“Our New Identity”

You’ve heard of Dejavu right? It’s the feeling that you’ve experienced something before.

Tom Kelly author of “The 10 Faces Of Innovation” in a blog recently said that this…

“When you go out to do field work you should try to do the opposite of Dejavu.

He says his friend, Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford calls this "vuja de." Tom says this in the blog…

“Vuja de happens when you enter a situation you've been in a thousand times before, but with the sense of being there for the first time.

“As French novelist Marcel Proust said, ‘The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.’ So if you want to find untapped innovation opportunities, watch the world around you with "fresh eyes." Go for a sense of vuja de, and then ask yourself why things are the way they are.”

He ends with this… ”Once you start asking the right vuja de questions, you might find that the answers can lead to big opportunities for your business.”

That’s what I want to do with this series is get us to see old things in a new way. Many of you have probably heard of grace before, but I want us to have a new, more accurate understanding of grace and how amazing it really is. When this happens our life will transform! You’ll be in situations that you’ve been in a thousand times before, but things will be different, because YOU’LL be different!

Before we get into today’s message let’s do a quick review of what we looked at already…

The idea of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

Most other religions are based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

We’ve seen that grace doesn’t mean God overlooks or ignores your sin. He doesn’t just let you get away with it. God NEVER overlooks sin!

The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made. God was the just one to do it! That’s what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is our 4^th Sunday in our 6 week look at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about the about what grace is and how to live in it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

So far we’ve seen that when you add anything to the gospel you actually subtract from it. We learned that there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves. We’re helpless to save ourselves. The only thing we can do is believe in what God did.

We saw that sooner or later every believer discovers that they are still a sinner.

When we make this discovery we can either cling to the law and become slaves again or run to Jesus and become free. How you respond to this discovery will reveal your true opinion of grace!

Last week we saw that the same way we started in this walk with Jesus is the same way we continue and finish this journey with him.

We started by admitting we were sinners – that we couldn’t save ourselves. We confessed our belief in Jesus’ payment for our sins through his death and resurrection and then we relied on him. That’s the same way we have to live everyday to the end as a believer!

God hasn’t changed the rules. We were saved and given new life because of faith and the only way we grow and conquer sin in our lives is by faith. It’s all still by faith!

Paul is saying you have two different tracks to run the race of life on:

• Law: you live a certain way to be accepted/forgiven.
• Faith: you live a certain way BECAUSE you have been accepted/forgiven

These two things are opposite ways of living. They can't exist on the same level at the same time. They work against each other!

Paul says in v. 13-14 that Christ rescued us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse! We don’t have to run on the track called the Law anymore!

What is the purpose of the law? To protect us (by showing us what was wrong), show us how guilty we are and to lead us to Jesus.

The law was never given to make us right. It was always only given to show us our need for Jesus! Paul says in v. 22 “²²But the Scriptures have declared that we are all prisoners of sin, so the only way to receive God's promise is to believe in Jesus Christ.”

Now that Jesus has come the law isn't needed. “²⁵But now that faith in Christ has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.”

If you weren’t here with us to hear those messages, I want to encourage you to go to our site and listen to the messages. PathwayPaloAlto.com

Today we’re going to look at Galatians 4. Go ahead and turn there in your Bibles right now. As you do, let me remind of some things…

Who Paul Was
Written by the Apostle Paul a man who knew what it was like to live his life trying to live of to the law. He was a Pharisee and persecuted the church, but, it all changed when he had a miraculous experience on the road to Damascus. Jesus appeared to him, revealed who he was and helped Paul to understand grace.

Who Were The Galatians?
“Galatians was written by Paul to congregations he had founded in the region of Galatia in central Asia Minor. (Show pictures of two areas they could be.)

Reason For The Letter
Some Jews had come and attacked Paul as a person (1) and what he taught (2). They said that Paul hadn’t given them all the information they needed to be saved. These people told people that they had to come under the law and be circumcised (live by the old rules) in order to be saved. They said Paul wasn’t a real apostle.

Last week I ended the message at Galatians 3:25, because I felt like Galatians 3:26 thru the end of chapter 4 went together, so let’s start at 3:26…

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Picture from story I tell of Chris Wendelberger