Grace and Serving God

We are wrapping up our sermon series “Rooted in Grace.” We have spent the last few weeks looking at how the grace that God offers to us impacts our lives. You can find all of these previous sermons from this series or any series on our You Tube Channel.

This week we conclude this series with a focus on grace and serving God. Our scripture comes from Galatians 6:7-10

 7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Please pray with me…

Each one of us are on a journey. We had a starting place on where we began our relationship with God. For some this starting place was from birth, we can always remember going to church and the lessons we learned from the time that we were little.

Others may have not had that benefit and through friends or family discovered God later in life. You got to learn when you were older all about Jesus and what he did for you and why you should give your life over to him.

There may be some of you either in person or online that are still trying to figure out this Jesus guy. You are herein person or watching attempting to decipher if taking the step of having Jesus as your Lord and Savior is worth it.

I was blessed with growing up in the church but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t walk away at times or found myself not listening to the Spirit or following the ways of God. I would expect that would be the case for many of us.

No matter what the circumstances, you are here today for a reason. You have either decided or are at least investigating what it might mean to be in a relationship with God through Jesus. The journey with Jesus truly doesn’t end until our time on earth ends.

(Transition)

It can be easy for us to forget that those that Paul is writing to in Galatia or anywhere he wrote his letters, are also on a journey. Those that were Jewish would have most likely believed that a Messiah would come for the Jewish people at some point. They would have been anticipating the time when the Messiah would come.

Those that are Gentiles, or non-Jewish in Paul’s audience would have heard of this Jewish God and possibly even knew the Jewish people were waiting for a Messiah. But they would not have known a majority of the message.

My point is that we are not much different than those that Paul is writing to in today’s text. Some with more knowledge than others. Some with stronger faith and some wondering. That is why reading scripture is so important. Its message is still written for us today.

(Transition)

What we find in our text is the culmination of the previous parts of this letter. Paul has focused on ending the division between Jew and Gentile. He has attempted to rid the people’s focus on the law instead of grace. In this last chapter he is making one final push towards bringing the people into a right relationship with God.

He begins with a focus on the negative. He is most likely speaking more directly to his Gentile audience. They are attempting to change their lives and may themselves at times find themselves falling back into old habits, don’t we all.

But he ends with a reminder to his Jewish audience to make sure that they are placing the Spirit above the law. He wants them to remove a focus on the law from their lives. He calls them out for being deceived. He wants their focus to be on the Holy Spirit.

(Transition)

What has most likely happened is what we know happened in many of the areas that Paul preached and formed churches. He would leave and another group would come in. This group’s focus was on a person having to be Jewish in order to be a Christian.

This made sense after all since the people would be following a Jewish God. Therefore, this group believed that these new followers who were Gentiles should become Jewish to become true followers of the Messiah.

This caused confusion within the community. They are hearing two opposite opinions concerning how to become a Christian and how to live out the Christian faith. This would have led to the separations between the Jewish and Gentile Christians.

The Jewish Christians are hearing that they are to go back to a focus on the law. They are to live their lives by following Jesus through the Jewish faith. Many of the Gentiles would have agreed with Paul and their focus was not on the Jewish law but on grace.

(Transition)

We can look back and wonder how they got so confused but are we really any different. We spoke earlier in this series about how we have also separated ourselves based off our beliefs. We call them denominations.

We have come up with our own way of dividing ourselves. We create new worship communities instead of trying to work together to form a congruent faith. We have separated Christians into different groups instead of trying to live out our differences.

This is what Paul is trying to prevent in Galatia. He is attempting to unite them under grace. Under an understanding that a focus on the law leads to chaos and failure while grace leads to unity and forgiveness.

(Transition)

We are attempting to become a church similar to what Paul was trying to build in Galatia. We want to be a church that will be united under our mission statement. We want to be a church that has all of us desiring to connect with those around us, show the love of God to all people, and grow in faith together.

What that will mean is that we might not be the right church for some people. We may find some that come here that struggle with certain parts of our mission statement. That is OK. We are called to live out our faith the way that God has asked us too here at The Church of the Good Sheperd.

But we also want to be careful that we show love and grace to those that come here even if they don’t agree with us. We want to form a Christian community like Paul is mentioning in this letter. One where all people are welcome.

(Transition)

Paul transitions to a focus on doing good. He states, “Let us not become weary in doing good.” He desires for his followers to keep being the people that God desires for them to be. He wants them to not give up following God.

This may be because it was thought that it would not be a long time before Jesus would return. We have an example of this, we have Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians telling them to get back to work. They had quit working anticipating the return of Jesus.

This may be Paul telling the Galatians that no matter how long it takes they should be continuing to follow Jesus. The Jewish people would be a great example on what it means to keep the faith while waiting.

After all, they had been waiting for many years for the Messiah that they had been promised. They seemed to at times grow weary and they would turn to other gods before eventually following their God once again.

What we know is that many of them must not have been looking for the Messiah because they missed him when he came. It is true that Jesus was not the Messiah that they were expecting but after reviewing the Old Testament prophesies, they should have at least believed that it was possible,

(Transition)

We need to be careful that we don’t miss it if Jesus returns during our lifetime. We should be living our lives connected to God to help us be able to recognize him when he returns. We are able to do this best when we are spending time with God.

When we are reading the scriptures to receive a greater understanding of God at work. We also need to incorporate prayer and listening into our lives to allow us to be connected to God so that we can hear what is sometimes called his still, small voice.

We also should be living our lives in such a way that would express our expectations that Jesus is coming today. We should be attempting to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbors as we would desire to be treated.

We are to live our lives with as Jesus’ disciples. We are to attempt to follow the will of God. We are to attempt to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus to the world and be open to that possibility that Jesus will return today.

(Transition)

We find in our first reading from the book of James how we should be attempting to live our lives as followers of Jesus. James is speaking to a Jewish audience who have left Jerusalem and is now trying to live out their faith among people that believed differently than them.

We could argue that this is where we are currently in the United States. We have many people that don’t believe as we believe. James points out that this should not prevent us from attempting to live out our faith.

He begins in the same manner that Paul had begun his text only with a focus on the Jewish people. He begins by calling them an “adulterous people.” This is the only place where this phrase is used in scripture. But this statement would have most likely led the Jewish audience to the Old Testament book of Hosea.

(Transition)

In that book the prophet Hosea marries a prostitute which would have been unheard of for someone who was a follower of God. The reason God gives for him to do this can be found in the second verse.

God tells Hosea to “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”

James is stating that those that are now living in these foreign lands are making the same mistakes as the Jewish people before them. They are choosing to live lives focusing on either themselves or other gods instead of living their lives as being a disciple of Jesus.

We should ask ourselves the question “Are we living our lives for God or for the world?” Which one is having a bigger impact on our lives? If we believe the world is impacting how we live more than God, we may have to decide if we are willing to make a change.

This can remind us of the saying that “we are to live in the world but not of the world.” We are to be living our lives in such a way that shows that our relationship with God is more important than our relationship with those around us.

It returns us back to earlier in this message where we spoke that living as the world desires leads to disarray and conflict. It is through allowing God to help us on our life journey that leads us towards unity and grace. God offers us a better way to live our lives.

(Transition)

James continues by pointing out that “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” We are to be people that choose to “submit ourselves to God.” It is through being humble in what we do and say that shows that we recognize that we are not God.

We submit ourselves to God by choosing to resist the devil. James is telling us through this statement to stay away from temptation. The devil is always attempting to move us further away from God. He seeks out our weaknesses and attempts to exploit them.

We spoke briefly about this last week when we had Paul comparing the “acts of the flesh” to the “fruit of the Spirit.” The acts of the flesh occur when our “desires are disordered.” We seek bad things or good things in the wrong way. The devil wants to bring disorder into our lives.

(Transition)

The best way for a person to not fall into temptation is for you to “Come near to God to allow God to come near to you.” We risk falling into temptation when we allow God to be secondary in our lives. God will attempt to help us through the Holy Spirit, but we have to desire to be connected to him to receive his help.

We find this played out in scripture through Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. We have Jesus fasting and therefore he would be hungry. The devil sees this as an opportunity and tells him to make himself bread.

When that doesn’t work, the devil challenges Jesus to throw himself off the Temple and allow his Father to catch him. Jesus again chooses to not take the devil up on his temptation. This leads to the last attempt where Jesus is promised dominion over all he sees if he will submit to him.

(Transition)

This is why James tells this “Adulterous people” that they have a choice. They can be friends with the world or with God, but they can’t have both. Followers of Jesus have a choice to make. Are we going to submit to the devil or to God?

God is always attempting to lead us to make the right choice through his grace. He is attempting to get us to understand that it is through him that we are able to overcome the troubles of the world.

We have a choice. We can focus on working for the world or working for God. Grace is how we discover the ways that God desires for us to work for him. It is how we are told of the temptations that are being put before us.

Let us decide that we want our focus to be on the one who through his grace saved us and showed us the love that he has for us. Let us decide today and every day that we are going to serve the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Let us pray…