Sermon: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17 (also Job 19:23-27a)

As I usually do, here is both the actual sermon, and other notes that I wrote but never used, or that just helped me to frame my thinking. There's also a couple of footnote type notes, where I cut stuff out of specific spots for time.

 Sermon: not as good as it gets

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17

& Job 19:23-27a

 

In a previous life, I was a criminal defence lawyer. And a question you get from a lot of people when you’re a defence lawyer is “How can you defend people who are guilty?” The answer is “So many reasons!” I would love to preach a whole message on that. But I’ll restrain myself and just share with you one statistic.

The Innocence Project – who work to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate and equitable systems of justice for everyone – have documented over 375 exonerations based on DNA evidence alone in the USA. Despite these people being provably innocent, 25% of them had confessed to the crime, and 11% pleaded guilty at court. And I’ve had this happen with clients – they didn’t do it, but they confess to a crime and plead guilty, and they get punished. Why? Again, so many reasons. Not all of them are great.

My point is, just because someone gets charged with a crime doesn’t mean they’re guilty. Just because they need a defence lawyer doesn’t mean they’re guilty. Just because they confess doesn’t mean they’re guilty. There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we know nothing about.

Now picture this: the year is... old. Ancient. Let's say about 4000 years ago. A wealthy pastoralist by the name of Job in the land of Uz loses everything - his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his camels, his servants, his 7 sons, his 3 daughters, his health, his comfort, his place in society. Everything. His wife tells him to 'curse God and die' already. His friends tell him it must be his fault: surely only wicked people deserve such suffering! But Job knows he's a righteous man. He certainly hasn’t done anything to deserve the absolute banquet of suffering he’s been served up.

In the chapter before our reading, Bildad says in response to Job's sufferings, "the light of the wicked gets put out"; "such is the place of those who do not know God." If you're suffering, you must have done something to deserve it.

Telling people who face injustice and suffering that it's somehow their fault can often pile injustice upon injustice. It's unsurprising that we often hear the oppressed call out for visibility, for their side of the story to be told. "O that my words were written down,” says Job. 

As law professor Larissa Behrendt said in her Boyer lecture this week, “for communities that have been silenced, telling their own stories counters attempts at erasure and at the same time asserts identity, culture and truth on their own terms.” They want to be seen the way they really are. They want to be vindicated. And Job believes he will be! In our reading today he says, “For I know that my vindicator lives.” His hope is that God will come and clear his name, explain what’s going on, and make things right.

The book of Job is actually 42 chapters long. While 35 of them are his friends blaming him for his suffering and him disagreeing, the other 7 are explaining what’s happening behind the scenes, stuff that Job and his friends know nothing about. God does vindicate Job, although he doesn’t explain to Job and his friends why this suffering happened – though we as the readers get a little inside scoop about it.

The lesson is clear: the natural world doesn’t have baked into it some kind of cosmic justice. Good things can happen to anyone. Bad things can happen to anyone. I know that I can echo the words of Ecclesiastes in my own life: In this meaningless life of mine, I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness. God loves justice and God provides eventual vindication, but if we want to see justice and vindication every day we have a part to play in that, because it’s not just going to happen naturally. I don’t have much more to say about Job, but I feel like that is a really good foundation for us to spring from today as we talk about 2 Thessalonians.

So now let’s picture this: the year is... still old. First century, let's say about 2000 years ago. A little church in a place called Thessalonica in northern Greece is struggling. The Roman authorities don't like that this church claims to have another god-king besides Caesar, and the members of the local synagogue are upset that there has been a split and they have lost members to this new church. Persecution is becoming a big deal - there are riots in the streets, church members are getting arrested, and there is public pressure on the church to conform. Now they receive a report saying that Jesus has returned! Everything is good now! God’s love has been made complete. God’s justice has been made complete. The prophecies have been fulfilled. Hallelujah!

But the Thessalonian church’s suffering continues. They are still in danger. Their members are still in prison. People still hate them. It certainly doesn’t look to them like everything is all better. So now they start to worry: did Jesus really come back? Did we miss it? Were we forgotten? Or is this life of trouble and persecution and suffering as good as it gets? Is this what God meant when he said his love and justice would be fulfilled in Jesus? And so they’re alarmed, they’re shook, because if that’s true, honestly, that kinda sucks.

Our 2 Thessalonians reading today is a response to that fear. It seeks to provide comfort and reassurance to its readers, and it does that on a few different levels. Before I get into that, I want to say that I know for most of us, me included, the concept of the church being persecuted is pretty foreign to us. We live in no fear of public arrests or private infiltration because we’re a church. The government doesn’t think we’re seditious. Most people don’t care what’s going on here today.

But I think this topic is bigger than that. I think the idea that God promises a fulfilment of love and justice is directly linked to the suffering we experience ourselves and that we see around us every day. I think it links back to that idea from Job that when anyone is unjustly suffering, and they want vindication that it is in fact unjust, the as-yet unfulfilled promises of God in Jesus are directly relevant. They can be pretty front of mind. As Belinda said last week, I’ll bet those questions are pretty front of mind to our brothers and sisters at Avalon and Seaforth Baptist churches. I’ll bet they are pretty front of mind to our First Nations brothers and sisters. So I feel like a message of comfort and reassurance in the face of suffering in the world still has a lot to offer.

In a previous life, I was the Australian administrator of a charity that supports Christian minorities living in contexts of persecution. For them, the oppression, the arrests, the killings, the hate – they are real. I met them. We call them ‘brothers and sisters’, the same way Paul, Silas and Timothy call the Thessalonians their brothers and sisters. And I find it important to know that there’s a message of comfort and reassurance for them.

As I said, this part of 2 Thessalonians seeks to provide that comfort and reassurance on a few different levels. For one, it makes it clear that the reports of Christ’s return are greatly exaggerated. It says that the readers may have been deceived, but it doesn’t actually suggest that the deception was on purpose. This could just be a big misunderstanding from wherever these reports came from. Whether it was from a word of mouth report, from a prophetic announcement in the spirit, or even if they got this idea from a previous letter – they can rest assured that Jesus has not come back yet: they didn’t miss it, they weren’t forgotten.

I have known so many people in my time who have felt alarmed and shaken because of misunderstandings like this. Sometimes it is deception: in my previous life as a missionary in Namibia, the prosperity gospel was rife in churches. It promises that if you bless the church with money, you will receive 100 times as much in return in health, wealth and prosperity. What’s that? You didn’t get more money? You must be too sinful, try giving more. That’s a scam to separate desperate people and their money.

But so often it’s not a scam, it’s just people saying things like, “If you can't afford a house, you must have eaten too much avocado toast”, “Just get a job, no-one wants to work anymore”, or the even more sinister “But what were you wearing?'”

It’s people saying, “Oh, we don’t have slavery any more” and quite honestly believing it – because that’s what we were told! – when Walk Free Foundation’s global slavery index estimates there’s around 41,000 people living in modern slavery in Australia. The NSW anti-slavery commissioner estimates around 16,400 people in modern slavery just in NSW.

For those people, the message that the way things are is fine when they are living in situations where it isn’t fine; it hurts to hear that. They can be deceived into thinking that if so many people believe it, then it must be true – maybe it really is their fault they can’t afford a house. Maybe it is their fault they were attacked. Maybe they aren’t a slave, and this is how it’s meant to be.

This is part of the problem: the deception that this is fine – whether it’s a scam or just a mistake – is believable. People believe it. It’s got legs. And so just saying it’s wrong isn’t enough. Part of addressing it involves explaining why it’s wrong. [1]

The explanation given in this letter is that God is a loving God. God does care about justice. Jesus talked about that stuff a lot. And God is still committed to seeing his love and his justice completed. That’s what Christ’s return promises to fulfil.

But until that fulfilment, there’s gunna be a lot of injustice in the world, a lot of suffering, lots of unfairness, lots of uncertainty. It feels like things are chaotic, out of order, because they are. The letter describes it as a rebellion against God’s good order of love and justice. [2]

It personifies this rebellion and disorder as a ‘man of lawlessness’, and links that to a bunch of leaders in history who have claimed to be bigger than any god. Because this is a thing that happens throughout history, it’s nothing new. There have been, there are, and there will continue to be people who embody that rebellion against God's order of love and justice, who rebel against God's big plan in a big way. There may not be a big bad that we could point to every day and at every point in history. It might not even happen once every generation.

But it happens again and again and again. Powerful people get full of themselves, and they cause suffering and injustice and chaos. They don’t tend to call themselves gods so much today, but some definitely make out that their wealth and popularity and power make them and their opinions more important, more valuable, more urgent than yours, and they definitely don’t like people disagreeing with that.

But none of them are special. And the injustice and suffering and chaos that they embody, that we do see every day, they aren’t special either. But God’s love is special. God’s justice is special. When you’re in the midst of suffering and chaos, love and justice are not the norm. But when you see them, man, are they special. And so their fulfilment, the completion of love and justice that come with Jesus, that will be so special, no-one will miss it. Certainly people looking for it won’t miss it. It’s so special that even Job could see it thousands of years before. He knew his vindicator lives, and in the end will stand upon the earth.

I hadn’t realised until recently just how often we long for God’s love and justice. But I’ve seen it happen three times in the last fortnight – once with work colleagues, once with a group of friends, and once with book club. And you’ve probably seen it too. Sitting around with a group of people, and we get into discussions about all the trouble in the world. We talk about how things aren’t right. Quite often, we talk about how things could be better, fairer, happier, nicer. We talk about how the problem has gotten to where it is, solutions that have been looked over or haven’t been put in place, about what really needs to happen: what the government should do, what businesses should do, what people should do.

And I’ve often thought that those talks were a bit lame. They never really accomplished anything. The problems are always too big, the solutions too idealistic or unreal, the people involved too powerless to effect any real change. But you know what those conversations represent? A yearning for improvement, a recognition that things aren’t all right and that things need to change. And that is 100% right. That is 100% God’s plan. 

And that is where this message of encouragement, of comfort and of reassurance goes. It’s definitely aimed at helping suffering people stand firm and endure, but it’s also more than that. The authors pray that this comfort will strengthen the church in every good work and word. They call the Thessalonians the ‘first fruits for salvation’, suggesting that there will be second fruits, and third fruits, and more and more fruits. Because God’s love and justice are special, when people experience them they want to see more of them, so they do more of them themselves.

There is a lot of suffering that gets brought to our attention, a lot of injustice. A lot of chaos. Sometimes it’s happening to us. Sometimes it’s happening to others. We shouldn’t let it deceive us though. Because every time we respond to it with God’s love and justice, we’re doing something special. Something that gets noticed. We start something, we continue something, that bears fruit now, and builds hope that this love and justice will be completed.

Sermon notes for 9 Nov 2025

Lectionary readings

Job 19:23-27a

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Think of people like Elvis, who are less and less likely to come back. Think of stuff that goes away and will likely never return. That's not Jesus.

It is coming, but bad times come first, come in the meantime. Great things happen too, but it doesn't stop the bad times. Job had it bad, and he couldn't see a way out of them till his redeemer would stand upon the earth, and he would see him face to face. 

Job also didn't know things were going to get better for him. That doesn't always happen.

We might feel like it sucks to live now, better to live back in history when Jesus was here. Job thought the same! But he was looking forward not to Jesus coming - because he didn't make it, just like we can't go back - but to Jesus coming back. 

So don't be shaken by mind, Spirit, word or letter - a lot of stuff in life is designed to shake us, to make us anxious, to make us sad, to make us mad, to make us feel hopeless or desperate. Like Jesus came, but nothing is better.

We need to stick it out. And there are good words and good letters that help us do that. I like Lectio365. I like memorizing Scripture. I like listening to sermons at church. 

[The restraint of evil is God's plan, and we should do what we can to help out with that.]

Donald Trump ≠ the lawless one. I don't think. Truth is, there was lawlessness before Jesus, it was there when he was around, it was around after, and it's still around. It's such a prevalent reality that lawlessness existing isn't special. It going away is huge though, and will be noticed whenever it happens whether in some huge “Jesus is here” way or a smaller “we stand up for justice because Jesus wants us to” way.

• Thinking you missed something can be scary

• There is actually lots of stuff in our lives designed to make us feel sad, mad, anxious, desperate, hopeless - bad ‘words and letters’

• Truth is, bad stuff (and good stuff) is going to happen 

• Like Job, when things are bad we can want God to step in and vindicate us

• We can’t see the future - imagine how different Job would be if he knew how his story ended?

• We can stand firm by holding fast to good ‘words and letters’

• Lectio365

• BIble memorizing

• Listening to sermons at church!

• But also hearing the stories of the oppressed 

• Comfort, hope, good work and word

The interplay between real injustice and manufactured outrage?

Fundamentally about hope

The fact that this letter leaves out so much, assumes so much, relies so much on previous conversation and relationship, really puts us in the position of an outsider - Gordon Fee refers to the reader as an ‘eavesdropper’ into a conversation between the Thessalonian church and Paul. As a drive by aside, this did indicate that the letter was not written with the idea in mind that it would be widely circulated and be of lasting value. [So what's the value to us now?]

Keep in mind the ‘why’ Paul is referring to this stuff - reassurance and comfort (moving on to exhort them to action) 

The entry into the temple is an event used to show how anti-god the Rebel is

First fruits = first in Thessaloniki: meaning God's work there is far from finished! 

Be strengthened in every good word and deed - a focus on everyday life in the midst of lawlessness

Words

About a month ago there was a big thing on TikTok about #rapture, because a South African pastor called Joshua Mhlakela said on TV that Jesus told him in a vision the rapture was happening on either September 23 or 24. 

Now, while living in Southern Africa I heard church pastors claim that they could fly, that seatbelts are sinful, and that vaccines are a trick by Bill Gates to kill black people and that only this pastor could cure COVID through prayer or possibly elephant droppings. So I was coloured unsurprised when 25 September rolled around and evidently the rapture had not happened.

But imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and saw your most trustworthy news source saying “Jesus has returned!”, and it had happened overnight on Africa time or something, and so you missed it happening live. How would you feel? I’m guessing cautious. Maybe hopeful. Maybe relieved? 

Job

• Being told his suffering is his fault; injustice atop suffering

• Wants his story to be told, wants to be vindicated

• Looks forward to a time when that vindication comes from God 

2 Thessalonians 

• Are a persecuted church: that's a pretty foreign concept to most of us

• Are worried they have missed out on Christ's return - is this as good as it gets? 

• Paul's job is to give them comfort and reassurance

• Does that in part by telling them lawlessness comes before God's fulfillment; history shows this stuff has happened before, and what is happening now is not special; God's fulfillment is special!; God is still loving, still working, and they are still an active part of that

• The message that alarms them is not legit

• Tells them to stick to legit stuff 

—--

The year is... old. Ancient. Let's say about 4000 years ago. A wealthy pastoralist by the name of Job in the land of Ur loses everything - his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his camels, his servants, his sons, his daughters, his health, his comfort, his place in society. Everything. His wife tells him to 'curse God and die' already. His friends tell him it must be his fault: after all, "the light of the wicked gets put out"; "such is the place of those who do not know God". But Job knows he's a righteous man.

Job's story is basically just 40 chapters of his friends wrongly telling him that if he's suffering then he must have done something wrong. In the chapter before our reading, Bildad says in response to Job's sufferings, "Well, the light of the wicked gets put out." If you're suffering, you must have done something to deserve it. It's the ancient version of 'If you can't afford a house, you must have eaten too much avocado toast', or the more sinister 'But what were you wearing?'

 

This attitude of telling people who face injustice and suffering that it's somehow their fault often just piles injustice upon injustice. It's unsurprising then when we often hear the oppressed call out for visibility, for their side of the story to be told. "O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!" says Job.

 

The year is... still old. First century, let's say about 2000 years ago. A little church in northern Greece is struggling. The Roman authorities don't like that they claim to have another king besides Caesar, and the members of the local synagogue are upset that there has been a split and they have lost members to the church. Persecution is becoming a big deal for them - there are riots, arrests, and public pressure to conform. Now they receive a letter saying that Jesus already came back - everything is good now. But the Thessalonian church’s suffering continues.

 

The year is... let's say now. 2025. Artificial intelligence is being introduced into business and government. The newspapers say that AI is going to take away our jobs. Also that it's creating jobs, but only for people good with AI. Also that it's making work easier. Also that it's making work harder. Also that AI is getting better. Also that it's getting worse. Also that Australia must embrace AI or risk productivity collapse. Also that the AI bubble is going to burst and lead to economic collapse. Ben has no idea what to think, but gets the feeling he should be worried.

Here are some actual quotes from the articles I read: "no job is safe in AI’s eyes"; "fears of a labour market apocalypse"; "seizing this opportunity will require urgent action"; "fear that you will never work again"; "latest defence against the onslaught of AI"; "AI’s impact on the arts... “an obscenity and a travesty”"; "Australia is falling behind and national productivity gains rest on embracing the technology".

And that’s just one topic, one area of news that I read about. There is lots of injustice in the world, lots of suffering, lots of unfairness, lots of uncertainty. And the closer you are to it, the more the world kinda sucks right now. It can feel chaotic. It can feel like things are out of order, that they're unjust, even lawless. Because they are.

—

Good morning. For those who don't know me, I'm Ben. My wife Penny preached back in July about Mary and Martha. Now it's my turn.

 

This morning's passages are pretty full on. 2 Thessalonians is pretty full on. Job is pretty full on. So I'm going to do the classic preaching thing and start with an anecdote.

 

Last week I read a news article saying that AI is going to take away our jobs. I read another article saying that AI is making jobs. And another about AI just making work harder. And another about AI being useless and getting worse. And another about students using AI to cheat on tests. And another about lecturers using AI to cheat on marking. And another about how the government must embrace AI or risk productivity losses. And another about how the economy is going to collapse because the AI bubble is going to burst.

 

What did those articles have in common? Well, AI. But they also used a lot of language that was seeking an emotional reaction. Here are some actual quotes from the articles I read: "no job is safe in AI’s eyes"; "fears of a labour market apocalypse"; "seizing this opportunity will require urgent action"; "fear that you will never work again"; "latest defence against the onslaught of AI"; "AI’s impact on the arts... “an obscenity and a travesty”"; "Australia is falling behind and national productivity gains rest on embracing the technology".

 

And that's just newspapers. Here's a quote from a recent social media post: "Okay guys its time to leave the multi billion dollar company alone. You have no right to comment on the unbridled greed driving the whole franchise into the ground, forcing prices ever upward and absolutely annihilating product quality and customer service. You must accept that the line must go up, the CEO and associated tumours, like the board and shareholders, continue to get richer, because if you don't you're mentally ill and need help." That wasn't even about AI: that was about a collectible card game called Magic: the Gathering. Such outrage!

 

My point is there is a lot of content out there - some even about real important problems - that's designed to make us feel sad, mad, anxious, desperate or hopeless. Bad news stories can overwhelm our media consumption. That affects us, it affects how we look at the world, and it affects how we respond.

 

This problem isn't new! 2 Thessalonians talks about spirits or words or letters that can shake our minds, alarm us, even deceive us. The words and letters the Thessalonians were getting were telling them that Jesus had already returned, and that was alarming them: they were waiting for Jesus to come back; did they miss it? And it was shaking them: Jesus coming back was meant to mark a fulfilment of God's promises, a day when God's love and justice would be complete. But they were still facing harsh persecution from the Roman authorities. Was that as good as God's love and justice gets? Because for them, the world kinda sucked. 

Today for us, there is lots of injustice in the world, lots of suffering, lots of unfairness, lots of uncertainty. And the closer you are to it, the more the world kinda sucks right now. And that's real, and it's important. It can feel chaotic. It can feel like things are out of order, that they're lawless. Because they are.

 

2 Thessalonians is acknowledging that life seems like it's in rebellion against the order of love and justice that God wants, because it is. There have been, there are, and there will be people who embody that lawlessness against God's order, who rebel against God's big plan in a big way. None of that is new, and 2 Thessalonians is reminding its audience that this is the norm. 

The Bible Project suggests that there's a sly reference to Nebuchadnezzar from Daniel and Isaiah here in this passage ("I will make myself like the Most High") - looking back at previous leaders in the Old Testament who embodied this chaos. There may also be a jab at the Roman emperors of the time who were embodying the chaos right then and there. (For example, did you know Caligula ordered a huge statue of himself be installed in the temple in Jerusalem? Twice!) I don't need to name people today who embody that chaos - they're out there and I'm sure you can think of some.

 

I got to this point in my prep, and I was tired. I’d been thinking about all the troubles in the world right now, and I felt defeated. I had a work meeting a couple of weeks ago, and a colleague who works in western Sydney mentioned that it got to 40 degrees where he lives. Unseasonably hot for October. And he commented, "Well, that's climate change. And there's nothing we can do about it." He sounded hopeless, defeated.

I've tried not to talk too much about all the problems in the world today, because I don't want to tire us all out. The relentlessness of this messaging about the chaos of the world affects us. It undermines our hope, it is alarming, it shakes our minds. If we try to stand on the side of love and justice, it's easy to get exhausted, to feel defeated.

But then I read a message from a colleague of ours in Namibia who has been accepted to do a PhD in theological education with a seminary in America. One morning in my Bible memorising a verse really hit me. I saw a herd of elephants with an adorable little tinyphant gamboling along with them on a live stream of a water hole in Africa. I baked something for a church morning tea, and it all got eaten. I read a newsletter from a couple we support in Zimbabwe who have started a marriage enrichment ministry. I prayed for a friend who a year after a messy divorce is finally getting help through therapy. I attended a church service full of animals and heard about how pets do go to heaven and that God's love is expressed through how we love and care for one another. I heard that the Persian lunch we had raised hundreds of dollars for kids in Gaza.

All that helped me see that we are not defeated. We can stand firm. We can actually find strength to keep doing good. We can play our part in resisting the chaos, reversing the lawlessness, and welcoming the love and justice Jesus brings.

And we do it through good work, and good words. I really like the way 2 Thessalonians puts it: don't be shaken and alarmed by the words and letters sent to deceive you; instead, stick to the words and letters that help you stand firm; find comfort and strength in good works and good words. 

Find those good words and that good work that gives you strength, that helps you stand firm against the chaos and the lawlessness. 

Because lawlessness is the norm: it is ever present in every period of history. But that makes Christ's love and justice that much more special. When love and justice win out over chaos and lawlessness, it is huge. It gets noticed whenever that happens. Whether it's some huge “Jesus is here” way, or a smaller “we stand up for love and justice because Jesus wants us to” way, it sticks out. It gets noticed. It makes a difference, especially for the oppressed and unloved.

Love and justice win. God loves humanity, God loves justice, and his goal for humanity is to see his love and his justice completed. Human history is pointing towards that completion, and it's guaranteed by the promised return of Jesus. 

Job saw this even in the midst of his undeserved suffering. He said, “I know that my vindicator lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth”. When we are in the midst of suffering, when we are feeling defeated by the chaos, knowing that love and justice win is a good hope, and it is comforting. It is vindicating.

And we can see it. There is good in the world, even on social media. Not just owls and puppies (those are great though). But our nephew just turned 5. Our friend in Namibia got accepted to start her theology PhD. A friend in Goulburn just got back from their holiday in Greece and Turkiye. People are making noise, standing up for love and justice right now. 

 

* the order of love and justice is happening now

*

 

Sometimes when I’m sitting with a group of people - maybe work colleagues, maybe friends, maybe book club - we get into discussions about all the trouble in the world. We talk about how things aren’t right. Quite often, we talk about how things could be better, fairer, happier, nicer. We talk about how the problem has gotten to where it is, solutions that have been looked over or haven’t been put in place, about what really needs to happen: what the government should do, what businesses should do, what people should do. 

And I always thought that those talks were a bit lame. They never really accomplished anything. The problems were always too big, the solutions too idealistic or unreal, the people involved too powerless to effect any real change. But you know what those conversations represent? A yearning for improvement, for perfection, a recognition that things aren’t all right and that things need to change. And that is 100% right! That is 100% God’s plan!  

 

 

And then, some people try to tell us that if you're suffering then it's your fault! Job's story is basically just 40 chapters of his friends wrongly telling him that if he's suffering then he must have done something wrong. In the chapter before our reading, Bildad says in response to Job's sufferings, "Well, the light of the wicked gets put out." If you're suffering, you must have done something to deserve it. It's the ancient version of 'If you can't afford a house, you must have eaten too much avocado toast', or the more sinister 'But what were you wearing?'

 

This attitude of telling people who face injustice and suffering that it's somehow their fault often just piles injustice upon injustice. It's unsurprising then when we often hear the oppressed call out for visibility, for their side of the story to be told. "O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!" says Job. Maybe this is where a lot of the emotionally heavy stuff we're consuming is coming from - genuine issues, actual injustices, real suffering, looking to get its story heard, crying out to get a few seconds' attention from our eyeballs and our hearts.

 

 

 Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? I don’t know why I even ask. You have all had a stereotype applied to you, had someone make an assumption about you based on some basic part of your identity and treated unfairly as something you’re not, because there are stereotypes about literally everyone. 

 

Galatians: Introduction and 1:1-10

Galatians intro and 1:1-10

 Have you ever read a part of the Old Testament and thought, “Is this really directly relevant to me today? Do I need to apply this?” Well, it turns out that this is the big question that the letter to the Galatians deals with! 

(S) Tonight at Core we’re starting a series of sermons on the book of Galatians. This is the first of six talks we’re going to have on Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches. My job tonight is to introduce us to the letter to the Galatians, so that as we move forward into the rest of the talks we can picture the context for this letter. 

 Now I know some of you better than others, but I think I’m on firm footing to say that all of us in this room are at different stages of our walk with God, have been going to church for different lengths of time, and our Bible knowledge might be a bit different. (S) So we’re going to start with some Sunday School stuff to bring us all up to speed, then we can start on the same page.

(S) Where is Galatians in the Bible? (S) Galatians is in the New Testament. So already we know that the letter to the Galatians is going to be about (S) Jesus and his impact on our relationship with God. We know it’s going to be written during the rule of the Roman Empire about 2000 years ago.

(S) Why is it called Galatians? Because it’s written to a group of churches in an area called Galatia. (S) Here it is on a map. Why am I showing you a map? Well, there’s a couple of things that this teaches us.

 First of all, do you recognise any names on here? Rome, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae - all of these are cities that have letters of the Bible written to them. But Galatia isn’t a city, it’s a whole province. It has cities in it like Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe - places we read about in the book of Acts. The contents of this letter were meant to be read widely - its original audience was not just a single church or a single city. The issues that are being dealt with in this letter were a big deal for a lot of churches.

 The second big thing the map shows us is that (S) Jerusalem is here, and Galatia is here. That’s about (S) 1,200kms away to get to the closest city in Galatia, Derbe. (S) That’s like from here to Adelaide. (S) And you know those South Australians are a bit weird, yeah? You probably don’t see people from Adelaide here very often. Adelaide doesn’t come up on the local news as often as Canberra, or Sydney. 

(S) Most Galatians at this time are gentiles - which just means “not Jews”. They didn’t grow up with the Old Testament. They didn’t grow up with the food laws, or circumcision, or ritual cleansing, or the festivals, all those other Jewish things. They’ve heard about Jesus from the Apostle Paul on one of his first missionary journeys, and they’ve accepted the good news with joy! But they don’t have that Jewish background. They have the Old Testament, (S) but it’s full of foreign concepts and stories that are not familiar to them. Maybe a bit like us? We have the Old Testament, but it can seem foreign and confusing sometimes.

 The Galatians had Christians, Jewish Christians, coming from Jerusalem and telling them, (S) “Yes, this is all applicable to you. If you want to become one of God’s people, you need to follow all the 613 laws in here. You need to follow our food laws, you need to follow our rituals, you need to be circumcised. And if you don’t, then not only can we not be friends anymore; but you can’t be Christian without this. You can’t be saved without this. You can’t have a relationship with God without this.”

 When the apostle Paul hears that this is happening to one of the first places he reached with the gospel,(S) he loses it. He writes the churches this letter. And in this letter Paul is not chill about this topic, because for the early church, this was a powder keg. This issue about whether gentile Christians all needed to become Jews to be saved was a make or break issue for the early church, because it cuts to the heart of the gospel. Did Jesus’ death and resurrection save us from our sins and bring us back into relationship with God the way it’s meant to be? Did he really make a new covenant between us and God, regardless of who we are and what we’ve done? Or do we still need circumcision and sacrifices and food laws to be a part of his kingdom?

 In this letter, Paul says that gentiles - us, non-Jews - don’t need to become Jews to become God’s people. And he is passionate and forthright about that. Some of Paul’s strongest language is found in this letter, because this issue is so important. 

(S) And you might be thinking, “Okay, cool, I get to eat bacon. I don’t have to wash my hands as often.” If you’re a boy you might be thinking, “I don’t have to get the snip. What’s the big deal?” 

 You might be like the rich young ruler and say, “Okay, so I would need to follow the Ten Commandments. But all of these I have followed since I was a child. What’s the big deal?”

 You may be thinking, “Well, some of these laws actually seem pretty restrictive. I’m not sure I’d choose to follow them. But if I don’t have a choice, and that’s the price for entering God’s kingdom, then isn’t it worth it? I might have to give up some freedom, but the payoff is an eternal relationship with God. When you consider what’s at stake… What’s the big deal?”

 My brothers and sisters: it is a big deal. Because this isn’t about food. It isn’t about circumcision. It isn’t about the Ten Commandments. It isn’t about giving things up for a future eternal payoff. It’s about who God is. This is about whether God is full of grace and mercy, or he isn’t. It’s about whether we are saved by God’s grace and mercy through Jesus Christ, or we need to do other things to be saved. This is about the heart of the gospel message. And that’s a big deal.

(S) The early church dealt with this issue pretty early on. In Acts 15 we can read about how the apostles had a council in Jerusalem and talked about this issue, and came to a conclusion about how big a deal it is, and how Paul was right - we don’t need to become Jews to become Christians. But this letter to the Galatian churches is so early it’s probably even before that council happened, so Paul is having to deal with these issues himself. He’s writing this letter to set the record straight. (S) Galatians is like a six chapter zoom in on the issues that are covered more briefly in 21 verses in Acts 15, and in more length and detail in his (S) letter to the Romans.

 Paul hits two big themes in the book of Galatians, and we see them both hinted at in the first 10 verses. One theme is “Why you should listen to Paul”, and the other is “Why this attack on the gospel being about grace and mercy is wrong and how that is such a big deal”.

 He gets into it from the very beginning. Let’s go through these first 10 verses together. You may find it helpful to have your Bible open in front of you. I’ll stick it up on screen as well.

 (S)“1 Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—”

 From the get-go Paul points out why you should listen to him. He’s an apostle - a sent one. He’s been given a mission. And he wasn’t sent on this mission by just a person or a group of people. He was sent on this mission by Jesus Christ himself, and by God who raised Jesus from the dead to affirm that everything Jesus said and did was true. 

 You might remember Paul’s pretty amazing conversion story on the road to Damascus, where Jesus appears specifically to him. You can read about it in Acts 9. This message has the authority of God stamped all over it. Paul goes into more detail about the authority of his message later in chapter 1 and chapter 2. So there’s one of Paul’s themes - why we should listen to him.

 (S)“2 and all the brothers and sisters with me,”

 He is with other Christians too though. He isn’t a lone wolf.

 (S)“To the churches in Galatia:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,”

 This is the standard greeting for a lot of Paul’s letters. It’s how he starts Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. But here in Galatians he adds to it, because he’s got business with the Galatians.

 (S)“4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

And there’s Paul’s other theme: why this attack on the gospel of grace and mercy is wrong and is such a big deal. What we’re talking about here is Jesus Christ, who gave himself - he died a voluntary sacrificial death - for our sins - he has dealt with the single biggest obstacle between us and God by being able to forgive our sins - to rescue us from this present evil age - to break us free from this decaying world and its messages of selfishness, self-righteousness and self-reliance, and he give us instead the freedom to live for his Kingdom in a way we just simply couldn’t do without his forgiveness. 

 You see, this world that we live in is doomed. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some awesome things in this world: love, flowers, chocolate, kids, puppies - I don’t know what you like. There are good things. But this world is broken. We know it could be better. It’s full of hunger and pain and suffering. It’s full of drugs and family violence and mental illness. It’s full of injustice and sickness, and death. 

(S) And Jesus saves us from that. Not just so that one day we will go to be with God in a heavenly kingdom for all eternity where those things don’t exist anymore. It is that - it’s definitely that. But he also saves us so that we can live lives that express that eternal kingdom here on this earth during this present evil age. He frees us from our slavery to those evil things. Because that’s what sin is: it’s everything in our lives that separates us from God and the freedom to live out his kingdom right now. It’s the selfishness, the judging, the greed, the fear, the limitations. Jesus says, “I’m done with all of those, and you can be too. I’ll rescue you from it all. I will set you free. You just need to trust me.”

 That’s the gospel. That’s the gospel that the Galatian churches heard from Paul, that they accepted with so much joy, that changed their lives! Because that is a huge deal. It is a powerful message. And it is the truth of what Jesus said and did!

 And so when Paul hears that the Galatian churches are ditching that gospel for something else, for something weak and lame, for a rehashing of the old covenant, for Old Testament 2.0, it’s little wonder he gets worked up! 

 (S)“6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 

 Most of this letter is Paul explaining why stepping away from the gospel of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ is wrong. Anything that does that is not the true gospel, it’s not good news, it’s actually really bad for you; while the true gospel is true freedom, both now and forevermore.

 I’ll let future preachers in the series unlock all that in more detail. I don’t want to steal their thunder.

 What I want to focus on today is this passion that Paul has for the gospel, the true gospel, the good news that Jesus will mercifully save us from sin and graciously set us free to live for God right now if we just trust him to do that. 

 I hope that you all here today trust God to set you free through Jesus’ death on the cross. If you have any questions or any doubts about that at all, then talk to whoever brought you here, and if you don’t know anyone then come and talk to me. You are the person I want to talk to most in this whole building. 

 For those of us who are sure that we can be Christian through Christ’s grace and mercy alone, I want us to ask ourselves: are we passionate about making sure that the true gospel message is our focus, and that we're not getting confused by twisted versions of the gospel that are out there, or that are even in here? Is the gospel of grace and mercy so central to our belief that we view everything else through it? Or do we sometimes get distracted by sideline issues that come up and threaten to drag us off-course?

 Because let me tell you, it's easy to get sidetracked! I'm sure all of us have our hobby horses, our hot button issues, those things that we really care about and that we take seriously and that are really important to us. And sometimes those things get so important that they can start to cloud how clearly we see the true gospel of Jesus Christ. We start equating knowing the gospel with having our position on our favourite issues, and judging people who disagree with us as not really Christian. 

 I have done this on so many issues! On politics: if you're not aligned with my politics, you obviously can't be a real Christian, or if you are you're not a very good one. On theology: if you don't agree with my theological positions, you can't be a Christian, or at least not a very good one. On church governance issues! Bible translation preferences! Missionary involvement! I can be so bloody judgemental! 

 And none of us are immune from this. Maybe you’re judgemental about people who say “bloody” in a church sermon! See what I did there?

 But none of those things are the gospel. Do I still feel strongly about them? You bet. Do I still think you're wrong if you disagree with me? Probably. But if I make any of these things a threshold issue about whether or not you're a Christian, if by my words or my actions or attitudes I'm telling people that they're not really right with God until they hold my view on these things, then I am setting up obstacles between someone and their relationship with God. And setting up obstacles between us and God is literally the definition of sin. I am becoming sin to those people! I am no different from those Jews who were saying that you need to be circumcised to be a Christian! No wonder Paul gets so passionate about it - so passionate he calls down God’s curse on them! 

(S)8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!” 

I don’t want to be under God’s curse! We need to look out for these attitudes amongst ourselves as individuals and as a church; and importantly, we also need to look out and make sure that we’re not even possibly holding out a message that might confuse people about the gospel of grace and mercy in Jesus Christ, because that is what Paul is cursing in this letter. 

 This is where it changes quite a bit from what was going on for the Galatian churches and how we apply this today. It's probably not circumcision that’s the issue these days. But in a Baptist church, is it possible that we send a message that you need to be baptised to be saved? Maybe. Is it possible in our actions or attitudes or church culture we send a message that your life needs to be this well put together before you can be saved? That you need a job, or to kick the drug habit, or look after your kids well before you can be saved? Maybe. Do we send a message that your theology has to align completely with ours, or you’ve got to read the Bible a certain way, before you can be saved? Maybe.

 And yes, there are other churches out there that might be confusing people with other messages: you’ve got to join their church specifically or you aren’t saved; you’ve got to have a specific spiritual experience or you’re not saved; you’ve got to be rich or you’re not saved. That’s on them. What I care about is the people God’s put in my path. What message are they getting from me?

(S) There is a big difference between what we need to do to become children of God - which is have faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to save us from this present evil age - and what our lives might look like afterwards. Because yes, God can help you get over a drug habit. God can help you look after your family better. God can help you to understand his Word more clearly. God can open up paths that get you more involved in ministry. God can make our lives better. And we should of course encourage one another to take those steps, to get to know God better, to join closer with God’s family here on earth, to reach out more to others with God’s love and peace. Those are great things, amazing things, that can take a long time, and may never get fully sorted out in this life.

 But joining God’s family is as easy as joining your regular family was. What did you have to do to join your family? Nothing! You were born into it, or adopted into it. You were brought into it without any work from your side. Who did all the work? Your mum! Or if you’re adopted, probably both your parents! That’s why Jesus calls it being born again! If we trust that what Jesus has done is enough to bring us into the family, without anything more, then we are in! That’s faith. That’s all it takes. And if we tell people anything else, or even confuse the message to people, we are getting in the way, and we deserve to be under God’s curse.

 This week, let’s all get out there and be passionate about the gospel - the real gospel - and let’s let it shape how we think, talk and act with other people. Let’s work on reflecting the freedom that we have from this present evil age, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and on just how easy that came to us, and just how freely it’s available to everyone around us.

 

 

 

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• An intro to doing a series

• Deep dive (allows a multi-week focus)
• Continuity (building on previous weeks; we’ll still have testimonies and one-offs)
• Overview of a whole book (rather than cherry picking)
• Expository (rather than topical)
• Six sermons in this series on Galatians
• An intro to this first series: Galatians
• Map
• Where it fits into the church’s early history
• Acts - before or after Acts 15? (I say before)
• Church make-up: mostly Gentiles
• Early church problems - people messing with the gospel and membership into God’s Church
• Galatians is often referred to as a “mini-Romans” because its focus is the centrality of the content of the gospel, but in a more summarised form than the lengthier letter to the Romans
• An intro to the gospel
• Not so much the content of the gospel - that is almost implicit in the book
• More about the result of the gospel
• Shows how important it is that we stand up for the gospel; that we should have passion for the gospel

 

So the first thing I want to say is don’t panic! We will still be having someone give a testimony once a month, so we’re not breaking with that Core tradition. On 4 August we’ll take a break from Galatians to hear a testimony of what God is doing in someone’s life right here. Then, back to Galatians.

 

Now in my long experience of attending this church for, oh, months now, I’ve noticed that we haven’t done a series of talks on a book of the Bible. But it’s a great opportunity for us together as a church community to spend a bit of time focusing on the message that God may have for us from one specific part of scripture. It allows us to take a bit of a deep dive into a whole book, to get some continuity in our talks, where we can build up our knowledge of God’s message to us together. We can see how the different things that Paul says in this letter connect together, and get a bit more of the big picture of the letter. 

 

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with preaching on specific topics and addressing things that we need to hear, and you can rest assured that in September there will be more topical sermons waiting for you. But expository preaching - that is, working through the text of a passage of scripture - can help us hear the Bible speak to us in all its richness, instead of us focusing on a single topic that we want to hear about.

 

And it gives us all more reason to come for every sermon in the next seven weeks, to make sure we don’t miss any of the series! Now if you do miss one, that’s okay: the talks will all still have their own message. You should come for every single one, but if you miss something in the middle, it’s not the end of the world. You can just read the passage and catch yourself up. In fact, in preparation for the next few weeks, something worth doing over the next week is to read the book of Galatians for yourself. It’s all of six chapters. Listening to David Suchet read the whole book of Galatians takes 20 minutes.

 

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Do we accept that our sin is a problem? Do we recognise that our selfishness, self-righteousness and self-reliance are wrong? Do we realise that these things put up barriers between us and God, and that we can’t overcome those barriers by ourselves?

 

Do we trust Jesus to do it for us? Do we have faith that his death and resurrection solves this sin problem for us? Do we trust that Jesus gives us free and unfettered access to God and his kingdom right now, and in the age to come we will have eternal life with him, and it all comes from God’s great grace and mercy and love for us, not because of the things we’ve done?

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When was this letter written? Who was it written to? What’s it’s big deal: that is, why was it written? What was it wanting to deal with? These questions help us remind ourselves that this isn’t just a religious treatise someone sat down and wrote, capturing their philosophical musings about God. No, this is a real letter, written by a real person with real experiences, to a group of real people who were dealing with real issues in their relationships with God, each other, and the world we live in. In that way, they were just like us - real people with real experiences, really dealing with questions of how we relate to God, one another, and the world around us. 

 

It also helps us to remember that those real people lived in a real place and a time that wasn’t Goulburn in 2024. They spoke another language, they had a different culture. Their weather was different, their clothes were different, their food was different, technology was different - day to day life was different. And we need to do a bit of work to bring what the Bible tells us about that ancient context into our lives here and now. 

 

To understand what the book of Galatians is saying to us today, we have to understand what it was saying to its original audience back then. Then we have to translate that message - the same message - into our modern context so we can apply it to our own lives. That might be quite a different looking application to how they might have applied it in their lives back then, because our lives today look different, and the issues we’re dealing with look different today to those they were dealing with back then. 

 

What does that mean? 

 

A testament is another word for a covenant, a binding relationship built on a series of promises. We don’t use the word covenant much, but we make covenants all the time: when you get married, you make promises to the each about how you’re going to live and treat each other; when you get a job, you make promises about how you’re going to work, and your boss makes promises about how they’re going to pay you. When you make your last will and testament, you’re making your last promises about what you want to happen to your stuff based on your relationships with people, and we’re making promises to follow it and not just distribute it however we want. Human society relies on covenants to work. The Bible’s Old and New Testaments are God’s covenants with people: the promises God makes to people that will make the relationship between God and people work.

 

The Old Testament is about God’s binding relationship he made with his people, Israel. In the New Testament, Jesus brought in a new covenant that covers all people. That means anything in the New Testament is talking about stuff that happened at or after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, about 2000 years ago.

 

That means when the Galatians first heard the gospel about salvation through Jesus Christ, they only had the Old Testament and oral stories about Jesus. No gospels! No other part of the New Testament! Everything they knew about Jesus was told to them by word of mouth, and then backed up by what was written in the Law and the Prophets.

 

If I said to you, “Give a five minute gospel presentation about Jesus being the Son of God, and his death and resurrection but oh, one thing: you can only use the Old Testament, and you can’t use any quotes or even concepts out of the New Testament” how well would you go? Tough gig, hey? Reading the Old Testament and working out what still relates to us, what is just useful history that tells us about God’s character, and what points directly to Jesus - that’s hard work. It took skill and study even back then, and it still does now.

 

Now we know that Galatians is part of the New Testament, so it’s written after the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. But how soon after? Well, most scholars agree that it was written pretty darn soon after! They reckon some time around 49AD. Galatians may well be the earliest book of the New Testament, written before the Gospels were written.