If you’re disqualified, you’re qualified.
OCTOBER 12, 2020
Steve Brown:
If you’re disqualified, you’re qualified. Let’s talk about it on Key Life.
Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers, because life’s hard for everyone, grace is for all of us. Our host is seminary professor and author Steve Brown.
Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. I hope you guys had a great weekend and I hope your pastor’s sermon was as good as my pastor’s sermon. And if you were listening last week, you heard a young man who has so much good to say. I love it when Zach Van Dyke sits in this chair, because then I don’t have to talk and I can be still and I can be ministered to. If you have your Bible. And if you really love Jesus, you will. Open, unless you’re driving, you keep your eyes on the road. Open it to the book of Galatians. And we’re looking, we’ll start at the 14th verse, or the 15th verse of this second chapter and go to the end of that chapter. And what we’re doing this week, and we’ve done for the last two or three weeks is to talk about the gospel and what exactly is it. We talk about it all the time. We spent a long time looking at the general idea of what the gospel is, and today we’re going to get down to some specifics. We’ve seen that it’s Catholic or universal, it’s conveyed, it’s continued, it’s conspicuous, it’s compassionate, it’s consistent, it’s candid and it is cleansing. That’s the gospel, but you gotta be more specific than that. And Paul is more specific than that. And we’re going to look at that beginning today, before we do that, let’s pray and then we’ll get down. Father, we come into your presence always surprised that we’re here. They lied to us when they told us that if we were good enough, we could be here. If we were religious enough, then you would accept us. If we went to church all the time, when the doors were open, then you would be pleased and you would welcome us into your presence. And father, it was such a dead end road. And inside we were so dead, because we knew that we simply couldn’t fill the requirement. And then, and you said, when we turned away, Hey, where are you going? Welcome child. Welcome. And we came running and we praise you and worship you because of it. Father, you know, every person, the name of every person who’s listening right now to this broadcast. You know, the hard places and the soft places, the laughter and the tears, the joy and the sorrow. You are God, and you’re sovereign over every bit of it. And more than that, you’re good. And you’re good all the time. Remind us always that that’s true. And that you’re sufficient. And now father is always, we pray for the one who teaches that you would forgive him his sins, because there are many, we would see Jesus and Him only, and we pray in Jesus name. Amen. If you were listening last week, we saw that there were three main problems and out of those three problems emerge a bunch of other problems and it’s a human problem. It’s a problem that we all have, guilt is a problem, alienation is a problem, meaninglessness is a problem. Now, the world has answers to all of those things. And I’m always pleased when people try to find answers to serious questions, because the genuine can be tested. And when they ask those questions, even if they don’t ask them in a religious way, that’s a good thing, because the genuine can be tested. And sometimes when you’re going down the wrong road and you realize that it, it was good, you went down that wrong road. The world, for instance, says, you guilty?, go to a psychiatrist. Well, that might get you through for a while, but it’s not going to make the difference in your guilt. You know, why you feel guilty? You heard about the psychiatrist who said to his patient, you know, why you feel inferior? And the client said, no why?, and he said because you are inferior. Well, do you know why you feel guilty?, because you really are guilty. And a psychiatrist simply doesn’t have the power to redeem and forgive and show the mercy that you need to deal with your guilt. You alienated?, find a prostitute or something else to kind of make you feel good for a little while. But that gets old quickly. And the emptiness that one feels when one goes down that dead end road is awful and it’s also good. Cause it causes you, you know, look for something different and something real and something that really does deal with your alienation from people and God and everything else. And the third one is meaninglessness. You without meaning? Get drunk. You know, it’ll be okay for a while, as long as you, but you can’t stay drunk forever. I mean, after a while, you gotta sober up and deal with a headache. You just can’t stay there all the time. And when it really hurts, when you, when the booze doesn’t cut it anymore, cause you gotta increase it all the time. That’s a good thing. In AA, they say the only way a drunk gets sober is to get to the end and the very bottom. And so if you’re trying to find your meaning there, or other kinds of addictions and there are all kinds of options. That’s a good thing. You go ahead and do that, because when you get to the very bottom and it doesn’t work anymore, then I have some wonderful answers for you. I have some friends and I’ve said this often to some of my friends who are not Christians. They sometimes say to me, just leave me alone about this Jesus thing. I don’t want to hear any more from you about it. And I say, okay, I won’t mention it again. I’m going to keep quiet. We’ll have a good time. Cause you’re my friend, and I like hanging out with you, but the subject of God and Jesus won’t come up anymore, unless you ask. But if it gets really, really bad, And you don’t have any answers and you’re alienated and you’re guilty and you’re without meaning and you want some answers, then bring it up. When you bring it up, I’ve got some very good news for you. Now, what we’re going to do in looking at this text, let me read it to you, is we’re gonna look at six paradoxical statements that delineate and define and remind us of how radical the gospel of Jesus Christ is. Paul says this in the text at the 15th verse of the second chapter of Galatians. And we’re in the middle of a study of Galatians.
We ourselves who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we ourselves were found to be sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I proved myself a transgressor. For through the law I’ve died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose whatsoever.
Now that is the statement of the gospel. And if that doesn’t make you want it dance and sing, and rejoice, then there’s something really wrong with you. I think I’ve told you that I’ve been working on a book. In fact I just got back from the Billy Graham Training Center and taught on this subject, which came out of the research of the book I’m working on. And the working title is this, Laughter and Lament: The Touchstones to Christian Freedom and Power. What’s the lament? Oh, there’s so much sadness and pathos in the world, but for all of us, there is alienation, there is guilt and there’s a meaningless and where’s the laughter comes from? It comes from within. The Holy spirit was called by the early church, the happy spirit. Why is that? Because you’re free. Thank God, almighty free at last. You can think about that. Amen.
Matthew Porter:
Now into chapter two today, today Steve introduced the idea of six paradoxical statements, we’ll pick up from here tomorrow. Sure hope you’ll join us then. Hey, a question for you. Do you ever feel guilty? I do. I sometimes think that if I didn’t feel any guilt, I might even feel guilty about that. But here’s some great news. Jesus’ death paid the debt for all our sins. That means guilt can actually lead us back to Christ, to find true and lasting forgiveness. Steve wrote about this in a mini-book called Feeling Guilty? Grace for Your Mistakes. And you can get that mini-book for free, right now by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also drop an email to [email protected] and ask for the mini-book. By mail send your request to
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