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All Saints Church |
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Thorpe Acre Road, Loughborough, |
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Terri Skinner Promise and the Law
Galatians: Main issue for Paul at time of writing – was the pressure that was being put on new Christians – Jew or Gentile – to keep Jewish Law and practise – especially circumcision. It seems that some Jewish Christians could not grasp that salvation comes through grace and faith in Christ alone and not by keeping the Jewish Law. Paul writes to very strongly challenge this and in this passage looks back at the OT and compares the role of promises made by God with that of the Law given by God. We are familiar with the idea of promise. It is a very strong statement of intention to do something: I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of… as on bank notes. When people make promises we expect them to keep them and don’t look well on them if they fail. A promise is not usually a legal contract but we expect it to be binding. Passage today from Galatians talks about promise – that spoken to Abraham and his seed – also speaks of law, covenant, transgression, inheritance and a mediator – the realm of legal terminology and a complicated passage. Like any legal document it is a difficult read. Paul had studied law as a young man. But contained in here is a large part of salvation history (the story of God’s life-giving grace towards humankind) and draws together much of what has been said over the summer as we looked at OT characters and genealogy last week. It gives us the opportunity to look simply at the bigger picture of what God has and is doing in his world. PROMISE OT is full of promises made by God to people but here the key one is that spoken to Abraham. Promise to Abraham: Gen 1-11 bring out the problem – how people though created by God have rebelled against him. Right from Garden of Eden and people doing the one thing they were commanded not to do – eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The next few chapters cover a huge expanse of time and tell of increasing wickedness and rebellion against God. Gen 12 – God steps in with a promise. People were by then scattered throughout the earth, they are divided and confused and a long way from the intimate relationship that God created them to have with him. The whole Bible is the story of God’s faithfulness in spite of people’s unfaithfulness to him. It is the story of his love, mercy and saving grace. Despite the mess that people get into God is never in a mess and is always working to rescue, heal, deliver, make whole and enable people to flourish and thrive when they live in relationship with him. *And so God, who never gives up on people, acted and said
to a man then called Abram (not told why Abram but God usually does choose to
work through people – often unlikely people) – Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to
the land I will show you. *“I will make you
into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing. I will
bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all
peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12.1-3) Promise repeated in various forms over next few chapters: *“The Lord said to
Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Lift up your eyes from where you are
and look north and south, east and west.
All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring for
ever. I will make your offspring
like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust then your
offspring could be counted. Go, walk
through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”(Gen
13.14-17). *“I will establish
my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your
descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and
the God of your descendants after you.”
Gen 18.7 *Key elements of God’s promise:- People – lots of them – one great nation Land Relationship with God – They will be his people and he will be their God. Blessing to others So right from the start God did not choose the Jews to be a special people purely for their own benefit but so that they could bring God’s blessing to the whole world. God was not and is not just the God of the Jews. A point that the OT repeatedly records that they often ignored. Now the Lord was
gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had
promised. Sarah became pregnant and
bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.
(Gen 21.1-2) God keeps his promises! Start of great nation to come and the fulfilment of the promise that would ultimately be fulfilled in Jesus. God is faithful – always. Story of rebellion of people against God has always been interwoven with the saving grace and love of God. He created people with freewill – so that we would be free to love him or to reject him – without this freedom we would be no better than puppets and unable to have any relationship with God. God has always been faithful and longed that people would be faithful to him too. He never stopped being faithful even when his people turned to other so-called gods and got themselves into all sorts of trouble time and time again. When people turned back to God and cried out to him for help so he was and is always ready to step in with the next instalment of his saving grace. In Gal.3.16 Paul sees these promises to Abraham as being fulfilled ultimately in Jesus. The whole of the OT leads us up to and prepares us for Jesus and the time when God himself would step into the world to be our Saviour and to bring in his kingdom. The whole story of how God worked through the Jewish nation, imperfect as they have always been, is a build up to the coming of Jesus. OT and NT are 2 parts of one story. THE LAW: Gal.3.19 – Paul asks why the law was given. At time of Galatians the OT law as given to Moses was a huge issue. At time of Jesus there had been a revival of interest in the Law and many were very ardent in their attempts to keep it. Groups like the Pharisees were especially fanatical and believed that if all Jews kept the Law perfectly for 24 hours then the Day of the Lord would come – a time when they thought they would be delivered from foreign oppressors (Romans) and enabled to live freely in their own land again. In their view God’s promises were about their own welfare and not about his desire to bless the whole world through them. Attempted to ring fence the law with all sorts of extra instructions about how to keep it – became a real burden to people. In the days of early church both Jew and Gentile were becoming Christian and some Jews were insisting that the requirements of the Jewish Law should be imposed on Gentiles too – especially circumcision. They could not entirely trust that faith in Jesus was the way of salvation instead of keeping the law. Implied that the cross was not enough! But the Gospel Jesus brings is one of pure grace – salvation by faith in Jesus resting on his death and resurrection. Many Christians still get confused over this. But the Law was never intended by God to bring salvation. Salvation has always been through faith in God who keeps his promises. Law was never meant to be a rod by which we are beaten but rather a framework to keep the people focussed on God and living in healthy community. The law was given to help the Jews to live out their calling to be God’s chosen people in a way that blessed the whole world and kept them together until God would step in as Saviour, i.e. the time when the promised Messiah would come. 10 Commandments (Exod 20) still make a lot of sense today – they sum up how we should relate to God and to one another. But much of the rest of the detailed laws that follow related to then rather than now. *- relating to sacrifice - relating to hygiene, what to eat and what not to eat – specifically for the time of wandering in the desert. - relating to worship – building of a portable tabernacle
as focus for worship of God during time in desert moving from place to
place. Later God would give detailed
instruction for building a - relating to community life – how they should relate to each other and to the nations around them – which God wanted to bless through them. Times changed with coming of Jesus: - no need for animal sacrifice now – Jesus died for us, taking the whole weight of the world’s sin on his broken body, destroying its power to keep us separated from God. He is the one true sacrifice to which all other sacrifices were pointing. - hygiene (we do not need Scripture to tell us how to keep clean) – Jesus always concerned with the inside not the outside – inner holiness. He is the one who makes us clean and fills us with the Holy Spirit. - worship – - community life – As people of faith we now gather together as church. The community that God primarily relates to is no longer the nation of the Jews but the kingdom of people who trust in Jesus. And we are not left without command and guidance in NT – full of how we should relate to each other and the world, live holy, generous lives, share the Gospel, make disciples, be filled with the Holy Spirit, use the gifts God gives us to build up the church, love one another…. This is about love not about a rigid set of orders and “thou shalt nots”! As at time of Moses – these are not commands that we must follow to be saved, but rather commands that will help us stay close to God and relate well to each other in a way that helps the church to grow and thrive. It is a question for us now as to how we should understand the OT law and is any of it (or all of it) still binding on us today? No to the detail, yes to the principles that underlay much of the law. Jesus didn’t say that he had come to do away with the law but to fulfil it. Jesus summed up – Love God and love your neighbour as yourself. This is the new framework that should guide the way we live our lives. Be guided by what keeps us close to God and what makes for healthy community life. 10 commandments remain a useful guide for this. The NT gives us plenty of instruction as to how to relate to God and to each other. But don’t think that being a Christian is primarily about being a good person or about keeping Laws or going to church regularly… Gal 3.22: But the Scripture declares that the whole
world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through
faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. JESUS, THE MESSIAH In him the promise comes true – for all. Now God is born into the Jewish race to
bring his salvation to all. The nation
becomes a blessing to the world because Jesus is born into it. All that has gone before – the chosen
people, the promise and the law have been leading to this time. And as Paul reminds us here and elsewhere –
It is by grace you have been saved,
through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by
works, so that no one can boast. (Eph2.9). Jesus told us a story of a man who got into a mess. It probably wasn’t the most sensible thing for him to do walking alone along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho but nevertheless he didn’t deserve what happened to him, being attacked by thugs and left only half alive, bruised and bleeding beside the road. Religion and Law couldn’t save the man – the priest and levite who represented both didn’t want to contaminate themselves and passed on by. But a man who was despised and rejected by many was moved with compassion for the hurting man. He went right to him and very tenderly wiped his wounds and dressed them with wine and oil before bandaging them. Then he took him in his arms and gently lifted him onto his donkey. And took him to a place of safety and healing, providing all he needed to become fully well again. This man acted with grace and love. He wasn’t interested if the man had kept the Law or not the man simply needed to trust himself to the Samaritan’s care. That is a lovely picture of how Jesus comes alongside us in our need. It’s all about Jesus. The promise was primarily about him – who would come as a blessing to all. The Law was given to help the nation that Jesus would be born in to keep faith in God until he came. Now we are all invited to be a part of his kingdom – we just need to say yes to him and trust him to do the rest. |
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