Walk Through The Bible: Galatians
Text for Sermon: Galatians 1:1-9; 2:15-16, 20-21; 5:22-26
Introduction.
This next weekend will be a great celebration of the 250th anniversary of our independence from England. It marks our freedom from the oppressive British rule under King George III and taxation without representation.
Freedom is tremendous gift, often underappreciated because we have enjoyed it for so long and we have no memory of living without freedom.
Can we even image a scenario where a large group of people started lobbying for the US to return to being under the rule of the British monarchy. Sounds totally crazy, right?
How about another example from closer to our time in history. In the lifetime of many of us we remember the historic occasion in November 1989 of the fall of the Berlin Wall that divided the German capital into communist East Berlin and free democratic West Berlin.
TV news showed the ecstatic joy in the lives of millions to people as there lives suddenly and dramatically change and they were free from lies, oppression and tyranny, from a total lack of freedom.
Could we conceive of there being a lobby among Germans for a return of communist rule and recreating a divided Germany, East and West German and East and West Berlin?
We hear of countries fighting for their independence, we don’t ever hear of countries fighting to for dependence.
This is effectively what is going on in the region of Galatia in southern Turkey were Paul and Barnabas had planted churches on his first missionary journey.
Judaizers were early sect of Jewish-Christian believers in the first century who insisted that Gentile (non-Jewish) converts to Christianity had to observe the full Law of Moses—especially circumcision and dietary restrictions—to be saved. They sought to make living under the Mosaic Law and according to Jewish customs a requirement of the Christian faith.