So in the mornings on the way to school, I've been listening to a
book called Be Your Future Self, and I've been listening to it
with my daughter who I'm taking to school and dropping off
there. And it's a fascinating study on
how to be your future self. So I'm wondering for you.
It's a great question as we come to 2026.
Are you being your future self? The the shocking question for
Mika when I asked her was Can you imagine yourself 20 years
from now? And she's like, Dad, I'm just
18. I, I think at 18 I would have
had a great difficulty myself imagining myself 20 years out.
The way I imagine myself now is I, I have 25 years out and
having built up a bit of discipline around it, I, I do
start to find it easier to push out and say, well, what do I
want? And if I want that, what does
this mean about today and who I am today?
Now for many of us as followers of Jesus, we sometimes miss that
a lot of the commands of Jesus actually press us to look
forward with our faith, to look forward with hope, to look
forward with love towards the kind of person we are becoming.
So we say it very simply, I want to become like Jesus, be like
Jesus. And so we we actually are
pressing forward with our future self and that really should help
us in some ways about making decisions because of the
decisions we make today actually do influence how we become our
future self. We've been studying the book of
Galatians and the book of Galatians is Paul's intervention
about the future self of the church in Galatia.
He is concerned because he recognizes they have come to a
crossroads, they have come to an intersection in the road where
if they choose one way, their future self as a church goes a
different way. But if they choose the other way
that he says is true to the gospel of Jesus, true to Jesus
himself, then they will go a completely different way.
As a church and as individuals, we're not used to thinking about
the future self of our church. And some of you really aren't
all that keyed in to your future self.
You're just hoping you graduate. I hope I graduate.
I hope this happens. But are you making the decisions
today that actually move you to be your future self now?
Are you thinking about yourself as a church and as participants
in a church that actually shape us for our future?
The answer is, is yes. Even if you're not doing that,
well, you are. But let's look at the Apostle
Paul's movement of where he gets really, really personal in his
movement towards the big ask. And we're going to talk about
his big ask next week. But he's being very careful as
he gets to that. And you know, what is the big
ask that some of you are hoping someone ask you?
It's like, will you marry me? That's a big ask.
Now Paul has a different big ask coming up, but he's moving
towards it with as much care as someone would take in asking
someone to marry them. He knows that what he's going to
ask them is going to be really difficult for them.
Being a follower of Jesus does not protect us from having to
make difficult decisions. In fact, it ushers us into them.
And so let's let's dive in here to Galatians chapter 4.
We're picking up in our series here at verse 8.
Paul says this formally. When you did not know God, you
were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.
But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is
it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable forces?
Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?
You are observing special days and months and seasons and
years. I fear for you that somehow I
have wasted my efforts on you. I plead with you, brothers and
sisters, become like me, for I became like you.
You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of
an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.
And even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat
me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I
were an Angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.
Where then is your blessing of me?
Now? I can testify that I if you
could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and
given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by
telling you the truth? Those people are zealous to win
you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate
you from us so that you may have zeal for them.
It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good,
and to be so always, not just when I am with you, my dear
children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth, until
Christ is formed in you. How I wish I could be with you
now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you.
You should recognize there some of Paul's very emotional sense,
but what he knows about them now is that they know God and
they're known by God. He's questioning a little bit
about, are you really keyed into knowing God?
But at least you know God are known by God because he knows
this is what brings them the greatest freedom in their lives.
That the greatest freedom in our lives comes when we know God and
are known by God. Our sense of truly being known
by God, but maybe not knowing God as well, started in the very
garden when Adam and Eve ate of that fruit and realized their
own sense of guilt, their own sense of shame, their own sense
of fear, and they ran to hide from God when he came to walk in
the garden. And God calls out to them, Hey,
Adam, where are you? Hey, you dust creature, that's
Adam. That's what his name means.
You dust creature, where are you?
I don't think God had lost them, but they had lost their sense of
God. The greatest freedom from guilt,
shame, and fear comes when we know we're known by God and that
we know God, that we know we're loved by God and love God, that
we delight in dwelling with God. So my personal prayer for 2026
is that I would dwell more deeply with God.
It sort of builds on our Christmas series that God
himself came to dwell in creation, to make creation his
home. In case you forgot it, you are
part of creation. You are an atom, a dust
creature, but you've been filled with a spirit, and so God would
make his home with you. This is my greatest prayer.
And but we know that that movement back into a dwelling
and life with God is actually a kind of exodus, and it's played
out in the scripture. But for Paul, he's envisioning a
new kind of exodus, a new kind of movement.
This is a review of the last sermon, which feels like it was
lots of weeks ago. But Paul sees that they have
been enslaved. He makes reference to it here.
Why are you wanting to go back and be enslaved again to these
miserable forces, these passions that control you?
Why do you want to be go back to slavery?
Because he's envisioning now that for every follower of Jesus
there is a new kind of exodus. This new exodus is from slavery
to redemption, where in redemption you experience your
adoption into the family of God, into the family of Christ.
And in that experience of adoption, it becomes real
because the Spirit of God is poured within you.
The Spirit of God is there to care for you, to communicate
with you, to guide you, to help you experience the love of God
so that you actually call out to God, ABBA Father.
And then having that experience, you now look forward to your
future self, your future inheritance and the fullness of
it. I'm not just experiencing the
Holy Spirit now in your life. You begin to experience the Holy
Spirit with the Son and the Father fully in creation that we
look forward to the new heaven and the new earth.
This is our new exodus. But they've come to a crossroads
in the now and not yet. They've come to a crossroads
because they want to go back into some kind of slavery.
He says, look formally, when you did not know God, you were
slaves to those who by nature are not gods.
He's saying for all of you, Jew and Gentile in the Galatian
context, whether you are an idol worshipper or not, you were
enslaved to those that were not gods.
Jesus spoke about this. He said some of you are enslaved
to mammon, to money. He treats money as if it's a
kind of power, a miserable power that must be mastered.
The only way to master it is to see that to yourself is the
throne room of God. Seek first his Kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
So Paul's concerned they're they're at a point where they're
tempted to go back. He says, look, you're at a
turning point. You're turning back to those
weak and miserable forces. Do you wish to be enslaved by
them all over again? For the Jewish listener, they
would be thinking, oh, he's talking about Israel in the
wilderness, saying let's go back to Egypt, let's go back to the
way it was because at least we had Raisin cakes in Egypt.
We're starving out here in the desert.
Our life is more difficult now that we're trying to follow God
in the wilderness. What was happening in Galatia?
In Galatia there was a group of teachers, false teachers, Paul
would say, who've arrived and are telling them your experience
of Jesus is not enough. You need to become more Jewish.
In fact, you men in the group, you need to be circumcised and
submit to the Law of Moses in order to be a complete person.
Now Paul is doing an interesting thing because the Jewish
listener is going to be saying, well, what?
What kind of miserable forces are at work by being attached to
the law? Why is the law a bad thing here?
And you'll have to go back and follow his argument again.
But Paul is arguing that now in Christ they are free of the
constraints of the law, for the law was meant to pull them back
from idolatry. That was tempting them.
It wouldn't completely free them from the idols.
It wouldn't completely free them from a heart that's an idol
factory, but the law would remind them of this great
problem to which they were enslaved.
And so Paul is saying, I, I know this is a problem for you
because you've already started to observe special days and
months. Somehow the teachers that had
arrived there with them had said you need to start following the
holidays of the Jewish calendar in order to experience the
goodness of the law. He wasn't saying he wasn't
having a problem with celebrating somebody's birthday.
Happy birthday, you December babies.
We we didn't get to do that for you.
We'll pick you up at the end of January if you felt left out.
He wasn't actually condemning the celebration of the Passover,
but he was. He was saying that this kind of
movement is actually not necessary for you to be a
complete person in front of God. He's getting ready to make a
really big ask in their lives, but you can see he's emotional
here. Look, he says, I fear for you
that somehow I've wasted my efforts on you.
Isn't that the last thing you want to have a teacher say to
you? I mean, OK, Paul, you're really
getting close here to that line of where this is almost too
much. Do you want to have a coach say,
I fear I've wasted my efforts on you?
Do you want to have a parent say, I fear I've wasted my life
on you? I mean, Paul is getting really
close here to a desperate feeling, and he's starting to
pull it back. He's just been so reasonable all
along the way, and now he's pulling back the curtain on his
emotion. I think there's something for us
to learn about this, that Paul is venturing very carefully in
this great conflict. He knows that this is a high
stakes, high emotion conversation because it's a
conflict. It's high stakes and high
emotion. Have you ever been in one of
these, a high stakes? Like the implications of this
conversation are big, but you also felt great emotion just
approaching it. Your heart started going.
It felt like your heart had horses in it.
It was just going to gallop away.
I, I think just a little, a little pause here in the
theological movement here and, and let's look at how Paul
actually has a high stakes, high emotion.
It's not a conversation. It's a letter that's prompting a
conversation. But I think there's still
something for us to learn about it.
Let me see your hands. Do you think that between now
and December 31st that there's a chance you might actually have a
conflict with someone? Some of you are living in OK
there we're starting to see some of you recognized.
Oh, my goodness. Like do you think that there's a
high stakes, high emotion conversation you might need to
have and you already know it's there?
All right, let's just look a little closer at what Paul has.
I think it'll help us in 2026. He says, look, I plead with you,
brothers and sisters, become like me for I became like you.
You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of
an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.
And even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat
me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I
were an Angel, as if Christ, as if I was Christ Jesus himself.
So he's recalling the foundation of their relationship.
He's recalling how the relationship started.
In fact, let's just look a little closer at what what he's
doing here. He's drawing out some of the
Greek concepts of friendship that were very common in the
culture. In fact, he's reaching into the
culture and saying I've been a friend to you and you've been a
friend to me. And so he he says, looking in
our friendship, we actually adjusted to each other.
We have a history of making adjustments.
He says, you did me no wrong. Isn't that a great friend?
You, you keep a friend around because they do you no wrong.
You keep a friend around because you deal with when things do go
wrong. And you enter into forgiveness
and you enter into that process. We'll talk about that a little
bit. But he's saying in general, I
move towards each other as we do each other.
No wrong. We've had welcome and
acceptance. There's been some hospitality
here. He says that look, there's been
honor. Now this is where he moves not
from the he moves a bit away from the Greek sense to say
honor in relationships. But here he says, look, you
honored me as if I was an Angel, a messenger.
In fact, you honored me as if I was Christ Jesus himself.
And this reaches back into that gospel tradition that was
already there in the presence of Jesus, who said, if you welcome,
if people welcome you in the future as if they're welcoming
me. And so he says, look, we've had
that. We've had that kind of honor
with each other. Maybe you're at this point
going, my friendships are nothing like this.
Maybe you're already going. I'm going to pray for deeper
friendships in 2026. I'm going to pray that I'm a
deeper kind of friend to other people in 2026.
Instead of trying to make everybody adjust to me, I'm
going to adjust to them. Instead of waiting for someone
to welcome me, I'm going to welcome them.
Instead of waiting to holding out on somebody saying, you
know, can I trust you? Can I trust you?
I'm actually going to start to trust you that you'll do me no
wrong. This is how you make friends.
You take this posture with people and you say I'm going to
honor you in Philippians 2, Paul says it this way.
Take interest in the interest of others, not only about your own
interests. Treat them as if they're of
great or worse than you than you are yourself.
This is how we make friends. Now he goes on.
And he says, look, you've been a blessing to me.
You blessed me. You didn't curse me, he said.
And and this is really important even for the Gentiles there,
because this was the Abrahamic move to say that while you
blessed me, you didn't curse me. And they actually seek to be a
blessing to others. And then he says, look, there's
sacrificial service. He says I was sick.
We don't know what the sickness was, something he was just
sickly. Some, some think it was his
eyes, 'cause he goes on to talk about eyes, that he was sort of
having some kind of blindness and infection and problem with
his eyes. Some say he was actually beaten
up, that he showed up there suffering because he had been
beaten up, having shared the gospel with others who stoned
him and threw him out. But nonetheless, Paul says I was
a burden on you and you served me.
There was sacrificial service. This is how we build friends and
keep friends. But here's the final thing.
And this is where he's having to really press in on them.
He says, look, am I now an enemy?
Because I'm telling you the truth.
And this becomes a test in friendship.
Sometimes our friends are not willing and ready to hear the
truth that we know. You know, there's always a part
of me that I don't know about myself, and that's always a
dangerous part. But it's my friendships and
relationships with others that helps me see it.
And that's a good thing. There's real danger when there's
something about me that I don't know and that they don't know.
That's a a shadow lurking in the dark, ready to consume me.
And so it's in our friendships that we actually do need truth
telling. And truth telling has to be done
really carefully. And Paul has been working this
with a sense of argument in his letters to get to this point of
truth telling. He's been doing it really
careful. But there has to be a movement
in friendships if they're truly going to go deeper where truth
telling is possible. In fact, you will find that it's
a small circle of people that you allow the the right to tell
you the truth. I know some of you are going if
you're married, if she asks, is my hair OK?
What's the right answer? Does this dress look good on me?
What's the right answer if if the guy says, hey, did you do
you think I did a good job? Was this a good meal that I
cooked? And you're like, wow, you
haven't ever cooked. What do I say?
And so you're wondering about that level of truth telling, but
there's another level of truth telling that's really, really
important to have relationships. And sometimes it takes you
learning how to do it. And sometimes you may say, hey,
that didn't go well. I didn't, I didn't do that very
well. Can I have a do over?
I could have said that better. I think Paul is really pressing
in on reminding them of their elements of friendship that
they've had because he's headed towards telling them the truth
and the truth that's going to require an action that's
difficult. Moving on.
I just want to touch how he revealed some things about
himself in his relationship with them and his conflict.
He's he reveals his sense of urgency.
He's look, I know I'm pleading with you.
I'm begging with you, he, he's just said it out loud and then
he says become like me and his his meaning here for become like
me is be be like. I am Jewish in relation to
Christ. It's not the biggest thing in my
life. In fact, I've lowered the level
of Jewishness in my life at the foot of the cross, he says.
I'm crucified with Christ now. He would also identify the
tension they're feeling. He has some empathy for them, he
says. Those people want to alienate
you from us. In fact, what they were
experiencing is that this group of people had arrived such that
the false teachers had influenced the Jewish Christians
in this to begin to exclude the Gentiles who were not
circumcised yet. And so in that sense of
exclusion and pushing them out, they were creating a kind of
social anxiety that says, well, I want to fit in.
Sure, give me the cut so that I can fit in.
You know, if you had a group of friends who all got a tattoo of
the Maple Leaf on the back of their knee and, and they said,
you know, we're, we're, we're the group who has the Maple Leaf
on the back of our knee. And if you're going to be in
this group, you got to get it. Well, would you sign up for
that? Depends on how badly you wanted
to be in the group. And so this sense of alienation
and social exclusion and you got to cut off these people in your
life. So you can have this group of
people in your life was tied to this whole sense of, and in that
way, you can be whole with God. You can be a complete person in
front of God. But he also revealed his
vulnerability. He says, I wish I could be with
you now and change my tone. So he recognizes the danger of
texting. He recognizes the danger of
e-mail. He recognizes the danger of
sending a letter with another reader is that this is a
vulnerable position. I wish I could be with you so I
could change my tone because I'm perplexed about you.
He's saying I don't get you. I'm not understanding you.
I don't understand why you've turned your back on the greatest
treasure of your life of knowing Jesus and the fullness of the
power of the Spirit. And so you know the love of God.
He says, I don't understand it. I'm perplexed about you.
So note in his care and conflict, he reveals his
urgency. He identifies with their
tension, but he also reveals his own vulnerability.
This is Paul's giving a master class at the same time on how to
do conflict in his letter. And then let's really look at
the stake. What's at stake?
This is what he's been working on all the way through the
letter of Galatians, that what's at stake is their status as
heirs of Abraham's family. It's been cast in doubt.
Maybe you're not really heirs to Abraham and part of the family
of God. The second thing that's at stake
is their freedom in Christ has been been put at stake because
if the men sign up to go get circumcised, they're actually
going to put themselves under the authority of this synagogue.
They're going to have to come in and be under the discipline of
the synagogue. They're after going to come in
and be taught by the synagogue on how to be Jewish.
And so he's recognizing that there's a loss of freedom in
this. And then third, he recognizes
that their confession, Jesus is Lord would be compromised
because in Galatia, the Jewish people had taken shelter under
Rome with the Roman exception that, you know, sure, Caesar
says Lord, but we don't really have to say that because, you
know, we get Jewish exception. And what he's saying now that if
you follow that route, you're going to have to put yourself
under this legal status with Rome where Caesar is Lord.
And he wanted them to think very careful about the political
implications of that move and their allegiance to Christ.
See, being Christian does have social and political
implications and he wants them to be very careful about it.
That's why he's going to make such a big ask.
So this is what at stake that that he even sees the gospel of
Jesus at stake here. No wonder he was emotional.
Now he's really concerned. He says ultimately that Christ
is formed with them. He says I'm in the pains of
childbirth. Notice what he says.
He says, my dear children, for whom I'm again in the pains of
childbirth until Christ is formed with you, how I wish I
could be with you. He says that he was like a
pregnant woman giving birth to a child.
You know, it's really interesting.
He moves from calling them brothers and sisters now to
calling them my dear children. He says, I'm going to show you
my parent heart. I'm going to show you my father
heart for you. I'm in the pains and the agony
of childbirth. Have you been there and have you
been there at childbirth? Have you seen or observed
someone else? Do you know?
In university, I signed up for a class on early child development
from conception to age 2. I was the only guy in the class.
It was a little embarrassing, but wow, it was amazing.
The development of a child in the womb is incredible.
Childbirth was shocking. I had to learn how to deliver a
baby. Theoretically I could do it, but
on the 1st occasion of having to be there, I almost passed out.
And Paul says I'm in this kind of agony until Christ is formed
in you. This is the parent heart.
This is the heart to which every one of us is called to through
the Great Commission. That in the Great Commission
you're called to have this longing for the formation of
Christ in other people, in yourself, in your children, in
the people you coach or mentor or lead, in your friends, in
your coworkers, in your neighbors, that the presence and
person of Christ would be formed in their heart and life.
This is to be the agony into which you enter.
This is the agony into which the church is called to enter.
That we would agonize and labor that each of us would become
more like Jesus. And so we say this about our
mission as a church. This is so good to remind us as
we come into 2026, one more, one more, that we are joyfully
investing relationships to spark a life journey with Jesus.
What happens in a life journey with Jesus?
We get to know Jesus, we become like Jesus, and we join Jesus in
his mission. This is our simple understanding
as a church about our labor, our agony, and being in the pains of
childbirth is that we would help each other become more like
Jesus. Some of us do it in official
roles. We have a hat that we have to
put on. Others of us do it simply
because we're under the Commission of Jesus.
And so we always try to find at least one friend in our life
that we're praying for, talking with, studying the Bible with,
inviting into our lives to talk about our life with Jesus
together. Do you have a friend like that?
Are you a friend like that? My prayer for you in 2026 is
that you would be that kind of friend, that this confession of
Paul would be yours that you'd like.
I'm in agony because I'm watching my friend and they're
just not getting it. I'm perplexed about how this
part of the life of Jesus could be worked out in their life.
And do you have a friend like that who's concerned for you?
We call them life groups, Bible studies, mentor groups.
Whatever you want to do, you need to find some kind of group
and community that cares for you like that.
Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, We have so much
in this little text today. And for some of us, we begin to
see that we want to go deeper with Jesus this year.
For some of us, maybe we see we want to be a better friend.
And for some of us, we need to take that next step of
intentional interest in the Christian development of another
person. So I pray that you would guide
us as your church as we move forward into this year.
I pray that as we come to the table of Jesus that we would
understand the agony of Jesus for his creation and for people
that to enter into this intentionality is to sometimes
enter into messy, honest conversations that we enter into
a kind of suffering, but we also enter into a greater joy as we
see other people thrive in their life with Christ.
Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are seated and sometimes
standing at the right hand of the Father looking at us and
longing for us. So you've given us your Spirit
and you give fully without restraint.
And so we say, come Holy Spirit, come help us envision our future
selves, a future self with you. Help us recognize when we come
to a crossroads and need to make a very careful and different
decision. Let's stand together.