Lenny 0:02

Welcome to Waking Up the Grace, where we cut through religious annoyance, look honestly at scripture, and return to the simplicity of Christ. I'm Lenny. Let's get into it. What was so foolish about the Galatians? There's a lot of teachers out there that will make this really simple in black and white. And in grace circles, we don't do that. We see Galatianism as a mix of rules and regulations with grace. But certain teachers see legalism as no, it's when you mix the law of Moses with grace, but yet those same teachers will preach the tithe, and that's what blows my mind, essentially. Legalism is only pertaining to the law of Moses. You can't even do that anymore. Galatianism can't exist without the temple. But yet it still seems to exist because it was a deeper thing than just the law. It was a deeper thing than just circumcision. If we just make it as simple as always, it was only about circumcision, we're making light of the real problem in Galatia, aren't we? Galatianism was a mixture of something that we can do to get more right with God with what Christ did to make us right with God.

Jack 1:16

Early on when I read the book of Galatians, the two favorite books that parallel so nicely is Hebrews and Galatians. If you want to read two books parallel, those are the two to read. Fireworks go off as you read the two of them together and enjoy the commentary that each gives one another. My picture of Galatians was like Paul drives out of town, you know, he's he's got a modest sedan. He sort of drives out in the modest sedan, waving goodbye to everybody. And just a few minutes later, this hot rod, you know, bus, travel bus with flashing lights and all this stuff comes into town. And this guy jumps out in this amazing suit and mesmerizes Glacia with the Yeah butts of Glacier. And he makes all these claims. First of all, he says, congratulations, man, that Paul. He got you right in this spot. That's good. That's what Paul does. He's a good guy. He really is amazing. Now, let's move on. Let me tell you what true perfection really is now. Now we just got to do these things and you can have a wonderful life. Sort of like Pinocchio, the story of Pinocchio. That idea. Celebrate all the way to your demise. The point in this is that everything seemed good. And so when Paul got back to them, it was like, oh man, they really did bewitch you. They really did. They did a great dog and pony show to push you into this terrible thing that's going to destroy your life, rob you of grace. So that's my picture of the book of Galatians, just because it's always sort of been that way since Bible college, really.

Lenny 2:52

Yeah, and you see Paul's frustration, that's the way you feel like responding to today's churchianity. And if you came up, somebody said, My church teaches grace, and you said, You foolish Galatian! Yeah, and I mean, how would they respond?

Jack 3:08

Yeah, you have to say, Well, what is grace? When you were speaking earlier, Lenny, it hasn't changed. There's been no change for mankind to set back and look at that. It's always the same. Now what? You come into grace, someone shares it with you, and all you have is that person concept. And as a new believer, you trust that person, and that person shares what his perception is with you. And so you immediately adopt as a child with a father what that person believes. And that's what traditionalism has done for generations.

Lenny 3:42

Yeah.

Jack 3:43

Grace points that person to the Redeemer. And that's the difference between teachers as people think what what's a teacher doing?

SPEAKER_01 3:51

If a teacher doesn't point a person towards the grace of God and the relationship with Jesus, then what benefit is not to mention also to point them to the fact that they're an essential part of the body with right, with so much so much to offer, right? That would be helpful too.

Jack 4:12

I think that's on the upsurge. I think we're on the cusp of that. I think that people are going to start to recognize their value.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah.

Jack 4:21

And as they recognize their value, they'll be less inhibited about what they perceive and what they think about.

Lenny 4:29

Yeah. The difficult thing for me that I see essentially on the surface of Christianity today is boy, you know, it'd be so much easier if we had the apostles and Jesus around to just tell us what they meant, because all we do, it seems like, is sit around and argue about what they meant by what they said. And there's so many interpretations out there, and it's just ridiculous. But everybody's views today are just a spin on everything that is taught out there in the mainstream. Nobody really has their own views and their own thoughts. There's very few that think independently about what's really true. And I think it's really just neat to see people genuinely seek truth and share that with others. And as a church, expressing that openly and inviting just the common people to do that, I think is how truth thrives.

Jack 5:21

Yes, exactly. And to take away words like heresy, take away words that say you don't know what you're talking about, and what do they base that on? That's always the same thing. Comparison. You don't know what you're talking about because I have years of experience, and you don't. There's a comparison, right? Instead of realizing, well, you are at wherever you are, and whatever you're doing in grace, wherever you are, that's where you are. And where I'm in grace, this is where I am. And I can't impose that on you. I can just share where I am.

Lenny 5:58

I used to be bothered by that statement, but I'm starting to come to a better understanding about it. When I first heard it, it sounded kind of like liberalism or something. I'm like, It can kind of like that thing, like, well, it's everything's subjective. Well, it's not subjective, but you do have a body of believers trying to build each other up, is what it is, because not everybody's in the same place. It's how you perceive that. At first, when I heard that concept, I was like, that doesn't sound right to me. You know, truth is not subjective, it's objective. So that kind of bothered me. But I think when you see things going on as a church in Paul's letters, you see this playing out that not everybody was on the exact same page. And when you look back at history, anytime man or an institution decides they have the objective truth, people are getting killed. Like what's going on? I mean, maybe not today in America, but we're getting you know ostracized in some sense if you try to share truth. But the history of the church is is gory and ugly.

Jack 6:59

Yeah. The history of religion is gory and ugly. I agree. Yeah.

Lenny 7:03

Jack, I was looking at your questions that we had talked about earlier in the week. You had a couple things that were really interesting. One was what is ever-present grace?

Jack 7:14

Yeah. You know, it's as easy as an on and off switch, really. When we go into a room and we flip a switch on light and time, you know, there's no dimmer in grace. It's either all there or not. But when it's all there, it's an amazing experience as we sit back and watch what God is doing in other individuals' lives as well as our own.

Lenny 7:33

Yeah.

Jack 7:34

It gives us the grace to allow that same power that's in us to form and shape other individuals. And we have the privilege of seeing God do that. You know, sort of like grandpa saying, uh, don't curry comb that side of the horse. You know, if there's a better way to do that, you maybe have to reach over his back to curry comb if he's a little grumpy on that side. Somebody decides, well, they know better. So they go over to the wrong side of the horse and they he bites them. Grandpa had that experience, but he couldn't impose it on that person. He's just saying, Well, this is the best way to take care of that animal. I think that's how it is with us. As we mature in God's grace, we start to recognize you have a place, a path that you're going to walk, and we have the privilege of joining you on that path, but we're not the one that's forming that path. And grace allows us to let go of forming individuals into who we think God would happen to be and allow to be there when they are experiencing things in grace that can be challenging and disillusioning. When they can come to us and we can speak the truth that we know from the experiences that we've had that builds confidence in who they are. You know, I'm convinced that the Spirit of God tells us in our hearts. He doesn't say to us, you know, you can't do that. Don't do that. That's not the spirit of our father. You know, he doesn't convict us of sin, he encourages us in righteousness. And that's what it is for us with each other. Everybody knows what's wrong with them. Everybody knows where their weakness is, but so many people have a difficulty recognizing the fact that God wants to speak encouraging life to them to say to them, You're my son. As a song saying that whispers in my ear, You're mine. That's what the church needs to hear.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

So beautiful.

Jack 9:21

That's what needs to be communicated. You are mine. That supersedes everything else. There's somebody in the work a day crowd that has a tough time breaking through that because they don't want to be mushy mushy and they don't want to be all that religious stuff. Bottom line is everyone wants to be accepted. And grace allows everyone to be accepted.

Lenny 9:45

I think grace gives us discernment that we didn't have before. It's just a matter of do we know how to use it, right? Because why would everybody see so many things so differently? And you know, we're all in different places. In order for the church to be of one heart and mind, as we saw in Acts stated once by Luke when he wrote, they were of one heart and mind, right? And you're just like, wow, well, what caused that? I think it was the church structure. I think when we're sharing with one another, we essentially experience that. Even if we're it may be in different places, we start experiencing that as we grow together and share together. That's the only way that truth really saturates throughout the body is through this expression as a group together, naturally in Christ. But you know what is this discernment thing in Romans? I got a few passages written down in Romans twelve, two, Paul says, Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And then in Philippians, Paul writes, and is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. Hebrews five fourteen, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. The final one in Hebrews four twelve, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So what is discernment? What does discernment look like as a Christian? I mean we're free in Christ, obviously, but why what is the call to discernment? Why is that so important? Something that comes right off the top of my head is that discernment teaches us through the spirit of truth. We start to see things clearer, we start to see a truth, and we'll start to discern like what we were talking about earlier, like you go into an institution, you're like something's wrong here. But it didn't just come off the top of our head. We didn't just say, you know, I don't really like giving 10% of my income. Something must be wrong here, because I I don't like doing that. Yeah. That's you know what I mean? That's not discernment, that's just an opinion.

Jack 12:19

That's an opinion. But I would say discernment is God's filter in our lives. Really. So that's a great example to tithe is a great example because it's really law, it really can be lumped under the law type of thing. But the more we walk in the reality of God's true grace, the more we automatically can recognize those things that are distractions from grace. And it's not like we need to uh practice this, but it's that filter that we see, as Lenny said, you went through the local churches to see what you know what they believed, and right away you knew, I mean, you you had your three things that you checked that balance that out, the fact that they didn't really understand what grace was. And I think the same is with us. I think as we are released in grace in our lives, that discernment in us is what preserves our knowledge of grace. So as we love Jesus more, we are protected by that filter that He gives us that allows us to recognize the contrary. That's sort of woo-e-woo-ey to some people. But I hold to this that we are mystical people because we are spiritual beings. So the world will look at us as mystics, and that's the revelation of that to many people is us knowing that the Spirit of God actually speaks in our lives. And he actually says, You know what, Jack, you're better than that. You know what, Jack, that doesn't really reflect me. And if we're willing to accept the fact that the Spirit of God speaks to our hearts, our new hearts, then we're willing to accept the fact that He gives us discernment in these things in our lives. And we should feel privileged to carry that in us, to know that God cares enough for us that not only has he saved us, but he takes care of us. And he brings people to us who maybe have greater degrees in different areas to protect and help us. And that's the elders in the body of Christ. Those are the people who walked with him. Those are the ones who are seasoned. They're not the ones to direct our lives. They don't direct our lives. True authority in the body of Christ. There is none. There's only submission. And as they submit their lives to us, to each other, and as we submit our lives to them, they can help us in those situations so that we can grow as they do. That's my my take on it.

Lenny 14:45

And I think a lot of that merely comes from people that know how to tell the truth about their father.

Jack 14:51

Yeah. No, that's great, Lenny. Yeah. I know there's a basic truth that we need to hold to as far as our faith is concerned. But after that, when somebody says, you know what, we're gonna agree on this. We're gonna agree on, you know, purple shirts on Sunday afternoons. That's it. Grace is diminished. I sound ridiculous, but that's really the way that Nanet done it since the beginning of time.

Lenny 15:15

But then on that note, it brings something to mind that you hear teachers say oftentimes that, did you know that nine out of the ten commandments are recited in our New Testament? Other than the Sabbath, the Sabbath was clear that Jesus said, I am the Sabbath. But you see all the other commandments appear in an instructional way, and then you see Paul saying that all of Scripture is valuable for teaching and correction, things like that, and that's what they had is the Old Testament Scriptures. So what did they see as value in that, and what would they have seen as subjective in that? It's certainly legalistic to say that the Ten Commandments apply to us today, but we do see them appear in some sense in our scriptures, strong enough to lead people to declare that those moral standards still apply today, and to what level you interpret that can get pretty interesting.

Jack 16:17

I think that's true. I think that the difference is this. Just right. The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament revealed the sin that separates. The Ten Commandments mentioned, the laws that are mentioned in the New Testament, don't separate any longer. There's no separation, nothing occurs. You're not separated from God when you do the same things that they did in the Old Testament to separate them from God. Now there's consequences, there's all the whole picture of that. But the vital, most important part is the most vital thing to hold to before arguments start is that you're never out of his presence.

Lenny 16:52

I 100% agree.

Jack 16:54

Isn't that right? Yeah. That's shouting. I mean, that's like if I was in a Pentecostal church, now we'd all be shouting.

Lenny 17:00

Yes.

Jack 17:01

Because that is the truth. That's the bottom line, the difference. The amazing part of salvation is that liberty, constant presence. But we want to define it in a whole bunch of different ways. But the bottom line is we live in constant presence regardless of what's going on.

Lenny 17:20

The fascinating thing, and I think I was gonna say this for next week, but I drifted. What we see in Corinthians is a lot of problems, obviously. A lot of problems. Sexual immorality was one, but even the way that they were taking the Lord's Supper was causing divisions. Paul actually said, Um, there has to be factions among you in order for those who are genuine to be revealed, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Yeah, yeah.

Lenny 17:48

And that's interesting alone, because you're like, okay, I've heard you say on our podcast, Jack, there has to be tension in our lives.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

Yeah, yeah.

Lenny 17:55

So we know there's gonna be tension in the church like that, where there's gonna be factions and there's gonna be a revelation of genuine people. And even with the sexual immoral brother, there was obviously a storyline that we don't see there that led that Paul didn't just snap and say, get that guy out of here. There was something going on, it was spreading, and it was causing people to revel in sexual immorality that wasn't even okay among the pagans. That's you know, not a healthy church environment, obviously, to have your church get together and say, Hey, what pornography should we look at this week, for example? You know, that's let's check this out. That would be pretty bad. And those things could happen. And when they do, how do you deal with that under grace? And I don't ever see Paul ever on the note of what you said ever telling people you're out of fellowship with God, not even the brother. And it took me a while to realize I had to do some studying, like, is he even a Christian? But he was. But he was never condemned before the Lord, he never said you're you're out of fellowship with God. It was a problem in their group, and he corrected it. But that situation's interesting. It is, it's very interesting, and but the bottom line is those things are gonna happen just like bad teachings are gonna happen, and you think, okay, well, how am I gonna deal with that in a close gathering? Because this is the only way these things are gonna even get even seen, is when people are transparent with their lives and they say, you know, I've been having homosexual relations, or I'm married to another man, and we're totally in love, and they're great people. You get along with them, and some of the nicest people. They're Christians, they call themselves brother and sister, but Paul had a specific view on sexual immorality that shows us that he didn't find that to be something that we embrace as a church. So, how do you deal with those things today?

Jack 19:58

I think that we as individuals and the church at large, and I'm talking about the everything out there that you'd call church, has a tough time because they feel that there's a need for them to define acceptance. When we find out that we don't need to define acceptance, but we can live in the confidence of who God is and the work that He can do in individual lives, we can release a lot of this stuff. There's no uh nothing wrong with our opinions on these matters and reflecting the opinions that uh the writers have of these things. But the bottom line is always the same. It's the heart, it's the new creation in that person. Can we have the confidence to think that God is able to work through that new heart in those individuals' lives? I'm the same as you. I have lots of friends about a bunch of different positions, different places, different convictions. But can I trust them to the grace of God instead of uh trying to make them change or or judge them based on my perception of who they are? Can I trust them? I have to do that. I have to do that with my own life because uh sometimes my life is out of control, and the only control I have is the confidence in the grace of God in my new inner man that says, Wow, we're gonna go someplace from here. And a whole to Ephesians 2.10 that says, Hey, he's got things ready for me to do, so I'm gonna walk in those. It's not about failure. The grace time, the time that we live right now is not about failure. It's about resurrection, it's about relationship. The church age has tried to change people, and that's not our job. Natural man looks around the world and says, Oh my goodness, I'm glad I'm not just a young kid in this world. I don't want to live in this right now. I don't know what I do. And my grandparents said the same thing, you know. But the bottom line is this God's grace is so much deeper, so much bigger, so much wider, so much stronger than we can imagine that He can affect all those lives. There's a couple great Books out about God's grace affecting individuals, folks who've had you know sex change operations, all that stuff. And then when they've truly experienced the grace of God, they wanted to be who he wanted them to be. And that's always the case. We always want to do that. We want to be who he wants us to be. And I I've got a scoop button. I would like to say this about what you said earlier about the gentleman who was being ostracized by Paul. The amazing thing about the gatherings is that everybody wanted to be there. That was like, all right. You can see the two guys saying, Hey, good, we're getting together tonight. I cannot wait to get together. I cannot wait to share what's happening in my life. I cannot wait to be involved in hear what happened in other individuals' lives. I mean, we are getting together. We're gonna probably have some bread, then we're gonna have supper, then we're gonna have some wine, uh uh uh we're gonna have a great time celebrating who Jesus is. And that was the major power of that time. People did not want to miss that time. And for Paul to say, treat him like an unbeliever, put him out for that. It really was saying, look, he can't celebrate like you guys are celebrating. He's not able to do that. That stunned, that hurt. That was a deep effect, had a deep effect on him that would cause him to rethink his life. Today, when we go to you know, you go to a conventional church and you're something's going on and they say, Ah, you're out of here, you say, Well, there's another church right down the street.

Lenny 23:42

Yeah, exactly.

Jack 23:44

I can go there. You know, they don't know this. I'm not gonna sh I know better than share this with them down there. But then everything was local, everything was closed. So to lose that fellowship was a mighty huge thing. And I really believe that what Paul was saying was let him experience what it's like to not live in a grace in an environment such as this, because that was a growing environment, different to find than what we have today. Whatever that environment was, was one that they could not wait to be involved in. And that's what our fellowship should be.

Lenny 24:20

And grace would have brought him back. Exactly right. That's exactly right. He would Paul was actually dependent on the Spirit of God to draw him back to the group. Exactly right. It seems he's the one that was described as, you know, don't be so hard on him, it'll be drowned in excessive sorrow. Just welcome him back.

Jack 24:38

I agree 100%. I I've shared a couple times on my podcast about times when people get together, and even in my little thing that I did about the unintentional gathering, about how people are so affected by it. They want more of it. That's the Jesus that we know. That's the Jesus that saved us. That's what he wants. He doesn't want us gathering with long faces and resentment, thinking, well, what time can I get out of here? And what's for lunch? Yeah. He wants us to gather as excitement. I mean, these two hours flash by, right? Yeah, they do. They flash by because we're living in a period of grace that we're so privileged to experience with one another. I have lots of questions. I have, you know, I have no clue. I had no clue that we would hook up. I mean, who would have thought that? This guy in Pennsylvania. Yeah, I know. Really, I mean it's sort of pretty awesome. But I'm so glad it's happened.

Lenny 25:32

I think the church helps build each other up in that sense, because even in those cases where we're describing with the brother in Corinthians, you know, what's the best solution? It's not churchianity. The best solution is a gathering that people want to be a part of.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Oh.

Lenny 25:47

And is it not okay that they share their views? The only way that they're going to be able to get any help is if they share their views and then other people share their views, and we try to help each other. It's not to say, you're a heretic. Yeah. Right? And I think there was again a lot more to that story than what we see in Corinthians. Paul wasn't a hair trigger. You don't believe what we believe, you're out of here. There was more to it. We don't see the whole entire story. But the church as a whole was necessary. It was this organic gathering of sharing was the only way that that brother opened up to other people in the first place. Right. And when you think about that, like what are we supposed to do? Stop the spread through kicking people out constantly. Oh, you don't believe what we believe. Stop the spread of that doctrine, you're out of here. That was never the way it operated because false teachers wouldn't have been among the church constantly if they were behaving that way and kicking people out for their views.

Jack 26:43

Man, that's right. I agree.

Lenny 26:44

We need to share views. Sorry, you gotta go. But I I've got to go. No problem, Jack.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Have a good day. Grace of Jack. Thank you. Every one of you, thanks. Thank you, Jack.

Jack 26:59

Don't thank me. I'm so privileged to be involved with you folks. And um, my my prayer is that uh God's grace would swell up in us and that we'd always be overflowing. So God bless you.

Lenny 27:17

Okay, uh you've been listening to Waking Up to Grace. Find the companion study and continue the conversation at wakingup to grace.com. Remember, the work is finished. Rest confidently in Christ, and keep waking up to grace.