Stand Fast

Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Stand Fast!: I prayed and sought God’s Spirit to tell me how to explain this section of scripture. I thought about the phrase “STAND FAST”, the Greek stēkō which means to “set your feet on solid ground, to resolutely stand and refuse to move from your assigned place”. Stēkō is a military term, a manly term. Jesus tied Stēkō to prayer. He said:

Mark 11:25-26 (KJV) And when ye STAND {Stēkō} praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

You cannot STAND FAST if you are in disarray. God’s Church is His people, His army. We stand TOGETHER in Him, in His Word. We do what our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, tells us. We follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says:

Romans 14:4 (KJV) Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own Master he STANDETH {Stēkō} or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

The Church STANDS FAST not in it’s opinion, but IN THE LORD. The Apostle tells us:

Philippians 4:1 (KJV) … STAND FAST {Stēkō} in the Lord, [my] dearly beloved.

1 Thessalonians 3:8 (KJV) … STAND FAST {Stēkō} in the Lord.

The Christian loves the Word of God, and is led by the Spirit of God. We walk together with other like minded believers, STANDING FAST for Jesus! We are commanded to “Watch, and STAND FAST {Stēkō} IN THE FAITH” (1 Corinthians 16:13). Not in the world, but “IN THE FAITH”. Or as the Apostle said in …

Philippians 1:27 (AP) STAND FAST {Stēkō} in one Spirit, with one mind STRIVING TOGETHER FOR THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL …

The devil and the world will do its best to either (1) keep people from hearing the glorious Gospel of Christ, to keep them unsaved, or (2) try and get the Christian to give ground to that which is contrary to the Gospel.

The devil cannot make our light dim – but he can entice us to give up Paradise for a piece of fruit. The devil cannot cast us out of Eden, but he can encourage us into losing our way by rejecting the command of God. Beloved, we must:

Stand Fast Against Sin

Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Christ has made us free. Jesus has saved us. From what? From hell? Yes, from hell! But Jesus saved us from more than hell. He saved us from emptiness. He saved us from self. He saved us from SIN. This is what the Bible says He came to do. We were told in the first part of this book:

Galatians 1:4 {Jesus} gave Himself FOR OUR SINS, that He might DELIVER US FROM THIS PRESENT EVIL WORLD …

Jesus “loved us, and WASHED US FROM OUR SINS in His own Blood” (Revelation 1:5). He changed our state.

Illustrate: I want you to think of your life as if you are a cup. When you are born into this world, you are born an empty cup. Within that cup is a conscience that will convict us of sin. Every person has a conscience, placed in you by God. Believers have a conscience. Unbelievers have a conscience. In Romans 2:14-15 the Bible says:

Romans 2:14-15 (NKJV) …. for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves [their] thoughts accusing or else excusing [them])

The Gentiles were never given the Law of Moses. But they WERE GIVEN a conscience. The conscience BY NATURE, by birth, tells us what things are good and what things are bad. For instance, we all know that murder, rape, theft, lying, cursing God, adultery and so on are bad. I know of no one other than a psychopath who would say “to rape and murder a woman is perfectly fine – after all, Darwinian Evolution says that there is survival of the fittest.” People instinctively know that these things are wrong. Why? Because God infused the human heart – the seat of our consciousness – with a conscience. So we are like cups. We are born empty, gifted with life by God, but we are not connected to God other than by a conscience. And here’s the bad news.

The conscience can be hardened or cauterized by sin.

1 Timothy 4:1-2 (NKJV) Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron …

To heed Satan, to heed the directives of the fallen world, to stop speaking the truth of God’s Word and begin to follow human tradition and fallacies will sear or harden the conscience. You are born with an empty cup, and a conscience to guide you. But the conscience can be hardened. This is the reason you see so many people mocking the deaths of the innocent. This is why we see women putting their abortions online in videos, laughing and celebrating the murder of their own child.

Sin or the violation of what God has said is right, if not repented of, will harden the heart, sear the conscience. Sin will enslave you. Sin enslaves the unbeliever, so that he or she will fill their cup with SELF rather than God or good.

Jesus Christ came not just to save us from hell, but to SAVE US FROM SIN’S DOMINION. Jesus said that the reason He came to this earth was to …

Luke 4:18-19 (ESV) … to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed

Those without Christ are empty cups with consciences. But without Christ they are enslaved to sin. But when God opens the eyes of a person and they see Christ as LORD and SAVIOR, when they give their lives to Him, Jesus frees them from sin’s mastery. He does this by sending the Holy Spirit to us to make us BORN AGAIN (John 3:3-7). God comes into our cup, and fills us with His Presence. Being BORN AGAIN, we are given ETERNAL LIFE (2 Corinthians 5:17; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3; 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1–4, 18). We are made “CHILDREN OF GOD” (John 1:12–13). We are set free from sin’s mastery, and and freed from sin to serve Jesus.

But something else happens. God enters our life, and stays with us. God the Holy Spirit comes into our cup. We are freed from sin so that we can live with Jesus and for Jesus. The Bible says:

1 Peter 2:16 (ESV) Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

The purpose of the believer’s cup, our lives, is to live free from sin and for God’s glory. The Bible says “sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). We are to fill our cups with God. There’s an old song we don’t sing anymore called “Fill My Cup, Lord”. But it explains the difference between the believer and the lost. The song says:

Like the woman at the well, I was seeking
For things that could not satisfy.
And then I heard my Savior speaking,
“Draw from My well that never shall run dry.”

Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up Lord;
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul.
Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more.
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.

The Christian is not an empty cup, but a “new creature in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are God’s property. Jesus said:

John 8:31-32, 34, 36 (ESV) So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in My word, you are TRULY My disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” … 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. … 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Jesus Christ frees us from the dominion of sin in our lives. He empties us of sin so that we might fill our cups with God’s goodness and righteousness.

Illustrate: I was talking with a brother in Christ and our plumber, Randy Blackburn, this past Friday. Randy had fixed a toilet for us – he does great work – and we were talking in my office. We were talking about how evil our world has gotten over the last few years, and how dark America is. Randy told me a story about a man he once knew, long ago. It was about 1970, and there was a fellow that everyone knew as just a “wino”. He was homeless, on the street, and horribly addicted to alcohol. Several men started talking about this man, and said that “he’s been drinking rubbing through a cheesecloth” to satisfy his addiction. They were talking about rubbing or wood alcohol. Randy said the man could buy rubbing alcohol for about 9 cents a bottle, would drink it through a cheese cloth, then throw up blood.

One day Randy was working the plumbing at a liquor store. He went outside to get something, and this “wino” came up to him. He said, “I’m dying! I’ve got to have a quarter.” Randy said he knew that if he gave the man a quarter, he’d go down to the store and buy two bottles of rubbing – and Randy didn’t want to kill him. Back then Randy kept a pint bottle of alcohol under the seat of his truck (he doesn’t anymore). He told the wino, “I don’t have any money. Here, I’ll give you this”. When he showed the man the bottle, the man lurched forward. “Yesssss – that’s what I need”. The bottle was 100 proof alcohol, a full pint, and the man quickly drank it down. Throwing the empty to the ground, he staggered off. Randy said to himself, “That man will be dead in 6 months”.

A few months past, and on Sunday Randy saw this same man walking up the street to a little Pentecostal Church. The man was not staggering. His wife was with him, and he was wearing a suit. He asked his friends about this man, and the change in him. His friends said, “That man got the Holy Ghost”. The man got saved. To this day, Randy doesn’t know if the man was saved in Church, or if he was in a gutter throwing up blood when he reached out and Jesus reached him. But Jesus saved someone who was a “wino”, and made him into a child of God! Randy said that this man who he thought would be dead in 6 months actually lived another 40 years before he went to be with his Savior.

Praise the Lord!

Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Oh Beloved, let us stand fact in Christ. He saves His people FROM their sins, not IN their sins. Jesus did not save us from sin so that we can fill our cups with ourselves. He saved us so that we can live our lives for Him. We’re told later in this chapter:

Galatians 5:13-14 (KJV) For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only [use] not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. 14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, [even] in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Sin WAS our master – but sin CAN enslave us again. If you don’t believe this, look at the life of King David. David loved the Lord. But one day David forgot that he was saved to fill his cup for Jesus, and decided instead to fill his cup with sin. David looked on another man’s wife, and took her as his own. When she got pregnant, David tried to cover up his sin by deception. When that failed, David had Uriah her husband murdered. But David did not profit. Though David repented, God told David:

2 Samuel 12:10-11 (ESV) Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.

You lose the blessings of God when you fill your cup with the flesh, and not with God’s Spirit. When you depart from the Word of God and do evil, God will repay!

Stand Fast In The Spirit

Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

When we are saved, God frees us from sin AND the Law. We are not under the written Law of Moses. We are under the Law of the Spirit. The Bible says:

Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

The Law is diagnostic. It can point out sin, but it cannot correct sin. When we give our lives to Jesus, we become His possession. We belong to Jesus. The Holy Spirit of God INDWELLS us, He lives within us. The Bible says:

2 Corinthians 3:17 (ESV) Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

The Spirit of God is not an IT. The Spirit of God is a PERSON, the Third Person of the Trinity. The Spirit of God causes us to be born again. Once born again, the Spirit INDWELLS us and LEADS us while TEACHING us about Jesus through God’s Scripture.

The Christian is given a choice every single day. We can fill our cup with SELF, or we can empty our cup of ourselves and be FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT. We are told:

Ephesians 5:18-21 (ESV) And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

You can be filled with the flesh – or you can be filled with the Spirit. It’s easy to tell what someone is filled with.

If you are filled with the Spirit, you will be musical. You will be “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart”. If you’re like a funeral dirge to talk to, you’re filled with the wrong spirit.

If you’re filled with the Spirit, you will be thankful. You will be “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

If you’re filled with the Spirit, you will not be self centered, but loving and useful. You will be “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ”.

Those who are saved do what they do because God indwells them. Before we were saved, we had the Law of God. We had a conscience. But we did not have God. Once saved, God lives in us to guide us through His Scripture, to make us more like Jesus.

Those who are lost do not have a good grasp of the Law of God.

Galatians 5:2-4 Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. 3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

The Pharisees crept into the Church at Galatia and told them “you must be circumcised to be saved”. Circumcision has nothing whatsoever to do with salvation. The Bible tells us that God took Abraham outside. We read:

Genesis 15:5-6 (ESV) And {God} brought {Abram} outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then {God} said to {Abram}, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he {Abram} believed the LORD, and {God} counted it to him as righteousness.

Before Abraham was ever circumcised, he believed in the Lord Jesus. Abraham was saved by faith in our Lord. The phrase:

“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”

Is repeated three times in the New Testament. It is in Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6; and James 2:23. But when did God give Abraham and his direct seed the Covenant of Circumcision? Not in Genesis 15, when Abraham was 85 years old.

Abraham was 85 years old when he “believed the Lord, and God counted it for righteousness”. But Abraham was 99 years old (Genesis 17:1) when God gave him the Covenant of Circumcision. Fourteen years passed from salvation to the Covenant of circumcision. Circumcision has nothing to do with salvation!

God told Abraham under the Covenant of Circumcision:

Genesis 17:7-14 (ESV) And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” 9 And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, 13 both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

The Covenant of Circumcision gave Israel the right to the land of Canaan. It was specific to the nation of Israel, not to the Gentiles. God said, “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant”. Failure to be circumcised would cause the Jew to be cut off – not from Heaven nor the Kingdom of God – but “FROM HIS PEOPLE”. The uncircumcised MALE (not the female) would lose the Promised Land. This is a physical Covenant, not a spiritual one. It has nothing to do with salvation.

Galatians 5:5-6 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

Salvation comes only by “faith which worketh by love”.

We – THROUGH THE SPIRIT wait for the hope of righteousness BY FAITH. We know that we are sinners, deserving only of hell, but Christ saved us. What have we previously read?

Galatians 2:20-21 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. {21} I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

I should have been crucified, but I was not. I am crucified with Christ – not because the nails of punishment were driven into me, nor because I hung naked and ashamed between two thieves. I am crucified with Christ – because the life which I now live in the flesh I live BY THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD.

My hope daily is in Him.
My hope for salvation is in Him.
My hope for sanctification is in Him.
My hope for eternity is in Him.

He loved me, and gave Himself for me – in my place. Therefore I have faith which worketh by love. He is altogether lovely. We love Him because He first loved us!

Illustrate: Often before people join a Church, they will seek out the Pastor and ask him questions. Over the years I’ve heard “What type of Bible do you use? How do you preach? “Do you use notes, or do you preach without notes? Do you have fellowship meals at the Church? Are women allowed to teach Bible classes – or pray – in the Church?” I’ve heard a lot of questions, but never hear “Pastor, do you love Jesus? Do the members of this Church love Jesus?” If the answer to those questions is YES, then all other things will fall into place.

The “faith which worketh by love” will not play with sin. The “faith which worketh by love” will recognize and confess sin to the Father in the name of Christ as soon as possible. The genuine Christian, discovering sin in the camp, repents and runs from sin as readily as he would run from a snake. The Christian does not try to love, but loves as naturally as a fish breathes water. The Scripture tells us:

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Do you know how you can tell one is saved, and the other is damned? One has the “faith which worketh by love”. The other wants to be waited on – even in hell. When Jesus spoke of the rich man and Lazarus, when the rich man lifted up his eyes in hell, he started looking for a servant. He did not repent. He begged Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water to cool my tongue”. Think of that! He wanted Lazarus to LEAVE PARADISE AND COME TO HELL to wait on him. What arrogance! He wanted Lazarus in hell with him, just as long as HE got a little comfort. Failing this, the rich man begged Abraham to “send Lazarus to my brothers, to warn them about hell”. He wanted Lazarus to leave Paradise and go back to earth to serve his family (Luke 16:19-31).

Beloved, do you have the “faith which worketh by love”? If you are saved, then you love Jesus. If you are saved, you love the family of God. I pray you are saved by faith in Christ. If not, today is the perfect day to REPENT and come to Him. Do not harden your hearts. You cannot work your way into being born again. God must do it. You must call on Jesus. The Bible is very clear:

Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: {7} Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

May God lead you to Christ today. Amen!