Take Your Stand
- Ray Befus, Jr
- December 13, 2009
Ray Befus Galatians 5:1-12 Take Your Stand 13 December 2009
Video Clip: The Mystery of Christmas. I’ve been around now, for 55 Christmases and it never gets old. Christmas reminds us that the Creator of the Universe was not satisfied to watch our lives pass by from a distance. He invaded our world in order to get to know us personally, to share his life with us. He took on human flesh in a mission of love, kindness, grace, and friendship. He wanted to get to know us personally, share his love with us, and include us in this kingdom mission.
Seeing that you and I would never be able to bridge the gap between earth and heaven, God invaded our world to do what we couldn’t do, so that we might come to know him, trust him, and return his love in authentic friendship. There’s no story like it in any other religion. The world’s religions are all very similar. They offer different plans to accomplish the same thing: earning God’s forgiveness, acceptance, and blessing by climbing a ladder of good deeds. If you study the world religions, there is a Buddhist ladder, a Moslem ladder, a Hindu ladder, a Mormon ladder. Each religion presents it’s followers with a list of good deeds that must be accomplished in order to be forgiven, accepted, and blessed. The Christmas story is different. Really, it’s unique. It describes how God so loved the world that he took the initiative to reach down to us by sending his one and only Son, Jesus, into our world to reveal himself to us, to teach and model his life-giving ways, and to pay the bill of our sinfulness, freeing us to live with him as friends. The message of Christmas isn’t a message of sadness and resignation—as though a disappointed, frustrated Creator finally put on his boots, left the warmth of his heavenly home, and went out into the dark, winter night, to fix the leaky faucet called humanity. The message of Christmas is a grace-filled message of hope. The Creator of the Universe is crazy enough to go to any length to know you and to have you know him.
This morning, in our ongoing study of Galatians, I’d like to answer the question: What happens if . . . this Christmas . . . I do decide to begin trusting and following Jesus, the Christmas baby? What if I take a big step beyond attending church services to actually deciding to invite him into my life to forgive me, fill me with his thoughts and feelings, and change me from the inside out by the Holy Spirit. That would be a huge step—very much like the difference between dating and getting married. What will happen if I buy into the Christmas story and begin trusting and following Jesus in 2010? In Galatians 5, the Apostle Paul emphasizes two results in Galatians 5:1-12. First, you’ll experience profound freedom—freedom from past regrets and the fear that your life-story will someday end in loneliness and loss, shame and regret. The essence of this freedom is a freedom from law—the law’s enslaving power to bless you or curse you for your performance. It’s not too much to say that most of our grinding regrets and late night fears are tied to our poor performance in law-keeping. So, the first result of your decision to open your life to Jesus will be profound freedom to live life to the fullest—as a fully forgiven, accepted, and blessed friend of God. The second result of deciding to trust in God’s grace is that God will invite you into the Christmas story. God will invite you to begin loving the way he loves. God will both invite you and empower you to begin loving others with the same love that filled Bethlehem’s manger. The first result of your decision will be a profound freedom from regret and fear. The second result is that God will enable you to begin living from an inner reservoir of love, created in you and kept full-to-overflowing by God’s own Holy Spirit., who will come to begin living within you when you decide to open your heart to Jesus. Let’s read Galatians 5:1-12. This isn’t the Christmas story; but this portion of Paul’s letter does highlight the transforming change that can take place in a man or woman who takes the Christmas story to heart.
To catch the context, you need to know that Paul is arguing with some ancient Jewish legalists, that since Jesus’ birth-life-death-and-resurrection, God is no longer relating to humanity on the basis of law—not even the law you’ll find in the OT. God is still holy and calls us to become righteous (truly good) men and women, but the plan and process has changed. The plan and process for life-change is now . . . by grace, through faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s plan for spiritual growth and transformation is not by law, above average performance, and a lot of covering up. This means that, because of Jesus’ birth-life-death-and-resurrection, Christians are free from having to earn God’s forgiveness, acceptance, and blessing. Because of Jesus’ death on a cross, God freely gives these things by grace, even to unrepentant sinners. God’s grace sets people free from all kinds of performance traps, anxieties, and the fear of being exposed. When you finally get it—get the message of God’s grace—the only reasonable thing to do is to respond with grateful trust. And, when you do make this decision to entrust your life to God, all rights and privileges of being God’s child and heir become yours. Because of this amazing grace, (1) you’re free to accept yourself as you are, instead of beating yourself up over your weaknesses and failures. (2) You’re free to admit the truth about yourself to other people instead of covering up and acting the part they hope you’ll play. (3) You’re free to live from your heart, to take risks to stretch and grow, and to get back up after mistakes and failures. (4) You’re free to love others without fearing that you might not get it right or have what it takes to make a difference.
Summing up the first four chapters of his letter, Paul declares, “It is for [this kind of] freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”. Paul’s special concern is that sooner or later in your spiritual journey, a legalistic Christian will befriend you and offer you some spiritual coaching. This person will tell you that faith in Jesus is a great way to begin your journey, but if your faith is real, you’ll also keep the OT law—at least the high points. They’ll tell you that the mark of genuine faith is that it expresses itself in law-keeping (Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . Blessed are you if you do. . . Cursed are you if you don’t . . . . Legalistis believe that the God-honoring path into the future is trusting in Jesus and keeping the OT law. In his devotional commentary on Galatians, Traveling Light, Eugene Peterson writes, “The gravest threats to the free life do not come from the atheist or secularist. They come from the quarter we might least suspect—from religion, particularly a former religion, a childhood religion, a neurotic religion. Living in the free air of freedom with its insecurities and chilling breezes, we are subject to sudden nostalgia for the warm, secure, swaddling clothes of an earlier religion—little borrowings from the past, inconspicuous compromises with the environment: an Egyptian calf-god, a Judaistic circumcision, sentimentalized prayers, stereotyped emotions, formulaic explanations. Religious friends suggest or insist on ways to improve or correct or legitimize our life before God. We satisfy our need for security or admiration or relief from boredom. But these seemingly well-meaning additions or apparently inconsequential lapses gradually erode the base of freedom, reducing the space which Christ has made large in liberty” (p. 143).
So having said “Don’t believe a word of the agitator’s message” several times over in the first four chapters, Paul now summarizes his thoughts in verses 1-12. There are only two spiritual paths through life, grace and law, and these paths NEVER cross. You must choose one or the other; you cannot choose both. You can choose to put your whole trust in the grace of God expressed in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for you . . . or you can choose to climb a ladder of law (Buddhist, Moslem, Hindu, or Mormon law—even OT Jewish law). If you choose to live by law-keeping, you cannot choose God’s grace revealed in Jesus. If you try to hedge your bet on Jesus and live by a little law (like circumcision, or sabbath worship, or kosher food), you must live by the whole law, Genesis to Deuteronomy (v. 3; cf. 3:12-13). It’s a package deal; you can’t just choose a few verses, instructions, or promises from the law. If you choose law-keeping as your spiritual MO, you must keep the whole law your entire life. That’s the curse of law-keeping; you must keep all of it all the time for the rest of your life. And , even if you keep the law perfectly (as Paul did) you still won’t be justified by your law-keeping, for in choosing law, you cut yourself off from Jesus and fall from grace (v. 4). So, leave the OT law in the past, where it belongs. Choose grace and God will change you slowly, patiently, thoroughly into a righteous man or woman by the Spirit of Jesus—the Holy Spirit—who lives within you (v. 5).
Jesus described his mission by saying that he came to proclaim freedom for prisoners, to set the oppressed free, and to declare the year of the Lord’s favor or grace (Luke 4:18-19). Paul echoes Jesus’ words and challenges the new Christians in Galatia to take a life-long stand against the bondage of legalism. Living in the freedom of the gospel will put you on the fast track to spiritual growth and inner transformation. ILLUS: One of the most popular fish among people who have salt water aquariums, is the shark. If you catch a small shark and put it in an aquarium, it’s growth will be limited by the space it inhabits. In a small aquarium, a fully mature shark may never grow to more than six inches. In the freedom of the ocean, the same shark may grow to more than six feet. Similarly, the slavery of legalism shuts down spiritual growth and creates the cutest little six inch Christians who spend their lives splashing around in little puddles of interest and concern—who’s wearing what, who’s drinking what, whose going to parties instead of church, whose weaknesses are showing up in ministry, who should be doing better in their walk with God? Paul wants the new believers in Galatia to grow up into mature, Christlike men and women who transform their churches and cities, and that won’t happen if they live in slavery to law-keeping and small legalistic concerns.
So, let me summarize. If you decide this Christmas to begin trusting and following Jesus (the baby born the first Christmas), you’ll experience a transforming freedom from past regrets and future fears which are both rooted in the belief that God’s forgiveness, acceptance, and blessing are only offered to winners—i.e., men and women who have kept his laws without compromise or failure. If you trust Jesus, your personal story will not end with loneliness and loss, shame and regret. You’ll live out all your days as God’s forgiven, accepted, and blessed child and heir! Filled with the Spirit of Jesus—the Holy Spirit—you’ll wake up each morning free to live from your heart, not a list of rules taped to your refrigerator. And as you keep your heart open to the Holy Spirit day by day, you’ll find yourself changing, slowly but slowly, as the fruit of righteousness grows with in you. But there’s more. Your decision to welcome the Christmas child into your life will have a second result. You’ll be invited to step into the Christmas story right now, to begin loving other people with the same love that filled the Bethlehem manger. Christmas isn’t just a holiday; it’s a mission, a lifestyle. In verse six, Paul writes that law-keeping (represented by circumcision) just doesn’t matter to God one way or the other. God isn’t happy if you do keep laws, or sad if you don’t keep them. God isn’t interested in law-keeping one way or another. What matters to God and your spiritual transformation is that you trust Jesus at such a depth that your faith expresses itself in in loving God and other people the way that Jesus does. What matters to God is that your life is characterized by self-sacrificing love (agape)—the kind of love that motivates people to put the needs and interests of others, ahead of their own.
For Paul, as James and the other NT writers, real faith in Jesus never stands alone. Faith that is genuine, that is alive, that is authentic, that is the real deal always works itself out in love for God and other people—especially the least (like children), the last (like the poor children), the lost (poor children who are looking for love). Faith isn’t just agreeing that certain facts about Jesus or the Bible are true. Faith is trusting Jesus as a life coach and guide. Faith follows Jesus because faith believes that Jesus is really smart, completely wise, and can deliver on all his promises. And, faith in Jesus stirs a God-like love in our hearts. Genuine faith doesn’t work itself out in law-keeping; authentic faith works it’s way out in love that sacrifices time and money, personal satisfaction and safety for others. A man or women who doesn’t love others like Jesus loves, doesn’t trust Jesus. He or she doesn’t have the Spirit of Jesus living within. In just a few verses Paul will write that self-sacrificing love is the primary fruit of the Spirit’s residence within a Christian. If a church-going man or woman isn’t growing in love for God and others, then the Spirit of Jesus isn’t dwelling within this person; for all his or her church attendance, he or she has not yet been born again.
This may surprise you, but one of the timeless appeals of legalism is that it is such a low bar. Trusting Jesus and loving like he loves is a high calling, a costly calling—so costly that even Christians do not choose it, unless they are filled with the Holy Spirit. At best, legalism supports a cool, self-serving individualism—even isolation. If you believe that God’s priority is for you to keep his law, and you’re satisfied that you’re keeping God’s rules well enough, you can stand at a distance from other people and their needs and just tell them, “I’m good, I’m doing good, I’m fine. We’re doing OK over here. Don’t worry about us. We’re taking a break from serving. We don’t feel called. We’re taking a sabbatical from carrying the burdens of the poor, serving the weak, discipling the children, investing in community life, using our gifts for the common good. We’re feeling a lot of peace over here, taking care of ourselves, being as good as we can be”. Legalism often appeals to our pride (we’ve got what it takes to keep the law); it also appeals to our human bent toward orienting our lives around ourselves, rather than God, his mission, and the needs of the least, the last, and the lost. It get’s worse, legalism is behind the oft-heard statements, “I’m not worthy; my life is a mess. Right now I’m not the kind of person who should be loving and serving and giving. I just don’t have what it takes. Even worse, legalists decide that others aren’t worthy of their time, their energy, their money. The poor deserve what they’re getting; they need to sleep in the bed they have made. The needy need to take care of themselves. The bottom line is that legalism doesn’t lead to love—not the Christmas kind of loving God demonstrated; legalism leads to being polite to strangers, being nice to the needy, giving children small gifts that cost us nothing. Legalists don’t love like Jesus. It’s superficial to think that the great divide between those who live by law and those who live by grace, is best expressed in who drinks alcohol and who doesn’t, who dances at parties and who doesn’t, who wears suits and ties to church and who comes in jeans and button down oxfords. The great divide between legalists and those who get grace is who loves, and who is merely nice . . . who gives and forgives, and who is simply polite . . . who serves and sacrifices and who just comes to church meetings for some individual inspiration.Self-sacrificing love is the theme of Christmas, and if you decide open your life to Jesus—the Christmas baby—
he’ll free you from slavery to fear and invite you into the Christmas story . . . the Christmas mission, the Christmas lifestyle.
My wife Carol and I went out to the movies a couple weeks ago and saw “Blind Side”, the inspirational story of Michael Oher’s rise from living on his own as a street kid in Memphis to graduating from the University of Mississippi and playing in the NFL with the Baltimore Ravens (who play the Detroit lions this afternoon). In his grade school years in Memphis, Michael went through 11 schools in nine years, often missing up to 50 days of school a year, yet still being passed from grade to grade. The movie Blind Side is truly inspiring, and not just because Michael Oher, a homeless kid whose dad was murdered and mom was a crack addict, is discovered and supported by some weathy white folks. The movie is especially inspiring because Christians dominate the plot. Michael Oher is given a chance to go to a private high school because a poor, older black Christian woman sees him and pushes him toward the opportunity. And, the private high school is a Christian high school cited by the NY Times as for caring more about introducing it’s students to Jesus Christ than to Harvard. Briarcrest School takes in 15 year old, 6‘5” 350 pound Michael Oher out of their fidelity to their mission, not his registered IQ of 80 or his GPA, of .6. At Briarcrest, Jennifer Graves decided to take on Michael as a special interest. Jennifer ran Briarcrest’s program for kids with special needs. She was quoted saying, “I decided early on in my life that Christ was calling me to work with the kids who didn’t have it so easy”. Almost from the beginning, five different Christian families at Briarcrest opened their homes from night to night to give this homeless teenage a place to sleep. Finally, one winter night, Leigh Ann Toughy (wealthy, white, conservative Christian) saw Michael walking outside in shorts and a t-shirt. The first night, Leigh Ann invited this huge, dirty kid to sleep on their $10,000 leather sofa. Soon, they gave Michael a room of his own and his very first bed. Within a year, Sean and Leigh Ann, with two children of their own, legally adopted Michael. Michael himself accepted Christ his his God while attending Grace Evangelical Church in Memphis with the Toughys. The Toughy’s did all of this out of the Christmas spirit. Their wealthy, white Christian family motto is, “To whom much is given, much is required”. One journalist described this as a story so wonderful and rare that Hollywood would never have dared to make it up. A couple weeks ago, a nationally syndicated editorial was included in the GR Press, celebrating the movie and wondering how America’s inner cities and schools might be transformed if the millions of Christians families across America each adopted just one inner city child. No stimulus funds needed; no government programs required. Just faith in Jesus working its way out in self-sacrificing love. That would be good news. That would be the spirit of Christmas love. That would be what Paul is talking about when he writes that what really matters to God is not that you do or you don’t keep the law, but that your faith in Jesus is deep enough to move you to love someone besides your lover, your parents, your husband or wife, or your own children. As Jesus himself said, “even those who don’t know God love those who love them in return” (Matthew 5:46). Spending all your time and money on yourself and your family is what everyone does. Adopting a homeless child is what love does.
Four hundred years after the first Christmas, a church father named Augustine asked and answered the question, “What does love look like?” He responded that love looks like the eyes that see the lonely and the poor, ears that hear their sighs and sorrows, feet that move toward the heartbroken and lonely, hands that help lift the burdens of people being overwhelmed by life, a mouth that speaks convincingly of God’s love and grace. So, it’s Christmas time again, and faith in the Christmas baby renews our faith. When our faith is stirred, it expresses itself by opening it’s eyes, opening its ears, stepping toward need, lifting burdens, and speaking passionately of God’s love. As a church, fifty of us have purchased $30 dollar gifts for the children of Kent County Jail inmates. It’s Project Forgotten Child. The giving of $30 and shopping for a gift was, for most of us, a pretty small step in the direction of love. You know, we could take another step in the direction of love this week. How? This coming Saturday morning, we need 20 teams of 2-3 adults to deliver these gifts personally to 20 families. The teams will drive to an unfamiliar neighborhood, knock on the door, meet a borken family, give the gifts to excited children, share a snack, watch as gifts are opened, and pray God’s blessing on the family. But that’s only the beginning. Then these men and women will invite these forgotten children and their families to a meal before the candlelight Christmas service the next day—next Sunday. This is the kind of step Sean and Leigh Ann Toughy took when they first reached out to Michael Oher. After the Candlelight service next Sunday night, they’ll take another step by offering to bring these people to church the following Sunday morning—the 27th—for a special welcome begin planned in Kid’s Church.
It was easy to get fifty people to spend $30 on a nameless, faceless poor kid. Tens of thousands of our neighbors are doing that with the Santa Claus Girls and other holiday charities. Christmas cynics sometimes say that we Christians buy gifts like this simply to sooth our consciences and to distract attention from how much of our money we keep for ourselves. But that’s not true of us. We really care. Our faith in Jesus really does stir us to love others in meaningful ways. So this morning, I want to invite you to consider joining me and Carol in opening your heart a little wider in self-sacrificing love for these children for whom we’ve purchased $30 gifts. Check in with Pastor Matt at the Information Desk this morning, and sign up to join the teams that will go out next Saturday morning to offer their hearts to the children who will receive these gifts. You could be meeting the next Michael Oher next Saturday. You could be the first white Christian who’s ever come into his home . . . the first Christian who has ever laid a hand on him and prayed for him, the first Christian who has ever invited him to dinner and a Candlelight Carol service . . . the first Christian who has ever picked him up on a Sunday and brought him to church. Or, if you have an even bigger heart and are willing to open it still wider you could sing up tobecome a member of the team that welcomes a Michael Oher to Vineyard North. You could join our Sunday children’s ministry team and become a part of the caring community that welcomes poor children into this church. Right after this service, you could pursue our children’s ministry coordinator, Lori Crossman, and offer to serve in the Kid’s Church ministry in 2010. If I asked for a show of hands, everyone would love to see fifty poor children from broken famlies come to Christ in 2010. Everyone would love to see twenty new families discover God’s grace here at Vineyard North. Yes? And, to take in the 50 poor children and their 20 families we’ll touch this weekend, we need a surge of fresh troops—mostly singles and empty nesters—to open their hearts and their schedules to begin loving children in this very practical, self-sacrificing way. Without a surge in our Sunday ministry team to children, this Forgotten Child project will just be another superficial exercise in holiday cheer.
Any six inch shark can take a $30 bite out of the family budget for a poor child. But some of you are big fish. You get grace. Your faith goes about as deep as anyone I’ve ever met. Signing up to serve in Kid’s Church in 2010 . . . your faith is ready for this kind of opportunity. This is your day to demonstrate some amazing grace, some Christmas love, the kind of self sacrificing love that legalism can never produce. How ‘bout it? Will you carry Christmas into the new year by stirring your faith to love in a way that is truly self-sacrificing?
