Glory to God for Salvation! (Galatians 1:18-24)

Live video and notes for my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for September 5, 2021.

The preaching text was Galatians 1:18-24. This message especially focused on v24.

Acts 9:19b-30 was also read during worship, for context.

Live link is below. Sermon notes below that. Soli Deo Gloria!

There are no little people in God’s family

We must remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight, there are no little people, and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God’s place for us, at each moment. (Francis Schaeffer)

In God’s eyes, no believer—not one son or daughter—is less important than another one. Every saved Christian is holy to God, and our lives are a story He has written.

Moment by moment—wherever we are—those who love God, and are called according to His purpose, are living through God working all things together for our good.

There are no little people in God’s family, and no little places. No little cracks we can fall through, and be lost.

I want to remind you of that at the beginning of the message today, because we’re still in the middle of Paul telling his story.

It’s tempting to hear about Paul’s dramatic conversion, from the church’s greatest foe, to her dearest friend and advocate. To hear all the things that Paul did and all that he went through for the sake of Christ and the Gospel, and to put him on a pedestal.

Paul would not want you to do that. If he were with us today, I’m positive he’d be glorifying God for saving him, and saving you—not posing as the model for a SuperChristian. 

He’d be pointing us toward heaven—not himself.

He’d be telling us to focus on God the Father, who loved us and sent His Son to die for us. He’d be telling us to rest in Christ’s finished work to save us. And he’d remind us to be patient with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, making us more and more holy.

And he’d say: You’re all so precious to God. Learn to love each other well, because you all matter to God.

Paul’s story: They glorified God in me (Galatians 1:18-24)

Paul was sharing his own story in theses verses. Not to put the spotlight on himself, but to defend the Gospel he preached. The very same Gospel that had saved him.

Because troublemakers had come along behind Paul, and had sown weeds of confusion and chaos in some of the churches he had planted. 

They accused Paul of watering down the truth, of not preaching the full Gospel. They said: If you follow Paul’s message, you may not actually be saved.

So in our text today, Galatians 1:18-24, Paul was talking about the early days of his ministry. After Jesus transformed him from an enemy of the church to an evangelist for Christ, Paul went and preached for three years in Arabia. 

Then after those three years, Paul says, I went up to Jerusalem. The birthplace of the church. 

Paul went there to visit Cephas—that’s another name for the Apostle Peter—and remained with him fifteen days.

While he was in Jerusalem, Paul says, I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.

But Paul didn’t just go to Peter’s house for a two-week vacation. 

We heard from Acts 9 today that the whole time Paul was in Jerusalem, he was preaching the Gospel, and publicly debating enemies of the Gospel—and he was winning.

The point of these verses in Galatians is that Paul went to Jerusalem and met with Peter—one of Jesus’ hand-picked original Twelve Apostles—and James, who was Christ’s brother. They accepted Paul, and from Acts we know they heard what he was preaching and teaching. 

So there was no discrepancy between Paul’s message, and what the other apostles were preaching. 

He’s telling the story to shut down the people who told the Galatians that Paul was preaching a deficient Gospel. 

Now, here’s where I really want to focus on today.

After Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, word started to get out among all the Christians in Jerusalem and Judea, v23: “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 

And when they heard the joyful news that their old enemy was now one of them, Paul said: they glorified God because of me.

And that’s what I really want to drill down on today, v24. When Paul said: And they glorified God because of me.

That one verse is just a hidden treasure.

Here’s why. I think most of us hear this, and if we think about this verse at all, it’s just: Well, of course they glorified God because Paul converted, and was preaching the Gospel, instead of trying to destroy it!

They were glorifying God because of the great miracle He’d worked in Paul’s life. Right?

I’m sure they were. 

But remember what I told you last week: God didn’t have to perform a greater miracle to save Paul than He did to save anyone! Even you and me.

Ephesians 2:1-5. Again. It says we were dead in [our] transgressions and sins. Dead. Helpless. Unable to respond to God with faith.

That’s the bad news. And it’s the same news for everybody.

But then vv4-5 cracks open that fire hydrant full of sweet, refreshing Gospel: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

Every believer is equally a miracle! Paul, you, me—God had to perform the same resurrection on every one of us.

They glorified God because of Paul. And we should glorify God for our own salvation, and glorify God for one another.

Ps. 3:8 says: Salvation belongs to the Lord. So He gets all the glory, every time anyone is saved.

Why we should glorify God for salvation

Look around this room full of believers. In God’s eyes, there’s no little person here. Every Christian here is equally eternally beloved and chosen by God. Every Christian here was equally lost, and has been equally found. 

We’re all equally known and called by God. Equally holy and precious in God’s eyes. 

We were all once equally dead, but by God’s grace, in Christ we’ve all been made equally alive in Christ, and are moving moment after moment closer to the same eternal life.

Francis Schaeffer told us we must remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight, there are no little people. Not in this church!

But in case you’re ever tempted to forget, here’s four good reasons why we can always glorify God—for our own salvation, and for one another. [1]

• You matter to God

You matter to God. I matter to God. All these people in the seats around you matter to God.

God is not a distant God. He’s not an absentee Father. Acts 17:27 says he is not far from any one of us.

One of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible is Psalm 8. Because it teaches us that we matter to God.

The Psalmist once looked up at the clear night sky—at the moon and the stars, the constellations dancing across the heavens as the seasons change.

And surrounded by the vast expanse of the universe, he called out to God: what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:4)

In other words: Lord, how is it that we rebellious little specks of dust matter so much to you?

God is never too busy to hear your prayers. He’s never not paying attention to His children.

Humans beings matter to God because every human is made in God’s image and likeness. But He has a special love for His sons and daughters by faith.

You matter to God. You’re not an accident. God has an eternal purpose for you. Ephesians 1:4-5 says God chose [you and me] in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. 

God personally knew you and He loved you and me, so in love he predestined us for adoption [as sons and daughters] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

Human beings—you, me—are so important to God that He sent His own Son to live and die for us, to redeem us from judgment and death. Even though in our fallen condition, in our sin, we really are basically balls of mud and rebellion.

God sent Jesus to redeem a people for Himself, a great multitude that no one [can] count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, Rev. 7:9.

And He set His love on you to be one of that great multitude.

You matter to God. So does every other believer. Don’t ever forget that. Glorify God, because you matter! Glorify God, because we matter!

• You are important.

Not only do you matter to God, you’re important to God. 

Not only did God choose to save you for His own purposes and glory—what you do is important to God.

Listen to what Ephesians 2:10 tells every believer: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

When it says that God prepared good works for you to do ahead of time, that literally means He planned your life before there even was time. Before the creation of the world, God predestined and prepared specific good works for you to do. 

And then He called you to faith in Christ, made you alive with Christ, created you anew in Christ, and filled you with His own Holy Spirit—so you would be able to do the specific good works He has planned for you.

So you’re important to God. He’s woven your life into His purposes. Every believer is important to God, and God has given you important work to do—for His glory, according to His will, and by His power. 

Philippians 2:13 says God is always working in you and in me, and in every believer, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

So we should glorify God for including us in His eternal plan. And we should glorify God for the good works He is doing and will continue to do through us, and through every believer we know.

• Our heavenly Father knows you by name.

When God called you to Himself, He didn’t just say: Hey you! Get over here!

Instead, God say: I have called you by name … Because you are precious in my eyes … and I love you (Isa. 43:1, 4).

God knew you and me—personally, and in intimate detail, before we were even born. 

The Psalmist says: all my days were written in your book and planned

before a single one of them began, Psalm 139:16.

God knows your name. He knows you inside and out—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And still, He says: child, you are precious in my eyes. You are my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased. 

God not only knows your story—God wrote your story! He’s even got the number of hairs on your head written down somewhere.

You are not a number or a statistic to God. You are a real person, a precious son or daughter, with a name.

So we should glorify God, because He has called us by name to faith in Christ. Every believer here was once dead in our sin, but God called us to eternal life in Christ. 

We were like Lazarus in the tomb—dead and already stinking. When Christ called Lazarus back from the dead, He said: “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43). He called Lazarus from death to life by name. And He did the same for each one of us.

• Jesus was thinking of you when He hung on the cross

Jesus didn’t die for a faceless mass of humanity. He knew exactly who He was dying for. He knew the name of everyone who would come to faith in Him.

How do we know that’s true? Because Jesus said so. In John 10:14, Jesus Himself said: I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.

Jesus knows you. He knew you from eternity. He is the Good Shepherd, who came to rescue you, and gather you safely to Himself. And like every good shepherd, Jesus calls his own sheep by name (John 10:3).

Our Good Shepherd, who knows His sheep, and calls us by name, also said: I lay down my life for the sheep, John 10:13.

In other words, He knew exactly who you were, by name, when He suffered and died for you on the cross. He laid down His life for you and for me, and everyone who has faith in Him—and He wasn’t just granting a blanket amnesty. He gave His life, personally, for His sheep, who He knows by name.

Jesus knew you, by name, and was thinking of you and loving you—in particular—when He died.

And He will never forget you. He holds up his nail-scarred hands, and promises: See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands (Isa. 49:16).

So give glory to God for your salvation, my salvation—and the salvation of every person here. Not one of us is a Christian by accident. Jesus died with you and me and every believer throughout the ages on His mind. Not a faceless crowd of people who might someday believe in Him. No—He knew exactly who He was dying for.

You might be tempted to say, either: I’m too big of a screw up; or, I’m so boring. I’m not gifted like Paul or the other apostles, or even other really faithful people in this church. Are you really sure He wanted me? I’m not worth it!

Well, it’s not really about if you’re worthy or not. No one is. 

That’s why it’s so awesome that our salvation, our righteousness before God, and our assurance of eternal life don’t come from anything about us.

Not anything we’ve done, or will do. And not anything we have to offer.

It’s all because—for God’s purposes, by His good pleasure, and for His glory—you and I mattered to God. He decided we were important to Him. He called us by name. And He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us personally.

That’s the same Gospel that saved Paul. It’s the same Gospel that Paul preached. It was the Gospel He was willing to fight over, and even the hill he was willing to die on.

It’s the same Gospel that saved you and me. It’s the Gospel I preach, and will continue to preach as long as I have breath in my lungs. This Good News is the hill where I have planted my flag, and it’s the hill I’m willing to die on.

How to Glorify God for Salvation

We heard today that when the Christians Paul used to persecute found out he’d stopped fighting them, and had become a Christian himself—that they glorified God because of him.

But we can and should glorify God because anyone is saved. 

One way you can glorify God for your own salvation is to believe his promises. He has promised that Christ is able to save completely those who come to God through him, Hebrews 7:25. He has promised that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1:6.

You glorify God when you say, Amen, Lord!, to His promises, and rest in them. 

And we can glorify God for each other’s salvation by how we love and honor one another. Rom. 12:10 tells us to: Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.

Sometimes your brothers and sisters will step on your toes, frustrate you, hurt you, and get on your ever last nerve. 

It is then you really must remember that they matter to God, they’re just as important to our heavenly Father as you are; that He called them to Himself by name, just as He did for you; and that their face was etched into Jesus’ mind as He hung on the cross—just as yours was. Their names are engraved on the palms of His hands just as deeply and clearly as yours is.

In the church, there really are no little people. No insignificant people. No useless people. There are only sons and daughters that God the Father has adopted in love. We all matter to Him. We’re all known by name. Jesus died for us all personally. 

So let us glorify God for our salvation. For your salvation, and mine. Remembering that the goodness and mercy of Christ are moment by moment, day by day, chasing us home to our Father, where we will enjoy him, together, forever!

[1] These four reasons were inspired by a social media post from Chad Bird. My favorite books by Chad are Upside Down Spirituality: The Nine Essential Failures of a Faithful Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019); and Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). Chad’s work will nourish and be a healing balm to your soul. You can also follow Chad’s podcast, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, at the 1517 Network.

From enemy to evangelist (Galatians 1:13-17)

Live video and notes for my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for August 29, 2021.

The preaching text was Galatians 1:13-17. For context, Acts 22:3-21 was also read during worship.

Link to video below. Sermon notes below that.

Soli Deo Gloria!

St. Paul the bully?

We’ve all dealt with bullies in our lives. On the streets, in your workplace, sadly—sometimes you even find them in church.

But most of us remember the bullies we knew in school. 

When I was growing up, there was a certain kind of bully who was worse than all the rest. 

They were the ones who came from wealthy or well-connected families in town. They were sometimes the teacher’s pet. They were very often on the honor roll. He may have been the captain of a sports team. She may have been the captain of the debate team.

People would often look the other way when they picked on you. In fact, sometimes you would swear that the worse they were to other people, the more they were rewarded.

In our reading today, the Apostle Paul confessed that he was once that kind of bully. 

Yes. This man, chosen by God, called by the risen Christ to be an apostle. This man who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote a third of the New Testament—the Apostle Paul was once the worst kind of bully.

That doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d become a great preacher and missionary in the church, does it?

And that’s actually the point Paul was making in our text today. 

Paul’s story, and why it matters

You see, there were people who were trying to discredit Paul’s message. And one of the tactics they used was accusing him of changing the Gospel, and teaching a different message than what Christ had preached.

[By the way—you’ll still hear people doing that today. Trying to drive a wedge between the message of Christ, and what Paul taught. So that’s nothing new.]

So beginning with these verses, and going all the way to the end of ch2, Paul’s going to defend his Gospel and his ministry. And he’s going to do that by telling his own story.

In our passage today, Paul’s going to say: The Gospel I preach is the same good news that saved me. He’s going to tell how Christ first gave him grace and peace, when he had absolutely not earned it, and certainly didn’t deserve it.

In other letter, Paul summed up his life under the Gospel like this: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them, 1 Tim. 1:15.

The same Gospel Paul preached is what transformed him from being a great enemy of Christ and His church; to being perhaps the greatest evangelist the church has ever known.

So here’s Paul’s story—in his own words.

Beginning at Gal. 1:13. Paul says:

For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.

Notice that he’s reminding the Galatians here. You know how I used to be. I used to bully Christians, and persecute them. I was an enemy of Christ, His church, and the Gospel. 

Paul first appears in our Bibles in Acts 7. He was a young man, and back then he was called Saul. Saul was running with a mob who attacked a Christian man named Stephen, and murdered him out in the streets. 

Those violent men had given young Saul their jackets to hold while they attacked Stephen.

And the bloodshed that day gave Saul a taste for destroying believers. 

You know what they did to Saul for his part in Stephen’s murder? They gave him a promotion.

Acts 8:3 tells us that, from that day forward, he began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

Later on, Paul testified that, as young man called Saul, he had persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, Acts 22:4.

We heard that in our other readings today. Let me break down what it means when it said he’d persecuted Christians to their death. 

It means that, when they went up on trial—Paul had voted for them to be executed for their faith in Christ.

Paul, who began as a human coat rack for the angry mob who murdered Stephen in the streets; graduated to sitting on the council that sentenced Christians to death.

He wasn’t punished for being a bully and a persecutor. He was rewarded for it.

St. Paul joins The Breakfast Club

Listen to v14:

I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

Paul’s career was advancing, along with his social status. He was upwardly mobile. People looked at him and said: That boy’s going places!

You see, Paul already had quite a pedigree. 

If you piece together Paul’s story from his letters, and the book of Acts, what you learn is that Paul came from a wealthy and influential family.

And we also heard in our readings today—Acts 22:3—that Paul had studied under the Rabbi Gamaliel. That name probably means nothing to you, but Gamaliel was considered the greatest legal scholar of his day.

I’m telling you all that to help paint the picture of who Paul was. He was a rich kid, from an important family, with a law degree from an Ivy League university. Paul was somebody. 

And the more he went after Christians and tried to destroy the church—the more popular and famous he became.

Notice what else he said: Back then, he said, I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 

It’s interesting that right here he says he was fighting for the traditions of his fathers—in other words, his people, his nation.  

You know what it kind of reminds me of? That classic ‘80s movie, The Breakfast Club.

Where you have all these high school kids stuck in detention on a Saturday.

I’m serious. Hear me out on this. If you remember the film—back when he was a young man called Saul—Paul would have fit right in with the other kids in The Breakfast Club.

Because they were also acting out based on what their parents and peers thought was important.

Brian, the nerd, was contemplating suicide because he grades weren’t living up to his father’s expectations. Claire, the rich girl, skipped school under peer pressure. Andy, the jock, was there for bullying a classmate. Then you had Bender, the delinquent from an abusive family. And Allison—who acts our because her parents ignore and neglect her.

Back when he was a young man named Saul, out bullying Christians and trying to tear down the church, he was just like the kids from The Breakfast Club. 

He couldn’t think for himself because he was so busy acting out a script his family, his peers, even his ancestors had written for him.

The only difference is, instead of getting detention for it—he got a gold star.

How Christ transformed Paul from enemy to evangelist

What would it take to completely transform a man like this from the church’s greatest antagonist, to her greatest advocate?

It would take a miracle. And it did take a miracle.

Paul tells us all about the miracle that changed his life in v15:

But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach him among the Gentiles …

I said this last week, I’ll say it again: But God—those are the two sweetest words in all of scripture!

Those words are always going to be followed up by some wonderful news.

Paul is saying: I was a bully. I harassed Christians and did everything I could to destroy the church. And that’s exactly what I would’ve kept on doing … but God had another plan for me!

And by the way, God’s other plan for Paul wasn’t a Plan B. Paul said God had set him apart even before he was born! 

If you read Paul’s other letters, you’ll see that God’s plan to save sinners goes even further back than that. Eph. 1:4 says God chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

Paul’s story shows us something wonderful. Nothing is going to hinder or hamper God’s plan when God has set His love on you.Not even your own resistance or rebellion. God’s eternal will is infinitely stronger than yours.

Because next Paul says that God called me by his grace. For Paul,it wasn’t a weak call, in a still small voice.

The risen Jesus Himself confronted Paul. Saul, Saul—why are you persecuting me? He knocked Paul blind with his glory. 

Why? To show Paul how blind he’d been to God, to the truth, and to his own sin all those years. When those scales fell off Paul’s eyes three days later—Paul could see clearly for the very first time in his life!

But here’s what I want you to understand. Maybe—in His grace—God called you through the example of your parents, by someone inviting you to church, or through the words of a preacher. 

Just because He didn’t open up the heavens and blind you with His glory and call you out by name—He still called you by His powerful grace.

However God saved you, didn’t you feel the pull of grace that you couldn’t resist? That you didn’t even want to resist?

That’s what Paul describes next. Notice the words. Paul didn’t just say that God revealed Jesus to him. He says God was pleased to reveal his Son in me.

What does that mean? To reveal Jesus in you?

It means that God calls us both by the Word and the Spirit. God calls us outwardly, when we hear His word proclaimed. But He also calls us inwardly—inside us, by the Holy Spirit. 

Paul was called outwardly by the risen Jesus speaking to him directly. But the usual way we hear outward call of the Gospel, is when someone preaches it to us from the scriptures.

But the inward calling a miracle God works in us, by His Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul meant when He said God revealed Christ in him. God doesn’t just reveal Christ to us—outwardly. God also reveals Christ inwardly to us, and makes our hearts able to believe the Gospel. 

That inward call is the miracle. Ezekiel 36:26, God says: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Naturally our hearts are like stone. Dead to God, unable to respond to His call.

If you’re a believer, the only reason that you came to saving faith is that the Holy Spirit replaced your cold, dead, stony heart, with a new, living heart of flesh. A heart that could be broken by your sin, a heart that wants to embrace Christ in faith, and believe in His promises.

It’s just as great of a miracle when anyone is saved—whether it’s you or me, or a persecutor like Paul. 

God’s plan for Paul was to send him out to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. So what did Paul do immediately after he came to faith?

Vv16-17. Paul said: 

my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.

Paul didn’t go and immediately sign up for the new members class at church. He didn’t ask anybody if he was ready yet to proclaim the Gospel. 

Even as a newborn Christian, Paul did exactly what God had chosen him to do from his mother’s womb.

Paul went straight to Arabia, and began preaching the Gospel to the nations.

So let’s sum it all up. People had come behind Paul and accused him of changing the Gospel.

But Paul said: No, I did not change the Gospel—the Gospel changed me!

By God’s grace and God’s power alone, in Christ alone, for God’s glory alone—God transformed Paul from the church’s greatest adversary, to her most loyal ally and advocate.

The same Gospel that transformed Paul can transform you

Paul was saved by the same Gospel he preached. He had received grace and peace from God, through Jesus Christ, who died for his sin, to rescue him—according to the will of God the Father. 

Maybe you’ve noticed that, as I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into the message, I’ve made it less and less about about Paul and more and more about us.

That’s because the same Gospel that Paul preached, the same Gospel Paul fought for—the same Gospel that saved Paul also saves you and me!

The Gospel is for you. It’s good news for you. It’s grace and peace from God the Father, through our faithful Savior Jesus Christ, for you!

You might think your conversion story isn’t as extreme as Paul’s. After all, you weren’t a blasphemer and a violent bully hunting down Christians.

But listen—before God saved you, you were just as much an enemy of God as Paul was. But God set His saving love on you, before you even knew you needed saving. While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, Rom. 5:10.

God didn’t have to perform a smaller miracle to save you than He did to save Paul. Listen to the miracle God performs for every person who comes to faith: But God—my two favorite words again—being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, Eph. 2:4-5.

Paul wasn’t more dead in his sins and trespasses then you were in yours. You weren’t less dead in your sin than Paul was. There aren’t different levels of dead. Dead is dead.

God didn’t have to work any harder to make Paul alive in Christ. And God didn’t have to do any less work to make you alive in Christ. 

If you are a believer, God has performed a resurrection on you. Not a bodily resurrection—that won’t happen until Christ returns. But an inward resurrection.

God breathed His own Holy Spirit into you to resurrect your dead heart of stone, and replace it with a living heart of flesh. God has already begun the work of resurrection in you, from the inside out. 

That’s why 2 Cor. 5:17 says: if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. God has already crucified the old sinful you with Christ, and buried your life in Christ. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, Col. 3:3.

God has made you new, and will keep working to renew you for the rest of your days. 

The power of the Gospel transforms enemies of God into evangelists for God. That’s not just Paul’s story. That’s your story, and my story.

2 Cor. 5:19 tells us that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. You were God’s enemy. He has granted you peace with Him, through Christ. And now you get to go out and share the good news with others, so that they can also receive grace and peace from God.

And you don’t even have to know a whole lot to be an evangelist. 

Remember—Paul went straight out as a newborn baby in Christ, and began to preach the Gospel. As smart and well-educated as he was, I’m sure he didn’t have it all figured out yet.

You don’t have to, either. Even if all you can say is: I have found peace and rest in Jesus Christ—even if that’s all you know—that’s enough good news to share.

Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. As we enjoy the rest we find in Christ, we can immediately glorify God, by telling our story, and leading others to also find grace and peace and rest in Christ.

The Gospel is not a human message (Galatians 1:11-12)

Live video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for August 22, 2021.

The text was Galatians 1:11-12.

John 1:11-13 and Romans 9:14-16 were also read during worship.

This message owes a great debt to John Fonville’s sermon, Not Man’s Gospel, Part 2, Paramount Church; Jacksonville, FL: April 10, 2016.

Main resources I’m using for this series:

J.V. Fesko, Galatians, The Lectio Continue Expository Commentary on the New Testament, ed. John D. Payne (Powder Springs, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2012).

Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535): Lecture Notes Transcribed by Students and Presented in Today’s English, trans. Haroldo Camacho (Irvine, CA: 1517 Press, 2018).

Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2005).

The livestream link is below. Sermon notes are below that.

Paul’s counter-argument: The Gospel is not Man’s Message

Martin Luther once wrote: 

How easy it is to cause horrible and infinite loss through one single argument! One single argument that removes God’s grace can pierce and demoralize someone’s conscience. In an instant, people can lose all the peace they ever had.

That’s what had happened to the Christians in Galatia. They were not firmly rooted in their faith. So when outsiders came and told them: You are not real Christians unless you get circumcised and follow Jewish customs, it robbed them of their assurance of good-standing before God. 

That’s why Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians. To get them back firmly planted in the Gospel, to fix their eyes once again on Christ alone. To remind them of grace, and give them back their peace.

Last week, v10: The false teachers accused him of being a people-pleaser who watered down the truth to gain more converts

In vv11-12, Paul launches into his counter-argument the charges that he’s preaching a made-up Gospel. 

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Throwing shade at the false teachers who had stolen the Galatians’ peace: I don’t know where those guys learned whatever they taught you, but I got what I teach directly from the risen Jesus Himself

[Warning: A lot of teachers and so-called apostles today claim they get revelations directly from Jesus. But when you listen to them, nothing they’re claiming jives with the Bible. 

Hearing a new word from Christ might sound exciting. But when we get bored with the word of God as He’s preserved it for us in scripture—that’s when we surely lose our grip on Christ and the Gospel.

God uses the His Word in scripture to create faith in us—by the Holy Spirit. And by His same word and Spirit, He strengthens our faith, He grows our faith, and He perfects our faith in greater knowledge and wisdom.]

So Paul was advancing his counter-argument against the false teachers.

The main idea of Paul’s argument here: the gospel I preached is not of human origin. [ESV says it’s not man’s gospel; KJV says not after man] 

That is, there’s nothing characteristically human about it. In other words—not only is Paul saying he didn’t get the Gospel from himself or any other human teacher; but that no human being would ever come up with a teaching like this.

That’s an argument that’s built to strengthen the peace and assurance of believers—not to tear it down, like the false teachers had done.

Six proofs that the Gospel is not of human origin [Credit John Fonville]

1. It’s not a human-centered message. 

The central idea of the Gospel is justification. That’s a legal word that means a person is declared not guilty.

And the core teaching of the Gospel is simply this: that God justifies the ungodly, Rom 4:5.

In other words, God declares that ungodly, unrighteous people are righteous in His sight—based solely on our faith in what Jesus Christ has done. 

Human judges in court of law do not look at guilty criminals and say: I know the Law condemns you, but I declare you righteous.

In fact, Prov. 17:5 says: He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

But Christ—the Righteous One—lived a perfect life on our behalf, and willingly gave Himself on the cross to suffer the condemnation we deserve.

Why? So that it wouldn’t be an abomination—there would be no miscarriage of justice—when God declares you righteous in His sight, through faith in Christ.

That’s not a human-centered message. That’s not a message that exalts man. The Gospel gives us humility—not pride.

Because it says: There is nothing you could do to make yourself righteous before God. Christ did all the work so God could declare you righteous, and pardon all your sin. The Gospel never says: Up with people! It always says: Up with Christ!

2. Grace is not natural for humans.

Look back at v3: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace means unmerited favor. It means it’s a gift, a freely given gift. You don’t do anything to earn it.

And that doesn’t come naturally to us. Because in our experience—that’s not the way the world works.

[Grace is not a participation trophy. Because a participation trophy is based on nothing. God’s grace to us is based on Christ’s obedience, and self-sacrifice. There’s an objective basis outside of us. It’s more like Jesus won a gold medal, and He shares His prize with all His brothers and sisters by faith.]

But grace doesn’t come naturally to us. Every other religion or philosophy in the world—whether it’s Islam, or Mormonism, or the self-help gurus—it always comes down to what you earn or accomplish through your efforts. 

Earning comes naturally to us. That’s the reality of the world we live in from birth. You earn your grades. You earn your spot on the team. You earn your money. 

But your right-standing before God has to be earned by someone else—Jesus Christ—and given to you as a gift.

The Gospel is an outpouring of God’s grace. And grace isn’t: God helps those who help themselves. Grace is: God helps those who can’t help themselves. And good news—that’s everybody in this room.

How helpless are we to save ourselves? Eph. 2:1-5 says we were born dead in the trespasses and sins … But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

That’s how the Bible defines grace. It’s not even that you were sinking in the ocean of sin, you were about to go under the third time, but Jesus threw you a life-preserver and you grabbed it and he pulled you safely to shore.

It’s that you were dead—drowned—and Christ jumped into the water and pulled you out and breathed you back to life. Why? Because God loved you.

That’s grace. And it doesn’t puff us up with pride. It deflates all of our pride. It doesn’t stroke our egos. It kills them. 

So the Gospel is not of human origin. We’d find a way to make ourselves the heroes—or at the very least, make it so we could take some credit for grabbing the life preserver.

3. The center of the Gospel is a crucified and resurrected Christ.

That’s not a story a human would write!

[Somebody’ll say: Well, what about Harry Potter? In Book 7, he died and came back from the dead!

First of all—where do you think J.K. Rowling got that idea?

Second—all the other books focused on how Harry was The Boy Who Lived

We prefer to worship strong heroes who don’t die]

What did Paul say in 1 Corinthians 1:23? but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

Paul’s basically saying: The very idea of a crucified Savior is hateful and offensive to everyone!

Our natural instinct is to follow heroes who are crushing it—not heroes who get crushed

It’s the same with resurrection. 

After Paul finished preaching his famous sermon to all the philosophers and wise men in Athens, Acts 17:32 says: When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered.

Listen, all those people believed some version of good people go to heaven when they die. But what they did not believe in—and what you can’t get most people to believe today, either—is that God would physically, bodily resurrect a dead person 

In other words: the Gospel is not a story we would write. 

A human would invent a Gospel where the Son of God comes and destroys all the wicked and cleans up the environment and we all live happily ever after.

It would not be a story of a shameful death, followed by a resurrection—but He only reveals Himself to women and fisherman and a bunch of nobodies.

So this is not man’s Gospel—like Paul said.

4. The Gospel is what rescues us from exactly what comes most naturally to us!

Look back at v4. Why does it say Jesus died? It says He gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.

What do you think of when you read this present evil age? You probably think: This world of sin and selfishness and suffering and wickedness and injustice and death.

And that’s true. But it’s only part of the truth.

The truth is, this reason this present age is so evil is because ever since Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and ate the fruit, we human beings are addicted to being our own Saviors.

And this present, evil age is the result of billions of people, addicted to being our own Savior and Lord.

What was it the serpent told Eve? Gen. 3:5: you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

The world we live in is an evil place because in our sin and rebellion, we have wanted to be our own Savior, our own God—deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil. My body, my choice, right? Love is love, right?

Humans are born addicted to that. Our flesh craves control, our intellects crave the right to define goodness and evil, and our egos crave being the Batman in our own story—or at least Robin.

And just like you can’t reason an addict out of his addiction; you can’t punish an addict out of her addiction—because their minds, their bodies, their hearts, and their wills are all under the power of it—somebody has to intervene on the addict’s behalf. 

In the same way, God had to intervene in Christ, in His death and resurrection, by His grace, through the gift of faith—to save humans from our sin. 

5. Gospel is not of human origin because The Gospel was entirely God’s idea

Look at the end of v4.

Paul says that the Gospel—sending Christ to pardon and rescue us from sin—all happened according to the will of our God and Father.

You didn’t decide to save yourself. Your salvation doesn’t depend on a decision you made.

John 1:13 tells us that we have not been saved by the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Again, Rom. 9:16—Paul says that our salvation does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy.

In other words: None of this was man-made. None of this was anybody’s idea but God’s.

By the way, once you realize that everything about your salvation is God’s will, God’s idea, God’s plan, and God’s work—through Christ, by the Holy Spirit—that just demolishes all self-righteousness. 

Even when you find yourself growing in faith and repentance and good works—you humbly remember that it’s God working in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose, Philippians 2:13. 

6. The Gospel leads us to glorify God and enjoy Him forever

Look at v5. Paul gets so emotional, so enraptured by the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that he just melts into the praise of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

A man-made, man-centered Gospel wouldn’t lead us back to God. It would have us looking to our own efforts, our own fulfillment, and our own achievements. A man-made, man-centered Gospel would be all about how to win your best life now.

See—if humans came up with a Gospel, we would want to grab at least some of the glory for ourselves. A human-centered Gospel always has God as your co-pilot, and you in the driver’s seat.

But God declares: I will not give my glory to another, Isa. 42:8. From Genesis to Revelation, the Gospel message has always been the same: Salvation belongs to the Lord, Ps. 3:8.

Somebody who really gets the Gospel—before they tell you anything else, anything to do anything—is always going to point you to Christ’s finished work, to the Spirit’s ongoing work, to Christ interceding for you right now before our Father, and to the Father’s infinite, eternal love for His sons and daughters.

Yes—they’re absolutely going to give you wise counsel from God’s word. But they’re going to give it to you, sandwiched between two thick slices of Gospel.

And I’m not just talking about getting you to believe at the beginning. I mean every time you’re struggling with sin or heartache or whatever—they’re always going to give you the Gospel. Every time.

This is not a man-centered message. Ours is not a human-centered faith.

The Law of God condemns all of our goodness, all of our righteousness, all of our accomplishments, all of our efforts, all of our wisdom, and all of our reason. 

God’s Law says: It will never be enough, and besides—it’s all stained with sin.

Jonathan Edwards: You contribute nothing to your salvation but the sin that made it necessary.

Because where the Law of God condemns us, the Gospel comes and proclaims: All goodness, all righteousness, all justice, all holiness, all wisdom, and every good work—God freely gives in Christ Jesus, through faith, to whomever believes in Him.

Conclusion: Why you should believe the Gospel

So there’s really only two questions to ask yourself today. The first is: Do I believe that?—and if not, why not?

And second: Why should I believe it?

And the simple answer is—again—what Paul said in v11: because the gospel … is not of human origin. 

You should believe it because it didn’t come from man, it’s not focused on humans, it’s not a step-by-step list of solutions for you to do, it’s not a ladder you climb rung-by-rung to perfection. It’s not about self-help or self-improvement.

It comes from God. It comes from the Father, through Christ the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

You should believe it because you’ve tried all the other ways. You’ve tried it your way, in your strength, with your best thinking and best efforts. 

You’ve tried it their way—maybe you’ve consulted the self-help guides, the positivity gurus, the horoscopes, the books that tell you to wash your face and stop apologizing. 

And maybe you felt inspired, maybe you decided—This time things are going to be different! But it wasn’t long before your realized, No—I’m still me.

Because those are all man-made, man-centered counterfeit Gospels. They didn’t come from God, and they are not the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.

Maybe you’ve even been a believer for a long time. But you look at your life, your struggles, how you keep falling short—and you wonder: Am I even really saved?

And you’re rededicated your life to the Lord so many times. And you’ve said: This time, I really am going to surrender.

But a few weeks or days or even hours later—you find that the fire of your zeal has grown cold again.

And so—in those cold, dark moments—maybe you’ve asked yourself: Why should I even believe this?

You should believe the Gospel because it’s God’s promise. 

You see, humans take back their promises. We don’t follow through on our best intentions. We back out when it gets too hard.

But God proclaims: my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways (Isaiah 55:8).

Our problem is that we often think God is like us. That He will cast us away because we fail Him so much. After all, we’d do that to someone who kept failing us.

But God’s ways aren’t our ways. He who began a good work in you has promised to bring it to completion when Christ returns, Phil. 1:6. 

Here’s where a lot of us get stuck. We base our assurance that we are saved and right with God based on a decision we made, or our level of commitment.

But your choice and commitment are not the Gospel. That’s not what saves you. 

The Gospel is grace and peace—peace with God, peace in yourself, no matter how you’re doing or feeling right now—from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for your sins, who rescued you from the present evil age—all according to the will of God.

God chose you in love, knowing exactly who and what you were. Christ died for your sins before you were even born. He was raised to life before you knew you were dead in your sins and needed His life. In Christ, you are forgiven before you even know you need forgiveness. Which is awesome, because as dark as the sins you struggle with are—there’s sin in you that you don’t even know about yet.

And don’t say: My faith is too weak! If you believe in Christ to save you—no matter how small your faith is right now—God has given you enough faith. It says you are saved by grace through faith—it never tells you how much faith. Like the old Puritans used to say: Even a weak faith can grab hold of a strong Christ.

So believe the Gospel. Because it’s God’s promise. Because the promise is sealed in Christ’s own blood, and guaranteed by His finished work.

Jesus calls—Matt. 11:28: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. By faith, you can rest in Him. You can take refuge in God’s promises, and you can rest in Christ’s finished work.

That’s why Paul—why God speaking through Paul, and by the weakness of my preaching—we all want you to know that this is not a human message we’re preaching to you.

It’s God’s promise and God’s power unto salvation, for all who believe.

And for that, may we glorify God, and enjoy Him—now and forever.

Freedom from people-pleasing (Galatians 1:10)

Video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for August 15, 2021.

We’re continuing our series through Galatians.

Text was Galatians 1:10.

Video link embedded below.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Gospel = Jesus + Nothing Else (Galatians 1:7b-9)

Video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for August 8, 2021. We’re continuing our series in Galatians.

The text was Galatians 1:7b-9.

A different Gospel? (Galatians 1:6-7)

Live video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for August 1, 2021.

I’m currently preaching through Galatians. This message was on Galatians 1:6-7. Portions of Acts 15 were also read during worship to give context to the problem at Galatia.

Paul begins with the Gospel (Galatians 1:1-5)

Live video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for July 25, 2021.

The text for the message was Galatians 1:1-5.

Resources I’m using for this series:

J.V. Fesko, Galatians, The Lectio Continue Expository Commentary on the New Testament, ed. John D. Payne (Powder Springs, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2012).

Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535): Lecture Notes Transcribed by Students and Presented in Today’s English, trans. Haroldo Camacho (Irvine, CA: 1517 Press, 2018).

Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2005).

Live video embedded below.

What was going on in Galatia?

Live video of my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for July 18, 2021.

This message began a new series in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. This served as an introduction to the circumstances and themes of the letter.

Resources I’m using for this series:

J.V. Fesko, Galatians, The Lectio Continue Expository Commentary on the New Testament, ed. John D. Payne (Powder Springs, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2012).

Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535): Lecture Notes Transcribed by Students and Presented in Today’s English, trans. Haroldo Camacho (Irvine, CA: 1517 Press, 2018).

Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2005).

This message also draws extensively from Trevin Wax, Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope (Chicago: Moody, 2011), 11-13, 44-61.

Live video link below. No notes this week.

Blessed are the pure in heart (Matthew 5:8)

After taking a sabbatical from preaching during the month of June, I returned to the pulpit to finish a mini-series from the Beatitudes, The Upside Down Kingdom.

The text was Matthew 5:8: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Other scriptures read during worship were Jeremiah 17:9-10; Psalm 51:10-12; and Ezekiel 36:26-27.

This sermon owes much to the chapter, “Go Home, Heart, You’re Drunk: The Failure to Follow our Hearts,” by Chad Bird, from his book, Upside-Down Spirituality: The 9 Essential Failures of a Faithful Life, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019 (65-84).

Live video link embedded below. Sermon notes are below that.

Intro

Text: Matt. 5:8: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Three questions this text raises I want to answer today:

1. What is my heart?
2. How pure does my heart need to be?
3. How can I get a pure heart?

What is my heart?

Before we can understand who Jesus is blessing, and what He’s blessing, we need to clarify what we even mean when we talk about our hearts. 

Because he obviously doesn’t mean that muscle in your chest that’s pumping blood through your body. But it’s also not the same heart that you hear about in pop songs on the radio.

In the Bible, your heart is who you are, at very core of your being.

As a face is reflected in water,

    so the heart reflects the real person. (Prov. 27:19)

It’s the totality of your emotions, your intellect, and your will.

It’s a single word that sums up what you feel, what you fear, what you desire, and what you think.

Bible doesn’t make the distinction we do between what you feel in your heart, and what you think or know in your head. It involves both.

See, in modern times, we redefined the heart. And we’ve downgraded it.

When we talk about our hearts, we no longer mean this rich word that sums up all of our inner life.

When we talk about our hearts, we mean the sentimental Hallmark version.

It’s the part of us that gets broken in a breakup.

It’s the thing Disney movies are always badgering us to follow.

It’s the part of us that marketing gurus have figured out how to manipulate us by tugging on our heart-strings. 

Like—Glade can’t just tell you why their scented candles are the best. They have to go and hit you right in the feels by showing you a lonely old man at Christmas or something.

They’ve got to pull on your heart like a leash, so you’ll follow your heart to Walmart and buy their candles.

See, what we’ve done is we’ve taken this rich, luxurious word, heart, that used to mean the totality of our inner nature, and we’ve boiled it down to just one aspect of who we are: our emotions.

The modern idea of the heart is little more than a lava lamp, with blobs of our feelings and our moods free-floating in it.

And yet—the popular songs on the radio, the Hallmark cards, the romantic comedies, the well-meaning cheerleaders of our lives are always telling us to just follow your heart.

But think about that lava lamp with its swirling orbs of emotions. Why would anyone want to follow that?

It’s fine, I guess, to follow your heart when it’s leading you to treat yourself to some Crumbl Cookie.

But why would you weigh matters of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s true and what’s a lie, matters of life and death—on the unstable scales of pure emotion?

Don’t you see, that’s really what you’re doing if you just follow your heart.

Most of you know my two year old son, Auggie. He’s a lovely child.

But when we go out, he sits strapped in a stroller that one of his parents has control of. Why? Because otherwise, he would run all over the store, making a mess, getting lost, and terrifying other customers with his fearless antics.

Now see, that’s what comes natural to him. But as his parents, we don’t slavishly follow him and obey his toddler whims.

Because Auggie is moody. He’s undisciplined. He doesn’t care if he gets dirty or gross. He doesn’t see danger or fear consequences. 

Just following your heart wherever it leads you is terrible advice! You might as well be letting Auggie lead you.

And listen up—this is equally true however you define your heart. 

Whether you just mean your emotional life, or you mean all of your inner life—including your thoughts and your reasoning and your will.

Our own minds play games with us, don’t they?

Our logic is easily bent towards selfish solutions.

Our moods are unstable as quicksilver.

Listen, very last thing you should be doing is journeying through life with your heart in the driver’s seat. 

You should say: Somebody take the keys away from my heart! She’s drunk!

We hear Jesus that the pure in heart will see God, and I think most of us would like to believe our hearts are pure.

Or they could be pure, if we worked at it.

Or at the very least—that our hearts are in the right place.

How pure does my heart need to be?

We like to imagine that as wild and unpredictable as our hearts can be—they’re still mostly pure.

But as soon you admit that your heart is so moody and undisciplined, that raises our second big question:

How pure does my heart need to be so I can see God?

How much will I have to clean up my heart so that I can glorify and enjoy God forever in eternity?

That’s what we really want to know, isn’t it?

When Jesus says that only the pure in heart will see God, we want to know how pureis pure enough, and how much work it will take.

Now, here’s what you need to understand.

We’re not asking: How pure is pure enough by my own standards? 

And we’re also not asking: How pure is pure enough for other people?

Ultimately, only God’s judgments matter here. We can learn to clean up the surface of our lives. We can even make the outside squeaky clean. 

We can learn to do good things, and say the right things, in the proper tone of voice, with the right expression on our face.

But when it comes to whose heart is pure enough for heaven, God says: I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve (Jer. 17:10).

God’s the one who peers into our inner life, with a holy, penetrating gaze. He knows all the nooks and crannies of the heart. He’s going to search through the basement and in the attic, in the crawl spaces, and under the couch cushions.

God’s white-glove inspection of the purity of your heart is the only one that counts for eternity. So we need to listen to God’s thoughts on the matter.

So: What does God say about our hearts?

Genesis 8:21. Very early in the first book of the Bible. God tells us that

every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.

God doesn’t say sometimes our hearts are bent towards evil. He also doesn’t say only some human hearts are bent towards evil.

God says every human heart is always bent towards evil. From childhood. 

It’s what comes natural to us. Some people have blue eyes, some people have brown eyes, some people have curly hair, some people have freckles.

But everyone has a heart that’s inclined to do evil.

Now, we hear this, and one common reaction is to be defensive, like this doesn’t apply to me. 

Maybe we say: Listen, I’m not some psychopath or mass murderer. I’m not Hitler or Stalin or Ted Bundy! Surely, my heart is not really only inclined to evil!

Surely God just means that in general, human hearts are bent towards evil. But not my heart in particular. Right?

Here’s where we go wrong when we reason like that. God’s not grading us on a curve.

He’s not comparing your heart to the nastiest men in the history of the world.

By God’s grace, most of us don’t attain to the depths of depravity of someone like Hitler.

But people like that do stand as a witness to what any of us could become if God’s grace and providence wasn’t restraining the most evil impulses of our hearts.

So when God tells us that every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood—no, He’s not saying that we’re all as wicked as we could possibly be.

But He is telling you that your heart is naturally not pure. 

God is telling us that, no matter how much you might believe that your heart’s in the right place, you have never had a truly good intention or a really pure motive a day in your life.

Now, Rom. 1:18 tells us that we all suppress the truth about this, but we do know it’s true. 

Our hearts rebel against obeying God. And even when we do obey, we grumble about it. And then we pat ourselves on the back afterwards. Look what I did!

We do good things to feel good about ourselves. 

We take all the credit and none of the blame. 

Even our best deeds on our best days are tainted with the rot of selfishness and self-righteousness. 

And this is what comes natural to us. It’s so natural, we don’t even notice it most of the time. 

And here’s the thing—we can’t blame God that we’re like that. Eccles. 7:29 tells us that God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes. 

It’s talking about our fall into sin. God created humans perfectly righteous. 

But in our first parents’ rebellion, every son of Adam and daughter of Eve was plunged into sin. It’s a common family trait, found in every nation, race, tribe, and family of man.

So now we go in search of many schemes. We follow our hearts, like a bull with a ring in its nose. But our hearts are always running away from God.

Rom. 1:21 says that because of sin, [our] thinking became futile and [our] foolish hearts were darkened.

The sin in our hearts has deep roots in every part of our lives.

Our emotions, our desires, our moods, our thoughts, and our reasoning are all corrupted by it.

In light of all that, here’s what else God says about our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Not only is your heart, my heart—everyone’s heart—thoroughly corrupted by our sin, it’s wrapped in layers of lies.

Our hearts tell us: I’m in the right place. My motives are pure. Those awful things you’ve done don’t really reflect who you are.

It’s like layers and layers of bandages, with a festering cancer underneath.

Who can understand it? In other words—who can unravel all those lies our hearts are telling us?

And even if we could, God says our hearts are beyond cure. The condition of our hearts is beyond all earthly help.

The question, again, is:

How pure does my heart need to be if I am to see God?

Let me tell you about that word Jesus used for pure. It’s the same word you would use to describe 24k gold. 

That’s pure gold. Zero impurities.

Your heart has to be that pure. No sin. No deceit. No false motives. Full of nothing but adoring obedience to God, and perfect love for your neighbor.

But God says no one’s heart is pure enough. Our hearts are only bent towards evil from childhood, and they’re deceitful above all things.

What’s worse—God says our hearts are beyond cure. No matter how much we try to clean them up, no matter how hard we might wish for a pure heart—we can never make them pure enough.

Down in Alabama, there’s a courthouse window that’s had an indelible outline of a man’s face in it since 1878. 

The man’s name was Henry Wells, and he was falsely accused of arson, and killed by a mob of vigilantes.

He told them he was innocent, and if that if they killed him, he would haunt their town forever.

The next morning, a face appeared in the courthouse window, right where Henry Wells had called down to the mob.

The county sheriff scrubbed that window with soap and hot water for weeks, trying to get Henry Wells’ face out of the window.

It’s still there today.

Our hearts are like that courthouse window. No matter how hard or how long we scrub them, they will never be pure.

The face of our sin will always be peering back at us—haunting us with our guilt, and the promise of being eternally separated from God’s love, mercy, and grace.

How can I get a pure heart?

Now, hopefully you realize that Jesus didn’t just come to say that the poor in heart shall see God; but none of you has a pure heart, so it sucks to be you! 

Right? That’s not what the Beatitude says. Then it would be a curse, not a blessing.

Jesus says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

That means God has made a wayto purify human hearts.

Our hearts are beyond all earthly help, all human help.

But they are not beyond God’s help.

So that’s our third and most important question:

How can I get a pure heart?

You get it from God, of course. God demands a pure heart. And God Himself gives what He commands. Isn’t that awesome? 

Here’s how you get a pure heart, according to an old Swedish pastor named Bo Giertz. He tells the story so much better than I ever will.

He says:

The heart is a rusty old can on a junk heap … But a wonderful Lord passes by, and has mercy on the wretched tin can, sticks his walking cane through it, and rescues it from the junk pile and takes it home with him.

Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God, rev. ed., Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005, 123.

You can only have a pure heart because God Himself redeems your heart. By sheer grace alone, He pierces your heart with the walking stick of faith, and brings you home to Him.

We sing a song, and we heard the scripture today, Ps. 51:10:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

What is this crying out for? A new heart! A clean heart! Only God can purify the heart.

Here’s the story behind that prayer.

King David had just committed a string of grievous sins, over the course of a year.

He had taken another man’s wife, and then arranged to have her husband murdered on the battlefield.

Then he’d covered up all his evildoing, while this other man’s wife was carrying David’s child.

God sent a prophet to King David to confront him with his sins.

David saw the evil he’d done, all the carnage and the victims of his sin.

And he said: That all came from my heart. That’s what lives in my heart! Lies and lust and murder!

All that ugly evil in his heart—and King David was a powerful man, but he powerless to purify his own heart. 

He knew only God could do that. 

So David prayed aloud for God to create a clean heart within him, by the power of God’s own Holy Spirit.

That’s the only way you can get a pure heart. God has to take your impure heart, and create a clean heart in you, by His Spirit.

And God will do it, too! 

Here’s God’s answer to everyone who cries out to Him in faith, asking Him to purify their heart. 

Ezekiel 36:26:

God says: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.

God promises to whoever calls upon Him in faith, to replace their heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

God takes your heart that was cold and stubborn and dead towards Him, and by His Holy Spirit, makes it alive again, and tender towards Him.

When God purifies your heart by the Holy Spirit, it’s really a kind of resurrection. God transforms your whole inner life—not just your emotions, but also your thoughts and your will.

And He does it all through faith in Jesus Christ.

You see, Christ is the true fulfillment of the Beatitude.

He is the One who is pure in heart. 

His heart is full of nothing but humble, adoring obedience to God, and perfect love for sinners like you and me.

Our hearts are made pure in Him alone. We will see God in Him and through Him alone.

Christ calls us to come to Him, and follow Him. I’m afraid a lot of us misunderstand what Jesus means when he says, Follow Me.

It’s not that we try and copy Him in our speech and pattern of life. 

You’re not shadowing Jesus like an understudy or apprentice, so that He’s just a role model and you’re trying to emulate Him.

Saving faith in Christ is so much deeper and more intimate than that.

Jesus calls us to come to Him and rest. He promises that if we abide in Him, He will also abide in us.

When God purifies our hearts by the Holy Spirit, our hearts no longer run from Christ. They run to Him in faith. And they cling to Him in faith. 

Resting in Christ and abiding with Christ means that we live and move and have our being in Him. 

I mean, just listen to some of the ways scripture talks about how intimately our faith joins us to Christ. 

• We’ve been crucified with Christ, and will be resurrected with Him
• We have put on Christ’s righteousness and holiness like clothing
• We are grafted onto His body
• We feast on His flesh, and are nourished by His blood in the Lord’s Supper

The Holy Spirit inside us purifies our hearts by joining us that tightly to Christ, by faith.

So Christ’s Father becomes our Father.

So that in God’s eyes, Christ’s obedience is our obedience.

Christ’s death is our death.

And Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection.

And finally—in eternity—we will be so joined to Christ, that our hearts will be His heart.

1 John 3:2 promises that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Our hearts will be perfected, and we will see God’s glory in the face of our faithful Savior Jesus Christ, forever and ever.

When you are finally, perfectly pure in heart—when Jesus Christ our faithful Savior raises us from the dead—then you will see God.

They happen together!

The pure in heart will see God because God Himself purifies our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ.

By His grace alone, He redeems our hearts and makes them do what they were created for—to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

The master of your fate (James 4:13-16)

Video and notes for my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for May 30, 2021.

The text was James 4:13-16.

Resources I’ve used when preparing these messages:

Robert M. Hiller, Finding Christ in the Straw: A 40 Day Devotion on the Epistle of James (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2020).

Daniel M. Doriani, James, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2007).

Douglas J. Moo, James, rev. ed., Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

Christopher W. Morgan, A Theology of James: Wisdom for God’s People, Explorations in Biblical Theology, ed. Robert A. Peterson (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2010).

Sermon video embedded below, notes below that.

Soli Deo Gloria!

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul

Today, we have come to the end of our time in James’ classroom. 

We’ve been coming to hear James teach us about the wisdom from above. 

Last week we learned Jesus Himself is the wisdom from heaven. Christ is the pure, peaceable, gentle wisdom from God, who makes us pure in God’s sight, and peaceful and gentle in ourselves, and with our neighbors.

And we can only get this wisdom from heaven by faith. By receiving Christ and resting in Him, as He is offered to us in the gospel. 

You see, James has taught us that: If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you, James 1:5. 

Now the ancient African preacher, St. Augustine, warns us that God gives where he finds empty hands.

Only with the empty hands of faith can we receive Christ in His fulness. 

And so James in today’s passage is going to teach us how we must receive not only wisdom from God, but every good and perfect gift from His hand, with the humility of faith.

There’s a famous old poem from Victorian England called “Invictus.” And even if you don’t recognize the poem by its name, you’ve probably heard its final stanza.

The poet concludes with a manly confidence, proclaiming:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

The author of this poem, William Henley, died at the age of 53 from falling off a railway carriage. You see, William Henley suffered from a rare form of tuberculosis in his bones. When he fell, he injured his leg, his tuberculosis flared up, and he died.

So it turns out the author of these proud words was in no way, shape, or form the master of his fate or the captain of his soul.

But how often do we then turn right around and actually live our lives like we also believe we’re the master of our fate and the captain of our soul?

We want ultimate control over our own outcomes and destinies. And very often, we actually believe that we have that control. Or at least we live like we do.

And that is exactly what James was preaching about in our passage today. 

Leaving God out of your plans

In v13, James says: Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”

Now, it’s really tempting to hear these words and say, James is talking about somebody else. He doesn’t mean me obviously.

Because you’re not planning on going out town tomorrow on a yearlong business trip.

Okay. But let me ask you a few questions.

Do you have a calendar? 

How much do you have scheduled for the next six months?

How full is your calendar?

Are you one of those people who has a calendar on your phone with a bunch of alarms and reminders?

Does your calendar have a vacation on it?

And I bet a lot of you would say, Yes—don’t you have a calendar?!

By the way—there’s nothing wrong with calendars or schedules or planning. Christians should be responsible caretakers of the lives and the opportunities God has given us. And that includes being prudent with how we manage our time.

But this is about a reality check, a gut check. Am I managing my time to the glory of God? Or is my schedule a reflection of my desire to manage the future, which belongs to God alone?

Here’s my point: It’s so easy for our calendars and our schedules and our goals to become an idol. 

I’m not suggesting that we literally bow down to our calendars and worship them. But it’s easy to become a slave to them. 

Like—do you ever worry about offending your calendar?

What I mean is—do you ever get anxious when you’re off-schedule, or something happens and your schedule goes out the window?

Let me confess, I have the opposite problem. A lot of time, it’s being on a schedule that makes me anxious. Unscheduled time is me time. Schedules and calendars mean I’m moving in the world of other people and their expectations. The world of deadlines and due dates and doctor’s appointments.

I love seeing a day on the calendar with nothing penciled in. No plans. Of course—something unplanned always ends up popping off anyway, doesn’t it?

Our calendars and schedules can give us an illusion of control over our lives. 

The future is so uncertain and unpredictable. But when it’s hanging on your wall, or it’s on your desktop, or even in the palm of your hands—it feels so manageable. It feels like you are the master of your fate, and the captain of your soul.

Like I said—there’s nothing wrong with planning—even if you’re like me and schedules make you itchy.

The problem James is addressing is when our planning doesn’t consider God, and His plans. God and His sovereign control over all the events of history—including our own lives.

In this verse, James is really diagnosing three mistakes we often make when we consider our future plans.

1. We assume we have control over how long we’re going to live. Right? If I say, Later today, or tomorrow, I’m going to do so-and-so. Well, that’s assuming I’m going to still be alive later today, or tomorrow, and healthy enough to do whatever I want to do. I’m sure William Henley had plans for tomorrow when he fell off that railway car.
2. We assume we can make whatever plans we please. We can come and go as we please. Today or tomorrow, we’ll go—whichever. The choice is ours.
3. We assume that our plans will be successful. In this case, James was speaking to people who planned to go off to some city and do business. They assumed they would be successful: We’re going to carry on business and make money. But he could be talking about any kind of plan, couldn’t he?

The common thread running through all of these bad assumptions is that God is missing from all of them. 

We often make our plans as if there were no God, who has His own plans, and who is the true master of our fate, and captain of our souls.

So in vv14-15, James is going to show us three things we’re forgetting when we don’t factor God into our planning. 

What else we’re forgetting when we forget God

First, we forget that we don’t know what the future holds. James looks over our plans and our schedules and our calendars, and he says: Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

In his case, he overheard some church members boasting about how they were going to go off to the big city for a year and get rich. And so he’s asking them: Why are you so confident about that? You don’t even know what tomorrow will bring. How can you know what will happen in a year?

God is eternal. For God, all times are now. God already decreed what was going to happen tomorrow before He even created time.

God knows tomorrow. We do not. And in some sense, what will happen tomorrow is none of our business.

We often go about life like we’re living by those words from “Invictus”: I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. But what happens when our plans go out the window?

What if you drop your iPhone in the toilet? What if you booked a flight to Cancun for vacation, and the airline went out of business the day before you were supposed to leave? What if you lose your job? What if there’s a recession that tanks your 401k and ruins your careful plans for retirement? What if tragedy strikes?

Now your plans are ruined. And your calendars and schedules are suddenly worthless. We cannot really plan our futures, and certainly we cannot control them!

James teaches us so much wisdom and humility with just these words: You do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

Moving along in v14, James continues to teach us humility. The first thing we miss when we fail to factor God into our plans, is we forget that we don’t know the future. Second, we forget that we are weak.

James says: What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Maybe you’ve been blessed to watch the sun rise over the lake on a cool, misty morning. It’s a beautiful sight to behold, the fog is all golden and brilliant. But in a few hours, the sun burns off the mist—and it’s gone. 

James says your life is like that, too. So is mine. So’s everyone’s. Against the endless ocean of eternity, our lives are just wisps of fog over a lake.

And yet—without even pausing to think about it—how often do we strut around making plans and filling up our calendars like we are the masters of our own destiny? 

James’ words here are a wake up call. Our lives are fleeting, like a mist that appears and a few hours later is gone. And our lives are as frail and fragile as butterfly wings.

Godly wisdom and humility teaches to remember that our days vanish like smoke (Ps. 102:3). We should call on the Lord with words like Job: Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath, Job 7:7.

The third thing we forget about ourselves when we don’t involve God in our planning is that we are dependent on God for everything.

This is what James teaches us in v15: Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Even Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, prayed: Yet not as I will, but as you will, Matt. 26:39. He was modeling a spirit for us of submitting to God’s will. And he taught us to pray the same way: thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, Matt. 6:10.

Now, just saying Lord willing when you’re making your plans is not a magic formula that will guarantee humility. But getting into the habit of saying it, or even thinking it, might be a way God uses to help make you more humble. More gentle. And more submissive to God.

See again—James is not against schedules, calendars, or planning. In fact, the Bible commends those who make plans. Prov. 6:6-11 teaches us look to the ant, [and] consider its ways and be wise! See how it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

Proverbs teaches us to plan like the ant, or poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. That is godly wisdom, to plan for retirement. Or for me to plan my preaching for the year. Or to have an escape plan for your family, in case your house catches on fire.

James’ point is that when we plan, when we schedule, when we draw up our calendars, when we set our goals—we must always remember that we are ignorant of the future, we are weak, and we are completely dependent on God.

God transforms arrogant schemes into humble, wise planning

So James looks at all those times we’re living like we are the masters of our fate, we are the captain of our soul. And here’s what James says about that, v16: As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

And since this is the Bible—it’s God’s word—that’s also God’s judgment on it. 

Remember, last week, we heard James call this kind of arrogant boasting unspiritual and demonic. I called that the wisdom from hell. It’s from the devil, not the Holy Spirit.

The most basic impulse in all sin is to live like God isn’t real. To say: I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. James says the boaster is arrogant because he has forgotten God.

So then—what does it look like when we include God in our plans?

First, including God in our plans means confessing that we are don’t know the future. So we will dedicate our plans to the Lord. 

Then we might say something like: I hope to finish college and become a nurse, for God’s glory, and the good of my neighbors. 

See, now you’ve made a plan, but you’re submitting that plan to God’s will, and the desire of your heart is to live your life for God’s glory.

When we remember that we are weak as butterfly wings and our days are wisps of smoke, we will always confess that we need the mercy and favor of God. 

Psalm 127:1 says: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Do you trust the Lord enough to let Him build your life, your future, for you—as He sees fit? 

Psalm 139:16 says all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Your life is but a vapor, and yet God has planned every drop, every molecule of it. 

Are you content to rest in faith, confessing that you are weak, but the Lord is strong, and you rely fully on His favor and grace? 

What if you buy a house, and lose your job the very next week? What if you buy a farm right before a drought?

What if you lose everything? Will you be able to say what Job did when he lost everything? The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

The humble planner knows that she can do everything just right, and her plans could still fail. So she has learned to rest in the Lord, and believe Him when He tells her: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness, 2 Cor. 12:9.

Finally, when we remember that we depend completely on God, there is no longer room in us for boasting and arrogant schemes. 

James has already reminded us that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father, James 1:17.

Do we really, truly believe that? Because that humbles us. If you are a great singer, who gave you your vocal cords? If you are successful at your job, who gave you skills and opportunities? 

Who gives us our talents, and nurtures them, and nudges us towards our highest aspirations? Who was it that made your mentors in your life choose you for special attention?

Christians realize we have nothing to boast about. Any good thing we have, any useful blessing we possess, is a gift from our Father, and He has given it to us so that we might glorify Him, and enjoy Him.

May we learn to confess the words of St. Augustine: O Lord, everything good in me is due to you. The rest is my fault.

Faith in the Lord leads us to repent of all the ways we live like we’re the master of our own fate, the captain of our own soul. And say: No, God—You are the master of my fate, and You are the captain of my soul!

It leads us to cast aside our illusions of control. And to commit our plans, our calendars, our schedules, and our outcomes to God’s Providence. Whether the Lord gives, or He takes away—faith teaches us to say, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Faith is your empty hand, reaching out to receive whatever today or tomorrow God decreed for you from eternity past. Faith receives the plans God has for us, trusting that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, Rom. 8:28.

But of course, that’s exactly what makes faith so difficult for us, isn’t it?

The God who planned your future has secured your eternity

It can make us uneasy to confess that God is the Master of my Fate, and I am not. 

It’s not always comfortable to place ourselves, our plans, and our outcomes in the hands of Someone as unpredictable, as unmanageable, as holy—not to mention invisible—as God is.

What if He doesn’t do things the way I want Him to, when I want them done? What if He laughs at my plans, wads them up, and throws them out the window? What if He keeps writing appointments on my calendar I don’t want to keep? What if everything falls apart? Can I still trust Him then?

We are such anxious creatures, and that’s why it’s so easy for us to try and climb back onto God’s throne, and declare ourselves master and captain over our own destiny. 

Sisters and brothers, here is your good news to remember when you get that anxious feeling. 

The same God who has planned your future, who has ordained all of your days and written them in His book, has also promised you eternity.

This same God who is the master of your fate and the captain of your soul has loved you and chosen you from eternity past. Eph. 1:4-5 says God chose [you] in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that [you] should be holy and blameless before him. And, in love he predestined [you] for adoption to himself—as His own son or daughter—through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

This God loved you enough that, before the creation of the world, He chose to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you. Before the first beat of your sinful heart, or the first breath in your fragile lungs, God had already planned your salvation. I mean you—personally.

Because He loves you, Jesus Christ took on your sin, and bore your curse on the cross so that he might present [you] to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that [you] might be holy and without blemish before His Father, Eph. 5:27.

God has not only planned for your salvation, and accomplished it in Christ, He has prepared a place for you in His presence for all eternity. You have a home in the new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells, 2 Peter 3:13. You will feast in the house of Zion. You will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!

God is the master of everyone’s fate, and the captain of everyone’s soul. He holds all futures in His hand. But he controls the future with infinite love, grace, and mercy for all who are His daughters and sons by faith.

And for that, may we glorify Him—because the God who controls the future loved us and chose us from before creation to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever!