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September 18-24

Finding Freedom - Galatians 1:1-10

Perspective

September 23, 2022 • Ed Green • Galatians

I love to fly. I don’t have superpowers or wings, so I need an airplane. But I love the view you get when flying so high above the ground. I always get a window seat. You can literally see for miles in every direction. What you can’t see when you’re driving on a road or hiking in the forest, you can see from above in an airplane. That is the power of perspective. This week we began our series through Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches. Sometimes it is difficult to get the “big picture” when you are focused on studying individual passages. That’s why we often need some help. I want to recommend two things to you between today and Sunday that might help you get that kind of a perspective: (1) Read the letter of Galatians in one sitting. It should take you around 20 minutes. Try to follow Paul’s thinking as he develops his argument. Write down any observations and questions you may have, and as you have time, begin exploring for answers. (2) The Bible Project is a fantastic resource for better understanding Scripture. I invite you to watch the overview video for Galatians. It’s just under 10 minutes long and will help to orient you as we journey through the book. Click on the link attached.

Gospel

September 22, 2022 • Ed Green • Galatians 1:6–10, Mark 1:1

I’m not one to stay up late on election night to see who won, but can you imagine living in the 1800s? Until the advent of the telegraph, for national elections it would sometimes take weeks to find out the results. Between that time and the current modern 24-hour news cycle, people relied primarily on waking up and seeing the results in the morning newspaper. In the first century, the word “gospel” (Greek: “euangelion”) was used of many kinds of good news, but often, it was the announcement that there was a new king or emperor. This is the word the writers of the New Testament choose to use about Jesus. Sometimes we can confuse the gospel itself with its many important implications—but even more dangerously—with the lesser important opinions about the gospel. The gospel—or good news—is simply that Jesus is the promised Messiah: in the words of Peter, he is “the Christ, the son of the living God.” Jesus is Lord. Everything else: what we think of as the “plan of salvation,” eternal life, judgment, etc. may be closely connected to the gospel—how we are to respond to it—but they are not the gospel itself (or as Matthew Bates calls it in his book of the same title, The Gospel Precisely). Here is an image that has helped me think about this (a seminary professor I had shared it with us). Think of a large circus tent. The tent is highest at the center but gets lower as you move farther out. The heart of the gospel (Jesus is the messianic King, He is Lord) is the very center, at its highest point. The farther you go from the center, the lower (and less important) are its implications. What Paul is dealing with as he writes this letter is very near to the heart of the gospel: how everyone—including the Gentiles—responds to the good news. It is by faith, not by law. All come the same way. Close to the center and high up on our tent. Are there beliefs or behaviors that you think are closer to the center than they really are? What dangers does that bring?

Grace

September 21, 2022 • Ed Green • Acts 2:37–38, Galatians 1:3, Galatians 2:21

One of the most important questions we ever read in Scripture is this, from the lips of those who first heard Peter at Pentecost: “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). When presented with the truth of just how far God would go to rescue us, and what Jesus went through to deliver us, it is an obvious question, and one we all must come to ask. Now you probably remember Peter’s response: repent and be baptized and you will receive the Holy Spirit (2:38). But does that mean that we, through those actions, have any role in deserving what God is offering? Absolutely not! Paul in Galatians is arguing with the idea put forward by some Jewish followers of Jesus, that Gentiles who wanted to follow Christ must go through the law. That is, they must become good Jews to become good Christians. That would mean committing to keeping (what we call) the Old Testament law, including circumcision as a sign of the covenant people of God. Paul adamantly rejects this and declares that whoever is teaching that as the “good news,” should be accursed by God. Ouch! These believers, in essence, were saying that salvation is by Jesus…Plus. To this kind of thinking, Paul almost literally says “Hell no!” What that idea does is undercuts what grace is all about. He will say in chapter 2 that, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (2:21). Dallas Willard captured this truth with the saying: “Grace is not opposed to effort; grace is opposed to earning.” As we follow Jesus, we are called to obey, but that in no way helps to balance the scales with what God has done in him for us. Grace—God doing what we cannot—motivates everything we do from here on out. But my obedience and living for him does not make me more deserving or get me in good with God. I am already a part of his family. That’s grace. Now here is a tough question for you. What are you doing that (maybe even unwittingly) you think will make you more acceptable to God?

Sent

September 20, 2022 • Ed Green • Galatians 1:1, Matthew 28:16–20

I would like to have Tom Udall’s job. He’s the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand. I have no qualifications, don’t know anyone in government—here or there—but it is a place I’d really like to live and explore. After all, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies were filmed there. Truly beautiful. But being an ambassador involves a lot more than simply going to another country. The job description is to represent the government of one country to another. Ideally, an ambassador is well-prepared to serve in the country to which he or she is assigned (and not just as political payback or because they are a friend of the President). Paul opens his letter to the Galatians with a greeting, and he identifies himself by his role as an “apostle;” “…sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1 NIV). We have gotten so used to “apostle” as a title—primarily in the New Testament for the Twelve and, later, Paul—that we forget the big idea behind being an apostle. That of being SENT. Next week we will look more closely at Paul’s calling to be an apostle to a particular group (the Gentiles), but today, I simply want to focus on the “sent-ness” of his apostolic role, and how we share that with him. Unlike the Twelve, Paul had not spent time with Jesus during his earthly ministry. The Lord got hold of Paul on the Damascus Road (see Acts 9), and Jesus turned this persecutor of the Church into its greatest proponent. It wasn’t the Church that gave Paul his commission. It was Jesus himself. And Paul spent years before he really started his apostolic ministry. Years of preparation, study, growth, and reflection. In that time, he was being prepared to deliver the message: the gospel of the grace of God to the Gentiles. Before Jesus returned to his Father, he gave his followers their task. Read the familiar words in Matthew 28:16-20. You, too, are being prepared. Prepared to represent the Lord himself by making disciples. You carry the good news to a hurting world. You, too, are sent.

Place

September 19, 2022 • Ed Green • Galatians 1:1–2, Acts 13—14

Places are important. I’ve had the opportunity on a handful of times to travel outside the country. This summer our son and his wife went on a trip to the Holy Land. They had a great time walking where Jesus walked and seeing the places where so much of the Bible took place. For myself, I think I would enjoy—just as much if not more—visiting some of the places where the apostle Paul traveled. Wow! Places like Ephesus, Athens, Philippi and Rome. He had grown up in Tarsus, in the region of Cilicia, in modern-day southeastern Turkey. For his first recorded missionary journey (see Acts 13-14) Paul traveled to the island of Cyprus and then north to the mainland. He and Barnabas went north into the region of the Roman province of Galatia and visited several cities there. While we are not certain, one of the best theories about his letter to the Galatians is that he was writing to believers in these cities, which were primarily in the southern area of the province. Galatia was one of the more loyal provinces to Rome. This region tended to have more Jewish immigrants than the northern part of the province. This is an important fact, because Paul writes to these churches that had been affected by teaching that called into question Paul’s gospel of grace, and its insistence on the equality of access for both Jew and Gentile before God. How do you think your location has affected the way you understand and experience the Christian faith? How might it be different if you had grown up in a different part of the country, or even a different country and culture altogether?