Sermon of Galatians has arrived. It's been since October when we
started the series in Galatians, and I've been looking forward to
the last sermon ever since. So I'm going to invite you to
open your Bibles to Galatians Chapter 6.
Can you use your Bible app if you want, or you can follow
along here on the screen. The Apostle Paul writes,
Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live
by the Spirit should restore that person gently.
But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the
law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are
something when they are not, they deceive themselves.
Each one should test their own actions.
Then they can take pride in comparing themselves alone
without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one
should carry their own load. Nevertheless, the one who
receives instruction in the Word should share all good things
with their instructor. Do not be deceived.
God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Whoever sows to please the flesh from the flesh will reap
destruction. Whoever sows to please the
Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we
will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to
all people, especially to those who belong to the family of
believers. See what large letters I use as
I write to you with my own hand. Those who want to impress people
by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised.
The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for
the cross of Christ. Not even those who are
circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised,
that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.
May I never boast except in the cross of Christ, cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified.
To me and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor
uncircumcision means anything. What counts is the new creation.
Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule.
To the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me
trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus, the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Be with your Spirit, brothers
and sisters. And all the people said Amen.
Let it be. So be it.
He ends with an Amen. Let's remind ourselves, what is
Paul envisioning? Paul's envisioning that this
church, this group of churches in the region of Galatia would
know God in his fullness, that they would know the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, and they would experience the deliverance from
sin that Jesus offers, that they would experience deliverance
from the powers of darkness. This is why he keeps Speaking of
their freedom in Christ. They have been set free to live
free. It's been one of the huge themes
through Galatians that they would also be a new family, that
they would enjoy their freedom of association as Jew and
Gentile, slave and free, male and female, That these would
have less significance except for this, that they're all
following Jesus Christ, the Messiah, that he is the one that
has drawn them. And so now they're reorganizing
their life around the Messiah, the Messiah who's the
fulfillment of the promises to Abraham.
Look to the rock from which you have been cut, said the prophet.
Look back to Abraham and Paul's drawing from that same, what we
would call a hermeneutic to read all the way back to Abraham and
say, look, you people together are the fulfillment of God's
promise to Abraham. So now you reveal the Messiah,
you reveal Jesus, you reveal the liberating, freeing powers of
Jesus by transforming relationships everywhere with
God's love. This is a little summary of what
Paul seems to have in mind as he envisioned the church responding
to this letter, that their relationships would be
transformed everywhere because of God's love in their life.
Do you want some of that? Has God stirred up a hunger in
your heart and life over this is sermon 11 plus Christmas.
So over the past 11 weeks plus Christmas, did he stir up a
hunger in your heart for some of this to be your living reality?
We've tried to summarize a little bit of what Paul's
envisioning, and now I want to pull it in together just as he
does, to say that what Paul is envisioning is the Christ life
lived in a cruciform community. This might be a new word for
you, the cruciform community. Would you turn to your neighbor
and say we are the cruciform community?
What in the world does that mean?
It means we have been formed and shaped into the image of Jesus
on the cross, arms outstretch, nailed to the cross.
We are to be like him even as a community formed by the cross.
And I've said that Galatians is a book about spiritual
formation. What is that spiritual
formation? It's to make us like Jesus.
Like Jesus How? Jesus on the cross, it's a
little difficult some for sometimes for us to get this.
So Paul says it in a lot of different ways.
He did say you have been crucified.
He says I have been crucified with cross, but like with
Christ. But he also said things like
this serve one another humbly in love.
And so we've said that's the Christ life.
The Christ life is that we would humbly serve one another in love
just as Jesus did, ultimately going to the cross and laying
down his life for others in love for them.
So let's examine this a little further.
What is this cruciform community to be like?
Now he's going to come on to some real action here.
Last week he talked about the character of the people and the
fruit of the spirit that's required in order to humbly
serve one another in love. Say them with me if you've
memorized them, Lovejoy. Peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Against such things there is no law.
I'm free. Look at all the things I'm free
to be. This is the character.
Now he's going to talk about some more things to do because
you are that. And each of these actually
creates a kind of tension in our lives.
And there's four of them. He breezes through them really
quickly here. And we're just about do the
same. But I want to list them out.
Here are the four things he spoke of valuing holiness.
If you're going to value holiness in your life and in the
life of the body of the church, you're going to experience some
tension. Keep stay with me a little bit
being helpful. If you're going to be helpful to
one another in the church and as the church, you're going to
experience some tension supporting the ministry
financially. Uh oh, I already feel it.
Tension. I'm going to experience some
tension if I I have to part with some of my money.
We breezed through it so fast. You're like, I don't even notice
that Paul said that. What, Craig, are you making this
up? And the fourth one that he
mentions here really quickly is just continuing to do good, do
good. It creates tension.
Are you all familiar with tension?
Attention band you. When you give your attention to
something, it means you're focused and drawn into it.
But really, when we speak of tension, it means that there's
two things pulling right. I mean, some of us put a rubber
band on us so that when we experience tension, we're like,
snap, it's OK, snap, pay attention, snap, it's OK, we're
not going to snap this, but you're going to help me.
So this rubber band is of no use until it actually has two parts
pulling, right? Two parts pulling.
Now we, if this band is come on, hold on, man.
If this band is useful, it actually has two poles that are
pulling to each other and you manage the tension.
It doesn't go away. Tension is meant to be managed
in your life, not eliminated. If you had no tension, you could
not stand up this morning. Tension is actually very helpful
in your life. But some of you think tension is
just drama. Are you still holding on?
Oh, man. You're you.
You've actually relaxed Here. Come on.
Keep it here. Keep it here.
You were. See, He was managing the
tension. He just held it out.
Go. Just hold on.
Lean back. Thank you for holding on to me.
See, he's managing the tension, and this is what we do when
we're healthy and mature people. We manage the tension.
We don't try to eliminate it or throw it out.
We manage the tension that's there in our lives.
And each of these four things that Paul speaks of actually
create a great deal of tension in our lives.
But to actually see God work in our life means that we need to
have some pull and some push back and some pull and we go.
And then we might have a season of just sort of relaxing, but it
creates tension on someone else. OK, so let's look a little
closer. Thank you.
Give him a hand. He's he really held on there.
Thank you, Aidan, for not letting me fall.
Let's look at these areas just a little more closely.
We have to value holiness. Notice he says if someone is
caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that
person. How gently.
He didn't give any other instructions on how to do this
except this one. Do it gently.
Be gentle. If you discover that someone is
caught in a sin, they have a slip up that they've the word
sometimes even has been used to say they've been surprised by
sin. Restore them gently.
You know, there is this whole move that sometimes happens
where we think that someone is actually going to get better in
their life if they have somebody yelling at them.
If you find that your children are failing, yell at them and
they'll get better, right? No, no, it just doesn't work
ultimately, because you know why?
If you're yelling, it's just an external move.
It means that they are being moved by an external, but if you
do it gently, you actually connect with what is the
internal intrinsic motivation. And so you want to cooperate
with the Spirit of God to reach in gently and find how do we
point to Jesus and his liberating work in your life?
And then Paul offers why there's even tension about this.
He doesn't think there's tension just because this is awkward.
He doesn't think there's tension just because it might blow up.
They might not respond well. He suggests there's tension
because when we address sin, we also become tempted.
We become tempted. We've become tempted to overdo
it. We've become tempted to join in.
We've become tempted to say, Oh well, if they can do that, I can
do this. We've become tempted to move
into conceit and pride, as he'll point out later.
We become tempted and there's tension then.
And this tension of valuing holiness in the life of the
church means that sometimes the church holds on to points of
view that in our society really put us at odds.
Valuing holiness means that you're going to accept some
tension in your life. The second area that he speaks
of is being helpful. Notice he says, carry each
other's burdens. And this way you will fulfill
the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ?
Love one another, the law of Christ love one another.
So he says, carry each other's burdens.
Come alongside and say, I see that you have a burden in your
life and I'm going to help you carry that burden.
I'm going to go with you in this burden.
And he says, notice he goes right away to the tension.
If anyone thinks they are something when they are not,
they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own
actions, that they can take pride in themselves alone
without comparing them to someone else.
Do you know sometimes we enter into helping other people
because it doesn't just make us feel good.
We like the feeling of being superior.
Oh, there was this deficit in your life.
Let me help you. And so now I'm needing you to
keep needing me to help you so that I can feel superior in my
life. And Paul's noting some of the
psychology of codependency being helpful.
There's tension in the church in being helpful because notice
what he says on the other side for each one should carry their
own load. What?
See why this is tension. We're each carrying our own
load, but now he's being helpful to me.
Snap. They don't see this is what
tension does. And there's tension in the
church and there's tension in your life group, and there's
tension in your ministry here on campus.
When you're helping others accomplish great things with
God, when you're helping others become the people God wants them
to be. And there's a time where it
feels like, wow, they're just leaning on me.
But you're each carrying your load because you're helping
something beautiful exist here in this life.
Being helpful must be managed in our life together.
So on one hand, he says, carry each other's burdens, but each
one should carry their own load. Which way is it, Paul?
And he's like, yes, it's both. It's both.
This is the life of growing and maturity of being
interdependent. Interdependent.
Most of us enter into high school, maybe some of us enter
into it a little bit later of really wanting to be
independent. I will carry all my own loads.
And so we try to work hard to create some kind of illusion of
independence and being a self-made person.
But the life of maturity in Christ is 1 of interdependence.
And interdependence always has some tension.
It always has some tension. The third thing he says is that
this this cruciform community is also supporting itself.
It's supporting the ministry of this community.
It's supporting the teaching ministry.
And I think he probably could have gone on to others, but here
very specifically, he speaks of the teaching ministry of the
church. He says, nevertheless, the one
who receives instruction in the Word should share all good
things with their instructor. We're not sure why Paul noted
this to be an issue in the Galatian church.
But he draws it out here to say that in the life of the church,
there's this self supporting, self-sufficient kind of
interaction that happens financially in the life and
ministry of the church so that the Word can continue to be
known and shared and integrated into the life of this community.
Remember, he's been trying to teach them how to read the Old
Testament through the cross of Christ all the way back to
Abraham. And so now he's saying you need
to support your teachers of the word in the life and ministry of
the church. And, and he's like, don't be
deceived. God cannot be mocked.
Like this is this is an odd move.
Don't be deceived. God cannot be mocked.
A man reaps what he sows. Well, what kind of sowing has he
been talking about right away? It's financial.
And so this, this verse has been abused in some settings and some
traditions of the church to say, oh, like if you if you sow your
money here in the life of the church, you're going to get 10
times more, a hundredfold more in your life because you gave to
this church. We're not saying that at all.
I don't think that's what Paul was saying here.
But he does say there is some kind of spiritual blessing in
putting your money where your mouth is or where your heart is
or where you're being fed in the life and ministry of the church.
There is some kind of blessing. And notice the blessing, he says
whoever sows to please their flesh from the flesh will reap
destruction. So he's like, if you're only
using your money to feed the flesh, your comforts, your
pleasures, your needs, your desires, he says this is just
sort of destructive. But if you actually sow put your
money into things that produce and yield spiritual impact, then
you're going to reap eternal life.
What we're going to talk more. I know this is this is huge,
right? In some ways to thinking about
money and the life of the church.
And it creates tension. And some of you are experiencing
the tension of the church talking about money like this.
You're like, I'm just getting jerked around.
Sorry. You did well, man, you're
hanging on. Very responsive.
But Paul is saying, look, if you're going to support the
ministry and the life of this church, there's a tension to be
managed, the tension between what you just want to do with
your money, hard earned money. I don't know how many of you
students are hard earning money right now.
A few of you, yeah. And some of you are not.
You're in that in between realm of afoot in both worlds.
But there's tension to be managed when it comes to
speaking about money and the life of the church.
So, so much so in this that in a one more week, like next Sunday,
we're starting a sermon series on financial peace and purpose.
It'll be a five week series talking about this tension that
we feel about money and peace and purpose and what does the
scripture have to say to us as a community about this?
OK, so that's one of those areas. 4th area, doing good.
Who knew doing good could create so much tension?
I asked my life week life Group A couple weeks ago to make it a
daily prayer, pray, asking God how could I today humbly serve
another in love. And even then, someone, someone
just volunteered. Oh, this is going to be really
difficult for me. And we talked and processed
that. Doing good creates tension, but
it also comes with great promise.
Notice what he says. Let us not become weary in doing
good. Is your arm tired yet?
Minus I think I've been pulling more.
You've just been out there. And so, you know, if you become
weary in doing good, you're you've actually become tired.
Why have you become tired? Because doing good creates
tension. We have great inertia sometimes
to doing good. Sometimes in doing good we've
become overextended. Thank you for holding on there.
We've become overextended. We've overdone it, so we have to
manage it. So he says, look, do not become
weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a
harvest if we do not give up. Do you know sometimes when you
do good and you don't get the expectations, you think, well,
what's the use in that? Sometimes you do good and you're
like, well, they didn't say thank you, so what's the use of
that? I was doing good, but their life
just seemed to get worse. What's the use in that?
God. So he attaches it to a promise.
Remember, Paul saw that they now lived not just in the present
evil age, but they lived in the age to come.
They had already been ushered into it, and so they were
looking forward to a greater harvest in the new creation.
So he says, look, there will be a harvest.
You're planting good things in the lives of others and your
community when you insist on doing good.
So therefore, he says, as we have opportunity, let us do good
to all people, especially to those who belong to the family
of believers, do good to all people, especially the family of
believers. So it's as if that my efforts at
doing good for the family of believers actually then
conditions me to do good for others.
The way in which I respond to vulnerability, weakness, and
need in my own family of believers sets up how I will
deal with weakness, vulnerability, and need in the
rest of the world. So how did it go in Galatia?
Did did Galatia pull this off? Did they actually see these four
things? Did they actually become a
cruciform community, or did they just sort of get wiped off the
history books? Well, there's a really
interesting letter that comes from Julian the Apostate.
Isn't that a terrible name? Julian the Apostate?
He became the emperor of Rome in 361 to 363.
Before that he was the Caesar of the West.
When he was 20 years old, Julian renunciated Christianity.
He said, I will no longer serve Christ.
I will serve the gods of the Greeks and Romans and I will
become a great promoter of the gods of the Greeks and Romans.
And so that's why he's known as the apostate because of his
apostasy. And Julian the the apostate
writes somewhere around 362 three before he died, he wrote
to the Greek priests of Roman religion in Galatia.
He writes to them and he says, why then do we think that a
stagnant Greek religion is sufficient and do not observe
how the kindness of Christians to strangers, their care for the
burial of the dead and their sobriety of lifestyle has done
the most to advance their 'cause he's writing a let me interpret
for you. It is a little a little awkward.
He's writes and says, look, I know we are observing how the
Christians are winning in Galatia, and so we need to
compete with them. Each of you, he says, ought to
do all of these things. It is not sufficient for you to
practice only one, but all the priests of Galatia, without
exception, must do these things, He says.
All of you Pagan priests must also not go to the theater, must
not drink in a Tavern, and must not profess to any base or
infamous trade. Dude, something must have
happened in the Galatian Church over the next 250 years that
they began to change their culture.
Why? Because they were becoming a
cruciform people, he goes on to say.
You must do more things like the Christians.
You must build hostels so that strangers may enjoy kindness.
You must be willing to do it for anyone, no matter what religion
they practice. You must support the poor.
Not just the poor in your own group, but the poor of everyone.
You must teach everyone to contribute so that these
services may continue. In other words, give money so
that we can do good things, he said.
You must accustom them to such benevolence.
Let us outdo them with our good deeds rather than being
disgraced by laziness. Wow.
Over the next 250 years, the church in Galatia had a profound
impact on their culture. Why?
Because they were a cruciform people.
Why? Because they accepted the
tension of being Jesus's followers.
Isn't that exciting? It is so cool.
That's why I've been looking forward to this last message,
because we can actually see the impact of being a cruciform
people. We can see the impact of living
the Christ life. Thank you again.
So let me just lay it out here. Our spiritual formation is to be
cruciform. Jesus put it out there and I, I
just want to do this. This will be actually our last
point because we're going to run out of time.
In this message, you know, Jesus spoke of the cruciform life of
the disciple. Notice what he said.
He's asking them, who do people say I am?
Peter said you're the Messiah, you're the one, the one it only.
And Jesus warned them, don't tell anyone.
The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the
elders and the chief priests and the teachers of the law.
He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
In other words, the government was going to turn on Jesus and
he was going to lay down his life and he was going to be
killed on a cross, but on the third day he would be raised
again. So he's like, let's not talk a
lot about that now, but you need to know that.
So then he said whoever wants to be my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross daily.
Take up your cross daily and follow me.
In other words, Jesus is saying you must have a cruciform shaped
life. Take up your cross.
This would have been really weird to them because the cross
was a Roman tool of capital punishment.
It was a Roman tool of tyranny. It was the Roman tool of
exerting their power and their influence over others.
It was their way of saying you are weak, we are strong.
Every tyrant finds their mode of doing this.
Every authoritarian regime seeks to do this.
Every parent who thinks they will be the king of their castle
looks to how they can exert power over another.
It is the move of empire. And Jesus said, when you run
into that, take up the cross. That's the cruciform community.
A few years ago, I had a conversation.
You can advance with me. I had a conversation with a
student in the MSA, the Muslim Student Association, and this is
probably about eight years ago. We were having an amazing
conversation just back and forth and he was asking me why do I
appreciate Jesus? And asked him, well, what do you
appreciate Jesus? And he says, well, I'll tell you
what it says about Jesus in the Quran.
And he processed that with me and and then he says, but Jesus
had a deficit. I said, oh, OK, tell tell me
about that. What was Jesus's deficit?
You can go back to that verse. And he said Jesus's deficit was
that he never governed. He never governed.
He he wasn't a governor. So he doesn't provide us an
example of what government looks like.
And every, every great leader actually needed to govern in
some kind of way. And I said, oh, that's so
interesting. I've probably been processing
different responses to that, trying it on for about 8 years
now. And recently God gave me an aha
moment. I was listening to Brian Zahan,
pastor at Word of Life Church in the United States share about
this very issue of Jesus and the governance.
And notice the verse. We all know this we from
Christmas right? For unto us a child is born, to
us a son is given, and the government will be on his
shoulders. Was Jesus deficit and he'll be
called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace and it goes on to say and and of his government
there shall be no end. So how was the government on the
shoulders of this Messiah Jesus? Well, here's how the government
was on his shoulders. The government was on his
shoulders with the cross. Look at Jesus carrying the
cross, the symbol of the government's power.
It is on his shoulders, and he carried it.
He experienced it, and upon it His own shoulders leaned back as
he was nailed to it. The government was on his
shoulders. And so we we must enter into
that strange view of Jesus in the confrontation of powers to
say we are our best as a church, not when we're shouting.
We are our best as a church, not just when we're praising.
We're our best as a church when we're cruciform.
Because therein is how God reveals His power.
How could one of the ugliest symbols in the world be
cherished as the most beautiful? Because of the resurrection
power of God expressed to the Christ who died on that cross.
So much so that now we know he governs.
Jesus governs and every knee will bow and every tongue will
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
So let me ask, are you willing to accept the tension, the
tension of following Jesus? Do you know the temptation to
power is all around us? For Rome, they had a special
class of people called the gladiators.
Do you know about gladiators? How many of you have watched
those terrible movies about gladiators?
So much violence, right? So much power.
They were in a special class, and the games of the Colosseum
were no games at all. They were how the week became
killed. As they were devoured by animals
or as they were killed by gladiator soldiers.
And in four O 4. After Rome had been experiencing
Christian governance quote UN quote the games were continuing
and at the Coliseum one day, January 1st four O 4, it's known
that a priest from Syria jumped out of his seat in the Colosseum
and ran into the playing field and said In the name of Christ,
stop. Telemachus was so moved in his
heart by the brutality of the government that he said In the
name of Christ, stop. An emperor onerous declared soon
after that the end of the games. He outlawed them, but Telemachus
was martyred on that day. He was killed on that day
because he said in the name of Christ, stop.
Many of us fear not that we're going to lose our life when we
stand up for Jesus, but we fear we'll get a little cut.
We fear that we might get embarrassed.
We fear that we might lose a little credibility.
We fear that someone might laugh at us.
We fear that we won't have the right words to say, but
Telemachus just said what was in his heart that day.
In the name of Christ, stop. And it got the tension of the
emperor and it changed something in the empire of Rome forever.
But again, we're always trying to resurrect the old ways, but
Paul says, hey, you, you are the new creation.
So in Christ, let the new ways dominate your life.
Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we, we come and
we're a bit sober in this moment because we realize we we are
meant to be a people that stand in stark contrast to the way of
the world. And yet the church is always
tempted to do another way. The church has always been
tempted to hold the cross out front and yet hold the powers of
Rome. And so we pray that you would
truly help us to be the cruciform people of Jesus as we
come to the table. The table reminds us every week
that we are a cruciform community because it reminds us
of your body being broken for us and your blood being poured out.
And you invite us to the table as a cruciform community.
You tell us love one another, for love comes from God.
This is how God showed his love among us.
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might
live through him. And this is love.
Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as
an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So, brothers and sisters, let us love one another.