Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Well, good morning and welcome to our online experience. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chet. I'm the campus pastor here. And if you're watching online and exploring and checking Christchurch out, I would love the chance to meet you, to shake your hand, to hear your story. So make sure and join us in person as well. And today we are continuing and we're wrapping up our Unstuck series. We're talking about those times where we feel stuck in life and what do we do? What, what is, what do these times mean? And how does God direct us in it? That's what we've been talking about and want to say a big thank you to Pastor Jovan for bringing a great word last week.
[00:00:41] So thankful for him and thankful for his preaching. But today we're going to look at Galatians. But just before we do, let's pray.
[00:00:50] Father, we pray, Lord, that you would help us to feel a sense of freedom.
[00:00:56] And Lord, in that freedom, help us to have a desire to love and to serve other people.
[00:01:03] Father, I pray you would bless us as we think about your word today. You would strengthen us and you would be with us. And I ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:15] Well, I've always heard about the great boxer Rocky Marciano. He was the only undefeated champion, although actually, I think maybe Floyd Mayweather is that now, too. But. But one of the most remarkable boxers in history. He never lost a professional fight, and there was sort of this, this aura of invincibility around him. And I recently read his biography or one of his biographies, and it was a really kind of fun read. But one of the things that I learned was Rocky Marciano got started into boxing late.
[00:01:49] So in his day, most, you know, would start very, very early. But. But he didn't. He was into baseball and he wanted to be a pro baseball player. And he was good and he was very naturally athletic, but just not quite to the level to make it in the pros. And so after being in the army and after trying his hand at baseball, he kind of worked his way into boxing and he started to show some promise. But again, he was very kind of late in the game.
[00:02:18] And so because of that, he was not known for his great technique and he wasn't known necessarily for his great athleticism. What he was known for was really his ability to take a punch and to give a punch and that a lot of times what would happen in his fights is that he would just stay in the pocket and he would take some really hard shots. But then while he was there, he would give some incredibly hard shots, and somehow every match, he was able to make it out and to beat the other guy. And so he kind of has this. This cool image of, you know, not the most talented, not the most gifted, but just tough and gritty and willing to slug it out and kind of hope for the best. And. And there is something to that that I think is. Is admirable. And I think even there's something to that, to that way of life that, that is also good for us to think about. Because sometimes in life you're in the good fight. We can be in bad fights in life. I'm not talking about those, but sometimes you're in the good fight. You're doing the right thing. You're on the right course, You're. You're taking the right steps, but, man, it's not easy. You're. You're taking some licks along the way.
[00:03:42] But the key in those moments is that you recognize that this is a moment not to give up, not to quit, not to back down, but to stay in the pocket and to throw your best punches and to keep fighting the good fight. And sometimes our sense of being stuck is right in those moments. And I want to talk to you about that today. I want to talk to you about sometimes to get unstuck, we've got to stay in the pocket. We got to just keep doing what we're doing, and we got to keep doing good in every way that I can. And I think a lot of the book of Galatians gives us a real powerful picture of this. And I want to take you to two different verses in Galatians today, because one is about being spiritually stuck.
[00:04:35] And I'm going to explain what this means. But the Apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Galatians, he's going to show us how. When we realize that God brings freedom to our lives, that we are spiritually unstuck, it gives us a new ability in the rest of our life to live into, focus on doing good. And if we can live and focus on that, it will keep our life moving in the right direction. So me explain this to you. Let's look at galatians chapter, chapter four. And I'm going to start at verse 11. It says this. Now, it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.
[00:05:18] The righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
[00:05:31] For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
[00:05:47] Now I know there's a lot in these verses, but let me tell you what was happening here. Paul was writing this letter to the church of Galatia, which is kind of modern day Turkey, because they were, they were stuck spiritually.
[00:06:02] They were stuck because they were being misled by people who were adding Old Testament law requirements to the preaching of the Gospel.
[00:06:14] And so they were kind of saying things like this. They were saying that, hey, faith in Jesus is good and you need that, but you also need to obey the, the Old Testament practice of circumcision.
[00:06:28] And so, yes, you can have faith in Jesus, but you also need this thing that you have to do.
[00:06:34] And Paul heard about this teaching and he says, man, this, this is completely off.
[00:06:42] And you cannot listen to these guys that are teaching you this because they are dangerously misleading you in a very, very big way.
[00:06:53] And what Paul then goes on to argue is he says, look, at the end of the day, the Christian faith is not about what, anything you do for God, it's about what God has done for you in Christ.
[00:07:08] And are you willing to receive that? Are you willing to trust that that's what we call faith? Are you willing to believe that Christ has done for you what you could never do for yourself so you can be forgiven and loved by God? And Paul would say, as soon as you try to add anything to what Christ has done for you and you make that part of the deal, Paul says, you, you mess up the whole thing.
[00:07:36] And then he goes on to explain that, that when we receive the gospel, we, we learn that we are, we've been set free.
[00:07:44] And that now the, the pain of our brokenness and our separation from God and our sins and our mistakes and our guilt and our shame, that, that now we don't have to live from that place, but we can live from the place of people who are loved and accepted and forgiven and redeemed by God. And so the Gospel is this, this great new flow freedom that Paul is inviting the church to and Paul is inviting us to. And I was thinking about this this week and I thought to myself, how many times do I live in that freedom?
[00:08:26] Because I don't know about you, I can really get caught in cycles of guilt and shame and all that. And, and, and I can, I can live in that. And, and as I was thinking about this, I read this week, an essay by James Stockdale. He was a POW during the Vietnam War for about five years.
[00:08:48] Tortured, treated terribly, all this crazy stuff he went through.
[00:08:54] But he said that when he was imprisoned, what he learned was that worse than pain, the enemy could bring shame to your life.
[00:09:06] And shame was more crippling than pain. He said, believe it or not, you could get used to getting torture physically, but. He said, but the shame that they could manipulate out of you as they, you know, get you to maybe volunteer information that you didn't intend to or want to, and. And the shame that you would begin to see yourself as a traitor to your country, as a traitor to your people. He said, that is what would actually ruin people more than the physical torture and the physical pain.
[00:09:41] I thought that's interesting because I could believe that.
[00:09:46] That this is. This is such a powerful reality. And where the shame comes is where we're saying, no, there's something that Christ hasn't covered. That's ultimately what we're saying. And we're saying something needs added.
[00:10:03] And I just want to encourage you today and maybe for some of you, remind you that one of the things that the New Testament teaches is that Christ is our expiation.
[00:10:14] And that's a fancy word, but what it means is that Christ cleanses us from guilt and shame.
[00:10:22] That although we can acknowledge that we're broken people, that we've made mistakes, we make mistakes and we will make mistakes, that we're capable of great evil and maybe we've done great, we can acknowledge all of that. But Christ has freed us from the guilt and shame of it.
[00:10:44] And that's part of the freedom of the gospel that Paul is trying to help us to understand today in the book of Galatians. And I think so many of us, maybe today, we. We are stuck spiritually because the power of the gospel hasn't fully landed in our hearts and lives.
[00:11:06] Some say we're like, yeah, I'm a Christian, but. But I'm still.
[00:11:10] I'm still being consumed by guilt and shame.
[00:11:14] And I want you to see that Christ has done enough for you.
[00:11:21] You don't need to add to it.
[00:11:23] You don't need to try to make up for it.
[00:11:27] You know, destroying yourself in your mind and in your heart isn't making you closer to God. Christ has forgiven and drawn you into God's blessing and into God's love.
[00:11:42] And so Paul then says in the book of Galatians, he says, you are free. And when we understand and we receive the truth and the power of the gospel. All of a sudden, our spiritual life begins to feel free.
[00:11:56] We begin to feel less of the weight of our past, the weight of our sin, the weight of our brokenness and all that. And we begin to feel a sense of new life and fresh air and space to live differently.
[00:12:14] And so now Paul says. He says, and now that you have this freedom, this freedom is for a purpose. And the purpose is to love and to serve people.
[00:12:25] That God has given us this great freedom in the gospel, yet you have to understand that. But he's given it to us so that we could be free to really love and serve people in ways that honor Jesus Christ. And so then Paul says this a little later in Galatians, he says, do not be deceived.
[00:12:44] God is not mocked.
[00:12:46] For whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will reap from the flesh corruption.
[00:12:56] But the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
[00:13:01] And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to the household of faith. And so what Paul is saying, he's saying, hey, God's given you this freedom, but now aim your life at doing good. Aim your life at sowing into the Spirit.
[00:13:32] Don't waste this freedom and don't let this freedom be taken up by sowing into the flesh and letting this gift of God be reduced in any way in your life. And so that's what Paul is trying to tell us. And he says, hey, the first thing I need you to know is that you can deceive yourself, but God is not to be mocked. We cannot deceive God. There's a great quote by Richard Feynman. He was part of the Manhattan Project, a physicist. But he says this. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.
[00:14:09] And you are the easiest person to fool.
[00:14:14] And what Paul is saying, he's saying, look, when you look at your life, and God's given you this great opportunity of freedom, what are you doing with him? Paul says, don't fool yourself and don't think you're fooling God. He says, are you with your life, Are you sowing seeds into the Spirit? That, in other words, God has put a law into the fabric of the universe.
[00:14:42] And the law is this, that there is a connection between what we sow and what we reap. Or to put it in words that are more familiar, to us and what you plant and what grows.
[00:14:55] And Paul says you, you can't deceive yourself that if you go and you go in your backyard and you get a cool little garden kit and you plant tomato seeds in there, you should not go out there and expect a bunch of peppers to grow.
[00:15:11] Says it's not going to work. You should go out there and expect tomatoes to grow in time because the seed that you plant is the fruit or the plant that will come from it. Secondly, the amount of seed will determine something about the size of the harvest. So if you go and you plant like one or two seeds, you may not get anything because they may not make it. But if you plant thousands, hundreds, tens of thousands of seeds, you can certainly expect a bigger harvest. And lastly, there is always time between planting and harvesting that all of this requires time that good seeds that get planted will become good things but in time.
[00:16:00] And bad seeds that are planted when we sow to the flesh, that Paul says that will grow into corruption. It will take value away from your life. But again, that will take time. So, so what is Paul saying to us? He's saying, well, listen, every day if you're a follower of Jesus, you have an opportunity to sow to the Spirit or to sow to the flesh.
[00:16:24] And if you sow to the Spirit, it will enrich it, will strengthen it, will make more noble your life. If you flow to the sow, to the flesh, it will corrupt it, it will deteriorate it, it will lead it, lead your life in all the wrong places.
[00:16:45] And so what he's saying to us today is, he's saying, look at your life and what are you sowing to see? When I sow to the Spirit, it's the part of me that, that is trying to listen and obey the voice of God.
[00:16:59] It's a part of me that says, I want my thoughts and I want my actions to honor God. I'm seeking him, I'm trusting him. I'm trying to follow him. And whenever I'm acting from that place, I'm sewing to the Spirit. The flesh is the other side of me. That's the side of me that says, no, I'm going to do my own thing.
[00:17:21] And I don't care if it honors God or not. I don't care if it prioritizes God or not. I don't care if God's involved or not. I'm going down this path. And it's the part of us that's always pulling us towards selfishness and godless thoughts. And godless actions. And Paul says that is always going to corrupt our lives.
[00:17:45] And so when we feel stuck, the question we need to ask ourselves is, what seeds are we planting?
[00:17:55] What are we sowing into?
[00:17:57] Are we sowing into the spirit? Because if we are, then we just need to keep doing that.
[00:18:03] And we need to. And we need to trust that eventually I'm going to reap a good harvest. This is going to be worth it.
[00:18:10] If we're sowing into the flesh and we need to step back, we say, all right, well, all that this is going to harvest is pain, is regret, is hurt, and is heartache. And so what Paul says, he says, look, if you're sowing into the spirit, then most importantly, you can't grow weary in doing good. Because here's the truth. A lot of times in life, the good thing that honors God, the right thing, is not the easiest thing.
[00:18:43] And many times it's the thing that will make you more tired.
[00:18:47] It's the thing that you'll. You'll look at. Sometimes you'll say, oh, is. Is this really worth it? And Paul says, don't grow weary doing good. And you will reap a harvest at the right time if you don't give up.
[00:19:03] And so the two challenges that you have to face is weariness and giving up.
[00:19:08] And Paul says, you can't give into each of those. And when I was reading this, I just. I just think about our church right now. We're in a season where we are sowing good seed.
[00:19:18] We're. We're in this rented space.
[00:19:21] We're working towards a new building. This is all hard. This is all challenging.
[00:19:26] This is not easy stuff. But do you know what? I believe we are sowing seeds that if we don't give up and if we don't give into weariness, we will see a harvest that is so worth it. We will see our faith built, our generosity built, our unity built, our love built. And we will see a building built that God will use to reach so many more people than we know and we can think of, and it will be worth it.
[00:20:01] And so when you're sowing in the right direction, here's what you need to know. Don't give up.
[00:20:05] And yes, it's okay to be tired and it's understandable, but keep going. I love the words of the great missionary William Carey. He has this great quote. He says this.
[00:20:17] If you. If he gives me credit for being a plotter, plotter, P L O D D E R, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond that will be too much. I can plod, I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything he says, I'm a plotter. And I just kind of think about that as just like one very humble step at a time. There's one humble step at a time. And this man, God used him greatly. And I believe part of why God used him greatly is because of this mindset. Said, I'm going to keep sowing, I'm going to plod.
[00:20:58] I'm not going to give up.
[00:21:00] I'm not going to allow discouragement to make me quit.
[00:21:03] I'm not going to back away from what is hard because I know the law of the harvest, that I'm going to use this opportunity God has given me.
[00:21:13] And I will reap a good harvest that honors God if I keep plotting. And some of you today, I just want to encourage you. You're on the right path, you're taking the right steps. I know you're tired.
[00:21:27] I know you're thinking about quitting. I know you're thinking about going the other direction. I just want to encourage you. Hold the line, keep plotting, keep sowing the seed. Trust that what the scriptures say here is true, because I believe it is. And Paul says, and hey, if you need a good starting point, then you just look at the people around you, the household of faith. He says, don't neglect doing good to them.
[00:21:57] You look at them and you say, lord, how can I be useful today?
[00:22:02] How can I serve the people around me? So I think one of the things that we can. If you're. If you're a follower of Jesus today, one of the things I think we should think about and practice more is, you know, we want to love the whole world, and we should, but oftentimes we need to start smaller than that.
[00:22:20] And we need to learn how to love our other brothers and sisters in Christ better.
[00:22:26] And if we can start there, and if I can look to my left and to my right to the people that sit with me at church, that are around me, and I could just ask God this simple question, God, how can I serve them today? How can I serve them this week? How can I be useful? How can I do good to them? If we just start there, I think we will be amazed by how God uses that simple approach.
[00:22:54] And I would encourage you to do that today. If you're like, I want to sow better seeds, I want to sow into the spirit, then don't make this complicated. Just do what Paul says. Say, all right, Lord, where is there an opportunity right around me to do good for another brother and sister in Christ? Maybe it's an encouraging text.
[00:23:14] Maybe it's helping them move. Maybe it's grabbing a coffee. Maybe it's praying for them. Maybe it's inviting them to your life group. Maybe it's. It's just checking in on them, seeing how they're doing. Maybe it's watching their kids. What? What? There's so many different ways. But just say. Just say, God, what opportunity is right in front of me.
[00:23:32] And Lord, help me to see it so I can sow into your spirit. Because here's what I believe, man. God has given us this great freedom.
[00:23:44] We don't. We don't have to live with the weight of all our sin on our shoulders.
[00:23:50] Paul says Christ became a curse for us.
[00:23:54] I'm free from that.
[00:23:56] The question is, how are we going to use this opportunity? What seeds are we going to sow?
[00:24:02] How are we going to honor God with what he's given us in this great gift?
[00:24:09] And I want to honor him well, personally and my family, but also as a church. And I know you do as well. So, church, we're planting good seeds.
[00:24:19] We're working the field, we're planting, we're watering, we're weeding, we're doing all these things. It's tiring, it's easy to want to quit. But let's keep going because there is a harvest before us that is so worth it. Let's pray. Father, would you bless us to have an understanding of this in our lives individually, but also as a church? Would you give us the endurance? Would you give us the wisdom? Would you give us the capacity to keep planting good seeds and to trust your timing and to trust, Lord, that if we sow to the spirit, it's never wasted, it's always worth it. And if we sow to the flesh, it's never worth it and it's always wasted. And help us to approach our life with your wisdom and with your heart. We pray for your blessing on this. In Jesus name, amen.
