Sermon Tone Analysis

Inscription: Writing God’s Words on Our Hearts & Minds

Part 76: Grace 1st, Works 2nd

Galatians 2:15-21

May 27, 2012

PRAYER

SCRIPTURE READING: Gal.

1:6-9 (Eddie Kelley)

GUT LEVEL RESPONSE

As I pastor, I have received some pretty NASTY EMAILS.

I have learned a very important TECHNIQUE – first I give the email a quick read, and I might even start to draft a response, but I don’t send it.

~* “The WRATH of MAN does not produce the righteousness of God.”

I take a DAY to COOL down, then re-read their email, looking for what truth might be in it.

Then I take time to RESPOND POLITELY.

Most of the time.

~* But sometimes an IMMEDIATE, STRONG response is needed.

The book of GALATIANS is like that.

Paul finds out that people have come in and corrupt the Gospel and Paul responds with clear decisive response.

~* Galatians covers similar territory as ROMANS, but is more BLUNT and VISCERAL.

The GREETING is unusually short: If email, it would be as if subject line said “What on earth are you THINKING?!?” and the first line said, “I can’t believe you are being so STUPID.”

It included one of my FAVORITE LINES in the whole Bible.

He is speaking about false teachers who are telling Christians they need to be circumcised:

Galatians 5:12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

He’s basically saying, “Since they are so into circumcision, I wish they’d move the knife up a few inches and finish the job!”

GALATIANS MESSAGE TO US

As I READ and RE-READ the book, I kept on wondering what to preach on: We are a good, grace-based church; we don’t believe that we are saved by works.

This is OLD HAT, right?

Well, no.

The more and more time I spent in Galatians, I saw how much we STILL NEED to understand its message.

~* What I am going to say will sound CONTROVERSIAL and will make some of you pretty MAD.

PAUL was ACCUSED of encouraging people to sin and if we preach him accurately, we will probably be accused of the same.

~* I will take it FULL CIRCLE, but you might get uncomfortable in the process – be sure to listen to it all.

AN IMPORTANT DISAGREEMENT

To SET the SCENE, Paul is showing how easy it is for even the BEST of the BEST to be lead astray by legalism:

Galatians 2:11-14 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.

12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles.

But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew.

How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

In JEWISH CUSTOMS, it was a big no-no to eat with Gentiles, lest they defile you.

The only way around it was if they were to CONVERT to JUDAISM, which was unpopular due to the whole circumcision thing.

~* It wasn’t until God poured out the SPIRIT on UNCIRCUMCISED Gentiles in ACTS 10 they early Christian began to understand.

PETER of all people should have KNOWN BETTER, but because of his FEAR of other CHRISTIANS, he caved to legalism

WORKS OF THE LAW

Paul goes on to say:

Galatians 2:15-16 “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ 16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

“JUSTIFIED” is one of those really important ideas in the Bible.

It has a lot of different nuances, and one of them is to be WELCOMED into the community of God:

Deep down, Jews knew they were ACCEPTED by God not because they were so good, but because God is GRACIOUS and LOVING.

But it was so EASY to start THINKING it was because of what they did.

~* Paul is saying that he and Peter know that God’s ACCEPTANCE and FORGIVENESS doesn’t come through OBSERVING the law.

WORKS OF THE LAW

This expression “OBSERVING the law” is extremely important.

Most translations translate it more literally, “works of the law.”

This is where we get the expression “WORKS” from, “we are not saved by works.”

Q What are the works of the law?

It simply means doing what the LAW SAYS to do.

This means the rules that no longer apply, like circumcision and eating kosher.

But it also means the rules that still apply:

Don’t commit adultery.

Don’t get drunk.

Don’t murder.

Don’t have sex outside of marriage.

Don’t have sex with the same sex.

Don’t lie.

Don’t steal.

Do help the orphans and widows.

Do be generous with your money.

Do raise your children well.

These are all GOD’S RULES that he expects us to obey.

He is our KING, and we are OBLIGATED to obey him.

What’s more, obedience brings JOY.

~* But doing these ARE NOT what makes us ACCEPTABLE to God.

I think we all UNDERSTAND this, but we DON’T.

Like Peter, we are still INCLINED to make being part of GOD’S FAMILY about following the RULES.

Here is what I mean:

Last Sunday, we watched MARK DRISCOLL talk about marriage, and he said some really good stuff.

But as he answered a question, he threw in some commentary that bothered me:

“If a friend who professes to be a Christian is living with his girlfriend, who also professes to be a Christian—” [“If I know two vegans who eat steak—” I just don’t even understand the question.

How...?] “How should we confront him as a professing brother in Christ?”1

That hit me SOUR at the time and kept ringing in my ears all day, and helped MOTIVE this SERMON.

Q Can you see WHY it bothered me?

~* He makes it sound like CHRISTIANITY is not sleeping with your girlfriend just as being VEGAN is not eating meat.

Now, MARK is strong believer in GRACE, and he would be mortified to be used as an example of works salvation, but I think even saying that creates the wrong picture.

I much preferred how his wife GRACE responded.

She basically said make sure that they are really Christians; they might not even know what that means.

If we were to SIT WITH Mark and ask him, “Are you saying that not sleeping with your boyfriend is required to be justified by God?” he would say, “Of course not, but being a Christian means Jesus is Lord and if a person lives in such willing disregard of Jesus, I question if they are genuinely saved.”

When MOST CHRISTIANS hear Mark compare sexually active Christians to meat eating vegans, WE GET what he mean; it is “CODED SPEECH” – it communicates something beyond what he said.

But there are TWO huge PROBLEMS with coded speech:

1.

It does not communicate with outsiders.

We tell NON-CHRISTIANS that we are saved by God’s GRACE and through faith in Christ, not doing what’s right.

We say that you don’t need to get cleaned up to take a BATH.

We can say those things a HUNDRED times, but then we say things like “VEGANS eating steak,” and we may have UNDONE it all.

What we communicate is that being a CHRISTIAN means NOT having SEX outside of marriage.

~* MANY, if not most, non-Christians believe being a Christian means “BEING GOOD” or HAVING FAITH.

EG: “A WALK to REMEMBER” though Christianity was about faith, not grace.

Q How many non-Christians understand the CORE of Christianity is being FORGIVEN and ACCEPTED by God apart from our worthiness?

After speeding a whole chapter on SEXUAL ETHICS, C. S. Lewis wrote, “This is not the CENTER of Christian morality, If anyone thinks that Christians think that unchastity is the supreme vice, he is quite wrong.”

~* The center of Christianity is CHRIST CRUCIFIED.