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.
___
- 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.
—
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?
---
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment