So whatever it is, whatever it is that you think you’re enslaved to right now—just picture it—whatever that thing is that you think you’re enslaved to—you’re not. You’re not. He has set you free, and you’re learning how to walk. Keep your eyes on him. That’s the problem with the law. That’s the problem with what’s happening in the church in Galatia. They are keeping their eyes on themselves, on their performance. And Paul is pleading with them, “Get your eyes up. Get your eyes up at the goal. He has something better for you. Keep your eyes on the Father because you have freedom—not so that you can get freedom—because you already have it.”

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So I understand this idea that somebody could come into your life and distract you from what's important, but that's not primarily what Paul is talking about. The word “bewitched” in the Greek is actually a word that's not used anywhere else in the New Testament. So what happens in translation, we then have to go to literature of that time period to discover what the biblical authors were talking about. What we discover is that in the Greek culture there was this word that is referring to the myth of the evil eye. 

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What this reveals is a tendency to put ourselves in the seat of God. By not believing God's words, we say, “No, it can’t be true. There must be something I need to do.” There’s something inside of us that denies the truth of God’s promises, repeating them over and over, yet in our hearts, we think we must do all these things for God to like us.

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This is what we mean when we talk about coming back to the foot of the cross, because this is where we bring that stuff. It’s not just wrong actions or wrong words—it’s wrong belief that leads to those things. So we want to dig down to the belief and examine the belief. Where we are believing lies, we replace it with truth. And the lie, we bring to the foot of the cross, and we go, "There you go, Jesus." And what does He give us? Freedom, grace, love, peace.

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The book of Galatians is written back to those churches that he planted and established because these guys he's debating had been going to those churches and teaching them, “Yeah, Paul only told you part of the story. Now we have this other thing that you also need to know and believe as well.” So the book of Galatians is written to those churches to combat what those other people had told them. Paul is saying, “This is what I told you; this is what I received from Jesus himself. Nothing else matters except this.”

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And this is one of the reasons why as the church we say, “Don’t put your hope there or there.” We don’t put our hope in the right or the left because their promises are empty. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t take part in our democratic system because we believe that there are ways in which our country can get better, lives can get saved, lives can get improved. Right? Those are all good things that we pursue.

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The title of the sermon is “The Prayer of Faith,” and that’s because the central phrase of this passage is where the difficulty lies. What is the prayer of faith? It’s the only time in the Bible this phrase is used — right here in this passage. That was a big part of our conversation as elders: what does that mean? What is the prayer of faith?

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