Him We Proclaim

Exodus 2:1-10: Summary:

Israel mourns in Egypt. The respected name of Joseph is no longer known in the halls of power. The fruitfulness of Israel stirs fears in Pharaoh, resulting in oppression, and eventually an edict condemning all Hebrew male children to be cast into the Nile. An unvoiced question hangs in the air: How will God be faithful to his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Does God hear their cries? How will he answer Pharaoh's determination? At just the right time, God enters the scene. The birth of Moses is hidden until it can no longer go unnoticed. Then, in ironic obedience to Pharaoh's command, God provides a deliverer to Israel by rescuing him from the waters, undermining the leader of Egypt through his own house. Enter Moses, providentially cared for by his family, nursed by his own mother, but adopted into royal splendor. One day, he will feel the weight of these two worlds colliding, but for now, we watch in hope as God orchestrates the deliverance of his people.

Sermon Outline:

Hope's foundation: God, present (2:1-4)

Hope's design: God, compassionate (2:5-6)

Hope's guarantee: God, sovereign (2:7-10)

Galatians 4:1-7: Summary:

Paul expands his argument to show more precisely what God has done to make heirs out of slaves. Continuing a prior analogy, he seems to relate a view of salvation history to personal history. As believers in the age of promise owned everything, yet lived under the law, being shorted the full enjoyment of faith in Christ, so those heirs in the age of faith were, at one time, slaves under the law. Paul now expands on 'under the law' as slavery to 'elementary principles of the world. ' To co-opt God's law and use it in a way that nullifies Christ is a demonic tactic, which we all once believed. And we never would have broken free from it, except that, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. The fallout of His coming was our redemption, adoption, indwelling, and title to Life. God didn't send His Son to be anything less than the all-sufficient Savior of all who believe in Him..

Sermon Outline:

Paul's recasting of our former slavery: enslaved to principles. (4:1-3)

Paul's reciting of God's sovereign redemption: heirs through God. (4:4-7)

Redemption accomplished. (4:4-5a)

Redemption applied. (4:5b-7)

Galatians 3:23-29: Summary:

Paul, reasserting the temporary nature and function of the Mosaic covenant, states its final purpose: to clarify that the sinner's only hope of a right standing with God is by faith in Jesus Christ. Once Christ came, and faith in seed matured to faith in Jesus, the Mosaic covenant had served its purpose. Faith had come full, so that being part of the family of God was no longer identifiable by observing the law. As with justification, so also adoption was through faith in Jesus Christ. Baptism is the new covenant sign, identifying the person who, through faith, has been received into the family of God. It has no part in justification, but a very significant one in identification of the justified by faith. It signifies that one has put on Christ, so that Christ, or being a Christian, has become our dominant and unifying identity. While admitting ethnic, social, and gender distinctions, such distinctions give no leg up in the family of God. As we're Christ's, we're Abraham's offspring, equal heirs of grace according to the promise of God.

Sermon Outline:

The law, as temporary guardian, promoted justification by faith. (3:23-24)

Faith, coming full in Christ, suffices for being a justified child of God. (3:25-26)

Baptism, publicizing that faith, makes those children visible heirs. (3:27-29)

Galatians 3:15-22: Summary:

Likely against accusations that his Gospel makes the law pointless, Paul continues to explain the Bible's testimony to the grace of God. Drawing on a human example from the world of legal documentation, once a covenant (and its contents) are ratified, nothing can be added to nullify it. How much more a covenant that God has made and conditioned upon Himself? The promises God made to Abraham in Genesis 12 were finally to Christ. 430 years later, the law, being added, is no addendum or amendment to the covenantal promises God made in Christ. Those promises depend on grace and are made to faith in Jesus Christ. Why then did God add the law? To clarify sin as transgression while waiting on the advent of Christ. Thus, the law is not contrary to the promises. It served it by condemning us as guilty sinners, so that we'd be directed to the all-sufficient Christ, and to faith in Him

Sermon Outline:

God's promises have always been promised to faith in Christ. (3:15-18)

God added the law to serve that faith. (3:19-22)

By its being principally different than the promise. (3:19-20)

And yet perpetually directional to it. (3:21-22)

Galatians 3:7-14: Summary:Having scoured his personal meeting with Jesus for Gospel affirmation, Paul now turns to the testimony of Scripture for proving that faith in Christ is all that's necessary for salvation. For Paul, affirming the sufficiency of Jesus is finally about the sufficiency of Scripture. What does God's Word say? That Abraham was justified by faith. That those of faith are likewise blessed. And that the Law serves and forwards that blessing by cursing us. As prior to the Law with Abraham, so also after the Law in Habakkuk, the insufficiency of the Law is evident in that the righteous shall live by faith. And that having uniquely kept the Law, Christ redeemed us from the curse of it, by becoming a curse for us, hanged, as He was, on the tree. Thus, in Jesus, the blessing of God's Spirit, to convert, sanctify, preserve, empower, has come to us, through faith.

Sermon Outline:

The Bible teaches: true faith suffices to bless the sinner. (3:7-9)

The Bible teaches: the Law labors to generate that faith. (3:10-12)

The Bible teaches: Christ crucified is the object of that faith. (3:13-14)

Galatians 3:1-6: Summary:

Though they'd heard the message of Christ crucified, some had bewitched these churches. They'd stopped beholding Christ in His sufficiency, and started believing they needed to (and could) supply what, apparently, He didn't completely purchase. It pays to return to one's beginning in Christ. Paul asks but one question: how did they receive the Holy Spirit? The Spirit's work of regeneration, sanctification, and preservation is implied; but the question is, from Whom did/does He come, and how was/is He received? Is God's eschatological promise and blessing of the Holy Spirit earned by works of the law, or is He freely given on the basis of Christ's work to all who, hearing the message, and believing God, are counted as righteous in His sight? In proving the latter by Abraham as the paradigm for all, Paul begins to make his Scriptural case for the efficacy and sufficiency of faith in Jesus Christ. The Law of Moses serves faith in Christ crucified whereby, being justified, we become heirs of God's Spirit, regardless of ethnicity.

Sermon Outline:

Don't be foolish; be faithful to what you heard of Christ crucified. (3:1)

The Spirit is received by hearing, with faith, Christ crucified. (3:2-5)

The Law itself asserts the sufficiency of faith in Christ crucified. (3:6)

Galatians 2:15-21: Summary:Paul asserts that the only way any person, Jew or Gentile, can be justified is through faith in Jesus Christ. Otherwise, no one will be justified. As this assertion settles the truth of our sinfulness, it also appears to allow for continued sinfulness. Paul seems to counter this probable accusation against a Gospel that posits full acceptance with God on the basis of a righteousness not our own. Every person God has justified, He has also vivified (made spiritually alive) in Jesus. His death and resurrection have both legal and personal power for us. As Christians, who we once were has been crucified with Christ. That person no longer lives. Christ lives in you. He now animates your life. The Christian life starts, not with 'I', but with 'Christ.' It's a life lived no longer by faith in ourselves, which leads to sin, but by faith in self-giving Son of God, which leads to Christlikeness. Accusation answered, Paul stands pat on the grace his opponents would cancel out. Jesus died out of divine necessity. To God's glory, there remains no other way for sinners to be justified with God than through faith in Christ and Him crucified.

Sermon Outline:

If any one will be justified, it will be through faith in Jesus. (2:15-16)

Every sinner God's justified, He's also vivified in Jesus. (2:17-20)

Justification, as Paul holds it, upholds the purpose of the cross. (2:21)

1 Thessalonians 1:6-8: Summary:

With thanksgiving to God, Paul recounts the remarkable advance of God's eternal love, first, for and, then, through the Thessalonian church into all the world. Indeed, their faith in God went forth everywhere.

1 Thessalonians 1:6-8: Summary:

With thanksgiving to God, Paul recounts the remarkable advance of God's eternal love, first, for and, then, through the Thessalonian church into all the world. Indeed, their faith in God went forth everywhere.

2:11-14: Summary:Gospel truth is for living that commends the Gospel. Continuing to advance the truth that his Gospel is the Gospel, Paul recounts an instance in which Peter's actions, and those of others, including Barnabas, counteracted the truth of the Gospel. Fear of disapproval with the circumcision party leads Peter to withdraw from table fellowship with Christians in Antioch. It's hardly an immaterial action. In it, Paul sees a public act of hypocrisy with the power to spread abroad against the Gospel truth of justification. Peter has effectively made living the Jewish life mandatory for these Gentiles in order to be justified, adopted, accepted fully by God. By his action, he's introduced a lie: faith in Christ isn't enough for equal standing with God; and just there, he stands condemned as a hypocrite out of step with the truth. Peter must repent. And for the Gospel, Paul makes sure that he and everybody else knows it.

Sermon Outline:

Conduct out of step with the truth of the Gospel: hearing the account. (2:11-14)

Conduct out of step with the truth of the Gospel: heeding the lessons. (2:11-14)