Set Free. Living Free
Galatians: Getting the Gospel Right • Sermon • Submitted
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1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
We are exploring a series of messages on the book of Galatians and we are calling it “Getting the Gospel Right”.
When I say the word “Gospel”, what do I mean?
There are probably a lot of ways that you could express what the Gospel means
God’s plan to redeem His people and to make them holy.
In other words, the Gospel is something that happened when we met Jesus. We were made righteous before God.
And it is something that continues to happen as the Holy Spirit transforms us to make us holy.
And it will continue to happen until that day when we are united with our Father and made perfect.
So when I use the word Gospel, I am talking about all three of these aspects. It is a then and now and future
But for those of us in this room who have confessed Jesus as Lord, I am most concerned about what the Gospel is doing in our hearts now, and what it will continue to do in the future.
A number of Sundays ago, when we first started looking at the book of Galatians, I showed you this slide:
The Gospel is a message
Not of bondage, not of law
But of liberty and freedom
I wonder how you felt when I showed you this slide.
I’m wondering how you felt, because in my experience as a conservative Mennonite, we have had kind of an uneasy relationship with this word “freedom”.
The reason for that is because many of us have grown up with a very defined set of rules, written or unwritten, for life and worship. These rules were meant to:
help protect us against the world
help bring unity perhaps, or a uniform way of doing things at least
preserve culture
And usually when we heard the word “freedom”, it was used as way to say, “Hey, I am NOT going to follow those rules that have been set out for me”
The Bible says that I am free
The church says, don’t cut my hair. But I’m free so I will
The church says, cut my hair. But I’m free, so I won’t
And the list could go on and on.
A few months ago I told you the story of how when we were living in Ohio, and the church we were attending was going through some challenging times.
And how part of the conflict was between the “liberals” and the “Conservatives”
And one evening when we were spending some time with another couple, and we were hashing around all that was wrong with our church
The lady finally just declared, “Well, if they don’t want to follow the rules, maybe they should just go somewhere else.”
This has been our relationship with “freedom”.
Freedom has, in many cases, been perceived as a threat to our culture, unity, and way of life.
Even though we know that we have been set free, I think it’s quite possible that as conservative Mennonites, we struggle with being set free, and living free.
In Galatians, Paul is writing to a group of people who are struggling to understand what it means to be set free, and what it means to live free.
And as we get into chapter 2 of Galatians, we start to discover that, contrary to how it sounds, the Gospel of Freedom actually puts some pretty heavy demands on us.
Living free is not “doing what I please or “bucking the rules of the church” whatever those may be.
But these demands are not something that a church constitution or “lifestyle guidelines” can fix. They are matters of the heart.
Here are some of the demands found in chapter 2 that the Gospel of Freedom places on us.
It demands
Unity
Humility
Sanctification
The Gospel of Freedom demands Unity
Look at what is going on in chapter 2 starting in vs. 11
Paul catches Peter acting like a hypocrite
Peter had been allowing the Gospel to work in his heart, and he was “mending fences” with the Gentiles, and eating with them
But we find that the Gospel still had some work to do in Peter’s heart.
Because some men who were sent from James arrived, and Peter immediately draws away from the Gentiles and starts eating with the Jews instead.
And even Barnabas follows his lead and is lead astray
And Paul basically tells him, “you are acting like a hypocrite, Peter. You aren’t acting in step with the truth of the Gospel. (vs. 14)
The Gospel of Freedom demands that there is no distinction between how we treat our fellow Jews and how we treat Gentiles.
In fact, as Paul says later in Galatians 3:28 “28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In Ephesians 2, Paul calls it the “dividing wall of hostility” that caused disunity between the Jews and the Gentiles.
Paul says that the Gospel breaks down that wall of hostility.
And really, you can’t get much bigger of a wall than there was between the religious Jews and the pagan Gentiles
The Gospel of Freedom demands Unity. The Gospel of Freedom demands that walls between followers of Jesus come down.
Much like in our building project, we took a wall out which largely divided two rooms.
Now both rooms are one
We talk about the importance of unity in our fellowship here at Fairview. We know that we here should be unified.
But here’s where things get tough
Are we supposed to be unified with other believers who don’t come to our church?
This Gospel that we profess. Does it demand that we be unified with people from other churches?
Does the demand of unity extend to the body of Christ around the world…to all those who have confessed with their mouths the lordship of Jesus Christ and who believe that He has been raised from the dead
Or, is it just for us here inside these walls?
If it does extend outside these walls, how far does it extend? What does it imply?
A few months ago, Pete Keller from Zion called.
As you know, the Zion church rents our facility for roughly a week usually in March
The reason they rent it is to hold a bible school. An intensive time of teaching and fellowship for young people who come in from all over the country.
And also, they usually pick up their operation and move it out of here for Sunday morning and then move everything back here for Sunday noon and for their choir program Sunday afternoon
This time, Pete wanted to know if there was any way possible to use the facility on Sunday morning, holding their service here and inviting us to join them.
I said there might, but let me talk to the elders and see what they thought.
As I remember, the conversation went something like this:
I expressed my desire to be helpful to them, because I realize that it was probably a big logistical challenge for them to find another facility, and switch between the two.
And so we talked about it.
And we asked, “are there reasons for NOT doing this?”
Well, it’s inconvenient, it’s not normal, we feel put upon that they would even ask such a thing. They are coming into OUR turf, etc.
And on top of that, we have felt offended by them in the past
All of these reasons to say “no” seemed kind of…well, not exactly good reasons
But were there reasons to say “yes”?
There were lots of reasons to say yes.
First and foremost, if Jesus were approached with such a request, what would His response be?
What about for the sake of relationship? Letting them know that we care about them and want to help their bible school go well and smoothly
What about for the sake of Grace? Going that extra mile and making that extra effort to extend an act of grace
What makes it especially full of grace is that it’s something that we wouldn’t be expected to do
Maybe reflecting the grace of Jesus which was shown when He did something that no one would have expected Him to do
So as we talked about it, we found ourselves saying, “Why don’t we try it?” We decided that I should call Pete Keller and tell him yes, we would honor his request this year at least.
But there was something else on my mind that I can’t remember if it entered into the conversation.
In 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning”
He was talking about racial segregation.
But this segregation goes much farther than that.
Our churches are segregated from one another, especially on Sunday mornings
Now, granted, there are churches that we have some serious theological issues with
But there are other churches here in this community that the only differences that we have with them are matters of preference
And the only time we do anything with these churches is when Ryan and Friends comes to town. Maybe a hymn sing here and there
But we NEVER touch that most sacred of times, our Sunday mornings.
It’s then when we all split for our respective corners, and dig say, this is OUR time. Our WORSHIP time. Do not disturb.
When the Bible says that the Bible breaks down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, what does that mean?
When it says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave or free, what does that mean?
Or could that possibly be, maybe per chance, once in a while on a Sunday morning as well?
What is it about our Sunday morning, when we say we come to worship, that we worship ONLY with Fairview people and those that we approve to come in here?
Revelation 7:9-10 “9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!””
One day I’m going to be in a multitude like that.
With brothers and sisters from:
Mozambique
South Africa
Tanzania
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Lesotho
The Netherlands
England
Norway
Upper Deer Creek
Lower Deer Creek
East Union
Zion
Sharon Bethel
Sunnyside
And we are going to be worshiping together, saying “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!”
But it better not be on a Sunday morning, right?
Look, I’m not trying to be snarky or coercive. I’m just asking us to be honest about our ways of thinking and believing.
We pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”
If what I just read from Revelation is a picture of what happens in heaven or will happen in heaven, what is happening here on earth that reflects that?
The Gospel of Freedom demands unity. And finding that unity means that I’m going to be uncomfortable sometimes.
The Gospel of Freedom demands Humility
This is another reason for saying ‘yes’ to Zion.
What unifies him with Peter is that they are on the same mission
Paul says, “Look, Peter and I are on the same mission. Are we doing the same thing? No. He’s preaching to the Jews, I’m preaching to the Gentiles”
Same mission, but two very different approaches to the same mission.
But it didn’t stop them from fellowshiping with each other.
What unifies us with other churches like Zion is that we are on the same mission.
Do we agree 100% with Zion? Of course not.
Do they drawn their lines differently than we do? Apparently
But are we on the same mission? Well, I believe so.
This past week, I sat down with Elvin Martin and Larry Zook and asked them what is on their hearts.
And I came away believing that indeed we are on the same mission.
Our Mission Statement:
Glorify God by
Bringing people to Jesus
Equipping Believers
Sending them to take the Gospel to the Nations
And as I tallked to Elvin and Larry, this is what I heard from them. They talked about young people coming to salvation in our basement. They talked about young people being instructed and taught, and they talked of folks who had been at bible school and now are church leaders and missionaries.
Their mission, at its core, is our mission
But for us to recognize this and join with them takes humility, just as it did for Peter and Paul
The Gospel of Freedom demands sanctification
The process of being made holy, clean, useful
Paul says, basically (my words), “Look For the Gospel to work in our hearts like this to bring unity and humility, it demands sanctification in our hearts.
Paul says, I tried keeping the law in order to be the kind of man that God wants me to be.
But ultimately the law condemned me. It showed me just how awful and sinful I really am.
So I had to die to the law
In order that I can start living to God
I have been crucified with Christ. I died to the law.
Now it’s not me living, but it’s Christ living in me.
I’m living in the flesh, but I’m living by faith in the Son of God who Loved me and gave Himself for me.
the Gospel is a work of
Grace, sacrifice, reconciliation, humility.
All part of the work that Jesus came to do.
and if you take just one of those words out of the Gospel, it’s no longer the Gospel
Yesterday we as elders met to talk again. We said, “It’s too late to go back on our word to Zion.” We can’t put them in that position.
But that doesn’t take away our options either. We believe that we have 3 options open to us
Come and worship with Zion here at 10:00 on March 20
come earlier, say around 8:00, and have a worship service
Meet somewhere else at our normal time