Sermon Tone Analysis

Hebrew Scripture Reading

Epistle Reading

Deserting the Gospel

Lately we’ve been talking a great deal about two things that are important to the future of the church: Identity and outreach.

We’re going to spend the next few weeks together working through Galatians, because that is what we have this book for.

It’s a letter that was written by the missionary(ies) who started that church in Galatia and are helping them wrestle with these very same ideas.

Paul starts off with a pretty harsh warning for the budding church in Galatia.

“You’re already deserting the Gospel!”

This sounds like just about the worst thing a church can do.

Especially from our Reformed theological perspective where the Word is central to every worship service we have.

Of course we have to pay attention to the Gospel!

But the thing that the Galatian church tripped over wasn’t quite that obvious.

They weren’t ignoring the gospel, they were watering it down to make it more congruent with other “gospel”, other ways of thinking that were popular at the time.

When faced with the reality that Jesus calls us to live in ways that the world sees as strange or idealistic or too hard to bother with, the church there has been swayed to sand the corners off of their Christian faith and convictions.

When faced with the reality that Jesus calls us to live in ways that the world sees as strange or idealistic or too hard to bother with, the church there has been swayed to sand the corners off of their Christian faith and convictions.

“Whose opinion is the one that really matters?” Paul asks.

“Who are you trying to please?”

They are so concerned with making the gospel message palatable to all that they are treading on some serious theological thin ice.

That’s a much easier trap to fall into than turning entirely away from Jesus’ message.

We spin it to justify our own fears or political views or cherry pick verses that match up with the point we want to make.

Who are we trying to please?

This is something that can be asked of Moses’ brother Aaron in .

“Who are you trying to please, Aaron?

God?

Or the people around you?”

When Moses goes to get, ironically- the law in which God says, “don’t worship anything but me”, the people get restless because it’s taking too long.

After we finish up Galatians, we’re going to come back to the 10 Commandments, so don’t let this story wander too far out of your memory before July.

For now, we’re just zeroing in on this little piece, though.

Moses has gone to meet with God to hear what God would have them do, and it takes longer than the people think it should.

So they ask Aaron to intervene.

And he does so.

He makes this idol and he changes the story.

He doesn’t give a new story, but he tweaks the truth.

He leaves in the appealing and epic narrative of freedom from slavery in Egypt, but he alters the main character - the one who provided that freedom.

He didn’t even change the way they worshipped much.

He used the same kind of religious language and they still made sacrifices.

“Here are the gods that led us out of Egypt!” he says, pointing to a golden calf.

And the people were appeased.

The problem is, the people were appeased, but if you read on in , it is clear that God is quite unhappy about this.

In Galatia, the church is trying to people-please by adapting Jesus’ message to fit more harmoniously with the “other gospels” - the messages of the world - that are all around them.

This passage goes on to talk about how the Gospel we are called to live into and share in all the world is totally different than what we’d expect.

It warns us not to blur the lines between true gospel and the gospel the world preaches.

There is a semi-biblical gospel that the world likes - taking the pieces of scripture that please us and dumping the parts that don’t.

The gospel that Paul preaches is one of freedom in Jesus Christ.

It’s one that is meant for all people.

And it’s nothing that we can learn by human learning because it’s not from us people to begin with.

It’s something completely out of this world.

The heart of the matter of Galatians is the hope we are offered to lift us out of our sin.

This is good news for us and our identity and it’s good news for all those around us.

It’s a message the runs counter to the message of the world.

It’s a message the runs completely counter to the message of the world.

But see, the lies in the world around us are dangerous because they just close enough to being the truth that they easily entice us off track.

When the Israelites fashioned that golden calf, they said it was the gods who brought them up out of slavery in Egypt.

It was close to their story, but not quite true.

But in that deviation from their story, they wound up deserting the truth.

When we fall for the Bible-y sounding psuedo spiritual catch phrases and ideas that are thrown at us from ads and movies and well meaning newspaper columns, we run the risk of deserting the truth.

We desert the truth all the time in our day to day lives.

We buy into the almost- but-not-quite-true stories around us.

The one we especially like in the western world - especially in the US - is this lie that there is always a direct correlation between hard work and success.

Not where you want to be in life?

The world says, “Work harder, you slacker.”

“Pull yourself up by the bootstraps!”

Small congregation?

The world says, “Knock on more doors and put another ad in the paper because small means unsuccessful and unloved!”

Or “You just need to start up a Vacation Bible School again because that’s what used to work!”

The world tells us that if we’re feeling some kinda terrible way because life has kicked us in the rear end one too many times, we must be a bad person or unloved by God or that God isn’t really there.

The world tells us that we don’t need to worry about “those” people, whoever they are.

The world tells us that if we just will ourselves to behave a certain way and avoid certain things, we’ll earn our way into heaven or good karma or whatever spiritual happy ending you want to put on it.

But the truth frees us from those lies.

Jesus’ gospel message is that there is more to life than where we are and what we have in the here and now.

And the world tells lies.

(The Beatitudes)

In fact, even though the wicked life leads to ruin, God can redeem even the wicked.

Look at Paul!

But the truth frees us from those lies.

Not where you want to be in life?

It doesn’t say that there won’t be people who are feeling down and grieving and meek and yearning for justice in this work, but that there is more beyond right now.

(The Kingdom is like a Mustard Seed)

Matthew 5:2-12

Small congregation?

(It’s not our good deeds that save us.)

Galatians 2:

Matthew 13:31

So what is the Gospel?

Those people who are walked past, ignored, looked down on, forgotten. . .

they are exactly the people who God loves.

The smallest of things can make a huge splash in God’s economy.

Those people who are walked past, ignored, looked down on, forgotten. . .

they are exactly the people who God loves.

The Gospel says that those people who are walked past, ignored, looked down on, forgotten. . .

they are exactly the people who God loves.

The smallest of things can make a huge splash in God’s economy.

And in God’s Kingdom, it’s not about what you do, it’s about living into who we are because of Jesus.

That’s what makes it powerful.

The Gospel isn’t a promise that we’ll never have to face hard times.

It’s a promise through them.

It doesn’t say you’ll never have to watch your kid get hit by a car.

It doesn’t say no one in your family will ever be diagnosed with cancer.

The gospel doesn’t say a successful church is the one with 1000 people in worship and a killer band up front and that a church with 25 people in worship and a traditional hymnal is a failure.

It doesn’t say that sin won’t exist or that we won’t feel the effects of it.