3 Ways to Live (1/8/17 Galatians #9)

ATTN: Happy New Year! Welcome to our first service of the year as we took a break last Sunday after a phenomenal retreat. I want to thank the Youth and Young adults again for planning and leading the retreat. Two of the things we have envisioned for our church is to be diverse and for young people to lead our church, and I was so thankful to God for moving us toward that direction.  

Speaking of young people, one of the privileges of having worked with young people for so long is I get to perform the weddings of the students I taught. Now, I will usually have a premarital counseling session with them before they get married, and almost invariably, I have to bring their attention to the marriage rather than the wedding. Typically, the groom just wants to get it over with. Honeymoon is what he’s really looking forward to, especially if they saved themselves. It’s the bride who wants the wedding to be perfect because she’s been dreaming of this day since she was 13. She has the songs picked out way before she even met the guy. He is just there to fulfill her dream of being a Disney princess…. So, with so much focus on the day of the wedding, during the premarital counseling sessions, I try to get them to focus on the marriage, which is for a lifetime, hopefully. I will remind them: Wedding is not the goal. Intimacy with your wife or husband is. Now, let me relate it to Christian life. Christians, heaven is not the goal for Christians. Intimacy with Christ is. If simply getting to heaven is our goal, then we are being religious. But what God wants us to be is gospel-driven, Jesus-focused.     

Background: Galatians 4 tells us there are really only 3 ways to live. 1) the worldly way. 2) the religious way. 3) the gospel way. To give you a little backdrop, the Galatians, who were non-jews, heard the gospel and committed their way to Christ. So, they were living their lives the gospel way. I will clarify what that means in a moment. But some Judaizers from Jerusalem came to them and told them that they have to become religious if they really want god’s favor. So, now they are being pressed to become religious. But Paul is pleading with them not to become religious but rather stay gospel-driven. V. 9 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to beknown by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more??” So, Paul says that these once worldly Galatians turned away from the worldly ways and received the gospel and became followers of Christ. But now they are in danger of becoming religious, which Paul calls following the elementary principles of the world. So, what this tells us about the worldly way and religious way is that they share a common theme – the motivation and the end result – it will ultimately result in their ruin. Only the third way, the gospel way, will result in the right relationship with God. Well, how are they different? I’m glad you asked because I will go over them.

I know this is being simplistic, but I can put it this way. The worldly way is living for heaven on earth. The religious way is living for heaven. And the gospel way is living for Jesus. Let’s look at each way.

1) The worldly way is pretty much everyone who is not religious or gospel-driven lives. What do people live for? If you think about it, what they are really wanting is heaven on earth. Maximum pleasure until death. “Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” is the motto. We got 70-80 years on earth and then we die. So, let’s make sure it’s pleasurable, comfortable, and make it last as long as we can. And what will get us that pleasure or happiness? Money, sex, and power. So, the end goal is to create heaven on earth for ourselves. And the means is money, sex, and power.

ILL: When I was a youth pastor, Korean parents of the youth once told me, “My child’s priority right now is to be a good student and so he should focus on studying above all else. He can be a disciple of Christ later, but right now, he has to be a good student first.” Now, this was a “Christian” parent. I thought being a Christian meant putting Jesus before all else including studying, family, culture, and even life itself… I mean what do you do with Jesus’ saying, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.?” Am I to think, “Oh, what Jesus meant is that He comes before all things except being a student?”  

The worldly will live to create heaven on earth because the earth is all they got. And money, sex, power, prestige become their mode of attaining it.

2) Then there is the religious way to live. By religious, I mean following rituals, rules, and regulations so that in the end, we will be accepted by God. That is what the Galatians were being enticed to pursue by the Judaizers. You become religious and earn your place in the kingdom of heaven. “Jesus initiated it, but we must finish it” was their motto. So, the religious people’s end goal is heaven. These people know that this life is short. The worldly way will give us pleasure but it will only be temporary. Death will end it all. Guaranteed. So, they turn their focus to afterlife – heaven. They want good things for a long time – like forever – and not for 70, 80 years. So, what is it they want? They want pleasure or happiness. And how are they going to get it? They are going to use God. God is going to get them it. But how are they going to get God to get them it? Through their rituals, religious activities, following the rules – being good and doing good. Now, if you compare the religious way to the worldly way, what they want is the same. The worldly wants heaven on earth. The religious way wants heaven. And how are they going to get it? Through self-effort. The only difference is that the worldly will get their paradise by going for money, sex, and power whereas the religious will get their paradise by refraining from money, sex, and power. But in the end, when they go to heaven, what they really want is money, sex, and power. The only difference is that the worldly wants it now, the religious wants it later.

Is that what Christianity is all about? We really want the same thing that the world wants, except we are more clever and we want it longer and that’s why we refrain from money, sex, and power now so that we can have them forever in heaven? So, all it is is delayed gratification? But my question is this. Let’s say in heaven, we get everything we have been refraining from – such as money that never runs out, a body that never gains a single pound even though we gorged ourselves on chocolate mousse pie all day long, infinite number of days spent by the seaside, etc? Will that really satisfy?

There is this logical fallacy we commit without knowing. We think if a little of something gives us some pleasure, having a lot of it will give us much pleasure. But is that true? My second daughter, when she was 7, went online and jotted down on a piece of paper all the lego friends toys that’s ever been made – probably more than a 100 on that piece of paper. I don’t know why she did that. She puzzles me sometimes with what she does. Maybe a genius in the making? Because they do weird things… Anyway, in her 7 year old mind, if one Lego Friends toy gave her much pleasure, then having 10 Lego Toys will give her 10 times more pleasure. But parents and grandparents of young children, when your child or grandchild opens their 15th gift on Christmas morning, is their smile 15 times bigger than when they opened their 1st one? No. I can’t tell you how often we had to discipline my two girls the night of Christmas because they are fighting over their toys and one of them would stomp off and we would threaten them to throw away all the toys! So, it is not true – the more the merrier.  So, then, my intelligent people, let’s say you make $50,000 a year and you are fairly happy. Do you think if you made $5 million a year, do you think you will be 100 times happier – because that’s 100 times the amount? .. “yeah… I would sure like to find out!” If you are a middle class american, you are richer than 99% of the population in the world. But are you happier than 99% of the population of the world? No. So it’s not our wealth that’s making us happy. So then what makes us think having more of what is already not making us happy will make us happy?  

Earthly pleasure works more like water. When we are thirsty, taking a good gulp of water will quench and satisfy us. Taking 100 gulps of water will not give us the 100 times the pleasure. Rather, it will kill us with water-poisoning or by bursting our stomach. Just the right amount gives us the maximum pleasure. So, the more the merrier is not true. And if it doesn’t apply on earth, it won’t apply in heaven either. If in heaven all we will get is simply more of what we happen to find a little pleasure in on earth, we are doomed. That just can’t be it. And it isn’t. There is the 3rd way.

3) It’s the gospel way. The gospel way has as its goal Christ and not heaven. Intimacy with Jesus is what it really desires. And the way it will get its way is not through self-effort or striving, but by depending on God. Yes, it will get God by depending on God. There is still effort involved like the other two ways, but the effort is not to earn heaven or heaven on earth, but to draw closer to this person who is called Christ. The striving is not to make deserve or to increase our worth, but to know and love Jesus more.

Galatians 4:19 my little children,for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! What did Paul want for the Galatian believers? For them to be worldly have lots of money, sex, and power? No. For them to be religious and earn their way into heaven? No. Rather, he wanted them to know Christ, love Christ, ultimately become like Christ. Listen, being a Christian is not like getting a ticket to heaven –  A ticketmaster named Jesus gave us a ticket to heaven so all we have to do is try really hard not to lose the ticket by being good and doing good and when we die, we will get to enjoy what we have been refraining from all these years. No. That’s religion. Being a Christian is like being engaged to Jesus. We are forging and becoming ever more intimate with this greatest being who is the cause of all great things. Then what is heaven? It’ like the wedding where we will get to know Christ even more fully just like those of us who saved themselves for the wedding can know their spouse more intimately.

ILL: imagine a young man who is a supreme athlete wanted by every pro scout who is also good looking. Think Tom Brady in his 20’s. Three young ladies are pursuing this man. But he gets into a terrible car accident, loses a limb, and his face severely scarred. The first woman leaves this man saying that she is no longer attracted to him. The second woman also leaves saying since he could no longer play sports and lost his earning potential, she is no longer interested. But the thirst woman sticks around saying it was him that she loved, not his face, not his earning potential, but just him. And she take care of him and eventually marries him.

The first woman is like the world. She was only in it because he brought temporary pleasure to her. The second woman is like religion. She was only in it because he was a way for her to get what she really wanted, which was money and comfort. That is what the religious do – use God to get what they really want which is money, sex, and power forever. The third woman is the gospel way b/c she wanted him for him. If we know what Christ has done for us in spite of what we deserved – He took the bullet for us, and He still pursues and is ready forgive at every turn – when we are broken by His love, we will stay by Him through thick and thin. Even in poverty, even in ruins, wey will stick with Jesus because we want Jesus for him.
CONC: This year, as you make resolutions, let it be something that has to do with Jesus. It’s fine if you want to lose 10 lbs or spend more time with family this year, but first and foremost, let it be about Jesus. Listen to one of 70 resolutions a man named Jonathan Edwards made. He is a hero of many of my faith heroes. He said, “Resolved, to improve every opportunity, when I am in the best and happiest frame of mind, to cast and venture my soul on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust and confide in him, and consecrate myself wholly to him; that from this I may have assurance of my safety, knowing that I confide in my Redeemer.” Don’t we do the opposite? It is only when things get difficult we go to Jesus for help. But he says he will resolve to go to Jesus when things are good to remember Him and trust Him. May you and I be a people who are about Jesus this year.