Today, we began a new series called “Eviction Notice.” This
is about weeding out the law and self-righteousness in our lives and living
truly by faith in grace. In this first part, we went through a little bit of a
history lesson regarding the message of grace in the early church. As I often
teach, understanding scripture requires knowing context. So many restricting
and condemning doctrines come from a very surface reading of scripture with no
consideration of context. We must always seek to know WHO is talking, TO WHOM
are they talking, WHERE they are talking and WHEN they are talking. It is also
important to consider whether the word something GOD said or something MAN
said.
We
examined, in detail, Galatians 1:6-17. In verses 6-9, Paul admonishes the
church in Galatia
to not receive any Gospel other than what he had preached. What other Gospel
was being preached? What was happening was, after he would preach the message
of righteousness apart from works and establish a church, Judaizers would
follow behind and preach that you had to still obey the Law to be saved – particularly
the law of circumcision for Gentiles who wanted to become Christians.
Talk
about how to motivate Gentile men NOT to become Christians! These religious
leaders were teaching a different Gospel than Paul preached. They preached
Christ, but that you still needed to obey law in order to be accepted. Paul
goes on to say “let them be eternally cursed.” Now, Paul is not saying – as
some have used this passage to imply – that if someone teaches something that
is not correct, God is eternally condemning them. If you make your
righteousness about your works, you are eternally condemned. There is no peace
in righteousness by works. You will never be righteous by your works. This is why Jesus came in the first place. Why “let” them be eternally condemned?
Shouldn’t Paul have encouraged them to try and preach the truth back at them?
No. Remember, these are baby Christians. The entire message of grace was even
younger than the church itself. Paul was one of the only ones who, at that time,
had real revelation knowledge. These baby Christians were not equipped to argue
with scholars on the law.
I
think a great example would be with our children. I teach my kids that God
created the earth in six days. I know that is truth and they know that is
truth. Their teachers in school are going to teach a vastly different account
of how we all got here. They will even imply that what my children believe is
backwards and foolish. But I tell my children NOT to argue with teachers. They
are very knowledgeable in their foolishness and can easily use intellect to
crush the faith of a young believer. I watch kids in church who love God
graduate high school and go to college. Within one semester, all the professors
have “convinced” them there is no God and that to believe in God is idiotic.
Thankfully, most have returned to the way they were brought up, but, without
deep revelation knowledge of God’s Word, it is easy to be intellectualized out
of your belief. I think this is what
these Judaizers were doing to the church in Galatia and elsewhere. It “made
sense” to be required to follow the law to please God. That is all they had
known, but Paul says to not let ANYONE (even himself) talk them into a
different gospel than the gospel of grace.
As
part of the history lesson, we went to Acts 15 when Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to help clear
up a similar matter. Jerusalem ,
in the heart of Israeli territory, was quickly falling back into law after
receiving Christ. Specifically, they did not want the Gentiles to be able to
claim “child of God” status without having to obey all the law they had obeyed
(kind of) for generations. Eventually
the church leaders agreed that Gentiles don’t have to be circumcised, but that
there were going to be four rules they must keep. Now, they felt they were okay
with these four rules because they were given by God BEFORE the actual law was
given. They were still missing the point. Jesus did not just come to fulfill the
Mosaic law but any law that would separate God and man.
The
more I study Paul’s writings, the more I see that God used him to save the
early church. I believe that, without Paul, we would not be here as Christians
today. The early church – even by the leadership of the disciples who walked
with Christ, was quickly falling back into law living. The belief in Jesus as
Messiah was layered on top of their belief, but they were still legalist
Jews by nature. Paul spent 14 years
(Galatians 2:1) studying and receiving this message. He points out that he did
not get this message from the disciples or any man, but from God himself. I
often wondered why (and even Paul wondered at times) Paul, who was a Pharisee,
was chosen to bring the Gospel to Gentiles and not the Jews. I believe what we
saw in Acts 15 shows that he had more impact on the Jews than we realize.
I
think God needed someone who was not there for the physical ministry of Christ
and who understood all of the Old Testament to be able to connect all the dots.
You know, sometimes when we physically experience something we can miss some of
the deeper, spiritual meaning. Paul didn’t see it all happen, but he knew what
happened and he knew well all of the things that were being fulfilled by Jesus.
He had to have 14 years of “a-ha” moments as he gained that revelation and then
passed it on to us in the New Testament.
We must also get that deep understanding of grace or we too can fall
into the trap of turning our Christianity into a list of rules and rituals that
have no power to grant us fellowship with God or to actually overcome sin.
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php. To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee,
visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.