Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Galatians: A Grace-full Life

Grace... It's personal (Pt 2)

Sermon Series: Galatians: A Grace-full Life

Title: : Grace... It's personal (Pt2) Text: Galatians 4:8-20

Introduction: In Discipleship Journal, Carole Mayhall tells of a woman who went to a diet center to lose weight. The director took her to a full length mirror. On it he outlined a figure and told her. “This is what I want you to be like at the end of the program.” Days of intense dieting and exercise followed, and every week the women would stand in front of the mirror, discouraged because her bulging outline didn’t fit the director’s ideal. But she kept at it, and finally one day she became the image she longed for.

People try very har, like this woman, to conform to a physical image. But, our passage today will tell us that God’s goal for us is to conform to a very different kind of image. (Jeff Simms)

Let me ask,

·       ‘What shapes you?’

·       ‘What forms who you are?’

·       ‘What people/ attitudes/actions are influencing who you are and what you will become?’

These are very important questions for anyone who can honestly say they want to experience a deeper relationship with God.

Read: Romans 12:2a ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world...’

J.B.Phillips version of this reads ‘Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into it’s own mold.’

I ask you again, what’s forming who you are and who you’ll become? Is it the heart of God or the pattern of the world? Does the pressure

·       to be like everyone else,

·       to have what everyone else has,

·       to do what everyone else does,

·       to think how everyone else thinks

squeeze you into a shape, a form, that is clearly contrary to God’s ideal pattern for you? What is God’s pattern for you?

Read: Romans 8:29a ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son...’

 
Does the call of Christ to be like Jesus take second/third or even a lower place than the calls of family, friends and associates, of career, business, wealth, fashion and the draw of a materialistic world?

Parents, listen closely. What you allow to form you now, will not only have an impact on who you will become, but will form your children and will impact who they will become. Let me give you a few examples.

·       Stay out too late on Saturday night so you can’t get up to worship on Sunday...

·       Regularly attend family functions on Sundays and miss worship...

·       Hang out only or primarily with people outside the church...

·       Use foul language in the home in front of your children...

Do those things and don’t be surprised when your children:

·       Start giving you a hard time about coming to worship on Sunday.

·       Start scheduling activities with their friends on Sunday mornings.

·       Start hanging out with people who are bad influences on them.

·       Start putting foul and inappropriate posts on Facebook.

Now, I ask you once again, what’s forming who you are and who you’ll become? Is it the heart of God or the pattern of the world? This is what we

will examine in our text today.

Transition: Open your Bibles to Galatians 4:13 (pg 888 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you.) For it’s there we will continue to see that God’s Grace...is personal.

III.Galatians 4:13-16 Why the change of heart?

Read: Galatians 4:13-16

Paul is looking to rekindle the warm relationship he once had with the Galatian Christians. So, he reminds them that although he came to them with a great illness, they didn’t shy away from him. In fact they greeted him with love and acceptance.

We don’t know why but Paul was a mess when he came to them. Yet, in spite of Paul’s apparent appalling appearance, they warmly welcomed him. Why? His welcome was not based on his appearance but on the Truth of the Gospel he taught them.

Paul asked ‘Has so much changed that you now call me your enemy for holding to that very same Truth?’ Paul makes it personal... ‘Why has your heart turned away from me? I spoke grace to you...I spoke Truth to you and you accepted it with joy and love. What has happened? What has influenced you in such a way as to cause you to

turn away from me and more importantly, God’s grace?’

Transition: Actually, Paul knows the answer and he will tell us in the next 2 verses.

IV. Galatians 4:17-18  Be passionate...

                                                  for what is good!

Read: Galatians 4:17-18

The Galatians were deceived into following the Judaizers teachings by their flattering words and subtle threats.

·       They allowed themselves to be formed by the flattery, the kind words, the friendships of the Judaizers. Just like we allow the world to form us by it’s deceptive lures of materialism, success, and a desire to be liked.

·       And the Judaizers kept them close by their subtle threats...just like the subtle threats we hear from the world... ‘church is a crutch, it’s for losers, spend time with us on Sunday or we won’t invite you over again, we won’t be your friends.’

Pressure...it’s hard, especially when it comes from family or friends who have nothing better to do on Sunday, so they plan their ‘family activities’ when it’s convenient for them....putting pressure on you, to choose, them over worship...ultimately over God Himself.

I know I’ve been harping on regular worship attendance, but this is our base of operation for Christianity, without it we will fall.

Pressure, Paul calls it ‘zealous,’ other translations say ‘passion.’ Paul says it’s great to be zealous, passionate, to be sold out for something. But be passionate for what’s good, what’s true, be sold out for what will help form Christ in you.

The ‘zeal’ or ‘passion’of the Judaizers was inappropriate. Why? Because it’s purpose was to make the Galatian Christians just like the Judaizers...Just like it’s the purpose of the world, to make you, just like it.

Grace...living for Christ, being formed by Christ and the Word of God...is personal. Because you have to make personal choices on how you will live in a world, in families, with friends who will try to make you choose them, over Christ.

And when the world, your family and friends begin to turn on you because of your choices to let Christ be formed in you, it will hurt. Because it’s

personal.

Transition: We get to the bottom line for Paul in the last 2 verses. He places the emphases where it belongs...Christ in you.

V. Galatians 4:19-20  Let Christ be formed

                                                                 in you!

Read: Galatians 4:19-20

Did you notice the distinct change of tone in these verses? Previously, Paul referred to the Galatian Christians as brothers, here Paul refers to them as children.

He is speaking as if he was a mother who is in the pain of childbirth...why? Because he wants to see Christ formed in his children and it hurts him to see them allow the world to form them instead.

This is probably the warmest and most tender passage Paul has written to the Galatian Christians. It revealed his heart for them, something the Judaizers lacked. You see,

·       the Judaizers and the legalists of today, respond to God out of duty not love therefore there is little joy in their lives.

·       Paul wants us to respond to God our of love and experience try joy in our lives.

But the Galatian Christians showed no love or joy so Paul speaks with a broken heart. He sees the damage the Judaizers have done, the influence they have had on them and he grieves for them as a parent grieves when a child does something the parent knows is wrong and will only hurt the child

Paul wants them to return to the truth of the Gospel, the Truth of God’s Word, so that God’s grace can form them into all that God intended them to be. And that God’s joy will fill their lives.

Even though the Galatian Christian turned to another gospel,

·       they can return to grace,

·       they can return to being formed by Christ.

It is never too late. Never too late. That’s what grace is all about. We don’t deserve it, but God loves us so much, He keeps giving us another chance, a clean slate, a new beginning. That’s grace!

Paul ends with ‘I am perplexed about you!’ You see, Paul understands that it their choice to return, it’s their choice to be formed by Christ rather than by the world. But they must make the choice. And so must you, if you have strayed from God’s grace and have lost your joy.

Conclusion

So...how is Christ formed in us? The answer is found in God’s Word...when we connect 3 verses.

Connect verse 4:19 to verse 4:6. Paul says let Christ be formed in you. And that Christ is formed in you by His Spirit whom God has sent into your heart.

Now connect 4:6 to 3:5. Paul says the Spirit God has given you, works miracles in your life, not because you followed the Law but because you believed what you heard.

So, how is Christ formed in you? By faith!

·       Jesus comes and shapes us from within when we rely on Him to form us.

·       Jesus takes shape in those who abandon themselves to Him.

·       Jesus forms himself in the lives of those who will let go of all of the forms the world would use to shape them.

·       Jesus forms his image/character in lives that have ceased to be hard and resistant.

So, are you allowing Christ be formed in you...or are you allowing the world (family, friends, career, recreation, material possessions) form you? It’s your choice, because Grace...is personal.