Galatians is likely the earliest writing we have in the New Testament, authored by the Apostle Paul within about 10-20 years of the time Jesus walked the earth. In this message, we introduce Paul’s letter to the Galatians and give some background information on this book.
Tag: gospel
-
The broken person and the Mission of God. Studying John 4:27-29
An unlikely missionary
At the beginning of John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. The Samaritans were a minority ethnic group who were half-Jewish. In the first century, there was a lot of animosity between the Samaritans and the Jewish people. Samaritans had some theological differences and given their ethnic differences, these fueled the division between the two groups.
The Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well and they start to talk.
The woman has had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband. So she’s already part of a group who’s looked down upon, and she’s also had her sins exposed. Jesus tells her of the living water that he provides. He tells her of true worship of God.
As the preceding section winds down, John records Jesus speaking to the woman.
24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
An incredible conversation.
Verse 27 suddenly changes the direction.
Just then.
Just then his disciples came back.
Earlier in the story, we learned that the disciples had left Jesus to go and find food. It’s the reason why Jesus had been alone when he met the Samaritan woman.
They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
The disciples want to question Jesus for talking to this woman. Out of respect for Jesus, they keep their mouths shut but they’re wondering “why are you talking with her?”
The disciples are not perfect. We see this time and again in the gospels.
We see examples of their pride, at times we see them lack faith, and we see here that they are not above prejudice. And they see Jesus talking with this woman. They don’t question it, but they’re thinking about it.
Probably giving her strange looks.
It was the culture at the time. There was a lot of prejudice against women.
There are rabbinic sayings which go back to the first century and talk of interactions between men and women. Some of these sayings are extremely misogynistic towards women.
There’s a rabinnic teaching against a man even talking to a woman in public, even his own wife.
There were rabinnic teachings which discouraged teaching women to read.
I’m not saying that those views were universal to every Jewish person in the first century. But they were within the social consciousness. Every generation has its own areas of sin, and misogyny was a common area of sin in the first century and sadly at many other times.
But the Samaritan woman, like everyone else, needs Jesus. She needs to know his love, needs to know his grace.
So the disciples didn’t publicly question Jesus, but not because they didn’t want to.
The text says that they marveled that Jesus was talking to a woman. Let alone a Samaritan woman.
John 4:28:
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,
John notes that the woman leaves her jar. It’s interesting that this detail is mentioned.
Throughout our study of John’s gospel, we’ve seen this theme of newness, new creation, Jesus as replacing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant.
I believe that the detail of her leaving the water jar is mentioned because it’s symbolic of the fact that this woman is leaving behind the cares and concerns of her own nourishment to serve the purposes of Christ in the world.
She had come to the well for water, but she’s leaving it having learned about the living water which Jesus provides.
So we have this Samaritan woman, who’s had five husbands and who’s living with a man who’s not her husband, someone looked down upon in society, she goes into the town and starts telling people about Jesus.
Verse 29:
“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
Jesus has revealed himself to be a prophetic figure who has a knowledge of her life that’s supernatural. He’s claimed to be the Christ, and so she rhetorically asks the people “can this be the Christ?”
It’s very powerful to consider that this woman from this marginalized Samaritan group is the first recorded person in this gospel to tell people about Jesus in northern Israel.
This story should be encouraging to all of us from the standpoint that God also uses broken and sinful people to serve him, to share his gospel and to tell the world about Jesus.
No one is ever too broken to know the love of Christ.
And no one is ever too sinful, as this woman was. No one is ever too lowly to share Jesus and be used by God to serve God.
Serving the mission of God is not just for the spiritual varsity team, but God has ways for all of his people to serve him.
And God desires for all of his people to serve him. To be light, to share the gospel, to serve others. To serve God’s mission of the world of being disciples who make disciples.
God uses broken people to do his work, and he can use you. No matter where you’re from, no matter what you’ve done. If you’ve wasted time, if you’ve spent years not serving God, it’s not too late.
God can use you. Not because of who we are, but because of who God is. And to his glory, he uses broken people to serve his purposes.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe!
-
Sermon: The Rise of Saul – 1 Samuel 11:1-15
In this passage, we see the high point of the reign of King Saul and the Israelites have the king that they had hoped for and all is well. At least for a little while. But this passage isn’t primarily about Saul, nor is it primarily about a battle between the Israelites and the Ammonites, but it’s about the God who saved his people and preserved the Promised Land.
-
The first gospel. Studying Genesis 3:14-19
In Genesis 3, we see the fail of Adam and Eve. Instead of turning to God as a result of their sin, their initial response was to hide and try to cover up their sins.
In Genesis 3:14-15, we see God’s initial response to Adam and Eve’s sin
14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
Judgment on the serpent
God’s first response is pronouncing judgment upon the serpent for his rebellion.
There is no questioning of the serpent. God didn’t have to question Adam and Eve either. God is all-knowing and was aware of the guilt. God’s questions draw Adam and Eve to confession. Eve has also implicated the serpent as being part of the sin but that is not the source of God’s knowledge of the event.
There are three judgments upon the serpent.
First, he will be forced to crawl on his belly. Second, he have to eat the dust of the ground. And third, he will face ultimate defeat. And it is for that defeat of the serpent, that we see the Bible’s first glimpse of the gospel in the immediate aftermath of the fall.
The first gospel
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
This verse is often referred to as the first gospel.
As God is pronouncing judgment upon the serpent, we see a picture of the ultimate victory for humanity.
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
John Sailhammer argues that this verse doesn’t answer a question but it raises a question. By itself, Genesis 3:15 is ambiguous and somewhat cryptic.
How to read the Bible
I sometimes hear people talk about the themes that develop out of Genesis and act as though we can’t bring them up when studying Genesis. I think we should take the entire Bible into account when reading Genesis and bask in the glow of what is illuminated throughout the rest of the Bible.
The serpent is another example of that. If all you have is Genesis, it’s hard to make the connection between the serpent and the devil. But the New Testament clarifies that (Revelation 12:9; 20:2).
In the same way, Genesis 3:15 is cryptic in isolation. But when we see the fullness of the Bible, the meaning becomes clear. We have the benefit of having a fuller picture than what the Ancient Israelites had.
The offspring of the woman
The rest of Genesis becomes the story of the family that comes from Adam and Eve. Her offspring. And that trajectory of this family and their provision as a people of God develops throughout the entire Old Testament.
The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy that leads back to Abraham, through whom God made a further promises of offspring and blessings in Genesis chapters 12 and 15. The Gospel of Luke’s opening chapters contain a genealogy that goes all the way back to Adam. It is establishing Jesus as the seed of the woman. He is the offspring who defeats the serpent.
1 John 3:8:
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
Hebrews 2:14:
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil
1 Corinthians 15:25:
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
Jesus is the ultimate and great offspring of the woman (Gal. 4:4), a descendant of Adam and Eve who would one day crush the serpent.
The curse on Eve
So we have the good news of eventual victory, but the world is now a world with sin, and that sin must be dealt with.
God will pronounce curses upon Adam and Eve. There are consequences for their rebellion.
Genesis 3:16:
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Having children is a blessing, but the moment of greatest blessing is also the moment of greatest pain.
We tend to think that the first part of this verse is only talking about labor itself. But I know that some scholars think it’s actually referring to the entire process of having children.
John Walton argues that in the Hebrew, it’s referring to anxiety and anguish. Emotional pain in conception and the process to giving birth. In the ancient world, if a woman could not produce an offspring, it was grounds for divorce. Security in a family had to do with the ability to produce children. And so it was stressful. Even today, 10-20 percent of pregnancies result in miscarraige. Fertility issues are still a common problem. 12-15 percent of couples struggle for at least a year to conceive a child. This is in a time when we have more knowledge and interventions and yet, it’s still a struggle.
So the first problem results in child bearing.
The second part of the curse upon women is interpersonal within marriage.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
There is a power struggle between men and women. The New Testament talks about wives submitting to husbands and that is a controversial issue.
It’s so often a struggle for both men and women to find the appropriate balance that is honoring to God’s Word.
There are relationships when men basically relinquish all responsibility and the woman leads. That is not Biblical. There are also relationships where men lead but don’t lead in a Godly way and can become authoritarian. These struggles are not new. They were not invented by millennials or with the advent of modern feminism. These types of struggles go back to the fall.
Adam failed to lead before the fall.
The closest, most personal, most intimate relationship that humanity has is that between spouses. There is perfect unity in the Godhead, but as people who are image bearers, we struggle to find the unity in our marriages that the Bible calls us to. It shouldn’t be a surprise. In a fallen world, the most fundamental relationship is the one that often gets the most twisted and distorted among fallen people.
The curse on Adam
There is also judgment upon Adam.
In Genesis, the curse given to Adam says in 3:17-19:
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Adam is treated with greater severity to Eve.
Adam is told that the ground is now cursed. This is an undoing of creation where the land was made good.
It also shows the far ranging impacts of the fall.
Romans 8:22:
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
Where the text says: in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
I take that to refer to the toil of working from the ground being a similar pain and toil to the woman carrying children, but it will never end. It is also a punishment that fits the crime. Because Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, his continuing sustenance will be a struggle for him.
Verse 18 continues the theme of the curse of the earth.
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
As Kenneth Mathews says in his commentary of Genesis: the ground will now be his enemy rather than his servant.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
This verse once again emphasizes the difficulties of working the ground and also introduces the idea of death.
When I read this, I think of the incredible difficulty that substance has been for so much of human history (and that it is still for so many around the world). There have been great technological advances in the last century which have made the science of agriculture and farming much more efficient than ever.
But these are relatively new advances. You read about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s when there were severe droughts. Parts of the world still experience famines. In modern America, we certainly are in a time of abundance, but as we’ve dealt with Covid for the last couple years, we’ve seen how delicate our supplies can still be. We’re in a time of increasing food costs. And it stinks!
But for so much of human history,this has been the rule, not the exception. That so much of your labor, time, and energy was simply to acquire enough food.
It has been a time of abundance, and I think we can take for granted that this will always be the case. For me, what the last couple years have shown me is that we never really know what’s around the corner.
A second takeaway is that man’s labor itself is toilsome. Even in times of abundance, work can so often be so difficult. There can be dangers of work, work can disrupt home-life balance, it can be unfulfilling. Work can be stressful. Financially enriching jobs can come with increased work or more competition and uncertainty. Our work brings challenges.
Work existed before the fall. Work is not inherently bad. It’s a good thing. But because of sin, work will often times have a laborious aspect to it which was not part of creation.
In Genesis, Adam is being told that tending to the earth will be a struggle and then he will die and return to the earth.
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
This is really the ultimate undoing of creation.
God made man from the dust of the earth and we will return back to it.
Adam does not receive the physical curse that Eve does, but there will be toil.
And in the rest of the Bible, Adam is associated with sin and the fall.
Romans 5:12-17 says:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Adam is the one man, sin entered the world. And through the one man (Jesus), there can be forgiveness of sins.
One final note of hope
After the curses, Genesis 3 tells us of the names for Adam and Eve.
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20).
The name Adam in Hebrew (Adamah) is the Hebrew word for man and is used 562 in the Old Testament. Adam had already named his counterpart “woman” (Genesis 2:23), but here he calls his wife Eve. As the text tells us, this name refers to her as being the mother of the living.
Even in the aftermath of sin and in the face of a world where there is now death, Eve has pointed to as the one who bears the living. And from woman would one day come the eternally living one, the second Adam, Christ the Lord.
-
The Spirit without measure. Studying John 3:34-36
In John 3:34-36, we see the final words of John the Baptist written in the Gospel of John. In this passage, John is giving powerful insights about Jesus and his relationship to God.
John 3:34 says:
For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
This verse tells us that Jesus has been sent by God. That is important to understanding how The Apostle John treats the idea of mission in his gospel. The mission of God is a theme which runs throughout the Bible.
When I say mission, I mean God’s work to restore sinful humanity to himself and the work of the church in spreading the gospel through which humanity is saved.
Different writers emphasize different elements of the mission of God. One thing that John talks about throughout his gospel is the idea of being sent by God. It’s mentioned dozens of times in this book.
And while the idea is present in the other gospels, it’s nowhere near the prevalence that we see of it in the Gospel of John.
We first see talk of God sending one for ministry in relation to John the Baptist.
John 1:6:
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
None of the other gospels use the word “sent” in conjunction with John the Baptist. Luke says the word of the Lord came to John. Mark says “John appeared, baptizing” (Mark 1:4). Matthew 1:3 says: In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Jude
But in the Gospel of John, he was sent.
And we see that Jesus has been sent.
Jesus has been sent into the world to do the work of the Father. John 6:38:
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
We see in this gospel that the way in which we treat Jesus is tantamount to the way which we treat God. John 5:24:
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
We see a culmination after his resurrection. He’s talking to the disciples and similar to the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, Jesus says in John 20:21:
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
It is after Jesus had fully fulfilled the divine plan for his ministry in the world that the one who was sent becomes the sender. And that then puts the onus on the church to fulfill the mission of God.
We weren’t sent to do this mission alone. Jesus has given a helper. And the same Spirit who was at work in Jesus during his ministry has been given to all who believe in the gospel to work for the mission of God in the world.
The Holy Spirit has been present so far in this gospel, but he’s talked about with far greater frequency in the later part of this book than in the opening chapters.
But in the ministry of Jesus, we see all three persons of the trinity at work for the divine plan, and the same is true within the church today.
Where it says that Jesus has the Spirit without limit. There were prophets throughout the Old Testament who were endowed with the Holy Spirit for their specific ministry.
But they were not equipped with all of the knowledge of the Lord.
Illustration – U-Haul
When I moved to Illinois a few years ago, I rented the U-haul truck to move our stuff here, driving in St. Louis there were a couple of hills. One thing I noticed when driving that big truck down hill was that it was equipped with a governor which would kick in and would keep the truck from moving too fast down hill. There were limitations.
God did not give the prophets unmitigated access to the Holy Spirit.
The same is true today. We see a similar idea in Ephesians 4:7:
grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Yet God gives Jesus the Spirit without measure.
I think about the electricity which comes into our homes. High voltage power lines can carry electricity that is several hundred thousand volts. It’s taken to substations where the power is reduced but the power of the electricity can still be in excess of 200,000 volts before its reduced at additional substations. But even once you get in town, the power is still several thousand volts as it is further reduced in order to be safe to use in our homes which is generally around 120 volts.
You think of all the possible power, and what we have to power our homes is so minor compared to that. But still powerful.
If you’ve ever shocked yourself and it still is very painful. The prophets just had small pieces of the divine knowledge. Some might have had 13,000 volts, some might have had 120 volts.
Jesus is unlimited in what he has been given through the Holy Spirit. Already discussed this morning, but because Jesus is above all and from heaven, he has the divine knowledge and privileges because he himself is Lord.
The opening prologue says in 1:18:
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
God is so holy and righteous that no sinful person can go into his presence. But since Jesus is himself God, he is able to make God known and Jesus is the one who is given the Spirit without limit.
John 3:35:
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
Some theology. What does it mean that the Father has given all things into the hand of the son? Jesus is fully God and fully man. Jesus is also eternally God.
John 1:1-2:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Jesus has always been God. There was never a time when he was not God. Jesus also has eternally possessed all of the qualities of God.
He didn’t give up being God to become a man. He didn’t become any less God. He wasn’t a man who was promoted to a divine status later on. He wasn’t created. He is eternally divine.
At the incarnation, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), Jesus was fully God and fully man.
But during the time of his ministry in the world, though he was God, there were aspects of his divine ability which he temporarily laid aside.
How exactly that works we cannot understand. There is one being in history who was fully God and fully man and that is Jesus.
Again, he is eternally God.
And these ideas will unfold more throughout this gospel, but we start to see some elements of the relationship between Jesus and God.
Jesus is the one who dies for sins. He bears the divine wrath for our sins. As we’ve already said, he’s the one who is sent.
John 5:19:
Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
And several other passages in this book. But the Trinity is a perfect relationship between the three persons. So one thing this verse does is it tells us that the Father loves the Son. And while we see throughout this book that Jesus honors God, it is also God who gives all things to Jesus.
So Jesus relinquishes some of his privileges during his ministry yet God also grants him all things. Jesus is sent by God and submits to the divine plan while on earth but Jesus is also enabled to fulfill the divine plan through his life, death, and resurrection.
Christology is perhaps the most intricate and complicated are of study within theology.
So I realize that’s pretty abstract. We’ll have other places in this gospel where the relationships within the Trinity are talked about at greater length.
Verse 36:
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
This verse is a summary of the two routes we can take with the gospel. We can trust in Jesus. Believe in him. Place our seal on the truth of his gospel.
The promise is eternal life. The consequence for not believing in him is that the wrath of God remains on you. Not a new idea in this gospel, but again, one we must be constantly reminded of. The gospel message itself.
Belief in Jesus, and that alone, is what brings eternal life. Without that, there is no salvation.
Jesus is above all. We are of the earth. Jesus speaks the Word of God. We create a manmade gospel where we make ourselves our hope.
Jesus bears witness to what he has seen and heard as one who came from heaven and who makes God known. As one who has the Holy Spirit without limit.
And it is because of who Jesus is that he is the one who has the authority over admission into the kingdom of heaven.
Because he came from there and died so that we could go there.
It is through him and him alone.
Where have you placed your seal?
Is your hope in Christ? Or is it in yourself?
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe.
