Galatians 3 - Remember Your History

My dear but foolish Galatians -

Beware the judaizers who would rob you of your God-given freedom and lead you back into capitivity!

No doubt they talked of their sacred history. Of Abraham, Moses and the Law. But what of YOUR sacred history. Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. You received my message as if from an angel of God. You witnessed miracles. You tasted of the Spirit. Have you so soon forgotten? I ask you - did you receive all of this by obeying the Law? No - you received it by the Spirit. Why, then, return to someone else's slavery?

They talk of Abraham as if they only are his sons. Yet the scriptures say he is the father of many nations - not just Israel! And that God was pleased with him not by his following the law - which had not yet been given - but by his faith! So who teaches Abraham - me, when I speak of grace through faith for the nations, or them, who would shackle all peoples with Jewish law?

They talk of Moses, these sons of a Korah. Yet like their father they would drag you back into hopeless toil and slavery and death without deliverance. I urge you instead to follow the burning fire of the Spirit out of bondage and into the Kingdom. Like Moses I am no great speaker and I look less like Charlton Heston and more like Chucky Cheese, but by the grace of God I am what I am, an apostle to the Gentiles, and His grace is not without effect. Follow me as I follow Christ.

They talk of the Law as if they own it. Yet they are its slaves. The Law itself has so judged and sentenced them. The Law itself says "cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in this book of the Law." No man can keep the Law perfectly. And 12 centuries of the sacred history they prattle on about has shown one thing: Israel will not, cannot keep the Law! The people of God need a deliverer, not from the holy Law, but from the just punishment of disobeying it. The deliver, the Messiah of Israel, is Jesus of Nazareth. He did this by taking on himself, through crucifixion, the curse of humanity's failure to keep God's law. By believing in this we become dead to the Law's judgement and alive in the Spirit.

Galatians 2 – whose is the real Gospel?

My beloved Galatians, you have seen the judaizers with the fringes on their garments and listened to their spiel and now you are wondering if Paul is meshugallah, no? You are thinking maybe Paul’s freedom is a lie?

Listen and see who bears the lie. You need to know the whole story. I was once just like them. I was zealous for the law and I chased the Christians from Jerusalem to Damascus, just like they do. Blessed be the God of Israel he appeared to me on the road to that city and revealed to me the full gospel of freedom and liberty from the bondage of the Law. Soon I returned to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles, the very same men claimed as authority by those puffed up poltroons who are trying to poison the wells of your spirits. Do you think those apostles opposed my gospel? No! They agreed with me! So right there is the judaizers’ first lie, and it should be enough for you to shake your dusty sandals in their faces.

Let me tell you another story – one day Peter and his crowd were in gentile Antioch, worshipping and living in unity with the gentiles, and then some judaizers show up, and even Peter goes weak at the knees and bends them in spiritual hypocrisy to the spirit of death and bondage to the Law. As I rebuke you today – so I rebuked him! No man’s teaching or cowardly, man-loving failure to teach should ever be suffered to challenge or weaken Christ’s gospel of freedom by grace through faith, not of works.

I mentioned they wear their fringes. They say clothes make the man, and indeed they are on the fringes themselves, the fringes of the Kingdom, if indeed they are in it at all. They are the last echoes of 12 centuries of resounding failure of my people to obey their own law. And the law they themselves cannot keep, they now push on you?! I have been entrusted with the gospel to the Gentiles, and Peter with the gospel to the Jews. Their gospel, pfhff – it is not mine, nor Peter’s, and certainly not God’s. And this is our gospel:

¹⁵ “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶ know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in^[d] Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.”

Now my beloved Galatians, you know the “back story” about their false authority to preach, and my very real authority. Judge for yourselves. And I add this difference between them, and their endless prattling about the Law, and me and the Christ I preach and live through:

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!

Dwell on this, which teaching seems right to your minds and spirits? But know that I am not finished…..I have four more strong messages for you.

Galatians 1 – Rape, looting and pillaging on the spiritual frontier! Marshall Paul saddles up and rides

Paul is one sick missionary. His sickness (of unspecified nature) forces him to change his itinerary and convalesce in Galatia, a Roman province on the Black Sea in modern day Turkey populated by Celtic Gauls whose ancestors three centuries ago raped, looted and pillaged their way from modern-day southern France (“Gaul”) to their current home. They have become loyal, respectable, civilized Romans, although they still speak their Celtic tongue. Anyway – what Satan or some microbe meant for evil, God meant for good. The convalescing missionary is received as an “angel of God” by the Galatians. They receive his message completely and enthusiastically, every jot and tittle. The trouble starts after Paul leaves Galatia and some judaizing Christians follow in his wake, as the Book of Acts notes they were wont to do (Ephesus, etc.).  Suddenly these zealous but unschooled Galatians have been bewitched into “buying” the lie that religious works will get the believer into heaven.  

Paul flips out. To him, this is not about defending “his” turf or validating his own point of view. There is nothing personal or subjective here. To Paul the crisis is obvious: the grace-abidin’ community he has established on the godless spiritual frontier is under attack! Torah-totin' barbarians are inside the stockade, raping, looting and pillaging! This is war!! Warrior Paul knows that ground seized from the enemy must be defended against determined counter-attack. So he straps on the armor of God and sets out to take captive or destroy every human and spiritual argument that would set itself up against God’s revealed truth, the gospel of freedom and liberty for the believer in the sacrificial death and resurrection of the One who sent him, the Lord Jesus Christ.

If Paul has his way, no false teaching is getting away, to rob, kill or destroy another day.

As our brother Brian Chapaitis, missionary to Papua – New Guinea, said in his sermon at Jericho Congregational Church this morning, spiritual warfare is real. We Americans and other westerners are willfully blind to it. But Paul – he is not blind. Or apathetic. Or weak.  And apparently by and for God's grace he prevailed - history tells that Galatia was a thoroughly Christian territory until the Seljuk Moslems finally overran it in the 11^th century.

For the history of Galatia: http://www.unrv.com/provinces/galatia.php. 

II Cor 13 – Take Stock Before the Storm

The news today is full of final, last-minute advice about preparing for Hurricane Irene. I have heard it so often I am starting to tune it out. They say you have to hear an advertising message at least three times before it prompts a decision. Will all of the warnings prove necessary? We will know by tomorrow afternoon.

The final chapter of II Corinthians is like those warnings. The Corinthians have heard it all by now, but they hear it again, one last time, from the earthly workman and overseer of their spiritual house. (I do not say “builder” – Paul is just one contractor of many for the Owner/General Contractor.) He wants them to be ready for the coming, howling storm of being Christians in first century Rome. To mix metaphors, any tradesman will tell you that there comes a time in any job when it seems to be done, and you cast your experienced eye over the whole thing, running a mental checklist. “Roofcap? Done. Nails and debris picked up from the ground? Done…..” Only then can you pronounce it ready for presentation and payment.

Either metaphor works; the final warning before the storm or final checklist of an approved, workmanlike job for the owner:

For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.

 ⁵ Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? ⁶ And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test. ⁷ Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong—not so that people will see that we have stood the test but so that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed. ⁸ For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. ⁹ We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is that you may be fully restored. ¹⁰ This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority—the authority the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down.

 ¹¹ Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

II Cor 12 - Thorns in the Flesh, Visiting Heaven

That braggart Paul goes on and on. He saw heaven. He saw things no man has seen and they were SO COOL he can't tell anyone about it!

Top THAT, Toronto. Beat THAT, Benny Hinn.

I am not moved, or impressed. Maybe I am jealous. But as Paul readily admits he is spiritually showboating. And that's why I love the next part, about the thorn in the flesh. God allows the Devil to painfully pierce Paul. It hurts and it just won't go away and Paul says "PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP" and Jesus says:

No.

I need you to stay humble.

My people must know that your power comes from me. Someday, Paul, your body will be gone, a broken vessel whose clay has returned to the earth from which it was made. My people learn to rely on the power and Kingdom that is not of this world.

But my son, my beloved Saul who became "small" for My sake, in imitation of Me - as in all things I have gone before you in suffering, and am with you in the painful present. I have allowed the Devil to pierce you with a single thorn in the flesh, for my Kingdom's sake. My Father allowed Me to be pierced by many thorns, a whole crown of them, and with metal spikes also, for the same purpose. In every pain, in every loneliness, I have been there first. I have suffered thorns and been left alone in the Garden. And I am still there, with my suffering loved ones. YOUR head feels YOUR body's pain. It is any wonder then that I am always interceding?

II Cor 11 – What do I have to do to prove that I love you?

Paul gets a little crazy in this chapter. He admits it. But he’s going out of his mind because these foolish Corinthians seem to think that Paul is a weak, you-got-nuthin’ pushover because he isn’t demanding enough. It seems the Corinthians expect their “elders” to slap them around a little.

Everyone has seen the photo of Marilyn Monroe with the breeze blowing up her skirt. Less known is that her husband, Joe Dimaggio, went nuts when he heard about the shoot. Thinking his wife was acting like a tramp in front of dozens of drooling male photographers, he beat her that night. When a woman friend told her indignantly that no woman should let her man hit her, Monroe answered, “any man who didn’t treat me that way wouldn’t be much of a man.”

Like the troubled sex goddess of the 50’s, the bride of Christ in Corinth seems to think they deserve mistreatment. Some Strong Man spirit of condemnation or respect for false authority has made them think their “betters” should validate their status by abusing them. Conversely they despise the servant who loves them in patience, kindness and truth.  

In this way Paul's agony reminds me of the Lord, and of his Father. How often an Old Testament prophet says God’s people despised His many blessings and only sought God when as a grudging “Plan B” He allowed them to undergo affliction.  Neither God nor Paul his messenger desire to harm their beloved, and they are grieved when their beloved expects mistreatment from them as some twisted sign of authority.

Empathy and abuse cannot coexist. Paul says in verse 29, “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” This is like the Lord. In her wonderful novel “The Road to Cana”, Ann Rice describes Jesus, wandering in the wilderness, suddenly aware of the anguish of each and every troubled soul on earth. Tonight, as I experience my first night of many as the old Page living at 144 Mansfield Avenue, I know that Jesus is with me, that in His compassion he “sorrows with me”, to use the term coined by our sister Michelle Jaquith. The lover of my soul may chastise me for my benefit – as Paul disciplines the Corinthians - but He will never abuse me. I am His beloved. He loves me.

II Cor 10 - demolishing strongholds

Paul writes in vs. 3-5: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. ⁴ The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds."

This morning I heard a story about this. Three stories, in fact. At our Jericho Congregational Church Men's Group, we discussed a "thought question" posed by Christian philosopher (and former UVM Campus Crusade for Christ director) J.P. Moreland in his book "Kingdom Triangle":

"What is real?"

Ask eight Christian men and you get eight views that particularly large elephant. Engineer Rich Parker noted that modern science does not determine what is real, it merely exposes it. The laws governing the universe discovered by Galileo and Pasteur were real before either man was born. Bob Terranova, a disabled person who ministers to other disabled people, described how Joni and Friends helped a disabled woman and her family this month; when God loves people through His body, that is real.

And finally, when someone mentioned the false "superstition" of third world peoples, Wycliffe missionary-on-furlough Brian Chapaitis talked about spiritual reality in Papua New Guinea. Over there, he said, people believe the spirits live in the rocks, the water, the trees. And the spirits are not friendly. The discerning Christian missionary acknowledges this reality. Rather than ignore the spirit world, as we Americans tend to do relatively speaking, the missionary walks down to the water. He speaks to the spirits in the rocks and trees. He tells them that Jesus is the One Great Spirit who is King over all the Spirits. He tells them in the name of King Jesus that they have no power to harass His people. He tells them to go into the abyss. He tells them to take a hike, because their salad days of feasting on suffering humanity are over. Starting now.

I see a common thread in all three stories: through His body Jesus demolishes the strongholds of invisible spirits, despair, illness, and proud worldly philosophy. Sin, the flesh, and the devil, the unholy trinity arrayed against the Godhead, thrive in darkness. Like all passing shadows, they die in the Light.