Struggles From Without and Within

11/05/11

Scripture:

At this time I want to invite you to turn with me in the Bible.  You can look in the Bibles in the seat rack in front of you or in your own Bible...which I hope you’re in the habit of bringing...to the Book of Galatians.  We’ve been studying Galatians now for several weeks and our sermon series title is Getting Our Gospel Right.   We have a message.  We have good news.  We have a gospel that’s been given to us to believe in and to stand by and to share with the world, and it’s up to us to make sure that we don’t lose it, that we don’t corrupt it, that we don’t change it.  And so Paul wrote this letter to the churches of Galatia, a group of churches that he planted, because they were beginning to drift and to lose their focus on the gospel.  And may the Lord speak to us through his letter today.  Here’s what Paul writes:

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.  ² Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.  ³ I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.  ⁴ You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.  ⁵ For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.  ⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.  ⁷ You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?  ⁸ This persuasion is not from him who calls you.  ⁹ A little leaven leavens the whole lump.  ¹⁰ I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.  ¹¹ But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.  ¹² I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!  ¹³ For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  ¹⁴ For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  ¹⁵ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

So in our text before us today Paul is still discussing with this congregation this matter of what it is that they are believing or almost falling into believing, and as I thought about this text this week and I thought about how I could teach you about it, I thought about a game that I used to play.  I started playing this game in the Marines.  When we would have some down time, our commander would get us together on a place where there was some high ground and we would play King of the Mountain.  Some of you may have played that as a kid.  I never did, but I enjoyed playing that as an adult, and the premise of the game is this:  Someone stands on the high ground, like me up here on the raised platform, and your job is to come up and push me off.  If you push me off, you’re now the king of the mountain and somebody else has to come and push you off.  And so our commanders...I guess to keep some of our restlessness in check...we’d be out like in Saudi Arabia and there’s a big dune of sand, and they would say, “Alright, you three Marines go to the top,” and the rest of them would surround it.  And they would say, “Go,” and everybody would start climbing the hill with the intent of pushing you, making you fall down, pushing you down the hill.  And your job is to push back for your life so that you can stay the king of the mountain.  You get the premise for that, right?  That came to my mind when I thought about this text because the idea here is a struggle.  

We all know about struggles.  We have struggles with people at work.  We have struggles with our family members.  We even have struggles in church, as Paul’s letter attests to today.  In fact, what he’s saying here is that you and I, from the moment we call ourselves Christians and we put on the uniform so to speak and say we’re a believer in Christ...we’re going to experience struggles.  And those struggles are coming from two places, from without and from within.  And so as I looked at this text, I thought about this concept of struggling and in it Paul, in fact, mentions the struggles that come against us from without and the struggles that come toward us even from within.  So I’d like to begin by showing you a couple scriptures and kind of explaining to you what I mean by this.  So let’s start with the first verse of what I read to you today.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.  There's that image of king of the mountain.  Stand firm.  Don’t let anybody push you off where you believe, but stand firm because you’re free in Jesus Christ.  So Paul here again is talking about the struggles that are taking place and throughout this text he talks about mainly the struggles from outside of us, but then at the very end he touches into the struggles that happen within us.  So let’s start with the external struggle, those who want to push you down the mountain, who want to lead you away from Christ.    

Now when you think about that, who are the opponents out there that you might struggle with as a Christian?  Some of the answers may be pretty obvious.  We might think about people like an atheist who wants to try to convince you that you’re stupid for being a Bible-believing Christian.  That’s an obvious person kind of pushing you away from Christ.  And so a lot of our kids, they go off to college, they sit in classes with professors who want to make fun of their faith and their belief in the Bible’s authority.  And so there are those kinds of opponents, and we hear about those from time to time even in the news.  I heard yesterday in the news about a case that the Supreme Court didn’t hear and it was between the American Atheists and the Utah Department of Transportation.  See they sued the Utah Department of Transportation because 14 highway patrol officers had been killed, and at the places on the highway where they were killed this private agency raised the funds to raise a memorial and put it there in memory of that fallen officer.  And it happened to be in the shape of a what?  A cross.  And the atheists said you can’t do that, you’re establishing religion.  They took them to court and currently they won, and so the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said the State of Utah has to take down these 14 crosses.  Now that’s kind of an obvious opponent that’s trying to push us away from Christ, and there were those opponents in the time of Paul as well.  You have to understand that when people converted to Christianity in the time of the New Testament they would of course have to break all their ties with the cult of the pagan deities to whom they formerly had been devoted.  What I mean by that is when you become a Christian you begin to break ties with society and you lose your social amenities, your club life, your festivals.  In fact, becoming a Christian involved the disruption of your whole pattern of life including business relationships, social connections and civic loyalties.  Christians were frequently regarded as anarchists.  You know what an anarchist is, someone that doesn’t respect the authority of the rulers.  Why?  Because they wouldn't go to the temple of the different gods in the communities and burn incense to them that the silver industry would be popular.  Or they wouldn't go to the temple where the agricultural god was to burn an offering there so they’d have a good crop.  And they were seen as troublemakers by the opponents.  But that’s not who Paul’s talking about here.  He’s talking about a subtle opponent, a struggle from without, but it’s people close to you.  It’s people who wear the same uniform as you.  It’s people who sing the same songs as you and read the same Bible, and they call themselves Christians just like you do.  It’s a subtle struggle.  

Paul gives us here...if you go back and look at chapter 2 of Galatians verse 4, he reminds us that there are people in the community of the church that he calls ‘false brothers.’  You’ll see that there in verse 4.  They’ve slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery.  So he’s talking about people in the church who are not really brothers.  On the outside they look like Christians but on the inside they’re not, and they’re trying to lead the church away from Jesus Christ.  That Paul’s saying is the struggle without.   It’s the person in the same congregation.  Why, what is it that they were doing that was so bad?  They were teaching that Jesus plus something equals righteousness.  Faith in Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, plus the act of circumcision and following the law made you right with God. And Paul says no--Jesus plus something is nothing.  Either your righteousness is found in him alone or you lose everything.  And not only did Paul say that, the great reformer, John Calvin, back in the 16^th century says, “Whoever wants to have a half Christ loses the whole.”  It’s the same concept.  You can’t have Jesus and something else or Jesus gets lost and pushed to the side.  

Paul has some pretty specific things to say here about this.  Let’s look at the text, verses 2-4 of chapter 5.  I read it to you earlier, I want to read it again:   Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.   I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.  You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.  Paul’s making an earnest appeal to his audience here.  He’s wanting them to understand that when you accept this concept that you need to add something to what Jesus did on the cross for you to be right with God, you’re in trouble.  You lose what Christ can do for you.  If you say you’re going to follow part of the law, then you’re bound to all of it, and no one is going to keep all of it.  And I like that phrase there in verse 4:  You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law.  What he’s saying here is the moment that you believe what these other people say, you’ve lost it.  You no longer are in a healthy vital relationship with Christ.  

I like that language of being severed from Christ.  It got me thinking about those old timey diving suits.  You know, the ones that you see in the old movies where you have the suit and you have the big round helmet that you stick on the top of it.  And then there’s a hose that runs out of the top of it and it runs up to the boat.  And up on the boat is a compressor that’s pushing in fresh air.  So you’re down on the bottom of the ocean walking around and as long as that hose has you connected to fresh air you’re alive.  What happens if a shark comes by and severs that hose with a big swipe?  I'm in trouble.  Immediately I've lost my connection to my life source, and Paul is saying it’s the very same thing.  Your life source, your source of eternal life and righteousness is faith in Jesus Christ alone.  Don’t be corrupted by those who want to push you down the mountain and lead you away from Jesus.  

You know, this wasn't a struggle that only happened in Paul’s time.  This is a struggle that the churches wrestle through in every generation.  It was very predominant in the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century.  There’s a reason that we are a Protestant church, because our predecessors saw that the church was getting corrupt and it was losing the focus that it’s faith in Jesus alone that makes us righteous before a holy God.  

So what do you and I do in the struggles today when we’re having people trying to push us away from Christ, even if it’s within the church.  What do we do?  How do we respond to people that seek to shipwreck our faith?  Let’s do like Paul did.  You speak up.  You confront it.  You draw attention to it.  You say this is wrong teaching and let’s resist it and stand firm on the gospel revealed through Holy Scripture.  Why do we have to do that?  Why did Paul do that?  Why did he fight so earnestly in this letter to win a wayward church back to the truth?  Because the church’s life was at stake.  Eden Church’s spiritual life will be connected directly to our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And so Paul said there are struggles without.  Resist them.    

But now I want to real quickly go on to say that Paul also mentions struggles within.  Let’s go back real quick to the metaphor of king of the mountain.  I'm on the mountain and several of you run up and try to push me away and I'm successful in pushing you down and I'm keeping myself the victor and then all of a sudden I go, “You know, I don’t want to be on the mountain anymore.”  The reason why is Gail’s over there and she’s holding up some ice cream going, “Hey, come get some ice cream.”  Hey, I want the ice cream so I walk down the mountain and I've lost the game by my own choice.  There is an inward struggle within us that wants to lead us away from Christ just as much as there is an outward struggle of people wanting to push us away from Christ.  And Paul alludes to that here in this text.  Let me read it to you and help you to think about it.  

We’re not going to have time to fully pull this apart and talk about it, but let’s get started today.  Paul says:  You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  He uses the term there the flesh.  I don’t know how much you know about the Bible, but the Bible says that there’s something in you and me, there’s something affecting us, that leads us away from God.  And the New Testament here calls it the flesh.  It’s interesting if you happen to read from the New International Version.  It replaces that word ‘flesh’, which is really what the Greek word is, with the word ‘sinful nature’.  So literally it would say, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the sinful nature.”  And the reality of the Bible is you have a sinful nature.  I have a sinful nature.  Believers in Christ are going to have something within us that’s going to lead us away from God, away from truth.  We’re going to want to live for ourselves and instead of sacrificing and living for the Lord.  It’s called the flesh.  It’s called the sinful nature, and you have it and I have it.  And next Sunday Mike is going to pick up in verse 16 and talk more as Paul does about that nature within you.  How do you resist that nature that wants you to make wrong choices, like to be dishonest?  How do you resist that nature that wants you to lust after another person or to have greed?  What do you do?  Well, the gospel is the answer and when you get severed from Christ you lose all ability to control that part of you that wants to go its own way.  

Next week Mike’s going to address that more, but as we come to a close I want you to think about this particular imagery here today.  We come to the communion table.  We receive bread, we receive the wine or the grape juice, whichever one you take as a reminder that Jesus Christ died for us that we might be righteous before God and to give His life to us that we would have the power not only to be told we’re righteous but to become righteous through the work of His Spirit within us.  So as you come today to the bread and the wine, let’s remember that you and I as followers of Jesus, we’re in this struggle.  There are forces outside of us that want to lead us away from Christ because he’s our life, but there are struggles within our heart that want to lead us the same way—away from the Lord Jesus.  And the answer is faith in Him alone and the power of the Spirit within us will set us free.  You and I are called to freedom and the freedom is an opportunity through love to serve one another.  Let’s pray together. 

Gracious God, I want to thank you for revealing to us that there is something wrong within our lives.  We see it in the aging of our bodies.  We see it in the dying of the human race.  We see it in the news whenever we look at crime and evil and violence and war, but we see it in the mirror, Lord, when we look into our hearts and we know that our affections are for our self and not for you.  But I thank you for the good news that you sent Jesus to make it right.  Lord, help us to get our gospel right and centered upon Him that we might truly know the forgiveness and the power of His life in our midst.  As we come to the table today, bless this time for each of us.  Work in us what needs to be done, that the old nature, the sin nature, can be put aside and we might live empowered by you.  Help us in the struggle to be faithful to Jesus, for our sake and for those who would believe because of what we say.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.