FREEDOM! (CC)
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Zion Ev. Lutheran Church-WELS www.ziontorrance.info
Zion Ev. Lutheran Church-WELS www.ziontorrance.info
Sermon Text: Galatians 5:1-6 Reformation Sunday 10-30-2011
Sermon Text: Galatians 5:1-6 Reformation Sunday 10-30-2011
Let us rise for the reading of this morning's Sermon Text
recorded for us by the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the
Galatians where we read from Chapter 5,
the first 6 verses: IT IS FOR FREEDOM
THAT CHRIST HAS SET US FREE.
STAND FIRM, THEN, AND DO NOT LET YOURSELVES
BE BURDENED AGAIN BY A YOKE OF SLAVERY.
MARK MY WORDS! I, PAUL, TELL YOU
THAT IF YOU LET YOURSELVES BE CIRCUMCISED,
CHRIST WILL BE OF NO VALUE TO YOU AT ALL.
AGAIN I DECLARE TO EVERY MAN WHO LETS HIMSELF
BE CIRCUMCISED THAT HE IS OBLIGATED TO
OBEY THE WHOLE LAW. YOU WHO ARE TRYING TO BE
JUSTIFIED BY LAW HAVE BEEN ALIENATED
FROM CHRIST; YOU HAVE FALLEN AWAY FROM GRACE.
BUT BY FAITH WE EAGERLY AWAIT
THROUGH THE SPIRIT THE RIGHTEOUSNESS
FOR WHICH WE HOPE. FOR IN CHRIST JESUS
NEITHER CIRCUMCISION NOR UNCIRCUMCISION
HAS ANY VALUE. THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS
IS FAITH EXPRESSING ITSELF THROUGH LOVE.
This is the Word of our Lord. Let us pray:
May the Lord our God be with
us as He was with our fathers.
May He never leave us nor forsake us.
Amen.
[Text taken from the HOLY BIBLE:
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, 1973, 1978, 1984,
used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers]
Dear Followers of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ:
A few days ago
I got a new computer.
And you might think that that may be a wonderful thing.
But I didn't want a new computer.
I didn't want to spend the money.
But I had to.
I had to buy a new computer because the
other one just died.
Was not coming back to life.
There was no resuscitation; it was hopeless.
So I go to the store.
And, of course, there's someone right at my side
to help me pick out my new computer,
who is doing all sorts of wonderful and cool things.
I can have 20 desktops
displayed on top of my computer
that I can just flip through with a click of a mouse.
A wonderful and amazing thing.
I don't want 20 desktops.
I want one! I want my old one back
where I knew where everything was and it was
always there and I had a wire on my mouse
that worked on my glass desktop because my wireless
mouse now doesn't work on the glass desktop.
We like
what we become comfortable with.
We want to do those things and
use those things that bring us
a sense of reliability.
That gives us tradition in our life.
Or ritual in our life. So that we can do them day-after-day
after day and we have this comfort.
And maybe that's the thought
that those Jews of the early Christian Church had.
That thought that for years
and generations they WERE
the chosen people of God. That God
had come to them. Out of all of the peoples in the world
and selected them to be His own.
To be His children. He made a covenant with them.
He called them to be His people.
And He gave them a symbol.
Something that would mark them as
His children. Separate them from the rest of the world.
And that was circumcision.
It was such a
clear representation
to God's people that they were His and
He was theirs.
It would sum up everything that God was
dealing with them about in His Law.
And in His sacrifices.
And that was their life. That was
their worship life. All of those regulations that
needed to be followed in their worship life.
The sacrifices that needed to be carried out.
All of God's Law was put into their personal life.
With their dietary laws and the way that
they were supposed to live. And even
their legal system was governed by God's
directives, as to how they were to punish people.
And what was bad behavior.
All of that became for them this rich
heritage. A rich tradition.
And then the One who came
to fulfill that, to fulfill that Law ...
Jesus Christ came into the world
and offered Himself
as the ONE sacrifice.
The sacrifice that covered ALL sins for ALL time.
Doing away with that old order
of sacrifices. Doing away with the Law
that set for the Moral Law
that God had put into place to be carried out.
But those regulations that needed to be followed each and
every day ... Christ destroyed them
as He destroyed those dietary laws.
When the curtain was torn in two
people had access to God.
They didn't have to go through the priest
because Jesus had given them the forgiveness
of sins. And it opened to them
a relationship with their Father that was personal.
That was intimate. He had
come to Peter and said: All of this food ...
all of these things are now clean and
available for you to eat. But the
early Christian Church still struggled
with that heritage.
Those people, who saw Jesus
as the Messiah and began to follow Him,
reached out to other peoples
who didn't have that background; who didn't have
that heritage. And in their own sinfulness,
an idea developed among the churches
in Galatia, that those non-Jews
HAD to be circumcised
to mark them as God's children.
And the Apostle Paul
came to those churches to clearly teach them
that it was not by the Law that people are saved,
but it is by GRACE.
By the grace of God, through His Son
Jesus Christ!
It is by grace that we are saved, not in the observance
of some ritual. Not in doing something ...
because the Apostle Paul said: Let me make this clear to you.
If you are going to circumcise
yourself to gain favor with God ...
to think that somehow this is going to give God ...
give you to God, or give God some way of seeing you
and drawing attention to yourself; that now you are
somehow better and deserving of His love ...
that is not the point! Because if you are going to
circumcise yourself and put yourself under that law,
then you need to put yourself under the entire Law.
And who can stand up
to that yoke of slavery of
the entire Law? I mean we today look
at the 10 Commandments and we see in them that we can't
live up to the standard that is set there.
Let alone adding to that the hundreds of
other laws governing the sacrifices that needed
to be made ... the dietary laws and the legal laws.
The life of an Old Testament believer
was one who was under this
weight of that Law.
And the Apostle Paul said: You are NOT under that weight
any longer. Christ has come and He has
set you free! Free from that
yoke of slavery. It's the same thing that
Jesus told the Jews in our Gospel Lesson for today
when He said to them: If you follow My
teachings you are really My disciples. And they will
set you free. And the Jews that were there
immediately said: We haven't been slaves of anyone.
We have never had anyone else rule over us and
been owner of us. And Jesus reminded them
the slavery that they are freed from
is the slavery of the yoke of sin.
That He came and shattered that.
And that they were to live in freedom ...
not as someone who doesn't have an
inheritance in the house.
Because a slave doesn't have an inheritance in the house.
But a son and a daughter does. And we ARE
the children of God. Paul reminds us
that by faith we are free!
Free from that weight of sin.
That yoke and that slavery to sin. Free because
Jesus Christ was the One who shattered that yoke and
its punishment. God the Father took
the punishment that should have been placed on us.
That punishment of death.
And He placed it on His Son.
And Jesus willingly
took that upon Himself.
In love for us sinners
Christ died
and washed away our sins.
He rose from the dead
to show the way for us
to know, that through faith, we will also
follow Him, so that we live
in the freedom of knowing that our sins are forgiven.
That Christ has been victorious over them.
That death has been defeated. That Christ is the victor
and that He has life and that we will have life ...
eternally with Him
because of God's grace.
And we are not to put ourselves
under that Law and hold ourselves to
old rituals because we think that somehow
that makes us better Christians.
And it's a danger for us each and everyone today.
That we don't start setting up some kind of new
law standard in our own minds
and in our own lives as to say:
What is a good Christian? And that we can then
apply that to people sitting around us.
That I'm better; they're worse. Maybe they're
half-way there. Maybe they're not. They really need to
do this. They really need to do that. We become people
who become legalistic thinking that
somehow through the Law we are going to impress God enough
to save us. When the simple truth
in reality is that God
did it all
to save us
by sending His Son. And that we are
to hold to His teachings.
We are to take the faith that has come to us by God's grace
that has been given to us
by the gift of the Holy Spirit
and to take that faith ... and live it.
And apply it. And the Apostle Paul said:
Express that faith in love
reflective of God's love.
Showing Christ's love.
Reminding each other that what is of most
importance is what God has done.
Adhering to the Word of God.
Keeping all of us focused on Christ.
Keeping us, all of us,
teaching that Word in truth and in its purity.
As we share it with each other. As we
share it with our children. As we reach out
to the world with that comes our greatest expression
of love. Because we look at the world
and see sinners who need
the comfort and the love that only comes
from God Himself.
That they are chained and burdened in their lives
and we can offer them the freedom
that comes from knowing Christ.
The freedom that is ours. The freedom that makes us
rejoice and sing and
be happy in our faith. To know
that God has taken care of our greatest need.
That we have no fear of death because we know
it's just the passing to eternal life.
We know that God is our fortress. He is our
strength for each and every day in this world
when we are weak and we are tired,
He is the One that we turn to.
To protect us. To provide us
with His strength. There is our joy.
There is our freedom. There is our
reason for rejoicing.
To live in that faith that reminds us
each and every day: It is not about me ...
but it is about Christ. And what He has done.
And by grace ...
I am His child.
And new things are going to come.
They always do. We can have change
in this world but one of the things we always
have to remind ourselves is, that change
shouldn't be done to say: Hey God,
look at us. But all of
these changes that we do, in our life, in our worship,
in how we proclaim the Word of God,
should be about: World ... look!
Here is Jesus Christ.
Let me show you Him.
Let me teach you about His love.
Let His freedom
be yours.
For it is by grace you have been saved.
Not of ourselves.
It is the gift of God.
Let us rejoice ... in that gift.
Amen.
Let us rise.
Now may the peace of God which goes beyond
all of our understanding, keep your hearts and your minds,
and especially your lives, in the one true faith
unto life everlasting. Amen.