February 15, 2009

Lesson: Galatians 3.15-25

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INTRODUCTION

Misunderstanding ⁽¹⁾

Before performing a baptism, the priest approached the young father and said solemnly, "Baptism is a serious step. Are you prepared for it?"

"I think so," the man replied. "My wife has made appetizers and we have a caterer coming with plenty of cookies and cakes for all of our friends."

"I don't mean that," the priest responded. "I mean, are you prepared spiritually?"

"Oh, sure," came the reply. "I've got a keg of beer and a case of whiskey."

1. The young man's response shows an appalling ignorance of baptism.

1. It's okay to have a celebration.

2. What is this young man preparing for?

2. What difference does it make.

1. He is susceptible to gross misunderstanding and misuse of the rite of baptism.

2. Unless he learns differently, he will pass on his perceptions to another generation.

3. This is clearly what Paul is concerned about in Galatians.

1. It is a mind set.

2. It is a world view.

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MAIN BODY:

1. On March 12, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his first of many informal "Fireside Chats" to the American people by radio at 10 p.m. from his study at the White House. ⁽²⁾

1. FDR explained confidently his policies and calmed fears about the Great Depression.

2. By speaking to his audience as "my friends," the leader reached the average citizen with sincerity.

   1. "Men are not prisoners of fate," he said, "but only prisoners of their own minds."...

   2. With the spirit of unity, FDR ended his first chat with the words, "It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail."

3. "Men are not prisoners of fate," he said, "but only prisoners of their own minds."...

2. We are prisoners of our environment, the world in which we live. (The aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences, including the social cultural and spiritual forces that influence the shape of our lives.)

   4. C. S. Lewis told a story of an artist who was thrown into a dungeon whose only light came from a barred window high above. ⁽³⁾

   1. In the dungeon, the woman gave birth to a son.

   2. As he grew, she told him about the outside world, a world of wheat fields and mountain streams and cresting emerald waves crashing on golden shores.

   3. But the boy couldn't understand her words.

   5. So with the drawing pad and pencils she had brought with her into the dungeon, she drew him pictures.

   1. At first she thought he understood.

   2. But one day while talking with him, she realized he didn't.

   3. He thought the outside world was made up of charcoal-gray pencil lines on faded-white backgrounds, and concluded that the world outside the dungeon was less than the world inside.

   6. The story is a parable, showing us in much the same way the artist tried to show her son, that all we see before us are merely pencil sketches of the world beyond us.

   1. Every person is a stick-figured image of God; every place of natural beauty, a charcoal rendering of Paradise; every pleasure, a flat and faded version of the joy that awaits us.

   2. But we need to be boosted to a window before we can see beyond the lines of our own experience.

   3. Only then will we see how big the trees are, how bright the flowers, how breathtaking the view.

3. We are prisoners of our ideology. (Doctrines, myths, beliefs)

   1. Pierre Allard, Prison Chaplain had an extraordinary experience that moved and changed him greatly.

   2. He quotes Folsom Prison Blues.

When I was just a baby,
my mama told me, "Son,
always be a good boy;
don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno,
just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin'
I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folk eatin'
in a fancy dining car.
They're prob'ly drinkin' coffee
and smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a movin',
and that's what tortures me.

3. That's "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash. Most people would probably say that anyone who'd shoot "a man in Reno, just to watch him die," deserved prison and a lot more.

   1. So what if he envies people on the outside "drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars."

   2. He did the crime, he does the time. Period.

4. Pierre Allard understands, perhaps better than most.

   1. In 1980, his brother Andre was brutally murdered - shot in the face and then dumped in a field outside Montreal.

   2. His killers were never found.

5. Pierre went to see the frozen body because he wanted, he says, "to see the ugliness of evil."

   1. Pierre had been a chaplain in one of Canada's roughest prisons, Archambault Penitentiary, and the whole experience nearly drove him out of the chaplaincy.

   2. He had been preaching about reconciliation and forgiveness, but all of a sudden he wanted something else.

   1. He wanted revenge.

   2. Raw, naked revenge.

6. Who could blame him?

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4. We are prisoners of our perceptions.

1. To perceive: ⁽⁴⁾

   1. to become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses: I perceived an object looming through the mist.

   2. to recognize, discern, envision, or understand: I perceive a note of sarcasm in your voice. This is a nice idea but I perceive difficulties in putting it into practice.

2. Dr. Ronald M. Patterson, Shiloh Church, Dayton, Ohio, preached a sermon in which he told of his own personal experience. ⁽⁵⁾

   1. One day many years ago, as part of my training, I worked at Boston City Hospital as a chaplain's assistant. I was assigned to a prison ward, and one of the prisoners there was a big-time drug dealer.

   2. It was my duty to visit him because he was very ill.

   3. Well, with the half-hearted pseudo-compassion of the typical do-gooder, I did my duty.

   4. Later, I confessed this to the Roman Catholic nun who was my supervisor.

   1. I said, 'How can I go and prey with this man who is ruining the life of this city?

   2. He deserves his illness and a whole lot more.'

   5. Do you know what she said to me? 'Patterson, who died and elected you God? Somewhere deep within that man, covered by the layers of pain and denial and every rotten thing he has ever done, there is the kernel of God's image. Your only job is to see that spark; and the only way you can ever see it is to forget everything else about whatever anyone else has told you about right and wrong and believe with your whole heart that the spark is there. He, too, just as much as anyone you will ever meet, is a child of God's love.'

5. Jesus Christ through Paul seeks to set people free.

   1. If there is any biblical character who benefitted from restorative justice, it is Paul himself, who started his career as a violent anti-Christian.

   1. On the road to Damascus, he was "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1), having just approved of the killing of the deacon Stephen.

   2. A light from heaven caused him to fall to the ground, but he was not killed - he was given a second chance.

   3. He converted and went on to serve the first-century church.

   2. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul recalls that "before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed" (3:23).

1. Call this the "tougher justice" approach - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, following the divine law that Paul describes as a "disciplinarian" for us.

2. "But now that faith has come," he goes on to explain, "we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith" (vv. 25-26).

3. In Christ Jesus, we are all children of God. Jew and Greek. Slave and free. Male and female. Victim and offender. 

3. All one in Christ Jesus.