{"id":31,"date":"2010-06-20T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/?p=31"},"modified":"2017-03-29T10:09:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T17:09:45","slug":"die-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/20\/die-to-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Die to Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Galatians 2: 11-21 | June 20, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suppose someone came up to you and said this:\u00a0 I want you to die.<\/em> What?\u00a0 Did I hear you right?\u00a0 You might get angry offended or hurt.\u00a0 How could you say such a thing!\u00a0 But suppose it was a person you knew cared deeply about you.\u00a0 What?<\/p>\n

Now it’s time to quit supposing.\u00a0 As your pastor.\u00a0 I want you to die.\u00a0 Please, before you storm out of here let me explain.\u00a0 I’m not talking about closing your eye for the last time. I’m talking about the kind of death that the apostle Paul speaks of here.\u00a0 It’s a kind of death each of us must experience to have the life God gives both now and forever.\u00a0\u00a0 In other words,<\/p>\n

DIE TO LIVE
\n<\/strong>I.\u00a0 Die of any hope to make yourself right with God.
\nII.\u00a0 Live through faith in the One who makes things right.<\/p>\n

The Christians in Galatia were confused.\u00a0 First Paul preached the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.\u00a0 At the cross, he canceled our debt.\u00a0 He won our forgiveness.\u00a0 His resurrection declares it is true.<\/p>\n

But then came the Judaizers.\u00a0 Sure Christ died for you, but there is more required of you Gentiles.\u00a0 Things written in the Law of Moses.\u00a0 You need to get right with these rules.\u00a0 Only then can you be worthy.\u00a0 Only then will God accept you.<\/p>\n

Paul heard about this and a red flag went up in his mind.\u00a0 They had stolen the good out of good news.\u00a0 So Paul wrote this letter to try to undo the damage done in these congregations.<\/p>\n

Here Paul pointed the people to an incident that occurred in Antioch some time before.\u00a0 Antioch was a congregation of mostly Gentiles that had sent Paul and Barnabas off on their first missionary journey.\u00a0 This happened while the apostle Peter was there.\u00a0 Peter was a Jewish Christian. Most of these people were Gentile believers.\u00a0 Yet Peter ate with them.\u00a0 In Christ, they ate together as one.<\/p>\n

But all that changed when the Judaizers came from Jerusalem.\u00a0 Suddenly Peter began to separate himself from the Gentiles and didn’t eat with them.\u00a0 Now to us it might sound like Peter had a case of bad manners. But Paul recognized something far more serious.<\/p>\n

You see, Peter was one of Jesus’ apostles.\u00a0 So people paid close attention to what he said or did.\u00a0 Other believers followed his lead. And that’s what happened.\u00a0 Other Jewish Christians like Barnabas stopped eating with the Gentiles also.<\/p>\n

By his actions, Peter was saying to the Gentiles, there is something still not right about you.\u00a0 Faith in Christ is not enough.\u00a0 You need to become like us. You need to follow the law of Moses.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Peter did not believe that. God had brought him to understand that Jew and Gentile were both saved by grace through faith in what Jesus had done.\u00a0 But he let the Judaizers intimidate him.\u00a0 So his actions said something dangerous and different to the Gentiles than what he believed.<\/p>\n

Paul stepped in big time.\u00a0 14<\/sup><\/span><\/strong> But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, \u201cIf you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

15<\/sup><\/span><\/strong> We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16<\/sup><\/strong> yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Peter had put his trust in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.\u00a0 Yet by his actions he was putting a stamp of approval on those leading them away from Christ.\u00a0 His actions threatened their certainty by pointing them in a hopeless direction.\u00a0 Their own lives.\u00a0 Their own obedience to the law. But the law does anything but give us peace with God.<\/p>\n

We’ve all seen the point of a needle. To the naked eye, it looks finely polished. But put it under a microscope and it looks very different.\u00a0 You see how rough and irregular it is.<\/p>\n

Our lives are like that.\u00a0 We may look at people we share this world with and think I’m pretty good.\u00a0 But look at your life under the lens of God’s law and you see something much different.\u00a0 The law holds up one perfect standard after another against our lives.\u00a0 Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God more than anything or anyone.\u00a0 His law reveals those dark corners of guilt in our lives we would rather keep hidden.\u00a0 The lust that makes us adulterers. The anger that makes us murderers.<\/p>\n

So you see the law gives us no hope.\u00a0 It takes it away.\u00a0 Look it square in the face and you will see. It is not smiling at you.\u00a0 It is frowning.\u00a0 That’s why Paul says.\u00a0 Through the law I died to the law.<\/span> The law drove a stake through the heart of that work righteous fool that lived in him.\u00a0 Well that’s what needs to happen in you and me. \u00a0Before we can live, we must die.\u00a0 Die of any hope to make ourselves right with God.<\/strong> Then we can live. Live through faith in the One who makes things right.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul had died that death.\u00a0 But through the gospel he was raised to a new life in Christ.\u00a0 The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.<\/span> There are two kinds of life in this world. Paul lived them both.\u00a0 Life without Christ and life with Christ.\u00a0 Life without Christ is a life without God and without any real hope. It’s really no life at all.\u00a0 It’s like being on a road with no exits that leads you ever closer to a big question mark.\u00a0 Along the way, some are lucky and some are not.\u00a0 The good times, the bad.\u00a0 That’s just how it is.\u00a0 No real meaning or purpose.\u00a0 No real peace.<\/p>\n

But life in Christ offers us a peace regardless of what comes our way.\u00a0 We have peace with God, his perfect forgiveness. God promises that somehow its all connected to His love, no matter how it looks or feels.\u00a0 For think of his love for you.\u00a0 It’s a love bigger and wider than any we know.\u00a0 It’s is a love that did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you.\u00a0 And there is no question mark at the end of this life’s road.\u00a0 Paul knew that.\u00a0 There is no doubt as to what awaits us.\u00a0 We have one who has promised us.\u00a0 Because I live, you also will live<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Here Paul makes the mysterious remark, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.<\/span> Some take this to mean a kind of invisible hand moving the levers of Paul’s life. \u00a0And yes, Jesus had turned Paul’s life around.\u00a0 He’s turned ours around as well.<\/p>\n

But Christ lives in me is \u00a0more than Jesus’ influence on our life.\u00a0 Through faith, Jesus’ death for the sin of the world became Paul’s own.\u00a0 Paul’s hope, his peace, his eternity was all about Jesus. \u00a0So is yours.\u00a0 It was all about his cross, his empty tomb, his ascension into heaven.<\/p>\n

The Galatians had their faith distracted.\u00a0 The Judaizers had confused them.\u00a0 Paul shifted their focus back to where it belonged. \u00a0The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me<\/span>.<\/p>\n

But what about when I get stupid? What about when I do and say stupid things. The same stupid things I’ve repented of time and again.\u00a0 There’s another comfort here.\u00a0 17<\/sup><\/span><\/strong> But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18<\/sup><\/strong> For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.<\/span> Jesus is no less our Savior when we get stupid, when we prove for the millionth that we are sinners.\u00a0 His forgiveness is still there for us when we come to our senses.\u00a0 There is still life for us in the One who makes things right.<\/p>\n

But there is another kind of stupid we must avoid.\u00a0 I’m thinking of a burning building, as fireman say, totally involved.\u00a0 I am told that rescued sheep or horses sometimes foolishly try to go back inside.\u00a0 Well don’t you try to go back inside.\u00a0 You have died of any hope to make yourself right with God.\u00a0 You now live through faith in Christ who saved you.<\/p>\n

Don’t start thinking. We’ve been good Christians. We’ve done a lot for the church.\u00a0 We’re been pretty good neighbors.\u00a0 We’re religious people.\u00a0 Stay out of that burning building. Instead put your trust where it belongs. In the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Galatians 2: 11-21 | June 20, 2010 Suppose someone came up to you and said this:\u00a0 I want you to die. What?\u00a0 Did I hear you right?\u00a0 You might get angry offended or hurt.\u00a0 How could you say such a thing!\u00a0 But suppose it was a person you knew cared deeply about you.\u00a0 What? Now it’s time to quit supposing.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}