Grace to change
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Please forgive me, set me free, help me change
I wonder if you’ve ever prayed something like that.
I know it’s a prayer I’ve prayed many, many times. God here I am again, struggling with the same thing again. As I’ve prayed that sometimes I’ve wondered, how long I’m going to have to keep doing this? Am I missing something?
There be some action I can take, some piece of advice, some thing I’m not doing that is keeping me stuck, when what I really want is to be free of this sin, this bad habbit, this way I keep hurting myself or the people around me.
I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way.
If you’ve wandered into a book shop lately - yes they still exist - you’ll notice that the best seller list is chock full of self-help books. There’s so much advice out there for people who want to get stop caring about what others think. Advice for people who want to stop living in fear. There’s advice for people who really want self-control. Who want to stop their problem gambling, or drinking or even gaming.
And that’s of course, before we get to the enormous, genre-of-it’s-own book of dieting advice.
Many of us want to change. And yet, so often se feel stuck, it can make us despair.
We’re looking again today at the book of Galatians. A book that is all about freedom. And yet, as we’ll see it is not just another self-help book.
As we’ll see today, the gospel shows us that there is nothing that we ourselves can do to help ourselves. But the good news is, that God is intent on freeing us. And the gospel, is the way he accomplishes it.
Pray
1. The gospel, and it alone, frees us
1. The gospel, and it alone, frees us
State
The gospel, and nothing else, frees us.
If you were here last week, we saw that Paul was writing to the Galatian churches because while they had started with the gospel of God’s grace - the gift of the Lord Jesus, a bunch of people had come in and tried to convince them - in fact, they’d almost succeeded in convicning them that what they really needed to change, to grow, to become God’s people, was to adopt Judaism.
We also got the sense that part of the way they did that was to undermine Paul, to claim that he was some compromiser, some people pleaser (we saw him address it in verse 10 - if I were still trying to do that, I wouldn’t be serving Christ).
And Paul says here,
You wanna know if I’m legit? You’re suggesting I’m not serious about seeing people change? To become the kind of people God wants us to be?
You do know my story don’t you?
Show
You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
Explain
I was driven. I was more serious than anyone. I was a zealot.
This is a very important word, zealot. What’s it mean?
Paul says I was zealous for the traditions of my ancetors.
Now we saw as we looked at Genesis what this looked like. We saw that at the very heart of these traditions were promises God had made to use the family of Abraham to bless everyone.
God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to the world. They were supposed to be a beacon of light in a dark world. God had promised to Moses and the Israelites, if they lived God’s way, followed his instructions, they would be blessed, enjoy life in the land he promised them, and would be so beautiful and compelling and attractive that it would draw all of the nations of the world to say ‘whoever their God is, I need him’.
But Paul also knew that his ancestors failed to do that. Paul knew that often, they ended up living just like the nations around them, and in some cases became even worse. They gave up being this beacon, this beautiful display home of what it looks like to live with God and settled for slumming it. It was essentially false advertising!
Paul knew it had led to disaster, eventually to the most painful experience in the nation’s history - being taken out of their land, into exile in Babylon.
What had led to slavery, being trapped, peace destroyed, was caving to the pressure to be like everyone else.
But in amongst this history of failure, there was also hope. Sometimes, brave, righteous people stood up against the influence of gentile pagans. Sometimes people stood up and said, no, we’re not going to be some cheap knock-off. We’re not going to dilute things, we’re going to give people the pure, clear picture of who God is, and what it means to be blessed by him.
One such guy was Phinehas (whom we heard about in our OT reading).
Phinehas, witnessing one of the most blatant episodes of ‘compromise’ in Israel’s history one that combined idolatry, ritual sex, a plague (Go read it in Numbers 25). Phinehas when he saw his fellow Jews putting God’s plans to bless the world at risk, didn’t just stand there. He took a spear, found a Jewish guy in the act of ‘mixing’ very publicly with a Gentile woman, and ran them both through with it.
And Paul knew that because he did that, Phinehas received this personal promise from God that his family will be priests forever.
And Paul says ‘I had Phinehas’ poster on my wall’. I was more determined to protect God’s covenant, his promise than anyone else.
I thought I knew what changed people. What freed people. And I tried it harder than you.
But then, God did something insane. He went to the cross.
God’s ultimate example of zeal that brings righteousness wasn’t Phinehas running through God’s enemies: it was Jesus, God in the flesh, allowing himself to be run through for God’s enemies.
It blew Paul’s mind. Changed his life. Everyone heard about.
they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.”
The thing that brought change, that showed people who God was, what he was like, how attractive he is wasn’t going around running people through if they refused to be more Jewish, it was God himself, laying down his life for Jews and Gentiles alike.
Because it wasn’t just Paul who changed when he heard this, Look at verse 21
Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,
Gentile places. After Jesus knocked him off his horse, blew his mind, redirected his life. He spent tons of time with Gentile Christians. And he discovered that they too had been just as upended, changed, liberated as he had. These people who did not keep Kosher, did not follow the law of Moses, were not circimcised. And yet their lives were producing the kind of fruit that Moses’ people, Abraham’s family were always supposed to produce.
Paul says, the reason I know the gospel is powerful, the reason I’m so committed to keeping it, the reason I’m so dead set against changing it - just look at me! Look at them!
I don’t need the tick of approval from anyone else.
The gospel is powerful. It’s changes people like nothing else can.
Illustrate
I’m not into martial arts at all. But I understand that there are some martial arts that are all about matching force with force. Like boxing, it’s all about hitting your opponent as hard as you can, and then blocking their punches. It’s like meeting force with force.
But with Judo, you don’t match your opponents force with equal and opposite force. Instead, you try and use their force against them. If they run at you, you try and sidestep them at just the right moment so that their momentum takes them head over heels. Or if they try and hit you, instead of trying to block their punch, you go with the movement and allow them to overbalance, and somehow flip them over your head or something - IDK.
What Paul is saying is that the Gospel much more like Judo than boxing.
He’s showing that from his own experience, and what he’s seen in the Galatians turning from paganism to Christianity, that God has pulled a Judo move. He’s totally sidestepped them. And what’s more, this sidestepping Judo move is the only way to get people to change.
Apply
There was a time not that long ago, we used to be able to respectfully engage, even disagree. We used to be able to share common ground. People from both sides of politics could talk to each other, even be friends with each other, even if they didn’t see eye to eye.
But in our culture wars these days, both sides are embracing zealotry. Now, increasingly either side requires you to denounce the other. To skewer the other side with a ‘gotcha’.
I realise, some of us are tempted to adopt that. Some of us may feel that what we really need is to push back. To stand up for Christian values. To get scripture and prayer back in school, to ban sport on Sunday. Right now, there’s a bit of a movement known as Christian Nationalism that is proposing this kind of stuff.
But what the gospel shows us is that God changes people, changes individuals and whole nations not by meeting force with force, not with Phinehas’ style zeal, but with Judo. With grace - the gift of Jesus.
Transition
But how? How does the gospel free us?
2. Gospel judo
2. Gospel judo
State
Some of us might be familiar with the story of Paul’s converstion - he sees a blinding light, is knocked off his horse, hears Jesus say ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me’. You might be thinking - that’s pretty forceful!
But notice what he says in verse 17
nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
Explain
In case you didn’t know, Arabia is a desert. It was also a desert in Paul’s lifetime. For 3 years, he was just in the desert, likely by himself - think Obi Wan Kenobi, living as a bit of a hermit. What was he doing? He said he didn’t consult with anyone. He was out there with plenty of time to think. Of course he needed that didn’t he? He needed time to allow the news of what God has done in Jesus to rework his heart. He needed time to go back over everything he knew of how God had worked in the past. He needed time to trace the implications, to see how Jesus fulfilled the longings he had, his people had.
Paul’s conversion wasn’t just that moment on the road to Damascus, it was a 3 year process of him reorienting his life, everything he knew about God, everything he understood about what led people to peace with God, to the life of blessing in his family.
He needed time to see how, God changed people not at the end of a spear, but by dying for them, to release them from the grip of whatever held their hearts. Because as he says in verse 10, Jesus died to rescue us from this present evil age. That’s another way of saying, Jesus died to free us, from the grip fo the things that hold us.
Now for Paul it was zealotry. He talks in 1 Timothy about being arrogant, violent, and proud.
For us it might be something else. It might be the desire to be noticed, or liked.
Kind of a similar desire isn’t it? Paul being known as an uncompromising, courageous crusader for God’s honour. We might want to be known as someone dedicated, hard working, reliable.
Both of these things aren’t bad in and of themselves, but when we put them at the centre of our lives, on the pedstal of our hearts, they go from good things, to god things.
See if we set our hearts on being noticed, and respected, we might work really hard to please the people around us. We spend more and more time saying yes to people’s requests. We sacrifice our sleep, we sacrifice our time, money and energy, maybe even our health to make sure we keep showing up, keep people thinking we are reliable, when everyone else quits, we don’t. No complaints, nose to the grindstone and all that.
But if we do that, we may start to find that no matter how much we sacrifice, our reptuation is fragile, we have to work harder and harder to keep it up, and even though we aren’t getting the happiness we want. We find people don’t so much respect us as use us. Take advantage of the fact that we never say no. Although we feel stressed, stretched, exhausted, we can’t see any other way out.
And so we keep working, keep sacrificing, and maybe we begin to resent the people who rely on us.
Of course, the classic ‘zealous’ response would be to say ‘just stop caring about what other people think’. We could put it stronger the bible says ‘fear God not man’. It’s a sin to care what others think.
But that’s not the gospel. Paul says, Jesus died to free us from the present evil age. Gospel judo works like this:
Jesus was glorious, not only that, he upheld the universe, can’t really be more reliable than that. He was constantly praised by angels in heaven, was glorified by his Father and the Holy Spirit. And he willingly gave that up, allowed himself to be rejected by his nation, his friends, his own family, to be slandered, accused of being weak, mocked and even to be abandoned on the cross ‘my God my God, why have you forsaken me’. He did that for you.
He did all that, so that you would know at the core of who you are, you are loved, noticed, appreciated. Even if you are constantly overlooked, or forgotten by people, at the cross you can see that God loves you, cherishes you, and will never abandon you.
In short, Jesus became pitiful, ugly, despicable, so that in him, you could become glorious, beautiful and respectable - no matter how well you’re performing.
If you know that, if you let that get to your heart. It will free you. It will release you from the need please people.
Paul was knocked off his horse, God told him in no uncertain terms, zealotry is a dead end. But then he went to Arabia.
Apply/conclusion
Friends, you and I need that too. We need time in Arabia. We need time to let the gospel sink in. Past the surface. Past the ‘presenting symptoms’ of our behaviours or difficult emotions. We time to see how the gospel is not just something that spoke to our grandparents generation - the news that if we feel guilty, Jesus offers to take our guilt. We need time to see how the gospel is also something that speaks to us now, as followers of Jesus who nonetheless are feeling frustrated, angry, hurt, disappointed, disillusioned, or distracted.
We need time, deliberate time where we bring the gospel to bear on our hearts. That’s why we need church. Church is supposed to be that time. It’s why at the centre of our gatherings is the preaching of the gospel. That’s why when I get up and speak, no matter which part of the bible we are looking at, I want to draw your attention to God’s grace.
It’s why we need time beyond church, where we reflect on how Jesus is a better answer to our longings than any of the other things we might be putting our hope in.
Because don’t naturally drift away from idols. In fact, as John Calvin put it, the human heart is an idol factory. We need constant contact with the gospel if we are to stay free and grow in our freedom.
Because the gospel is what changes us. The gospel is what frees us. And God’s desire for us, is to be free. Truly free.