God’s plans are perfect and transcend all peoples and generations. Tough times bring temptation, temptation to take away our pain and leave us in peace by trusting in a substitute for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul uses the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac to show us God’s perfect plans and how careful we need to be not to reject or resist them. The temptations can be subtle and so deceitful, we need to be humble, patient, persevere through persecution, rooted in Scripture and constantly reminded of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no substitute or additive to God’s grace through Him.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between true and false teaching. The Holy Spirit contrasts the difference, not only through the inspired teaching of Paul but by inspired actions and their supernatural consequences. Galatians 4:12-20 provides a crystal clear example of speaking the truth in love, a core principle of the Christian Faith, and only possible by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. The Gospel speaks the truth in love, false teaching lies for selfish gain.

This week, we take a break from Galatians to celebrate a family service, run by the youth. The theme is salt and light. In His sermon on the mount, in the Beatitudes, Jesus tells His people that they are to be the salt and light of the world. The message could never be more relevant, we are living in a dark, corrupt and decaying world. Christians need to be salt to stop the decay and light, to shine into the darkness and to bring God’s people into His light. Enjoy, as we take a look at what this means to be Christians and to bring Salt and Light into the world that desperately needs it.

When we’re crying out for help and we feel that God is not answering us how and when we want Him to, we can become desperate and try get relief elsewhere. This is usually when we try to use good things in a bad way or think we can use bad things for a good purpose. This passage of Scripture highlights how we are lost without Christ, and how we push Him away when we try to add anything to the Gospel. We we place anything before Him we are not adding to Him but risk losing our relationship with Him.

When we try and make ourselves right with God and cling to ritual and man-made efforts to earn God’s approval we’re yearning for a time in history that has passed, and is no more. The people in the Church of Galatia were being deceived into longing for something that doesn’t exist, when they already had something so much better. God’s Grace, and the promises of God that come by His grace, are infinitely better than the law and rituals that were there to lead us to Jesus. Now that He has come, and given His life for us, we must also look forward, live in the present, in gratitude for His grace, and strive towards the glorious future that He has promised to those who love Him.

In the last few weeks, Paul has been making various comparisons and analogies to show us how we are saved by faith alone. Today, he continues with his illustrations, to ensure that we get the message; we are saved by faith alone, not by works. And in today’s scripture, he does so by drawing an analogy to children. That before we come to understand Christ, we are like children, immature and enslaved by the law. For us to become mature, we need to embrace the truth of God’s grace, so that we can understand the blessings He has in store for us, so that we can be transformed into the image of His son.

God’s grace is more powerful than we realise, it’s way more powerful than the law and can do what the law could never do. By faith in God’s grace, we are hidden in the righteousness of Christ, seen by God as perfect and blameless. By His grace, we are given the power to imitate the character of Christ, to think and act like Him. By Grace we are unified into a body called the Church where we are all equally loved and valued, and are equal heirs of His promises. The law may be able to restrain us, but it can never inspire and empower us to be like Jesus, and to do more than the law requires out of love and gratitude to God.

“Whom the Son sets free, is free indeed”. Are you free, or are you enslaved to sin? The Christian faith is not one of accomplishments nor self-righteousness. The person who has been forgiven and made right with God does not think of themselves as better than anyone else, and certainly not as perfect. The child of God know that they are not perfect, and that they constantly need God’s grace and mercy. This doesn’t mean that we don’t need God’s law or to obey it, it means we’ve learned how to use the law, and how it guides us to the freedom found only in Jesus.

Like in the Church of Galatia, there are those who's goal it is to discredit and detract from the gospel aiming to replace it with laws - not Biblical laws - but human ones. The Gospel is offensive to prideful human beings and so morality and authority are being systematically redefined through powerful media and we, and particularly our children, being conditioned to accept it. We must cling to the Gospel which is precious because it is a personal and permanent gift from God.We can only appreciate this gift with the help of the law of God which will never pass away until all is accomplished.

Last week, we looked at the danger of trying to live according to works, because those kinds of works can only be measured by God’s standards, and there is no way we can live up to them, they are God’s perfection. Today, we look at the promises God made to the Israelites and whether or not any of the promises nullified another. It’s an important concept for us to grasp, because God makes thousands of promises in the Bible, and He keeps every one of them. But the Juaizers, like many in our time will try to nullify some of God’s promises with some of God’s other promises, for various reasons. In the end, we will learn that God’s promises all stand and they don’t nullify each other, they complement each other!

The Galatians were living the life… The Christian life! But the Judaizers came and told them that being saved by grace was not the end. Once you had accepted Jesus as your saviour, you had to follow the law of circumcision and of Moses to remain in good standing with God. When we say it out loud like that, it seems absurd! But is it? That’s very much what many churches today preach. “If your faith was stronger, you’d be well.” And of course, we all feel compelled to work for God in some way or another. In today’s scripture, Paul continues to make a resolute argument for Justification and Sanctification through Christ alone. It's such an important message in today’s world, so enjoy it!

Have you ever struggled to get something right and had to do it over and over again until it worked? Like a stubborn stain, there are some problems which are only dislodged by sustained repetition. Two chapters of Galatians are focused on the argument that we are made right with God through faith in His Word, many different arguments are repeated over and over again, because of our tendency to fall back on our own self-centred, self-righteous pride. We keep thinking we must do more to make ourselves right with God and it’s exhausting. Here’s what we should do about that problem.

God sets apart His people for a purpose, then He equips those people to work together for that purpose. A relationship with God must be outwardly expressed towards others, especially to the other members of the Church of our Lord Jesus. We can’t do the work of God alone, and we can’t do it in our own strength. We need the Holy Spirit and we need each other. Although our roles are all different in the Church, we each have a role and we all suffer when even the seemingly smallest roles are not being filled. The Church is suffering a present weakness because we either abuse or neglect the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and must return to the Bible’s teaching on these issues if we are to fulfil God’s powerful purpose for the Church.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Why is the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus important? Although His victory was won on the cross, the moment He died without sin, His resurrection remains critical to our faith and relationship with God. The bodily resurrection is irrefutable proof of Jesus identity, victory, and the guarantee that we can trust Him to raise all who believe in Him in the same way.

Nicodemus was a man that sought Jesus, but he struggled every step of the way. He couldn’t grasp what it takes to be made right with God, nor could He fathom how Jesus willingly went to His own death, and he cold certainly not understand how Jesus’ apparent defeat was actually the greatest victory of all time. We all feel like Nicodemus sometimes, but the cross of Jesus should encourage us to stand firm in our faith and trust in the mighty victory that He won there, for God’s glory and for our eternal peace and joy.

What’s stopping you from being what God called you to be? What are you waiting for, before you commit yourself to the service of God in obedience to His word and by faith in His power? There is only one thing we need to wait for, One person. The Holy Spirit. When we have believed the Gospel and received forgiveness and reconciliation with God we receive the Holy Spirit of God, but we if we want to be witnesses (as we’re instructed to be) we need His power. We should not let anything else delay us, nothing else should stop us from obeying Jesus’ Word to repent and be baptised, and become witness for Him and His powerful Gospel.

Who do we live for? What motivates us when we get up in the morning? When we believe in Jesus Christ, we surrender our rebellion against God, admit that we have angered Him and trust that He has forgiven us by allowing Jesus to take our punishment. We can not let it end there. If we believe that Christ died for us, and that He now lives in us, we must live for Him, and no longer for ourselves and our own selfish desires. God has designed us for a purpose and He saves us in order to enable us to live for Him and for His glory.

Modern culture is obsessed with virtue-signalling, also know as self-righteousness. It’s deemed to be good, but it’s a man-made religion. All man made religions teach the same thing, they teach that we need to obey some supreme being in order to get their favour. Jesus teaches that the only way to be made right with God is by faith alone, in Christ alone, by His grace alone. When we trust in our own abilities to be “good enough” to please God, we sin against Him. In the closing stages of the 2nd chapter of Galatians, Paul reveals the shocking truth about self-righteousness.