RECLAIMING YOUR SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE
Victory In Jesus – Part 3
Galatians 3
October 3, 2004
Introduction:
It seems as if there is nothing too stupid for some people to try. Listen to some of these warning labels that have been placed on various products because of the stupid things that some people have tried to use them for.
Ø A fishing lure, with a warning that reads: harmful if swallowed.
Ø A warning on an electric router made for carpenters cautions: “This product not intended for use as a dental drill.”
Ø A warning label found on a baby stroller cautions the user to “Remove child before folding.”
Ø A container of underarm deodorant says, “Do not spray in eyes.”
Ø A cartridge for a laser printer warns, “Do not eat toner.”
Ø A cardboard car sunshield that keeps sun off the dashboard warns, “Do not drive with sunshield in place.”
We can laugh about those and think, who would be stupid enough to need warning labels like that? Who would be crazy enough to try any of those things? But apparently someone was crazy enough to try them so they had to put on these warning labels.
Paul felt the need to write the third chapter of Galatians because the Christians there were trying some equally stupid things in the spiritual realm. Look at the first three verses.
1 You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the Cross was certainly set before you clearly enough. 2 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? 3 Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? (Msg)
Paul called the Galatians “crazy” because having received the free gift of God’s grace they were now turning to their own self-effort instead. It is as if they were saying to God, “Thanks for the jump-start, but we can take it from here.”
What these people were in effect doing was walking away from their spiritual inheritance and so Paul writing to them about what they must do to reclaim their spiritual inheritance. And that is what I want to talk to you about this morning. “Reclaiming Your Spiritual Inheritance.”
We need to talk about this subject because this problem did not begin and end with the church in Galatia. Because of good old-fashioned human pride and ego people through the ages have sought to earn the favor of God. Our own arrogance wants to feel that the blessings we have received from God have been earned or deserved. We don’t want anyone to accuse us of receiving spiritual welfare or of accepting spiritual handouts. But that is exactly what the grace of God is. It is something you don’t earn or deserve yet it is given to you freely for your own welfare – your own well-being – if you will humble yourself and accept it. This is not something to be ashamed of rather it is something to be grateful for. So don’t make the mistake of walking away from it. Or if you have already made that mistake, then listen and learn how to reclaim your spiritual inheritance.
Let’s begin by looking at the three components of a spiritual inheritance as brought out by the apostle Paul in the third chapter of Galatians.
1. Friendship with God.
How do you get to be friends with God? Is it by doing the right things and earning his friendship? Do you have to keep certain rules and obey all the right laws and jump through all the correct hoops?
Notice what Paul says about the purpose of the law.
24The law was our guardian leading us to Christ so that we could be made right with God through faith. (NCV)
What does Paul mean when he says that the law was our “guardian?” Other translations say “schoolmaster” or “teacher” or “tutor.” The Greek word is ‘paidagogos’ (pahee-dag-o-gos’). It means “a tutor i.e. a guardian and guide of boys. Among the Greeks and the Romans the name was applied to trustworthy slaves who were charged with the duty of supervising the life and morals of boys belonging to the better class. The boys were not allowed so much as to step out of the house without them before arriving at the age of manhood” (Studylight.org). This slave was to insure that the child developed social skills, learned manners, and formed character. He wasn’t a tutor or a teacher in the academic sense that we would typically use it today. This slave was more like a mentor or maybe even more accurately like a nanny.
The law is like that in that it can show us what is right and what is wrong. It can show us what kind of a life God expects us to be living. It can teach us where there should be boundaries and limits. But the law does not have the power to enable us to live up to God’s expectations. All it can do is point out our shortcomings when we miss the mark. All it can do is make us painfully aware of our own personal ineptitude when it comes to pleasing God.
Do you want to know how to drive yourself into a state of total despair and frustration in very short period of time? Try to live your life perfectly according to the law. Try and doing everything that you know that you should be doing without ever once messing up. Try that and see how long you last. Some of you might not make it through the end of this service. Many of you certainly won’t make it through this afternoon’s football games.
Think about this for a moment. How long could you go without ever messing up? How long could you go without thinking – even for just a second – one vindictive thought? One selfish thought? One jealous thought? One lustful though? One self-righteous thought?
Go ahead and try that and you will bring despair to your life faster than you ever imagined possible. In short order you will come to realize that you can’t control your emotions, your thoughts, your desires or your actions in a perfect manner 100% of the time. You will come to the conclusion that although you know what the right thing is you are not always able to force yourself to do it.
You can try this little experiment for yourself if you really want to, but I would encourage you to take a little shortcut and learn this lesson from the apostle Paul. He tried this very experiment in his own life and look at his conclusion:
“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.” Romans 7:15,18-19 (Msg)
Does that sound familiar to you? Does that sound like your life? That’s what the law does. It frustrates us by showing what we should do and then pointing out all of our failures. No matter how hard we try to be good we end up doing what we know is wrong and we come to despise ourselves.
So is there any hope for us to reclaim our spiritual inheritance of friendship with God? Look at what Paul says in verse 18:
18If the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
He says that our spiritual inheritance does not depend on our ability to keep the law. That is good news for all of us who can’t keep it. If the inheritance did depend on the law, then none of us would be able to reclaim it.
21If the law could have given us new life, we could have been made right with God by obeying it. (NLT)
But that is the very problem with the law. We can’t obey it. So what is the solution? Look at the next verse.
21But the Scriptures have declared that we are all prisoners of sin, so the only way to receive God’s promise is to believe in Jesus Christ. (NLT)
We saw a moment ago that our spiritual inheritance does not depend on the law, but on the promise. So how do we receive the promise? This verse tells us that it is by believing in Jesus Christ. If you want to become right with God, if you want to stay right with God, there is only one way to do it. And that is by placing your faith in Jesus. Because no matter how hard you try to be good you will never be good enough to earn a passing grade. Now that we have moved from living according to the law to living by faith, what happens to the law?
25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.” (NIV)
Our lives are no longer governed by the dos and don’ts of the law, but by our faith in Jesus Christ. The law had the power to prove our sin, but Jesus has that power to remove our sin.
Paul was reminding the Galatians that they started off their spiritual lives by faith in Jesus Christ and they need to continue to live by faith as well. He would say the same thing to each of us today. We need the law to show us that we can’t do it on our own. We need the law to help us to recognize that we are sinners in need of being saved. Then you need to turn to God and say, “I know that I can’t do this on my own. So I am putting my faith and trust in Jesus to forgive my sins and to enable me to live a live that is pleasing to you.” That is how you enter the Christian life and that is how you maintain the Christian life. That is how you become a friend of God and reclaim your spiritual inheritance. Look what Paul said in Romans:
“So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God– all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God.” Romans 5:11 (NLT)
That is your spiritual inheritance – reclaim it today!
Now let’s turn our attention to the second component of your spiritual inheritance.
2. Blessings From God.
Not only do we get to have a friendship with God, but we also get to have blessings from God. It only gets better. Let’s look at what Paul has to say about this:
6[Abraham] believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God… 9So those now who live by faith are blessed … 10And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: "Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law." (Msg)
Those who live by faith in Jesus are those who experience the blessing of God on their lives. As we have already established – it is impossible to keep all of the rules and regulations of the law perfectly through your own human effort. Therefore, you are doomed to failure if you try to do so and you find yourself under God’s curse.
If you have slipped back into that way of living as the Galatians did, don’t lose hope. Paul goes on to share with us the remedy for this unfortunate situation. He tells us how to get out from under the curse and back into favor with God.
13Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the Cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. 14And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available …(Msg)
Now that is good news! The blessing of God is present and available to you this morning. Now aren’t you glad that you came to church today. This is exciting stuff. You don’t have to live a cursed life anymore. You don’t have to live a life predestined for failure. You can experience victory in Jesus. You can experience the blessing of God on your life starting right now. It is present and available. Have you ever been frustrated when you went to the store to make a purchase only to find out that the item you needed was out of stock? Let me tell you that God’s blessings are never out of stock – they are always available to those who believe in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for you.
What is the blessing of God? Well obviously it is primarily that experience of salvation as we are forgiven for our sins. But God’s blessing doesn’t stop there. Look back at verse five.
5Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? (Msg)
The blessing of God is his presence in our lives and the fact that he works things out in our lives that we could never do on our own. The NIV calls these things ‘miracles.’ What are miracles? They are God’s supernatural workings in our lives.
Notice that he doesn’t ask if God is working in their lives, but how. He assumes that God is at work in the lives of those who believe in him. That is a given. I like how The Message words this because when we think of miracles too often we only think of the really big stuff like walking on water or raising the dead and my guess is that none of you have done any of those things recently. But that doesn’t mean that God has done miracles in your life – it doesn’t mean that God isn’t at work in your life. It is a miracle when God helps you to forgive someone who was mean to you. It is a miracle when God brings a friend along when you are feeling down. The little coincidences of life become miracles when seen through the eyes of faith. And that in itself is part of the blessing – that we recognize these things for what they are – the work of God in our everyday lives. What a blessing it is to know that God knows about our concerns and that he cares about them and that he is working in our lives to help us with these problems.
Look at some of the many blessing of God that can be found in the scriptures. We are not going to take the time this morning to look up all these verses, but take home your study guide and look them up throughout the week and be blessed by what you learn.
The Blessings of God are: An acceptance that can never be questioned. (Ephesians 1:6).
An inheritance that can never be lost (I Peter 1:3-5).
A deliverance that can never be excelled (2 Corinthians l:10).
A grace that can never be limited (2 Corinthians 12:9).
A hope that can never be disappointed. (Hebrews 6:18, 19).
A bounty that can never be withdrawn. (I Colossians 3:21-23).
A joy that need never be diminished (John 15:11).
A nearness to God that can never be reversed (Ephesians 2:13).
A peace that can never be disturbed (John 14:27).
A righteousness that can never be tarnished (2 Corinthians 5:21).
A salvation that can never be canceled (Hebrews 5:9).
That is your spiritual inheritance. Put your faith in Jesus Christ and reclaim it today. Now let’s look at the third component of your spiritual inheritance.
3. Service For God.
Your spiritual inheritance includes friendship with God, blessings from God, and service for God. That is a complete package and one sweet deal. Take a look beginning in verse 8.
8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (NIV)
Then skip down to verse 29.
29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (NIV)
By faith in Jesus Christ we have become heirs of the promise that God gave to Abraham. That promise is our spiritual inheritance. What is that promise? It is that God would bless Abraham and make him a blessing to others. Look back at Genesis 12:3.
“I will bless you … and I will make you a blessing to others… Everyone on earth will be blessed because of you.” Genesis 12:2-3 (NLT/CEV)
According to the apostle Paul that promise is now our spiritual inheritance. And what is that promise? It is that we will be a blessing to others. God said that he blessed Abraham so that Abraham would in turn be a blessing to others.
Have you ever stopped to think that God doesn’t bless you only for your own benefit? He actually blesses you for the benefit of others. You are intended by God to be a channel of his blessing to the world. That is your service for God and it is your spiritual inheritance.
A man was in front of a preacher coming out of the church one day. The preacher grabbed him by the hand, pulled him aside and said to him, "You need to join the Army of the Lord!" The man replied, "I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor." The Pastor questioned, "How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?" He whispered back, "I’m in the secret service. " (Contributed by Abraham Shanklin, Jr. – SermonCentral) God doesn’t want secret-service Christians, he wants full-service Christians.
How are you supposed to know what your service for God is to be? Look at how God has blessed you and then find ways to pass that blessing on to others. Has God blessed you financially? Then be a financial blessing to other people or to missions or other Christian charities and organizations. Has God blessed you with a particular skill? How can you use that skill to bless others?
This is the biblical principle: However God has blessed you is how he intends to use you. The area in which you have been most blessed by God is the area in which you will be most used by God. God’s blessings are not meant only for your own personal enjoyment – although that is a wonderful perk – but also for the benefit of those around you. Are passing on the blessings of God or are you guilty of trying to hoard them all for yourself? Here is the secret to being blessed by God. Use his blessing to bless others and when he sees your faithfulness he will bless you with even more. If you are not already using what you have to bless others, then why should God give you anymore? If you don’t use it, you lose it. So reclaim your spiritual inheritance and get ready to see God use you to change the world.
Conclusion:
Paul has outlined for us in the third chapter of Galatians an incredible spiritual inheritance. This inheritance includes friendship with God, blessings from God, and service for God. This inheritance is present and available this morning. All you have to do is to claim it as your own through faith in Jesus Christ. As Paul told the Galatians, you would have to be crazy to pass up this inheritance.
Please email me if you use this sermon or a revision of it. Thank you!
