces is really quite shocking in what it offers.

 

Grace teaches us that God does for others, what we would never do for them. We would seek out the not so bad people to bring them to church to meet Jesus...but God starts with the prostitute and goes down from there.

 

Yancy says that grace costs everything to the giver, but nothing to the receiver...and we have problems with that. Let me illustrate with a parable from God’s Word.

Read: Matthew 20:1-15

 

Bottom Line:

·       The people who worked longer complained that the other workers shouldn’t get the same pay as them. After all vineyard work is hard and those who work harder and longer

     should get more.

·       The Landowner replied that they agreed to the amount they were paid so what business is it of theirs what he chooses to pay his other workers. Who are they to question his generosity?

 

The story is about God’s grace.

 

Grace, if truly understood, has an edge to it. It is challenging and can often be disturbing...especially when we are the ones who work so hard for so long only to see God bless someone who we feel just doesn’t match up to us.

 

Like the workers in verse 10, we often demand grace from God when we work hard for Him or when we see others who don’t work as hard be blessed from God.

 

Listen...God’s grace...is a gift. It’s a gift we need because the Christian life is impossible to live without it.

 

Read: E-mail

 

 

·       Do you need a fresh start?

·       Do you need a new beginning?

 

You can have one!! Hold out your empty hands to God and ask Him to fill them with His grace...you will not be turned away.

 

Grace! Shout it. Sing it. Share it. And above all else, believe it.

 

And live...by God’s Amazing Grace!