Sermon Central
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Remember How You Received Series
Contributed by Aarron Ellerman on Jan 3, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: Paul implores the Galatians to remember how they first received the gospel.
I. Remember How They Received The Son (1)
Vs. 1
• “Foolish” does not mean not knowing, but more like not using your head.
o The Galatian believers were not exercising their spiritual intelligence, or the truths that had been taught to them.
o It was a lack of faith that made them foolish our whole salvation experience (regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification) is carried out by faith.
• “Bewitched” emotional appeal of flattery or false promises by which one is led astray of the truth.
o Even today Christians are led astray because they are lead by their emotions (what feels right) instead of being lead by their minds (what they know is right).
o Problem with emotions is that you cannot count on them, they are always changing.
o Danger in living like this.
• “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth,” or publicly displayed, has the idea of posting an official public notice in the market place.
o Paul had preached the crucifixion of Christ among the Galatians’ in this way, everyone was able to examine it for themselves.
o 1 Corinthians 2:2, 4-5
II. Remember How They Received The Spirit (2-4)
Vs. 2
• Paul takes the Galatian believers back to the beginning.
• “How did you receive the Holy Spirit? By faith or by works?
o Again Paul is asking a rhetorical question, he wants to know if they came to Christ by faith and then later received the Holy Spirit by fulfilling some kind of spiritual requirement?
o The obvious answer is no, the two events happen at the same time our rebirth and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Vs. 3
• Again Paul calls them “foolish,” but what he wants to know is are they so mislead that they actually believe they can improve on or carry out what God has started in the Spirit through their weak, imperfect, sinful flesh?
o That is how many Christians live, they start out by faith in the power of the Spirit, but try to live out each day in the power of they flesh.
o And wonder why they fail so miserably.
Vs. 4
• “Suffered” not as in agony or pain; better said experienced.
o In other words have you experienced all this for nothing?
• “If it be yet in vain,” Paul is expressing his doubt, even though the Galatians were acting foolish, Paul does not doubt their salvation, he just wants them to act like it.
III. Remember How They Received From The Father (5)
Vs. 5
• It was God the Father who “ministereth” or ‘generously poured out’ the Holy Spirit.
o Acts 1:4
• “Worketh miracles” Greek word dunamis (dynamite, dynamic) means power.
o Paul is most likely referring to how the Galatians believers have been changed by the power of Christ.
