Sermon Tone Analysis

part of a new creation, through the cross, separated from this world - God’s chosen people

Intro me

I know many of us have been shaken by the events of the past ten days.

I certainly have been very shaken.

Although for most of us it’s still just something we are reading about and hearing about rather than something we’re experiencing or directly connected with, we know there are literally millions of people whose lives have been shattered, thousands killed, and no end in sight.

It’s been hard to concentrate on anything else - and that’s probably appropriate given the gravity of the situation.

So you’ll forgive me for being less well prepared today.

I know people there - not close friends, but real people I have sat in a room with.

We will be meeting at 5pm this evening in person and online for an extended time of guided prayer focused on the situation.

Though we might feel - and be - mostly powerless, when we pray, we speak to one who is powerful, the God who can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine.

So please make a special effort to join us in person or online, and whether you can join us or not, to pray and keep on praying.

Our elders - that’s the bible word for church leaders - have been talking about whether there are other things we could do as a church to help those in need.

You’ll be aware there are many practical efforts to help and collections already in flight so we don’t want to duplicate.

We’re also aware, while it may feel like doing less, giving money to established organisations near the crisis could ultimately be doing more: money can be used immediately at the point of need for what’s presently urgent.

I spoke last week about a post regarding our prayers from a pastor in Ukraine called Igor.

Igor is the pastor of Christ's Communion Evangelical Church in Lviv in Western Ukraine.

I don't know Igor or his church but he is a friend of a friend, I know the church network that they belong to (EveryNation which has a church here in Edinburgh, CentrePoint Church), and I have cross-checked via the US missions agency which supports them as missionaries.

We've been able to find the bank details for their church and we are proposing, given the urgency of the situation and how quickly things are changing, that as something we can do immediately to help, we aim to make a single transfer of funds directly into their church bank account, hopefully on Monday.

It will enable them to continue serving with Christ's love those who God has placed around them.

I shared a link to a video of Igor describing the sorts of things they are doing to our social media and email lists yesterday - it’s pretty inspirational and I’d love you to watch it.

If you would like to be a part of putting money directly into their hands, you can give to HopeCity via direct bank transfer with the memo "Ukraine" or you can give via PayPal right now - scan one of these QR codes to give a fixed amount.

We’ll show this slide again at the close of our gathering.

We'll sum up everything which comes in by Monday and try and wire it direct to their bank that day.

We don’t necessarily expect to hear or see anything from them in response - they are in the middle of a catastrophe.

We’ll share anything further they share - but you'll understand making videos isn't a priority for them right now.

We think it is very important that we do not place any further burden on them in doing this, just resource them when they are in the heart of the storm.

This crisis is very likely to continue so we must be generous now but also expect ongoing needs - I'm just conscious they may not be able to use money or buy resources in a week.

Please don’t feel any obligation to give, or to give in this way.

There are many other places you can give to, and other ways you can help.

The government is match-funding gifts to the Uk’s Disaster Committee Appeal but sometimes you want something more focused and specific to give to rather than a large and general fund.

Let me pray once more and then we’ll continue.

… live prayer ...

So we’ve been working through a letter in the bible called Galatians and we’re going to continue that even in this present crisis.

We believe what the bible has to say continues to be relevant - perhaps especially so as we see the fragility and brokenness of our world so awfully on display.

The passage we’re going to look at today is the conclusion of the letter - and it points us towards our hope as followers of Jesus: new creation.

Let’s read together and then we’ll dig in.

Galatians chapter six - that’s page 1172 in these blue bibles.

Galatians chapter six - big 6 - and we’re starting reading from verse 10 - tiny 10.

Page 1172, Galatians chapter six, verse 10.

Leona is reading for us today.

The big aim of our author is to shoot down some fake news, some false teaching that’s arrived in the fledgling churches of Galatia, modern day Turkey.

This teaching says an essential part of following Jesus is circumcision, a Jewish body-marking ritual.

But our author has explained to us if you accept circumcision, you have to accept the whole Jewish religious way of life with it.

If keeping any religious law is essential, then keeping every religious law is essential.

It’s a package deal - but he says it’s a hopeless path because it’s an impossible path, like every path built on the foundation of us trying to measure up.

He says, instead, all our hope should be in what Jesus has done, not in what we do.

He says to them, having started out in grace - that is, being right with God because of what Jesus did for us - they need to continue in that grace; that’s our series title: “continuing in grace”.

They - and we - are not to turn back to the old way of trying to measure up by ourselves, through our performance.

He talks about this as freedom rather than slavery - “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” we read a few weeks back.

Here in this closing section, which it seems our author, the apostle Paul, penned himself, picking up from the scribe who’d captured the rest of the letter, he talks about motives: what drives his opponents, and what drives him.

His opponents, he tells us, are in it for themselves: to protect their own skin.

“the only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ” They don’t care about the people they are speaking to - they might pretend, but it’s not real care.

They only really care about themselves.

Bragging rights are their bottom line.

It’s all self-focused.

Paul is the opposite end of the spectrum: he isn’t in this for himself, to protect his own skin - he has the scars to prove it.

That’s how most commentators understand “the marks of Jesus” here - scars Paul has as a result of following and sharing the good news about Jesus, scars from the various attacks and beatings he has suffered as a result.

These opponents want to avoid persecution but Paul’s served Jesus through it.

Why?

What motivates him?

What drives him?

“The cross of our lord Jesus Christ”, he says: that’s what he’ll boast in.

That’s what he’ll suffer for.

That’s what drives him to be so radically other-focused rather than self-focused like these opponents.

As we live through these troubled times, it’s the hope which we have through the cross which I want to focus in on this morning, something Paul describes as “new creation” - the only thing, he say, that ultimately counts: “what counts is the new creation.”

Sounds cool.

Sounds significant.

But what does he mean by that?

Let me try and unpack this briefly for us:

neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, he says, in contrast to this “new creation” which means everything.

What’s he telling us here?

circumcision means nothing - sure, we understand that: those Jewish religious rites won’t save - circumcision doesn’t mean anything.

We’ve talked about that a lot over these last months.

But uncircumcision?

Why does Paul tell us uncircumcision is meaningless, insignificant too?

Circumcision was the dividing line between Israel, God’s people, and “the rest”, the Gentiles.

That dividing line is meaningless now because of the cross, Paul is telling us.

Where that used to be a boundary, some inside, some outside, based on our performance, that’s meaningless now.

That old way of doing things belongs to a previous era, one which has begun to pass away with the cross.

What counts now is new creation - and by that, he means not just pressing “reset” on this world, winding the clock back and starting again, but the transformation and renewal of creation from within, through God’s direct action.

Starting with the incarnation, Jesus - God come in the flesh - begins to act directly in his world to transform and renew.

At the cross Jesus absorbs the full power and penalty of all our wrongs, taking it to the grave, finishing it.

With the resurrection of Jesus, God’s new life, God’s new creation begins in earnest.

And through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, alive within every true Christ-follower, this new creation expands, transforming as it goes through the power of the Spirit inside us, bringing righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness - and eternal life.

The dividing line is no longer performance based: circumcision vs. uncircumcision; that wall has been demolished.

“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.”

The dividing line is between what Paul called back at the beginning of this letter “this present evil age” Gal 1:4, which is passing away, and this “new creation” which is breaking in - through the cross, by the Spirit.

“What counts is the new creation.”

Here’s the difference: that old dividing line was on the basis of how we perform; whether we keep the rules or fail to - and in truth no-one could keep all the rules.

This new division is on the basis of what Christ has done, and our relationship to it.

Is our hope and trust rooted in our performance?

Then we’re thinking about that old dividing line.

Is our hope and trust rooted in his performance?

Then we have already crossed this new dividing line; we are a new creation.

This same Paul writes in another of his letters:

This is the only thing that matters.

Any question related to our performance, any identity flowing out of our performance, whether that’s being “in”, or being deliberately and resolutely “out”, is meaningless.

The only thing that counts is new creation, flowing out of Jesus’ performance.

Paul tells us the path to this new creation, and what to expect as participants in it.

First let’s look at the path: the cross is the path - the one thing Paul is willing to boast in, to boast about.