God's Big Plan

 “God’s Big Plan”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Oct 6, 2019

Text: Galatians 3:1-9 // Series: Galatians: Freedom Through Christ  

Welcome here, friends.  My name is Brad Sumner, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge and it is our privilege and pleasure to have you here with us today.   

Two summers ago, Meg and I were in England with Meg’s parents and we were invited over to her dad’s cousin’s place for lunch.  It was an English garden party as only the English can do – a long table with a seemingly endless supply of food, warm beer and ample helpings of good-humoured ribbing.  And at one point, some photo albums came out and were passed around.  Pictures from Meg’s grandparent’s generation and the one before that.  One of the cousins had begun keeping a family history and they were placing names and years and relevant data onto big 11x17 sheets.  And it struck me in that moment when I saw my name on that piece of paper – than when I married Meg, some 18 years prior to that summer garden party, even though I had never met them, these people became my people.  Their family became my family.  Their history became part of my history.  Or more accurately, I became part of their family history.  It was a strange feeling because you are used to your own family history and stories and lineage and if you marry someone, you gain a whole new set of history books and family narratives and genealogy. 

This fall, we are studying the book of Galatians here at Jericho Ridge.  And one of the profound questions that this group of people back in the first century was wrestling with is still very relevant to us today.  These new Christians had come from two very, very different family backgrounds.  One group had come from a Jewish family story.  They traced their lineage back to Abraham and down through King David and the Exile and the diaspora of Jews throughout the ancient first century world into places like Galatia.  And the other family history or background for non-Jews or Gentiles as they were called, was that of cultural paganism.  They had been accustomed to participating in worship at the local temples to all of the various gods & goddesses of the ancient world & Roman civic religion. 

But when Paul, the writer of the book of Galatians, and an apostle in the early Christian movement, came through and shared his life with them and preached Christ to them, people from BOTH Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds became part of this new, emerging Jesus-movement.  And so they found themselves out in the religious wilderness.  They were not part of Jewish synagogues anymore, nor were they part of pagan temple worship.  They were part of a new community, the Body of Christ, the church. 

But the pressing questions of the book of Galatians is “where does this new community fit into the story of God in history?”  Because there were some false teachers who were coming around and telling these newbies “ah, you see, you’ve got it all wrong!  Your place in the family tree is really over here on the Jewish side.  So in order to belong, you have to adopt the cultural and external practices that have marked out family for generations.  The real way to be part of God’s family is to sign up to be a proper cultural Jew – observe the Sabbath and holy days, eat the right foods, get circumcised.  That’s the way to really prove you are part of the family.”  And this would have made life easier for these new Christians because when you are out in the religious wilderness, you get shot at from all sides. 

And so Paul has to write to this little group because there is a real danger that those who have found faith in Christ will get deceived into believing that in order to be part of God’s family, they have to conform to a certain origin story, adopt certain traits and a maintain a certain legacy.  And Paul will have none of that. So today we’re going to look together at Galatians 3:1-9 and we’ll see that God is writing a family story, alright.  But it is a BIG story.  Bigger than either group could imagine because it extends down throughout history and you and I and millions of people who don’t have Jewish origins are being swept up in it. 

Turn with me in your Bibles or on your devices to Galatians 3:1-2 (NLT)

“Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.”

When we think of family stories, they all share 4 characteristics that we are going to see played out in this text.  And the first characteristic is that

1) Every Family’s Story Has An ORIGIN

For my family, the Sumners, the origin is British and it is also role based.  In the late middle ages when you were to attend legal proceedings at court, there an official piece of paper that we still use today: a summons.  And the person who delivered that piece of paper was a Summoner.  Just like many names the spelling got updated a bit but that is the origin story of the Sumner family, as I understand it.   

But Paul is writing to this motley crew of post-Jew, Post-Gentile Jesus people and he reminds them that

• Every Christian’s origin story includes:
  • Faith coming by hearing and responding

to the message about Jesus.  You received God’s Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.  That’s your origin story.  It didn’t start by obeying a set of ancient Jewish practices, the Torah, it started at the foot of the cross.  When you heard about God’s love and grace, and by faith and in faith, responded to God’s good news. 

The good news of God’s rich and deep love for you that God sent Jesus to live, to die and to rise again so that you are freed from the penalty of sin, which is death.  Your origin story, should you choose to accept it, is that

• The Son of God’s vicarious death for you

Paul says that the meaning of Christ’ death is clear: that it had salvific impact for you and for all who choose tot embrace it as part of their own origin story.  Those who, by faith and in faith, say YES to Jesus.  Who respond to God just like Paul did, just like the Galatian Christians did and just like many here at Jericho have done.  Whatever you background ethnically, culturally, economically, religiously, if you are a Christian, your origin story started at the same place as mine and Paul’s: at the cross. 

Paul also says that the evidence of your participation in God’s one family is

• The Spirit of God coming to live in you

All who are part of God’s new family have received the Spirit.  In the book of Acts, 15 the early church is having a massive debate about what it means to live together in one family, Jews and non-Jews.  And the Apostle Peter stands up and says in Acts 15:8-11 “God knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. 9 He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith. 10 So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? 11 We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.”

Friends, this has implications for you and I and for the church today. The clearest one I can think of is that when it comes to who is part of God’s family, we draw the boundary lines in the same places as Peter and Paul and the New Testament. 

• Faith is the only entrance requirement

God is not in the business of making distinctions based on how many generations of your family have been Christians or if you have Mennonite heritage, if you went to Seminary or if are living below the poverty line on the streets of Surrey-Langley.  If you are part of God’s family, you came through the same doorway that anyone and everyone has: it is by grace you have been saved through faith.  Not by works of righteousness so that nobody can boast. Faith is the only entrance requirement.  If you have the Spirit of God living and working in you, you are part of God’s family.

As founder of the Vineyard movement, John Wimber, was fond of saying:

• “The way IN is the way ON” (John Wimber)

The work of God’s Holy Spirit in each woman, man, and child got you into this complex, global family and the grace and gifts of the Spirit are the sustaining and underlying thing that binds & keeps us together in unity. 

That’s our origin story but let’s keep reading in Galatians 3:3-5 were we are going to see the second feature of our family story.  Paul is amped up!

“How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? 4 Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it? 5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.”

This past week on Monday was Orange Shirt day.  Sept 30 is set aside as a day to remember the harm done to first nations children in residential schools where we as settlers and our ancestors worked to re-centre their story to become more “white” or more “Christian”.  Stories were lost. Language was lost. Culture was supressed.  And here Paul here is doing some recentering or retelling of history, particularly the one that the Jewish people are telling themselves.  Paul is an accomplished student of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, and Paul is reminding his readers   

2) Every Family Story has a CENTRE

A place where the plot hangs.  A main point.  A main character.  Going back into the Jewish understanding in other places in his writings, Paul asserts that the centre of the story

• For those living from Adam & Abraham:
  • The promise of God sending a Redeemer

That due to human choices, sin and evil was present BUT God’s promise in Genesis 3 was that God would one day overturn & undo all that was wrong.  Those living in that time period from Adam to Abraham clung to it.  

Then God appears to Abraham and makes a promise to Abraham that all of the nations of the world would be blessed through his family.

• For those living Abraham to Moses:
  • The promise God will care for God’s family

The period following Abraham is very difficult for his family yet they cling to the promises of God that in the midst of being enslaved in Egypt, that God will watch over and protect them. 

Then God rescues God’s people and meets them in the wilderness and gives them the Law, the Torah.  It is a wonderful gift that had a beginning

• For those Moses to 1^st Century Galatia:
  • The gift of Torah (Law) to guide & guard

And a purpose… to guide and to guard them from waywardness. To mark them as a unique and set-apart people.  BUT Paul is giving the story a new centre.  Not in Adam, not in Abraham, not in Torah observance,

• BUT for those alive after JESUS…

He re-centres the story in the work and person and power of Jesus. 

This has massive implications. Because the big story God has been writing throughout history has a new plot twist that was always planned: 

• Jesus is the fulfillment Messianic expectation
  • He’s the Redeemer, come to crush the evil one
  • The Rescuer, sent to release us from slavery,
  • Righteous One, fulfills all requirements of the Law

In other words, Paul is not saying that Adam, Abraham and Moses have no importance.  On the contrary, he is saying the same thing that I was feeling when I was looking at those old pictures in the garden party two summers ago.  That in some mysterious way, when you and I become part of God’s family, their stories become our stories.  We are, using language from another part of the New Testament, grafted into their history.  But their history also has been re-centred not on the law given to Moses BUT on the fulfillment and liberty and love that has been manifest in Jesus! 

Even non-Jewish and non-Christian historians bear witness to this re-centering.  Novelist H.G. Wells said that “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.” 

So what do we do with Jewish history?  Is Paul up to some kind of cultural appropriation here?  Not at all.  Let’s keep reading because he is going to use Abraham’s story as a positive example of what he is talking about, not a negative one.  Look with me at Galatians 3:6-7

“In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.”

Paul here is highlighting our third characteristic of families.  That  

3) Every Family Shares Traits

What are some examples you can think of traits shared by a family?  Traits can be genetic, such as hair or eye colour.  They can be learned (Intriguingly, though it was once thought to be such, tongue rolling, which approximately 70% of the population can do, was through to be genetic.  Turns out it can be learned!).  There are other traits - Dominant Handedness (approximately Right handed – 93% Left handed – 7%).  Also genetic… If you take your hands and clasp them together, which thumb is on top – mine, the left hand is.  How many? (Left thumb on top – 55%

Right thumb on top – 44% No preference – 1%). 

Traits are fascinating things to study and al families have them.  But what Paul says here in Galatians 3 is pretty radical because he strips almost all superficial or cultural or historical traits away and says simple that

• The common family trait is FAITH
  • Anyone characterized by that trait is a member of the family

This is also true for people before Christ.  Listen carefully to Paul’s language.  In the same say you believed, Abraham believed.  Genesis 15:6 “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted his a righteous because of his faith.”  God proclaimed this good news, this gospel, to Abraham long ago.   

Wait a minute, you might say.  Jesus hadn’t come yet!  This was all before the cross.  How does Abraham get to hear the gospel, how does God declare Abraham righteous without the cross?  Paul is not devaluing the cross at all but what he is saying is that the family trait isn’t whether or not Abraham wore a crucifix around his neck or understood atonement theories properly.  The common denominator is faith in God. Anyone characterised by that kind of faith is a member of God’s family.  This means that people in the Old Testament who demonstrated that faith were, to use the language of modern evangelicalism “saved”.

This has massive IMPLICATIONS: for us to think through & live out…   

• Christians have roots; we belong to the people of God, stretching back to Abraham

We didn’t arrive on scene with advent of modern evangelicalism, or even Anabaptism or even stretching back further, with the birth of the early church.  The story of God’s family, God’s people, is one that God has been writing for centuries and generations.  And you and I are privileged to be a small part of it right here right now.  But it doesn’t start or end with us. 

• God has ONE family with ONE story

Despite all the divisions in denominations and the massive theological and pragmatic divisions between Protestants and Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, and Messianic Jews, God still has one family with one story. 

 You might say “But Brad, Catholics?! they have so many wrong ideas about Mary!”  I would ask you to think about your Catholic friends and ask “Do they evidence faith in Christ, are the filled with the Spirit, do their lives bear the witness of transformation?” Then they are part of the family. 

Here’s the other implication of our being grated in and having such deep roots in the big story that God has been and continues to write:

• There’s NO PLACE for anti-Semitism (hate) or Zionistic nationalism (over-elevation)

God’s family isn’t rooted in the story of an ancient or modern nation-state.  So it is wholly inappropriate to say thinks like “the Jews killed Jesus” just like it isn’t’ helpful to blindly to side with the contemporary Israeli government in their treatment of Palestinians because somehow you feel Israel has a special and divine purpose in God’s future plans for history.  God’s family is made up of all those throughout history who are grafted into Abraham’s story by faith, not by nationality or history or obedience to laws. 

Paul really drives it home for us: Galatians 3:8-9   “What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.”

This past week, Jared and I were away with my dad who has become more aware as he gets older about the legacy he is imparting to his family.  And here Paul is asking the question “what is the family legacy that God’s one family is to be leaving the world as they live out God’s story?” You see

4) Every Family Has a Legacy

The Abrahamic legacy that is still being written in and through your life and mine is that we are blessed to be a blessing. 

• God’s family is designed to be a BLESSING

This is why we exist as a church, friends.  It is not for the spiritual comfort and ease of the already convinced.  The mission Jericho is called to is that  

• People who are lonely find community
• People who are lost find hope and peace
• People who are hurting find healing
• People who are poor are fed and clothed (Guatemala)
• People who are spiritually seeking find Jesus

One day, church, our family story will be written.  And the chapter that begins now as we renovate this building with the vision to be a beacon of hope in the lives of people here in Clayton, gets written not at the end of time, but gets written week by week…. line by line, page by page, chapter by chapter.  And you and I are all co-authors.  You have your part to write and I have mine.  So each of us has to ask ourselves some legacy   

• IMPLICATIONS:
  • What will your legacy be this week?

In the next 6 days, what will my story be?  What contributions will I make in a positive and loving way to the lives of people around me?  Legacy isn’t built in a week but it is built week by week.  And so the choices you make this week and the actions you take this week will form a part of your legacy.  Will you choose generosity and forgiveness and love?  Will you choose faith and hope and live as a person who embodies good news, who proclaims peace and who calls others to thanksgiving and new life. 

• What impact am I having on my family?

For parents, we often spend time on thinking about what kind of financial or educational legacies we are leaving, but what about the spiritual and emotional legacy that you are building this week.  What will your children say about your character about your walk with Jesus?  Live a life worth imitating so that your legacy impact on your family is one of faith. 

As Ruth Ellen and team come and lead us in response, I am reminded this is not only a call to us as individuals, it also applies to Jericho collectively. 

• What will our community legacy be?

Years from now, when all the raw land is paved over, all the apartments are up, all the people are settled into life in Willoughby and Clayton, what do we want our part in this community to be?  That is one reason why we believe firmly that investing in this facility is not about bricks and mortar (or paint or even working washrooms J).  Buying and renovating this building is about increasing our missional contact with people in this city so that we can have a legacy of blessing and impacting the lives of people in this city who need Jesus.  Our ministry legacy here is just beginning and it’s an exciting time be pick up a pen and start to write with us.  So perhaps for you, joining the newcomers lunch or membership class would be the next step in joining your legacy to the legacy we are writing as a community in this community, by God’s grace.  And not only here but also all around the world.  Steve just got back from Nigeria, another family the Workmans who attended Jericho just landed on assignment in South Africa. We are called not just to this city but also to be a blessing to the nations.

• What will our global legacy be?

We have been blessed to be a blessing.  Taste and see that the Lord is Good.  To receive God’s love and mercy and to offer it freely to others.