In my sermon this past Sunday, I talked about the decision we all have to make about whether we're open to believing in the God revealed in Jesus Christ or not.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian martyred for his Christian opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, has a chapter called, "The Decision," in his classic, The Cost of Discipleship. Here's some of what he wrote there:
The time is short. Eternity is long. It is the time of decision. Those who are true to the word and confession on earth will find Jesus Christ standing by their side in the hour of judgment. He will acknowledge them and come to their aid when the accuser [Satan, who wants God to give him authority over us in eternity, by virtue of our undeniable sinfulness] demands his rights. All the world will be called to witness as Jesus pronounces our name before his heavenly Father. If we have been true to Jesus in this life, he will be true to us in eternity. But if we have been ashamed of our Lord and of his name, he will likewise be ashamed of us and deny us.
The final decision must be made while we are still on earth...
But, as mentioned in this past Sunday's sermon, God leaves the ultimate decision between eternity with God or eternity in hell to us. We are the ones who decide the judgment rendered over our lives the moment after we draw our last earthly breaths. Jesus says of Himself to Nicodemus:
"Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3:18)
What decision have you made? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your God and Savior?
And if you've made the decision for belief, do you love your neighbor enough to present this critical decision for or against faith in Christ to them?
Your eternity and the eternal destinies of others depend on how you answer those questions. What decisions will you make?
[This was shared during the funeral service for Irene, a member of our congregation.]
John 11:17-27 For me, there are two words that will always immediately spring to mind when I think of Irene. Those two words are humor and toughness.
There are other words that come to mind, too; words like cheerful, loving, strong-willed, and faithful. All of them are descriptive of Irene. But her humor and toughness, as a Christian, as a mother and a grandmother, and as a person, are what stand out to me.
She wore her good humor everywhere she went: in the greeting line after worship, in visits friends and family members had at her home, and even during her stays in the hospital. Irene could laugh even when things weren’t going well.
And she was tough! There were many weeks when I would call her, sometimes after she had gotten difficult news about her health or when she wasn't feeling particularly well, and she would tell me, “I’m planning on being in church on Sunday.” "OK, Irene," I would tell her, knowing that she would be as true as her word.
Irene wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her being in worship on a Sunday morning! She knew that, as we gather to praise God and hear God’s Word in the company of other believers, God gives us the strength—you might even say, the toughness—to face all the good and the bad that life in this world brings.
She knew too that worship with our church family also recharges us with the hope that belongs to all with faith in Jesus Christ. This is one of the reasons God calls us to regular weekly worship and it’s why the Bible tells believers “not to [neglect meeting] together,” because in this habit we encourage one another.
Irene’s faith in Christ was evidenced in her humor and in her toughness and I, for one, was encouraged by her faith!
We meet another tough woman of faith in the Gospel lesson from John, chapter 11, which we read a few moments ago. Martha, along with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus, were friends of Jesus. As our lesson opens, Jesus arrives in His friends’ hometown of Bethany. Lazarus has died four days earlier. Many of the siblings’ other friends had come to comfort Martha and Mary, just as people have done for Irene’s family this morning.
Martha sees Jesus and calls out to Him. Martha’s words indicate anger and disappointment with Jesus. “Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
There is an impulse when we grieve to feel that God has abandoned us, to question God and His promises. Some time after the events recorded in John 11, even Jesus, God in the flesh, would feel that God the Father had abandoned Him. From the cross, as He neared His own death, Jesus cried out, “Father, why have You forsaken Me?”
Such feelings are normal. Deep in our bones, we know that what the Bible teaches is true; we weren’t made for death, we were made to live! Several translations of an Old Testament passage, Ecclesiastes 3:11, tell us that God has set eternity in human hearts. We know that death is a foreign intruder that exists in this imperfect world, but should not exist in the Kingdom of God that Jesus died and rose to bring to all who believe in Him. Martha experienced the same feelings all people experience when a loved one dies.
Her feelings are made more poignant by the fact that she, her sister, and her brother all believe in Jesus. Even in her anger and disappointment, Martha calls Jesus, “Lord,” a title the use of which indicates that Martha believes that Jesus is more than a carpenter who does some teaching. She sees Jesus as the Master of the universe, as the One Who brings sight to the blind, healing to the paralytic, and new life to the dying.
In our lesson, Martha underscores that, even in the midst of a situation she can’t understand or explain—the death of her brother—she still believes in Jesus. “Even now,” she tells Jesus, “I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.”
Later, Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him, even if they die in this world, will rise to newness of life. Jesus asks Martha if she believes Him and, in the midst of her grief, with no idea that a few short moments later Jesus will raise Lazarus from the grave, Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”
Folks, this is resilient faith. This is tough faith. It’s the kind of faith that I saw in Irene. It’s the kind of faith I am sure that she wants you to take hold of today.
It’s a faith that acknowledges the realities of this present, imperfect, sinful world in which we live. But it's a faith that trusts that Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is bigger than all our sorrows and that He gives eternity to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.
Today, in spite of sorrow, there is reason for us to be glad.
You see, God is tough too! He went all the way to a cross to bring you forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. It’s to you and me, as much as it was to the people who first heard Him in first-century Judea, that Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the good news.”
That good news is what, even in her sorrow, Martha believed and what, even in her trials and suffering, Irene believed: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Trust that God’s love is tough enough to love you wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, however weak and unworthy you may sometimes feel.
God endured the cross just because His love for you is resilient, tough, and uncompromising.
Let Him be your Lord today and in all the days of your life. He will give you the faith—and the humor and the toughness—you need to live each day.
And if you let Him, He will give you exactly what Irene is enjoying at this very moment: new life, life as it was meant to be, life forever in the presence of God! Amen
[This was shared during worship this morning with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Luke 21:5-19 As followers of Jesus Christ, we know and cherish the promise that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ receive the forgiveness and grace that God freely offers the whole world. Believers in Jesus are the only people in the world who have an authentic and eternal hope for life with God. This hope should mean everything to us!
In twenty-six years as a pastor, I have seen that there is a qualitative difference between how those who trust in Jesus Christ face eternity and how those who are without faith in Christ face eternity.
Christians grieve the loss of other Christians, of course. It would be strange and unnatural not to grieve the loss of loved ones and friends. But, as Paul writes in First Thessalonians in the New Testament, believers in Jesus do “not grieve as others without hope” do.
So, how do we live now? How do we live in this messy, sin-infested, dying world? How do we live today, in all of the moments of our lives?
It’s ironic that today’s Gospel lesson is really all about how to live in the day-to-day world in which you and I live. It's ironic because our lesson, Luke 21:5-19, is the first segment of a section of Luke’s Gospel that is described by the scholars as “apocalyptic.” From our look at Revelation earlier this year, you’ll remember that the word apacalupto, from the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, literally means, “I reveal.”
Apocalyptic literature in the Bible, which includes most of Revelation in the New Testament and Daniel in the Old Testament, basically contains God’s revelation of how this world will end and what lies beyond that end for you and me.
In the apocalyptic words of Jesus quoted in Luke 21:5-38, Jesus does reveal much about the end of the world. But in the verses that make up our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells us how to live today.
So, please pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to our Gospel lesson. Verses 5 and 6 set the stage:
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Imagine Jesus being here with us this morning and someone asking Him if He didn’t agree that Saint Matthew’s sanctuary was beautiful and Jesus saying, “It won’t last. Some day, it's going to be destroyed.” Or, imagine Him being shown, in a single moment, Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Statue of Liberty in New York City and hearing Him say that every fragment of those places would one day crumble to pieces.
Scenarios like these can only approximate how Jesus’ words about the Temple must have seemed to His first hearers. The Temple in Jerusalem was the living symbol of Judea’s religion and nationhood. It was the place where the presence of the God of the universe came to be among His people.
In verse 7 of our lesson, no doubt frightened by Jesus’ words, His listeners ask what sign will be given that the Temple would be destroyed. Read along silently with me at verse 8 for Jesus’ response:
“Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.’”
Jesus warns us to not fall for false messiahs. Years later, in letters like First and Second Timothy, which we looked at a few weeks ago, the apostle Paul warned Christians not to fall for false teachers. Such people still pop up today. They’re on religious TV stations, on the New York Times lists of best selling books, and even in the assemblies of the very Lutheran body to which we belong and that we cherish.
The moments when these false teachers make their plays to lead us away from God can come at any moment, which is why it’s important for us to use as many moments as we can steeping ourselves in God’s Word, getting to know the God of the Bible, not the false versions of God pushed by false teachers. That’s why Sunday School and other opportunities to study the Bible with others are important, even for we adults.
In verses 9 to 11 of the Gospel lesson, Jesus says not to be surprised or frightened by all of the disasters, natural and human-made, that happen in this fallen world.
Then, starting at verse 12, He warns that persecution will naturally befall believers in Him. We’ve seen exactly what Jesus was talking about in recent international events.
Now, there’s all sorts of persecution in the world, of course. Some of it is even perpetrated by those claiming to be Christians. Whenever persecution happens, it is always wrong.
It’s also true that if you proclaim a Lord and Savior Who is more important than you, your family, your country, your neighborhood church, the denomination with which you’re affiliated, or anything else, you will incur opposition, snubbing, and persecution. Bank on it, Jesus says.
All forms of persecution toward those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of the world are the death throes of a sinful world Jesus is going to destroy, the early warning signs of the new creation that is already being born in all who repent and believe in Jesus.
In verse 13, Jesus says something peculiar about being persecuted for faith in Him: “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”
If you have a pencil or pen, you might want to circle that word, “opportunity.” In Jesus’ mathematics, Persecution=Opportunity.
Jesus is telling us that when Christians are persecuted, that’s when the depth and reality of our faith shows. It’s easy to confess faith in Jesus on Sunday mornings in a free country. But the authenticity of our confession is seen when being a Christian is marginalized, dismissed, or distorted, as happens today to Christians in America, to Christians in Logan, Ohio.
Listen carefully: God’s primary project in you and me is not to give us easy lives, but to build our characters, to retrofit our sinful natures, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, to recreate us in the very image of Jesus.
The character that people see in us when adversity strikes is our “testimony,” for good or ill. There is really only one way to ensure that our testimony for God is positively Christian and that’s to humbly own up to our imperfections, turn ourselves over to Christ, repent for our sins, and allow the Holy Spirit access to our lives every moment of every day.
And, we need to do those things every single day if we are to become, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, which I’ve mentioned before, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop.”
Acts, chapter 4, in the New Testament, is a very important place in Scripture for me. After a decade of atheism, I came to faith in Christ through the witness and confessions of the Lutheran Church. The first book of the Bible I read as a new Christian was Acts. I chose it because, in recounting the history of the Church in the first three to four decades after the risen Jesus' ascension, it would show me how Jesus' imperfect followers lived from day to day without Jesus being physically present to them.
I remember that tears filled my eyes when I read those words and I stopped to pray, “Oh, God, please give me a faith like that!”
You see, God had forged new characters in these first Christians. They weren't interested in obtaining revenge on their persecutors. They only wanted the boldness to share Christ with others, in spite of persecutions.
I don’t know about you, but in my daily life, that’s what I want more than anything! I want to be faithful no matter what!
Persecution and all adversity are, as Jesus tells us, opportunities to live our faith and to share our testimony about Jesus, not just with our words, but with our lives. Jesus promises, you see in verse 18 of our Gospel lesson, that if we will be steadfast in following Him, seeking His help in all the moments of our lives, “not a hair on your head will perish.”
Jesus isn’t offering a cure for baldness here! Nor is He saying that all will go well in this life if we follow Him. He’s saying that, no matter the adversities we experience in this life, we can live each day in the certainty that we will be with Him for all eternity!
“By your endurance,” He says in verse 19, “you will gain your souls.”
Eternity, you see, belongs to those who hold onto Jesus even when the chips are down.
Today, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Keep holding onto Me! Keep holding onto Me!"
Revival, new life with God, is something that can happen to people who have long warmed church pews, but have lost sight of Jesus, once their "first love."
Revival also happens to those who have never known or trusted in Christ, who come to worship and trust Him as their only God and Savior.
The word revival literally means, of course, to be made alive again. Revival is what happened to the Prodigal Son in Jesus' famous parable. The younger son in Jesus' story, you'll remember, took the inheritance the father had always planned on giving to him and decided to misuse his freedom as license for sin. Things didn't go well. Mindful that life with his father--representative of God--had given him both the freedom and the power to be his best self, the son set out for home, his only goal to ask for his father's forgiveness and seek employment with him as a hired-hand. He felt worthy of nothing more than this.
But when the father sees his son, he welcomes him happily and throws a party for him. The father's other son--representative for us today of good religious pew-warmers whose relationship with God is lukewarm, at best--becomes angry with his father for forgiving the younger son. He even refuses to join the welcome home party for the younger son. The father begs him to join in, explaining, "...we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."
Elsewhere, the New Testament says that "...if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
General revival, such as was experienced in the United States during the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries, begins with individuals and churches confessing their sins in more than pro forma ways to God--and in some cases, to each other. Confession of this kind authentically owns its need of the power for living free from the sin and the death we can't get free of on our own. Revived people relish the Biblical promise: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord!" (Romans 8:1).
Humility and honesty before God, a willingness to trust God more than we trust the sins we love to commit, can ignite a contagious general revival in which hundreds and thousands of people turn in faith to Christ and find their lives, their churches' lives, and the lives of those they touch in the community and world with the Good News of new life that comes only through faith in Christ.
This is how revival has always come. In Old Testament times, God told Solomon, king of God's people, Israel, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).
Our land--where only 17% of those identifying themselves as Christians bother to worship on any given week--and our whole world, need the healing, the revival, that Christ can bring.
This can happen. Someone once said that if you want to know how revival begins, get down on your knees, draw a circle around where you're kneeling, then confess your sins and ask God to help you trust in Christ alone. God will then begin revival within that circle.
In a real sense, revival begins when we're dissatisfied with the way things are. I call this holy discontent.
When we have holy discontent, we're not pleased by our own lack of love for God and others and we long to live differently. We want to be more like that person we're always trying to prove we are to others. When we have holy discontent, we hunger for--we are desperate for--God. When we have holy discontent, we will be incapable of trusting God, but we want to. We're like the man who said to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief." And just as Jesus answered that man's prayers, in spite of his feeble, weak faith, Jesus will answer the prayers of all who are willing to trust in Him, even if their trust is weak or next-to-nonexistent.
God doesn't sit in heaven waiting for us to become good enough before He hears our prayers. "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," the Bible tells us repeatedly. God knows the intentions of our hearts and understands how hard it is for us to trust in Him. But His promise, again found in several Biblical passages, is that all who call on His Name will be saved. All of this is why David wrote back in Old Testament times: "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust." God will never turn a deaf ear to anyone who genuinely wants to want Him, who genuinely wants to trust, wants to turn from sin. Blessedly, if we give God an inch, God will take a mile. That's a great thought to my mind!
It's foisted on you by the Holy Spirit calling you to the daily habit of personal repentance and renewal.
When we experience holy discontent, a good thing to do is to go through the Ten Commandments and Martin Luther's explanation of them (or any other great Christian teacher's explanations of the Commandments), to hit our knees, to repent for our violations of each commandment, and to experience the forgiveness that can come to those who pray in Jesus' Name.
The joy that comes to people who are reconciled with God through Christ causes them to want to share that revival that comes from God with others. They're like Peter and John, early followers of Jesus who were ordered by religious authorities to stop telling others about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and the good news of new life given by all who turn to Christ. In the face of the threats, they said, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; 20for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20).
Having personally experienced the forgiveness and new life they knew that the crucified and risen Jesus wanted to give to all people, Peter and John felt an overpowering need to share Christ with others. "This Jesus," they told the religious leaders who threatened them, "is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12).
Once revival starts to happen inside of you, it's bound to show up outside of you, and nothing and no one can stop it...not even you yourself. "If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it..." as the Sunday School song puts it.
But it's this precise insight that ought to rouse our holy discontent...and our concern. As Tom Phillips writes in his 1995 book, Revival Signs: Join the Spiritual Awakening:
People today want to know about Christ more than Christians want to tell them about Him.
This sad state of affairs is even worse today than it was when Phillips wrote those words fifteen years ago.
A Florida pastor gains national prominence not because he and his flock are sharing the good news of Jesus, or because they are repenting and experiencing the revival the Holy Spirit sends to people who humble themselves and repent in Jesus' Name. Their prominence comes from touting a plan to burn the Koran, an act irrelevant to their mission as a church and hardly expressive of the gentleness and reverence with which we Christians are told to share our faith. Meanwhile, the world is desperate for the revival only Jesus can bring!
A denomination, which has shrunk by over a million members and 1000 congregations in the past twenty years, my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), becomes more involved with lobbying the government in Washington and the acceptance of heresies designed to court the favor of the world while ignoring the will of God, than it is with sharing Jesus. (Of course, it can't credibly share Jesus anyway, so long as it remains rebellious against Jesus and against God's revealed will in God's Word.) Meanwhile, the world remains desperate for the revival only Jesus can bring! But we shouldn't give in to hopelessness! There's no good reason to do so. After all, in Christ, we know that God is bigger than all that daunts us or threatens to rob us of the joy Christ came to give to us. We need to pay attention to our discontent and bring it to God.
Discontent among Christians can lead us to repentance and to renewal, which in turn can lead us to share our faith in Christ with others. Jesus' plan all along has been to use people desperate for Him and so desperate in their love for others that they will obey His great commission--to make disciples of all nations, to lovingly woo others into a relationship with Christ.
The person who lets God into their lives through worship and fellowship with Christ's Church, personal confession, regular Bible reading, grateful reception of Holy Communion--Christ's body and blood--each time it's offered, and intercessory prayer for others, can experience revival.
It will happen first in themselves.
And then, through the Holy Spirit, they'll follow Scripture's direction to "always be prepared to make [a defense of their faith in Christ] to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." And they will be able to do it "with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15-16).
In his phenomenal little book, The Church God Blesses, Pastor Jim Cymbala writes:
Every revival in church history has been started by pastors and believers who became deeply dissatisfied with the moral and spiritual climate around them. They knew from Scripture that God has something better for his people. All the great missionary movements have been spawned by men and women who became desperate to see God's kingdom extended to new regions and to those who had not yet heard about Jesus. In fact, every time people really pray, they are believing that God by his divine power can change what is into something better.
Do you feel discontent with yourself, your family, your church, your community, our world?
Turn to God. Trust in the God Who makes this promise to those who want Him:
Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:6-10)
Confess.
Trust.
Pray.
Get to know God better through God's Word, the Bible.
Share the good news of new life through Jesus.
Revival can happen. Every Christian should want it to happen.
Are you content with the way things are or do you long for the better--and everlasting life--God wants to bring to all people? God can answer the prayer that many of us sing on Pentecost Sunday, when we ask the life-giving breath of God to make life new, to revive us, through Jesus Christ:
Spirit, Spirit of gentleness Blow thro' the wilderness calling and free. Spirit, Spirit of restlessness stir me from placidness Wind, wind on the sea
We dare not be placid! There's a dying world that needs new life. God is looking for people who will daily surrender to Christ and ask God for nothing more than the privilege of sharing the new life that comes from Christ with others.
Revival can start within us and take in all the world. May our prayerful surrender to Jesus Christ be the start of a new great awakening!
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Galatians 1:11-24 One day, I received a phone call from an upset member of our extended family. She had just ended a phone call with a friend of hers. This friend had recently joined a church that required all of its members to tithe. Tithing, giving 10% from off the top of one’s income for God’s work in the world, is a great thing. It’s even Biblical! But what the friend of my family member said wasn’t Biblical. “Do you tithe?” the friend asked. “No,” said my family member, “we haven’t gotten to that point yet. But we’re moving in that direction.” Without pause, her “friend” said, “You’re going to hell.” A few more such “pleasantries” were shared, the conversation blessedly ended, and my relative, in a panic for her immortal soul, called me. She asked, “Am I going to hell for not tithing?”
I asked her to think of a few famous passages from the New Testament. The Gospel of Mark records only one sermon of Jesus and this is it in its entirety: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” No mention of tithing there as a condition for salvation, just repent, believe.
I reminded her of John 3:16, where Jesus says that everyone who believes in—entrusts themselves to—Him will have eternal life. Jesus didn’t say, “those who believe and tithe,” I pointed out.
Turn from sin and believe in the Savior Jesus, Who did all that is necessary to free us from the death that we deserve because of our sin. Christ has done all to save us; we must repent for sin, believe in Jesus. That is the gospel—the good news--and there is no other.
Yet, as that frantic call from my relative shows, there are people who like to change this gospel with which Jesus has entrusted those of us who are part of His Church.
Some like to add conditions to our salvation. “You need to do good works to earn God’s favor,” they say. “You need to speak in tongues or you really aren’t a believer,” others will tell us. Or, as happened with my relative, some will tell us, “You have to tithe. Give more. Do more.”
Yet the Bible says that the only way the world or any individual can be put right is for people to repent and believe in the Savior.
So, why is it that, in spite of the clarity of the one true gospel of Jesus Christ, Christians are constantly dogged—and tempted--by those who either want to add to or subtract from that gospel?
I think it’s because this business of adding to and subtracting from the gospel appeals to our egos. Those who want to add more to what’s necessary for our salvation are looking for brownie points and bragging rights. Those who want to subtract from what’s necessary for our salvation are looking for either easy virtue, the applause of the world, or a sainthood of their own making.
In both cases, a different gospel, an alien, ungodly gospel, turns the true gospel on its head. In the true gospel God acts, we respond; God creates, we are made new; God dies on a cross, our sins are forgiven; God sends His Holy Spirit and we are empowered to have faith, empowered to live differently.
In the fake gospels of addition or subtraction, we human beings replace God’s truth with our puny wisdom. In the fake gospels, we are the subjects and God is a holy afterthought.
I say all of this by way of introduction to the New Testament book of Galatians, the subject of a sermon series we begin today. Galatians was written by the apostle Paul sometime between 49 and 56AD, to the Christian churches in Galatia, a region of central Asia Minor. We know Asia Minor today as Turkey. Some years before, Paul had started churches there.
Galatians is a call to the freedom that only comes from the good news of Jesus. But Galatians is also an angry letter. At its beginning, Paul dispenses with his usual expressions of thankfulness for the people to whom he writes, found in his other letters. Instead, he lets the group of Galatian churches have it. “I am astonished,” he writes early on, “that you are so quickly deserting the one [God] who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is a different gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Paul is angry with an anger born of deep Christian love, because the all-Gentile Galatian churches—willfully ignorant, infantile, and lazy in their faith, apathetic, willing to go along with the latest theological craze—have allowed themselves to be beguiled by other preachers who swept into their churches following Paul’s departure.
These preachers of “another gospel” were what scholars today call, Judaizers. Judaizers said that non-Jews—Gentiles—who became followers of Jesus, had to first become Jews before they could claim the free gift of new life in Christ. The men had to be circumcised, the Judaizers said. Men, women, and children all had to abide by Jewish dietary laws. They had to observe Jewish religious days. What Jesus did through His cross and resurrection were all well and good, the Judaizers effectively said, but if the Galatian Christians didn’t jump through these old religious hoops, they would lose their connection to God, they would lose their salvation. The Judaizers were adding to the gospel.
Instead of challenging the preachers of this fake gospel, the Galatian Christians simply went along. Rather than knowing Christ and God’s Word for themselves, they dodged responsibility for their own eternal lives, deferring to "experts" happy to do their thinking for them. They allowed Jesus, His cross and His empty tomb, to be moved from the center of their faith and lives. The Judaizers convinced them to instead, put their own religiosity center stage. That was great for their egos, but as Paul points out repeatedly in his letter to them, it also took them away from God and God’s grace in Christ.
In today’s lesson, Paul contends for the one true gospel. He says that, contrary to what the Judaizers said, the gospel he had preached to them came straight from God and was affirmed by Old Testament Scriptures, by the scars he'd received for Christ, and by the agreement of the Judean churches, led by Peter and Jesus’ brother James, who had been around when Jesus lived, died, and rose.
The gospel of new life as a free gift for all who believe in Jesus needs nothing added to it or taken away from it. It’s the only way to the freedom to become our true selves in this life and in the next. Paul says that because followers of Christ are certain of their eternal destinies, they’re free to rely not on human additions to or subtractions from the gospel of Christ. He tells the Galatians not to fall back into slavery to the world, but to live and be free in Christ.
There’s a lot of anger in our world today, some of it founded, some of it not. But I think that in Galatians, Paul is telling us today that the only things truly worthy of our anger as Christians are the lies told by those, who, as was true of some in the first century, claim to speak in Christ’s Name, but by their additions and subtractions, put the eternal salvation of the gullible and the well-meaning in jeopardy.
Those who embrace the one true gospel, surrendering all to Jesus Christ, do not have trouble-free lives. But they do have free lives—free from sin and death, free from stewing over ourselves because we know we’re always in God’s hands.
At the core of the Christian experience a centrifugal force pushes believers-sometimes successfully, sometimes not-beyond the temptation to tarry forever with their own problems or with preoccupation with Christ's benefits so that they may join God's work in convincing the world of his holy love.
Because of Christ, are you certain of your place in God’s kingdom?
Are you angry with those who add to and subtract from the gospel?
Do you want to convince your neighbors and friends of the holy love of God?
Then I invite you over these next few weeks to read Galatians on your own and to come to worship on Sunday morning to be fortified and empowered by this word from God and to be pushed by the centrifugal force of God—His Holy Spirit—into your daily lives to live and share the one true gospel, the new life with God that comes only through faith in Christ.
At the end of today's lesson, Paul says that as the first century churches in Judea heard reports about how we was sharing the gospel with Gentiles and they were coming into an eternal relationship with Christ, "they glorified God because of" him. My prayer is that, as was true of Paul, God will be glorified because we live and share the one true gospel of Jesus Christ! Amen
