Take your Bibles, if you wouldn't, and turn with me to the book of Galatians. We're in chapter 5. We're going to begin reading in verse 1, and we're going to read down through verse 12. We've studied through verse 6 last week, talking about the covenant of circumcision, the Jewish nation going back to Abraham, and then through the Levitical law as given unto Moses on Mount Sinai. Of course, this controversy that is raging in the early church concerning the relationship of the believer to the Old Testament law, and specifically how that relates to his salvation. Paul is here in chapter 5 and chapter 6 now bringing together a lot of the application of these truths. Galatians 5, verse 1, he says, Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free. Do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the entire law. You have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. For we, through the Spirit, eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love." Verse 7 is really where we're going to begin in the message this morning, although we'll tie in some thoughts from last week. He begins with these succinct statements. You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Confident in you in the Lord that you will have no other mind, but He who troubles you shall bear His judgment whoever He is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off. Would you join me in a word of prayer? Father, we come before Your Word this morning. We're thankful for the truth. We thank You that we are complete in Christ. That in Christ, we are justified, we are sanctified, and we are glorified. And that we are secure in Him. that there is nothing that we can add to His completed work when He finished the work upon the cross and He cried out, it is finished. And He went down into the grave and then He rose triumphant on the third day and He ascended to heaven. And Father, as we look into this text before us and we contemplate the sufficiency of Your work, may we see that this not only relates to our justification, But Father, it is also related to our sanctification as we through the Spirit eagerly hope and wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. Father, I pray that You are blessed as we go before Your Word this morning. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This morning I want us to really begin to draw our attention here in the verses before us to verse 7. And we're going to look from verses 7 to 12. And we're going to think about how Paul is applying what he's already developed concerning the falsehood of the teaching of the Judaizers concerning circumcision. Now we're not going to go back to the message last week, but you'll remember we made a clear distinction between the covenantal aspects of circumcision and how the Jews were applying that to what we think of as circumcision today. One being ritualistic and applied through the law and necessary in the mind of the Judaizers for eternal salvation. What we now practice today is more of a hygienic circumcision in most cases. And so the two are like comparing apples and oranges. Now, what we are looking at today is some very succinct sentences, a series of simple sentences where Paul is beginning to apply how and reinforce the folly of the counterfeit path. Maybe you remember last week we looked at the counterfeit path. The counterfeit path is this idea that unless you keep the law and you are circumcised according to the law, you cannot be declared not guilty before God. And in these verses, Paul delineates the consequences of believing that. The consequences are in verse 2 to 4. He gives us four of them. He says in verse 2, Indeed I, Paul, say to you, if you become circumcised for the wrong reason, Christ will profit you nothing. He then goes on, he says in verse 3, I again testify, every man who becomes circumcised, he then becomes a debtor to keep the entire law. You can't pick and choose. The law is a whole. If you're going to be justified by the law, then you must keep it in its entirety. You can't pick and choose. Verse 4, he says, you have become estranged from Christ if you attempt to be justified by the keeping of the law. And then lastly, he says there, the result is you have fallen from grace. It's been a beautiful fall, hasn't it? You see the leaves everywhere. You drive around. The beauty of them. And now all of a sudden, they've kind of gotten past their peak. They're beginning to fall. And this word is used here when He says, you have fallen from grace. He is talking about a leaf that is falling away from a tree. And once it is severed from the life of the tree, there is no life in it. Apart from grace and our connection to Christ, as Jesus taught in John 15, abide in Me. And then you have life. But severed from Christ, there is no life. In verse 5, he talks about the consequences of the genuine path. That through the Spirit, we are eagerly waiting for the hope of righteousness. When we get later in this chapter, he's going to develop the fruit of the Spirit. The work of the Spirit in our life. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such, there is no law. And it is through the Spirit, and the sanctifying work of the Spirit, by faith that we are set apart under Christ. Paul preaches Christ Not circumcision. Notice this in verse 11. He says, I brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Notice what he said in that verse. I brethren, if I still preach circumcision, he's telling us there once upon a time he did preach circumcision. Paul was a Pharisee. Paul had walked amongst the teaching of the Pharisees. And he had gone out of his way, at one time in his life, to persecute the believers in Christ. He had gone to Jerusalem to get letters, to go to Damascus to drag them off and to put them into prison. At one time in his life, he was a preacher of the Judaizing message. And his life was revolutionized, and now the persecutor has become the persecuted. And so he says, if I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. Paul did not preach circumcision. He preached Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 17, Paul says it a little bit different way. He says, For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. As a Pharisee in his former life, he would have once had this at his message. that you had to keep the law in order to be justified. But his life was revolutionized by Christ, and now he preaches Christ and Christ alone. And he is becoming persecuted. And so persecution is centered around this message of Christ alone. I want us to look at the persecution that comes to the Apostle Paul for just a minute. I want you to go to the book of Acts. And I want you to go to chapter 13. We're going to run through this real quickly this morning. I don't want to take a lot of time as we look at the persecution and why it came to Paul. Why was Paul being persecuted? It really is because of this message concerning Christ and the completed work of Christ. In chapter 13, Paul is in the region of Galatia, the very region where we are studying the book of Galatians now, he is there planting churches. And in chapter 13, he is actually drug out of the city because, excuse me, chapter 14, he is drug out of the city and he is stoned because of the message concerning Christ. There are Jews who have come all the way from Pisidian Antioch, which is in chapter 13, and in verse 45, where the Jews are filled with envy, and they contradict and blaspheme against the message of the Apostle Paul. And then they follow him to Lystra, and he is drug out of the city. And I want you to notice this. The Jews from Antioch, in verse 19, and Iconium, come to Lystra, And they persuaded the multitudes and they stoned Paul and they dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and he went into the city and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derby. That's a miracle, by the way. They didn't just throw gravel at him or little sticks and stones. When they stoned someone, the reason they supposed he was dead was because they had so brutally brutalized him by hurling rocks upon him that his bones are broken and he is bleeding, and they suppose him to be dead, and they drag him out of the city and leave him in the garbage dump. And his bones are broken by these rocks. And yet as the disciples are gathered around him looking at him, He stands up on his feet, his bones are healed, and the next day he departs with Barnabas and they go on down the road. This is a miracle. But he is persecuted by these Jewish people because of his message concerning Christ and the law. Go to chapter 15. Chapter 15, we've already studied this, this is the Jerusalem Council. where the whole church is convened to discuss this issue. What is the purpose of the law? And what is the Christians relationship to it? As a result of that? Council, the church writes a letter. It's in verse 23. And I want you to notice what they say to the churches. They wrote this letter by them. And this is how it goes. The apostles, the elders, the brethren to the brethren, who are of the Gentiles, who are in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greetings, since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying you must be circumcised and keep the law. to whom we gave no such commandment, it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." And they go on, they develop the actual preaching of the message. and how it is contrary to what these Judaizers had said. But you'll see there, right in verse 24, there were some who were unsettling the souls of the Gentiles and troubling them with words saying unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved. And it is for this very teaching in Acts 21 that the Apostle Paul ends up being imprisoned and then appealing to Caesar and going to Rome in chains, because the Jews had heard that he was preaching that you do not have to be circumcised in order to be saved. And so this doctrine is like a storm-tossed sea troubling the hearts of these new believers, of these Christians, and it is unsettling their souls. And Paul comes to them in this book with this message, know the work of Christ is completed. You can go back to Galatians chapter 5. Paul characterizes this doctrine of the Judaizers as a leaven. And this is what we want to talk about for a few moments this morning. I want you to notice in these very short, simple sentences, the Apostle Paul defines and delineates Some very clear truths for us. Notice them in verse 7 and 9. It's interesting. This is a really sharp contrast with many of the writings of the Apostle Paul. You read the book of Ephesians. You read the first chapter. Some of his sentences are so complex. It's all you can do just to pick them apart and to understand them. These are just very simple, short statements that anybody can understand. They are very clear to us. He says, you were running well. Who tripped you up? Who hindered you so you would not obey the truth? This persuasion, this teaching, does not come from the One, this would be the Father in Heaven, who calls you. And then he says a little leaven leavens the entire lump. I have confidence in you in the Lord. His confidence is not in them in and of themselves. His confidence is in them because of the Lord in whom they have trusted. And he goes on he says. You will have no other mind, I am sure. The One who is troubling you, the One who is unsettling your souls, He will bear His judgment, whoever He is." That doesn't mean He doesn't know who the person is. It's just saying, God is impartial. Whoever that person is, the One who is unsettling your soul, He will have His judgment bound to Him. Very same thing as Paul says in Galatians 1, verse 8 and 9, when Paul says, but the we, or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what you've received, let him be accursed." God is completely impartial. Now, Paul is characterizing this doctrine as a leaven. I want you to notice this in verse 9. A little leaven leavens the entire lump. He is saying this is a leaven that must be purged out of the dough. It's kind of a proverbial statement, isn't it? It's also used in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Maybe we say a different statement today, but it's very similar to this statement. It only takes one rotten apple to what? Spoil the barrel. All you ladies are storing up your winter food supply, right? And you're putting these goods away, and yet you've got to watch through them, because you don't want to have one rotten apple in the barrel, because if you do, what'll happen? The entire barrel will go bad. It doesn't work the other way. All the good apples don't make the one bad one good. One bad one makes all the good ones eventually bad. And so this is the permeating influence of this evil doctrine. Like I said, this verse is quoted also, or this proverb is also quoted in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, concerning the need of the church to deal with the unholy lifestyle of a corrupt church member. There was a corrupt church member who was doing things that even the pagans believed to be immoral. He has his father's wife as his wife. And the pagans say, this is wrong. And the church won't deal with it. And Paul says to them, you need to purge out of the dough that leaven. And so this statement does not just deal with Christian lifestyle, it also deals with Christian doctrine. Now when we think of leaven, probably most of us today are thinking of yeast. You go to the grocery store and you buy your little packages of fancy dry yeast, right? And it's maybe Fleshman's yeast or some other brand, and you keep it in your refrigerator. So ladies, when you're going to bake bread, you can put the right amount of yeast in your bread so that it rises. Really, leaven, or the process of leavening, is kind of like a fermentation process. And it is a fermentation process that begins the breakdown of the grain through a chemical reaction, and the byproduct of that leavening is that the bread rises, and the bread then becomes light and airy, the way we all like to eat it. Now, he's not saying here, in the real world, it's wrong to eat bread with leaven. It's wrong to eat white bread that's raised. He's not talking about that. He's applying a spiritual truth. And we're going to look through the Scripture at various places where this comes up. The first place is in Exodus 12. But I don't want you to go there. I want you to go to Matthew 13. And I want you to meet me there, and I'm going to talk to you about Exodus 12, why you're going there. In Exodus 12, we have the story of the Passover. Some of you that were here a few weeks ago, you'll remember David Sadaka being with us and we did Christ in the Passover. The Feast of Passover was a one-day celebration of the redemption through the sacrifice of a sacrificial lamb the blood being applied to the doors of every Jewish household, and because of their obedience to do so, the angel of death did not come into their households and kill the firstborn. And God delivered them from Egypt. It was the tenth plague. Now, many times when we think of Passover, we think of just the one day. But in the Jewish practice, and in the Mosaic Law, Passover was actually an eight-day feast. The first day being Passover, and the next seven days being the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on which, the first day, they went through their household and they thoroughly cleansed it of any leavening. Now that did not only relate to bread, It would be anything that would cause fermentation. It wasn't just bread. And they would take it out of their house. Now we gotta remind ourselves, when we think of what they were doing and how they baked, this is a whole lot more like what maybe some of you ladies keep when you think of a sourdough starter. It's not just a little packet in your refrigerator. It is more like a sourdough starter and they would keep it and they would use it to bake their bread. In Exodus chapter 12, this leaven, or this feast of unleavened bread, is also called the bread of affliction, or the bread of haste. Because God told the nation of Israel, on the day that I kill the firstborn, you be in your houses with your sandals on, and a staff in your hand, and you be ready to go. Because the Egyptians are going to drive you out, and you won't have time, ladies, You won't have time to put the yeast in the dough to bake your bread. And so whenever they celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it was a reminder to them of the haste with which they left Egypt and they left behind the bondage of slavery. They went out quickly. There's two things that are pictured there. One is this. You were once a slave in Egypt. Once you're going, leave Egypt there. Leave the old behind. You're going off unto Christ. And so the reminder is to go quickly and to make your journey to the promised land. You have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Now leave Egypt and Egypt and go forth unto Christ. And so when the Jews think of leaven and unleavened bread, they are thinking of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now Jesus takes this, and I want us to go through a couple of texts in Matthew's Gospel. I want you to notice, first of all, in Matthew 13. Matthew 13 is what we call the Kingdom Parables. In this chapter, Jesus tells many different parables in relationship to the Kingdom of Heaven. The first one is the parable of the sower. The second one is the parable of the tares. The tares that were sown in the wheat of a man's field. And He is relating these truths, these stories, to the Kingdom of Heaven. A parable is like an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. It is an allegorical teaching that we can apply the truth to our lives. And so Jesus tells two very short parables in relationship to the Kingdom that I want to draw our attention to. The first one is in verse 31. Let's just begin reading. Matthew 13, verse 31. Another parable. He put forth to them and He said this, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds. But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. And another parable he spoke to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until it was all leavened." She takes the leaven, she inserts it into three measures of dough, and that leaven does not just stay in one location where it is inserted. What does it do? It spreads. It permeates the entirety of the dough. The Kingdom of Heaven is like this. Now go with me to Matthew 16. Let's look at another place. We're not going to take a lot of time to apply that parable. There's two different ways of looking at it. Some people say it is a parable where Jesus is teaching us about the influence of the kingdom, that it starts very small. It's like it's a synonym to the parable of the seed. The mustard seed starts very small, and yet it permeates and it grows. Some people say, no, this is a parable that relates to the fact that evil will always be seeking to insert itself into the kingdom of heaven. And when it does so, it will permeate and it will grow. But now notice what Jesus says in Matthew 16. Let's look at this in verse 1. The Pharisees and Sadducees come to Him, and they're testing Him, and they ask Him that He would show them a sign from heaven. They want to see a miracle. That's really what they want to see. They're looking at Jesus like it's some carnival sideshow. Show us a miracle. They're just testing Him. He answers and He says to them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. In the morning, you say it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening. Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the time. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a miracle or a sign. And no miracle will be given to it except this one, the sign of the prophet Jonah. In Matthew chapter 12 verse 38, Jesus delineates what the sign of the prophet Jonah is. Jesus essentially says this to the Jews, as Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, So will the Son of Man be three days in the heart of the earth. What is the miracle that Jesus is pointing to? The miracle of the resurrection. The Gospel message. Christ will die for your sins. He will be buried. He will rise again. This is the great miracle that Jesus says we must believe. Now he goes on, and notice what happens in verse 5. We left off in verse 4. Now, when he and his disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. They had left it on the other side. They didn't have any with them. And Jesus uses this as an occasion to teach them. Then Jesus said to them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. They think all he's talking about is we forgot bread when we were on the other side of the lake. And they're reasoning amongst themselves. But Jesus, being aware of it, says to them, Oh, you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves? Because you have brought no bread. Do you still not understand or do you not remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I was not speaking to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees?" Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine. of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So even in Jesus' earthly ministry, He is preparing them beforehand for the teaching of the Pharisees which would creep into the church even in Galatia. Now essentially, you can go back with me to Galatians 5. Essentially, leaven represents for us, or to us, the concept of permeation. You put a little bit in the dough, and it's not very long until it permeates the entirety. This counteracts our tendency, and this is for every one of us, where we have this tendency to fool ourselves with kind of this idea of compartmentalization, kind of the division of the secular and the sacred. We can have a part of our life over here that we live a certain way, and we do a certain thing, and we go and we live this way in the real world, and then we come to church on Sundays. Or maybe you go home to your family, or whatever it is. And we tend to compartmentalize our lives. And He's really saying here, and in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, there is no division in your life. Your life is a holistic whole. And you can't separate it. And if you allow a little bit of leaven in, it leavens the entirety. And so it is, he is saying here, of this false doctrine. That false doctrine inserted into the faith will eventually leaven the doctrine of the faith in its entirety. It doesn't just stay small. As I was studying this all this week, I kept thinking back in my mind to a week ago Monday, went down to Salt Lake City to question and answer. a pastor's gathering down there in Salt Lake City. Dr. Norman Geisler was there. I don't know how many of you have heard of Dr. Norman Geisler. He's taught for over 50 years in most of the leading seminaries in the United States of America. You name a seminary, Trinity, Dallas, almost any of them, Liberty, he's been there, he's taught. He's always doing a question and answer time. It was very interesting, but it was, I'll just be, I'll admit to you, I came away from it horribly discouraged. horribly discouraged. He went through seminary after seminary where he taught and said this is what they're teaching, this is the battle that's going on there now. Three main battles in the church he said today. Creation, we all knew that one. Inerrancy of scripture. He said you can't believe he named names of big name evangelicals who are no longer teaching the inerrancy of scripture in major theological seminaries. It's horrifying. Resurrection. Third one, the resurrection of Christ. That in many of the evangelical seminaries, the teaching concerning a literal, historical, bodily resurrection of Christ is quickly going out the window for kind of a teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses of an immaterial resurrection of a phantom, not really a body. That somewhere in Palestine, the bones of Christ are still there. I came away hugely discouraged for that. I mean I'll just admit it. I was like how in the world can this be going on. Two days later I had to meet a fella who lives over in Pinedale who works with the Gideons. His name is David Harper. He came over and we were talking and he wanted to come to the church and share the ministry of the Gideons and talked about the power of the Word of God and we talked about testimonies that they receive of the simple word of God being left in a motel room all around the globe and how people are being born again, people are being saved. And I came away from that hugely encouraged. Our hope is not in men. Our hope is not in the systems of men. It's not in the seminaries of men. It is in the living God. And God's word is still powerful. But we must be careful because a small false doctrine inserted into the faith eventually leavens the faith in its entirety. And what Paul is saying to us here is this, to add this leaven to the gospel negates the gospel. And then he says at the end of this, it actually would make the offense of the cross to cease. Notice this, the offense of the cross. Is the cross offensive to the world today? You can't even put it along the side of the road anymore. The offense of the cross. The cross has an offense that is linked to it, and the message of the cross has that offense. Now notice this word offense, or to offend. It's an interesting word in the original language. The Greek word is the word skandalon. We get our English word, a scandal, that the cross is scandalous in the thinking of the Jewish people. The word is interesting and actually the word itself, the word scandalon in the Greek language, the definition of it is it is the trigger of a trap. Those of you that are trapped or some of you may run household trap lines looking for your mice, right? The little trigger on your trap, in the Greek concept, is a scandalon. It is the device that causes the mouse to offend or to fall away. And so it is an implement that causes someone to fall. Now, in the ancient world, of course, they didn't have steel traps. They had snares, and there would be a device that was worked into the snare that would either spring the net on the bird or would spring the noose on the animal. And this is called the scandalon. Now, in the Scripture, there are two different meanings, and they're very important ones. The first one is when we think of the word to offend, That would be a person or a thing by which someone is drawn to sin. And it is interesting, in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9, Paul talks about this word, and he tells us there, if meat will make my brother to offend, then I will not eat meat any longer. Because he says, I don't want to be the trigger of the trap that causes my brother to fall into sin. You know, we need to analyze that carefully about our own lives, don't we? Things in our life that can cause someone else to have a temptation triggered, we must be careful that we do not allow them into our life out of love to our brother. But in the scripture, as applied to Jesus Christ, we are thinking of Christ and his person and his career and his teaching. And His teaching is so contrary to the Jewish expectations of their Messiah that they reject Him and they suffer shipwreck. And this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Maybe you want to turn over there. Look in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. He tells us here in chapter 1 in verse 23, Actually, beginning in verse 22, he says, for the Jews request a sign. We just read that in Matthew's Gospel, didn't we? For the Jews are looking for a sign. The Jews are looking for a miracle. The Greeks are seeking after wisdom. But we are preaching Christ crucified to the Jews an offense, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, foolishness. Go with me to 1 Peter 2. And then we'll close with a little illustration of this. In 1 Peter 2, He says, we are coming to Christ in verse four as as to a living stone rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, precious. You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now notice what he says. Therefore, it is contained in the Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect and precious, and the one who believes on him will by no means be put to shame. Therefore, to you who believe, he is precious. But to the ones who are disobedient, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense. And so the Jews were tripping over Christ, so to speak, and over the gospel, and rejecting him. My father-in-law is a stonemason. Love to watch the work that he does. He did the fireplace in our home. done a lot of beautiful work with rock. And it's always interesting to watch him how he'll go out into the field and he'll maybe gather up a whole pickup load of rocks and he'll bring them and he'll dump them there where he's going to work. And as he's laying the rock, he looks down and he knows where he needs to place the next one. And he's looking for the right stone that will complete the work. that will fit into that joint. And he's looking through stones, looking for the one. And what he's telling us here is this. The Jews have looked through their stones and here is Christ, the chief cornerstone. And he will complete the work and he will finish the work. But rather than putting him into the position and the slot that is fitted for him, they set Christ aside and they take their own stones and they put them there and they reject it. David Brainerd was a missionary to the American Indians. Maybe you've heard of him. He had a very faithful ministry amongst the Delaware Indians. Lived from 1718 to 1747, only 29 years. He was orphaned as a child. Both his father and mother died. His father had been a legislator in the colonies there in Connecticut. When he was 19 years old, he had a very striking conversion where as he read the word and he studied the word, he came to grips with the teaching of Christ and he was born again. He endeavored to enter the ministry and he enrolled at a place called Yale. You've heard of Yale. While he was there in his second year, he developed tuberculosis and he had to drop out of school. Went home, there he was nursed along and eventually returned to school. When he came back to the school, there was a huge controversy which was sweeping through Yale. And it was over what we call the First Great Awakening. There were some preachers, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, who were having a huge impact in the colonies and people were being saved and churches were having revival and this was making a huge impact on the next generation and even on Yale. What is interesting, even at that time, the faculty of Yale was opposed to the first great awakening, stood against it. Told the student bodies they could have nothing to do with it, essentially, because they did not agree with the doctrine. Finally, they decided to invite Jonathan Edwards to preach at the commencement address, thinking that somehow that would placate the controversy. And instead of doing that, it only exacerbated it. Following which, the college actually made it an offense for which to be expelled after the second offense to criticize the doctrinal position of Yale. Two strikes and you were out. They didn't know baseball. And so Brainerd, who couldn't keep his mouth shut, was expelled for criticizing one of his teachers. In fact, he said of him, he has no more grace than a chair. which sealed his fate in ministry in the churches. Because in the day, in order to be ordained to pastor a church in Connecticut, you had to be a graduate of either Harvard or Yale or a European institution. He didn't know what to do so he went to prayer and God said to him, go to the Native American Indians. And so he went to the Native American Indians and he devoted his life in ministry to them. And by the way, his ministry was very short. He wrote in his journals, I could have no freedom in the thought of any other circumstance or business in life. All my desire was the conversion of the heathen and all my hope was in God. God does not suffer me to please myself or comfort myself with the hopes of seeing my friends, returning to my dear acquaintances, and enjoying worldly comfort. So for three years he poured his life into the Native American Indians. and many of them were converted. After three years, he was too ill to continue. Jonathan Edwards brought him into his home, took him in. He stayed with Edwards until his death. He died later in that year of consumption or probably what was tuberculosis, suffering greatly, strangling on his own blood. But he left a lasting impact to the church because of his writing in his journals. that were compiled by Edwards. What is interesting is it brings to our thinking a lot of cross-cultural missions and the power of the gospel. Brainerd did not concern himself with how much he was like his Indians. What concerned him was, did they know the gospel? Did they know Christ? And he went to them and he preached Christ and Christ crucified. And he would go into the camps of the Indians and they would be gathered around their campfires weeping for they knew they were lost. And he preached to them. He said this in his journal shortly before his death. He says, I never got away from Jesus and him crucified. And I found that when my people were gripped by the great evangelical doctrine of Christ and Him crucified, I had no need to give them instructions about morality. I found that one followed as the sure and inevitable fruit of the other. I find my Indians begin to put on the garments of holiness and their common life begins to be sanctified even in small matters. when they are possessed by the doctrine of Christ and Him crucified. Would you join me in a little prayer? Father, we thank You that the work of Christ is complete. That we are complete in Him. That we are set apart under Christ. Father, may we understand and be reminded even here today of the fullness of Your work. That it is sufficient not only to justify us, but also to sanctify us and eventually to glorify us. Father, may we never be guilty of adding to the finished work that you have done. Father, may we rest in Christ and him alone. I pray that, Father, if there's someone here today who has been resting in some system of works and they've been thinking that they could please you through the works of the law or the works of ritualistic righteousness, Father, that they would see today Christ. lifted high upon a cross, buried in the ground for three days, risen triumphant, ascended to the right hand of the Father. Father, I pray that You would do the work in their life that only You can do. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.