Presented to Swift Current Corps of The
Salvation Army, 21 April 2013 and Corps 614 Regent Park, 30 August 2015 by
Captain Michael Ramsay
This is the 2015 version, to read the original, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2013/04/galatians-519-21-ephesians-427-32.html
Back in Swift Current one Sunday my friend,
Tim, told me this story:
Early on a Sunday morning before he is up
and ready for Church, there was a knock on the door of Tim’s new place. He had
just recently moved in. He gets up, answers the door; it is a police officer.
She asks, “Are you Tim?”
“Yes”
“I need you to come with me”, she says.
“Why”
She tells him what it is that he has
supposedly done. Tim doesn’t think that this applies to him. As far as he knows
he has never been involved in whatever the police officer is talking about but
“Okay.” He's still half asleep.
“Go get dressed”, she tells him. He does.
The whole time he is wondering, of course,
‘what is going on?’ As he is getting dressed, of course, he is thinking that
there is something not right here; so as he comes out of his room, fully
clothed, of course, he asks her again, “Who are you looking for?”
As they walk out the door, “Tim”, she says.
As they go to the police car, “Tim who?” he
says. “What is the last name of the Tim you’re looking for?”
“You tell me your last name first”, she
says. He does. “Show me your ID, please”, she says. He does. “Have a nice day,
Tim”, she says. He does. Apparently some other Tim – in whom the police were
interested - used to live in this apartment before him; or the new landlord
thought he was some other Tim or something like that. But anyway that was Tim’s
excuse for missing church that day. I thought that was a good excuse.
This was a case of mistaken identity. In
our texts today – especially the one from Galatians – we may have cases of
mistaken identity as well. The pericopes we read this morning are all passages
from letters that the Apostle Paul has written to the Saints (In the Bible,
when we see the word 'Saints' to whom is it referring? Christians). Paul has
written these letters to Saints/Christians in various communities he knows
well. He is writing these letters to churches he has planted himself. He is
writing these letters – in the cases of the Philippians and the Ephesians – to
people he loves and respects. And to the Galatians, he writes of their common
problem, Galatians 5:19-21:
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual
immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred,
discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and
envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that
those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
People who indulge
in hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions,
factions, envy, and the like will not inherit the kingdom of God.[1] This is pretty serious stuff. He is not
talking about those who have not claimed that Jesus is Lord (See Matthew
7:15-27; see also Matthew 25:31ff.); Paul is writing this letter to and for
people in the churches. Matthew 7:21, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will
enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven.” Paul
says that those in the Christian churches – that he himself knows and some of
these churches he actually planted himself – Paul says to his friends that
those of us who live a life with hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage,
selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy and the like will not even
inherit the kingdom of God.[2] This is serious stuff (cf. TSA doc 10).
This can be a real
problem too. Paul had to write this similar sentiment in many of his letters,
three of which we have read from today. Paul had to warn people who were
meeting in the Christian congregations. Paul had to warn the Saints in these
Christian communities. Paul had to warn the good guys not to get drawn into
this stuff or, he says, they will not even inherit the kingdom of God.[3]
We know too that
just as this was obviously a temptation for people in the Roman world of the
first century, it is equally a temptation in the English-speaking world of the
21st Century. Who of us hasn’t seen or experienced hatred (hating
someone), discord (not getting along with someone), jealousy, fits of rage
(getting angry at people and things), selfish ambition (wanting to be better
than someone), dissentions, factions (this includes getting people on your
side, gossiping, talking behind people's back), envy, and the like? And who of
us ourselves hasn’t been tempted to consider indulging in hatred, discord,
jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the
like? Here then is the question for us pertaining to mistaken identity. Have
any of us been convincing ourselves that we are Saints when in reality we
actually regularly partake in hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish
ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the like? And if we do, what can we
do about it?
These behaviours
can be such a temptation to draw us away from a loving relationship with God
and our neighbour, can’t it? We have heard the analogy of yeast working its way
through dough. When we are surrounded by all of this stuff, it becomes
contagious. We have heard the expression, ‘one bad apple spoils the whole
bunch’. This is true. Where one day no one is engaged in discord, dissentions,
factions, and the like; one person indulges him or herself and gossips with
another person who then huddles in a corner with a third person who then tells
someone else about all of their perceived problems with someone (which may or
may not even be true!) and then they tell two friends and then they tell two
friends and then they tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on and soon
the whole congregation is full of cliques, factions, whispering, gossiping,
fits of rage and the like. And that is not a good place to be. And that is
exactly where some of these first century churches were and that is exactly
where a lot of the 21st century churches appear to be and - I don't
know the whole history here but - that is exactly where I would hope and pray
that we would never find ourselves as a congregation – in this very real danger
of – as Paul says - not inheriting the Kingdom of God.
The effects of these things - hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition,
dissentions, factions, envy, and the like - are disastrous. It is like
this. I was at an RCMP, a police chaplaincy-training course a couple of years
ago in Edmonton. There were many good speakers. The Edmonton ERT (SWAT) Team
Leader let us play with some of their toys (their weapons) and he spoke to us
about the importance of chaplains in his job when people are shooting at them
and when they have to consider what course of action to take themselves.
The keynote speaker, Gerry Fostaty, was a
fellow who has written a book, As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier,
about an incident that happened to him when he was a teenager in military
cadets.[4]
He was probably about 19 or 20 and he was a leader of younger cadets – probably
Rebecca or Sarah-Grace’s age. They were at a cadet camp in Valcartier, Quebec.
As part of the camp, they got to play with weapons not entirely unlike we did
at the conference in Edmonton. The cadets (even more) learned how to use the
weapons properly and how to take care of the weapons and how the weapons worked
and all kinds of things like that.
In one class, the adult instructor was
handing out dummy grenades for the children to examine. The dummy grenades you
can apparently tell from the real grenades because the dummies are brightly
coloured - orange, pink, blue – not the military green of combat weaponry. The
cadets, these children were encouraged to take apart these dummy grenades, put
them back together, examine how they work, etc., etc., etc… Apparently and
disastrously in with the orange, pink, and blue-coloured grenades was at least
one live green grenade. The children were passing this live green grenade –
along with the other toy grenades – along the line of cadets in the class. They
were taking the pin out and placing it back in and they were holding (I don’t
know what the term is but…) the safety and disabling and reassembling it along
with the other coloured grenades and then one little boy pulled the pin on the
live grenade and holding it out too long…
The writer of this book was out of the room
at the time; he ran in when he heard the explosion and found his little brother
who -was not seriously injured- along with many others who were. One deadly
green grenade had mixed in with the harmless coloured grenades and this one
green grenade brought destruction with it and it brought death with it.
The result of this green grenade in the
room full of children is essentially the same as what results when hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition,
dissentions, factions, envy, and the like wind up in our churches. These are
our green grenades. When we put ourselves first, engaging in selfish ambition
instead of thinking of others as greater than ourselves (as Paul extols us;
Philippians 2) the results are essentially the same.[5] Just as the green grenade brings physical death when people
handle it and it goes unchecked, Paul reminds us that hatred, discord,
jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and the
like, bring everlasting death to those who are consumed with them. Paul says
they will not inherit the kingdom of God.
So what can we do
about this? The Apostle Paul says, in essence, that we should remove the green
grenades from the box; we should remove these things from the church. We
should, Ephesians 4:31-5:2a:
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander,
along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another,
forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly
loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us…
Remove the green
grenades before they go off. Paul says, Galatians 5:16, 22-25:
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires
of the flesh… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such
things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the
flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep
in step with the Spirit.
Remove the green
grenades before it is too late. Paul says, Philippians 2:3-4,12-13:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in
humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but
each of you to the interests of the others... Therefore, my dear friends, as
you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my
absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God
who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.
Friends, I remind us all today that
selfishness, gossip, slander, talking about others in this way, unforgiveness,
pulling each other down instead of building each other up. These are the green
grenades that can blow the roof right off the top of a corps that to has until
now been actively fighting in the Salvation War. When we think of ourselves as
equal or greater than others, when we allow ourselves to get worked up about
what other people are doing or saying, when we start to talk about others, not
forgiving them but tearing them down instead of building them up, that is
really our pulling the pin out of a green grenade that the Enemy has tossed
into the Holy of Holies, that is the body of Christ.[6]
So today I challenge each and every one of us and I encourage each and every
one of us here “to be
wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (TSA doc 10) and as Philippians 2:3,4 records, let us “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather,
in humility [let us] value others above yourselves, not looking to your own
interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Let us pray.
---
[1] Francis Foulkes, Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1989 (Tyndale New Testament
Commentaries 10), S. 139: Quoting
the Old Testament again, the Septuagint of Psalm 4:4, he says, Be angry but
do not sin. The av rendering
of the psalm, ‘Stand in awe, and sin not’, gives a different turn to it. The
Hebrew verb rāgaz means basically to ‘tremble’, and it
could be with fear or rage (BDB). Whichever was the psalmist’s thought, the
Septuagint is meaningful and relevant. There is anger which is righteous anger,
such as we see in our Lord himself (e.g. Mark 3:5; John 2:13–17); but his anger
never led to sin, because his emotions were kept under perfect control.
[2] R. Alan Cole, Galatians:
An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press,
1989 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 9), S. 217: Inherit the kingdom of God; although Paul is emphatic that we cannot
by ‘doing’ the works of the law enter our promised inheritance (3:12, 18), but
that entry is by faith alone (3:11), yet he strongly asserts here that by
‘doing’ these very different things we can bar ourselves from the kingdom …those
who do such things thereby show themselves to be without the transforming
gift of faith which leads to the gift of the promised Spirit, which, in turn,
leads to the fruits of the Spirit, the seal of our inheritance.
[3] Cf. James Montgomery Boice, The Expositor's Bible Commentary,
Pradis CD-ROM:Galatians/Exposition of Galatians/III. The Call to Godly Living
(5:1-6:10)/C. Life in the Spirit (5:13-26)/2. The works of the flesh (5:19-21),
Book Version: 4.0.2
[4] Gerry Fostaty, As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier
(Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2011).
[5] Ralph P. Martin, Philippians: An Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1987 (Tyndale New Testament
Commentaries 11), S. 101: The
ethical terms used here expose the spiritual malaise at the heart of the
church, and point to the all-sufficient remedy. Selfish ambition, eritheia (rv,
‘faction’) is the same word as in 1:17 where it is used to describe the
inimical intention of Paul’s enemies. Of the Philippians it is used of party
squabbles and petty conceits. We might translate it ‘quarrelsomeness’, although
that does not quite convey the hint of self-seeking which the word contains.
Such a display which Galatians 5:19–21 brands as an ‘act of the sinful nature’
sadly disfigured the inner life of the church.
[6] Cf. Morna D. Hooker, The Letter to the Philippians, NIB XI,
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