Galatians Chapter 3, we'll consider verses 1 through 5. Galatians Chapter 3, we'll read verses 1 to 9, but our consideration this morning will be from verses 1 to 5. Galatians Chapter 3, verse 1: "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Just as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to Him for righteousness. Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham."
Let us pray. O Lord God Almighty, we come before You asking now that You, in Your mercy, would by the Holy Spirit teach us from Your Word and conform us into the image of Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Show us, Lord, where we lack; encourage us, Lord God; strengthen us; convict us; bring us into the liberty of the children of God, that we might know You, rejoice in You, and understand what You have accomplished for us in Your Son. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.
From chapters 1 and 2 of the Epistle to the Galatians, what we have written here is Paul's defense and case for the gospel and the case for his apostleship. Paul unfolds to the believers there at Galatia that his gospel came not to him by mediation from man, but it was rather by revelation from Jesus Christ, as he was on the road to Damascus. And therefore, his calling to salvation, his calling to the ministry, the transformation that took place in his life, was all the result and fruit of the power of God. And so, therefore, what he brought to the Galatians when they first heard the gospel was indeed a gospel not taught by men, but rather a gospel—the gospel of God—which he taught them. And he explains in chapter number two that this gospel is not different to the gospel that was believed among the Apostles at Jerusalem. They also agreed that the gospel that he preached was also the gospel of God and the true gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, he demonstrates that there was unity there at Jerusalem between Paul and the Apostles. But in chapter number 2, verses 14 to 21, he also shows that he was equal to the other Apostles, in so much that he himself even confronted Peter to the face when he was to be blamed for his hypocrisy and not walking according to the truth of the gospel. And in this, Paul elaborates and expounds in his rebuke to Peter, which he's recounting for the Galatians, he expounds the gospel of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone, showing the Galatians that what the false teachers are bringing to you is none other than another gospel. To say that through circumcision or by faith plus your good works you will be received and accepted before God is nothing else but another gospel. And he demonstrates what the true gospel of Jesus Christ is.
Now, Paul is going to continue to make his case for the gospel that he proclaimed throughout the rest of this epistle, and he's going to deal with it in different ways. But what we come to in chapter number three is a turning to the Galatians and asking them to examine their experience in light of the gospel that was preached to them. So, he makes his case for the gospel of faith, but he does so in this section by another two main arguments. Argument number one is: Galatians, look at your experience. I preached the gospel to you; you received it by faith in Jesus Christ. What did that do in your life? What it did in your life testifies to you that it is none other than the true gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's verses 1 to 5, which we look at this morning. But verses 6 to 9, he also goes to the Scripture, and he says, not only look at your experience, but I want you to look at the Scripture, because as a man named Abraham, who was justified by faith also, and the message that I preached to you is the same gospel that was preached to Abraham back in the book of Genesis. And so, he makes a case from their experience, and he makes a case from the Scriptures. But both of these cases are vitally important that Paul wanted the Galatians to really, really think about and understand.
And as we've been looking through this epistle, we've been considering, especially in the last section of chapter number two, that Paul is dealing with a situation at Antioch, and he's not directly talking to the Galatians but indirectly to them. And so, in verses 1 to 5, we find a shift in language. He stops using the first person and the third person—the "I" and the "they" and the "he"—but he goes on to now say "you." "You Galatians, O you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should believe a lie, that you should not obey the truth, that you should be doing this and you should be doing that." And what he's doing is he's making application directly to them upon the text that he has just been explaining. We've been explaining over the last few weeks. He's functioning in this second person, and he's rebuking them and challenging them, basically as a prophet would, saying, "You are the man." Not positively, "You are the man that has sinned. You were the man that has violated God's law," just like Nathan said to David when he was caught out. And so, he's been talking about Peter and Peter's sin and Peter's folly and expounding the truth of the gospel. Now he turns around and says, "O you foolish Galatians, you're no better than that. In fact, you're going astray in a very similar way." And he shifts from his literary style; he goes from proposition to interrogation. And here we have six questions, like almost in rapid-fire succession, where Paul's just asking question after question after question, interrogating them, or expecting them to interrogate themselves with the authority of Scripture here, and to ask themselves these questions as an examination of what the true gospel of Jesus Christ ought to be doing and producing in the life of those that believe.
Now, his rebuke begins with the words, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" Now, he's not saying their folly was of ignorance. In fact, when the Bible talks about folly in Scripture, it's more of a moral problem than it is being an ignoramus. We all have to increase in our knowledge and our understanding, and that, in many ways, is a lifelong lesson. But there was a moral issue here with them. It's not that they did not know the gospel. In fact, he's about to just say that Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. And he's saying, "O foolish Galatians, how can you not obey the truth? How can you not continue in this truth? How is it that you can morally, as it were, move away from this truth in rejection of it?" You see, this was the folly of hardness of heart. This was the folly of complacency. This was the folly of dullness of hearing or being led astray by a simplicity of mind, not because of ignorance necessarily, but because of deception. And so, he uses the word "bewitched you." "Who has bewitched you? Who has cast a spell on you?" Now, I do not believe that they actually had a spell cast on them. I think what he's simply trying to say by this is that you are falling for the demonic lie propagated by the Judaizers, propagated by the false teachers, the father of lies, Satan. These are his workers. They are corrupting the gospel of Jesus Christ, and you are being carried along as if you're being mesmerized by this truth, which is contrary to the gospel, saying, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" It's like your eyes have been carried away like this, and you've forgotten what you knew and believed and experienced at the first, as you're saying in chapter 4 later, "Where is this blessedness that you once knew when you first saw the Lord, when you first knew the Lord?"
Look what he says in verse number one. He says, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?" Well, wait a minute, Paul. Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. How is that possible? We live in Asia Minor. Jesus died outside of the city in Jerusalem. You're writing this epistle to us long after the death of Jesus Christ, at least a couple of years or more, ten or so years. We're geographically removed from Christ. We are years removed from Christ. And Paul, you are saying to us, "How foolish we are that before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified among you." He didn't die among us. We never saw the nail-pierced hands. We never saw the nail-scarred feet. We never saw the crown of thorns. We didn't see the soldiers mocking Him and abusing Him. What are you speaking of?
Paul is talking about here is the fact that through the preaching of the cross, God had given them, as it were, a vision of Christ. The eyes of their understanding were opened at the proclamation of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit had opened the eyes of their understanding. Their vision was illuminated to see Christ Jesus. And he says, "clearly portrayed among you as crucified." And what that means is he was placarded among you as crucified, or he was set forth in a modern term, as you put it, like a billboard, crucified among you. What he's saying is there is no mistaking what you heard and what you saw with the eyes of your heart when that gospel was preached to you in power when I came to you in Acts chapters 12, 13, and 14, and so on, and made known to you this Lord Jesus Christ. It was a great work of God's grace, a revelation of Christ to them, which they were now turning from. And Paul goes on to challenge them with this question, and he says in verse number two, "This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" And Paul challenges and says to them, "Just tell me one thing. I just want to know one thing. Did you receive the Holy Spirit by your law works, by your self-effort, by the power and might of your own strength, by your submission to circumcision and to the Jewish customs, or did you receive the Holy Spirit when that gospel was preached to you, when Christ was clearly portrayed among you by faith, when you heard and responded in faith at the hearing of faith, as he puts it here? You go on and ask yourself that question," he says to them. "I want to learn this one thing of you. Just tell me this one thing. Now you're going astray. Now you're being carried away. Now you're essentially being bewitched and moving away from the truth of the gospel. Let me ask you one thing. Look to your experience. Let me tell you this. When you heard the gospel and Christ was clearly portrayed among you, did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law, or did you receive the Holy Spirit by believing in my Son?" Basically saying to them, "Do you remember? You can't get away from that in this text." He's simply saying to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit?" This is something that happened to them at a time in their conversion experience before, and he's saying, "Go back to that time and ask yourself this question. When you look at your life and the power of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God that was upon you, did it come to you because you were a good law-abiding citizen or keeping the Jewish laws and all these kinds of things, or did it come to you because you turned to Jesus Christ in faith, realizing that you cannot save yourself?"
And then he goes on to say in verse number four of this text, "Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?" And what he's simply saying to them there is, "When I preached the gospel to you and you received Christ and you received the Holy Spirit, you were persecuted for your faith." Paul got driven out of the city in many places, and when he came back to Galatia to tell them of the Lord and strengthen the disciples, he said to them that we through much tribulation shall enter the kingdom of God. They heard the gospel, Christ was portrayed among them, they received the Spirit, and then they suffered for the truth of the gospel that they believed. And Paul is saying, "Now you're turning away from it. Did you suffer in vain? You were willing to die for that message. You were losing family and friends and your community and being kicked out of the synagogue for that message. What's happened? Was it all empty? Was it in vain?" You see, what he's trying to help the Galatians understand is that you've experienced something that was real. You've experienced something that's effectual. You've experienced something that's transformative. And yes, he's elaborated the doctrine of justification by faith, but now he's trying to show the power of it demonstrated in their life and saying, "Hey, why are you moving away from this when this faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation transformed you? Do you think there's more to it than Christ?" If this is what he's saying to them here at Galatia.
Look what he says there in verse number three. He says, "Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" And here we have "received the Spirit," "begun in the Spirit." What he's simply saying is, "You were converted. You received the Holy Spirit. Your Christian life began in the power of the Spirit. It began in the grace of God. It began in the demonstration of God's work in your life. You were illuminated. You were regenerated. You were empowered to forsake sin and follow Christ, and you had the assurance of the grace of God in your life and proclaimed the name of Jesus to those around you. You were saying, 'Hallelujah, I have found Him whom my soul so long has craved. Jesus satisfies my longings. Through His blood, I now am saved.' And you were rejoicing in the Lord by the Holy Spirit. That was your experience. This is what you had. This is how you began your Christian faith and your race. And what, did you begin that way, and now you think that that's just for the beginning part of my Christian life, and now I need to perfect myself in the work of the flesh? That then now, yes, believing in Christ is the first step, and having the Holy Spirit and, you know, experiencing the joy in the grace of God is the first step, but then later on in your life, you get to know real Christianity, where you just tough grid it without God, and you go on with the law, and you just tick off boxes and do duty and all these kinds of things?" And he's saying, "Hang on a minute. Hang on a minute. Are you really going to start trusting everything that you're doing now to perfect yourself? But don't you understand that having begun in the Spirit, you are also meant to go on in the Spirit and finish in the Spirit, so that your whole life is to be marked by His grace, by His power, by His sanctifying operations as you continue in obedience to His commandments? Have you begun in the Spirit, and do you now think that you've made be made perfect by the flesh?"
Start to finish, he's saying the Christian life is a life of grace through faith, dependent upon the Christ of the gospel, holding fast the promises of God's Word, believing in the power of Christ to help us, and the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us and to lead us and to strengthen us and to give us strength in our warfare. Jesus puts it this way: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can you, except you abide in Me. A branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine." What he's simply saying is, "You need constant communion with Me, not just at the beginning of a conversion, but you need to go on in the power of the Holy Spirit that you first knew when you first knew the Lord. He is to be the sustaining grace and strength of your life." And what you began in the Spirit, and now you turn to your own efforts, to your own energy, to this, to this gospel of the Judaizers, to kind of complete that which Christ couldn't complete for you, or complete that which the Holy Spirit could not do for you? And so, it points them to their experience and challenges them in that and saying, "You need to begin the way you begun is the way you need to finish, and you must not stray from faith in Christ at any given point in your Christian experience."
Look at it says in verse number five. Now he turns it up in their experience even more. He says, "Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" Okay, so he tells them, "I want you to remember what happened in your time period of your conversion when you experienced the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the beginnings." But he goes on now to talk about their present experience, and he says, "He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" Paul points to this present experience that they were having in their life, this continual supply of God's Spirit to them by God, and this continual work of God in their midst, evidently in their midst. What is he referring to here? Well, he's not only talking about receiving the Spirit as an indwelling Spirit at conversion, but now he's talking about the continual supply of the Spirit with regards to Spirit filling. And he's saying to them, "Does God fill you with His Spirit and do miracles among you simply because you keep the law meticulously and because He's rewarding you for all your hard efforts because you haven't failed this week? Or is He doing it because of faith in Jesus Christ?" And this is the promise of His blessing and grace to you. The answers are obvious, isn't it? All the way through, it's because they were dependent upon God and God alone, and in Christ and in His gospel alone.
The blessings of the new covenant, which is the blessings of the Spirit, which is mentioned here in this passage three times—the Holy Spirit—he's saying to them, "This blessing that is yours has come to you because of faith in Jesus Christ, and you will continue to experience and know the power of this Lord and of His Spirit if you continue to believe in Him. Why would you turn away from Him, O foolish Galatians?" God, when God was not blessing them because they were legalists, God was not doing miracles among them, whether it be healing or prophecies or whatever it is that they were experienced among them at that time. God was not doing it because they were good legalists, but rather because they were trusting alone in Jesus Christ, and God was manifesting His power as they were believing in Him.
You see, this is really important to understand because what happens in revivalism—and what I mean by revivalism, those that think revival and the outpouring of the Spirit and miracles and all that, that think it's mechanical in a one-two-step, three-four program—finally, it fails at this point because God doesn't supply the Spirit and work miracles among people because they tick all the boxes, and God then becomes a genie that must respond to the mechanical operations. God doesn't work that way. Some people think if I pray for this long, God must do that. If I spend this much time doing that, God must respond in that, as if His hands are tied, as if He's not sovereign, as if the sovereignty of the Spirit has no part to play in the bestowing of revival and God's work in the world. God was doing what He was doing because they were believing in Him, they were trusting in Him, they were resting in Him. He was not doing what they were giving them rewards for their hard labor, and that helps us to understand that God is not mechanical. He works by means, yes, but there's a vast difference between means and mechanics. And what I mean by that is God has established means by which we are to approach Him, by which we receive blessing, by which He guides us and strengthens us, and we commune with Him and experience, as it were, even the filling of the Spirit. Yes, the difference between means and mechanics is when you have a machine, and you push a button, it always operates. The mechanical, the machine has no mind, it has no will, it has no design. You push the button, it moves. You put your foot on the accelerator, it goes. God is not like that. We don't push the button, and God acts. We pray in faith and dependence on God, and God, in His own wisdom and in His own counsel, in His own way, will work through those means as He sees fit in His course.
And so, "He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you," He does it because of their faith in Christ. He does it because they're depending on Christ. He does it because of their salvation through faith alone in Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know about you, but when I look at a passage like this, this kind of makes me feel a little bit awkward. I think it makes many Christians feel a little bit awkward, if we're honest with ourselves. Why is this passage awkward? Well, for many of us, we might be able to describe to you the theology of the Spirit, and you might be able to give me some passages of Scripture about who the Spirit is, what the Spirit does, some examples of what He's done in the Scriptures, etc., etc. But you know what Paul's saying here? He's not asking them for a theology of the Spirit; he's asking them to look at their experience and see what it was that the Spirit had done in them. And he says, "This only I want to learn of you," and that becomes quite troubling in many respects because then it turns our eyes on ourselves a little bit and asks ourselves, "It's not about what we know about the Spirit; he's asking, he's saying, 'What do you know in your experience about the Spirit? What do you know by reason of His effectual work in your life?'" You see, he said, "Did you receive the Spirit?" He assumes that they have received the Spirit. He says to them, "He who supplies the Spirit," or "is supplying the Spirit among you," and "He's working miracles among you." He assumes that they are experiencing the miracle-working hand of God in their lives and that they are experiencing the supply of God's Spirit in their life to both enable them and empower them.
I don't know about you, but that's challenging. And it's challenging because it makes me wonder, if Paul was to look at us today and say to us, "This only one thing I would learn of you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Does God who supplies the Spirit to you do so by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Does God who works miracles among you do so by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" I think for many of us, we might have to ask ourselves, we might sound like those people at Ephesus that said, "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Spirit." And Paul had to preach to them Christ. They said, "We've only known John's baptism," and all that. You can read that in Acts 19. But what he is teaching us here, at least for our own learning and our application, is simply this: that Christianity is a living religion. It is not a dead religion; it is alive, so alive that Paul could ask those believers, "Look at your life." Okay, we're going to look at the Scriptures and see what God did with Abraham as a defense of the truth of the gospel, but I want you to look at your life this morning and ask yourself, "Have I truly believed by faith alone in Jesus Christ? And if I have, how has that translated in my life by receiving of the Spirit and by the power of God in my life?"
See, Christianity is a living religion. We have a living God. We have a living Savior. We have a living Word. We have a living Spirit. And our relationship with God is meant to be alive, a living relationship. And what is interesting about something that is living is that something that is living can be encountered. It can be felt. It can be known. It may be experienced. That's what makes something alive. There is interaction. There is fellowship. There is communication. There is the to and fro, as it were. There is the demonstration. It is not one-sided; it's alive. And Christianity is alive. God is alive. And if our knowledge of God only translates in our intellect but it never translates into our experience, then we must ask ourselves, "Have I believed this precious gospel by faith alone in Jesus Christ, or am I still running according to the course of the law, trusting in my own works, trusting in my own strength?"
You see, this is part of Christianity's authenticity. Imagine the apostolic gospel at the very beginning, when Christ commissioned His disciples, was preached throughout all the world, and imagine—imagine there were no effects that ever followed any gospel preaching. No receiving of the Spirit, no miracle-working hand of God, no change in life, no effect in life, no fellowship and joy and love and peace and all these kinds of things weren't happening, and all it was was a transfer of information from the brain of Paul to the brain of those people down there at Galatia. I tell you, Christianity would have died long ago when their persecutors came for them. But because the gospel is alive, and Jesus is alive, and God is alive, and the Spirit is alive, and the Word is alive, that life is communicated to those who trust in Jesus Christ, and they know the power of that life in them.
Now, no doubt, there are counterfeit experiences of false life all throughout Eastern religions, Buddhism, Hinduism. You have it in Pentecostalism, extreme Pentecostalism, counterfeit experiences. You have that all over the world today, all in the name of Jesus, all in the name of God, true, but counterfeit experiences should not nullify our pursuit of the God who works and is effective. It should not cause us to come to the place in our lives and mind where we're like, "Because there's counterfeit, I don't want to know God in any kind of experiential way, and anyone who talks about experience, you've got to be careful of them." I tell you, you rob yourself of the New Testament when you say such. In fact, beyond that, you must reinterpret the New Testament to conclude such because what are you going to say about a text like this? What are you going to say about the fundamental foundational doctrines of the faith? And the balance for God's people is not to shun the experience or be afraid of experience but to understand that we should experience the doctrine. We should be experiencing the doctrine. And when we come to the Scriptures and we read the Scripture and we see and understand and we learn, we have to ask ourselves, "Is God doing that in me?" We should pursue an experience of doctrine, of the doctrine.
You see, when we read something like this, where it says, "And He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" we should straightaway ask ourselves, "Hang on a minute. Do I know anything of the supply of the Spirit? You know, do I know anything of the power of answered prayer?" He's not saying they were miracle workers; he's saying God was working miracles among them. "Have I ever seen God move in a miracle way?" You see, what happens then, all right, so what it should do then is drive us to a place where we're like, "Lord, I want this. Not for my glory, but for Your glory. I want to know and enter into all that You have given for Your people." So in Luke chapter 11, as was read to us just this morning, He says, "If a friend has need for bread because someone's coming and knocking on his door, he goes to his friend's house at midnight, and he says, 'Friend, awake. I need some bread to feed this midnight traveler that's come to my house.' And the friend says, 'Go away. Go away. I'm asleep with my family. Stop bothering me.' 'No, no, I really need this. I really need this.' And he says he's going to give him bread not because he's his friend but because of his persistence, his persistent faith in asking and asking and asking."
And then what happens is Jesus goes on to explain the meaning of this parable, and He goes on to say, He says, "So I say to you, ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." And what Jesus is saying is, "You have need. Pursue God. Pursue Him. Keep on asking Him. Keep on seeking Him. Keep on knocking on heaven's door until God grants it to you." And you know what encouragement He gives to us? He says, "Will a father give something different to what his son asks him? Of course not. He's going to give his son exactly what he asks him because he loves his son." So He says, "You, and if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father"—listen to His words—"give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" "He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" No, He does it by the hearing of faith. "Lord, I have need. Lord, there's a community that needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I don't have the bread. Lord, my family needs to know You, and I need grace. Lord, I'm in a difficult relationship with my wife, and with my husband, and with my children, and I don't know the way forward. Lord, supply the Spirit to me. Lord, we need You, oh God, we need You to work." Knock, knock, seek, depend upon God, and trust that the risen Lord Jesus, having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit, which He has both now poured out upon His people, and that He is willing.
Or are we of those that read the Bible like this? It says, "Praying in the Spirit." Oh, that must mean just reciting Bible passages when you pray. We read that John was "in the Spirit on the Lord's Day." Do we ask ourselves what that means? We just assume, "Oh well, he was in the spirit; that means he was saved, but he was just saved on Sunday, on the Lord's Day." Or then we start reading the Bible, and we see things that say "illumination," and we think, "Oh, illumination just means studying really hard and hoping that we find the answer," rather than the Spirit of God opening our eyes and giving us the truth of God. We read "the power of God," and for some of us, we translate that as, "Ah, that just means strategic endeavors and seeing church growth." So many people think revival is a service. "We're having a revival meeting," as if revival's a service, as if it's something you can put on. But if it's something mechanical that you can organize, you can't organize a revival. A revival—look at the New Testament—revival is the outpouring of God's Spirit. You can't do that; you can't organize that. That's God's.
And we reinterpret the scriptures in light of our own experiences, or lack thereof, rather than letting God speak as He speaks and say to ourselves, "Lord, I need You, and I don't have what the Bible says, and I want it, and I need it." So this morning, this is a call for us to consider our own experience. Was your conversion just a mere mental exercise where you assented to the truth of the gospel, or can you say, "I received the Spirit when I trusted Jesus"? I don't know that because of the work that took place in my life. "Have you begun in the Spirit?" Maybe now you're trying to be made perfect by the flesh. Is your Christianity merely mechanical, or is it lively?
You see, here in this passage, we're encouraged to come to God, the one who supplies the Spirit, and to realize that there is, through this gospel, everything that we need, not only to be holy but to live and to work and to serve God in all that He has given us to do. And He supplies it through His Spirit. And therefore, it should be our prayer, "Fill me, Lord. Fill me, Lord, with Your Spirit. I want to live up to the standard of the New Testament, and I want You to do that in me, Oh God. I'm not going to settle for anything less than what Your Word says, and I will beg, and I will petition You, and I will cry out to You, and I will faithfully serve You, waiting upon You to do in me what You only can do. But I'm not for a moment going to say I'm okay, and that God's Word—I've experienced everything in there, and there's nothing more to be known in our experience of God."
And God help us as His church to realize what's been given to us through faith alone in Jesus Christ. When we realize that, we won't go anywhere because we'll know the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us pray.