Drop the H and spell it backwards! Intro:

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Egbert Scott
5 years ago
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1 Drop the H and spell it backwards! Intro: We are returning today to our series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit and we have camped out in Galatians chapter 5 for the past couple of weeks, so I am going to ask you to turn there and we will read verses together. Today we are going to be looking at Letting the Spirit win! Text: Galatians 5:13-15 As I was preparing for today s message, I was thinking back to a great fight from my youth or rather a series of boxing matches between two great boxers by the name of Cassius Clay and Joe Frazier. Cassius Clay later became Muhammad Ali! You might remember two of their great matches, the Rumble in the jungle, and the Thrilla in Manilla? Why was I thinking about fighting this week you might ask, because Galatians is a very combative letter, it is a take the gloves off, for you hockey fans, kind of discussion where Paul works to eliminate a danger to the Christian faith by the Judaisers, the circumcision party. And yet despite the need for a good defense of the faith, we are called to wisdom as Christians that helps us discern what is a threat to Christian faith from the needless fights that are a threat to Christian unity. There is a great big difference! Over Christmas, our family got together and unfortunately an argument broke out. To provide a little background, members of our family have joined a church that would be in my estimation, an ultra-conservative, church (There is a wide spectrum of what is called Calvinist) where the doctrines of election and predestination from a certain sectarian Calvinist perspective are taught very clearly and in depth. The people who teach and attend there are very dedicated to the word of God so this is not a criticism in any way. For those of you who have studied doctrine, you know that there is always the danger that immaturity and misplaced zeal have caused some to focus on the spread of their brand of doctrine rather than the sharing of essential and common doctrine and spreading of the gospel itself. One of the conversations got quite heated and I realized that we had gone down a wrong path and into a trap of the Devil to be more accurate. I should have shown mature restraint as the elder in the argument! It seems that this kind of fight, wrong kind of fight had broken out in one, or some of the churches in Galatia. Let s begin this morning with a closer look at verse 13.

2 I. Called to liberty We have all heard the term called in our Christian life and usually with respect to full time ministry, but here is another calling, and that calling is to liberty or freedom. For those who have been with us for the past couple of weeks, you would now know that this liberty is a liberty from the Law of Moses and especially a demand that Christians get circumcised. At the heart of Paul s teaching is that we are to add nothing to the cross of Christ when it comes to our salvation, even if the people are persuasive and even if there is a personal cost to resisting them. If you don t feel free today, freedom, liberty is calling to you to get rid of your legalism! II. The opportunity of liberty Next, we are going to look at the opportunity, or rather opportunities afforded us by liberty. The word liberty here is actually rooted in a military understanding. It is rooted in the phrase, Starting or martialling point, and the base of operations. When you begin a battle, and today s message is about a battle, you do not know the outcome, hopefully your strategists are on the ball and give you a chance to win! Paul is talking to Christians here, You, my brothers 1. The opportunity to indulge the sinful nature Obviously this is the negative and the wrong option for the free Christian to take. So, what then is the sinful nature or as more traditional versions call it, the flesh? We want at all cost not to take our freedom opportunity to indulge the sinful nature. Commentators have long sought to define sinful nature or flesh. They have called it physical nature, human nature, lower nature and corrupt nature and all this is part of it, but let s simplify it right here. Look at the word flesh! Now, eliminate the H and spell it backwards and what do you have? That s right, just plain old self. I don t think that I have adequately described the fight yet; so let me regress a little. The battle within each and every one of us is the battle of flesh verses the Spirit. We are not talking here about the spiritual nature of man but rather the battle between our flesh, self and God, the Holy Spirit! God lives in you, not a godish or godlike thing but God, all of Him! Let s move on to the other opportunity. 2. The opportunity to serve

3 Rather serve one another in love. The other opportunity you have is for serving. Serving should be important to us because it was important to the Lord. The Lord s example to us was this, The Son of man did not come to be served but rather to, serve. You only have to think back to the Lord s Table at the time of the very last Passover in John 13 and remember his humbling act of taking up a basin and a towel and washing the feet of some very unworthy apostles including Judas Iscariot. It is one thing to wash the feet of a friend to make a point, but to wash the feet of an enemy, one who seeks to kill you, now that is another deal altogether. Now here is the Spirit of God, witnessed by God in you, saying serve one another in love, and then Paul quotes scripture, a quote that has caused some to think Paul to be contradicting Himself. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. 1 It almost seems that Paul is suggesting some form of works here and you would be right if you think so. There is no contradiction between faith and works. Christian faith always produces Christian works. We learned way back in verse 6b that faith works through love! The NIV says serve one another in love, but I am going to stick with the traditional verses here. Faith has a helper to amplify it, to express it and that help is love! Did Jesus have an opinion on this? I am not so sure we should just be trusting Paul s opinion, some might think to themselves. So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. 2 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. 3 1 The Holy Bible: New International Version (electronic ed.) (Le 19:18). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 2 The Holy Bible: New International Version (electronic ed.) (Mt 7:12). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 3 The Holy Bible: New International Version (electronic ed.) (Mt 22:38 40). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

4 I trust you are seeing that there are two groups that receive our love. Firstly, we are to love our brothers and our sisters, even the ones we don t like. We are called here in church to love the ones we don t agree with too! This is all clear, we will come back to this, but then there is that big word neighbor and the Jewish people missed the whole point on this so Jesus helped clear it all up with the parable, or maybe not parable, of the Good Samaritan. This is brilliant, you have the robbed and wounded man, the religious passers by and then finally, a Samaritan comes to help with his time, his things, his money and a commitment of his future. He promised to come back. A lot of Christians like to give kindness a quick blast but the quick blast in a kindness without ongoing commitment. Who are our neighbors? Wow, what a question, we have West Quebec, CFB Petawawa, and what about the Golden Lake reserve folks. And of course all of the people of the region. We must love them all too! And now we come to a liberty that has gone bad! III. Liberty gone wrong It seems that a fight has broken out in the church or churches! 1. The biters There is a decent sitcom that airs on Wednesday nights called The Middle. The youngest child is an intelligent but socially awkward kid who has to go to a socialization class. Each kid, all boys, has a unique problem but they added a cute little girl to the mix last season and she appeared perfect on the outside until she got ticked at one of the boys and she bit him. Ah she s biter, they all said together having figured out the problem. Churches have biters too! 2. The devourers In addition to biters Paul adds devourers and he is trying to convey the picture of wild beasts fighting and winding up tearing each other to pieces and literally eating each other. There is nothing more embarrassing, more shameful, more unbecoming than Christians biting and devouring one another.

5 It seems the circumcision or perhaps even the What do we use our freedom for debate has caused some divisions. Here is what Paul had say about this in Corinthians, I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers, some from Chloe s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, I follow Paul ; another, I follow Apollos ; another, I follow Cephas ; still another, I follow Christ. 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? 4 Paul s commands are quite strong here! He is calling the church to unity, to make sure that every single Christian has their faith working through a love that rises above every argument. He is not advocating a faith working through love that makes peace with things that are untruthful and I am speaking of wrong doctrine on the essential things. Here is some additional help from Paul when it comes to arguments of a theological nature or any nature at all. Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23 Don t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. 5 i. Flee the evil desires of youth Sex outside of marriage is not the only evil desire of youth! Arguments are too and that goes for marital ones. The worst fight my wife and I ever had been over the icing on a donut! But we are talking about church arguments here. ii. Skip the stupid stuff 4 The Holy Bible: New International Version (electronic ed.) (1 Co 1:10 13). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 5 The Holy Bible: New International Version (electronic ed.) (2 Ti 2:22 26). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

6 I wish at Christmas that I had skipped the stupid stuff. Whether I chose the Christian ship heading for eternal life or the ship chose me is not worth a family fight! (Especially not at Christmas) iii. Gentleness works Yes, I know there are those who just keep coming with arguments! But if you keep fighting, the trap of the Devil that has them will ensnare you too! In the last year I have had two very important relationships that have been very strained by situations. They have had political dynamics; personal relationship dynamics but they have also had devil dynamics, intimidation on both sides. iv. Recognize the Devil at work Through prayer and the counsel of wisdom, I saw, seated with Christ in heavenly places, the Devil at work on earth. The issues straining the relationships had nothing to do with truth; they were all about opinions, and other things that were much less important than Christian relationship. Here is what I did. Now, keep in mind that I, the flesh would like to keep fighting, but God s Spirit give other direction. I was directed by God to go to those people, to tell them that my priority was them, our relationship and friendship, that they were more important to me than any thing that was straining and stressing things. I laid my argument down first and that allowed for the whole thing to be defused. It was like a military engineer taking a part an IED! The really wonderful thing was that when I gave up my rights, healed the relationship first, that the other person responded giving me more than I hoped for in my mental and carnal reasoning and arguing! This is how you give that old Devil a great big kick! Conclusion: The best way to conclude today s message is to tell you about a real life story of between George Whitfield the great English reformed preacher and John Wesley, the great Arminian theologian and Evangelist. The two had a sharp disagreement on the matter of divine election and predestination. One of Whitfield s followers came to him one day and very smugly asked the question, Do you think we will see Wesley in heaven? Whitfield replied, I very much doubt it. Whitfield s follower smiled with relief, believing to have made his point. Whitfield went on, John Wesley walks so close to God that when we get to glory, he will be so

7 near Jesus that we probably won t see him from the far off place that we will be standing! Whitfield nicely makes our point today! I am going to encourage you to follow my example to heal up the unhealed relationships in your life. You go first!

The Weirdest Story In The Bible

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