Known By God
Freedom of the Gospel • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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We’ve been looking at the book of Galatians over the last several weeks. The title of this series is “Freedom of the Gospel”. Paul has written this letter as a rebuke to the church in Galatia who have traded freedom in Christ with following the Law of Moses. I am convinced that the last thing most in the world would say about the evangelical church in America is that we are free. And yet that is what we are.
Last week we saw the freedom that we have in Christ as we have been adopted from slavery into sonship. Sonship is a position of honor, a position of an heir, a position of one who is favored by the Father. That is us. That was the Gospel that Paul preached in Galatia, a Gospel that they were beginning to trade for a return to rules and law.
***Sermon title slide***
Today, in the middle of chapter 4, we are going to see another truth of our position in that we are known by God. Let’s open our Bibles to Galatians 4 and begin reading in verse 8...
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
12 I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. 13 As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, 14 and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. 15 Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
17 Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. 18 It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. 19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20 how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!
Let’s take this a few verses at a time.
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.
This was our condition before Christ. Unfortunately, there are times we can be let back to those old gods that would love nothing more than to hold us in slavery. Before we were introduced to Jesus, we didn’t know any better. By the way, people you know who do not know Jesus don’t know any better either. They won’t know better until we introduce them to Jesus, who can set them free.
As a side note, I want to share a quick video with you. Penn Jillette is a well know magician/illusionist. He is also an atheist. Here is a one minute clip about people who do not evangelize.
***Show youtube clip*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZc3Xq8obk
This is part of a longer video where he shares about a man who gave him a Gideon Bible and the respect he had for that man. I’ll post that to our facebook page later today.
Before Jesus, we were slaves to the worldly gods...verse 9:
9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?
There are so many examples in scripture where calls someone and tells them that he knows them. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah, David...so many. Jesus even had something to say about this in John 10...
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
I spent some summers on my uncle’s sheep farm. When you have the change to see a shepherd in action, in how he cares and knows his flock and then can imagine that is how Jesus is with us. He sacrificed it all for us. He laid his life down for us, so that we could know God and be known by him.
10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
12 I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. 13 As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, 14 and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. 15 Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.
Out of all of this book, it’s in these verses that Paul gets really personal with what his journey with them was. He goes back to how they met, how out of his weakness and illness he found himself with them and in that time they treated him really well. So well, that Paul even acknowledges that they in a way ministered to him in his illness at a great cost while he was there preaching the Gospel to them.
He acknowledges that it seemed to him that they would have even given an eye for Paul if they could have. Up to this point we’ve only really seen frustration from Paul about the churches in Galatia, but now there is this tender moment where he reminds them of their heart and actions toward him when he was there.
He does this just before asking them the question that he poses in verse 16...
16 Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
This Friday, I went to Rumney Bible Conference Center for the day. The Baptist Churches of New England were hosting a Pastor’s Family Snow camp. I got to meet some pastor and lay leaders from Alabama who were there to create connections with churches in Vermont so that they might be able to send some of their people on a short-term missional trip to Vermont to help out.
On Friday night, a Pastor named Matt shared a message with us. It was a message about persevering as Pastors when the people we are serving treat us as the enemy. Some of his stories were truly heart breaking. It got me reflecting on my time as a pastor and how overall, I have been so blessed by this church and the people in it. So many of you are so gracious in accepting when we preach truths that challenge you and me in our walks. So many of you are so encouraging and life giving to the leadership here.
I can probably count on one hand...maybe a finger or two on the other hand....the times where I’ve wanted to ask this question, or one like it. There are times when I have felt like the enemy of the person who has come to talk to me. A bit of a confession on my part and a praise for the elders of this church...I’ve at times come to an elder’s meeting frustrated and ready like James and John were with Jesus in Luke 9, where they asked Jesus if he wanted them to call down fire from heaven to destroy them.
Just to be clear, I’ve never actually said that, but the reaction to the conversations that I’d had brought me close to feeling that way. The elders are amazing in their ability to take in this information from me and then all of us work together to come to what we hope would be a Christ honoring solution. We have seen some success in this and we’ve seen some situations where things didn’t quite go like we hoped.
I’m not saying this to make anyone feel guilty or as a side way of dealing with a difficult relationship in the church. As I’ve said, I have been so blessed over these last 10 years to be in this church, surrounded by so many encouraging people. Not all pastors have that experience. That breaks my heart. We support a ministry called Alongside Ministries in Virginia. Tom Friedrichs, a former pastor from Vermont and a friend serves as the lead guy there. Their ministry is to help those in ministry find healing from challenges. He reposted this snippet from someone who is also in this kind of ministry to pastors...here is what he wrote:
Had a long and heartbreaking conversation early this morning with a pastor. After listening to him recount incident after incident that deeply hurt and wounded him, he said, “I’m done. I can’t and will not do this anymore. I am tired of faking it until I hopefully make it. I am making plans to leave ministry all together. I am sure I will find something safer to do instead of working side by side with ministry leaders who treat me like I have been treated.”
As the Christ’s bride, we’ve got to do better. This isn’t just about how pastors are treated, it’s about how all people in the church are treated. The most damaging thing to a church is not the world. It’s not satan and his band of misfits. It’s people in the church that are doing a different version of what the Judaizers were doing in the church of Galatia. They were making church about something other than the Gospel.
Let’s read again what Paul said next...
17 Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. 18 It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you.
As I’ve experienced my own challenges with people, as I’ve heard from other pastor about the challenges they’ve had, as I examine some of the times in which a church has had a split or a mass exodus, I see where verse 17 labels those problems well. It’s people trying to get other people won over to something that isn’t the gospel. They want others to be on their side, asking for things to be or go a certain way, all the while, the gospel is alienated in the process. It no longer is about knowing God and being known by him. It’s about personal feelings, personal doctrinal convictions that as so not important the big picture of the gospel, it’s about the me, my, I, mine, what I deserve or want and it usually forsakes the gospel.
May we be zealous for the right things. The Good things. The God things. Zealous for knowing God, zealous for being known by God, zealous for pleasing Him and growing in our relationship with Him.
Paul ends with this...
19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20 how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!
My desire as a pastor, as a disciple of Christ is to see others have Christ be formed in them - to see in all of you, Christ formed in you. This means seeing all of you living a life not by rules, but a life governed and encouraged by the Holy Spirit in you. A life that imitates Christ in all ways. A life that says I know God and I am known by God.
I imagine Paul expected some push back on this letter by what he said in verse 20. There is something that happens when two Christ followers are face to face, committed to a Christ honoring conversation. A conversation that starts and ends by asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide.
