Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 21 April 2013; Corps 614 Regent Park, 30 August 2015; TSA Alberni Valley Ministries, 08 June 2025; and Southmount Citadel, 15 November 2026 by Captain (Major) Michael Ramsay
This is the 2026 Vancouver version.
To read the 2013 original, click here:
https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2013/04/galatians-519-21-ephesians-427-32.html
To read the 2015 version, click here:
http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2015/08/galatians-519-21-ephesians-427-32.html
To view the 2025 version, click here:
https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2025/06/galatians-515-21-ephesians-426-32.html
When we lived in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, one of our congregation members, Tim was his name, early on a Sunday morning before he is up and ready for Church, there was a knock on the door of Tim’s new place. He had just recently moved in. He gets up, answers the door; it is a police officer. She asks, “Are you Tim?”
“Yes”, Tim says.
“I need you to come with me”, she says.
“Why”, Tim asks
She tells him what it is that he has supposedly done. Tim doesn’t think that this applies to him. As far as he knows he has never been involved in whatever the police officer is talking about but “Okay.” He's still half asleep.
“Go get dressed”, she tells him. He does.
The whole time he is wondering, of course, ‘what is going on?’ As he is getting dressed, of course, he is thinking that there is something not right here; so as he comes out of his room, fully clothed, of course, he asks her again, “Who are you looking for?”
As they walk out the door, “Tim”, she says.
As they go to the police car, “Tim who?” he says. “What is the last name of the Tim you’re looking for?”
“You tell me your last name first”, she says. He does. “Show me your ID, please”, she says. He does. “Have a nice day, Tim”, she says. He does.
Apparently some other Tim – in whom the police were interested - used to live in this apartment before him; or the new landlord thought he was some other Tim or something like that. But anyway that was Tim’s excuse for missing church that day. I thought that was a good excuse.
This was a case of mistaken identity. In our texts today – especially the one from Galatians – we may have cases of mistaken identity as well. The passages we read today are all from letters that the Apostle Paul has written to the Saints (In the Bible, when we see the word 'Saints' to whom is it referring? Christians). Paul has written these letters to Saints/Christians in various communities he knows well. He is writing these letters to churches he has planted himself. He is writing these letters – in the cases of the Philippians and the Ephesians – to people he loves and respects. And to the Galatians, he writes of their common problem, Galatians 5:19-21:
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
People who indulge in hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like will not inherit the kingdom of God.[1] This is pretty serious stuff. Paul is not necessarily talking about those who have not claimed that Jesus is Lord (See Matthew 7:15-27; see also Matthew 25:31ff.); Paul is writing this letter to and for people in the churches. Matthew 7:21, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Paul says that those in the Christian churches – that he himself knows and some of these churches he actually planted himself – Paul says to his friends that those of us who live a life with hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy and the like will not even inherit the kingdom of God.[2] This is serious stuff (cf. TSA doc 10).
This can be a real problem too. Paul had to write this similar sentiment in many of his letters, three of which we have read from today. Paul had to warn people who were meeting in the Christian congregations. Paul had to warn the Saints in these Christian communities. Paul had to warn the good guys not to get drawn into this stuff or, he says, they might be mistaken for people who will not even inherit the kingdom of God.[3]
We know too that just as these things were obviously a temptation for people in the Roman world of the first century, it is equally a temptation in the English-speaking world of the 21st Century. Who of us hasn’t seen or experienced hatred (hating someone), discord (not getting along with someone), jealousy, fits of rage (getting angry at people and things), selfish ambition (wanting to be better than someone), dissentions, factions (this includes getting people on your side, gossiping, talking behind people's back), envy, and the like? And who of us hasn’t been tempted to consider indulging in hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like? Here then is the question for us pertaining to mistaken identity. Have any of us been regularly partaking in these things? And if we are, what can we do about it?
These behaviours can be such a temptation to draw us away from a loving relationship with God and our neighbour, can’t they? We have heard the analogy of yeast working its way through dough. When we are surrounded by all of this stuff, it becomes contagious. We have heard the expression, ‘one bad apple spoils the whole bunch’. This is true. Where one day no one is engaged in discord, dissentions, factions, and the like; one person indulges him or herself and gossips with another person who then huddles in a corner with a third person who then tells someone else about all of their perceived problems with someone (which may or may not even be true!) and then they tell two friends and then they tell two friends and then they tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on and soon the whole place is full of cliques, factions, whispering, gossiping, fits of rage and the like. And that is not a good place to be. And that is exactly where some of these first century churches were and that is exactly where a lot of the 21st century churches appear to be and that is exactly where I would hope and pray that we here would never find ourselves – in this very real danger of – as Paul says – of looking like those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
The effects of these things - hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like - are disastrous. It is like this: I was an RCMP chaplain many years ago. They sent a number of us chaplains on the Prairies to a police chaplaincy-training course in Edmonton. There were many good speakers. The Edmonton ERT (SWAT) Team Leader let us play with some of their toys (their weapons) and he spoke to us about the importance of chaplains in his job when people are shooting at them and when they have to consider what course of action to take themselves.
The keynote speaker, Gerry Fostaty, was a fellow who has written a book, As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier, about an incident that happened to him when he was a teenager in military cadets.[4] He was probably about 18 or 19 and he was a leader of younger cadets. They were at a cadet camp in Valcartier, Quebec. As part of the camp, they got to play with weapons not entirely unlike we did at the conference in Edmonton. The cadets (even more), who were just kids, learned how to use the weapons properly and how to take care of the weapons and how the weapons worked and all kinds of things like that.
In one class, the adult instructor was handing out dummy grenades for the children to examine. The dummy grenades you can apparently tell from the real grenades because the dummies are brightly coloured - orange, pink, blue – not the military green of combat weaponry. The cadets, these children were encouraged to take apart these dummy grenades, put them back together, examine how they work, etc., etc., etc…
Apparently and disastrously in with the orange, pink, and blue-coloured grenades was at least one live green grenade. The children were passing this live green grenade – along with the other toy grenades – along the line of cadets in the class. They were taking the pin out and placing it back in and they were holding (I don’t know what the term is but…) the safety and disabling and reassembling it along with the other coloured grenades and then one little boy pulled the pin on the live grenade and holding it out too long…
The writer of this book was out of the room at the time; he ran in when he heard the explosion and found his little brother who -was not seriously injured- along with many others who were. One deadly green grenade had mixed in with the harmless coloured grenades and this one green grenade brought destruction with it and it brought death with it.
The result of this green grenade in the room full of children is essentially the same as what results when hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like wind up in our churches. These are our green grenades. When we put ourselves first, engaging in selfish ambition instead of thinking of others as greater than ourselves (as Paul extols us; Philippians 2) the results are essentially the same.[5] Just as the green grenade brings physical death when people handle it and it goes unchecked, Paul reminds us that hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like, bring everlasting death to those who are consumed with them. Paul says they will not inherit the kingdom of God.
So what can we do about this? The Apostle Paul says, in essence, that we should remove the green grenades from the box; we should remove these things from the church. We should, Ephesians 4:31-5:2a:
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us…
Remove the green grenades before they go off. Paul says, Galatians 5:16, 22-25:
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Remove the green grenades before it is too late. Paul says, Philippians 2:3-4,12-13:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others... Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.
Friends, I remind us all today that selfishness, gossip, slander, talking about others in this way, unforgiveness, pulling each other down instead of building each other up. These are the green grenades that can blow the roof right off the top of any church or Salvation Army corps that to has even up until that point been actively fighting in the Salvation War. When we think of ourselves as equal or greater than others, when we allow ourselves to get worked up about what other people are doing or saying, when we start to talk about others, not forgiving them but tearing them down instead of building them up, that is really our pulling the pin out of a green grenade that the Enemy has tossed into the Holy of Holies, that is the body of Christ.[6] So today I challenge each and every one of us and I encourage each and every one of us here to continue faithfully serving, let us “be wholly sanctified, and that [our] whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (TSA doc 10) and as Philippians 2 records, let us “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility [let us] value others above [ourselves], not looking to [our] own interests but each of you to the interests of the others”..."Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that {we} may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then [we] will shine among them like stars in the sky "
Let us pray.
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