Galatians Part 5: Curse of the Law is Broken

We're going to talk about foolishness today verse three says are you so foolish and like raise your hand if you've never done anything foolish go ahead feel free. so here's what we're not going to do my wife saw my notes just now as I was standing there with my iPad and she was like she saw the statement that I have written here highlighted in yellow that says I have two or three incredibly foolish moments in my life and she was like what are you going to talk about I'm not going to talk about any of my foolish moments we're not going to talk about any of your foolish moments we're going to focus on the Galatians foolishness because then we can judge them.

As we do so what's going to happen is the word of God is going to turn that spotlight around and shine it on us. I'm not going to waste any time I'm not going to waste any of your time talking about my own foolishness even though most of you are probably like let's do it let's talk about your foolishness Sam that would take too long verse one oh foolish Galatians who has Bewitched you it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified now here's what Paul is trying to say how could you so quickly get your focus off what was important. 

How in the world did you go from Jesus to yourself how in the world did you lose sight of what was central to your faith and to your salvation? There's a couple of things going on here and there's two different ways that this word is taken when he says “Who has bewitched you?” 

When you and I think of Bewitched, depending on our age, we think of like really bad TV shows or we think of some kind of spells  so one of the common ways in which this is kind of Taken and it's they're not wrong is this idea of Bewitched when you see a really good Illusionist or magician whatever they call them nowadays do a card trick what is the unbelievably subtle and really amazing skill that they use to trick you into thinking that they're actually performing magic sleight of hand deception. 

They are capitalizing on the human inability to focus on more than one thing at once if you remember the famous video of David Blaine stealing President Bush's wristwatch during a card trick. He's doing a card trick and he ends up stealing his wristwatch off of his wrist and the president had no idea because he got him to focus on something else now some of you might be like well not all of our presidents are overly smart but it's not the point. The point is that he takes your attention.

I've never been diagnosed ADHD. I grew up in the time period prior to when that was what every other kid got diagnosed with, but I'm easily distracted I'm the shiny things guy all the time. In fact, that's why I didn't show up to my men's group on Saturday morning because there was no school on Friday and so all day I was saying to Shannon I feel like it's Saturday because James is here so we're doing Saturday stuff it felt like a Saturday and so I woke up yesterday ready to preach and I had all these text messages on my men’s group, “You showing up?” No I was not showing up I was not there they talked without me.

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. 

Now if you've ever read about the Greek myth of the evil eye, it was this mythological superstition that somebody could curse you with a look. Now it was either a look of judgment or a look of jealousy. So you didn't want to look too good because then somebody could look at you with the evil eye of jealousy and curse you. You didn't want to not be good enough you didn't want somebody to judge you according to your actions and therefore curse you with the evil eye. 

So that's actually what Paul is trying to get at, and he's using that word sarcastically to say to these believers, “Did you fall under the spell of someone's evil eye? Did somebody look at you in such a way that you thought, I better please them so that I'm not cursed. He's being sarcastic and he's saying to them that they literally were falling under this spell of someone else's judgment. 

This is exactly what was happening. The judaizers were coming in telling them, “No, no, no. Your faith in Jesus isn't enough. Your faith in Jesus isn't enough to save you. It's not enough to keep you. You have to then do all these other things in order to remain in the faith of Jesus. If you want to be a part of the people of God like the Jews, you have to become a Jew. You have to perform the law. So Paul sarcastically is making a point that they have lost the focus of what was important.

He continues on, ”Let me ask you only this, did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Do you hear what he's saying? You began by the Spirit, did you receive the Spirit by your work or did you receive the Spirit by hearing with faith? That's what he was referring to when he said “It was before your eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified.” 

These people weren't there at the crucifixion. He's saying, “You are eyewitness accounts to your own salvation. You have received the Holy Spirit. You are witnesses of your own salvation, and everybody else is around you. Did that happen through the works of the law?” He's asking rhetorical questions to get them to see the obvious truth of how their salvation began. Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit that you are now being perfected by the flesh? You received the Spirit by hearing through faith, are you now going to be perfected by works? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you, and works miracles among you, do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Now who is he who supplies the Spirit to you? Who's he? What did Jesus say to his disciples as he ascended? “I must go away so that what I can send the helper, the comforter, the Spirit.” It is unbelievably obvious to them that they received their salvation and the Holy Spirit through hearing with faith. They are no more capable of being perfect now, apart from the Spirit, apart from faith, than they were then. 

So he asked the question, “Having received the Spirit through faith, are you now going to perfect yourself through the law? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does he do so by works of the law?” He's asking these repeated rhetorical questions to lead them back to the truth. 

Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. now Paul is going to constantly refer back to the Old Testament. Paul is going to rest on the Old Testament to make his case against the Judaizers saying you have to keep the law, you have to keep the Jewish traditions. Because this is the word of God. We have the Old Testament telling the Galatians and the Judaizers they're wrong, and he is going to reference the Old Testament repeatedly. “Just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” it's Genesis 15:6. 

Notice that two of the questions, these rhetorical questions that he asks, are in reference directly to the Holy Spirit. This is where Paul makes his case for the change that we see in our lives did not begin with us, it does not continue with us, and it will not end with us. It is all through the power of the Spirit. Did you receive the Spirit through the works of the law? Are you now being perfected through works of the law or through faith in the Spirit? That's why Jesus calls the Spirit “the helper”,  because we do not have the strength in and of ourselves. We are not being perfected through works of the law because the law could not get us to where we are. It can't keep us where we are. Only the Spirit. Only the Spirit. 

As he references Genesis, he uses the word “hearing”. If we know Jewish culture, if we know the Old Testament, we know that the Jews did not have two separate words for hearing and listening. parents, is it possible at times that your kids hear you but they're not really listening? I know I do. All the time I hear somebody speaking but I'm not really listening to them, and my kids know that. My wife knows that sometimes I hear them but I'm not really listening.

The Hebrew language did not have two different words for hearing and listening, and listening not only had hearing implications, but it had attention implications. The implication of the word in Hebrew was to hear it, pay attention to it, and then do it. Abraham is hearing with faith. He heard God, he believed God, and then his hearing led to belief that led to action. Because if belief does not lead to action, it is dead. If belief does not lead to action it's worthless. It's not good for anything.

So now you're just going back to the law? No! Belief must come first. If belief is not leading our action, then it's worthless and what we believe in matters. The problem is that we say we believe one thing and we live our lives another, revealing what we say and what we believe don’t always align. And this is where we have to become really brutally honest with ourselves, because this is the door to change. It's the only door to change. If I will not admit to myself and others that the way I act is the way that I actually believe, I will will never change.

This is the heart of repentance and the refusal to do this is the heart of religious law keeping. We may not be law keeping according to the Jewish law, but we all have a law in our heads that we have to keep, and if we have to keep them everybody else does too. If people don't keep our laws, then we judge them and then we're slaves to shame. When we don't keep them yet we say we live and believe in grace, there's a lack of congruence in our lives.

This struggle we feel as we talk about law and grace, deep down inside we know there's a prideful, Genesis 3 refusal to simply say, “This is who I really am. I wish it wasn't this way. I don't want it to be this way, but this is who I am. Therefore this is what I must be believing.” If we will not actually honestly walk that path, we will never end up where we want to be. If we will not look at ourselves honestly, we can never experience the grace that he is offering.

If we will lay down that pride, if we would stop defending ourselves, stop pretending, there is grace for you.

I'm not saying we're not Christians. I'm not saying we don't believe in Jesus. What I'm saying is that the way that we live our lives, if we could really examine them, will show us the things that we are believing. Just like the Galatians, we are bewitched by aspects of this world that pull us away from the foundation, from the center, and Paul is saying: see it, let it go, and come home. See it, let it go, and come home.

Verse 7: Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

Verses 8 and 9: And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” (That's Genesis 12.) So then, it is those who are of faith who are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

In the same way that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, we, as we believe God, it is credited to us as righteousness. The gospel was never intended to be the sole possession of Israel. If you read the Old Testament, the evangelistic nature of God's promise to the Israelites is obvious. They are to be a shining city on a hill, they are to be an example, they are to be a welcoming place for foreigners to come and find hope and peace.

The law was never intended to be the means of salvation. We have this misconception, often as Christians, that in the Old Testament they were saved by the law, and now that Jesus came, we're saved by faith. And that is completely untrue. No one was ever saved through the law, and that's Paul's whole point. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and that was 430 years before the law was even thought of. No one in the Old Testament was saved through the law—no one—and no one ever will be.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written (Deuteronomy 27): Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them. Hear what he said? Hear what Deuteronomy said? It did not say, Cursed be everyone who does not do the law—it said, Cursed be everyone who does not—what? Abide. What did Jesus say in John? Abide in me, and I in you. Abide is not a doing word; it's an identity word. So even back in Deuteronomy, he's saying cursed is everyone who does not abide and do, which is, by the way, no one. No one.

Paul is not talking about our inability to be lawkeepers. He's talking about the inability of the law to save us. Why would we turn to something that can't save us? Oh, see, this is where their foolishness turns around and shines on us. Because don't we do this every day? Don't we turn to things, things literally that cannot save?

Now, I may not be saying, "I don't believe in Jesus anymore, I'm going to put my faith in this," but where do we spend our effort? Where do we spend our—like, this is something that I've started to recognize in my own life: how much—even though I don't ever recognize it or admit that I have it, because I'm the laid-back guy—how much anxiety controls me. Amen? Anybody?

How much my life is controlled by anxiety? I don't admit it's there, but I watch. I watch my attention to the people that I'm with fade. I watch my effectiveness in the tasks that I'm trying to perform diminish. I watch the fear level in my heart rise. I watch my willingness to step out and be courageous to the things that God has asked me to do disappear.

I'm starting to see that even though I say I trust Him in all things, I'm not living what I say I believe. The spotlight is now on us. We are putting our faith in something that cannot save us—namely ourselves, money, job security, you name it, whatever it is. We are running to things that cannot save us to make us feel secure, just like the Galatians.

Remember what Paul wrote to us in Philippians chapter 3. Talking about himself, he says: As to the law, blameless. So the misconception here is that the law was impossible to keep. Paul says he kept it. So again, it's not that we can't keep the law—it's that the law is not able to save.

The law itself did not actually require perfect obedience. If you read the law carefully, every time you broke the law, there was a way for you to make it up. The law itself did not require perfect obedience. The law—think about this—the law itself did not require holiness. How could it save? It was never intended to save. It was intended to be a reminder to the people of Israel of their need for a savior, of their need for the promised Messiah. That’s what the law was from the beginning to its end. It was never meant to be the means of their salvation.

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith (that’s Habakkuk 2:4). But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them (Leviticus 18). Don't put faith in the law, that’s what Paul is saying, and he's using the Old Testament to prove it.

Verse 13: Notice if you have your Bibles that verses 13 and 14 are a contrast to verses 10 through 12. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us, for it is written (Deuteronomy 21): Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree—so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. The promised Spirit through faith.

There was a promise made—a promise made with no conditions. So why are we putting conditions on it? The one who gave the promise didn’t put conditions on it. Why are we putting conditions on it? It’s received as a gift through faith in the promise and in the promise-giver. Jesus was our Redeemer by becoming the curse. Jesus was our Redeemer by becoming the curse for us.

Now, you see what he did? He went to where they were, he asked them these questions, and then he slowly, through the use of the Old Testament, brought them back to the center: Christ is the Redeemer. Christ became the curse. The law reminded them that they were under a curse, that they could not achieve holiness before God, standing before God, through anything that they did.

In fact, he even says—let’s give a human example: Verse 15: Even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now, the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring—again, promises. And it does not say "and to offsprings," referring to many, but referring to one—and to your offspring, who is Christ.

This is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified, ratified not by humans but by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. But God gave it to Abraham by a promise. It was promised with no conditions. Why are we adding conditions to it?

That’s the question we have to ask ourselves. We talked about this the last couple of weeks. Why is it that when we do certain things as Christians, we feel better about ourselves than when we don’t do those things? Whatever rules you have in your head—and we all have them: I didn’t go to church enough this month, I didn’t read my Bible enough this week, I had two beers instead of one, I said four cuss words yesterday. The list could go on and on and on, and you all have your own lists.

What are they? What are the means by which you are attempting to measure up to God? Maybe it has to do with anxiety. Maybe it’s just telling yourself over and over again, I trust Him, I trust Him, I trust Him, but the way you're living your life says you're not trusting Him. And what you really need to do, like me, is go, God, I'm not trusting You! Holy moly, I just see how my life is controlled by this thing. Forgive me, Lord. We just lay it bare. I am not putting my trust in You—rather than say, No, this is what good Christians believe, and this is what good Christians do.

You see the difference? We're not invited into law-keeping. We are invited into relationship. And in the same way that a lack of real relationship with any person—my wife or my kids or any one of you—is going to cause the relationship to suffer, if we think that we can fool God by reciting things, we are sorely mistaken. That is not what He is asking for. It's not ever what He's been asking for. He’s saying, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you what? Rest.

And what we do in response to that is say, No, God, I’ve got to be good, completely missing the point of what He’s inviting us into. We’re trying to keep the law. We just have our own law, which, by the way—did you know this?—this is what the Pharisees did. So, the Torah refers to the books of the Old Testament where the law existed. And then there’s this other thing called the Talmud that the Jews wrote: We’ve got to build a fence around the law so not only do we not break the law, we don’t even come close to breaking the law. So we’re going to create all these other rules in addition to the law because we want to make sure that we are not just keeping God’s standard but putting our own standard above God’s standard.

See what they did there? So the law, many of the rules and traditions that the Jews referred to, weren’t even in the law of God. It was their own man-made law. Now, that’ll preach today, won’t it? How often are we doing this? We’re adding what we think God expects of us to what we expect of ourselves, which says that we have now become God in our own lives. And we are refusing to honor Him as God because He’s saying, This is what I want, and we’re saying, No, I’ve got to do this.

And we think that somehow this religious piety will make Him go, Oh, you’re really taking yourself seriously. I like this. But in reality, what He’s doing is going, Bro, why would you walk away from this gift? Have you ever tried to give somebody a gift and they say, I like to do things myself? Do you know what that does to a relationship?

If you’re that person, stop it. If somebody gives you a gift, you accept the gift. Because by refusing the gift, you’re refusing relationship.

Your Savior—I’ll just read—Jesus is enough. Hebrews chapter 12: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight. What weight? Sin—not just the bad things we do, but the wrong ways of believing, believing in ourselves, believing in our laws. Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. What race is set before us? I’m glad you asked, because Paul has an answer.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The founder and perfecter! See how this takes us right back to Galatians? Did you begin by the Spirit, and now you’re being perfected by the law? No! Jesus is the founder and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross—became the curse for us—so that we don’t have to live under the curse. The curse that we continually choose to live under when we put ourselves back on the throne and say, This is the way that I have to live in order for God to be happy with me. We’re putting ourselves back in the prison cage, choosing to live under the curse.

Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God—where He belongs, not you and not me. Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. How do we endure? By keeping our eyes on Jesus.

What did Paul say to the Galatians? Why are you being so foolish as to take your eyes off Jesus?

So we sit here today, 2000 years later, hearing the words of Paul, hopefully penetrating our hearts: Why are we being so foolish as to take our eyes off of Jesus? God, why am I so foolish as to take my eyes off of You? It’s because we have wrong beliefs that still hold sway over our hearts. Don’t run from them. Don’t deny them. Bring them to His feet and give them to Him, day after day after day after day.

This is how we are healed. This is how we are sanctified. This is how our relationship with Him and others around us deepens.

The more we deny it, the more we just continue to swim in a mud puddle while He's offering us holiness and cleanliness—free of charge. My prayer for us today is simply that we would keep our eyes where they’re supposed to be. And as we leave today, as we respond, just ask yourself the question: What’s the thing? What’s the main thing?

For most of us, it's one thing, maybe a couple. What are the things that pull my eyes away from Him? This is what we call a core sin, the thing that holds sway over my heart. Maybe it's anxiety, and maybe that anxiety takes shape and control. Maybe it's comfort, which takes place through the misuse of food, entertainment—everything, right? Maybe it's power. What is it?

What is the thing that tends to hold sway over your heart that pulls you off center? And as we respond, my invitation to you is to just lay it down. Be honest with your Savior. It’s an invitation into wholeness. It’s an invitation into joy and peace for every single one of us today.