Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 28 July 2013
by Captain Michael Ramsay
I heard this on the radio the other week: A man was nervously walking down the street in New York. A large intimidating man approaches him and asks ‘do you know where Central Park is’
‘No”
“Then I’ll rob you here…”
A man in his car asked a police/by-law officer, ‘Is it alright if I park here?’
‘No’, the police/by-law officer replies
‘What about all of these other cars?’
‘They didn’t ask…”
In our pericope today we are speaking about the old Jewish Law. And just like Larry here enforces parking and other by-laws in our city, many of which probably didn’t exist 100 years ago, when The Salvation Army came to Swift Current; the Apostle Paul is saying that the old Jewish Law’s time has been fulfilled, it is no longer needed so they shouldn’t be enforcing it anymore. I’m going to read a few old Canadian Laws that have been fulfilled; some of which are still law on paper if not in practice:
Ø You may not pay for a fifty-cent item with only pennies (Canada).
Ø Citizens may not publicly remove bandages (Canada).
Ø It is illegal to kill a sasquatch. (BC)
Ø A law requires jailers to bring convicted debtors a pint of beer on demand. (BC)
Ø Driving on the roads is not allowed. (New Brunswick)
Ø Bylaw states that no more than 3.5 inches of water is allowed in a bathtub. (Ont.)
Ø Businesses must provide rails for tying up horses. (Alta)
Ø It is illegal to kill a sick person by frightening them. (Alta)
Ø If you have a water trough in your front yard it must be filled by 5:00 a.m. (Ont.)
Ø You can't drag a dead horse down Yonge Street in Toronto on a Sunday. (Ont.)
Ø If you are released from prison, it is required that you are given a handgun with bullets and a horse, so you can ride out of town. (Alta)
A lot of these old laws sound silly to the post-modern person, as they are no longer required because the world has changed significantly since they came into effect. And today, even if it still is ‘on the books’, I wouldn’t want to try giving an Alberta ex-con a loaded handgun outside the prison gates. I can’t see how that would end well for him or for you. And if you have a trough in your yard, I would be very surprised if Larry gives you a ticket for not having it filled with water by 5am.
In the previous chapter, Chapter 3 of Galatians, Paul explains quite nicely this very point as it pertains to the old Jewish Law through the analogies of a student and a child.[1] When a student graduates, she is no longer under the authority of her teacher. When a child comes of age, he is no longer under the authority of his parents. Likewise now that the ancient Israelites have grown up, they are now longer under the authority of the Law of Moses; they now can experience freedom in Christ.
Another contemporary example: even if our town was in Alberta, where the law was written, Larry wouldn’t come by the Thrift Store and give us a ticket for not providing a rail to tie up horses because there is no longer a need to provide that service; horses aren’t the primary mode of transportation anymore. It is the same as recorded in Galatians with the old Jewish Law.
The Israelites and Judeans used to have to follow the old Israelite Law because it used to be applicable in the ‘old days’ but today the world is nothing like it was in the days B.C. (Before Christ) so the Jewish-Christians no longer need to follow these laws.
A couple of important review questions before we go forward:
Ø What was an Israelite? (a person from the old United Kingdom of Israel or a descendant of the person ‘Israel’)
Ø Who was the person Israel? (Jacob)
Ø As a side note people descended from the remnant of Israelites who remained in the country after the conquest and exile, do you know what they are called? (Samaritans after the capital of the northern country of Israel, Samaria)
Ø What was a Jew? (A person from the Israelite tribe of Judah, the independent Kingdom of Judah, or the Roman province of Judea, or a follower of their national religion)
So Israelites are people descended from Israel (Jacob) and Jews are people from Judea (Judah).
Back to the question of the old Law that we have been discussing then: the Israelites, who are descended from Israel; and the Jews, who are people who live or lived in Judea; they used to follow all these old laws stretching back to long before their countries were ever founded and now their countries are long gone and they are ruled by Rome and even more than this: As Paul reminds us, now that Jesus has come the Jews don’t need to follow these old laws from Before Christ because absolutely everything has changed now – Chapter 5 of Galatians will explain this part in detail.
This is a central part of Paul’s letter to the Galatians but here comes the confusing point: Paul says that the Jews don’t need to follow the Law because it is already fulfilled – that makes sense - but this letter isn’t primarily written to Jews; it is primarily written to Gentiles.[2] Who can tell me what is a Gentile? Technically (s)he is a Greek person but Israelites and Jews used the term to refer to anyone who was not a Jew.
So how can all of this about out-dated Jewish laws here possibly relate to Gentiles? What do Gentile Christians care about obsolete foreign laws that they never ever followed anyway? And why should we care about obsolete foreign laws that we never ever followed anyway? How does all of this relate to us here today in The Salvation Army? How does all of this relate to us today here in Canada? How does all of this relate to all of us here today in Swift Current, Saskatchewan?
The answer to this question – in part – comes from Galatians 4:8-11. Paul, after he spends a lot of time speaking to Gentile converts about the old Jewish Law then says to these non-Jewish Christians:
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Do you see what Paul is doing here? In saying this, Paul lumps the Gentiles and all of us together with the Jews of old. He says to the Gentiles in Galatia, who never were slaves to the old Jewish Law, he says that they were in essence just as much slaves, as the Jews were slaves.[3] Paul says, as recorded in 4:8, that they were enslaved by their own gods, their own cultic legal systems, their own cultic traditions. Some Jewish Christians have been telling the Gentile Christians now that they are free from the confines of their old Gentile rites that they need to adopt the old Jewish rites.[4] Paul disagrees: Paul tells these Gentiles that now that they are free from their own rites if they do start obeying all the special days and months and seasons and years of the old Jewish rites, the old Jewish rituals, and the old Jewish Law; then Christ will be as useless to them as if they had never met Him. This is because if they do start following the old Jewish laws then they will be in exactly the same situation as they were before they ever knew Jesus. Following the old Jewish Law after the resurrection of Christ, Paul says, is exactly the same thing as being a pagan or worshipping a foreign god: neither will get you anywhere near heaven (cf. TSA doc 2).
In a nutshell, this is what has happened. People in Galatia –who were not ever Jews or Israelites – they became Christians. They gave up all their old pagan or old secular or old cultic lifestyles and became Christians. Most Christians to this point in history we remember were from Judea. Most Christians at this point in history were Jews. So then these other Jews or even Jewish Christians show up in Galatia where the Gentile Christians have already stopped following all the outdated pagan rites of Galatia, and these Jews are telling them that they now need to follow the out-dated Jewish rites and the Law of the Jews if they want to be real Christians; then some of the Christians in Galatia believe them, turn and walk away from Christ and towards these out-dated laws.[5]
Do we ever so this? Do we ever turn away from God and towards out-dated traditions and regulations? Do we ever walk towards those who are telling us that in order to be saved we need Christ and something else; I tell you the truth we can’t turn and walk toward something else without turning and walking away from Christ (TSA Doc 9).
For those of you who came to know Christ later in life, I want you to cast your mind back to that time when you first came to the Lord; when you first came to Christ, what did it feel like? When you first came to Christ, what did you do and what did you want to do?
For those of us who have been Christians for as long as we can remember, I want you to think of a time when you were especially close to Christ: maybe it was at a summer camp; maybe it was at an evangelism week; maybe it was at a prayer weekend; maybe it was when you were first married; maybe it was when you were in college; maybe it was when you spent some time away?
Has everyone got a time in mind when they were really intimate with God? Those who can vividly remember when you first entered into that relationship, what was it like? I have compared it to when you first meet that special someone. Remember when you first saw him or her and then you first asked him or her out on a date or you first accepted his or her invitation? Remember that excitement? You wanted to spend every moment with each other? You wanted to get to know each other intimately. You didn’t want to be separated for a moment…
Marriages break down when this feeling is replaced by rituals, frustrations, deeds and other things that you have to do. Marriages break down when people stop being considerate of each other and start just thinking about themselves. When you have a close personal relationship with someone you want to spend time together and you are naturally considerate of each other because you love each other. When the initial feelings wane, many people in our day and age turn into themselves or to something or someone else and in this day and age many people even walk away from the relationship altogether.
This is in essence what the Galatians were at risk of doing: turning towards rites and turning away from Christ. This is the same for us today. If we here today are more concerned about rites, rituals, rules, than about experiencing a right relationship with Christ; if we here today are more concerned about whether somebody else smokes, speeds, swears; if we here today are more concerned about if someone reads the ‘wrong’ version of the Bible, holds the ‘wrong view’ of the rapture, or sings the ‘wrong kind of songs’;[6] Paul says if we are more concerned about how other people are to worship Christ than we are about actually spending our own time worshipping Christ then why did we even bother to say that sinner’s prayer anyway? Paul says that if we are more concerned about how our brother or sister acts – what he wears, who she’s dating, how he speaks – then we are about spending our time in prayer and worship of God through Bible study, service, and other means; then our faith is about as useful to us as an atheist’s. Like so much in this world it is not what you know but whom you know and how well you know Him.
With this in mind, I encourage each of us to encounter God daily. With this in mind, I encourage each of us to pray and to read our Bibles daily. Susan encouraged us weeks ago to read through Galatians as a congregation; I encourage any of us who have done so to do so again and I encourage each of us to commit to pray to God everyday. Today I have left these cards at the mercy seat to remind us to spend time with God and there are sign-up sheets for those who wish to make that commitment to spent time everyday with God in prayer and Bible study. If you leave your name and number, we will follow up and encourage you in that pledge.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cf. Michael Ramsay, “Galatians 3:19-25: Don't be a McChicken...”, presented to Nipawin Corps (January 20, 2008), Tisdale Corps (January 27, 2008) and Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army (26 August, 2011). Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2008/01/galatians-319-25-dont-be-mcchicken.html
[2] Cf. James Montgomery Boice, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Galatians/Introduction to Galatians/Who Were the Galatians?, Book Version: 4.0.2
[3] Cf. David M. Hay, “Between Text and Sermon: Galatians 4:1-31,” Interpretation 54 (2000): 293
[4] Cf. R. Alan Cole, Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1989 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 9), S. 164
[5] Cf. Charles B. Cousar, Galatians, in Interpretation, ed. James Luther Mays, et. al. (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1982), 93.
[6] Cf. Richard B. Hays, Galatians, in NIB, Vol. 11, ed. Leander E. Keck et. al. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), 289.
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