6/23/24 Gal. 3:23-29 “First Came the Law, Then the Faith!”

20 Jun 6/23/24 Gal. 3:23-29 “First Came the Law, Then the Faith!”

6/23/24    Gal. 3:23-29    “First Came the Law, Then the Faith!”

I’m rather glad that we don’t get a newspaper any more.  I still get news on the internet and TV so don’t start thinking I don’t keep up on anything.  It’s just that since we quit the Fargo Forum, we have one less viewpoint to crash in on us.  I’m also glad that we left the UMC.  Their last general conference a few weeks ago, really told us that they are no longer a church of Christ but rather another country club in the area.  We got out just in time.  Anyway, I think that we are in some really hard times that will continue to get worse because Satan is in control.  If you don’t believe me, then look at some of the laws that have been passed.  I have been against many of these things and I get shouted down and beaten up, mentally, not physically, at least not yet anyway.  So, I would really hate to be a younger person who is just coming into this mess.  We also have many places where we can turn to get some true help.  Crystals help a lot of people as do pyramids.  I’m sure that if you read a self-help book on this, it will help you immensely.  Not!!  I have talked about this before that we might have our midwestern work ethic to blame for some of this.  We figure that we can just wait things out or we can work our way out of any jam that we get into.  Now, we also think that this is something new.  Well, it’s not.  We don’t learn from history because we don’t study it.  We can even go back to the Bible and find how this happened to Israel when Jesus came along.  Let’s see if we can learn something from our past so that maybe it doesn’t happen again.

I’m going to begin with this story.  There were once two old geezers living in the backwoods of the Ozarks: Rufus and Clarence. They lived on opposite sides of the river and they hated each other. Every morning, just after sunup, Rufus and Clarence would go down to their respective sides of the river and yell at each other.   “Rufus!” Clarence would shout, “You better thank your lucky stars that I can’t swim, er I’d swim this river and whup you!”

“Clarence!” Rufus would holler back, “You better thank YOUR lucky stars that I can’t swim, er I’d swim this river and whup YOU!”  Every morning. Every day. For 20 years.

One day the Army Corps of Engineers came along and built a bridge. But the insults went on every morning. Every day. Another five years.

Finally, Mr. Rufus’ wife had had enough. “Rufus!” she squallered one day, “I can’t take no more! Every day for 25 years you’ve been threatenin’ to whup Clarence. Well, thar’s the bridge! Have at it!”  Rufus thought for a moment. Chewed his bottom lip for another moment. “Woman!” he declared, snapping his suspenders into place. “I’m gonna whup Clarence!”

He walked out the door, down to the river, along the river bank, came to the bridge, stepped up onto the bridge, walked about halfway over the bridge, then turned tail and ran screaming back to the house, slammed the door, bolted the windows, grabbed the shotgun and dove under the bed.

“Rufus!” cried the missus. “I thought you was gonna whup Clarence!”  “I was, woman, I was!” he whispered.  “What in tarnation is the matter?”  “Well,” whispered the terror-stricken Rufus, “I walked halfway over the bridge and saw a sign that said, ‘Clearance, 13 feet, 6 inches.’ He ain’t never looked that big from the other side of the river!”  That’s what happens sometimes to the people of God. We look at things from a distance and make plans but when we get closer to doing what God wants us to do, we think that the task is too monumental and we resort back to the safety of what we have always done. We don’t do what God wants us to do.  Instead, we circle the wagons and stand our ground. We stay right in our comfort zone.

So, God had a huge job to try to get these Israelites to move out of their comfort zones and embrace this new but also old religion.  They had been kind of faithful to the Law for many years and it would be a challenge to get them to move ahead to Christianity.  First, let’s look at where they had been, their history.  It had been a miracle that Abraham listened to God when He sent him away from his home to a land he had never been to before.  But that is just the beginning.  God, who is in part Jesus, made more miracles in the Old Testament than we can count.  However, even today, we don’t want to see them.  I’m going to name just a few more here just to show you how important the Old Testament really is.

We begin with the story of Abraham.  He came to the promised land but he produced not one male offspring.  The angel came along and soon there was a baby.  This is not unlike the miracle of the conception of Jesus.  Then we have the story of Ishmael.  A little later Sarah becomes pregnant with Isaac when she is just shy of 100 years old.  People that old just don’t get pregnant so we have another miracle.  I’m skipping many hear because I don’t have time to read the whole chapter of Genesis.  Remember how Hagar and Ishmael are sent food and water as they were dying in the wilderness.

The whole story of Isaac is just one miracle after another.  Then we have Sodom and Gomorrah.  God allowed Lot and his family to escape the coming disaster.  Only Lot’s wife was made into a pillar of salt because she didn’t obey and looked back.  Of course, we also have the story of Noah.  How in the world could just a handful of people build an ark the size of 1 1/2 football fields with their primitive tools.  That could only be a miracle.  And let’s not forget the Tower of Babel.  I know that there are some here today who dismiss many of these events as folklore and fiction.  I’m here to tell you that each and every one of them is true.  It’s true because we have a God who loves us and is faithful to us.  He can do anything and He would not lie to you.  Remember that in all you do.

Now let’s move to Egypt.  God brought Moses and Aaron back to free His people after over 400 years of captivity.  Once again, after 400 years, they were going to need some convincing to drop their way of life and follow Moses.  And also once again, God gets everyone in line to go.  Just as a little timeline reference here for you today, 400 years ago today would be in the early 1600’s.  So, God lines up a series of 10 plagues to help the Pharoah change his mind.  The first one is one we don’t think about because the Pharaoh’s magicians did the same.  God turned Aaron’s staff into a snake.  No matter how you look at this, it is an absolute miracle.

Then we have the turning the water in Egypt to blood.  We have the plague of the frogs.  Then we have the infestation of lice.  Followed by the flies where ever you looked.  Then we have the first disease which they figure might have been anthrax.  This is followed by everyone getting boils.  Then we have thunder and hail that was bigger than I have ever heard of before.  Soon the locusts came and killed everything.  This is followed by the endless darkness that was only over Egypt, but no place else.  And finally, all the first-born males were killed.  This was just one miracle after

Then we have the parting of the Red Sea.  That one was also pretty major.  We have the healing of the bitter waters of Marah, manna which came from heaven and the water that poured forth from the Rock in the wilderness.  We have numerous deaths due to unfaithfulness that just happened out of the blue.  We have Aaron’s rod that budded.  We have the lifting to the rod to become a brazen serpent.  And we can’t forget the parting of the Jordan River.

We have the fall of Jericho, the sun and the moon standing still, along with the withering of Jeroboam’s hand.  Uzziah was smitten with leprosy.  We have all the miracles in the battles for the promised land.  We have all the miracles that Elijah performed.  And the even more miracles that Elisha performed, some which parallelled some of the things that Jesus did.   One of my favorites is when Elisha floats the ax head out of the water.  I could go on and on here until the end of the sermon but I hope that are beginning to understand where I’m going with this.

I want to show you how God had taken care of His people for over a thousand years.  We all know that there were ups and downs during this period but God never gave up on the Jewish people.  And the people slowly but surely caught on to God.  The last four hundred years or so before Jesus, they had finally settled down a little to love the Lord.  So now God had a big job in front of Him as He would try to convert these Jews to a newer aspect of their religion.  This is what was happening at the time of Jesus.  The Jews had become so religious that many could not be swayed from the basic tenants of Judaism.   They had become prisoners of their own religion, The Law.  Today, we are not prisoners of the Law but rather most people are prisoners of their own sin.

Now that faith has come, things change.  And faith here means Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the next step in Judaism.  Remember that the Jews had been looking for the Messiah for centuries.  They had even become fairly faithful for the last 400 years or so.  We don’t hear of any real major breaks during this time.  Unfortunately, they had been gradually sliding into a very legalistic form of religion.  The Law was made for them and now they worshipped the Law above all else.  It was not about God anymore.  It was about the Law.  And of course, it was always about power and money.  This problem continues through today.  This is why the UMC split.  They began to worship themselves and their social principles.  They forgot that Jesus was God and He alone is worthy of worship.  Nothing else is worthy of much of anything.

Also, remember that God had taken centuries to do all the miracles of the Old Testament and the people knew this.  They knew their Old Testament like we know our alphabet.  Then Jesus comes along and, as John tells us, He does more miracles than can be written down in books.  I would guess that every day with Jesus would be just one miracle after another.  He did as much if not more in three years than God did in the entire Old Testament.  I hope you are following this.

Now it is a little after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We have Paul and the other disciples going around and telling the stories of Jesus.  They are also empowered by the Holy Spirit.  They are doing everything and they are doing it by faith, by Jesus.  The Law is gone.  Faith, Jesus has arrived and will not be beaten back.  Plus, faith is not just for the Jews.  It is now for the Jews, the Greeks, the free, the slaves, males and females and even the illegal immigrants who cross our borders.  It is also for the Russians and the Ukrainians.  The best news for us today is that it is also for the Republicans and the Democrats.  It is for everyone and it is free.  We can all be baptized into the family of Jesus Christ.  There are no exceptions to this.  Please remember this in the upcoming election year.

What I’m saying here is that this wonderful grace is for everyone and without it we are doomed, you are doomed.  It’s like this story from Davon Huss.  A mouse looked out through a crack in a farmhouse wall and was distraught to discover a mousetrap. When he went to tell his buddies, the chicken said, “Sorry, pal, not my problem.” The pig said, “I’ll pray for you.” The cow was busy and said, “Come back later.” Dejected, the mouse was left alone to handle his problem.

That night, a poisonous snake got caught in the mousetrap and when the farmer’s wife went to investigate, she got bitten. She developed a raging fever, and everyone knows you treat a fever with chicken soup. So, the farmer took his axe to the barn for the main ingredient! As his wife’s condition deteriorated and neighbors gathered, he had to butcher the pig to feed them. Finally, she died. So many people came to the funeral that he ended up slaughtering the cow to make dinner for them all. In the end, everybody lost!

We don’t want everyone to lose.  But we have so much trouble trying to tell people about Jesus Christ.  Dale Harlow tells us in an interview of Tanya Donelly, “For some reason, God is embarrassing to people. It doesn’t embarrass somebody to talk about how they got completely bombed the night before and how terrible they acted, but God is a really embarrassing subject, and that’s kind of strange.” Tanya’s right. That is strange! But to the woman at the well, speaking of God’s living water, it was not embarrassing at all. She ran to tell people of what God had done.

I have always found it helpful to be ashamed of the people who don’t know Jesus.  I never do this in an overt fashion, but I do it in my heart.  My heart breaks when I think of the unsaved.  It breaks even worse when I see people who think they are saved but they are not.  Our mission field is enormous.  I would like you to brush up a little on some of the Old Testament stories.  Brush up on the Law and see how it points totally to Jesus Christ.  The Old Testament is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.

God worked through the Law and gave us faith.  He gave us Jesus!  Many Jews could not make that transition but also many did.  And that is where we are today.  The Bible is the complete book of truth that we must follow as best we can with the faith that came with Jesus Christ.  It all works together for your goodness.  Bring someone new to church next week.  Tell them what a great new church you have.  You have a church where Jesus Christ and the Bible are at the center.  They will love you for it.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.