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The world says, ‘Have a drink and forget.’ Jesus says, ‘Drink and remember.’

The world says, ‘Have a drink and forget.’ Jesus says, ‘Drink and remember.’

OCTOBER 22, 2020

/ Programs / Key Life / The world says, ‘Have a drink and forget.’ Jesus says, ‘Drink and remember.’

Steve Brown:
The world says, ‘Have a drink and forget.’ Jesus says, ‘Drink and remember.’ Let’s talk on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve Brown. And this is Key Life. We’re dedicated to the teaching that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. Steve is an author, seminary professor and our teacher on Key Life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you have your Bible, I’m not going to read that text to you again, but we started a brand new text. And if you have your Bible open it to Galatians 3:1-9. Now at the risk of repeating myself and, you know, I taught you some of this, when we first started studying the book of Galatians, you know, who wrote it, when they wrote it, what was the purpose of it and all that kind of thing. Let me refresh your memory. Paul is insistent in this entire book and especially in these verses that the Galatians had been deceived. Some people and Paul had been their pastor. He had been faithful. He had taught them grace, justification, adoption. He taught them imputation and they had these people come into the church and began to tell them, well, that’s okay. But there’s some things that you need. You have to get circumcised for instance. And the pagans said what? You have to live by the law, or you’ll hurt your witness. You have to become a member in a good synagogue. You have to be a wonderful person. You have to understand and practice a certain kind of ritual. And so Paul is dealing with that sort of thing. And they’re not only going after what he taught, they’re going after pole personally, I used to say that I didn’t want to spend time with Paul when we got to heaven. I wanted to go to his lectures and I have a bunch of questions during the question and answer period. But when we go out and get a Coke and a hamburger after his lecture, I want to go with Peter, I want Paul to go somewhere else. I don’t want to spend time with him, but I’m a lot older now and I’m wiser and Paul has become a good friend and there’s something so childlike about him that it just blows me away. I mean, he does dumb things and he knows it. He gets upset and he apologizes. He says things that he shouldn’t say, and he says, I’m sorry. He is absolutely devastated, and I was a pastor for a lot of years, and I know how this is, if two people were talking in the hallway, I was sure they were talking about me. And he, and Paul was just, he defends in II Corinthians, he spends a lot of time defending himself and then he stops. And he, and he says, this is stupid. This, this is foolish, I’m talking like a fool. And then having said that, he went and did more of it. And I just love him for that. I love his Romans 7 confession, he’s so authentic, he’s so kind, his love has legs. So when I get to heaven, Peter and I are going to invite Paul to go with us to get a Coke and a hamburger after Paul lectures, but I get what he’s doing here. Have you ever been with new Christians and caught their wonderful spirit? Well, I have, and it’s exciting, I sometimes work at leading people to Christ, just so I can, just so I can hang out with them and, and feel the joy. I have a friend, when he found a Christ, he was on drugs, he had a horrible disposition, one of the most negative people I’ve ever met. Two months after he came to know Christ, he was off the drugs, he was positive about everything. He was walking the talk, he was living the life. He was talking the walk. He was one of the most winsome people you would ever want to meet. I met him, again, after three years had past, and he looked like death warmed over. He was negative. He was legalistic. He was angry at all the sinners in the world and not even the sinners in the world. He was angry at anybody who disagreed with his doctrine. And I wanted to shake him and say to him what happened to you? I’ll tell you what happened to him, religion happened to you. I mean, if religion can kill you and it can make you very weird, how do you fix that? Well, according to Paul, you remember, have you forgotten Paul asked? He says, remember, the world says, have a drink, and forget, and Jesus says, drink the wine and remember. And so we’re going to spend the rest of this broadcast, and probably the next couple of weeks talking about the importance of remembering. In the old Testament that’s what happens with memorials. You remember when they crossed the Jordan and they had gone through the Red Sea, and the first thing that God told them to do was the build, to pile up a bunch of rocks. Now that seems kind of silly, but you know what God was saying? He was saying, every time your children see these piles of rocks, you tell them what God did. Don’t forget, don’t forget, and God’s done that in your life too. God has been faithful, hasn’t he? I mean the time when you thought you weren’t going to make it, but you did. When you couldn’t pay the bill, but you did. When you couldn’t get your kids through college, but they got through college. When you thought it was the end, and it wasn’t. When you didn’t feel loved and then you felt loved, those are memorials. And it’s very important for God’s people to look at what God has done and to remember what he’s done. And that’s what Paul was saying. Paul is saying, as he looked at the people at the church who were reverting to their old ways, were listening to heretics who were telling them this grace thing is fine, but you got to add some things to it. Paul looked at them drifting away and he said, are you crazy? Remember for God’s sake, remember. And so, this week, next week and the rest of this broadcast, I want us to examine a few things that sometimes we have a tendency to forget. Because of our tendency forget, you have to say to me, remember, and I have to say to you remember. Alright, let’s dig in, first in this passage in Galatians 3:1-9, you can be deceived by forgetting the cross, Galatians 3:1,

O foolish Galatians! Who has be witched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Now the Greek word that Paul uses here for portrayed means literally placarded or advertised on a bulletin board, the way one would put up a poster. In other words, Paul is saying, when we publish the gospel to you, it was in nothing more or less than pointing to the cross of Christ, where all of your sins were placed on Christ. Lawrence Converse has a story where a Mr. Budget blueprint in hand decides to take down an old cross and construct a short wave radio transmitter where modern religion with no cross in it, can be broadcast around the world. There’s an old man there, who everybody thinks is crazy. He watches as they try to pull down the cross and they try to dig it up. The old man says they can’t dig it up, it’s from the beginning, it’s at the very core of creation. It really is. Now next week, when we talk about this, I’m going to give you some lessons in the history and show you how everything in all of human history for ever crosses at the Cross, it points to the cross. Everything was preparation for the Cross. Everything God did was his way of preparing us for what he was going to do on the Cross. And the Cross, and the reason you have to remember is because it seems crazy. I mean, I mean, when somebody tells you that you can be forgiven because somebody hung on a cross and paid the penalty for your sins and you don’t ever have to feel guilty anymore. That’s crazy. That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem like that’s enough ,or that that could work any way, but it is. And so the first thing Paul says here is don’t you forget. When you start drifting and you’re depressed or you’re down, please, for God’s sake, remember the Cross. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. We’ll continue our guided tour of Galatians soon, but first, tomorrow, it’s time again for Friday Q & A, tomorrow Steve and our friend Pete Alwinson will take on this question, what about the gospel of Thomas? Have you ever heard of that? Interesting story, be sure to join us tomorrow. So have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that you were right? Maybe there’s a reason, Steve wrote an article called Christians are Right, a headline that you probably won’t find too shocking, but what if there’s more to the story than just being right? More meaning what, Matthew? Well, you can find that answer and that article in the 2020 edition of Key Life Magazine, you’ll also discover loads of great content from other favorit Key Life Voices. It’s the 2020 edition of Key Life Magazine. Get your free copy right now by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also email [email protected] and ask for the magazine. If you’d like to mail your request, send it to

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