Saved By Faith:August 16, 2026-Morning Service

We walk through Galatians 3:1–14 and hear Paul fight for the gospel of grace through faith when religious voices try to add extra requirements. We challenge ourselves to test our spiritual experiences against Scripture and rest our assurance in Christ’s finished work, not our performance.  
• Paul’s personal faith theme and his refusal to compromise truth  
• Why Ephesians 2:8–9 rules out salvation by works  
• Who the Judaizers are and what they demand  
• The difference between experience and theology and why it matters  
• How the Galatians received the Holy Spirit by hearing with faith  
• Why trying to be “perfected by the flesh” collapses under the law  
• Abraham’s righteousness counted by belief and the blessing for the nations  
• The curse of relying on the law and Christ becoming the curse for us  
• Two closing questions that diagnose what we trust for salvation  

Transcript

Galatians 3 And Personal Faith

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you have your Bibles, if you're turning with me to the book of Galatians, chapter 3, we're going to walk through verses 1 through 14 today. And as we walk through this, notice the title of this is called Personal Faith. And what we're looking at here is the Apostle Paul is going to stand up for the truth no matter what. No matter persecution, no matter what the religious folks say, he's going to stand up for the truth. And the truth that he's going to stand up for revolves around the concept of a personal faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and as our Savior. As he writes to the Galatians, I want you to notice one of the uh key verses that's actually in Ephesians, but still written by Paul, is what his whole argument is about. Listen to what it says in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. It says, For by grace you have been saved through faith. That is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Now, if you want to be completely honest with you, if you wanted to, we could start the invitation now. I could have Debbie come up, I could tell Tammy to hit the button in the back, and we could just do the invitation because that is a sermon right there. That's what it's all about. For by grace you have been saved through faith. You remember the problem that Paul's facing with the church in Galatia, these people called the Judaizers, people who were religious people, people who were what we almost want to call like believers. But the problem is they were saying that if you were going to be a Christian, if you're going to follow after Jesus, you must first follow all of the laws of the Old Testament, specifically having to do with circumcision. Okay. Now, describing a Judaizer and even just looking at the verse that we just read is still on the screen in Ephesians. Do you see a conflict there? This says, for by grace have you been saved through faith. God's grace allows you to be saved. And how you're saved is through your faith, your faith in him. Not just believing in him, because you know scripture tells us that the demons believe. Okay, but having a true faith, knowing that he is the Son of God, that he came, lived a perfect life, died on the cross, taking on my sin and your sin, so that we can have a restored relationship with the Almighty God. Notice too, it says here, this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God. So if it's a gift that's coming from God, it's not something that you can do on your own. But see, the Judaizers were saying, oh, you have to follow the Old Testament laws. There's some other things you have to do. You have to cut yourself, you have to do all these that follow all these other laws. But notice it says in verse 9, it's not a result of works, all the things the Judaizers won't done, so that no one can boast.

Grace Through Faith Not Works

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So as we walk through it this morning, I want you to help me think about the difference between experience and theology. Experience, something that happens to you day by day, something that you go through, something that you live, something that has happened in your life. Think about that in terms of your salvation. What was your experience like? How was it in your life? How did you come to know Jesus? Okay, I've mentioned before I came to know the Lord as a seven-year-old in vacation Bible school. And I've taught before that it was not until I was a little bit later in high school before I really took the Lord more serious and started sharing my faith. Uh, visiting folks in the hospital, praying more, reading my Bible more, things like that. That's kind of my experience. Okay. Now, that's a short version. In that experience, I came to know who Jesus Christ was. I came to know that He came and died on the cross for my sins. I came to know that I was a sinner and I needed forgiveness. Okay, I didn't need to add that part to that. That was the experience. Now, theology, what do you mean by theology? That's one of those big fancy words, right? Theology, you got theo, which refers to God, and ology would be like the study of. So you theology is a study of God. A theologian is someone who studies God. Do we got any theologians in the room?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

I'll ask the question again.

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Do we have any theologians in the room? Another way I'm asking that, do we have anybody that studies God, that studies his word, that seeks to know him more? I pray that, yeah, I pray that as a believer, every single one of us, even those listening to us online today, are theologians in the sense that they study God to know more and more of him. Now, obviously, there's theologians that we think of like in an ivory tower somewhere that all they do is sit down and read books all day. There's others like us that live a daily life, have a regular job, worship him in our homes and come and worship him together. But here's the catch. When I'm talking about experience versus theology, I'm talking about experience, what's happened in our life versus what God's word says. So you're telling me there could be a difference in our experience and God's word. Yes. That's where we have to be careful. Because if our experience doesn't match up with God's word, then something could be wrong. A Judaizer would come and they would say, Well, you know what? We had an experience. We were circumcised. So because of that, we can be a believer in Christ. Well, you show me in God's word in the theology, show me where that's true. Now, if you can show me where that's true, then we might as well stop coming to church because Christ's death was worthless because we can save ourselves by something we can do, which is Paul's whole argument here. Okay? So help me think about this. As we walk through this, what is the difference in our experience and our theology? We need the experience, but it's got to be based on our theology. If it gets off, then we're gonna have trouble. That makes

Experience Versus Biblical Theology

SPEAKER_00 6:40

sense? You'll see more of this as we walk through this, but let's take a look at this. Verses one through five, Paul's gonna talk specifically about the experience that the Galatians have. In this case, it's a positive experience. And then after that, in six through nine, we'll look at the actual theological argument that he makes. But let's talk for a second about the experience that the Galatians had as it came to know Christ. Look at verse one. He said, he starts off. It's not a very exciting, hey, how you doing, my brothers? It's a little bit different. Look what he says. Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. It says, though he's writing this letter to some people who he, many of him may have won to the Lord and helped be vital in the starting of the church. He's writing to say to them, Hey, what happened? Why are you getting off course? It was before your eyes you heard about Christ and how he was publicly portrayed as crucified. That that was true facts. Okay. The Galatians had had an experience where they had been taught and heard the truth that Christ had died. Okay? Goes on to say, let me um let me ask you this only. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? All right, so here's the catch. As we've seen in the book of Acts, many times in that early church, when people would come to know the Lord, they also received a visible filling of the Spirit where they began to speak in tongues. Not all of them, but many of them. The idea is that was the validation from those who were preaching, the apostles and disciples, that this was truly the word of God. Okay, that was the experience that was taking place. So notice what they said. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Now, for those who were Gentiles, this part didn't maybe make a lot of sense to them because they weren't worried about the Old Testament and all the laws. They just, that wasn't them, they weren't Jewish. But for those who were Jews, they knew about the Old Testament law. They sought to obey the Old Testament laws, and many of them obviously still valid today that we need to be mindful of. But the question is, when did the Holy Spirit come? Did it come to them when they obeyed the laws or when they heard in faith? Well, us looking back, we know it's when they uh heard by faith, because that's when they realized they were filled with the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and miraculous things took place. Same would be true to us today, that's we're filled with the Spirit when we place our faith in the Almighty God. Okay? So he's saying, look, what was tell me about your experience. When you came to know the Lord, was it because you followed all the laws and were circumcised? No. Because look at all the people that were circumcised as Jews, and how many of them had experiences where they spoke in tongues or were filled with the Holy Spirit for that matter? Okay, wasn't quite the same. So he's using an argument based off the Old Testament, one that would kind of make sense today in the sense that, how did you receive the Spirit? So if I ask you today, how did you receive the Spirit? Well, Scripture, if we take our experience and put theology with it, aren't we told in Ephesians, I think it's 1.13, that we're sealed with the Holy Spirit when we come to place our faith in Him? Or did we receive the Holy Spirit when we started doing good works? If it was when we started doing good works, what happened when we did bad works? Did we lose the Holy Spirit? So we have to watch our theology on that. That's why sometimes we might have days when we feel like we're really doing good in the Lord, we're excited, and like God's right there with us and everything's good. But then another day may come along, and we feel like even though we haven't changed anything, we feel like God's a million miles away. He's still God, we're still saved. We've still got that same Holy Spirit that came when we placed our faith and trusted him. Okay? Our experience and our theology need to add up. And they don't, it's not theology's fault, it's our own experience's fault. Look at verse 3. He says, Are you so foolish? Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? What he means by that is he's reminding the Galatians, and you came to faith in Christ, you understood who he was and

How The Spirit Comes By Faith

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what he did, you placed your faith in him, you were filled with the spirit. Now you're listening to these Judaizers, and it's making you want to go back to try to obey the laws. For those who are Jews in the crowd, they would have to, oh yeah, I'm supposed to follow the Ten Commandments perfectly. For those who were Gentiles, they would have to find some scroll lines, say, hey, tell me what were those, what are the laws? 600 plus laws that they had back in that time.

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How are we made perfect? Not by following the law. Just think about the Ten Commandments. How are we at following the Ten Commandments? Do we do those perfectly?

SPEAKER_00 12:11

If you do, don't raise your hand because that hate for the Lord just to take you out right now, just like that. Lying to a preacher on a Sunday in church, that'd be pretty bad. But those laws only show us how we're sinful. Yes, a standard to look up to, but that's not what's gonna save us. So when I come to know Christ, when I place my faith in him, boom, I'm saved. There's nothing I can do. Remember, that's a free gift from God because of his grace. But what the Judaizers were doing, they were trying to tell everybody, oh, good, you made that profession and you're Christian now. Good. Now you got to be a Jew too. Go get circumcised. Go follow all these other man-made laws. And that's where the problem is. What about in the church today? We get excited when somebody places their faith in the Lord, right? Whether they make it publicly by walking the aisle or pray at home, however that is, that's exciting for us. We didn't make sure that they know when they do that, truly, sincerely confessing their sins, believing that Christ is who he said he is, that he came and lived a perfect life, died on the cross to take away our sins, knowing that we trust in him, he'll come in and dwell in us with his spirit. That's salvation. We're saved. Nothing else we can do to be saved. Now, as a result of that love relationship with him, there's some things that we're gonna want to do. As we understand how much he loved us, we're gonna want to love others. As we understand how the church was set up, we're gonna want to be a part of that church because it's part of the body of Christ, the fellowship. That's what we're created for. As a result of coming to know the Lord, there's many other things we're gonna do. I said, attend the church, be faithful, serve as we're able, give as we're able, et cetera, et cetera. But those things don't save us. That's just uh showing uh other folks that we have made a change in life and we love the Lord, right? That's not what saves us. There might come a time where you might not be able to attend church. What about those who are on our shut-in list?

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Ms.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Hare, the Reams, they can't come to church. Does that mean they're not saved anymore? No, not at all. They were saved the moment they placed their faith in the Lord. They've sought to serve Him the best they can, and now they can't physically be here. That doesn't change your relationship with the Lord. It changes who they worship with. So he's saying, Galatians, how have you been so foolish? You started out right, but now you're going back to this old way, trying to be perfected in the flesh that you can't do on your own, that only Christ can do in you. Look at verse 4. He said, Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain. Understand here the word suffer has various meanings. To suffer something means to experience something, and it can also mean to suffer like physically harm suffer. So in this case, the concept here is more of the having an experience, right? So it says, Did you experience all these things in vain? You placed your faith in the Lord, but now are you saying that's worthless because you have to do all these things? What Paul's saying here, kind of like a rhetorical question. Look at verse 5. It says, 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? Is he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles? Is that done by the law or is that done by hearing with faith? Well, go back to the Old Testament times. How many miracles did you see by those who were following after the law? Matter of fact, what's really weird, if you think about the law, wasn't that during the time of Moses when they got the Ten Commandments? But who was the patriarch who came before Moses? Was it not Abraham? Abraham didn't have the law because God hadn't given it yet in the full, complete form, like we have with the Ten Commandments. So there must be something about that faith and by hearing, not by works. Verse 6 through 9, we make a transition. We've

Why Rules Cannot Perfect You

SPEAKER_00 16:15

been looking at the experience and arguing from people's experience that they had had, that that experience was they had placed their faith in God, and that's what saves them. Now they're going to look at the theological side, taking the Bible, specifically for their case, the Old Testament, talking about Abraham and seeing how it was that he came to have faith in God. Look at what it says in Galatians 3, verse 6. Just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. You heard that before? How was Abraham saved? Did he follow the Ten Commandments? Well, there were many things in there he may have followed just because he was an upright man before God. But they hadn't been physically written yet. How was he saved? He believed God because of his belief. And I'm not talking about just believing that he existed, because that's what the demons do, but truly believed God and walked in his ways, obedient to him, even at the potential cost of his own son, Isaac, through whom the blessing would come. He believed, God saw him as righteous, as holy because of that. Was he a perfect man? No. But in God's eyes, his faith, his belief was enough for him to be what we call in our churchy word, saved. Does that make sense? All right. Look at verse 7. Know then that is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. We see the song, Father Abraham and many sons, and many sons of Father Abraham. At that time they didn't have that little song, I don't think. That was written a lot later, the last hundred years, I believe, was when that song was written. But the concept here is that those who are truly Abraham's sons are those who are people who come after Abraham who've been blessed because they have been like Abraham in the sense of having faith in God. Verse 8, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel before him to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed. Again, they didn't have the Old Testament laws to follow, hadn't even been written yet. But it was a simple matter when God said, I'm going to bless you, you're going to be a blessing to the nations. Why? Because of faith. Move forward from that time, two, three, four thousand years or so to get to about now. How are we saved? The same way. Salvation hadn't changed by faith and God alone. It's a gift of God. It's called grace. Sometimes I feel like a broken record just saying the same thing over and over again, but I hope we're hearing that. That should give us good news because you know how bad a person you are before God got a hold of you. I know how bad of a person I was before God got hold of me. I know how I messed up since God got a hold of me, and you know how you messed up since God's gotten a hold of you. But nothing can separate us from his love. We're truly his child, we believe in him, we've been saved. That should give us great encouragement. We try to follow the laws, all the rules, we're gonna mess up. The Ten Commandments, thou shalt not lie. Has anybody lied today? I bet four or five of you just lied, but thinking you didn't lie, and you probably did have a little small lie and just didn't say that. You've got to be careful with that, right? We're gonna break those laws, okay? We don't lose our salvation over that. We didn't get saved because we could abide by all those laws. It's through faith in Jesus Christ. Verse 9, it says, so then those who are of faith are blessed, along with Abraham, the man of faith. You know, it's a it's a it's a blessing when we come to know Christ, when we realize God's favor on us, we realize how sinful people we are, but yet God still sent Jesus Christ and died on the cross for our sin. He didn't have to do that, but he did that out of his love for us, because he created us for a relationship with him. Verse 10, for all who rely on the works of the law were under the curse, for it is written,

Abraham Counted Righteous By Belief

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curse is everyone who does not abide by the things written in the book of the law and do them. Quoting scripture saying that if you don't follow the law, you're gonna be cursed. Well, you know what? We already know that we can't please God, we can't do all these things because we just can't follow the law. So it's saying here there's a curse because of that, those who are under that law. But didn't Jesus come? And when he came, didn't he become a curse for us so that we are no longer under the law? You see, if we were under the law, we would be doing what the law says to do. We'd have to have all these different sacrifices at different times, grain offerings, you know, meat offerings, sins sacrifices. We'd have to have all these different feasts, we'd have to make sure we follow the Ten Commandments, and the list goes on and on and on. But see, we're not under that anymore. Christ has come and he's fulfilled that. That should give us encouragement. It says here in verse 11, now that it's evident that no one is justified before God by the law, it says, because the righteous shall live by faith. It doesn't say the righteous are gonna maintain their righteousness by doing good things. It says they're gonna live by faith, faith. Knowing what the theology says, what the Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith with the gift of God and out of work, so no man can boast. That is how we're gonna live. If we live like that, we know that we've been made right before God because of our faith. We cannot be justified by the works of the law. Verse 12, it says, But the law is not of faith, rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Okay? Following the law at that time was not having faith. That was trying to do the right things to please the Almighty God. Just like maybe, and I say maybe there were some of us in this room when we were in school or you call it grade school back then, tried to do things to please the teacher. And you did that, right? Maybe you helped clean up the room, maybe you stoked the fire, brought in firewood, maybe you brought a teacher a gift or something, depending on what your school looked like. Okay, we can do all those things to try to please God. But we're loved because He's chosen us. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. If you want to follow after the law, live that way, have at it. But there's no faith in that. Faith is above the law. Look at verse 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Back in the day in Judaism, someone would do something worthy to be executed, more than likely they would be stoned. And then after they were stoned, they would be put upon a post. Okay? Is that post cursed? No, the post is a piece of wood. Are they cursed because they got put on that? No. They're cursed because they did something that was worthy of death, disobeyed the will of the law of the Lord. Okay? So Christ redeemed us by becoming a curse for us. How did he become a curse for us? He died on the cross. The physical putting him on the cross was not a curse. That's just putting a person on a cross and them dying on the cross. The curse is he took away our sin, all that lawlessness that we had, because we couldn't follow the law. He took that upon himself. That was the curse. It says Christ redeemed us, he took us away from that. He got that curse off of us by becoming a curse for

Christ Becomes The Curse For Us

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us, dying on the cross. That last verse for today, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Okay. Finishing up his argument, he already looked at experience. Now he's finishing up his argument on theology. All this has taken place, Christ dying on the cross for us. So that this blessing of Abraham, the idea that you are saved by faith, and credit, his faith is credited to him as righteousness, that can now be applied to the Gentiles. See, before that, everybody who were following after God were mostly Jews and they were following the Old Testament law. But now that Christ has come, we can see even more and reminded even more that we're saved through faith, just like Abraham, just like Isaac, Jacob, and the list goes on, David on and on and on. Does it make sense what we're talking about? So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. When we place our faith in God, the Spirit comes upon us. We're still with the Spirit. From that point on, we're told to live in the Spirit, to walk by the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit. The idea that we get to know Him more and more by getting in His Word, reading it, studying it, meditating on it, sharing it with others, and be involved in the local church, the local body of Christ, growing in our faith. It's that Holy Spirit that saves us. Or by grace are you saved through faith? So two questions, this warning, two simple questions. This the first one, does your experience match your theology? The catch here is the theology, not your experience, by the way. Because we've all had experiences. But we can't say that we have an experience and go try to find it in the Bible and try to justify what we believe and what we do. You see, that's what was going to happen with those who were the Judaizers. They were trying to tell the Galatians, oh, you had this experience, but you know, you really need to have another experience. You need to be circumcised, you need to follow all these rules. So, what about in your case? Does your experience match with the Word of God? Because the Word of God is the Word of God, and it says that you can't do anything to save yourself. Can't impress anybody. I mean, you can try to impress me. You know, you can take me out to lunch, or you can tithe a lot of money, or be every Sunday, or sit up close on the front pew, which nobody's doing today, but that's not going to impress me necessarily. Nothing we can do to impress God. We want to make sure that we understand that we're His, His child because of our faith in Him through grace. And the last thing, were you saved by following rules or by following faith? What does the culture tell us today? What do they think about the Baptist church? Oh, you're just a place of hypocrites, maybe? Mentioned that before. Oh, you're just a place to have to follow all these rules. What if they understood it as New Hope

Two Questions For Real Assurance

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Baptist Church is a place of faith? People who come together to have a, even though we have different personalities, come from different backgrounds, some different states, things like that. But our common bond is we have faith in Jesus. Yes, there's some rules, if you will. We have as a business, we're not a business, but we do follow some principles. So we have business meetings once in a while, and we have elected positions to serve in this and that. And if you don't live up to the requirements of Scripture, those abilities to serve may change. But maybe we'd be seen as people who love the Lord, people who are of faith, not running around trying to do things to appease God, because that's what pagans did. They try to appease the gods all the time. But what if we run around living a life of faith, knowing we're saved by grace, and as a result of that, serve and live and be obedient to what calls us what God calls us to do? If we do that, people will take note of that. And they're like, oh, they're not just a bunch of rule followers or pew jumpers. They're people who really love God. And as that result of their love, they're making a difference in the community. And they're gonna say, you know what? I want to be a part of that. I want to have what you have. They'll know you're not perfect because they see you every day. But you can let them know that you love God and you've been forgiven and you seek to be more like him every single day. Would you pray with me?

Prayer And Closing

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Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you, Father, for your word. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you, Father, that we can have a relationship with you. And Father, thank you that to do that it's a matter of faith. Even though we may try to do things on our way to uh please you or to serve you, help us remember that we're saved solely by faith. I pray that as we leave later today, that we will evaluate our lives and make sure that the things that have taken place in our life match up with your word, because your word is faithful, true, and unchanging. Speak to our hearts now, guide us, Father, and to your presence as we seek to humbly walk before you in spirit and truth. We love you. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.