A Little Leaven Leavens The Whole Lump
Gal 5.7-10
Galatians Series
July 31, 2005 Chester FBC Chester, Illinois Mike Fogerson, Speaker
Introduction:
Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France in a row this last week.
A He is sporting legend who comeback from cancer a few years back.
1 The race is long, difficult, and only the worlds best race the tour de france.
a Paul uses a race analogy in today’s text.
b He tells the believers at Galatia that they started the race well, but in the lat few laps they have started messing up.
c "hindered" cutting in or tripping up. (IL.) Early runners were not an oval track with lanes. They ran around a pole. They would get tripped or pushed out of the way.
2 7 You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion did not come from Him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough. 10 I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will adopt no other view; but the one who is disturbing you will bear his judgment, whoever he is. Gal 5:7-10 (NASB)
a The Galatian church was slowly becoming disable by a small amount of sin in its members. (ETS)
b A small amount of sin can corrupt the thinking of a large group of people in the church. (ESS)
B I hope you’ll evaluate your leaven level. (Objective)
1 How much do you know about the leaven that can level your run with Christ? (Probing Question)
2 Let’s look at two lessons we can learn about how sin slowly takes us out of the running of the race. (Transitional Sentence)
3 Pray
I The first lesson we can learn about how sin slowly takes us out of the race is . . . about leaven’s origin. (v.8)
A Paul points away from God as the source of the Judaizers teaching. " . . . did not come from Him [God] who calls you."
1 Paul’s not saying the source was Satan, though that may be the case.
2 His point was that the teaching had nothing to do with God’s will & purpose.
B Anytime sin is present, realize that did not come from God.
1 Doesn’t mean the devil is hiding under every pew and behind every door; it doesn’t mean that he’s not working either.
2 The devil gets blamed for things that he knows nothing about!
(Led me not into temptation, I can find it just find by myself.)
C The Judiazer’s message was about works of law, not about God’s work of grace through Christ.
1 Many in the church got off course because of this flawed message.
2 God didn’t call them by the law.
a 6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; Gal 1:6 (NASB
b God called them by His grace. (Grace was the course)
3 Any message that says God’s grace is insufficient for our salvation, you immediately know that it is not from God.
D When Pam & I got married we received many gifts, some duplicates.
1 We had bought a crock pot before we took our vows and received one just like on at our wedding.
a A few weeks after the wedding, we took the crock pot to Wal-Mart w/ a receipt and wanted our money back.
b The gal at the service desk looked at us like we were crazy. (You didn’t get this here. She then gave us back our receipt, our K-Mart receipt.)
2 Anytime we sin we must realize that it didn’t come from God.
II The second lesson we can learn about how sin slowly takes us out of the race is . . . what the result of leaven is. (v.9-10) (Paul gave two results)
A The first result is that leaven spreads.
1 A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough (Gal 5.9.)
a Leaven (yeast) is usually used in Scripture to illustrate the penetrating & corrupting influence of evil/sin.
b I Cor 5:6, Paul uses the same proverb to describe an incestuous man’s sin effect on the body.
c The sin of one or two (or a few) in a church can corrupt the whole body.
2 (IL.) On October 2, 1996, Armstrong was diagnosed with a cancer found in men that had metastasized, spreading to his lungs and brain. His doctors told him that he had a 40 percent chance of survival. After his recovery, one of his doctors told him that his actual odds of survival had been considerably smaller (one even went as far as to say three percent), and that he had been given the estimate primarily to give him hope.
a Sin can start with one or two, but very quickly can spread through the entire body of a church.
b "For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse the rider was lost. And for want of a rider, the battle was lost." -Benjamin Franklin
B The second result is that leaven ends in judgement.
1 10 I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will adopt no other view; but the one who is disturbing you will bear his judgment, whoever he is (Gal 5:10.)
a The real believer will get back on the track!
b Paul says, "God will deal judgement on the trouble maker."
2 The Judaizers’s were telling the Galatians that God was going to come down hard on them if they didn’t obey Mosaic law, get circumcised, practice ceremonial rites/cleansing.
a Paul says, "No, it’s you trouble making Judaizers who’s going to be judged by God because you’re not teaching about God’s grace."
b God didn’t allow leaven to go undealt with in the church. He still doesn’t either.
C An Atheist farmer often ridiculed people who believed in God. He wrote the following letter to the editor of a local newspaper:
"I plowed on Sunday, planted on Sunday, cultivated on Sunday, and hauled my crops on Sunday; but I never went to church on Sunday. Yet, I harvested more bushels per acre than anyone else, even those who are God-fearing and never miss a service."
The editor printed the man’s letter and then added this remark:
"God doesn’t always settle His accounts in October." The editor was right.
Conclusion:
The Galatian church was slowly becoming disable by a small amount of sin in its members. (ETS) A small amount of sin can corrupt the thinking of a large group of people in the church. (ESS)
A We’ve looked at two lessons we can learn about how sin slowly takes us out of the running of the race.
a We’ve seen the origin (Not of God.)
b We’ve seen the result (twofold: spreads & judgement)
B I hope you’ll evaluate your leaven level. (Objective)
a Ignore it or deal with it. (God will not let sin go un-dealt with.)
b Salvation?
C How much do you know about the leaven that can level your run with Christ?
a One of my favorite cartoon strips is "Frank and Earnest." Frank is in the courtroom standing before the judge who says to him, "It’s ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’ You can’t plead ‘I gotta be me.’" The cartoon is humorous because it touches a reality in our culture which places the need for self-expression above the need for morality, integrity and honor.
b I often think about the fact that Jesus warned his followers to beware of the "wicked and adulterous generation" in which they lived. And then I wonder what he would call our generation which has long passed the simple immorality of his day into acts of violence, sexual addictions and perversions that had never been thought of then, and around which we have built many of television programs and movies.
c And yet, we have an aversion to calling anything sin these days.
d How much do you know about the leaven that can level your run with Christ?
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