Resist the Resurrection // 613 Ghosts
Brace yourself for an unsettling, terrifying truth: You’re being haunted. I know. You’ve never seen a ghost, and you aren’t even sure they exist. But they do. In fact, you’re being followed by 613 ghosts at this very moment. Don’t be scared! You’re in good company. In fact, every Christian who has ever lived—including Jesus’ disciples—has been haunted by these same 613 specters. Who are they? What do they want with us? Why do they single out Christians to haunt? And how can we deal with them so we don’t have to be haunted anymore?
Christians, we’re haunted. Ghosts lurk around every corner, and the thing is—we’ve brought this haunting upon ourselves! For years, we’ve mixed elements of the old covenant Law with the new covenant of Jesus. In the process, we have unintentionally invited specters to torment and burden us with something terrifying—something we’ve never been able to handle.
Message Notes
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.cFor before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles....know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
Galatians 2:11 -21
“Resist the Resurrection”
The Law of Moses (Mosaic Law)
613 Commands
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses
The Old Covenant
Civil, Ceremonial, Moral
Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Romans 7:1-6If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
Galatians 2:18But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Romans 7:6
