INTRODUCTION
On an autumn day nearly 200 years ago, Ray Palmer met his friend Lowell Mason on a busy Boston Street. Mason was a collector and publisher of hymns, and he asked Palmer if he had recently seen any good religious verse.
Palmer thought a moment, then pulled out a little book in which he jotted down his own thoughts and poems. He showed Mason a particular poem he had earlier written as a personal prayer to the Lord.
Palmer, a theology student in his early 20s, had a passion for the Lord, and as he showed Mason his poem he recalled the night, two years previously, when he had sat alone at his desk on an early winter's evening and wept over the words he'd written. To him, this was a sacred text conveying the craving of his life, uttering his deepest prayer to the Lord, and he showed it to his friend hesitantly.
Mason, reading the lines, was immediately moved. Ducking into a store together, the words were copied and Mason put the copy in his pocket. Arriving home, he was so deeply touched by Palmer’s verses that he immediately set them to music.
Two days later the two men chance to meet again. “Mr. Palmer,” Mason said, “You may leave many years and do many good things, but I think you will be best-known to posterity as the author of ‘My Faith Looks Up to Thee.’”
Mason was right. The words that had so moved the two men include this stanza which has worded the prayers of several generations of Christians since:
May's thy rich grace impart
Strength to my fainting heart,
My zeal inspire;
As Thou hast died for me,
O may my love to Thee,
Pure, warm, and changeless be,
A living fire!
BACKGROUND
We are all zealous for or about something. It may be our jobs, our family, our favorite sports team (Geaux LSU!), or something else. But are we zealous for the things of God? It would seem that all Christians need a renewal of their zeal from time to time. We need to be reminded that our zeal for God is what keeps the proclamation of the gospel of Christ from becoming stale and stagnant.
What is zeal? Pastor Ed Vasichek said this: “What we see urged in the NT is zeal, which is not quite the same as the fad word “passion” (which implies the necessity of emotional exuberance and is emotionally driven) or “urgency” (which implies a desperate God and is usually guilt-driven). Zeal is a spiritually driven energy grounded in a faithful, long-term attitude within a servant-like heart. It energizes a marathon, not a sprint. Zeal is practical and tenacious.”
As unlikely heroes go, the man whose life we will examine today was a man of zeal all his life. Unfortunately, it was aimed in the wrong direction, unbeknownst to him.
This young man was apparently born of a Jewish mother and Roman father, giving him dual citizenship. He was in his early youth educated in the finest Jewish institutions, even learning from their foremost scholar of the day. When the “Jesus of Nazareth sect” appeared, he was one of its notable prosecutors. His zeal was incomparable.
By now you must know the man of whom I speak was named Saul, later to be renamed Paul. His first impressions were that of a bully and defender of all things Jewish. Paul was convinced that he was doing God’s will in defending the Jewish religion and keeping it pure.
But when Jesus lay hold on him on the Damascus Road, that zeal was redirected truly towards the way of God and His Son, Jesus. And he never looked back.
Our text for today is Galatians 1:11-24, and it will reveal how Paul’s zeal for God was transformed. READ
I. True Zeal Derives from God’s Grace.
Before Paul became a follower of Jesus, his zeal for his nation, his people, and their way of worship was commendable, but wayward. No one was more zealous than he. He would later speak about the zealousness of his actions:
Acts 22:3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.”
Galatians 1:14 “And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.”
Philippians 3:6 “… as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.”
But only when the grace of God changed his life did he discover true zeal. Now he was a part of God’s new covenant with all men, and his efforts were now focused on the things of Christ. His passion was before leveled against people, whereas now his passion was for people. All because of the grace of God!
Grace has changed you as well! You are no longer running away from God and fighting against Him all at the same time. Now you have been reconciled to God by His grace. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:19: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to …; ‘that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”
Whereas before you were zealously following after the things of this world, Christ has gloriously saved you by His grace, and now your earnestness can be transferred to the things of God.
A number of years ago, in Progress Magazine, Halford Lucock wrote, “I was impressed several years ago when I read that Eugene Ormandy dislocated a shoulder while directing the Philadelphia Orchestra. I do not know what they were playing, but he was giving all of himself to it! And I have asked myself sadly, ‘Did I ever dislocate anything, even a necktie?’”
Has the grace of God in your life changed you to the point that you are zealous for God?
II. True Zeal Relates to God’s Church
In the beginning, Paul’s zeal related directly to the nation of Israel and its well-being spiritually. Paul zealously guarded the religion he knew well and desired that it remain pure from impostures and fly-by-night messiahs. Too many times he had watched false messiahs rise and fall, and it seemed to raise his ire against anyone or any group religiously infringing upon what God had established in the Mosaic Covenant.
So, when he found the right way of God through the real Messiah, Jesus, his efforts were then used on behalf of the church. Now he was vigorously promoting the church of His Lord and the gospel message for which it existed.
Paul did more for the establishment of the early church than anyone else. Why? His zeal. Just as strongly and zealously as he had persecuted the church, he now promoted her and defended her. According to 2 Corinthians 11:21-29, he received 39 lashes from the Jews 5 times, was beaten with rods 3 times, stoned 1 time, shipwrecked 3 times, and in danger many more times. All of this on behalf of God and His people.
Are we to do any less for our God and His church? Where are the Pauls today? Where are those burning with a zeal to take the church forward and conquer the gates of hell? Alas, I am afraid the church has gotten lazy in its zeal. Paul warned the Roman church about this in Romans 12:11 – “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.”
The following comes from an anonymous source: “A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God.
“He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it-he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry, and sigh, and pray...If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill (Exodus 17:9-13). If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of ‘zeal' in religion.”
God is seeking, as Paul said in Titus 2:14, “to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
III. True Zeal Results in God’s Glory
There is no doubt that God raised the Apostle Paul up for a special task at a specific time and in a specific place. Paul was up to the challenge presented him, and served the Lord faithfully – and zealously – for many years before suffering martyrdom. But when he first was changed, he was only known within the church primarily as the one who had been persecuting the church. Even Ananias, whom God commissioned to go and speak to Paul and baptize him, was afraid to go because of Paul’s reputation.
But to everyone else he was just Paul – the evangelist, the teacher, the preacher, the way-maker for the Gentiles. It was easy for the new converts influenced by Paul to glorify God because of him. And that is all Paul ever wanted. When he and Barnabas preached in Antioch of Pisidia, Luke records that the Gentiles “began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord” (Acts 13:48), actions that were often repeated.
But was Paul ever accepted by the mainstream church and its leaders? Yes, he was. In verse 23, after many saw how God was using him in such a great manner, his reputation among them changed: “They only were hearing it said, ‘He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’” So, of those in the church, he could also say in verse 24: “And they glorified God because of me.”
The one desire of Paul’s heart was that God be glorified for all and everything he did. To Paul, his zealous accomplishments were not his own to claim, but what God had accomplished through him.
So often I see Christians who want the limelight, the recognition. Perhaps that is the main reason the church is dying. Rather than zealously working for our Lord and allowing God to receive the glory we have sought our own reputations. This ought not to be!
Harry Saulnier headed up the ministry of Chicago's Old Pacific Garden Mission from 1940 to 1986, where he was a bundle of compassion and whirlwind of activity. Even into his 80’s, Saulnier endured increasing arthritic pain to work late into the night at the mission. During gospel meetings at invitation time, he regularly hobbled up and down the aisles of the mission auditorium, tenderly placing an arm on the shoulders of sin-ravaged men, nudging them to go to the prayer room for personal counseling to receive God's pardon and a new life in Christ.
What kept him going? How did he motivate others? He once summed up his philosophy of Christian work in one unconventional sentence: “Work like the blazes, but give God the glory.”
Are you “working like the blazes,” and is God receiving the glory?
CONCLUSION
Fanatics are those who seem to live in extremes. Many who are called spiritual “fanatics” are simply those who are more devoted than ourselves. But when you stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ:
Would you rather be told you believed too much or you believed too little?
Would you rather be told you cared too much or you cared too little?
Would you rather be told you tried too hard, or you didn’t try hard enough?
Would you rather be told you were too forgiving or you were too judgmental?
Would you rather be told, “Well done, thou hyper-hopeful, risk-taking servant” or “Well done, thou cautious, play-it-safe servant?” Author Unknown
If this is how you want it, then on continue your path. God will not be honored, the gospel will not be proclaimed, and the church will not advance.
But if your desire is to see the church march forward triumphantly, to see great and glorious revival, and to proudly and boldly declare the whole counsel of God, then be someone’s hero of zeal for the Lord!
