In Galatians, Paul answers the question, “Why did Christ set us free?” For freedom Christ has set us free. That is an indicative, a settled truth. We have been set free by Christ. It is followed by an imperative, a command. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You are free in Christ. And in Christ, you are to remain free. That will take effort, but that effort is energized by the grace of the settled truth: Christ has set us free by grace. And the grace that redeems us also empowers and transforms us.  

In his book, Formed for Fellowship, Kyle Worley writes that he was a teenager percussionist in his high school band. But as he said, it wasn’t cool. He thought he would be like a drummer in a rock band. Instead, he was told to play the xylophone, a large one that Worley said was expensive so his parents borrowed one from a family friend. His parents then said, “Do not break this instrument.” So Worley wrote, “I broke it. On purpose. By throwing it across the yard to make my friends laugh.” He broke it in half and that night told his parents. They were upset, rightfully so, and told him he would likely have to pay to replace it. He went to bed that night frustrated and angsty. “I was so entitled and so immature that I was angry not only because I had to play such a dumb instrument, but now I was going to have to pay for it? How unfair was that? Never mind that it was entirely my fault.” Kyle woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep so he went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. There was a light on in the laundry room and when he peeked through the cracked door, he saw his father on his knees fixing the keyboard with glue. It was a picture of grace. He had made a mistake and something needed to be fixed. It was entirely his fault and yet, he was shown grace.  

As were the Galatians when Paul first came to them with the gospel. Then they fell into deception. Paul made his plea in his letter to the Galatians to reject the lie of the Judaizers who would steal their grace and replace it with works. The churches Paul planted had been led from Mt. Sinai’s laws to Calvary’s grace and now were headed back down south toward Sinai as fast as they could go!  

Why would anyone do this, having tasted the goodness of the grace of God? Here’s why: the default mode of the heart is set on self-justification. The Galatians, like so many Christians today, could not believe that Christ had done it all. They had grown accustomed to the yoke of slavery to pagan idolatry and their necks were itching for that yoke again. So they believed the lie and traded idolatry for biblical moralism which says, “I will keep the law and therefore make sure I am earning my way into God’s good favor.”  

The problem with that is two-fold. On the one hand, if you are going to be a Pharisee, you better be a perfect one. No slippage. Because no amount of obedience will make up for one single act of disobedience. I haven’t been pulled over on the highway in a long time, much to my wife’s surprise. But the last time I was pulled over, I didn’t try to make a plea to the highway patrolman that I am a faithful husband, that I pay my tithe and my taxes, and besides that, officer, I have been pretty good at obeying most of the traffic laws, most of the time! All of that would be irrelevant, and the patrolman would shake his head as he wrote me a ticket. That’s the problem with trying to keep the law in order to be saved. No one is a perfect Pharisee.
 
Ok, what about a combo deal, which is what the Judaizers were pushing? How about Christ plus the law? As Tim Keller said, you cannot add to Christ without subtracting Christ. Paul reminded the Galatians that Christ was either all their value, or He was without value. We cannot stand on grace if we are holding onto works. Peter argued this position at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 as he spoke to the apostles and elders. He said, “…why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the (Gentile) disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

The grace of the Lord Jesus saves us and brings us into freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free.”  

Let’s ask ourselves this question: In what way am I not enjoying the freedom Christ purchased for me with His blood? Am I relying on rules rather than grace? Am I regularly returning to sinful habits? Am I holding onto unforgiveness for a perceived wrong? Am I constantly living under the burden of fear? Or guilt? Or is my freedom diminished for any other reason?  

The Lord would whisper to us, “You were called to freedom.” May we answer with, “Yes, Lord. And…Lord? Would you help me to lay this hindrance down today, and tomorrow, and walk in the freedom your grace supplies?”

In Luke’s gospel account, the women at the empty tomb were asked a question they could not answer. The angels said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” It’s a great question! But the truth is, they didn’t seek the living among the dead. They sought the dead. They were looking for a dead body.  

The angels asked a question that strikes at the very heart of where most people find themselves today. “Why are you spending time rummaging around death and the dead hoping that you will find life there somehow? Why would you go among the dead expecting to find fellowship there?” Or as Paul said, “What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”
 
It is an important question for us to ask ourselves today, isn’t it? Are we looking for the living among the dead? I have to assume you, dear reader, are looking for life as you go through your days. No one in his right mind is looking for death. You are all looking for life, you are all looking to live, you are all looking for purpose, you are all looking for meaning. So, why would you seek that in a graveyard? Why would you look for meaning and value and purpose for your life in those things which are meaningless and purposeless and will ultimately be destroyed? Why seek the living among the dead?  

Remember in John’s gospel when many of the followers of Jesus turned back and no longer walked with him? Why did they do that? He had told them that they could only live by feeding on Him. That He alone was the source of life, the bread of life that they could eat and never be hungry again. He was the bread come down from heaven, and He said, “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” In other words, there is only life eternal and the life you are desperately seeking in Him. You cannot find it anywhere else. After this, many of those who were walking with Him turned away and did not walk with Him any longer. Jesus turned to the twelve and asked if they wanted to go away as well. Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” Why seek the living among the dead? Jesus alone has the words of eternal life.  

At the empty tomb, the women were asked a question they could not answer. They were also given a treasure they could not contain. Mark’s gospel tells us the angel said, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you in Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”  
 
What is the message of the cross and the empty tomb? He is risen! At every cemetery on earth, you can find the graves of great philosophers and world leaders and religious holy men and gurus and teachers and shamans and priests and soothsayers and fortunetellers and cult leaders. And you can wipe the dust off their tombstones and say, “He is not alive. He is here!”

But the testimony of the angels 2000 years ago in a graveyard outside Jerusalem is the greatest proclamation of our faith: He is not here. He is risen! Why seek the dead among the living when you can walk with the living Christ among the dead?
 
David Mathis wrote, “Easter has become our annual dress rehearsal for that great coming day when our perishable bodies will put on the imperishable. When the mortal will finally put on immortality. When we will join in the triumphant song of the prophets and apostles, ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’”

You know what I really love about these first witnesses? They were terrified, Mark tells us they fled the scene and said nothing to anyone. They acted just as we would have. But wait. We know from the other gospels that they were able to overcome their fear and tell the disciples. They could not keep the news to themselves. The world had to know, so the women went and told the story. We must do the same. The world still needs to know. It needs to hear it from people like you and me, people who have seen the Lord, not face to face, not yet. But we have met Him, and His risen life has made us new.  

Go tell it! He is risen!

Remember that great old gospel song that started, “Would you be free from the burden of sin, there’s power in the blood, power in the blood, Would you o’er evil a victory win, there’s wonderful power in the blood!” Paul starts off this section with an even older hit. “There’s Power in the Law.” Have you heard this one? It goes like this. “Would you throw off all the freedom of grace, there’s power in the law, power in the law, You can be saved by your own steady pace, there’s back-slapping power in the law!”  Could be the next hit. Let’s face it, there are some good things about choosing to live under the law. First, there’s a list of rules to follow every moment of every day. Second, you can always give yourself praise for keeping the rules better than others. Well, there is that nasty truth that some keep it better than you, but just stuff that thought and move on. Finally, you can pat yourself on the back every day for your salvation, because clearly you did that yourself by keeping the rules. True?

No! Paul asks the Galatians, do you even listen to the law? Do you actually know what it says? In other words and to echo Jesus’ question to the Pharisees, “Have you not read? Have you not heard?” Did you not hear the fine print, the final clause of the contract in the law that seals your eternal destination? If you break one law, Jesus said, you are guilty of breaking them all. Period. Think of it this way. Under the law is what you do for God to make yourself right with Him. Under grace is what God did for you in His Son to make you right with Him. Under the law relies solely on your perfect performance. Under grace relies solely on Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. Under the law are fig leaves that cannot even begin to cover your sin. Under grace is the precious and imperishable blood of Jesus that completely washes your sin away.
 
Paul tells the Galatians what has been written, and goes back again to the time of Abraham as exhibit A. Back to the very Scriptures that the Judaizers claimed to stand on. They likely were telling the Galatians, “You say you are sons of Abraham because you believe in Christ, but you are not sons of Abraham unless you keep the law of Moses! All of it.” So Paul turns those tables over by reminding them that Abraham had two sons: one was born by a slave woman and one by a free woman. So there are two ways to be related to Abraham, a right way and a wrong way.

You remember the story. God told Abraham when he was 75 years old to leave his homeland and everything he had known and go to a place he knew nothing about. There, God promised, He would make Abraham a great nation. So he left Ur with his wife Sarah and they traveled 1200 miles to Canaan. There, God promised to give the land to Abraham’s offspring. But he had no offspring. And after Abraham and Sarah had lived in Canaan for ten years, they still had no children. In fact it would be 25 years between the promise and the fulfillment. So Sarah decided that though she still believed God, she needed to help God out with keeping His promise. She attempted to do that through a scheme of the flesh, by giving Hagar, her servant, to Abraham her husband so, as she put it, “I shall obtain children by her.” Abraham obviously also had issues that included not trusting God’s timing as well, so he doesn’t argue. He sleeps with Hagar, who gives birth to Ishmael. Then Hagar looks at Sarah with contempt, because Sarah is still childless. The family is in a total mess now because the whole act was born out of fear and unbelief. But God. But God was patient, and 14 years later, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 and still barren, God fulfilled his promise and Isaac was born. The son of promise.
 
Do you see in Galatians that Paul is teaching us there are two opposite approaches to God? One leads to death and one leads to life. We can try to come to Him through law or by grace. Through the flesh or by the Spirit. Through self-reliance or through divine dependence.

Would you be free? Stand on grace through faith.

“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” Paul wrote that in his first letter to the church in Corinth. Notice that this is NOT a command but a statement, a fact: every man is the head of his household. As some have said, you can be a bonehead, a meathead, a musclehead, an airhead or a knucklehead…but you cannot NOT be the head. So, why not do whatever it takes to be a godly head?  

Some men might say to God, “OK, I see it clearly stated in Scripture that I am the head of my household. But I don’t know what that means. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know if I can do it.” Then he adds one more very important statement and an even more important question: “God, I want to know what it means, and I want to obey You, and I want to lead my family, and I want to learn how to build godly relationships with my family–but I am so afraid I will fail. Will You help me?” God loves that prayer.
 
I believe understanding our role as leaders is key not only to revival in our homes, but to revival in our churches, and even revival in our nation. Richard Baxter, the great Puritan pastor and writer, said, “You are not likely to see any general reformation until you see family reformation.” 

There is a deeper truth that I pray will be fruit from stepping up to love and lead our families. That truth is that you and I will know our acceptance and love from our heavenly Father, and that knowledge will transform our manhood, making us free to love Him and those whom He has entrusted to us. Milton Vincent writes in his powerful little book, A Gospel Primer, “Outside of heaven, the power of God in its highest density is found inside the gospel. This must be so, for the Bible twice describes the gospel as ‘the power of God.’ Nothing else in all of Scripture is ever described in this way, except for the Person of Jesus Christ.”  

I recently heard Richard Reeves speak on the topic of his 2024 book, Of Boys and Men, about the trend in the culture right now. From rising male suicide rates to widening education gaps, and from sports betting addiction to body-image pressures once thought to belong mainly to girls, Reeves argues that boys and men are not so much acting out as they are checking out. Scott Galloway suggests many young men are “not going out,” “not getting a plan,” and “not getting jobs” because their dopamine needs are met by virtual wins in gaming or social media. He highlights that young men are increasingly isolated, lacking the confidence to approach others for mentorship or friendship, which makes them less “economically and emotionally viable.” He has pointed out that young men aged 20 to 30 now spend less time outdoors than prison inmates, with nearly all their free time consumed by online activities like gaming, gambling, and social media.
 
There is a simple but often neglected message young men need to hear: we need you. We need you to pray for and pursue calling and marriage. Marriage is a gift from God and the married man, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, is to please the Lord and his wife. There are some who are choosing to be single or to delay marriage for all the wrong reasons, but some are single because God has called them and gifted them with singlehood. Their lives will focus completely on pleasing the Lord. But the normative desire is for marriage, so young men, pursue that. If you are supposed to be single for service to God, He will make that clear. And young men, pursue your calling. What has he called you to do? I had lots of jobs that were not my calling, but I knew I was called to work. So I worked until I found it, because, it’s hard to steer a parked car. Get the training or the education to do what he has called you to do. Young men, we also need you in the church. The future of any healthy church will look a lot like it does now: older men are walking alongside younger men in service and leadership, and older women are walking alongside younger women, in service and leadership.  

Don’t miss out on being part of that. Step up, younger and older men. It’s not too late.

The same people whom Paul says would once have given their eyes to him now treated his message with disdain. The one who was their father in the faith was now their enemy. The Galatians had been courted by the Judaizers. The works-righteousness legalists showered them with affection, made much of them, and won them over. Some cults today use this technique and call it “love bombing.” They find the doubters and the disenfranchised and do whatever it takes to convince them, telling them you have never seen community like you will have it with our group. Then they slowly box them into their way of life. Listen, dear reader, we are never more in danger than when we are being praised by people who have ulterior motives. Or when people, including preachers and teachers, are telling us what we want to hear, tickling our ears, pandering to us in order to get us on board, to win our loyalty. The endgame? Paul told them, “They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them.” Literally, they want to lock you up so that your primary commitment is to their group of “super-spiritual” legalists. The only way you can understand Paul becoming their enemy is that they have now decided that Paul did not have what they have and was just not as spiritual as they were. “This Paul talks a lot about freedom in Christ,” they may have thought, “but we know the best way to really know God.”  

Let me ask you something. Aren’t there churches today that make that claim? “Hey, we know how to really worship God and keep His commandments. Come join us, the real church.” These churches mostly attract people who are looking for lists and rules and regulations that they can practice in order to, they believe, get more spiritual and closer to God. And though that church or home group or house church may name the name of Jesus, it is the group itself that is being exalted. They make much of you so that ultimately you will make much of them. Are they zealous? Oh yes! But zeal in the service of a lie is a dangerous thing.
 
We all know the pitfalls. And we know that we can easily veer into works-righteousness in different ways and at different times. And sometimes it is hard to tell where it is true legalism (our salvation depends on doing these works), or where it is drawing a line in the sand on preferences not principles.  Then we start drawing lines on preferences for others! We start to think we know the best way to live and therefore everyone should live this way. Our preferences could be educational choices, how and where our children will be taught. Or entertainment choices we permit or don’t permit in our homes. They could be medical choices and whether we will immunize or not, or whether we go to a primary care doctor or a functional med doctor.  Or to no doctor at all. It could be dietary decisions that we make. And the list is endless.  

These are all liberty issues, not directives that come from the Word to every family. That’s why Paul wrote in Romans 14, “Let not the one who eats (anything) despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains (eats only vegetables) pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.” Then he asks the key question: “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” Wait! Do you mean people who eat differently than I do can just do that and I don’t need to correct them? What about people who have a different opinion about how to care for their children? I mean, I owe it to them to tell them (and maybe everybody) what I know. Right?  

Wrong. They are servants of God. We are servants of God. So, issues of health, child-rearing, education, politics and more, fall into the nonessential category most of the time. They are liberty issues, where we can disagree and still love one another and walk together.  

Let’s choose to not answer questions that people are not asking us about liberty issues, unless we have a close relationship of trust.

Paul tells us, “you are all sons of God,” in Galatians. Paul uses sons, not “sons and daughters,” simply because with sonship in ancient cultures came the right to inherit. Are all people sons of God? Find the important qualifiers in this verse: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” They serve as bookends for sonship: “in Christ Jesus” and “through faith.” We have all the rights and privileges of a child of God only if we are in Christ Jesus through faith. Without that, we are still in our sins. We are still in Adam.

J.I. Packer says in his classic book, Knowing Faith, that there is a higher privilege the gospel offers, even higher than justification. The doctrine of justification made you right before God the judge, who made the declaration, “not guilty” from the bench. But what happened next is critical. The judge then got off the bench, came down to where you are and embraced you, and said, “Come home to live with me as my son.” JI Packer wrote, “To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.” In answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” Packer said, “The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven,” didn’t he? Sometimes I have a hard time moving past that first phrase without getting emotional. I have a perfect Father who loves me perfectly and wanted me to be in His family.
 
Along with that, a son of God is one who is clothed in Christ, Paul wrote. The picture of baptism points to that moment of your salvation, when you “put on Christ.” Paul writes in Romans 6, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might walk in newness of life.” Therefore, water baptism follows spiritual baptism, and our primary identity is in Christ. We don’t have to wear a badge that says, “I belong to Christ.” We are closer to him than our clothing is to our body, and in our speech and actions we “practice His presence.” If we are clothed in Christ, we are growing in our love for Him and that changes how we think, and speak, and walk, and act. There is an intimacy with Christ that colors everything about us.

That means also that we are one with every other believer, because we are all where? In Christ! We play different roles in the body, but there is no distinction among believers as far as our position in Christ. There are ethnic, social and gender distinctions among believers, and yet, we are one in Christ. Paul said, “There is neither Jew not Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul mentions this threefold affirmation in Galatians because, many believe, the same was used in a morning prayer that Jewish men prayed every day: “Thank you God that you did not make me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” The reason for this prayer, which Paul himself would have prayed before He met Christ, was not a disparagement of Gentiles, slaves, or women as persons. FF Bruce writes that it was because of the fact “that they were disqualified from several religious privileges that were open only to free Jewish males.” Paul affirms that in Christ, these distinctions are irrelevant.  The body of Christ is unity within diversity, but not sameness. All are welcome in Christ as in Him there is no difference, no distinction, no division.  

Nobody can pull this off except Christ. And only in His church.

Paul tells us in Galatians the law did not come to tell us about salvation but to tell us about sin. “It was added because of transgressions.” Some have said the law is a mirror that when we look into it, we see who we really are. But you know that no one who looks in a mirror and sees dirt on his face then takes the mirror off the wall to clean the dirt away. The law can only show us our sinfulness. It cannot remove it. Paul said in Romans 7 that without the law he would not have known what sin was. “I would not have known what it is to covet,” he wrote, “if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” On the one hand, then, the law was given to constrain mankind by clearly revealing God’s standard for holiness. It tells us how to live a life pleasing to the Lord.  

That is why we don’t have free-range children. At least, we shouldn’t. Instead, I would urge you to constrain your children’s tendencies toward misbehavior with rules and with loving discipline. We teach our children right and wrong because God tells us to! One of the things my wife and I did as we  raised our children was to ask this question when one offended or hurt another: “What was in your heart to make you do that?” We did not want to just correct behavior, we wanted to teach our children to examine their hearts. We wanted to teach them to pray with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts…Lead me in the way everlasting!” That’s what God does through the law when we read it and apply it: He shows us our sinful hearts, which causes us to cry to Him for help.  

On the other hand, we know that the law exposes and even inflames our sin. Paul wrote, “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” Is that the commandment’s fault?  No, Paul says, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Why then do we delight in breaking ourselves against the law? Augustine, an early church father, described how this worked in his own life: “There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears – not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law? The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.” The law against stealing inflamed a desire to steal. It did not cause a sinful heart, it exposed one.  

A brand-new waterfront hotel in Florida was concerned that people might try to fish from the balconies so they put up signs saying, “NO FISHING FROM THE BALCONY.” After that they had constant problems with people fishing from the balconies, with sinker weights breaking windows and bothering people in rooms below. They finally solved the problem by simply… taking down the signs – and no one thought to fish from the balconies. Because of our fallen nature, the law can actually work like an invitation to sin.  

The law shows us our need for salvation. It can lead us to Christ, but no further. When Jesus draws us, by grace and through faith, He is waiting with open arms to release us from the prison of the law and call us sons and daughters.

Paul called Abraham to the witness stand as an expert witness in his plea with the Galatians. This must have been a shock to the Judaizers and some of the Jewish believers, because Abraham was their guy! They prided themselves on being the sons of Abraham. Jesus had told the Jews that if they were really sons of Abraham, they would be doing the works that Abraham did. What were the works Abraham did? There was only one that Jesus was referring to. God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them, because that was how many descendants he and Sarah would have, both in their 90’s, and her barren. And the Bible says, “And he believed the Lord, and he (God) counted it to him as righteousness.” What was the “work” of Abraham? He believed God. What did God do? He credited, he accounted righteousness to Abraham. Something that did not belong to Abram was given to him because he believed. Paul said of this Genesis account, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” It is incredible but true that God justifies the ungodly. He saves sinners and calls them righteous even while we as saved sinners still battle with sin. That is the Great Reversal that Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5 in the simplest of terms: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Our sin was imputed (transferred) to Christ on the cross, and Christ’s righteousness was imputed (transferred) to us. This is our only hope for salvation.  
 
Abraham is still on the witness stand with Paul, and he is asked again: “Are you saying sir, that you did nothing to please God? That all you did was…believe him?” “Yes.” And then Abraham, in my imagination, turned to the Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and every combination of Jesus-Plus-Works people in the world and said, “That’s all I did. I believed God. I didn’t just believe in God. Even demons do that and tremble. I believed God. He told me Sarah and I would have a child, and we were both as good as dead in that department. He even told me that in me, all the nations would be blessed, and I could not fathom how that would be so. But I believed God. Period.” Paul replied with Habakkuk’s powerful word, “The righteous shall live by faith.” The righteous doesn’t just become righteous by faith. He lives by faith. 
 
When Martin Luther first read Habakkuk 2:4, he was living in a monastery and he didn’t understand it at the time. Later he entered into deep depression and illness and believed he was under God’s wrath. He thought he was about to die and he remembered Habakkuk, and he started saying that simple truth over and over, “The righteous shall live by faith.” When he recovered from his illness, he went to Rome. And the pope at that time had promised an indulgence, a forgiveness for punishment of sins in purgatory for any pilgrim who came to Rome and mounted the tall staircase at a famous church. You were to pay your money, climb the staircase, and get either your punishment or someone else’s punishment in purgatory removed through this work. People were flocking to the staircase and climbing it on their knees, pausing to pray and kiss the stairs as they climbed. Luther’s son later wrote about that day: “As he (Luther) repeated his prayers on the Lateran staircase, the words of the Prophet Habakkuk came to his mind: “The righteous shall live by faith.” Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenburg, and took this as his chief foundation of all his doctrine.” Luther later wrote himself, “Before those words broke upon my mind, I hated God and was angry with him…but when, by the Spirit of God, I understood those words—the just shall live by faith!—then I felt born again like a new man; I entered through the open doors into the very Paradise of God.” 
 
The righteous shall live by faith. Believe it.  

Believe God.

We had a covered dish lunch last Sunday at church. And everyone sat at tables in the fellowship hall wherever they wanted to sit. We didn’t have a section that was marked out for “people who had devotions every day this week.” They would have all been beaming with pride at each other. We also didn’t have a section marked out for “people who are gladly holding something against a fellow believer.” That would have been a sad group for sure, even if they didn’t know it. We also didn’t have a section for “those who like each other,” because we don’t need that sign. But many years ago in the church at Antioch, not the one in Elon, there was a covered dish meal and the Gentiles were asked to sit in the back room where no one could see them. And they were told they couldn’t go through the same buffet line with the real Christians. In fact, the Gentiles had to bring their own food. Everybody else was terrified to even touch their ham sandwiches and popcorn shrimp.

The story in Galatians is a familiar one, but it is still shocking to me every time I read it. That Peter the apostle would give in to the fear of man and treat Gentiles with disrespect. Peter had already heard from Jesus that what goes into a man doesn’t defile him. He heard Jesus pronounce all foods clean. In other words, he had heard Jesus say in effect that He was the fulfillment of the ceremonial laws. Peter needed further convincing later so God sent him a vision showing that we should never call something (or someone) unclean that God had pronounced clean. Right after that he met Cornelius, an uncircumcised Gentile whom God was drawing to Christ. Peter preached to him and to all the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’ house and they believed the Gospel and were filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter saw with his own eyes those whom he had considered to be unclean made clean by the same faith in Christ which had made Peter clean! Now here he was in Antioch, eating with the Gentile believers, enjoying their fellowship. And suddenly when “certain men came down” from Jerusalem, Peter forgot everything he had believed before about God not showing partiality. And he refused to eat with the Gentile believers. His hypocrisy set up a powerful scene, where Paul confronted Peter because of his sin.
 
How did he do it? We are told he confronted him “to his face,” and “before them all.” Why didn’t he speak to Peter privately? Because this was a public sin that had affected others and led them into sin. It required a public rebuke. I saw a bumper sticker last week that said, “Caution: Blind Driver.” I was laughing at the joke, but also thinking about the damage that driver could cause to himself and others. It made me think about Peter’s deadly sin in Antioch. It was certainly a sin against the Gentiles. But it was also a sin against God and against the gospel. Paul knew that, too, and wrote that their conduct “was not in step with the truth of the gospel.” That could also be translated, “not in line with the gospel.” The prefix “ortho” means straight, or to make straight. We go to orthodontists to straighten our teeth. Orthopedists can straighten broken bones. We believe in orthodoxy because it is correct doctrine, truths about God and man and sin and salvation that are straight, right in line with Scripture. Paul sees that Peter is out of line, acting in a way that speaks lies about the gospel. And that Peter stood condemned because of this. The gospel cannot be changed or made crooked in any way by anyone. It must be preserved at all costs, because eternity is at stake.  

Paul saw Peter acting in a way that would lead the Gentile believers in Antioch to think that they were not accepted, that they were unclean, and Paul was not a little bit upset. He pointed out their hypocrisy, Peter and everyone else, asking, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” In other words, “Peter, you have forgotten your welcome in Christ. And as a result, you have misrepresented the gospel in not welcoming the Gentile believers.”  

May God help us bring everything in line with the gospel, including our fears of man, our prejudices, our cowardice in the face of opposition, and our laziness in welcoming others as Christ has welcomed us.

I remember hearing in my 20’s that some churches teach you are not saved if you don’t speak in tongues. Oneness Pentecostals, for example, believe this. When I heard that I remembered what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12: “Do all speak with tongues?” No. I also remember hearing some say that you must be baptized in order to be saved. That’s called “baptismal regeneration,” and it is taught by the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, some Lutheran churches, and the non-instrumental Church of Christ denomination. My first thought was, “Surely Jesus did not lie to the thief on the cross!” This man believed in his final hours, and Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” I also believe what I see in the Word: baptism is a response that follows, not a cause that creates, salvation. In each of these cases, whole denominations are guilty of leading people into a false gospel, teaching that faith in Jesus is simply not enough. Teaching that you must add something to your faith, in order to be saved. Which means that not only is your faith not enough, but it means that Jesus is not enough. That struggle started as early as the first few decades of the church. And that struggle prompted Paul to write the letter to the Galatians.  
In the churches in the first century, there were false converts who were whispering into the ears of church members that they were not really saved. The gospel Paul preached, they were saying, is not enough. You must believe in Christ, but you must also keep the traditions and the customs of the Jews. These false brothers, Paul said, “slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus.” Why would they do that? Paul continues, “so they might bring us into slavery.” It is a reminder that not all who gather in a physical church building are believers. There are “false brothers and sisters” that may enter a church with the desire to bring people into bondage. They want to show us important traditions and works and regulations that they believe we must keep in order to be saved. That is the very definition of legalism. Anything added as necessary for salvation beyond grace through faith is a false gospel. How do we respond? Paul writes that we must not “yield in submission (to them) even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved.”  

In his book, What It Means to Be Protestant, Gavin Ortlund writes a great deal about the Reformation that took place in the 1500’s. “The heart of Protestant identity lies in two affirmations: justification is by faith alone (sola fide), and Holy Scripture is the only infallible rule for the church’s faith and practice (sola Scriptura). The first of these represents a material component of the apostolic deposit recovered by the Reformation; the second represents a formal principle by which we remain accountable to that apostolic deposit. The way I like to put it is that sola fide is the ‘what’ of the Reformation; sola Scriptura is the ‘how.’ The first is an object, the second a method. The first is a precious jewel; the second, the safe that protects it.”  

Sola fide eliminates the possibility for works-righteousness.
 
We could argue that in the book of Galatians, Paul was doing a strike not only against the works-righteousness of the false teachers in the early church, but a pre-emptive strike against all churches and all denominations in future centuries who would elevate tradition and ceremony and works of any kind to the level of sola fide. To do so, Paul would say, is to invite people out of freedom and into bondage.

What do we do when such teaching creeps into the church? Paul shows us by example: “to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment.” The saying goes that if you let the camel’s nose into the tent, his body is sure to follow. Don’t even let the nose of “works-righteousness” in.

We know that the conversion of Saul, from terrorist to evangelist and from murderer to martyr, is one of the evidences in the Bible for the truth of the Gospel. It is almost Exhibit A in the New Testament that salvation is only by grace through faith, and not through good works. Why? Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a young man who stood head and shoulders above others in his zeal for following the law, in his passion for doing good works for God. Paul writes to Timothy, saying, “I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent.” But, he said, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” He is not saying that God showed mercy because of something He saw in Paul! But that Paul is a perfect example, like the rest of us, that there is no merit whatsoever in us but perfect merit in Christ who took our place. If you are in Christ, it is because God displayed perfect patience in calling you before you were even in your mother’s womb, and saving you at the time of His choosing. That’s the Gospel.

Notice what Paul says about his conversion in Galatians. First, he says that Jesus set him apart before he was born. Before Paul entered his mother’s womb, God had ordained that Paul would know Jesus. And think of this. God endured with patience as Paul advanced in Judaism and in works-righteousness. And the same misplaced zeal that Paul grew skilled in to advance works-righteousness, the false gospel, would be employed by the Spirit, this zeal, in a new Paul to advance the Kingdom of God and salvation by grace through faith! I love the story CS Lewis tells in his book, Surprised by Joy of a teacher he had in school who was nicknamed “The Great Knock,” and “Kirk.” William Kirkpatrick was a brilliant tutor who trained Lewis as a young man in logic, clear thinking, and analysis. And Kirk was an atheist whose rationalism formed Lewis in that same mold. Until Jesus, who had set CS Lewis apart before he was born, gave the light of the Gospel to him. And then? Lewis’ training in logic and clear thinking prepared him well to become one of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith in his day. Here’s the truth, saints. Nothing is wasted with God and all that you have learned and all that you have suffered become the tools God uses in you to be salt and light in the world.  

Second, Paul says that not only was he set apart before birth but at the right time, God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” God revealed Christ to Paul so that He could reveal Christ through Paul. It is the same for you and me! Ironically, Paul was called by Jesus to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, the very people Paul would have avoided like the plague before his conversion. Notice also that your Bible may have a footnote that says the Greek there is actually “in.” God revealed his Son, not just to Paul, but in Paul. Salvation is only ours when we have Jesus in us. “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”
 
You don’t have to be a terrorist to have a miraculous conversion. Any conversion of any soul is a miracle. Neither do you have to be “blinded by the light” to be saved. You just have to meet and surrender to the One who is light.  
Only Jesus.

Thomas Edison said once, “I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.” That’s the way I feel about the 6 men I serve alongside as elders of our church. Many of us have walked together for more than twenty years, and the weekly meetings for prayer and discussion on Sunday morning are a highlight of my week. We meet together almost every Sunday for two hours before the service starts because we know that we need the Lord’s help to love the body well and to walk together as those who agree. The seven of us are different in many ways, from professions to personalities, but God has made us one.  

This past weekend was our annual Elders’ Retreat, which has traditionally been spent with our wives in the mountains at a conference center. Until last year when, because of icy roads in Black Mountain, we called an audible and met at one of our elders’ homes in town. This year, because of last year’s weather in the west, we booked a beach house on the Carolina coast. Who knew that the threat of a “major” snow and ice event would force us to pivot again to another of our elders’ homes? It was a wonderful day and a half together.
 
When we gather for these retreats, the purpose is to build our relationships, assess the past year’s joys and challenges, and seek the Lord’s wisdom for the year ahead. One of the elders started the retreat with a few icebreakers. “Would you rather lead worship without any sheet music or preach a sermon without any notes?” Lots of laughter on that one. The second question was, “Would you rather debate theology or hear someone’s life story?” I was surprised at the number of theologians in our group who are ready to rumble! By the way, I recommend Jen Wilkin’s book, You Are a Theologian. She builds the case that if theology is the study of God, all who belong to Him are theologians, growing in our understanding of who God is and what He has said to us in His word. If the most important thing about us is what we think about God, the pursuit to truly know Him is primary in our lives.  

The ice breaker questions were followed by devotions and worship and a time of prayer.
The rest of the retreat, when we weren’t enjoying great food and fellowship, was spent discussing the health of our body, the needs of the saints, and the plans for taking care of the growth the church is enjoying. We are outgrowing our facility and asking the Lord for wisdom. As we consider whether He is leading us to merge with another church that has more space, or to add on to the building that we are in now, our posture is prayer and our ears are open to what the Lord will answer. Our history of nearly 39 years bears the marks of His handprints as the Lord has provided a place for us to gather from the time we started with fewer than 50 until today. We have been in the same building for 23 years, and it is the tenth place where we have gathered for worship. What were the words of the hymn? “All the way, my Savior leads me.” Yes, and He has been faithful to provide. As we talked and laughed and sometimes cried this weekend, we did so as friends whom God has called together to love and lead.

I don’t know any kings, and I don’t think any of our elders or their wives wear overalls, but I wouldn’t trade our friendship for any of the world’s treasures.

The letter to the Galatians is considered by many to be a “capital epistle” of the Apostle Paul, along with 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans, because of how clearly it sets forth the Gospel. Written around AD 50, just 20 years or so after the resurrection of Christ, Galatians is called by some the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. Martin Luther loved Galatians so much he called it “Catherine von Bora,” his wife’s name, because he said, “I am married to it.” Along with Romans, Galatians is the book that launched the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s as it liberated that Catholic monk from works righteousness and helped him clearly see the doctrine of justification by faith alone. That is the central doctrine of Galatians, and in it we read, “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” Do you see that? Not once, not twice, but three times in that single verse Paul insists that we cannot be justified (or, declared righteous) before the bar of God’s justice by doing the works of the law. The good news of the Gospel is only good news if it is the Gospel. Anything else, anything added, reverses the Gospel so that it becomes terrible news.

The Gospel is this. Christ “…gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.” Notice three things about that powerful truth.
 
The Gospel tells us who we are. We are helpless and lost in our sins. That’s what the word “deliver” implies in that verse. What do we need more than anything else? To be rescued. Delivered. Other religions were founded by people who claim to have the knowledge we need that will set us free. They are here to teach us, they say, because that’s what we need most. Was Jesus a teacher? Of course. The greatest of all teachers. But Paul in describing the Gospel in its simplest terms makes no mention of Jesus’ teaching. Because that was not as important as rescue. A man who thinks he just needs to really understand the difference between Buddhism and Christianity is not looking to be rescued. He just wants to be taught. But when a person is drowning right in front of you in a pool, they don’t want you to yell to them how to do the breaststroke or toss them a manual on swimming. They need a rope. They need someone to deliver them, to rescue them. Jesus is first our rescuer before he becomes our teacher.

The Gospel tells us what Jesus did. He “gave himself for our sins.” That is substitutionary atonement. He took our place because no one else could. Paul says it plainly also in 1 Corinthians: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” This is of first importance because there is no other hope, no other way, no other rescue. He did not die for all, but for all those who will believe. He said himself that he came to “give his life as a ransom for many.” He also did not die to just give us a “second chance” to do better, to get it right so we could be right and stay right with God. No! He did all that was needed to make us right before God, something we are helpless to do ourselves. And the Gospel means that if Jesus really paid for all of our sins we can never fall into condemnation and then have to…pay for our sins. It would be unjust for two payments to be made. Jesus paid it all. It was just for Him to die on the cross because He took our sins upon Himself. It is unjust for us to have to do anything to win God’s favor. Jesus won that for us.
 
Third, the Gospel tells us what the Father did in the very first verse of this book. God the Father accepted Jesus’ perfect payment for our sins by raising Him from the dead. And He gave us grace and peace that was bought by Jesus’ precious blood. Why did the Father do this? Not because of anything we have done, but “according to the will of God the Father.” The Gospel begins and continues and flourishes for eternity because of the will of God. Not because of anything we did or could ever do. Salvation is pure grace.  

Are you living in and flourishing because of the Gospel? There is no other.

The gospel is paid for by blood and empowered by grace, and I believe every church that stays healthy will do everything it can to build a gospel culture, a grace-filled community, where the body of Christ can flourish.  

I remember the story of the young man with long greasy hair that walked into a ‘proper’ church on a Sunday morning. His jeans were ripped and dirty, his t-shirt smelly and stained, and his feet were bare. He wandered down the aisle looking for a place to sit, but none of the shocked parishioners would make eye contact. He finally plopped down on the floor in front of the first pew. No one breathed. Finally an elderly deacon began to make his way down the center aisle, and the people sighed and nodded. At least Deacon Jones is going to set this young man straight, they thought. Coming into our church looking and smelling like that! But when the deacon got to the front, he did the unthinkable. He dropped his cane and sat beside the young man on the floor, nodding at him as if to say, “Welcome. I am glad you’re here.” When the pastor came to the pulpit, he said, “What I am about to preach, you may not remember. But what you have just seen, you will never forget.”  
What they saw was gospel culture.

Francis Schaeffer spoke at a conference in Switzerland in 1974 on the topic of “Form and Freedom in the Church.” He said there are four essentials to a healthy biblical church, which of course include sound doctrine and real relationship with the God who made us. But another essential is “Relational beauty.” Schaeffer said, “Lovelessness destroys orthodoxy. If we do not show beauty in the way we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our own children, we are destroying the truth we proclaim.” Relational beauty has a lot to do with building gospel culture.
 
One of the things I hear over and over from Christians about their church-search woes, maybe when they have moved to another city, is this. Why can’t we find a church that has both sound biblical doctrine and strong fellowship, or loving community? Where is that solid Bible-embracing church that is also warm and welcoming to everyone who comes through the door, a church that is intentional about helping people find their place and build solid relationships with the family of faith? What I hear is that most of the time if they find a church that holds firm to the trustworthy Word as taught, the people there are as cold as a fish. Instead of receiving a warm welcome and an invitation into fellowship when they walk in, visitors often sit alone and try their best to enter into corporate worship beside people who don’t even acknowledge their existence. The flip side is people who tell me they found a church where everyone loves each other and welcomes those gladly who come to visit, but what they are teaching and what they believe is not grounded in the Word. They are not sound in doctrine. Why can’t we have both? Sound doctrine and healthy community?
 
Anyone who has been around the Word for more than a few months has already seen that not only can we have both, but the truth of Scripture demands it. Jesus was, as John said in his prologue, “full of grace and truth.” Grace and truth. If that is true of Jesus then is it not also to be true of his church as well? Grace and truth. Not just truth. Not just grace. You really cannot either unless you have both. I would suggest that a church will not thrive that does not strongly believe that a vital part of the reason they come together on Sunday is to love one another. Jesus said it plainly in the upper room, after Judas had left to betray him. He looked the other 11 men in the eye and said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Just to make sure they got it, and that we do as well, He said it three times. Love. One. Another. That is gospel culture.  

That must be the culture of any church that belongs to Jesus.  

I remember hearing a sermon once on Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal entitled, “Before the Fire Will Fall.” Remember the story? Elijah had to do a lot of work in preparation before fire came down from heaven and God revealed Himself and His glory to the people who followed Baal. Especially to the 400 prophets of Baal, who no matter how hard they tried just could not get any fire from heaven. You see, the power was not in the preparation. That was just Elijah being obedient. The power was in God and God alone. Fire came down for Elijah because God sent it. Fire did not fall for the prophets of Baal because their god simply does not exist.  

That’s not to say that preparation is not important. We should prepare every time we gather as a church with humble hearts, bowed to His will, with prayers of expectation that God is glorious and will increase our awe and love through songs and preaching and prayer and testimony. That’s just us being obedient in preparing our hearts to receive what God so loves to give: Himself. And that is what we see in the final chapter of Exodus. All the furniture for the tabernacle had been made. All the materials for the tabernacle itself had been made and were ready to assemble into a tent of meeting. It had been at least 120 days since the instructions were given and Bezalel and Oholiab, spirit-filled craftsmen, led a team of artists who constructed everything, right down to the pomegranates on the priests’ robes. Now it was time for Moses to put it all together.  

Notice the day! It was the first day of the first month. Verse 17, in the second year. This is significant because it was the anniversary of their departure from Egypt. This day the tabernacle was erected, the culmination of everything God had been doing since He first delivered His people from bondage. Now there was a tent of meeting, a tabernacle, where God would meet with His people for many years. And again we see the heart of Moses who obeyed the Lord. You read this phrase 7 times in chapter 39, 7 times in chapter 40, and 7 times in Leviticus 8: “As the Lord commanded Moses.” The Spirit of God in inspiring Moses to write it this way was making a point on the importance of word-for-word obedience to the Word of God. These people were humbled and repentant over their idolatry, at least for now, so they wanted to make sure they followed God exactly as they should. Then you read in verse 33, “So Moses finished the work.” Moses had done all he had been commanded to do. Now all that was missing was what everyone was waiting to see: the glory of the Lord. God with us. Moses could put the tabernacle together after God told him how to do it. But only God could fill the place.
 
We cannot close the book of Exodus without going one more time to the book of Hebrews, where we are told again that we have full access to God through Christ, His Son, who is also very God of very God. “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”  

We know that Jesus is with us and in us! How should we then live? Let us draw near to Him. Let us hold fast our confession of hope without wavering or deconstructing. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not stir up one another to distrust or bitterness. And let us not neglect to meet together for worship.  

All the more, Saints, because we see the Day is drawing near.

I recently read through my journal for 2009, and I love this excerpt from Friday, November 27 of that year: “I was at the YMCA on Wednesday, expecting Cindy to show up any minute. I was on a stationary bike and kept turning round as I was riding to look for Cindy’s appearance. At the same time I was listening to a message by Sinclair Ferguson on the Return of Jesus, and it struck me how this picture in the Y looked like that picture in the future. It reminded me of how we should live: distracted from the things of this world because of a longing for the arrival of the One we love. We want to be craning our necks, watching the door, not caring what we look like to others, some of whom may be annoyed by our constant turning and looking and longing. Paul said a crown of righteousness will belong to those who “love His appearing.”

That story also reminds me of February 22 and November 22 of 2025. I remember them like they were yesterday. In each of those days, I was privileged to stand next to a young man who was looking intently at a door that was closed, knowing that when it opened, he would see the young woman standing behind it as his fiance for the last time. Because in mere minutes, she would become his wife. They would leave their father and mother, hold fast to one another, and they would become one flesh. Their lives would be forever changed as a new family was formed, and that union would be a testimony to the world of the marriage between Christ and His church, His bride.    

Cindy and I had the privilege of doing the pre-marital counseling for these two young couples this year, and all of them members of Antioch. In fact, three of them grew up in the church and the fourth came to us already grown up beyond her years.
 
Let me tell you three things I saw in those two weddings and the work that led up to them. First, I saw four families who were committed to training up their sons and daughters to know the Lord and to follow Him. I saw four men who take seriously Paul’s admonition, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” I saw four women whose children rise up and call them blessed and whose husbands also praise them. Each of these moms “opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.”

Second, I saw a church body come together for each wedding to do whatever needed to be done for the sake of the bride and the groom and for the glory of God. It was a mountain of work and you did it without complaining because the love of Christ compelled. It really does take a village to pull off a wedding, and what a godly, giving, and loving village the church is. Gospel community is alive and flourishing at Antioch. Third, I saw two young couples that patiently waited to say yes on their wedding day. I saw the light shining in their eyes when they looked at one another and when they talked about one another.
 
I want to remind you who are married, whether it is for one month or more than 50 years, of this truth: marriage in Christ is meant for our joy and for God’s glory. Don’t give in to anything less for your marriage than that. Don’t accept for a moment the thought that suggests marriage is something to be endured, not enjoyed. No! That is certainly not how Jesus thinks of His bride! For the JOY that was set before Him, Jesus our bridegroom endured the cross. Because of what Jesus endured for us, we can and we must pursue joy in one another.

Celebrate the one whom God gave you, in good times and in hard times.

I never get tired of reading Luke 2 and learning from the angels and the shepherds. Here are five important lessons we learn from these men who were “keeping watch over their flock by night” when an angel of the Lord appeared with good news of great joy. The Savior had been born in Bethlehem! How did the shepherds respond?

They believed the Good News. We know this because as soon as the angels were gone the shepherds started making plans to go into Bethlehem. This is the critical time for all of us, isn’t it? We have just heard the doctor give us his diagnosis and tell us what to do to get well. Do we believe it? We have just heard our boss give us his evaluation of our work and tell us what to do to improve. Do we believe it? We have just heard the Lord speak to us in a sermon or in our own reading of the Word. Do we believe it? In each case, our “belief” is proved by what we do next. We can say we believe the word we’ve heard and simply ignore what we heard the word, which would be proof that we do not believe it. Belief and obedience walk together or not at all.
 
They obeyed the Good News. The shepherds said to one another, Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. What do we know about the shepherds’ obedience from this passage? First, their obedience was corporate, and that’s a great thing. The shepherds obeyed together. They exhorted one another to obey the Lord. If you are spending time with people who make a habit of obeying God, and encouraging you to obey God, you are hanging out with the right people. If you are spending time with friends or family who do not obey the Lord, but they know and they see that you do obey the Lord, then you are a friend of sinners as Jesus was. He was in the world, but not of the world.  Second, their obedience was immediate. And they went with haste.” They hurried to obey God. There were lots of reasons to delay: as many sheep they had, those were each a reason to stay where they were. We are not told what they did with the sheep. Maybe the angels told them they could leave the sheep in the field and they would be fine. Maybe they found some substitute shepherds who were off that day and hired them to come and watch. Maybe they just looked at the sheep, looked at each other, and said, “Good luck Fluffies!” and took off to town. Probably not. They were shepherds, which meant they were first and foremost protectors of their sheep. But God had spoken to them through a heavenly host, an army of angels. And it was with great joy that they obeyed God with abandon! There is delight and surprise waiting for those who will make haste and obey God’s command.

Third, their obedience was grounded. They said, let’s go see this thing which the Lord has made known to us. How much do we run to see and to do and to walk in what the Lord has made known to us? Think of this. They were going into the city, where they almost never ventured, looking for a baby in a feeding trough. That took faith. But at the same time, God had revealed it to them. There are times to step out in faith, and certainly there was a measure of faith involved in what the Lord told the shepherds. But most of the time our obedience will not be to something we are not sure of, but to that which has been clearly revealed to us. The shepherds understood exactly what God was telling them to do, and they simply obeyed.  Fourth, their obedience was rewarded. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. We don’t know how long it took them to find the right baby. Remember, the angel had said, “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” The key word was manger. There were surely other babies in Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling cloths, but the One they were looking for would be in a feeding trough. They looked until they found Him. This is one of those main things and plain things in the Bible. In Jeremiah we read, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” And in Isaiah, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.” Wisdom speaks in Proverbs, saying, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me.” Jesus himself said, “Seek and you shall find.” That is what these lowly shepherds did.
 
I don’t know about you, but I want to follow the shepherds.

The shepherds were watching their flocks by night. That’s all. Just a normal night for a shepherd. Maybe glad to have sheep to watch. Maybe also wishing they could do something for a living that didn’t subject them to the elements quite so much. It was quiet. And dark. Then everything changed in an instant. For them. For the world. The sky was lit up as an angel of the Lord appeared. The word for appeared means “be at hand in an instant.” The angel was not there. Then it was. It wasn’t like the shepherds looked way off in the distance and saw a dim light moving in their direction.

“Hey, Levi. What’s that coming yonder?”
 
“Don’t know, Jake. But it’s headin’ this way.”

No. They didn’t see the angel approaching. There was no warning whatsoever. The angel was on them in an instant. “The glory of the Lord shone around them.”
 
The pictures that men have painted of this scene over the years are almost comical. They often portray the shepherds as rough-hewn burly men, and the angel as a delicate woman with curls and rosy cheeks. Which would make you wonder, who was afraid of whom? Like the shepherds should be saying to the angel, “Don’t be afraid little lady. Us big ol’ shepherds won’t hurt you. You can talk to strangers. It’s Ok.” No. The angel was awesome and the shepherds were terrified. “Filled with great fear,” Luke said. It was the night of nights and the appearance of an angel changed everything. Because he came with news.

The angel said, “Fear not!” Probably because the shepherds were still shaking, maybe hiding their faces on the ground. Then the angel said, “I bring you good news of great joy!” It is the good news that is not only the answer to all of our fears but is the source of all our joy. All of our fears, gone. All of our joy, now here. Maybe that was the inspiration for perhaps the most popular Christmas Carol, Isaac Watts’ “Joy to the World.” Remember verse 2? “Joy to the Earth! the Savior reigns; Let men their songs employ; While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy…”

Think about that. This is Biblical language, because fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains are doing what they were created to do: they repeat the sounding joy! It reminds me of what Jesus said as He was entering Jerusalem and the people were praising Him, shouting “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” The Pharisees said, “Hey, Jesus, tell these people to be quiet!” Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” You get that? The rocks would rejoice! When you pick up a rock in your driveway or you find a big one in the woods, do you ever put it up to your ear and listen for it to speak? No. What do rocks say? Nothing. At least nothing that we can hear. So is Jesus saying that those who refuse to sound forth His praises are as dumb as a rock? No, that would be an insult to rocks because they are praising Him. The rocks and the trees and the fields and even the floods. All of creation praises God.
 
That’s why Isaac Watts pleads with us, “Let men their songs employ.” Put your life and loves and all your might to work praising God, like heaven and earth does. Why do we sing and speak praises? Because of the angel’s announcement that was good news of great joy: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  
Several years ago I went with a group from church to Boone to work at Operation Christmas Child. Franklin Graham came to the warehouse to speak with all of us and he told a story about a little orphan boy in another country who was invited to come to the church to get a Christmas shoebox. “I don’t want a shoebox,” he said. “I want a Mom and a Dad.” He was told, “Well, we don’t have a Mom and a Dad for you…but we do have a shoebox. Won’t you come and receive your gift?” The little boy went reluctantly and was given a shoebox and when he opened it, he found gifts. But there was also a picture of a young couple, a note from them, and their address. “Hey, why don’t you write to this couple and thank them for the gift?” The boy agreed, sent his letter, and six weeks later they got it and wrote him back. Six weeks later, he got their letter and wrote them back. And six months after the little boy first received a shoebox, he got what he really wanted: the young couple took him home as their adopted son.

There’s good news of GREAT joy today. Christmas is a celebration of the One who came to earth so we could become His sons and His daughters. That’s what we all want. It is certainly what we all need.

Moses saw God’s glory in two ways. First, God passed him by in the cleft of the rock. Immediately after that, Moses saw God’s glory in His character. He gave Moses six ways to know Him and thereby to love Him.

The first thing God revealed about His character is His compassion for His people. David compared it to an earthly father when he wrote, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.” There’s something sad about a father or a mother who is always looking to punish or embarrass or shame their child. God is not petty or cruel. He is full of compassion.
 
Second, the Lord is gracious. To those of us who can never measure up, and I am one, He gives grace. I am so thankful for God’s grace, paid for by Jesus. Maxie Dunnam tells the story of a woman who took her friend with her when she went to a photographer to have her picture taken. The beauty parlor had done their best for her. She took her seat in the studio and fixed her pose. Then she said to the photographer, ‘Now be sure to do me justice.’ The friend who had come with her said with a twinkle in her eye, ‘My dear, what you need is not justice but mercy.’” That’s what we all need as we are always before the eyes of the Lord who sees us and knows all about us. We need God’s grace and mercy. As you may have heard before, grace is God giving us what we do not deserve, and mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.

Third, the Lord is slow to anger. To those who are rebellious, this is good news. The literal translation of “slow to anger” in Hebrew is “long of nose.” We sometimes say an angry person has a short fuse, and someone who is more patient has a long fuse. But there were no fuses or bombs in ancient Israel, so why “a long nose?” Many believe the idea is that this person takes a long and deep inhale. He can wait.  One commentator said it may be because short-nosed animals are the ones that snort. Think of pigs, grunting and snorting. That’s not God. When something sets us off, we may blow up, but God does not. His patience is perfect.

Fourth, the Lord abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands. The Pacific Ocean is so deep at the Mariana Trench that if Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world,  were placed into it, the peak would still be more than a mile underwater. We cannot fathom that depth, no pun intended, but the steadfast love of the Lord makes the Pacific Ocean look like a plastic kiddie pool. The love of the Lord never ceases and has no bottom floor.
 
Fifth, the Lord forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. The word forgive means “to lift or carry.” For the repentant, God lifts their sins from them and carries them away. He forgives iniquity, which is turning aside from what we know is right. He forgives transgression, which is rebellion, open opposition to God, sometimes called treason. Paul was guilty of that: he was a treasonous rebel, hell-bent on destroying Christians and Christianity. After God apprehended him on the Damascus Road, Paul referred to himself as the chief of sinners. For the rest of his life he held up the unsearchable riches of Christ’s forgiveness. God also forgives sin, which refers to all sin, or, our sin nature. Remember, we aren’t sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

Sixth, the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. The same God who forgives sin also condemns the guilty. The sins of the fathers are passed down from generation to generation. That does not mean that a grandchild is punished for something his grandfather did. It means the patterns and the cycles of sin continue from one generation to the next.

God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving, and just. We cannot pick and choose which attributes we believe in or even which attributes we like. They are all true or none of them are true. God is who He says He is or we are all without hope.

My hope is in God.

Moses cried out, “Please show me your glory!” Much has been written about this over the years, and we must not overlook this powerful plea. Charles Spurgeon likened it to Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus and seeing Him in His glory. Peter blurted out, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Can you blame Peter for wanting to make a place for these three to live? Let’s keep this glory right here! I think we see in this story, and in God’s response, that He does not rebuke His sons and daughters for having a hunger to see Him and to know Him in greater ways. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “We may have been Christians for many years, but have we ever really longed for some personal, direct knowledge and experience of God? We all ask for personal blessings, but how much do we know of this desire for God himself? That is what Moses asked for: ‘Show me your glory. Take me yet a step nearer.’”

God said yes. And He said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you.” Goodness! Not justice, or wrath, or even holiness. God’s glory encompasses all of His character, but you could say that God’s glory rests in His goodness. He said to Jeremiah, “My people will be satisfied by my goodness.” If we don’t know that God is good, then we really don’t know much about Him. Remember when Susan asked Mr. Beaver if Aslan was safe? Mr. Beaver said, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe. But he is good. He’s the king!” God is good.

Then notice God said, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” God is Lord of all creation. That gives Him alone the right to be compassionate and show mercy on those whom He chooses. And because He is good, everything He does is good. Why did God choose Abraham? Why did God choose Moses? Not because of anything He saw in them. He chose them simply because of His compassion and mercy. His goodness. If you know Christ, why did God call you out of darkness and into His marvelous light? Because of His God’s grace. His mercy.
 
God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock, because no one on earth can see the face of God and live. I love this: Moses was protected from God by God. God covered Moses with His hand and passed by. When God passed by Moses, hidden in the rock, He took away His hand and Moses saw the back of God. Perhaps more accurately, Moses saw the after-effects of the radiance of God’s glory, since God is spirit. What was Moses’ response? We are not told. But we can guess, based on others’ responses in the Bible.

When Isaiah beheld a vision of God, he cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost!” When John got a glimpse of heaven in a vision and saw the Son of Man in all His glory, John “fell at his feet as though dead.” And when Paul was caught up to the third heaven in a vision, he could barely describe it, writing of himself in third person, “He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.”
 
What we know of Moses’ experience with God is very limited. But what we know should call each of us into greater desire to know God more deeply. God heard Moses’ request to see His glory and rewarded his seeking heart. Seeing God’s glory assured Moses that the Lord was with him. And we need nothing more as followers of Christ and nothing more than a church than to know that God, the God who makes Himself known, is with us and will never forsake us.

Do you want to see God’s glory? I hope so! Listen beloved, what Moses experienced in the cleft of the rock does not compare to the revelation we have been given in the person of Jesus Christ. John wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” You may say, but John saw Jesus, face to face! Yes, he did. But Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” And Paul wrote, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The glory of God in Jesus. Celebrate it. Tell others about it.

When God saw what was going on below with His people, He sent Moses down the mountain. When Moses saw what was going on, he smashed the two tablets of the law that God had personally written. The golden calf was burned, the people drank down its ashes, and three thousand of the ringleaders in that idolatrous orgy were killed that day. The greatest cost for their disobedience, however, was when God told them they could still go to the Promised Land, and He would protect them on the way there and help them defeat their enemies, but He would not go with them. He would destroy them if He did.

Imagine a wedding ceremony where the bride and groom say “I will” to the charge, and “I do” to the vows, and “we will” to the kiss, and they nod “we are” to the pronouncement of being husband and wife. And then as the music for the recessional starts, the groom walks out the back door of the church and drives away alone, leaving the bride standing at the altar. The reception would be a strange and sad event, to say the least. Well, for most people. Some guys would say, “Hey, there’s food here, it’s not a total loss.”

What is the point of a wedding if the two do not become one? What is the point of a Promised Land if God is not there? What is the point of heaven if the Son of God is absent? The people in the wilderness understood where their sin had put them with God, and they responded with humility. They mourned this proclamation. When Moses told them God had said they were stiff-necked (aren’t we?) and they should take off their ornaments, they did so. In fact, the Bible says they “stripped themselves of their ornaments,” indicating forceful removal of their Egyptian jewelry. It was an outward act of inward humility.
 
To hear that the Lord would not go with them to the Promised Land was terrifying. And to hear that God would not go for fear that he would destroy them because of their sin is even worse. I remember in high school when I challenged a guy that was twice my size to a fight after school because he was going out with a girl I liked. She couldn’t have cared less about me, but then, what does logic have to do with hormones? Word spread fast in the school that day and a crowd gathered to watch the slaughter. We faced off and then David said, “Fox, I’m not going to fight you.” I grinned and said, “Hah! So you’re scared!” He said, “Yeah, I am. I’m scared I might kill you.”

Let’s be clear. God was not scared. He was resolute in his judgment of a rebellious people, and that judgment included mercy. This is a story of redemption from beginning to end. How can a holy God dwell in the midst of an unholy people? He cannot. But because of his mercy, He will once again hear the cries of the mediator, Moses, and will renew the covenant with His people.

The sad truth is that many choose a “god” that promises much and demands little. To the One who created them they say, Give me all the promises of God, but don’t bother me with having to try to get to know him. Or hang out with his people on Sundays and other times. And learn about his commands? Nah, all that stuff cramps my style. Yeah, sign me up for the “low-involvement” package, please.

We have to hand it to the Israelites. They didn’t respond that way. Instead they mourned the news that God would not go with them. In humility they surrendered their will to His.
What does it cost to have God’s presence? Jesus paid that cost. Our part is faith, and surrender. Which, praise be to God, we only do either by the power He gives us through the Spirit.

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory!

When Moses saw the people worshiping an idol, he smashed the tablets of the law, ground the idol into powder, and made the people drink it down. Then he confronted his older brother, the high priest. His reproach against Aaron started with a question that seemed at first to give Aaron the benefit of the doubt: “What did this people do to you…”  But it also clearly laid the blame at Aaron’s feet. “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” On the one hand Moses seems to be conceding that the people must have abused Aaron in some way. “I mean, they must have made you do this, right Aaron? Was it a spear pointed at your head until you gave in to their demands? On the other hand, big brother no matter what the people did, you are guilty. You did this, Aaron.” It reminds me of the classic analogy of a ship’s captain whose vessel is run aground by a lieutenant in his charge. The lieutenant is guilty, but the captain is responsible. Aaron was the person in authority in Moses’ absence. The people were guilty, but Aaron was responsible. It works the same way in the home. A home without godly leadership will run aground quickly. As will a church.

Aaron’s response to Moses’ question is classic denial. First, he seems to blow it off. Hey, don’t be so angry about this, Moses. He seems to have no sense of the significance of his sin, and calling him “my lord” does not soften the charge. Second, Aaron shifts the blame. You know these people and how much they love evil. Ahh, the first priest of Israel sounds a lot like the first priest of the garden. Why did I eat the fruit? This woman, which by the way you gave to me, handed it to me! When confronted, Aaron made excuses. Philip Ryken writes, “There’s always somebody to blame: “My parents didn’t love me.” “My husband didn’t care for me.” “My wife wasn’t meeting my needs.” “My elders didn’t handle the situation right.” “My boss didn’t treat me fairly.” “They went behind my back.” “Everyone was doing it!”

Third, Aaron actually spoke the truth. “They told me to make gods for them because you were gone and they didn’t know when you were coming back.” That was true. Aaron then said he told them to give him any gold that they were wearing. That is also true. Good job, Aaron. But wait.  Fourth, Aaron spoke a bald-faced lie while looking Moses straight in the eye. Calf? What calf? Oh, you mean that one? Pssh. I just threw all the gold they gave me into the fire and that’s what came out! Again we wonder why Aaron wasn’t a made a greasy spot right then, by the wrath of a just God. It is simply that by the mercy of God, because of the intercession of Moses, Aaron was spared. But the damage was done.
This story is a photograph of the sinfulness of sin and the consequences for it. Three thousand men died that day for their part in the idolatry. It is also a picture of the mercy of God. He did not destroy them all. He heard Moses’ offer to take their place: “take my name out of your book!” God had a plan for redemption, for someone who would stand in the place of sinners. There is only One who could.

It wasn’t Moses.  

The story of the golden calf in Exodus 32 is a familiar one. The people who had seen God’s mighty power and felt his mercy and grace got tired of waiting for Moses to come down from his 40-day meeting with God on Mt. Sinai. So they asked Aaron to make them a god, to build them an idol they could worship. When God saw it, he told the leader of Israel that he would destroy the nation and start over with Moses. That is when Moses “implored” God not to do that. The word is rich in meaning. To “implore” pictures a person who is weak and sick, grieved and bent over with the weight of intercession and entreaty. We see a clearer picture of that in this same story as Moses told it in Deuteronomy. That account adds even more weight to Moses’ plea for mercy. When God told him what was going on below, Moses went down to see what the people were doing. When he witnessed their idolatry, he threw down the stone tablets and broke them. He wrote, “Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. And the Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.”

Do the math. When idolatry broke out below, Moses had already been on the mountaintop with God for 40 days. Add another 40 of brokenness and intercession, and that means Moses went 80 days without bread or water. He was supernaturally sustained by God. But more importantly, look at his intercession which he gives us in the text in Exodus 32. His argument in defense of God’s people is an appeal to God’s great favor he has shown them already many times. First, Moses appeals to a God’s great love for His people that showed itself in mighty deeds. “You brought them out with great power.” Second, Moses appeals to God’s great name and character. “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains.’” Third, Moses appeals to God’s great covenant with the patriarchs. “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self…I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven.” Notice Moses calls Jacob “Israel” which is what God changed Jacob’s name to when the deceiver finally and fully surrendered his will to the Lord.
 
What happened? God relented. You could say he “gave in” to the exact plan he had all along. And Moses was the man who stood in the gap. Psalm 106:23 says, “Therefore he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.”

Two challenges I would leave with you. Just as Moses had to go down and intercede to stop God’s wrath, the greater intercessor, the Son of God had to come down and stand in the gap for God’s people. And he did that with his own blood. Paul writes to those who believe, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” The first challenge is simply a question, then: do you know Him? Have you bowed your head and accepted the yoke that Jesus offers? He say to you this morning, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
 
The second challenge is this: For whom are you interceding? You can make the same appeal that Moses made. Ask the Father to show his love to that one who has not yet come to repentance. Cry out to God for his own name’s sake and ask him to save so that others will see and proclaim his glory. Finally, appeal to the covenant God has made with the world that because of the finished work of Jesus his Son on the cross, men and women can be saved. You can pray, “Add this one, Lord! Open his eyes. Show her your kindness and mercy. Save them, O God!”

What can we do? We can pray. We can intercede. We can ask our God who is unstoppable in his love and mercy to change the hearts of our loved ones and friends. So what are we waiting on?
 
Let’s pray.

When Moses stayed on the mountaintop with God for a long time, the natives got restless. Their response was a desire for a “better god,” one they could see, so they asked Aaron to make them one. Did Aaron respond with, “What are you talking about? I will not do any such thing!” Not quite. He basically said, “Ok.” And then, ‘Take off your gold earrings.” He just gave in to their demands. Fear of man triumphed over fear of God, and when that happens, evil is sure to follow. As we read in Proverbs., “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.” Aaron didn’t pray about their request. He didn’t consult the elders. He didn’t do anything but go along with the pressure of the crowd. His will was not settled in a desire for only God’s will, and that opens the door for the enemy every time. A leader without conviction gives sinful people what they want.

Young people, don’t listen to the voices around you, live or streamed, that tell you to do what you know is wrong. Be a man or woman of courage and conviction. Be a Daniel who would not give in even to the king’s demands with what he was to eat. Be like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who would not bow to the golden image while the rest of the nation was eating dust as they groveled before it. Be like Esther who went before the king without permission to plead for her people, saying, “If I perish, I perish.” Be like Jesus who did not give in to the crowd’s demands but did exactly what the Father sent him to do. When it comes to conviction about sin that others are inviting you into, be a leader not a follower.

The people gave their golden earrings to Aaron. And remember where they came from! These were part of the bounty, the plunder, that the people of Egypt gave to their former slaves as they sent them on their way. God gave them these riches for the building of the tabernacle, not for the practice of idolatry. But the people weren’t thinking about that, They craved the gods of Egypt, something they could see, even if it was something that was made with human hands. They also wanted a god they could control.  And Aaron gave them what they craved. He fashioned it with a graving tool, and you wonder if God’s thunderous voice was in his ears saying, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” This was not the spirit-inspired artistry of Bezalel, this golden calf. This was the sin-inspired idolatry of a man ordained and appointed as the primary spiritual leader of a nation. It may have been a beautiful piece of art, but that was not the problem. The problem was that the artist perverted his skill to make an idol. It is a reminder to all of us that our gift can be our greatest blessing, or it can become our greatest curse. Whether it is artistry or intelligence or beauty or athletic ability or business acumen, or anything else that the world praises, we must devote it to God and his glory. Lest we end up worshiping the gift and not the Giver.

Think of this. The golden calf Aaron created did not even exist the day before. But to this lifeless image the people gave their worship and to this statue carved by a man they ascribed glory and power. Isn’t that what Paul said happens when we reject the Creator and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images? “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”

We look at this and say, “Why? How? How could you throw away what you had with God for this? How in the world did you get there?” One day at a time. One corrupt thought at a time that instead of being held captive is allowed to run wild in their minds. One opportunity after another to trust God that instead is turned into a complaint against him. Or against his people. Or against his leaders.

Sin makes us forget the goodness of God. Sin makes us doubt the presence of God. Sin makes us ignore the treasures of God.
 
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.”

Because God is creator, we are given the ability to create as well. We are all artists. Our creativity and artistry can be expressed in many ways, from painting to sculpting to master carpentry to music to storytelling to acting to sewing to designing clothes…and the list goes on. Of course the artistic ability we are given varies widely as well. And I believe Exodus 31 gives us great help in developing a biblical view of art and artists.

First, you see there that God called two men by name, Bezalel and Oholiab.  Just as Moses and Aaron were called by God to lead the people, these two craftsmen were called by God to lead in building the tabernacle and everything in it. Bezalel means “in the shadow of God,” and that is where he would stand as he did everything God told Moses to do in preparing this earthly home for God’s presence. Moses did not do it because it wasn’t his job and it wasn’t his gift. The tabernacle needed an artist to build it, not a prophet. Bezalel’s associate in this work, Oholiab, was called to the same task as an artist, and his name means “My Father’s Tent.”  That seems appropriate: in the shadow of the Almighty, Bezalel and Oholiab built their Father’s tent.

Second, notice that these artists were gifted and their gifts came from God. Look at this. God said of Bezalel, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God.” This is only the third time in Scripture that the Spirit of God, “Ruach Elohim,” is mentioned. The first mention is in Genesis 1, when the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. The second time was in Genesis 41, when the Pharaoh said Joseph must be the second in command because where else would we find man in whom is the “Ruach Elohim?” And Exodus 31 is the third time someone is said to be filled with the Spirit of God. But notice, this man filled with the Spirit was not a prophet. Or a priest. Or a king. He was a builder. A construction foreman. And an artist. And under his leadership, men and women would construct the tabernacle and all that was in it.

Don’t think these were men and women who had no ability and God instantly turned them into artists and craftsmen. That would be like me waking up tomorrow and knowing how to build a beautiful China cabinet out of cherry wood. You don’t want me anywhere near that project. No, they were already skilled in these things and God worked with them as he does with us and with our gifts. He refines our gifts and takes us deeper with them and repurposes them for his own glory. He sometimes takes people who have developed good leadership in the world and gives them a heart for leading God’s people with humility. He often takes people who like to serve and shows them how to do that in the church. For his greater purposes. God gives us ability and teaches us wisdom as we use the gifts he has given. The Spirit of God came upon David to play the lyre before King Saul. He didn’t suddenly learn to play the lyre; he had practiced for many years. And at the right time, God used that gift. I know the Bible has a few lists of spiritual gifts, but I think those are descriptive rather than exhaustive. And if the ability to make music or the ability to build something beautiful can be used by God for his glory, and we certainly see that in Scripture, then they are spiritual gifts as well. And if you are an artist, God will show you how to use that gift for his glory.
 
All of God’s people have abilities that God has developed for the purpose of building up his body and declaring his glory. We must not undervalue or squander those gifts.