7/18/21 Galatians 6:7-16 “Snatched From the Jaws of Satan!”

16 Jul 7/18/21 Galatians 6:7-16 “Snatched From the Jaws of Satan!”

7/18/21   Galatians 6:7-16           “Snatched From the Jaws of Satan!”

This is my summertime sermon and we have been having a hot old summer here in North Dakota so far.  Our only summertime holiday is July 4 and this is when we shoot off fireworks.  We have picnics.  We try to do outdoor stuff as much as possible.  And we should be doing these things all summer because these are all great things to do in our short summer season.  But I also want you to think about what it was like 245 years ago when we declared our independence.  It happened in a city called Philadelphia which really wasn’t a lot bigger than West Fargo was a few years ago.  They signed this document called the Declaration of Independence and the celebration was on.  The excitement had to be great.  After all they had just severed themselves from the greatest, most powerful nation on earth, England.  Anyway, one of the things that they did was ring the liberty bell until it cracked.  I really don’t know how this was possible unless maybe there might have been a little divine help.  This is something that we tend to forget in our modern times.  We like to leave God out of it and just talk about what a great country we have.  And we have a great country because of God and Jesus Christ.  I have read some history books and they tell of the things that happened that could have only happened with the help of God.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there was the Native American, named Squanto, who spoke English who helped the pilgrims.  We had Washington rout the Hessians in the Revolutionary War.  You can read about these and other incidents of American history in a couple of books by Marshall and Manuel.  Check them out.  They are a good read.  Anyway, we have a tendency to forget our roots and this is what Paul is warning us about in this today’s reading.   Let’s see if we can see what God does when we do forget.

Michael Deaton tells the story of a young lad who ran out of his house to go for a swim in the swimming hole just past his back yard.  He barely got his clothes off before he hit the water.  As he was swimming toward the middle his mother noticed an alligator had also come into the water and was swimming toward the boy.  She ran out and began screaming at the boy to come back.  He heard her and started back for shore.  Now the race was on.  The boy just reached his mother on the dock when the alligator reached his legs.  The mother held onto his arms for dear life.  She didn’t think she could hang on much longer when a neighbor heard the ruckus and came running with a gun.  He shot the gator but the little boy was severely hurt.  After weeks of recovery the boy was interviewed by a newspaper reporter.  The reporter was interested in the boy’s story and his severe leg injuries.  So, the boy rolled up his pant legs so he could see all the scars.  Then the boy pulled back his shirt sleeves to reveal more scars.  The reporter asked where these came from.  The boy replied, “These are where my mom was hanging onto me.  She wouldn’t let go.”

This could be the end of the sermon because God will not let go either.  But I wanted to start on this reassuring note because some of the things that Paul talks about are not that reassuring.  We seem to have developed several ways in which we can ignore God or leave Him out of our lives.

Our reading begins with ‘do not be deceived.’  Paul is talking to his listeners about false gods.  If you remember there were many, many gods in those days.  Everything had a god and the one and only God was rather a new concept to many of them.  So, they had to be continually on the lookout for false gods.

We have to be even more careful in our modern world not to be deceived.  I’m not just talking about false gods.  I think that just about any advertisement is an effort of someone to deceive us.  Recently I was listening to an oldies station and they played an old cigarette commercial from the 60’s.  People were deceived to smoke and it still causes many deaths today.  Beer commercials used to tell us how good we look at the beach or how we could excel at sports with alcohol.  Alcohol does none of these things in fact it does just the opposite.  Look at makeup commercials.  Look at car commercials.  They are all intended to deceive.  It seems to me that we have let the liars and cheats of this world get away with these things far too long.  And now they are also mired in Congress.  I’m not going any farther on this as I hope you get the point.

We are also deceived when it comes to religion.  We have so called denominations in this country that were started by ordinary people and God wasn’t involved.  Some of these founders could have been mentally ill and as we talked of this a few weeks ago where there was a good chance they were even demon possessed.  Oh, I forgot.  We can’t say things like that because there is no such thing in our modern world.  You see, this liberal, wacko denomination that I’m part of hasn’t changed me yet.  What I am trying to say is that whole religions were founded by the devil for his purpose and we buy into them.

A friend of mine was recently at a church service in a different part of the country.  I really do appreciate it when you go to a church when you cannot be here and you tell me a little about your experience.  Anyway, the pastor was preaching about how we have to honor and respect the Muslims because their god is just as viable as ours.  This was coming from a Christian pulpit.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  We all know that there is only one God and that God is not the one who the Muslims worship.  This is a classic example of deception. Be careful of any religion that doesn’t have our loving God at its center.

The next thing that Paul tells his audience is that God cannot be mocked.  We can see this many times in the Bible where people directly disobey God or they mock him and suffer severe consequences.  It is no different today.

Here are just a few examples from George Crumbly of famous people who mocked God.

Marilyn Monroe was visited by Billy Graham during one of her shows.  He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.  After hearing what the preacher had to say she said, “I don’t need your Jesus.”  A week later she was found dead in her apartment.

A bi-sexual composer, singer and poet named Cazuza was doing a show in Rio de Janeiro.  While smoking a cigarette on stage, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: “God, that’s for you.”  He died at the age of 32 of AIDs in a most horrible manner.

Thomas Andrews was the man who built the Titanic.   A reporter asked him how safe the new ship would be.  With an ironic tone he said: “Not even God can sink it.”  We all know what happened.  Andrews died on this ship as he was also on board.

Tancredo Neves was in the midst of the presidential campaign in Brazil when he said that if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from the Presidency.  He did get the votes to win but he got sick the day before being made President and then he died.  These types of things have been happening throughout history.  Whatever you do, don’t mock God.

The third thing that Paul is telling everyone here is that “man reaps what he sows”.  This is really not all that hard.  If you live your life outside of God, if you love to do the worldly things like not come to church or not being kind to your neighbor, or if you think that all this religious stuff is just a fairy tale, then you will get what you lived your life for.  You will get the chance to spend eternity in damnation.  That is how you lived your life so that is how you will be forever.  Just remember, none of the good things of this life will follow you to the next.  You will be without God.

However, if you live your life loving Jesus, if you are always reaching out to your neighbor to do good things, if you shun all that the world or the devil has to offer you, then you will be able to spend eternity with God in the best place that we could ever imagine and then some.  In other words, you will harvest what you have planted.

I think that Paul is also showing us three ways for us to live in the good graces of God in these few short verses.  He tells us in verse 10 to do only good.  This is what John Wesley preached.  We just talked a little about how hard this is to do in our world because we have been living with evil for so long that some things seem like they are good and it turns out that they really aren’t that good.  Some of the things we consider to be good are really evil.  It is discouraging when we find out about these things.  All I can tell you is bounce back to good.  Bounce back to good.  In other words, don’t give up on doing good.  Keep trying and trying and trying.  We all fail so don’t feel so bad.  Get back up on the good horse and try again.  Eventually you will find that you really are doing a lot more good than bad.

One quick word of warning about doing good.  If you go out and feed the poor, if you cloth those who have nothing, if you give medical care to those who are sick, if you do only good things, it isn’t enough.  If you do all these good things on your own and not in the name of God then you could just as well stay home.  Good is not good unless it is centered in God.  This is why I always ask the question, “Do you know Jesus Christ on a personal level?”  If you don’t, then you are spinning your wheels.  Good deeds will not get us to heaven.  They will get you no place.  But once you know Jesus then you will do good deeds because you know Jesus and for no other reason.  You will try to please Him.  If you don’t know Him, then ask Him into your life today.  You will never regret it.

I have already alluded to the next thing that we need to do to keep God’s plan going in our lives and that is to keep our focus on Jesus Christ.  We need to focus on what He did for us.  We need to remember the scars that he had after the resurrection.  Often times we try to focus on our own scars.  This person hurt me or that person is against me.  These types of things happen and they happen all the time when we as a group of Christians live in a world controlled by non-Christians.  We will have scars.  Get over it and move forward by focusing on Jesus.  There is a good chance that you will learn from your scars if you don’t let them control your life.

One of the things that can help you in everyday situations is to thank God for everything.  If someone praises you for something, praise the Lord.  If you have a good turn in business, praise the Lord.  If someone in your family does well, praise the Lord.  Jesus loves to hear these things from you.  He loves to hear from you in any fashion so why not just praise the Lord.

The last thing that we need to do to have a better life in Christ is to remember that you are a new creation.  This is hard for some to do.  When I first came to Christ, I left behind a lot of things that I thought that I liked to do.  It turns out that the only reason that I did them was that I had no focus in my life and I needed something to do.  Satan is very crafty in telling us that things are fun when they are only time killers until he can take us down.  We need to be so careful about these things.  The people you left behind when you started more Godly activities need Jesus just as much as you did before you knew Him.  Your advantage is that you have seen life from both sides.  Remember to leave that old life behind but also remember some of those old friends need Jesus more than ever.

The passage that we have been looking at today is filled with Good News.  However, Paul is not about to let us off without telling us the truth about our lives.  This is a huge problem for many of us.  We don’t like to be told that we have been doing wrong.  There are many churches in this country that will only talk of the Good News and they will sweep sin right under the rug.  The trouble with this is that we all sin; every one of us.  And every one of us has to know this so that we can feel the hands of Jesus Christ holding onto our arms as Satan, the alligator, is trying to get a hold of our legs.  Jesus will make scars on your arms by doing this.  What He wants to do is make a scar on your heart for Him.

He is holding onto every person on earth in this very fashion.  He will not give up.  When you suffer the death of a loved one, He is there holding onto you.  When you do something stupid and take your eyes off Him and do things for Satan, Jesus is always there to pull you back to Him and the great life.  It doesn’t matter what you do or say, Jesus is there waiting for you, holding onto you.

This is what the Bible is all about.  God loves you so much that He will hang onto you harder than the mother did to that little boy who was in the jaws of the alligator.  Paul has shown us a few ways to try to keep out of the jaws of Satan.  Practice these along with praying, reading the Bible and coming to church.  God only wants one thing.  He wants you to be an integral part of His life.  He loves you that much.  Praise the Lord for that.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.