teaching scripture, we're going to be in Galatians chapter 1
verses one through 9. Paul, an apostle, sent neither
by human Commission nor from human authorities, but through
Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.
And all the brothers and sisters with me to the churches of
Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to set us free from
the present evil age, according to the will of our God and
Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen. I am astonished that you are so
quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of
Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who
are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
But when? But even if we or an Angel from
heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we have
proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed, as we have said
before. So now I repeat, if anyone
proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you have
received, let that one be accursed.
This is the word of the Lord. All right, Welcome, friends.
I'm glad you're here. My name is Parker.
I'm one of the pastors here. So if we if we haven't met, it's
it's good to be with you this morning.
It's also good to be with you if we have met.
But about 100 years ago, a French anthropologist named
Marcel Moss wrote a little book called The Gift that people in
that field still engage with great interest.
He went looking all across cultures, travelled the world
studying different people groups, looking for the idea of
a truly free gift. He was searching for something
given with nothing expected in return, and he ultimately
couldn't find it anywhere. That concept was, in the the
results of his research, absent from the face of the earth in
any culture. Instead, he found that across
cultures, a gift always leaves a thread between two people.
You give me something, and now there's a connection there.
There is something owed back. But more than that, there is a
sense that something associates us together.
That concept is seemingly unavoidable for us as humans.
The point that Moss makes was that this is how human beings
are wired. A gift ties people to each
other, and it's actually not a catch in the way that gift
giving works. What he discovered was that this
was the entire purpose of giving gifts.
Throughout all of human history, the the thread that connects us
when a gift is given is something that we call a
relationship. Most gifts happen in the context
of a relationship, whether it's a new one or an old one.
There, there. There might be good or bad
motives tied to that gift, but ultimately gift exchange takes
place in a relationship between one person and another.
And most of us know this in our bodies, even if we've never
studied anthropology. Somebody does something generous
for you, does something that you can't pay back.
And there's a kind of sweetness to it.
There's, there's something that you can think of with fondness.
I can, I can think of many times in my life where people were
extravagantly generous toward me and it's endeared me toward
those people. And I, I just want to say, I
don't think that's a bad thing. The idea of an altruistic free
gift we sort of think of as the ultimate expression of gift
giving. But the truth is, some of my
dearest friends and some of the people that I have come to love
and respect the most are people with whom I've, I've built a
relationship with over time of, of giving and exchanging,
whether it's gifts or help or kindness in relationship with
one another. But there is also this little
itch for all of us. We start looking for a way to
kind of even out the two columns naturally as humans, because a
gift that you can't repay leaves you tied to someone in a way
that you can't control. And ultimately what we want as
humans is to have control over our lives and control over our
circumstances. And the thing that we do almost
every time is to try to turn that thread, that connection,
that relationship with another person into something that we
can manage into something that we can control.
We turn our relationships into a kind of Ledger where we keep
track of gifts given and gifts received in in one column or the
other. Hang on to that idea this
morning because it sort of runs underneath everything that we're
going to look at actually for the next couple months through
this series on Paul's letter to the Galatians.
So we're starting this new series that's going to take us
probably over the next 8 or 9 weeks, most of the way through
Paul's letter to the Galatians. We're not going to look at every
single verse in that book, but we're we're going to look at the
most of it. And so naturally, we start at
the beginning. Most of Paul's letters have a
little bit of a, a warm up. He tends to kind of ease in
almost for an entire chapter in most of the books that he
writes. He opens with a Thanksgiving and
he tells the church that he prays for them and he's grateful
for what God is doing among them.
And sometimes he even reminisces a little bit what it was like
when they were together. And he skips almost all of that
here. The greeting is there, but it's
significantly shorter than normal.
It's just a couple verses and then he's just into it.
I'm astonished he writes that you are so quickly deserting the
one who called you. The Greek word that he uses is,
is something close to speechless.
Agitation is what my, my, my dictionary said.
Like, what are you people thinking?
He is he's rattled by some news that he receives.
He can't believe what he's hearing about these people who
he loves and he spent time with and invested in.
This is a letter from somebody who has gotten some news and had
to respond. And what, what makes it, I
think, worth several weeks of our time is that the thing that
he's so worked up about in the beginning of this letter is
something that each of us has done and are probably still
doing in one way or another. And so I think it's apartment
that we sort of dig in and understand a little bit of what
he's talking about. So here's the story.
You can you can read in Acts, actually a lot of the background
for what this, what's where this letter is coming from.
But Paul came through a city called Galatia and he preached
the gospel there and something real happened.
Lots of people were met by the grace of God.
People came to know Jesus for the first time.
They they came into contact with this free gift of God in Jesus
Christ and people's lives were changed.
This kind of self giving love that God pours out into the
world through the cross. People heard about this and it
transformed the way that they thought about their lives.
And then Paul left. Galatia and other teachers came
through with a different message.
So Paul's message said, you know, Jesus has has rescued the
whole creation, has rescued the whole creation from sin and
death, and you no longer need to live under the constraints of
the old law. This is a gift that's been
freely given and you enter into relationship with Jesus.
And then the the teachers who came through after Paul were
sort of adding some ingredients to this message.
And so they would say, you know, keep the Torah practices, keep
the Hebrew law, get circumcised. And if you do these things, then
you'll really belong to the covenant people of God.
And the Galatians started doing it.
So this is the thing that Paul is writing in response to.
These people have heard other teachers add ingredients, add
requirements. They've begun to do those
things. And Paul is writing back
basically to say, hey, I told you you didn't need to do any of
those things, and now you're doing the things.
So they took the freest gift that had ever been offered to
anybody. And this is the part that's
important for us to to hear clearly.
They begun, they began to do the most human thing imaginable with
that gift. It's easy for us to sort of
distance ourselves from these people as we read this letter
and think, well, that's awfully silly.
They received a free gift and started adding requirements to
it. But remember what we were just
saying about the way that we often think about receiving
gifts in relationship to other people.
We start keeping a Ledger without the other person ever
asking us to. We begin to think to ourselves,
I know that that person, you know, gave me a thing generously
or was just trying to help or was trying to express kindness.
But I feel the need to keep track of that internally.
And I'm actually imposing on myself and on the relationship,
the need to sort of keep, keep the balance, keep this thing
even. And this fits perfectly with the
research from Marcel Moss and others on gifts and connection.
It's our human instinct to do this.
So Paul's letter, and this is, this is important.
It's less about a theological correction.
It's less about writing to these people and saying, you know,
you've begun to believe the wrong thing.
You've misunderstood the text, You've misunderstood the message
of Jesus. Paul is writing to them because
they have made a deeply human error.
They've made the most natural human error.
Upon receiving a gift, they started to place conditions on
that gift themselves. And so why so we, we have to
ask, would people who received a free gift start trying to earn
that free gift? And the honest answer is that
it's very difficult to receive something that you didn't earn.
It actually takes a tremendous amount of humility.
Most of us have been taught this idea that, you know, we, we
should work hard for the things that we have, that we should
earn the things in our lives and not, not just be given handouts.
And so we sort of idealize the idea of a free gift because of
some of the things that we were taught to believe about gift
giving as modern Westerners. But there's something in most of
us that really struggles to sit in the presence of the idea of a
pure gift without keeping score. You already know this.
Somebody picks up a check and you hear yourself say you got it
last time, I'll get the next one.
Somebody helps you move and you're already calculating how
you can pay it back in their life because they've taken time
to to be with you. Somebody gives you a gift that's
clearly nicer than the one that you were able to give to them.
And you smile and you accept that gift.
But inside the meter starts running and you're already
thinking about, I don't know how I'm going to get out from under
this indebtedness. And that's almost certainly not
what the person giving you the gift intended.
But that's the way that we think, isn't it?
And so if most of us are honest, this is the the tough part.
We actually prefer it that way because as exhausting as a
system of owing is, it at least tells us where we stand.
You know, being on a treadmill is awful, but at at least I know
how to run on a treadmill. And, and what scares me is being
handed something free and just having to trust that it's, it's
an honest, real free gift. Am I the only one who feels that
or do you have a similar experience?
I've, I've spent a frightening amount of my life sort of
performing to appear worthy of some of the things in my life,
performing competence so that people in my life think that I
kind of have it together, performing faith so that people,
you know, thought that I was the the real thing, right?
And I've done it in prayer with nobody watching but God, which
is one of the strangest places to perform of all, doing
spiritual things quietly hoping that they build up some kind of
credit for me, even though I clearly understand that that's
not how this thing works. Because this is an urge that's
just deep inside of all of us that's incredibly difficult to
work our way around or out of or convince ourselves isn't there.
I was trying to explain this series Debris a few weeks ago,
maybe earlier this week, and she said something that I think is
so important. She said even people who have
been told their entire lives that grace is free still feel
like they have to earn their way to favour people.
People who have spent a long time in the church especially
feel that way. They feel like they're on the
hook. And when somebody starts talking
about responding to the free gift of the love of God, it just
sounds like the same heavy burden that we carry around, but
maybe with slightly better marketing.
So that when the person talking about it says it, it doesn't
feel like I'm, I'm laying a burden on your shoulders.
But instead, oh, it's something that you ought to feel.
And I don't want to rush past that that fact.
Because what the Galatians did was this very normal impulse
towards self protection. They were being handed the one
free thing in the universe and on reflex, trying to turn it
into something that they could manage, trying to turn it into
something that they could control or comprehend by their
own actions and behaviors. Because it's so hard to get our
minds around the idea of something that's given to us for
free. And so before we go on in the
text, I want to, I want to just talk a little bit more about the
world that these Galatians were living in, because it turns out
that they had even more reason to reach for this sort of
relationship, the counting, than we do.
The Galatians weren't just reaching for that Ledger out of
habit. They were doing it because they
had real reasons to be afraid in the moment that they found
themselves. They were living inside the
Roman Empire, and Rome had a very specific, very efficiently
enforced idea about who counted and who didn't, particularly
when it came to religion. Bridget Call, a New Testament
scholar who spent years reading this letter and its imperial
backdrop, makes an important point on her commentary on
Galatians. The Galatians were being
pressured to take on Jewish practices, and they probably
weren't doing it because they were theologically confused.
They were actually probably doing it because they were
scared. And the the point that she makes
in her commentary is that in the Roman world, to be a recognized
religion and stay out of trouble, you had to have some
recognizable practices and some recognizable patterns to count
as a real religion, a real religious movement.
And so Judaism had that. It was ancient, it had standing,
it had legal protections. But if you were following some
recently executed teacher from the backwater of Galilee, with
no temple standing anywhere to its God, you were a little bit
exposed. At the time, it was maybe a
little bit harder to recognize these early Christians as part
of a valid religious movement. So this was the kind of group
that tended to get noticed by the wrong people.
Taking on these Jewish markers might have actually felt like
finally getting your papers in order.
And so if we have some of these things, if we have some of these
practices that we can sort of point to when the authorities
come knocking, we can say, well, clearly we're part of this, you
know, this specific religious sect.
Here are the things that we do that make us part of that.
Please don't haul us off to prison.
But when somebody starts talking about this, this free gift that
removes the need for a lot of those societal markers, it
starts to get a little bit confusing for these people.
There's actually even more on at stake than what initially
appeared. What the Galatians did was was
very normal. They're getting handed something
free and they're trying to manage it.
So Paul writes to them and says basically this.
That's actually not safety. That's the thing that you had in
the first place. It might feel a little more
clear. It might feel a little bit more
like you have firm ground to stand on, but you're backing
yourselves into the thing that you were just freed from.
He actually has a word for the thing that they're turning back
to. He, he calls it Stoichia, which
basically it gets translated all these different ways, weak and
beggardly elements or elemental forces or the basic principles
of the world. What he means is that there is a
whole machinery of the way that the world works, the ways that
people sort of interact with each other in a, in a very rules
based sort of economy. And Paul says you were just
rescued from all of that. You were just rescued from
having to make this exchange and having to keep things even.
And now you, you are walking back in that door and closing it
behind you. There are great African
theologians who argue that those of us in the West tend to
flatten Paul's language about these powers into metaphor.
And you know, when we do in polite Western society, we kind
of lose the plot. Paul is not just being poetic
about these powerful ideas. He's not talking about the the
elemental forces of the world to to use nice flowery language.
He believes that these are real systems and real structures that
sort of inform the way that people are able to show up in
the world. And he thinks that these things
hold people in genuine captivity to patterns of living that the
gospel is meant to liberate them from.
So when he says that the Galatians are turning back to
elemental spirits of the world or the present evil age, he's
not exaggerating for effect. So let's look at what Paul
actually writes Paul, an apostle sent not from men or by a man,
but by Jesus Christ and by God the Father who raised him from
the dead. Grace and peace to you from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our
sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to
the will of God, the the will of our God and father.
So before he's even said hello properly in this letter, he he
kind of goes on this soliloquy. This is this is important to
remember who's writing this. This is Paul, who was relatively
recently hunting Christians down, dragging them out of their
homes, standing by, observing while Stephen was stoned.
Jesus interrupted his life and pulled him into a story that he
was actively trying to destroy. And he becomes part of this
people of God. And so even in the opening that
can sound a little bit like fluff, he stops to say what the
grace actually is. Jesus, who gave himself, nobody
took his life from him. He handed it over.
And then notice the scope of what he's talking about here.
He he doesn't say Jesus forgave our sins in some private
transaction between US and God. The point that he's making is
that this grace, this free gift of grace rescues us from the
present evil age. So the gospel is not about
humans moving toward a more blessed state of being.
It's about God's liberating invasion of the whole cosmos.
You know, many of us, I think, were handed a gospel that was
about getting my individual soul into the best spot when I die.
And what's happening here in Paul's explanation of the gospel
is that God breaks into enemy territory to get his people out.
And this is the primary picture of the gospel that Paul is
working with. So it's not primarily a a
courtroom scene where one individual is on trial.
We're talking about the epic rescue of the whole cosmos.
So that's how Paul opens this letter.
I think that's I think that's quite the stage.
And so then on verse in verse 6, the temperature changes a little
bit in what he's saying. I'm astonished that you are so
quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace
of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
The word different that he uses means different in kind.
It's a it's a different, it's a different species.
It's a completely different thing.
It's not just we've, we've changed a few ingredients where
we've like added a little bit here, taken away a little bit
there. He's saying that this thing that
they have bought into is a, is a fundamentally different message
than the one that he brought. He, he says that the gospel that
he preached to these people is one that operates on the basis
of of a free gift from God. And the one that they've begun
to embrace moves them back toward this, this habit of
earning what they have. And those two things don't mix.
They're different. They're fundamentally opposed.
And this raises the question underneath all of this, that if
the gospel of grace is really free and it's this beautiful,
can't be taken back thing, how does it so easily for so many of
us become a burden as we try to sort it out in our own lives, as
we try to think, how do I live into the shape of this story
that's been put in front of me? And then verses 8.
And nine are are even more confrontational.
Even if we are an Angel from heaven should preach a gospel
other than the one we preach to you.
Let them be under God's curse, as we have already said.
So now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel
other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse.
Some translations in place of God's curse use the actual Greek
word anathema. And in in the Jewish mind, this
meant something that was distinctly set apart for
destruction, handed over to judgement, completely cut off.
This is rarely how Paul talks. You know, he can sound a little
salty in some of his letters, but I think this is the only
place where where Paul actually sort of directly invokes a curse
on his opponents. So this is he.
He means business. He gets angry in.
Other letters, but not a lot of stuff like this.
And and he throws himself. And and the.
Angels under this language, he says.
Even if I come back and preach something else, even if an Angel
does, let it, let it be cursed. So this is this is how strongly
this is how consequential he. Feels that this.
Is he knows exactly how this sounds.
He is not fussing over some secondary thing.
You know, it's not about denominational preference or a
worship style or, you know, any, any of those sorts of things.
He he's saying that the free gift, taking this free gift and
turning it back into a transaction, pulling it into
sort of our human frameworks for how we have to account for
relationships with other people is catastrophic.
To the. Message of Jesus and I want to
slow down because we we have to get clear about what Paul is so
worked up to protect because we're going to spend quite a bit
of this series unpacking the idea of, you know, how how do we
respond to the free gift of God? How do we respond to the grace
that we've received? And and it is.
It's just a click off. But it makes a world.
Of difference, the way that this this thought can kind of unfold
in our minds. There's a New Testament scholar
named John Barclay and some of our team is, is actually reading
his book on Galatians as we preach the series.
And he asked the same question from a more theological angle
that Moss did, but about Paul's world specifically.
And he wrote this book called Paul and the Gift.
And what he found actually lines up with with Moss almost
perfectly. In Paul's world, gifts were not
thought of as free. The way that that sounds to us,
a gift created a a connection, a gift created a bond, a gift
created a relationship between two people.
And that's actually how all of society held together.
There's extensive writing on this in in Roman society, this
was sort of one of the customs, one of the ways that people
thought about how their whole world held together was around
these these sort of social obligations that revolved around
gifts. If somebody gave you something
and you didn't reciprocate, you weren't just rude, you were
breaking the social contract in a way that was really important
to understand. So I want you to picture what it
sounded like when Paul came into that world.
Where failing to. Reciprocate a gift wasn't just
rude, it was a failure of conscience.
It was a failure of nerve. And Paul starts saying that
there is this God who gives gifts to people who have not
earned them and who can't reciprocate Who?
Gives. Before they have done a single
thing. Who gives to people who are
unworthy on purpose without checking whether they deserve
that thing or not that? Didn't.
Sound generous to these people? That would actually not.
Have been their first thought. It sounded irresponsible and
hard to believe. So one of the reasons that
people struggle with this, with this aspect of the gospel so
much in this moment is because they hear this and they don't
instantly think, oh, how good is that?
We're rescued. They think this is a God who
doesn't follow our rules. And that's sort of.
Offensive, isn't it? Barclay says.
That God's grace is incongruous. I think I said that.
Right. It it it.
Doesn't match. It's like misaligned.
So we live in a world where gifts go to worthy people.
And. We sort of track status based on
honor and people get what they have coming.
And then there's this God who gives not just gifts, gives
himself by the spirit to the people who had the least coming
of anybody. And that's why the, one of the
reasons that the gospel was thought of as as scandalous,
because it violated this social convention.
And here's the the move that we have to track because I, I
really think it's the hinge of this whole series.
As we work our way through this letter, you would expect the
punchline to be. So the gift is.
Free Nothing is asked of you, and a lot of us have heard this
preached exactly that way. Nothing required, nothing
required whatsoever. But Barclay shows that grace.
This this idea. That grace asks nothing of you
is a very modern idea only. Just.
In the last, you know, couple 100 years, have we sort of
invented the idea of a purely altruistic gift that doesn't
create any kind of a, a bond or a connection or, or serve a
relationship between two parties?
What Paul is saying is, is stranger than that.
It's a little bit less black and white.
The whole point. Of God's gift.
Wasn't. To settle a score or clear
balance, it was to make a people who represented this kind of
grace to the watching world and to open a relationship with a
people group, to fold you into a family, to pull you into a life
with the living God. And the gift is free and it's
relational. And those two things, we're
really not put in tension. We're not put at odds with each
other. Until pretty recent history,
people people started to put them into tension.
The freedom. Of this gift is what makes the
relationship real instead of coerced.
It's a thing that. You can receive or not receive,
but it's it's clear where it's coming from.
And it's. Clear that we can't just sort of
separate a gift out from the giver and we can't separate a
gift out from the circumstances where we find ourselves when we
receive it. So all of these things have to
be true at the same time for this to really operate the way
that that Paul claims that it does and.
What being? Loved like that does.
Is it calls a response? Out of us, not a payment, not
not a way of getting even, not a way of, of keeping that Ledger.
But there is a response. And those things can look
similar on the outside, but they're worlds apart on the
inside. And so I sort of described the
shadow side of what happens inside of us when we give and
receive gifts. But now, I'd love for you to
call to mind some of the most beautiful instances of giving
and receiving that you can recall in your life.
What have? Those moments.
Created my. Assumption for many of us is
that they've called a response out of us.
Toward the person who's. Given generously to us or to the
person who's been radically kind to us.
Not, you know, when. When we trust that person's
motives, When we understand who they are, When we understand a
little bit of their character. Not because we feel.
Like we have to, not because we feel like we have to pay them
back or to get even or get right with them, but because receiving
a gift from one who loves us is a beautiful thing.
And the response. To that is good and appropriate.
It's a It's beautiful. Paying back is what you do to
clear a debt and get free of someone.
You know when? When?
You're in debt to a credit card company.
That's not a relationship that you want to continue on into the
future. When you're.
When you're paying off your mortgage to the bank, that's a
relationship that's clearly free of of altruism.
There is obviously a motive there and it's to extract as
much money from you as possible. But that's not what we're
talking about. We're not talking about getting
free of someone. Responding is what happens when
we believe that we're loved and we don't want to get free.
We want to go deeper. We want to grow in understanding
and being understood. And so no, that's not the
relationship that you have with the credit card company, but
hopefully that's the relationship that you have with
a close friend or with a spouse or with your kids.
This is the kind of beauty in relationship that human beings
are designed for This, this attachment style, this, this
thought that we just want to get free of someone.
We want to get out of their debt.
That's anxious and insecure. And the other is the most
natural thing in the world when we find ourselves in in the free
exchange of love one with another.
Robert Capen, who wrote some of the most beautiful sentences
about grace that I've ever read, put it plainly in his book
Kingdom Grace and Judgement. He said grace doesn't sell.
You can hardly even give it away because it works only for losers
and no one wants to stand in their line.
I love that idea because you know what is it?
I mean, you don't give grace to one who you think you're going
to get a lot from, right? But to stand in line with
losers? Right.
Is there a more? Is there a more Jesus thing?
And so here we are. Friends, people who we we've
been convinced that we live in this economy of of give and
take, of staying, even of getting out of one another's
debts. And I I.
Just think that one of the things that that the Spirit of
God wants to do in people is to draw us into this understanding
of who God is. That would allow us to just say
I'll stand in line with the losers.
I'll take whatever. You'll give me knowing that I
can never pay it back, but what it will draw out of me will be
the kind of response that's hopefully so full of of love, so
full of gratitude that I'm not concerned with getting even.
I'm not concerned with paying it back.
It's just because I've embraced this reality.
The freedom that Paul is fighting for is, is this idea
that you are not on the hook. You're not on the hook for
anything by receiving this gift. This this gift won't be
repossessed if you don't respond the right way.
You know, I, I don't. Want to overuse this analogy,
but but borrowing in our in our sort of economic structures as
they exist. This is a great example for how
it's not supposed to work. You know, think about this kind
of stuff like if you are, if you borrow money to buy a thing and
you can't repay the money, what happens?
Somebody comes and takes it. That's not what we're talking
about this that's that's not the kind of gift giving, that's not
the kind of love that calls forth a response from US.
One more verse before. We close and then I'll say a
little bit more about where we're headed for the next 8
weeks. Paul's deep into this argument
by Chapter 4, and he's made his case about the gift and about
the freedom of the gift, and then he writes this line.
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?
And I want you to. Catch the little self edit that
he makes right there and it would be fascinating to know if
it were written this way on purpose or if he sort of caught
himself mid thought and and and made this little change.
But either way, it's in the text he starts to write now that you
know God and. Then he interrupts.
Himself to say no, wait, that's backwards.
Or rather are. Known by God.
That's the entire that's the entire gospel in one little self
correction. This version that starts with
you knowing God. Is the one that we.
Default to it's the oldest story that humans have that we cling
to this idea that I climb toward God and I eventually get there.
I follow the steps, I climb the ladder and you know, it's this,
it's it's magical thinking, really, it's what it is.
I pray the prayer, I recite the right incantation or perform the
right sacrifice. And I conjure favor as a result.
And Paul flips. It and he says it actually never
started with you. This.
This idea, this gospel doesn't, it doesn't terminate on you or
your ability to understand something or your ability to
behave a certain way. It terminates on God and so.
If you have. Ever been on the outside?
If you've ever been the person who had to prove that you
belonged before anybody let you in.
You hear? This verse differently than
people who are a little more comfortable in life do.
And so for people. Who?
Maybe, maybe you've had to earn your way into a lot of rooms.
This idea that. You were known before you proved
anything. It's not just a.
Nice theological idea. It's the whole, it's the whole
gig and. That's what this whole.
Series is about South. For the next 8 weeks, we're
asking one question together. If everything starts with a
gift, if you were known and loved before you did anything,
then what does the rest of the Christian life actually become?
And the answer that we'll continually come back to is that
it becomes a response. It's not a it's not a payment
plan on debt or some way for us to get even with the God who's
given generously to us. It's not a list to keep so that
you don't lose your spot. All of this stuff that we talk
about, prayer and worship and generosity and the way that we
treat each other and the way that we want to show up in our
neighborhood, all the practices that we're going to build toward
together as a church, all of it is meant to be a response that
we can share to a love that has already been found in each one
of us. And so some of you.
Are already feeling that I spend time with some of you in the
question that's rising up. That's right at the surface is
what do I do with this? Where do I start?
How can I help? And hear me.
Clearly that question is good. I love sitting with people who
are like, put me in coach. That's fantastic.
And you know the gift in your case is doing exactly what a
gift does. It stirs something.
There's a response that's in you and it's wanting to come out
because it's come into contact with a new way of being loved.
And so we are going to spend 8 weeks trying to help you find
language for that response. And I just want you to hear that
there is nothing suspect about wanting it and others of us are
somewhere else entirely. Something closer to I don't know
if I feel anything ever. How am I supposed to?
Respond to that. I'm not sure.
God is anywhere near me. I've.
Been at this for a long time and the well is dry.
You know, it's interesting. That those two things can can
coexist in the same room at the same time in response to the
same love of God that's being poured out.
And I just want to say, if that's you, you are not failing
the assignment. If you find yourself.
Not particularly responsive or not particularly full of joy or
excitement. When you think about this, the
thing that we're after isn't, isn't your performance.
And it's actually not. Even your response.
My hope is. That the gift would actually
land in your life in a new way in this season.
And so there's no need to rush. There's no need to rush a
response. If you're not feeling anything
to respond to yet, that's OK. There's room.
For that. My hope is that that.
You'd know underneath all of all of that you were known before
you knew anything. And I think that's what.
Paul is trying to communicate here, so as we move into a time
of response, I'll invite the worship team to come back up.
And parents, you can prepare to receive your kids back into the
room. And I'd love to invite.
You to stand if you're able. I'm going to pray for all of us
here in a moment. Our prayer people will.
Make their way out to the edges of the room.
Some of you have. Been doing this for a long time
and you could probably preach this sermon better than I just
did. And if you're, if you're honest
with yourselves underneath all of that, knowing you still feel
like you're on the hook for something.
There's still a little bit. Of like, I hear all of this, I
hear all the free gift stuff and the, and all of that and I, I
just still feel like there's something that I'm supposed to
be doing or something that I'm not doing right.
And that that. Feeling runs really really deep
and knowing better doesn't seem to be moving it.
I want to invite you to come and and receive prayer this morning.
If that's you, I don't have any technique for that.
But the gift doesn't expire and the the free.
Price tag. On the gift doesn't doesn't
expire either. And so I would just love for you
to come and receive prayer. You know, that's the only kind
of gift that that God gives is the one that that doesn't match.
It doesn't fit. It was never meant to fit.
And so the fact that you can't you can't make it add up is is a
testament to the way that grace works.
And I would just say for the rest of you, if there's anything
in your life, spiritual, emotional things going on in
your family, things going on in your body, come, we'd love to
pray for you. So Lord, we welcome your spirit.
And as we worship God, I pray that you would.
Fill fill this. Room.
Fill us, fill our praise. Lead us together.