Sermon Tone Analysis

As you know - if you’ve been with us or following along the past couple of months, the apostle Paul has spent his time in this book of Galatians - REVISITING work that he had ALREADY DONE...

having established churches in Galatia

He had preached the gospel to them...

They had embraced it...

BUT NOW?

Today we’ll start with the verse we ended with last week...

A theme that runs through this passage - is one that I hope and pray will become a theme that runs throughout our lives…till the day we drop!

And it relates to the title of this sermon....

SLIDE:

Uncompromised Truth

If we think about the apostle Paul’s life - we know that prior to his CONVERSION - he was an UNCOMPROMISING man...

AND YET - the area of life where he WAS uncompromising - was his RELIGION...

He was ....well - let’s have Paul explain himself...

Paul - prior to his conversion - was VERY confident in his - RESUME...

He was UNWAVERING in his resolve - to destroy the church...

For Paul (Saul), it was very BLACK and WHITE...

If you professed Christ - you deserved to die...

And so Paul - being a man - UNDER THE LAW - viewed the BELIEVER in Christ - as the ENEMY!!

Paul - as a Jew - viewed the Gentile - as DEFILED!

Paul was uncompromising…!!

But then what happened?

He’s CONVERTED...

TRANSFORMED on the inside - to now - LOVE the church!

He went from PERSECUTING the church - to now DEFENDING the church!!

He went from DENOUNCING the message of Christ - to now PROCLAIMING the message of Christ!

And PART of proclaiming the message - entailed - ESTABLISHING the churches in Galatia!

INITIALLY - that message was - embraced!

Believed!

AND YET - Paul leaves - and then False Teachers come and begin teaching a FALSE GOSPEL!

A works-based Gospel!

How will Paul handle this?

SLIDE: Uncompromised Truth: From Contextualization to Comprehension

Uncompromised Truth

v12

The apostle Paul’s approach to evangelism, is one that many people have argued about over the centuries...

Paul would often CONTEXTUALIZE the message of the gospel - in order to help those hearing him - COMPREHEND what he was saying.

If we were to look at a definition of Contextualization, it would be this: There’s quite a few variations but this one works...

SLIDE: Definition

Contextualization: a process or description that places an idea or piece of information within its setting, whether that is historical, geographic, or conceptual.

And so in the arena of Christianity and the Gospel - to contextualize the Gospel - is to take the [gospel] - and to take the current [culture] - and to bring the 2 TOGETHER - in order to AIDE in comprehension.

Now we DEAL with this all the time in every day life...

*Math (think back to your elementary Math classes)

When kids are starting to learn Subtraction, it’s a hard concept for them to understand.

They maybe had just learned how to ADD...

But subtraction is another ANIMAL in their little brains...

AND SO - what do we do?

We TEACH subtraction this way - “Joe has 5 apples on the table.

His neighbor comes and takes 2 of them.

How many apples does Joe have left?”

What did I just do there?

I contextualized the math equation (5 - 2 = 3) in order the help a 5 year old understand SUBTRACTION...

We all use this type of approach when teaching our kids about the world...

NOW - of course - when we think about Contextualizing the Gospel…we have to be careful!

So throughout history - there has been this wide SPECTRUM of approaches to Contextualization...

FROM...

Contextualizing SO MUCH that the truth itself is COMPROMISED...

*maybe you WATER the message down SO MUCH that it gets lost...

to

No Contextualization AT ALL - leading to a lack of understanding

And so - What did Paul say in v12?

We spoke last week about this verse - in that PAUL - by embracing Christ ALONE for this salvation - had TURNED FROM the LAW - - AS his salvation!

And so - in a sense - Paul had become - LIKE a GENTILE - not having the LAW

But Paul would have ALSO - lived that out - He would have DINED with the Gentiles…EVEN as a JEW -

and in doing so - he would have PUT on DISPLAY - a contextualized Gospel

Obviously - in the 1st century - It would have made complete sense if there would have been a REALITY TV show called - CULTURE WARS

The tension between Jew and Greek - was extremely HIGH!

And so the Gospel - is what?

The Good News of Jesus - His life, death, burial, and resurrection!!

THAT’s the Gospel....

NOW - HOW the Gospel plays out in the 1st century = is to BRING together Jew and Gentile...

AS ONE - by FAITH!

Paul - would have PUT that on display!

He brought the Gospel INTO that “Jewish - Gentile” context…(of course he was a Jew)

But that’s not the only type of contextualization found in scripture...

In the Bible, we see Daniel and his three friends were fully immersed in the Babylonian culture without giving in to influences that might draw them away from their God (Daniel 1-2).

Their willingness to accommodate earned them an audience with the Babylonian king, and their refusal to compromise truth eventually led to the king’s acknowledgement of God (Daniel 4).

When Paul spoke to the Athenians, he not only mimicked the Athenian style of argument, but he also used their own writers to bolster his points (Acts 17:22-34).

In other words, Paul understood Greek culture and contextualized the gospel in order to gain a hearing.

What did Paul DO here?

He contextualized the Gospel -

He USED THEIR false religion - to POINT to the TRUE God - and the WORK of Christ!

And yet....

There are OTHER clear biblical examples of contextualization in the New Testament.

Jesus preached to Samaritans and Gentiles without requiring them to conform to Jewish practices.

Peter’s dramatic vision of Acts 10 showed him that he needed to modify his approach to the Gentile culture; this he did, and a Roman centurion came to faith in Christ as a result.

Paul’s statement that he would be “all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22) indicates his willingness to contextualize the truth for his hearers, whoever they may be.

- - And DISPLAY that truth!!

And, finally, in Revelation we see that the Lord Jesus has redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9; 14:6).

The gospel is truly cross-cultural and must be presented in a way that each culture can apprehend.

Listen to this amazing story of contextualization - from a time closer to us today...

Don Richardson was a missionary - and tells of his effort to bring the gospel to the Sawis Indians, a tribe of cannibalistic headhunters in Papua New Guinea.

He faced tremendous obstacles in a culture that honored deceit and betrayal.

In their new home in the jungle, the Richardsons set about learning the native Sawi language which was daunting in its complexity.

There are 19 tenses for every verb.

Don was soon able to become proficient in the dialect after a schedule of 8–10 hour daily learning sessions.

Richardson labored to show the villagers a way that they could comprehend Jesus from the Bible, but the cultural barriers to understanding and accepting this teaching seemed impossible until an unlikely event brought the concept of the substitutionary atonement of Christ into immediate relevance for the Sawi.

Missionary historian Ruth A. Tucker writes:

As he learned the language and lived with the people, he became more aware of the gulf that separated his Christian worldview from the worldview of the Sawi: "In their eyes, Judas, not Jesus, was the hero of the Gospels (Their culture HONORED deceit and betrayal), Jesus was just the dupe to be laughed at."

Eventually Richardson discovered what he referred to as a Redemptive Analogy that pointed to the Incarnate Christ far more clearly than any biblical passage alone could have done.

What he discovered was the Sawi concept of the Peace Child.[4]