Isaiah 28:14-30:11, Galatians 3:23-4:31, Psalms 62:1-12, Proverbs 23:19-21
Today is the 18th day of September. Can you believe it? This month is just flyin by, isn’t it? We have like already crossed the center of the month and are in the back half. And I didn’t even realize that until just now. Nevertheless, here we are and we’re where we’re supposed to be and we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, we’re stepping out of the chaos of life and just letting God’s word become a part of our day, and a part of our thoughts and allowing you to seep into our hearts and transform us. So, we’ve been reading from the New English Translation this week, which is what we will continue to do until this week is over. And we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. Isaiah chapter 28 verse 14 through 30 verse 11 today.
Commentary:
Alright. Since we met the apostle Paul in the book of Acts and began in the book of Romans to read his writings, we’ve spent plenty of time kinda digging into the theological challenges that were going on in Paul’s time so that we could better understand where he’s coming from, especially here in this letter to the Galatians. And, so, we’ve looked at why his views would have been perceived as controversial or heretical to religious Jews and for that matter even religious Jews who had begun to be followers of Jesus and we’ve explored the Jew / Gentile issue so that we could understand better the cultural challenges that the early church was actually facing. And, so, now we can wonder why it even matters, like these are old arguments, these matters are settled, right? What does is it have to do with me? Paul’s writings made it into the Bible. That’s got to be good enough. It’s been a long time since any of this stuff would be life-threatening for most people. So, let’s look back once again at what Paul said in our reading from the letter to the Galatians today and see if we can bring this struggle just a little closer. So, Paul says, “the law had become our guardian until Christ so that we could be declared righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we’re no longer under a guardian for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” Okay, buckle your seatbelts, this is going to be disruptive. We can read what Paul…well…what we just read out of the book of Galatians and just go, “Great. Like, that’s great news. I don’t have to even think about the Mosaic law. Thank goodness because we read that when we were reading Leviticus and I can’t imagine trying to adopt that into this modern world. Thank God I don’t even have to think about it. God sees me righteous before Him through faith.” And that would be a reasonable, common way to look at things now. But when Paul is referring to the law, he is essentially referring to the Torah, what the Jewish Hebrew people would’ve understood as Scripture, right? So, the Bible that we have, the one that we’re reading through in a year, it didn’t exist like it does now when Paul wrote this letter, right? So, the Gospels that tell the story of Jesus ministry and life hadn’t been written yet. The New Testament was in no way formed, right? So, Paul would’ve had no way to get up in front of a group of people and refer to anything from Matthew to Revelation when he wrote the letter to the Galatians. Like, he could refer to his own letters, but there was no cohesive New Testament at all at that point. If there were a Bible in this context, it would’ve been the Torah. And if we were to read this passage again and replace the word law with the word Bible, then we would immediately begin to see why people were struggling so much against Paul. So, let’s do it. “The Bible had become our guardian until Christ so that we could be declared righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” So, you see, like if the apostle Paul were alive today saying all that, he wouldn’t probably get all that far And, so, we can see the struggle that he had as he did his ministry, which kind of does bring us to something a little on the delicate side. What is the Bible? Is it God’s holy word that instructs us on how to live our lives? Like, we would probably agree that's…that’s fair…that’s fair. Okay, what if we could obey everything the Bible says? For that matter, let’s just whittle it down. What if we could obey everything the New Testament says? Would following the rules alone make us right with God? Right? So, you see how this issue is still alive and raging today? Do you see how much of our faith is consumed by getting everybody to be in line with the rules? And, so, let’s just pick up what Paul is saying to take this further. So, Paul’s like, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.” Alright. Me reading those words to you. You even backing it up and listening to those words again, those words, reading those words does nothing. Having faith in the reality that those words are describing changes everything, which in part is the point being made here. Adhering to a set of rules or even claiming some allegiance to a belief system can’t save you. The Bible can’t save you or me. But the Bible points the way to the God who can. So, if we’re processing these words every day and doing this ritual of being in the Bible looking for the recipe, like what commands do I need to obey then we are missing the point. There is a God who is behind the Bible and the Bible points us to God. But if we just listen to the words it’s not doing anything. If we don’t reach out in faith, we aren’t gonna find God. We will…we will have simply read a bunch of words about God. And as we’ve talked about so many times before, knowing everything about a person does not mean in any way that you are in a relationship with them. So, Paul, what he’s trying to say here is, “faith is the key.” If we do not step beyond what we think we know and into a relationship with God by faith then we haven’t really gone anywhere, which brings us to consider our own journey. Are we worshiping and defending the Bible because a lot of people are? Are we worshiping and defending a certain theological position about the Bible or adhering to a certain doctrine in the Bible? Not that anything…not that any of the things…I do those things but if that’s where we stop then we’ve lost the spirit of the whole thing. We’re waging a battle over what people can and can’t do. We’re trying to manage each other’s behavior when God is right there saying, “come to Me. All you who are weary, come to Me.” Like, this whole book is supposed to show us how to come to God, not so that we’re better equipped to manage everybody’s sin and point out everybody’s sin who goes to church with us. So, basically have we read words that tell us that we could die to who we once were without Jesus? Or by faith have we actually died to the person we once were? If we look at ourselves, we find that we’re very often trying to obey the rules so that God will even notice us. Paul, on the other hand, spent his life trying to reveal the God behind it all, the God who has adopted us into His own family as His own children.
Prayer:
Father, certainly this…this does bring it near. Certainly, this does bring some of the early struggles that we can see in these letters home. And we find that, no, these issues that we might consider irrelevant or ancient are very alive and very present with us today. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that today. Why are we doing this? Are we doing this because we’re scared about the afterlife? Are we doing this because we believe that You are there, and it would be good to have You on our side? Or have we reached across a chasm in faith into the dark only to find that You were reaching back, and You have loved us with every breath we’ve ever taken? Are we taking your word and trying to dissect it like it’s a science experiment or are we allowing your word to wash over us and lead us to your heart? Come Holy Spirit, we pray, into that question. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.