Crushed and Broken
Gal. 3:20-21
Greeting-
Good Morning! Blessed be the name of the Lord!
Introduction-
If you would turn to Galatians 2:20-21, this will be our text this morning.
I am concerned by the amount of people falling away from the Christian faith. Surveys upon surveys show that Christian people believe that it is okay to not be in church, not supporting the church, not being involved in the church. There is a numbness to the things of God yet claim to have a spiritual hunger. Today’s Believers not able to explain what they believe and share what they believe.
We can blame Covid-19 for isolation and we can blame circumstances because of the tough times, but it is a spiritual problem that has to be addressed in the spirit realm.
The New Testament writing’s of Paul gives us answers to life’s tough questions if we would take the time to look.
There is a reason we have become complacent in seeking the things of God and there is a reason that we struggle in things that the Lord has already given us victory in. It is because so many are not all in! They are half in, in so many areas of their life.
So I asked that we quiet our spirit to hear from the Lord this morning- Let’s pray
Prayer- Father, today, speak to us through the Apostle Paul teachings to be able to see the heart of a man that has tried to find and please you by works and self accomplishment. Paul who shows us that we cannot please God without knowing Him and we cannot be set apart if we do not disengage from the world thought and seek after the things of “God. I pray today that we would be set free to enjoy the freedom that comes in not only knowing of Christ but living for Christ.
Text- Galatians 2:20-21 read from Bible
There are two great temptations for a believer.
To think that you can earn your salvation and earn God’s favor in your life.
To reach a little achievement and you begin to compare yourself to others rather than a Holy God. You try to use your achievements as an advantage for you and disadvantage for others.
Paul who speaks from experience tells us in Philippians 3:5- “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more, circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law, a Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.”
I am all that and a bag of chips!
He tells us that to go back to the law which showed him that he could not be righteous in himself would be spiritual suicide.
People today commit spiritual suicide
Though he had a burning desire to put himself right with God, he found through the law that he could not please God and the deeper in the law he went, the more he sensed that the law was only designed to show us how much we need God in our lives.
The law was to show us how helpless we are in ourselves.
Paul’s life was a model of transformation.
He was a religious zealot who persecuted Christians and thought that he was going to stand before Almighty God and be rewarded for his actions until He encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Blinded on that road, it was Jesus Himself who asked Him why He persecuted Him and went after God’s people.
The law VS Christ- the law was the Ten Commandments. The first five books in the bible called the Torah- the mosaic law of Moses. It was also the 613 man-made laws set up by the Pharisees and Sadducees.
God gave ten but the religious leaders gave 613 more.
If you broke one law you were guilty.
Your animal sacrifice covered your sin but did not forgive your sin and had to be done by a priest who would intercede for the people and if sin was in his life, that priest could die in the Holy of Holies sacrificing on your behalf. He went in with a bell on his foot and if they could not hear the bell, they dragged the dead priest out.
Christ on the other hand was the sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice. Christ came to fulfill the law. He was the promise sent by God the Father.
Paul considered being under the law and being in Christ to be incompatible.
Paul rejected the law because the Gentiles could not be included.
Paul said that through the law was death and that the laws of Moses cannot give life. It had no power.
It was not faith VS the law- it was faith in Christ VS the law. It was Christology. Christ made the difference.
The law’s inability to save was not a reflection on God or the law. God never intended the law to be a means of salvation.
It was to regulate the way people lived and showed that without divine grace no human could do it.
Salvation was God’s gift and undeserving humans may receive freely by faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul’s attack on the law was not merely legalism, it was an attack on self-salvation without Christ.
When Christ went to the cross, He broke the barrier and allowed all who would receive Christ to be able to experience salvation.
To keep the law without Christ was in Paul’s mind saying that what Christ did was not enough.
Romans 7:12 “So then the law is holy, and the commandment Is holy, righteous and good.”
The law was planned obsolescence until the coming of Christ
The law was to point out sin and could not cure it.
Law had a restricted audience- now all were included.
What does that mean for you and I today? Let me read verse 20-21 again.
Romans 6:6
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of the sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
By faith we keep sin in death where it belongs. We reckon ourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sin must not reign in our mortal bodies, that we obey it in its lusts. (Romans 6:11-12)
If Paul could believe that he was crucified with Christ, it is possible for us too. “And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24.
Break this down
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
This is the heart of Christianity, the foundation of faith in Christ.
Until this becomes true in a person’s life, we will suffer continual defeat and failure.
As long as we live for ourselves, misery will result, because in us, that is, in our flesh, dwells no good thing. (Romans 7:18)
No one can manage to follow in the steps of Christ, do the will of God, and keep His commandments on his own.
Everyone’s flesh is totally irreparable, helpless, and impossible.
The more we try to do good, the more we discover that it is hopeless.
What are we to do? We must recognize and acknowledge that this is our state, it brings us into need and causes us sorrow.
God is able to then open our eyes to see that we were crucified with Christ;
debt nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14)
But also the debtor himself! (Romans 6:6)
This was included in the work of Christ; the Father reckons it to be so.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live.”
I have been crucified with Christ
It means that I no longer live according to the sinful lusts and desires of my flesh
I no longer commit what I know to be sin willfully and consciously. Sin in my flesh has been nailed to the cross by faith.
How can I say that I have been crucified with Christ? By faith!
We read, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life [the overcoming life], to which you were also called …”
It is easy to understand that no one is going to strive to believe that he has been crucified to something which he loves and wants to keep.
Before we can lay hold of faith in being crucified with Christ, we must have grown tired of ourselves. Yes, we have to be so sick and tired of sin and all the activity of self that we are thankful to be crucified with Christ and receive Him as Leader and Lord over our lives.
If you have this attitude, God will see to it that you get the opportunity to lay hold of faith in being crucified with Christ.
Two things are necessary to be crucified with Christ:
To want it.
To believe it!
Taking up my cross daily
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” Matthew 16:24.
“Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” Luke 9:23.
We see that it cannot be taken for granted that a person is following Christ just because he is converted. But, if someone really wants to follow Him, he can receive clear instructions as to what he/she must do to succeed.
As long as we live, the big question is and always will be: What do we do with our self-will? Everything depends on this.
We all have an enormous and complex self-will that always resists God’s will.
It is evident that these opposing wills cannot be carried out simultaneously!
If I do my own will, I transgress God’s will; if I do God’s will, then I go against, or deny or crucify, my own will.
If I want to walk the same way that Jesus walked, the way which He consecrated, then I must deny my own will daily and take up my cross onto which my self-will is to be nailed, because that is what Jesus did.
To be able to say that I have been crucified with Christ means that in the practical situations of daily life, I say “No” whenever I am tempted.
To agree with temptation would be the same as coming down from the cross.
We enter into life through all sorts of temptations. That is the same as constantly saying “No” to our self-will. We must be faithful in this and make no exceptions whatsoever. We must never get tired of saying “No!”
Closing
Our new life in Christ!
2 Corinthians 5:17-21-
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf; be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Our will that goes against the will of God has to be broken and crushed in Jesus Name!
That we daily lay that at the altar and allow the Lord to crush it, get rid of it, not want to hold unto it- then we will experience the newness of walking in Christ that actually gives us freedom like never before, we are set free from ourselves to experience the will of God which has our best interest.
What do you say to him this morning? Lord have your way in my life! Mold me and make me as you will!
