Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 6, 2024 | Galatians - Stop Complicating Your Life!

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October 6, 2024 | Galatians - Stop Complicating Your Life! · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing this morning?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see Carrie and Clyde Bolse.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Always good to see somebody come from pagan Florida back to spiritual the spiritual center of the country.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure, but I think Connor's up in my neck of the woods in the Pacific Northwest and uh Washington.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Might not be, but I think he went up there.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh I get uh number six in the Galatians series, and I thanked him last night and said, thanks for giving me the greatest passage of all.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now Galatians does have some, it'll have a lot of meat left on the bone when I'm done this morning, and there are some good, there's some good stuff left.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I get Galatians 2, 15 to 21, and I've entitled it Stop Complicating Your Life.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is what we do, isn't it?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we we fill our lives with clutter, and as a result, we have anxiety.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're always under stress and tension, and uh, and it's it has to do with money, of course, it has to do with our friendships, our relationship, it has to do with uh our job, but it also has to do with uh something deep inside of us.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It has to do with our emotional life, our psychological life, and our spiritual life.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you this morning uh two of the greatest verses in all of the Bible that are in my passage, and both of which, if you understand them and recite them to yourself regularly, use them to preach to yourself.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: They will help you uncomplicate your life.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is a topic, of course, that a lot of people, I decided not to put Taylor Swift's song up, but um, a lot of people have sung about over the years.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is a song from a long time ago, about 50 years ago, my time.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the beginning and end of the kink song complicated life goes like this.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I woke this morning with a pain in my neck, a pain in my heart, and a pain in my chest.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the doctor, and the good doctor said, You gotta slow down your life or you're gonna be dead.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Cut out the struggle and strife.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It only complicates your life.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta get away.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It ends from the complicated life, son.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta get away from the complicated life.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Cut out the struggle and strife.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a complicated life.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you this morning about uncomplicating, uncluttering your life, living more of a simple, relaxed life.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The first of the two verses that will help you do that is Galatians 2.16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the King James Version.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I put that up there because that's the version I grew up knowing.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would list this as one of the hundred most important Bible verses that every leader must know, calling it Uncomplicate Your Life, verse number one, and I have a picture of a 1960 Washington quarter there, because I think that was the year that my father made the best investment of a quarter that perhaps he ever made.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I came in from the barn, I was under 10 years old, and before supper I told Dad that I was out, that I needed to earn money.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we had this practice every night before you could eat, all ten children or whatever, however many there were at that time.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You had to start with the youngest, and everybody had to say a Bible verse, and you know, then we prayed, and then we would dive into the mashed potatoes and whatever.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um so my dad said, Well, if you'll memorize Galatians 2.16, I'll give you a quarter.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It may have actually been a nickel because he was really tight, but a nickel back then would be worth more than a quarter today, so we'll go with a quarter.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a nickel, but anyway, I'm I'm gonna be nice to my dad.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, uh, but uh mom said, You've only got five minutes, because uh Roland, because supper's coming up in five minutes.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into the clothes closet, closed the door, turned on the light, and in five minutes, I looked at that and I thought, this is so unfair, this is so long, a verse.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: But as you can see, it has all of this repetition in it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, memorized it, everybody sat down at the table, I raced out, it was my turn to say a verse.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I recited the verse, said it, dad handed me a quarter.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to myself, I will forget this verse by the end of the psalm, by the end of the meal, and it's fine.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, when you're young, your mind is a remarkable thing, and I have never forgotten that verse, and so I say it's best investment of a quarter my dad ever made.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, the other verse, by the way, that uh will uncomplicate your life is one that you know better, Galatians 2.20.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and read this along with me.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about these verses, and so we'll just go through the passage the way Connor has been.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um I'll tear them apart and put them back together and we can look at them.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully you'll know and love them uh by the end of this service, these two verses, and you'll use them and your life will be better as a result.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: From the Christian Standard Bible, it reads like this We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, which is what, which is what Jewish people always call Gentiles.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They just call them Gentile sinners.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason was because Jews, you know, uh had the law, they had the Mosaic law, and they loved the law.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how I love thy law, David said in the book of Psalms.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the Gentiles, they didn't have law.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were Gentile, they were pagans, so they called them Gentile sinners.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul's about to make an argument that the law is not the way to salvation, even though a lot of Pharisees believe that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he starts off by saying, you know, we're Jews by birth, we're law lovers, not those Gentile scoff laws.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, because we know that a person's not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Christ, even we ourselves, law lovers, have believed in Christ Jesus.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because by the works of the law, no human being will be justified.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: This verse is at the center of the book of Galatians.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is the theme of the book of Galatians.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of good stuff in this book, but this is the theme of the book, and this three times has the word justified.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now you'll notice if you look at this verse closely, that the first part of the verse and the last part of the verse are sort of general.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: A person is not justified by the works of the law.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the verse, by the works of the law, no human being will be justified.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: But in the middle, it gets personal.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that it starts with sort of a general theorem, a general principle, ends that way, but then it applies personally in the middle, and I hope you'll apply it to yourself that way.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the key word, of course, justified, used three times.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a word that we usually use very much.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we use it in a law court or an accountant, might use the word justified, but the word justified here means declared righteous, right with God.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It has the word right in the middle of it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And to justify something like to justify accounts is to make them right, to line them up.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: People say, I want to get right with God.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: What they want is they want to be justified.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: They want God to reckon to account in his books that they are right with God.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is such an important word.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was the word at the heart of the Protestant Reformation.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's sit on it for just a moment, okay?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: For the sake of those of you that would like a little bit more of this.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: 2% of you.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But um, so Jesus used this word when he told a story about a tax collector to his disciples, Jesus said in Luke 18.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The tax collector stood at a distance.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't even look up to heaven.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But he beat his breast and he said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you, this man went home justified before God.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: He contrasts him with the Pharisee who went to the corner and said, Hey, God, I thank you.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not like that tax collector.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Gentile sinner, but you know, I'm, I, I, I keep the law.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, the tax collector who says, Have mercy on me, I'm a sinner, goes home justified before God.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Paul picked that up when he said, the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: His face is credited, his faith is credited as righteousness.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So justification in the Bible, New Testament, is not something that happens to people who keep all Ten Commandments.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's for people who break all Ten Commandments.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Justification means, like read, a person has been acquitted in the courtroom of God only because of the saving work of Jesus.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: We know that a man's not justified, Galatians 2.16, right?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from a Greek concept meaning to declare, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a legal act.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: God pronounces something.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: That a believing sinner has been credited with all virtues of Jesus Christ.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that there's a credit here.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness is the negative aspect, going to take your sins away, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Subtracting human sin, but justification is the positive, the plus side, meaning the addition of divine righteousness.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Terry Bridges, who many of you follow and like, uh, who passed away, was a leader of the navigators, puts it this way in one of his famous books: to be justified means more than to be declared not guilty.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say justified means just as if I'd never sinned.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That just gets you up to zero.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Justified means more than that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Bridges said it actually means to be declared righteous before God.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: It means God has imputed or charged the guilt of our sin to his son, Jesus Christ, and has imputed or credited Christ's righteousness to us, which is why, you see, it's called this called the exchanged life by some people.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: He made him Jesus, who knew no sin to be sinned for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Christ's righteousness comes to me, and my guilt is credited to Christ hanging on the cross.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is a really significant, and I call it the center of the Protestant Reformation, and Martin Luther was at the heart of that, when he realized as a Catholic priest that he had been teaching wrongly, he'd been teaching that justification actually made people righteous, but he realized justification is by faith alone, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that it's only belief in Jesus that makes people worthy before God.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this may be the most important thing for you to notice is the difference between the verb you use.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you use the word declared or made?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Luther saw from Scripture that sinners are declared righteous by God, apart from any of their works, whereas the church in his day taught that sinners are made righteous in actual conduct as they cooperate with God's grace, and therefore they need to keep doing things the rest of their life so they stay in the made righteous category, or else on judgment day they'll go to hell.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see how that would lead to stress and striving and anxiety and effort and fear and insecurity.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why Martin Luther said, Every week I preach justification by faith to my people, because every week they forget it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a world where you are rewarded by how much you do, and we bring that over into the Christian life or into the spiritual life, right?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we say, I have to be, I have to act in a certain way.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So back to the verse, verse 16.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how he says three, how he says three times, not.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're not justified by the works of the law.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: That we might justify faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law, no, he says that three times as well.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then three times as well, he has the flip side.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just faith in Jesus Christ.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Believed in Christ Jesus, faith in Christ.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this repetition makes this verse, you know, complicated, you know, but it also makes it easy to memorize, and it just repeats it three times.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, notice here's another way of dividing up the verse, where on the left side you have works, person's not justified by that, on the right hand side you have faith.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is what separates all of the religions of the world, all of them but one, are on the left hand side with works, and only true Christianity is on the right hand side with faith.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when a person asks this question, how can I get right with God?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then the answer you must give them is believe in God the Son.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: A person justified by faith, the words faith and believe, of course, are exactly the same Greek word, pistis, p-is, t-i-s.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the same word, believe and faith.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So stop complicating your life.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Stop trying to get right with God.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's only when you stop trying to get right with God and look to Jesus Christ and saying, I'm wrong with God, I'm wrong with you, please be my righteousness.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I see you on the cross, I trust your act for my sake.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how you suddenly are relaxed.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of sporting things.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: This would be from Andy Stanley in his wonderful little book, How Good Is Good Enough.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: He writes: smart, educated, accomplished men and women from just about every nation on earth are banking their eternities on a theory that doesn't hold up under even the slightest scrutiny.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's talking about is nobody can do it.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in How Good is Good Enough, he says, you know, the whole world is looking for the right button to push so they can go to heaven.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they get to that button that says, Well, I am above average.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so they push that button and they think that'll do it.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Chuck Swindahl in Grace Awakening puts it this way: you will be granted entrance to heaven because you accepted the free gift of eternal life.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's one and only one password for entering heaven, grace.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're feeling overloaded and overburdened spiritually, maybe you're complicating the way to get right with God.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And don't let anyone else, not your favorite TV preacher who seems like, as to quote Paul in chapter 1 of Galatians, who seems like an angel from heaven, complicate your life and leave you stuck halfway to heaven by overloading you with requirements for getting there.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, that's Galatians 2, 15 and 16.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: That has to do with becoming a Christian.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this passage because now it moves on beyond that and addresses the issue of living as a Christian, which we in this room complicate all the time.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Leading to stress, leading to anxiety, leading to tension, leading to broken relationships with God and man.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses 17 through 19, where Paul continues, but if we ourselves are found to be sinners while seeking to be justified by Christ, is Christ then a promoter of sin?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the question that you often get.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you share with someone, as you've done, as I've done many times, and you share with someone the gospel of grace through faith alone, oftentimes the immediate reply is, well, then I can do anything I want.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or then I can just go commit murder and I'll still go to heaven.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul has to constantly address that.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: He addresses it in Romans after giving the gospel in Romans 6, he addresses it.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now he addresses it really quickly here.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: When he says, you know what?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: What if, you know, I trust by faith in Jesus Christ and then I fall in sin again and so forth, does that mean that Christ is promoting sin?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have eternal life.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to let sinners in heaven.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, No, absolutely not.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Christ isn't promoting sin.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's my fault.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I rebuild those things that I tore down, I show myself to be a lawbreaker.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, notice all the different language, instead of it's not me at all, it's all Christ.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, I am the subject of every sentence, and it's all about my living.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can tell we've moved from what theologians call justification to sanctification.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the borderline is not always this clear in the New Testament.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the difference is basically that justification is judicial, where God declares us righteous, sanctification is moral.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's making us righteous through the rest of our life.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Justification is instantaneous, sanctification is your lifelong pursuit.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Justification is imputed righteousness, that is, you get Christ's.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sanctification is imparted righteousness, your walk, your practice.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Justification is indicative.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: You are justified.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sanctification is imperative.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta act like it, etc.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so and you can see this clearly, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: That this is a sanctification passage because of that last line, so that I might live for God.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see the difference there?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're getting into theology here.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is first year seminary spiritual life theology, but it's really, really critical that you understand this.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, well before most of you were born, we used to sing a chorus, uh, living for Jesus, a life that is true, striving to please him.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I won't do that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And all that I do.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: My life I give it ends henceforth to live, O Christ, for thee alone.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody out there remember that?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, somebody else is in Youth for Christ.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is this.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with that song.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd sing that song in Youth for Christ meeting or whatever.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd go, but I can't do it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I tried last week.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Tried hard, you know, turned over a new leaf.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you've every one of us finds that living the Christian life isn't just hard.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do it.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're constantly failing, constantly losing your temper again, constantly, you know, etc.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why we have this uncomplicating verse, Galatians chapter 2, verse 20.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then I put down there the last verse, I'm not going to get to it, because it goes back to justification, 2.21.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But Galatians 2.20 is about living as a Christian.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I no longer live, but Christ lives.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now notice in this verse, this beautiful verse, that it ends and begins in the past tense.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have been.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or in the King James, I am, but it it's something that happened 2,000 years ago.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you trusted Christ at that moment, you were crucified with Christ.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ, Paul said.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he ends after talking, you know, about how to live now.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: He ends, he loved me and gave himself for me.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That happened 2,000 years ago, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the middle, and let's just stick with the past for a second.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the two great facts there.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me and gave himself for me.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the two great facts is that Christ died for me, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me and gave himself for me, but also I died with him.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: You ever sung that song?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Were you there?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: I bet I was there when they crucified, right?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're going to take the Lord's table today, and that's this fundamental to taking the Lord's table.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you're identifying you were there when they crucified him, he died for me, and I was there with him.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's my past history as a Christian.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: But in the middle, this is all about how to live life.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he says it's no longer I who live, that's present tense.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: But Christ who lives in me, that's present tense.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: The life I now live in the flesh, present tense, I live by faith in the Son of God, that's present tense.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it tells us how to live in the present.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'll do this, it will uncomplicate your.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual life amazingly well, right?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now the problem is a lot of us Christians, we stop with a past tense.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about, you know, I've been crucified with Christ.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: He died for me, and we never move into the in me part of it in the present tense.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: A guy named Larry Crab, a counselor, wrote a book called Inside Out.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether he based it on this verse, but but but too many Christians are living an outside in kind of a life, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: He died for me.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I died with him.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's all outside.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's all 2,000 years, it's all on the cross, right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which is great.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's the foundation of your salvation.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you need to move to an inside-out life where he's living in me and he's living out through me, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole different kind of living.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can almost see it on people's faces and through their eyes.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're no longer trying to live for other people or for the world or for whatever else.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're living an inside-out life.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the important thing about the prepositions here.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Moving from the past to the present.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: From the cross to, oh, isn't that a isn't that a great picture?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I credit all I do for God, this uh you know gold medal uh girl who who lived, clearly lived the life of Christ.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So just to review, you have the question, how can I get right with God?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is believe in God the Son, but now you have the question as a Christian, how can I live the impossible Christian life?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is I let God the Son do it for me.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I live by faith in the Son of God.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, I live inside out.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And again we get to the exchanged life.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and um you'd say that sounds simple.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about this morning, a simple life.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: But too many people don't live the simple life.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: I um by my junior year seminary that asked me to help in the Greek department.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I was co-teaching, you know, some Greek classes, and there was a young, there was a young Greek graduate a year ahead of me, and he'd signed on.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was a professor.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Great guy, John was his name.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um and after a couple years, John quit.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I said, why would you quit being a professor at Dallas Seminary?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, you don't know me very well, but I I just I live an insecure, stress-filled, anxious life where I feel like I'm living by lists and I never get it all done and everything.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, But I just went to a retreat or something where the speaker spoke on Galatians 2.20, and he introduced me to the exchange life.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: He said, and I realized I've been through seminary, got a master's degree, doctor's degree, I'm teaching at seminary, but I'm I'm not living a life that I would wish on any of my students or any of the people at the church I preach at.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I need to quit, and I need to really understand how to live life inside out, and I'm gonna spend the rest of my life teaching people how to do that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when it hit me that there might be more to this familiar verse than I'd ever realized before, and introduced me through a person, uh through my friend John, to the exchange life.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So stop lying.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the second way to stop complicating your life.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Stop trying to live the Christian life.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let Christ do it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's an here's an illustration.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Kifa, um, a Uganda man, a young man with a wife, Panina, and a little girl, Demalia.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this is now 20 years ago.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Idi Amin, incredible tyrant, taking over Uganda, was killing Christians and so forth.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: He had secret police.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: They all came from the Karwa tribe.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: They would wear flowered, flowered clothes and bell bottoms and sunglasses, and they were just killing thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they'd heard that Keepa was a Christian, so they came in to kill him.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he's written the story in his book, A Distant Grief, which has been turned into a movie.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he says five of them came into the building where I was.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't at home, and they pointed their guns at me and they said, uh, said their he said their faces are just just distorted by rage and anger.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the leader said, uh, we're gonna kill you.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to beg for your life or say anything, do it now before we shoot.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, and Kiva said, um, he said, their guns are pointed at me, and my knees gave way, and I began to shake.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I he said quickly, I thought, they don't need to kill me.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to fall over dead anyway.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna see Panina or my little girl again.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And but he said, somehow I heard a voice, and it was my voice.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I said, um, I'm not gonna beg for my life.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm a dead man already.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: My life is dead and hidden with Christ.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's your lives that are in danger because you are dead in your sins.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray to God that after you kill me, he will spare you from eternal destruction.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, something in the something in the leader's face changed.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being twisted with anger, it was now full of curiosity.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Would you pray for us now?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yes.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I'm gonna pray to the Heavenly Father, to God, and so you need to bow your heads and close your eyes.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, So the leader motioned to his men to put down their guns and to bow their heads and close their eyes.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Keefe says, I kept my eyes open because I didn't trust them and I didn't want to die with my eyes closed.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said, I prayed a very short prayer.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed, God, you have forgiven many men in the past.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive these men now.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do not send them to eternal destruction, but bring them to yourself.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, That's all I prayed.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a prayer I could hardly control my voice.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was so full of fear, and I looked up.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, their faces had changed, and the leader was quiet for a while and then said, Um, you have helped us.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to kill you.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we'll protect you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: We'll tell the these were these were assassin squads sent all over Uganda, martyring, killing Christians, and others.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We'll tell them to spare your life.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be okay.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that night um uh Kifah said after they left, you know, he said, I made my way home, and he said, it struck me that for the first time I could, I felt like I could really identify with Paul, and so out loud I recited Galatians 2.20.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: The life I now live in the flesh, in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it, uh, young Kiva went on to start a church in the captive city of Yukonda.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing is those five men were so struck by meeting him and so forth, they came to that church and they became believers.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful story uh in that book.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a story, it's a story built around um Kiefa's understanding that he was not the person that he used to be, that he, in a sense, no longer lived.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he lived, but but it was Christ who lived in him and through him.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um another story, a Luis Plough.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I maybe the reason, much of the reason Glacier 220 is my favorite verse is because it's Luis Plough's verse.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Once uh a number of years ago, when the largest churches in town were well under a thousand people, our church, TBC, and Fairlone Heights Westland, which is now Grace Point.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Tom Cannan, the pastor there, was my best friend.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um so we talked a lot, and we decided to bring Luis Palau to Topeka and to Kansas State and KU and so forth.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we planned for a year, and we did bring him in to Topeka, spoke at the Expo Center, which is pretty new then, and uh to those campuses and so forth.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: But but I had known uh the reason we picked Luis is I'd known him when I was a kid.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: He'd gone up to my dad's school uh when he was young.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: He met his met his wife Pat up at Mallam School of the Bible and would come over and eat at our house and taught me how to how to do a yo-yo.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um so we've uh Mel and I have supported him, his organization.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: He just passed away of cancer, but we supported his organization all these years.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but he loved Galatians 2.20.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh he's called the Billy Graham of South America, spoken to 25 million people in 70 countries over the years.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: His ministry got its jumpstart through Billy Graham, his friend.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But Luis Plough loved Galatians 2.20 when he came to town to talk to our pastors and so forth.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about Galatians 2.20.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what he would say.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 2.20 tells me that as long as I am alive, the Lord Jesus Christ himself lives in me.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, any demand made upon me is a demand made upon the one who lives in me.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever temptation attacks, whatever challenge I face, it's not I, but Christ living in me who faces that challenge.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who meets that temptation?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: The exchange life.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: One last story.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry Escazeiro, her husband, and she had started a really hot fast-going church in New York City.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I helped start, it was an incredible experience.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: But can I be honest with you?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: As great as that experience was, there came a time when it was just plain exhausting because, like a lot of well-intentioned, passionate people, my relationship with Jesus started to revolve around a whole lot of work.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus invited me into the Christian life to enjoy a rich banquet at his table.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it often felt like I was a galley slave, laboring to serve everyone at the feast instead of enjoying it myself.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one day she walked into her husband's pastor's study, her husband's study, and started off by saying, I quit.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how that went over, but uh it's a great story, and some of us need to quit, right?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: First, do you know how to get right with God?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is it's not by works, it's by faith.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Stop complicating it.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to live now as a Christian?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's an impossible life to live.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't live it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not by self, but by faith, letting Christ live through you.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stop complicating it.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and then uh celebrate our own funerals.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the chance to take the Lord's table, especially as we've been talking about your death for us, our death with you, and the resulting life that you now live through us.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: See us, hear our prayers, smell our worship.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, now, as we obey your Son and sit at the Lord's table.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.