Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2004 : June 13, 2004
Continue in the Gospel of Jesus
Pentecost 2
This morning I want to start you off with a quiz. Is cholesterol good for you or bad for you? How many of you would says it's good? How many of you would say it's bad? Here's another question: How many of you think that bacteria are good for you? How many of you think that bacteria are bad for you? It seems that just about every other day the evening news reports a new medical report -- one day you hear that cholesterol is bad for you, the next day another report says that it can be good for you. One report says that getting a mammogram is good for women, and another says that they are not as important as we are led to believe. So which is it? In these cases, there's good cholesterol and there's bad cholesterol, just as there are good forms of bacteria and bad ones. There are usually two sides to every issue.
But that's not always the case. Sometimes there is definitely a right answer and a wrong answer. But it isn't always easy to know what the right answer is.
Being right with regard to your health is certainly important. Even more important is that you are right when it comes to your eternal welfare. So Paul tells us: Continue in the Gospel of Jesus, being careful that you don't oppose Jesus and being certain that you are forgiven through Jesus.
If you lived in the city of Lystra just after Paul's first missionary journey, you would have remembered the day that Paul and Barnabas came to town and healed a crippled man you knew who had been lame from birth. You would have remembered how the people treated Paul and Barnabas as if they were gods one minute, and then stoned Paul the next minute because some Jews came from other cities and stirred up the people against Paul and Barnabas. But, by God's grace, you believed the message that Paul spoke -- that Jesus is your Savior from all your sins.
But later, after Paul left, some others came and said that you still had to follow certain Old Testament regulations to get to heaven -- you had to be circumcised if you were a male, you had to abstain from certain foods that were unclean. But that contradicted Paul who said that nothing you could do would get you to heaven, but that Jesus of Nazareth had done it all for you and had died to take all your sins away. Then the others told you not to listen to Paul because he was a Johnny-come-lately to the scene and was speaking his own ideas, not God's Word. So who do you believe?
That's why Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians -- to convince them that Jesus was their Savior and that trusting him alone for salvation was the only way to get to heaven. He showed that by telling them about his own experience with Jesus. "You have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it." Paul had been a Pharisee, a religious leader of the Jews. He believed that a person could attain heaven by being good, by living a good life, by obeying the law of Moses. But then a man named Jesus began to teach that the only way to get to heaven was through him, through Jesus. He had said, "I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me." That went against everything Paul believed. And now Jesus' followers were spreading the name of Jesus all over the world. So Paul made it his life's goal to destroy this group called Christians. He saw them as a start-up cult, probably much like you or I would see Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses today. Paul wanted Jesus and his followers stopped -- at all costs. The word he uses brings the image of Paul being a trailblazer, a pioneer of persecuting the Christians. In the book of Acts he tells what he did: "I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth." (Acts 26:9)
Paul opposed Jesus and everything Jesus stood for. For someone so focused on destroying the church, no mere human being would be able to change his mind. That is Paul's point -- no man could change his mind -- only God could, and did. He says, "God set me apart from birth and called me by his grace and was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles." So because of his undeserved love for this persecutor and murderer, Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus as he was looking for more Christians to hurt or have killed. Then Paul's life completely changed from being the one who persecuted the Church, one who opposed Jesus, to being Jesus' foremost spokesman.
Paul says that he didn't get his message from anyone but from God alone, and they could be assured of that. After his conversion, he went into Arabia, which was just outside of Damascus. There the Holy Spirit worked on Paul to see what had so long eluded him. He looked at every Scripture passage of the Old Testament now in a whole new light -- with Jesus at the center and its complete fulfillment. Paul didn't go to the other apostles to see if their version of the gospel matched with his, and he didn't get his message from them either -- he received his message from God himself directly.
There are two things that we can take from this. First, the Galatians could be assured that Paul was sent by God, not by men, so they could be assured that his message was from God as well. When Paul had gone to the town of Berea on one of his journeys, the believers there didn't believe him just because he was persuasive and made a good argument. They believed Paul because they "searched the Scriptures everyday" and found that everything Paul said was true because it was supported by the Bible. So when you hear me or anyone else in this church tell you something, you shouldn't just believe me or them because we say so or because we have good arguments to support it -- you should compare what we say with what God says in his Word -- then you can be assured that what we are saying is what God is saying to you, and therefore you can trust it in every part.
Secondly, you should look at your life. Paul thought he was following God when he hunted down Christians and put them to death when he focused his life on persecuting the Christian church. But Paul wasn't following God at all. Paul finally realized that when Jesus himself appeared to him on the road to Damascus and showed him that he is God and that Paul was persecuting God when he persecuted Jesus and Jesus' followers. Do you feel that you are living for your God in all that you do? Paul did, but Paul was wrong -- dead wrong. There are two sides to every issue. I'm sure there are plenty of examples you could give in your life that show you are following Jesus. And that's important -- keep doing those things. But what about the other times? What about the times when Jesus takes a back seat in our lives to what this world has to offer? What about when our sinful nature tempts us to indulge in some sin of the flesh instead of presenting our bodies to our God as living sacrifices? What about the time when we thought we could get away with not being totally Christian just this once. The problem is that God knows all of those times when we have failed him. We might think God looks the other way, but he doesn't. He is just. He is holy. He hates sin and the one who commits it. We need to understand that at those times in our lives we have opposed Jesus, just as the Apostle Paul did.
But listen to this amazing Word of God: "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life." (1 Timothy 1:15-16) The hymn writer used those words in writing his great hymn: "Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me." Paul understood that despite his many sins, his persecution and torture of Christians, and his hand in having them murdered, Jesus shed his blood on the cross to save sinners just like him. It's amazing that by God's grace Paul, who was once a persecutor of the Church, had become its greatest missionary, dedicating his life to his Savior. It is equally as amazing that God has forgiven all your sins because Jesus paid for them all on the hill of Calvary. It's amazing that he called you from the darkness of your unbelief and hatred of God to be his disciple. It's amazing that through the power of the Spirit you can serve him with your life.
Not only is that message right from God, it makes you right with God. Think of that. Paul had to think about his horrible past every day. He would remember how he wanted to hurt people, even kill them. He would have to remember that it was only because of his actions that some people did lose their lives simply for being Christians. But Paul could rest his guilt-ridden conscience on Christ and the cross, where Jesus paid for every one of Paul's horrible sins. That is why Paul dedicated his life to his Lord, because his Lord had dedicated his life to him, a horrible sinner.
At Paul's time, the battle was raging to water down the gospel by attaching things that you have to do for your salvation, which would then make it no gospel at all. Paul stood in the midst of that battle to win as many as he could with God's gospel of full and free forgiveness in Christ. You fight that same battle today. There are many who say, "Jesus is my Savior, but I have to do more to get into heaven." You know that there are no two sides to this issue. Jesus did everything for your salvation. Heaven is already open to you through faith in Jesus because Jesus washed all your sins away when he died for you, and he has given you his perfection as your ticket into heaven. When the world or your sinful flesh tries to get you to oppose Jesus by your life, resist them by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in you. That power comes from the God-man who died that you might live forever. And so follow Paul's words: "He [Christ] died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." Live your life to please God. Continue in God's gospel. Amen.
