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May, 2020
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on August 25, 1985 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Galatians 1:3 DID YOU KNOW THAT GOD CAN SAVE WHOMEVER He wants to save? He doesn’t have to ask any preacher for permission. He certainly doesn’t have to ask me. Frankly, I don’t think I could make much of a contribution to God’s decision-making. But it sure seems like there are many traditional churchmen who think they have the right to determine whom He wants to spend eternity with. The Bible is comprised of the Old and New Testaments. We normally reserve the word “testament” to describe a special kind of contract where only one person writes all the terms. For most of us, we only exercise that kind of authority when we write our “Last Will and Testament.” A will gives you the absolute power to express your final wishes, which is as close as you will ever come to being like God. I don’t know why some people put off writing their wills. Writing a will can be fun, especially if you want to make your feelings known about certain distant relatives who didn’t treat you too kindly. I can imagine someone stating in their will, “Upon my death, I want this relative to get the thumbtacks from the wall. And I want this other relative to get that old worn-out toilet seat from my bathroom.” Now, they might not want the thumbtacks or the toilet seat, but that’s their problem. I know it is a ludicrous analogy, but the point is that only God has the right to choose the people He wants to share His inheritance with. God has written His will, and there are certain distant relatives who, I am sure, would like to rewrite it in their favor. But God will have to live with us throughout eternity and He has decided, having had much experience, what kind of people He wants with Him in heaven. God has declared in His Testament that He will give salvation to people who act in faith, and to no one else. Faith is not something mysterious; faith is acting on a promise of God. Find the places in God’s book where He has declared He will do something for you, and then grab hold of those promises and act on them. Faith is an act of courage that declares, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” God has declared He will give salvation to faithers, but Satan wants to cover up that truth. Satan wants to keep us in bondage to the law and to death. The law has no power to save anyone. Paul teaches in Galatians that 430 years before God ever gave the law, He gave a promise to Abraham and his seed. In Galatians 3, Paul emphasizes that the word used is not “seeds” but seed, which he then defines as Christ. God is a God of set times, and in the fullness of time He sent forth His Son. In the book of Exodus, we read that God came down to Mount Sinai and gave the law, or covenant, because mankind was transgressing. God gave them the law so that they might properly understand their need of Christ when He came. Paul said that the law acted as a tutor and a “schoolmaster” until Jesus came and became the law incarnate. Jesus said He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. He became the living law incarnate; and by bringing the law to life and fulfilling it, the law then had the capacity to die. The law itself taught that no one could fulfill it; we all fall short of God’s standard. It doesn’t matter if someone can perform the law better than someone else. The only person who ever completely fulfilled the law was Christ. All of our short-falling, past, present and future, was heaped on Christ, the living law. He became our Kinsman Redeemer who had the price of our redemption, which was His perfect life. Christ paid the price by dying for our sins; and when He died, the law died with Him. The law is now dead, and all of our sins died on the cross along with it. Every sin is now covered. Since every sin is covered, God is now free to save everyone if He wants to. Some people believe that God will forgive everyone. They believe that God can even save people who have already died. There is an enigmatic passage in 1st Peter 3:19 that says, speaking of Christ, “he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” Some interpret this verse to mean that Jesus actually preached the gospel to departed souls during the three days He was in the grave. I will state it as a logical possibility: God could, if He wanted to, save someone who had already died and even bring them back to life. If He wanted to, He could reincarnate someone. I absolutely do not believe in reincarnation, but the point I am making is that God has the power and the right to do whatever He wants to do. Where did Samuel come from in that mysterious passage in 1st Samuel 28, where a witch supposedly called forth Samuel from the dead? Did she really call him forth, or did God do it? Maybe it was God who brought Samuel back just to terrify that witch! Again, God can do what He wants. Small-minded people often box God in and deny His sovereignty. There is a seldom-preached message in 1st Corinthians 7:14 where it says that if a wife or a husband keeps the faith, God will cause that faith to save their whole household. Imagine a scenario in which a woman is faithful to God, but is married to a drunken derelict, a worthless scoundrel. Some people might not believe that her faith could cause God to save such a man. God can save a man in a casket if He wants to! Who are we to say that He can’t? Someone might ask, “Do you mean to tell me that God could save someone who was already in hell?” Yes, if He wanted, but He has not said in His word that He would. I can tell you what He did say in Galatians 1: “Grace be to you and peace.” God gives us grace, which is “unmerited favor,” and peace, which is “cessation of againstness.” The preaching of the message of grace makes some people angry because they don’t want to leave salvation up to God. They want to keep you in bondage to their rules and their “formulas” of salvation. These same people will be quick to say, “Well, you haven’t mentioned Galatians 5:16: ‘This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.’” Before we can discuss that verse, we must read the previous verse, “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Some people like certain Bible verses if they can use them against other people, while they conveniently avoid any verses that might apply to themselves; but we need to listen to the whole counsel of God. “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” The Greek word translated “contrary” is a military word. Paul is saying there is a battle between the Spirit and the flesh that is like trench warfare, where enemy combatants are dug in for a long siege. I preach a message of freedom. I know that the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another, but I also know that the Spirit side will ultimately win. Paul goes on to say, “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” Make sure you understand there is a difference between being led of the Spirit and being under condemnation from someone clubbing you with the law. We read in Galatians 5:19, “now the works of the flesh are manifest . . .” Paul is saying that the works of the flesh are obvious. You really don’t need a preacher to catalogue them, because everyone knows them when they see them. It is all flesh and it is really no big deal. Paul begins his list with adultery. Someone might ask, “How can you say it’s no big deal? Are you suggesting that any kind of behavior is okay, that anything goes? That is not at all what I am saying! I am not saying that adultery is okay. I am not suggesting it is okay for any married man or married woman to be playing around with someone else. You might wonder, “But what if I have done that? This may shock some people, but grace and peace can still be your portion. God gives grace and peace to the one who acts in faith. And when you faithe, all of your sins, including adultery, are put on Jesus. Furthermore, God gives you the gift of His Spirit, and His Spirit will change you. I don’t want to know who in the congregation has committed adultery. It is none of my business. I am not your judge. I am simply saying that it is no mystery what caused it: the flesh! Someone will objet and say that I am excusing sin. They will say, “But what about sinning willfully?” No one on God’s earth can tell you at what point that occurs or how many times it takes for it to become the “willful” time that puts you beyond the pale. It is possible to presume upon God too many times, and He could decide you are past redemption. It is also possible for you not to maintain faith long enough for the Spirit to do anything with you, and He may decide to leave. But I cannot tell you what specific act might put a person beyond the possibility of redemption. That brings me to the subject of “the unpardonable sin.” I don’t know what it is, and neither does anyone else. The Bible speaks of a sin unto death. There is also a sin for which there is no remission, and there is the state of being turned over to a strong delusion and believing a lie until you are damned. There is a sin against the Holy Ghost in which people who know better lie and deliberately credit the works of God to the devil. The unpardonable sin is not a single, specific sin; it is just whichever one, in your case, causes God to withdraw His Spirit from you. But all sin has been laid upon Christ, including the unpardonable sin. Whatever the unpardonable sin is, it creates a state of mind where you don’t even want to come to God. If God were to withdraw His Spirit from you, you wouldn’t care about it anymore. God said in Genesis 6:3, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.” You cannot come to God without His Spirit drawing you. The initiative to come to Christ starts with God. Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Theologians call this “prevenient grace.” If you have any desire to come to God and to know the things of God, then thank God; you have not committed the unpardonable sin. And as long as you want to come to God, all your sins are on Christ, even the sin of adultery. When you strike the connection of faith, three things happen: God puts your sins on Christ, He gives you the gift of His Spirit, and He views you as being seated in heavenly places in Christ as a finished product. The minute you start faithing, God places His Spirit into you and His Spirit is at war with the flesh. John says that whosoever is born of God cannot commit sin. When that new nature in you manifests Himself, He can only be Himself. So there is a new life in you, a “non-adulterous” Spirit, and this new life is at war with your old nature. Now, until you had this new life, it didn’t make any difference; you couldn’t have stopped sinning even if you wanted to. You might have repented ten thousand times. You might have said, “God, this will never happen again,” but your old nature would still overpower you. Even when you start to hear the word of God, it is like a graft in a tree that needs time to establish itself. You may even feel some internal resistance to your old ways, but that doesn’t mean you will change right away. Now if you don’t change your own behavior – and my point is that you can’t – the traditional church will eventually give up on you. They will say, “You don’t get another chance. You’re going to hell!” That’s why I say you have to leave salvation up to God. The problem is the traditional church no longer believes that God’s power can change a person. They think the only solution is to cage the converted sinner or put him into a straightjacket. I am not preaching that “anything goes” and you can just do whatever you please. I am preaching that it is none of my business what you do, and it is none of anyone else’s business either. What you do is between you and God. God makes it clear that when you start faithing, He places His Spirit in you. It is the flesh that wants to commit adultery, not the Holy Ghost. The new life in you is contrary to the flesh and this new life will change you with time. But the saving experience puts all of our sins on Christ and leaves them there. God will save faithers. In terms of judgment, you are placed in Christ and viewed as a finished product. It is the preacher’s job and the task of the church to communicate God’s message of grace and peace, and give the Spirit some time to work things out! Let’s move on to the next item in Paul’s list: fornication. I can imagine some self-righteous preacher exclaiming, “Finally, my prayers are answered! Dr. Scott is preaching against sin!” No, I’m not. I’m simply defining the works of the flesh. Sin is to fall short of God’s standard. The flesh, because it is flawed and earthly oriented, always falls short of the mark. The Greek word we translate “fornicate” is a cognate of our English word “pornography.” Pornography is just another desire of the flesh. The list in Galatians 5 continues with uncleanness, lasciviousness and idolatry. Idolatry can include the worship of anything. Some people worship the appearance of spirituality; they worship their own spiritual imagery. Idolatry could even include bibliolatry; it is possible for people to worship the Bible more than God. That would be like falling in love with a love letter instead of with the one who wrote it. Imagine a woman whose husband had just returned home from a war and she tells him she would rather spend time reading his letters than spend time with him! We get to know God and His ways through the Bible, but we don’t worship the Bible. Witchcraft and hatred are the next two on the list. It is amazing how many Christians think that hatred is okay. They will hate you if you fornicate or commit adultery. Mankind likes to decide that this activity of the flesh is okay while that activity is awful. The point is that it is all flesh. The haters are in the same camp as someone who commits adultery in his mind while watching pornography. Most tradition-bound Christians don’t believe that. They think, “it’s okay for me to hate, but it’s not okay for those people to do those other things.” All Paul is saying is that anyone who opens his eyes can recognize the works of the flesh, including “hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies . . .” Let me tell you about heresies: the legalism peddled by the traditional church in the form of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” is heresy. It is heresy to deny the grace and peace of God! Paul continues with “envyings, murders, drunkenness.” The self-righteous will latch on to one word, “drunkenness,” and use it as an excuse to condemn people who have a drinking problem. You could go to a traditional church and read this list of sins aloud, and they would applaud some of them and be dead silent on the others. Many self-righteous people seem to think, “We don’t need to hear the rest of the list; all we need is adultery, fornication, and drunkenness! Forget the rest; it isn’t important.” Paul is saying it is all flesh. You see, the self-righteous are often miserable and they want to make everyone else share in their misery. Allow me to be ludicrous, but some of them are so unattractive that there is little risk of anyone wanting to commit adultery or fornication with them. And they wouldn’t know how to have a good time, so no one would want to have a drink with them either. So they just sit there in their non-adulterating, non-fornicating, non-drinking glory and hate everyone! Paul concludes this section on the works of the flesh, saying, “revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” These verses are used by the self-righteous to condemn people to hell who do any of the things listed; but if that were true, they would have to include themselves for hating. I have often spoken of hearing an evangelist shout, “There’ll be no sin in heaven!” That is true, but the evangelist was a fool! He was trying to make people think they had to stop sinning in order to get to heaven. But the reason “there’ll be no sin in heaven” is it was all placed on Christ at the cross! Sure, we all do those things, but because we act in faith, our sins were put on Christ and died with Him. Therefore, our sins are not going to heaven with us! Someone will still demand, “But what about drunks? Will there be any drunks in heaven?!” I can tell you there won’t be anyone drunk in heaven. That side of a drunk’s nature, the “old man” in him, died with Christ. And when the man started faithing, his sin was put on Christ and he was viewed as a “non-drunk” in Christ. A new life came into him that doesn’t have a taste for alcohol. Given enough time, that man will go out one night and discover that former things have passed away and all things have become new. He might even try to behave in the same way he used to, but his desires will have changed. Maybe now just one drink suffices, or maybe he can no longer stand the taste at all. There are many in this congregation who would say that when they started faithing and receiving the grace and the peace of God that their tastes started to change, without their even dreaming it would happen. My cry as a pastor is “Why can’t we give God a chance to work that miracle?” All you do by hammering on yourself is become wrapped up in focusing on your flesh. You cannot kill that old nature in you by yourself. The flesh is there and we all know what it looks like when it manifests itself. Paul goes on in Galatians 5 to speak of the fruit of the Spirit, saying, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” How do you bring forth fruit? Has anyone ever produced fruit by shouting at a tree? Imagine someone standing in an orchard, shouting, “Thou shalt produce apples!” That is not the way you get fruit; fruit is the inevitable outgrowth of the life in the tree. Again, when you act in faith, God places a deposit of His Spirit into you. This creates a battlefield within you between your fleshly nature and the Spirit. The Spirit has an urge to go in a Godward, eternal direction, while the flesh is oriented in the opposite direction; they are contrary to one another. But if you stay connected to the Spirit through acts of faith, the Spirit will win. God has freed you from the consequences of your sins and has delivered you into Christ as a finished product; your responsibility is to continue to act in faith. The pastor’s role, therefore, is to create an atmosphere that brings forth faith by the preaching of God’s performance. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing the word of God. When you turn faith loose, God’s life-giving Spirit is placed in you. Then look out, brother or sister; God will change you without some preacher shouting at you to bear fruit! There are fundamentalists who get enraged when they see me smoke a cigar. They say, “How could you possibly smoke that thing if the Spirit is in you?” I need to remind them that cigar smoking isn’t even mentioned in Galatians 5, but hatred is. And if a person hates you for your sins, they are condemning themselves. My message is simply “Let God change you.” You might say, “But I like myself as I am. I like my fornicating, adulterating, drunken and reveling life!” To such a person, I would say that you are like someone who never knew how much they could love a family until they had one; you don’t have the perspective yet. You haven’t developed any new desires. You haven’t yet become a new creation in Christ Jesus, but you are under such pressure in your life that you need God’s help. Let that pressure drive you to God’s word as you begin to grab hold of His promises. The motivation to act in faith is God’s faithfulness to His word, not someone condemning you for your behavior. Once you start faithing, you have a new perspective; you are a new creation. You will notice your tastes starting to change. And if you keep faithing, the Spirit will stay with you long enough to change you. In fact, you will hardly recognize the person you used to be. Galatians 5:18 says, without equivocation: “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” The problem is most people can’t get past the law and practice faith long enough to allow the Leader, God’s Spirit, to influence their behavior. I am determined to build a church that lets God do the changing in us. We don’t judge one another. God takes you where you are, just as He takes me where I am. When you study God’s faithfulness and learn to grab hold of His promises, God will take care of the rest! Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | December, 2020 Wingspread | November, 2020 Wingspread | October, 2020 Wingspread | September, 2020 Wingspread | August, 2020 Wingspread | July, 2020 Wingspread | June, 2020 Wingspread | May, 2020 Wingspread | April, 2020 Wingspread | March, 2020 Wingspread | February, 2020 Wingspread | January, 2020 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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