Sermon Snippets

Bragging is something good Christians just don't do. We are supposed to be humble, like Christ. We are supposed to let our actions speak rather than run our mouths. Plus, no one really likes someone who is boastful and arrogant and can't stop telling you how great they/their job/their family/or their favorite team is.

But how does that saying go? "There's an exception to every rule." And there is an exception to this one. Paul tells us in Galatians 6:14 that we can brag "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ". We are given leeway to brag about what God has done in our life, through the Cross.

Obviously this is a different kind of bragging. This is not self-centered or self-magnifying. This is Jesus-centered and God-glorifying. The transforming power of the Cross makes us "a new creation" (6:15) and imparts to us peace, mercy, and grace (6:16-18).

So go ahead, brag all you want. As long as it's Cross-centered, it's perfectly acceptable.

Sermon Snippets

Thanksgiving is most often associated with food. Ever since that first meal enjoyed by the Pilgrims and Native Americans, our country has paired giving thanks with sumptuous meals.

There's another pairing that involves food which we as Christians can remember this Thanksgiving week.
Galatians 5:22-23a says,

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

If we depend on the Spirit on a daily basis (Gal. 2:20, 5:5), He will produce spiritual fruit in our lives that taste good to our Lord.

It's easy to focus on each of those individual traits. It's also easy to focus on that list, then look in the mirror and become preoccupied with which ones that are our strengths and which are our weaknesses.That would be a mistake though.

We cannot naturally produce all of these in our lives on a consistent basis. The key to the fruit of the Spirit is THE SPIRIT. We must submit and surrender to the Spirit's control (Eph. 5:18), staying connected to the Vine. And when we do, those qualities will supernaturally grow out of our transformed hearts.

I decided not to preach a special 'Thanksgiving' message. Where we are at with Galatians 5:16-26 is a great fit. With food on everyone's minds, maybe it will be easier to remember the spiritual fruit that the Spirit desires to produce in our lives.

Sermon Snippets

 

So much of the Christian life is a balancing act. Finding the middle ground between two opposite extremes is often tricky business.

 

Paul addresses one of the most basic balancing struggles we face in Galatians 5. Much of his letter is focused on rejecting the idea of adding rules to faith. He argues that following the OT Law and the legalism it demands is incompatible with the freedom we have been granted in Christ. He continues this argument in chapter five by saying,

"...do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery....You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." - Gal. 5:2-4

Adding legalism to our faith is an extreme we must be sure to avoid. But so is the other extreme of licentiousness. Paul addresses that opposite approach in verse 13:

"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature..."

We can't live like God's grace didn't come at with a price. It didn't cost anything, but it cost Jesus his life.

'YOLO' is a popular saying these days (for those uninformed, it stands for You Only Live Once). And by and large, it seems to thrown out anytime someone is looking for an excuse to do whatever they want no matter how stupid or sinful. It's true we only live once, therefore Paul says at the end of verse 13:

"...do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love."

Just as we cannot give in to the spiritual extreme of legalism, neither can we slip into the extreme of licentiousness, or what I'm going to label "loosey-goosey living".
In fifteen short verses, Paul's outlined how to successfully walk the tightrope that is the Christian life. There are a couple more keys for how to find balance in the Christian life...come Sunday and find out what they are.

Sermon Snippets

Good or bad, our father's have an incredible influence on us.

Not only do they affect our physical appearance but they can have an even greater impact on our personality and worldview.  They can love, encourage, and inspire us. But they can also denigrate, embitter, and neglect us. They can leave us a legacy that makes success easily achievable or one that perpetually haunts us.

Whatever our parental backgrounds, Galatians 3:26-4:7 calls us to look beyond our earthly fathers and focus on our heavenly Father. In Christ, we are made sons of God and heirs of a promise that dwarfs any inheritance of material wealth that anyone could leave us in will.

In Christ, we have more than we could ever ask for as sons and daughters of God. The very essence of who we are is transformed and we are given rights and privileges that are impossible to earn or attain on our own.

²⁶ So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
4 What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. ² The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. ³ So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. ⁴ But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. ⁶ Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba", Father.” ⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Sermon Snippets

I've spent a night in jail.

I was protesting a traffic ticket and failed to appear in court for my hearing four months later.  I realized I missed it afterwards and thought I covered my basis to stay out of trouble. But it was not to be and two evenings later, there was a knock on my dorm-room door and I was escorted to the Kosciusko County Jail.

They took my fingerprints, my mug-shot was taken, and I got to change into an orange striped jumpsuit.

I believe it ended up being only 7 hours or so, but it was a miserable night.

Sleeping in the drunk tank wasn't really possible. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. I was stuck.

The apostle Paul knew what being locked up was like too. Several different times in Galatians 3, he talks about how living legalistically is the equivalent of being in a spiritual jail (see vs. 22-23)

Apart from Christ we are prisoners and slaves to legalistic living that tries to be good enough to earn salvation and the approval of God. Unfortunately, that path does not end in life, only imprisonment (3:21).

The good news is that Jesus Christ freed us from having to resort to legalistic living. If we place our faith and trust in what He did for us, we are given the free gifts of freedom, righteousness, and salvation by God.

Paul brings this up to the Galatians because while they were saved by faith, they were dangerously close to buying into false doctrine that said they needed to live by rules and not by faith.  It is not just a salvation issue, but it's clear that legalism is a danger after our initial conversion and regeneration.

I would never volunteer to go back to jail. The entire experience was miserable.
Why then would we want to go back to a legalistic approach to life spiritually? It brings about similar misery and confinement when freedom is what God calls us to.

Sermon Snippets

We are beginning a new sermon series this week in the book of Galatians.

Galatians was written by the apostle Paul to a group of churches in modern-day Turkey. The reason for this letter was a group of religious opponents that constantly gave Paul problems during his ministry - the Judaizers.

In the days of the early church, Christianity was seen as a Jewish religion by much of the outside world. And much debate and discussion was given within the Early Church about it's relationship to Judaism. The Judaizers were those who adamantly insisted that anyone converting still had to follow the regulations and rules of the Old Testament. To become a Jew, one would have to submit to circumcision and follow the various rituals and sacrifices the people of Israel adopted. The problem was, these standards and rules became so important as traditions, the people of Israel widely viewed them as works that had to be done in order to maintain a good standing with God.

With Jesus, that whole paradigm was changed. Paul sets forth clear doctrine in his letter to the Galatians that Jesus has set us free; free from the law and free from legalism. In Christ, we are free.

The principle remains the same for us some 2,000 years later. Every other religion consists of it's own rules and regulations that force on it's adherents a works-based righteousness. Christianity offers grace. And freedom.
We are free from sin through the free grace God offers us in His Son.
We are freed from legalism and doomed life of striving to be 'good-enough' because Jesus paid it all and did it all on our behalf.

We love our freedoms in this country. People can't stop talking about them when it comes to governmental policies and life choices.  We have no clue what real freedom is, apart from Christ.

Music Mondays

This week's Music Monday selection is inspired by our upcoming sermon series. We've finished the book of Daniel and are returning to the New Testament by going through Galatians.

Galatians is all about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Galatians is all about how we undeservingly receive salvation through Christ by placing our faith in Him. Paul wrote this letter to combat those who were adding stipulations to the gospel, wanting new converts to conform to Jewish laws and regulations. Instead, Paul's message is "We are free!" OR as Homer Kent titled his commentary, Galatians is about "The Freedom of God's Sons".

With that in mind, I could think of no better recent CCM song to feature than this one: