God says, ‘I made you and you’re mine, all mine.’

Steve Brown:
God says I made you and your mine, all mine. Let’s talk on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
God’s grace changes everything. How we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. This is Key Life with practical Bible teaching to get you home with radical freedom, infectious joy, and surprising faithfulness.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re looking at some of the themes that you’ll find in the book of Galatians from the first 10 verses of that book, a book we’re going to be studying over the next many, many weeks. And we have seen the theme of truth. And the theme of apostleship and authority and yesterday we talked about the major theme, the theme of grace, Galatians 1:3, it drips of grace. This is a book that shouts it from the rooftops and we still don’t get it. And I don’t know why we don’t get it. Part of that’ s supernatural, because there’s a dark side. And yes, there really is a devil. There really are demons and they have vested interest in are not getting grace. And so we’re constantly hearing the lies from the father of lies who says to us, if you were a really a Christian, if you were saved, you would spend more time in the Bible. Sometimes when I’m teaching I, in order to teach grace, and this is a sort of effective way to do it. I say to the gathered conference or lecture in a seminary or a church place where I’m preaching, I sometimes say, you’re, you call yourself a Christian. Do you tithe? You know what you’re doing? You’re robbing God. How much time did you spend in the scripture this morning? I mean, that’s God’s letter to you and you just ignored it, or only read the 23rd Psalm. You don’t, you can’t even name the books of the Bible. And when have you witnessed? Do you know you’re called to make disciples? How many disciples have you made? And how much time do you spend in prayer? Do you even pray the Lord’s prayer? Do you ever sit down and pray for the missionaries who depend on, and you call yourself a Christian? You don’t, and I go about as far as I can go. And I, and the staff will often sit on the, in the back of a conference in there. They’ll be taking bets on how far I can go with this before I lose it. And I do .Cause you ought to see the looks on the people in the congregation when I say it. I mean, there’s shock. There’s guilt. There’s tears. There’s and then I say, when I finally can’t do it anymore, I finally say, listen, and listen to what I’m telling you. I just manipulated you with guilt and don’t ever let anybody do that to you because it’s not about all that stuff. It’s about Jesus and it’s about grace. And let me tell you about that. That’s what grace is. Everything you think that it could not be, it is. Everything that you think is crazy, isn’t. Everything that you think can’t have do with God, really does. It’s that amazing. It’s that crazy. It’s that big. It’s that central. You’ve heard it a lot from a lot of preachers that if you never ever did anything to serve Christ, if you’re a Christian. If you never read the Bible and didn’t care that you didn’t, if you never prayed, if you never let anybody to Christ, if you never reached out to the poor and oppressed, if you never gave money to God’s work, listen to me. God would not love you one iota less than he loves you right now. That is so cool. And let me tell you something. If you get ordained, and I am. And you know, the Bible and I do. I’m a Bible teacher. If you pray, and I am a man of prayer. I’m going to have to repent of my self righteousness when this is over. But I am, I’m a man of prayer. I’ve led piles and piles of people to the savior. I live a reasonably good and obedient life. I’m a good citizen. I vote. I, uh, I sometimes reach out to the poor. I do better than tithing. I do all of that. And as I said, I’m ordained and you’re not. But et me tell you about me. God doesn’t love me, one iota more, because of all of that and because I did it. Because it has nothing to do with that. And you say, you’re encouraging sin. No, I’m not. You were doing fine with that before I came along. I’m not encouraging sin. In fact, I’m encouraging holiness. I just don’t call it that because they’re so many misconceptions about it. But holiness comes from grace. You get better and you will get better, not because you try harder, but because he loves you more. And that’s a fact. And the apostle Paul makes a, makes that clear in this book, because it’s all about grace. It’s all about grace and that’s all it is. And that frankly doesn’t seem right. If you’re a student and you study hard, you ought to get good grades. If you’re an employee, and you work hard, you ought to get raises. If you own the company and you give it 24 seven, your company will grow. If you’re nice to people, they will be nice back to you. If you’re a good person, your life will be good. If you, that’s all, that’s all the way the world works, but that’s not in God’s dictionary. It’s about grace. It really is. You want to do something, if you, and don’t tell your pastor, I told you to do it. Um, next Sunday, assuming we’re over the virus in your area. Let me tell you what to do. Don’t go to church. I mean you say, what are you crazy? No, just don’t go to church. And uh, just say, this Sunday, I’m going to go next week. And I went last week, but I’m not going to go this week. Just don’t go to church. Now, why am I telling you to do that? Because when you do it, you’ll see how much you really believe the Gospel. That’s how you do it, then you’ll see your guilt. You won’t, if you’re like me and you’ve been to church every Sunday, For your entire life. And if you miss one, you think you’re going to hell. That means I don’t get grace. So just don’t go to church one Sunday and see how you feel. And then when God shows you how you feel, get on your knees and repent and ask him to love you anyway. And you’ll begin to get it. Were the oceans filled with ink and the sky is a scroll, there isn’t enough to write about God’s love, about grace that is total and without condition. I don’t know how to say that, to me better. And I don’t know how to say it to you better. But trust me, it’s good news. And that’s why Paul is so angry about those who cut the legs off of grace. That’s what’s happening, religious people doing religious stuff and laying their religious stuff on other religious people at the churches in Galatia. They’ve come in and they say, yeah, this grace thing is okay, but it’s dangerous. You got to understand, there are some things that real Christians do. You’ve got to get discipled and you’ve got to, and you’ve got to live by the law and you’ve got to be a good person and you’ve got to, and that absolutely burned Paul’s chicken. I mean, he is so, that first chapter shows one angry man, and, and Paul was so angry, he couldn’t stand it. I do that too. Sometimes, you know, I hear of people who’ve betrayed the gospel, by religion and it’s toxic. And I’ve seen people that have been absolutely wiped out who those, I have pastor friends who are no longer pastors because they couldn’t do it anymore. They couldn’t be good enough. I have friends who have left the Christian faith, because I’m just not as good as those people. And I want to say no, no. Jesus said, to the city of Jerusalem, and to us, how often I would have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her chicks. And you would not. The rejection of the gospel of grace. Don’t do that. Don’t do that if you’re a Christian, because you couldn’t do it. And certainly don’t do it, if you’re not a Christian, because it has eternal importance. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thanks Steve. Steve has been pointing out the themes covered by the book of Galatians so far. We’ve touched on the themes of truth, of apostleship and authority and of grace and today taking an additional look at grace because in the end. It really is amazing. Steve will resume his tour of Galatians on Monday, but tomorrow be sure to join us for Friday, Q & A, when Steve and our friend, Pete Alwinson answer the challenging questions that you’ve sent in. Well, as Steve alluded to Paul wrote the letter to Galatians because well, headed in the wrong direction. And of course that happens to us too. Right. But the worst part is when we put up a front, acting like we have it all together. What comes from that? Well, nothing good. Steve spoke about this in a sermon called When Believing is Hard and Pretending Doesn’t Work. It’s powerful. It’s relevant. It’s really going to help you. So get your copy on CD for free, right now. Call 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also request the CD by emailing [email protected]. If you’re mailing us, send your request to

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