A Message for Cursed People

10/15/11

Scripture:

This morning, church, I invite you to turn with me in the Bible to Galatians chapter 3.  We’re going to be reading verses 1-14.  We’re in a sermon series called Getting Our Gospel Right and we’re taking a look for these few weeks, twelve in all.  We’re looking at the gospel of Jesus by looking at a letter that Paul himself wrote defending the gospel.  If you’ve been with us for the last few weeks, you know that Paul has been talking of his calling and his ministry as a spokesperson for the Lord and how God has called him to preach this very gospel.  And so today Paul is shifting his direction away from talking about himself to talking about the gospel.  I want to give you a challenge as we read this morning.  I want to give you an assignment, so to speak.  Paul here quotes from the Old Testament repeatedly and you can tell because he always begins the quote with the phrase ‘it is written’.  I want to ask you to think here is a man making an appeal to the word of God for his statements about the gospel.  I want you to count and to listen how often Paul appeals to the Holy Bible of his day, the Old Testament, to say what I believe lines up with the word and it is the true gospel.  Here’s what Paul wrote for us.  Open your ears and hearts to the gospel.

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.  ² Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?  ³ Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  ⁴ Did you suffer so many things in vain - if indeed it was in vain?  ⁵ Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith - ⁶ just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?  ⁷ Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.  ⁸ And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."  ⁹ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.  ¹⁰ For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."  ¹¹ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The righteous shall live by faith.”   ¹² But the law is not of faith, rather "The one who does them shall live by them."  ¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" -  ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

I want to start off today by saying that I am a man under a curse.  I am a cursed man, and I don’t say that lightly.  I believe it with all of my heart.  Now, that might be something odd to you because we don’t talk about cursing in the sense that what I mean of being a cursed person.  We might think about curses when it comes to sports like baseball.  You guys have heard of the curse of the bambino, right, that's on the city of Boston?  It’s a claim that the city had a horrible baseball team and so they couldn't win a World Series for 86 years, from 1918 to 2004, and so every year as they lost and they lost, they began to feel like the gods are against us.  And so someone came up with the curse of the bambino when they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1918.  Well, if you know in 2004 they won the World Series and the newspapers in town said, “The curse has been broken.”  That’s the way most people tend to think about curses or they think about something like the curse of the mummy, and you see those movies where somebody goes in this ancient crypt and they move something they’re not supposed to and it awakens the undead who come out with this vengeance against them because they’ve been cursed.  But what do I mean...what do I mean today when I talk about being a cursed man?

If you’ll look at the screen, I've got up here a definition of curse:  A solemn utterance to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.  I’ll read it again--a solemn utterance to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something. The idea here is you go to someone who has contact with the higher powers, the deity so to speak, maybe a witch doctor in your village, and you give them a chicken or you give them money and they do something.  They put a curse on your neighbor and it’s a way of calling down the supernatural powers on high to ‘sic ‘em’.   That’s the concept, the idea behind a curse.  Now am I saying that my life has been cursed, that there’s some witch doctor in Glen Carbon that’s got it in for John Roberts and he’s killed a chicken and sprinkled the blood on my front porch and I'm now doomed?  No.  But I am a cursed man. 

The question is who has invoked the curse on me?  Who has brought calamity, punishment, harm upon me that I'm a cursed man?  The answer is me.  Me.  See Paul is talking in this text about the gospel and he makes reference here...one of six times Paul quotes the Old Testament here...and he makes reference here in verse 10 with this statement:  For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."    Paul’s quoting the Bible here.  He’s quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy.  It’s the fifth book of the Old Testament.  The word ‘Deuteronomy’ is Greek for the second law because it’s the second time in the Bible the Ten Commandments are mentioned.  This book is really a sermon from Moses.  At the end of his ministry he’s standing before the Israelites and he is talking to them about their special relationship with God.  They’re covenant people.  They’ve just come out of Egypt.  They’ve just passed through the Red Sea.  They’ve just received the law from the Lord.  They are covenant people and so here Moses begins to assign a ritual that they are to practice, that is that there are twelve tribes in Israel and they’re to be a choir.  They’re going to gather for a responsive reading, and so he has six of the tribes on Mt. Gerizim, he has six on Mt. Ebal, and the Levites who are the priests read the law to everyone and they recite the blessings for those who obey the law and the catalog of curses for disobedience that would happen for those who did not follow the law.  At the end of every statement, the people of God gathered together would confirm the truthfulness of this covenant by saying the word ‘amen’.  You guys know what the word amen means, right?  It means the preacher’s done and now we can go to lunch.  Amen (from audience).  Alright, I heard that, and that’s you Cory, right?  So where we going to go today?  I’ll pronounce amen right now if you take me somewhere nice.  Amen means let it be so, let it be true.  And so we’re going to practice.  I want you to be like the Israelites, I want me to be like a Levite.  I'm going to read some of the curses that are mentioned in the law, and when I finish a sentence I would like you to say amen as a way of practicing the curses.  Okay? 

Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.  Amen (congregation). 

Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road.  Amen (congregation).

Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife because he has uncovered his father’s nakedness.  Amen (congregation).

Cursed be anyone who strikes down his neighbor in secret.  Amen (congregation).

Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.  Amen (congregation).

And my favorite one, cursed be anyone that interrupts the preacher’s sermon.  That’s not in there Cory, you’re safe brother. 

And then at the end of it, the last statement is this one:  Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.  Amen (congregation).

So this is the text that Paul is appealing to and he’s saying here if you don’t follow the law, if you don’t follow the rules, you’re a cursed man.  So this text does not say John Roberts is cursed. But I've got a noodle and I read every one there and I know everyone that doesn’t always follow the law is cursed, and I'm one of those that don’t always follow the law, ergo I am a cursed man.  But, ‘everyone’ is an awfully broad statement.  Who might it include?  It includes them doesn’t it, because they don’t follow the rules--they’ve broken the law.  It includes those folks over there, right, because they...it’s not me, it’s them.  No ‘everyone’ is everyone.  We all are cursed people because we’ve all not been able to follow the rules of the law of God.   See, we have to stand before God some day and if we’re righteous, if we’re right people that are clean and we’ve not done anything wrong, we have nothing to fear.  But if we are unrighteous we have something to fear. 

When I was in the Marine Corps, the Marines had just instituted mandatory drug testing, and so every so often you’d have to take a random pee test, pee in a bottle.  They’d ship it off and they’d check your urine for marijuana, cocaine, whatever, and if you got busted you were in big trouble.  Now think about that for a moment.  If Cory...since you’ve entered the sermon, I'm going to pick on you...if Cory and I go to work tomorrow, work in the same place and we happen to have a random drug test, and Cory is clean, never done any marijuana, never done any lines of cocaine, he’s a clean guy.  Do you have anything to worry about?  Not at all because he’s righteous, he’s not done anything wrong.  But what about if this weekend I kicked back a couple of beers and shot a couple games of pool, and one of my friends had one of those crazy left-handed cigarettes and I took a couple hits off of it.  Do I have something to fear?  Absolutely, because judgment is coming.  I'm going to get found out, I'm going to get exposed, and then there’s a consequence for that.  Do you see where I'm going? 

Righteous people have nothing to fear before God.  It’s the unrighteous people that do.  But you and I, we’re going to all stand as humans and give an account of ourselves before God for every thought that we’ve had, every word that we spoke, every deed that we’ve done, every little white lie that we’ve told, every judgmental thought that we had, every thief-like action.  So if you can begin to see this, if you’re like me, maybe you’re going, “Hey, wait a minute, I'm a cursed person, too.”  I mean let me ask you a question.  How many lies to you have to tell to be a liar?  How many?  I see a hand there.  One...not ten, just one. 

Jesus says...let me ask you this.  We know that one of the Ten Commandments is about adultery--you shouldn't commit adultery.  Am I innocent if I've not done it with my body but I've done it with my mind?  How would my wife feel if she knew I was sitting around thinking about another woman in an intimate way?  Do you think she’d be happy?  I’d say, “Honey, I didn’t do it, I just thought about it.”  I guarantee my wife would thump me in the head as quick as she could say go.  And Jesus says if a person...he says the law says don’t commit adultery, but if a person looks at another person with lust in their heart, they’ve committed adultery with them.  So you see where I'm going here?  You starting to feel a little hot, wanting to loosen your collar?  When you start looking at the law and what it says about you, you start to squirm. 

So how much do you have to steal to be a thief?  So you know Bernie Madoff, right, this guy that was an investor?  He entered into this Ponzi scheme.  He ended up milking people out of millions and millions of dollars.  He’s arrested, he’s in prison now.  So what would be different?  How would I be better if like today after your offering I went in there and I cracked the safe open and I took out 500 bucks?  I’d be just as much of a thief, right?  Because it’s not like you’re only a thief if you get over a certain dollar amount.  A thief is a thief. 

A couple weeks ago there were I think 19 of us that went to see the movie Courageous.  Great movie, by the way--I want to encourage you all to see it--men, women, children.  It’s about fatherhood, about doing the right thing.  There’s a scene in there.  These two sheriff’s deputies are talking about how God's going to judge them, and this guy says, “Well, my good will outweigh my bad.”  And his friend, who understands the gospel, rebukes him and says, “Look, you know it doesn’t roll that way.”  He says, “There’s no good judge if I stand before him for murdering someone and I say ‘yes judge, I'm guilty of murder but I'm a good person.  I help out at the school and tutor kids.  I go to the homeless shelter every weekend.’  No judge that’s good is going to say well, I'm going to let you off then because I've done wrong.”  And what he said in the movie is absolutely right.  It’s not the good that we get judged for, but it’s the wrong that we get judged for. 

As I said, I'm a cursed man, and if you’re serious with yourself you know you’re a cursed person too because none of us are right with God by following the law, because it’s all things.  But Paul goes on in verse 13 to give us the root of the gospel.  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree."  Here Paul is saying the good news is that we are formerly cursed people and the reason that we’re no longer cursed is that Christ has stepped in and done something for us.  He has redeemed us from the curse of the law.  It’s a word that means he’s rescued us.  It’s a monetary transaction.  He’s come in and he’s paid something to let us go.  A good way to think about it would be imagine that I'm a death row inmate.  Tomorrow at midnight is my injection; I'm going to be put to death.  So tonight outside my cell a cart stops, a laundry cart, and a man walks away and before long some of the towels get pushed aside, and my twin brother stands up and he says, “John, I'm here to take your place.  I’ll get in the cell, you get in the basket.  I’ll cover you up.  You’re free.”  And then my twin goes into the cell, closes the door behind him.  I climb in the basket.  I'm covered up and before long I feel someone pushing the cart and then I feel it being moved into a truck, and then I feel the truck moving along and before long someone stops and opens the back and lets me out and says, “You’re free.”  I am a free man.  I'm not paying my penalty because my twin brother paid it for me. 

Now the problem with that analogy is if the judge found out, if the law found out, they’d still come look for me because I owe for my crime.  But what if the judge had said, “Your brother came to me, he wants to take your punishment, I have agreed to that.  You’re a free man to go.”  That is exactly what Jesus has done for us.  He’s come, he’s redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse.  This righteous innocent man was cursed for us and Paul appeals to Deuteronomy 21, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”   That’s just the quote there in Deuteronomy, but for the sake of time I'm going to skip that.  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" - so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.   In Christ Jesus you get blessings instead of curses.  You get forgiveness instead of condemnation.  You get the Spirit of God living in your heart instead of separation from God forever. 

So you today, friends, can be a formerly cursed person, too.  The question is are you?  Have you come to Christ?  Are you in Him by faith, trusting the Lord that He is your deliverer, that He’s redeemed you from the curse of the law?  That’s the gospel.  That’s the good news.  It’s called ‘substitutionary atonement’.  Jesus came and was our substitute, dying for all the wrong that we do, that we might have forgiveness and everlasting life.  So let me ask you, do you have your gospel right?  What do you do?  You open your life to Jesus.  You receive Him as your Lord and Savior.  You surrender yourself to him and say Son of God come and rescue me from my sin.  That’s the gospel.  Believe in it today.  Let’s pray.

Our Father and our God, I thank you that you are a redeeming God, that you from the very beginning planned that your Son, the innocent one, the Savior, would come and redeem us from sin on that Roman cross.  We thank you, Lord, that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.  Help us to live as if we truly believe that, forgiven people, free people, Spirit-empowered people, able and ready to follow with love our Master Jesus.  For we ask this prayer in His name.  Amen.