Salvation’s Foundation
Galatians 1:11-17

Matthew Wright
Lords Day March, 14 2010

Truth Taught: God’s redemptive work originated from His grace and has never had any other foundation.

Introduction:

I will never forget the look of the great castle. So magnificent in its magnitude, so marvelous in its marvel and mysterious in it mystery.  For it was crafted with care and precision with detail and determination.  It took days to build and a little sneakiness on my moms part to put the pieces together while I slept.

You see I loved to put things together as a child and one of my favorites was a 3D puzzle of a castle.  We built the walls, the mote, the drawbridge, arrow loops, the drum tower, the trebuchet and the wall walks.  It was a sight to have seen. All 1000 pieces.

The small card table set in the middle of my bedroom to display our constructive masterpiece.  My little sister would roll back and forth while sitting on my skateboard watching the construction take place.  The small legs of the card table we no match for the force of my rolling sister.  Days after her completion in one glide of the board the castle toppled over with my sister still seated and castle now in pieces.  The castle was destroyed.  Our craftsmanship was ruined.    What a poor foundation we built upon.

Foundations are essential to all building projects.  Its essential to life and how we live out our lives.  The apostle Paul stakes his life on the foundation of his salvation knowing that to add his own works be to weaken its foundation.  The beauty of salvation is that it does not need our help for we have nothing to add.  Christ work is complete and our salvation is sure. God’s redemptive work originated from his grace and has never had any other foundation.

Let us investigate Gods redemptive work.

God’s redemptive work… (Galatians 1:11-14) Continue Reading

The letter of Paul to the

Galatians

1:1-10

The Gospel: Message or Miracle?

Grace Community Church

September, 20^th 2009

Matthew Wright

1Paul, an apostle-not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead- 2. and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4. Who Gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. 10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or and I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man. I would not be a servant of Christ

Intro:

It was 600 feet long and It had over 300 teeth. Get your hand out of there, my father would yell! You see my father would occasionally take me to work with him.  He owned a shoe repair business and at times I was his apprentice.  We would fix all kinds of shoes. Boots, ladies high heals, sandals, sneakers.  We would give the shoe a new life.  When we would finish the shoe the last step was my favorite.  We would use the buffer.

Remember the 300 teethed monster that was over 600 feet long.  I was more like 8 feet and it had no teeth rather it had 6 or so buffers on it. The buffer seemed like it was so big and it was desirable.  My father would put his hand in the shoe, turn on the buffer and bring back the shine on the leather. The soft bristles felt good on my hands.

My father knew the impending danger if I put my hands all over the machine. “I told you not to do that” my father would repeat.  His indignant response was what I needed.  He was justly angry as I wanted to prove that my hand would not be devoured by the monster.  His raised voice always caught my attention and I was quickly corrected.

Maybe that’s why I like the book of Galatians. Paul the spiritual father of the Galatian churches has looked over and seen his children hands in the monsters mouth.  They were caught in the act and not yet lost there fingers. Continue Reading