Yesterday 15 of us from this church gathered to pray and then to go out into the community. 12 in total went out and 3 stayed back both to pray for the teams that went out and to prepare a remarkably yummy lunch for the team on its return. We went out in teams of 2, and we went out for one reason. The people of Church at the Mission care about this neighbourhood. We love this community.
We identify with it. Some of us have been coming to church here for a really long time. Some are pretty new to things. Some of us live near here or use to live near here.
My family lived 5 minutes from here for 11 years until we moved in 2004. But my heart is always here. I know others feel similarly.
So the team yesterday went out to connect with people, to pray as we walked…for blessing and for peace in the community.
We went out also door to door to invite people to the special event, the service and BBQ next Sunday. We shared that our church recently produced the short film: God’s iPod”, hoping that folks would take a look at it.
People were very, very open to conversation. And a lot of people said they’d be joining us next week. One gentleman prayed and asked Jesus into his life. What a gift!
And each of us who was part of the outreach yesterday felt that what happened was truly significant, that it truly mattered. It matters that we connect with others. It matters that we share the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. Among all the other things that truly do matter, being the church, the body of Christ out in the community rates very, very high.
There will be lots of other opportunities in the future for more of us, if we choose, to be involved in reaching out to the community.
We exist as a church not for ourselves. We’re here not to receive, receive, receive from God. We’re here to be blessed, and to share that blessing with the community.
We’re here for others. And God has placed us here in Cabbagetown, Regent Park and St. Jamestown for a reason. We are in the midst of a mission field. That really, truly matters.
For Paul, that most fascinating and complex and passionate of the apostles, what mattered to him the most was…what? If you’ve been here this summer much you’ve heard a bunch of sermons on the book of Galatians.
Let’s review a bit. So…did following the law strictly matter to Paul? Did obeying rituals matters to Paul? Did circumcision, that outward sign of the covenant between God and His people, matter to God?
No. Our Scripture passage today enlightens us as to what truly mattered the most to Paul. Let’s turn to Galatians 6:11-18 (page 1816 in pew Bibles)
Gal 6:11 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! 12 Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. 14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. 17 Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
Gal 6:11 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! 12 Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.
Occasionally Paul inserts a quirky note like what we see in verse 11 here. Paul’s practice, as was Peter’s, was to have a trusted scribe write down his letters as he spoke them.
Once in a while he would pick up the pen or quill and jot down a note. Here he seems surprised that his own handwriting is a lot larger than his scribe’. I love little human elements like this that pop up in God’s Word occasionally.
Paul sums up his argument in Galatians here by exposing again the motives of his opponents, heretics in the Galatian church. What, by the way, is a heretic? [Someone within the church who holds to beliefs that are not consistent with Scripture].
Paul says here that external and superficial concerns are driving the Judaizers in the Galatian church to insist on the ritual of circumcision before one is considered a Christian. They want to make a good impression on the world around them.
What was the dominant culture surrounding the church? What was the main religion? Why…why do they want to make a good impression?
What is their motive? Well, Christians stood out as different from Jews, even though all the first Christians were Jews.
Among traditional Jews, the fact that people were allowed into the church and accepted in the faith as full members of the body of Christ, this was a problem.
So those who said you had to be circumcised to be saved were doing so in order to avoid being persecuted by Jewish opponents to the Christian faith.
Let’s pause here for a moment. I wonder…do we do things to avoid being persecuted? Do we ever keep hidden our faith in Christ in order to avoid a hassle? Do we do things to conform to the people around us that we really know we shouldn’t be doing?
Or are we willing to face persecution or being misunderstood, are we willing to be the object of scorn by those bigoted against Christians…no matter what?
There are those who dismiss me because I am a Christian. I was at a neighbourhood party here once years back and was chit-chatting with a woman I’d never met. She asked what I did and I told her I was a pastor. She said out loud and with some distain: “Why would anyone ever want to be a pastor!?!” And then she walked away.
People make assumptions before they know me. Hostility and bigotry toward followers of Jesus is a stronghold of intolerance in much of the modern world. Anyway, asking ourselves, “Am I willing to stand out for my faith, am I willing to be persecuted for following Jesus”
That’s a good question. There are good questions to ask ourselves. And if we find our answers somehow lacking…let’s pray for courage. Let’s begin to take a stand for Christ. Let’s let ourselves be fully identified with Jesus.
Paul then points out a key irony among the Judaizers in the Galatian church. Although they were demanding strict conformity to the Old Testament law be demanding circumcision in the flesh, in other matters those who were circumcised were in reality failing to obey the law.
13 Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh.
This is the general problem with legalism and why so much of Jesus’ teaching and so much of the Bible as a whole points to the importance of obeying the spirit of the law over the letter of the law. The Judaizers were sincere…let’s not forget that.
They were sincere and they were sincerely and entirely wrong. They wanted conformity to the law by others on the one hand, and yet their own lives were far from perfect.
Over-focussing on the sins of others, while they may indeed be quite sinful, enables us to escape the necessary examining of our own hearts.
I throw a stone at you because you broke the law, but meanwhile my heart and my life is full of things that don’t please God. God wants more from His people. That “more” is choosing to focus on what really matters.
14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Paul gets to the heart of the matter and the very centre of his whole purpose for writing, for teaching and for being. Others may brag that they obey the law and are more legally holy than him. They may be trying their hardest to surround themselves with others who share such boasts.
But Paul…Paul will boast, you can be sure of that. But he will boast in the cross of Jesus. The word "boast" can literally be translated as to glory in, trust in, rejoice in, revel in, live for.
Paul says he will align himself completely with what Jesus accomplished on the cross. He will fix his eyes upon Jesus. He will never stray from the path set out by Jesus.
I had breakfast with a great old friend this past week, Chris Walkington. Chris is both a fireman, and a pastor of a church in Pickering.
At one point he shared very excitedly something that is at the core of my being too. He said, and I paraphrase: “I never tire of the gospel. I am so excited about my salvation. I never grow weary of hearing the good news!”
So in contrast to legalistically following the law, in contrast to self-justifying attitudes, in defiance of any and all who would assert another gospel that puts one’s works or one’s earning of salvation, or one’s merit, against all these things Paul asserts the simple fact of Jesus’ willing sacrificial death on the cross and glorious resurrection from the dead. This, and this alone, is worth ‘boasting’ in.
And Paul says that through the cross of Jesus, the world has been crucified. He turns everything on its head and affirms that because he has become alive to God in Christ, because his sins have been forgiven through the atonement of Christ, all the things of his former life, and all those things that remind of his previous life…they are all dead.
Elsewhere Paul says that he counts even his highest and noblest accomplishments before he knew Jesus, as worthless… dung is actually the word he uses for emphasis in Philippians 3:8.
And he says that he is dead to the world. “The world” here referring not to life and living and interacting and loving people, but rather referring to all those things that are not of God, though they may assert that they are.
15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.
And here we get to Paul’s final point and the most important take-home for us, the place where the rubber hits the road. Arguments about the law don’t amount to a hill of beans.
Legalism is an absolute waste of time and energy. What counts…what matters is a new creation.
What matters is all the things that resulted for you from Jesus going to the cross. It is summed up here and elsewhere in Scripture as the “new creation”, but what it means is that when you receive Jesus, the Old is gone.
All your sins are washed away. We are not, when we become Christians, better off because we’re more religious. No one is better off with more religion. In Jesus Christ we undergo a transformation that results in an entirely new being.
Paul, the author of the book of Galatians, is a great example of this. In the first message in this series back at the beginning of July, if you recall, we talked about Paul’s former life as Saul…one who zealously persecuted the church, overseeing and consenting to the murder, the martyrdom, of Christians.
He was transformed from that person to one whose whole life was given to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He himself was martyred, history tells us, for his steadfast commitment to sharing the love of God in Christ with the Gentiles. Paul new what it meant to be a new creation, an entirely new being.
We have a banner here that I love. “18 "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool”.
Some church leaders were questioning a young boy, who wanted to join the church, about his salvation. “How'd you get saved?” They asked He said, "Well, I done my part & God done His part." When asked about what he meant, he said, "My part was the sinning. God's part was the saving".
The ONLY thing that counts is the new creation. Are you a new creation? Have you come to understand that nothing you do or will ever do, no works will ever qualify for heaven.
Have you learned that God loves you so much that He sent His only Son to live among us and willingly go to the cross, so that you and I and all who believe might not perish? Have you accepted Jesus into your life?
Have you been washed? Has the blood that Jesus shed on the cross penetrated your life? Have you accepted what Jesus did for you on the cross? You know it says this in John chapter 1:12 “12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
As we come to end of our summer-long trek through the book of Galatians, may each of us find the courage to embrace the cross of Christ more completely.
May each of us find it in our hearts to affirm God’s love for us…not a sentimental, generic kind of love that people talk about – a love without sacrifice, without the cross.
But a love that laid down its life, that offered itself freely as a pure sacrifice so that you and I and every single person who believes or will believe, may be completely new.
This truth, this good news, is the message we’ve been given to share with our community. It is the best gift we can give.
Let’s keep sharing this message. Let’s keep going out into the community with the express intention of being a blessing. Let us go prepared to give an account for the hope that is within us.
The only thing that counts, we affirm with Paul, is a new creation.
Let’s pray. God…thank you that your love for us is active and not passive, that You reached down from heaven to earth in order to touch our lives. That in Jesus God You came to earth and lived among us, and then you died for our sins. Thank you.
Thank you so much Jesus that Your love led You to this decision. May we decide, along with all the faithful, to serve You with our whole selves. May we have the cross of Jesus always in front of us. May we stay close to you so that we might always celebrate and treasure the salvation won for us by our saviour. For it is in His name we pray. Amen.
