So, as I said a moment ago, this is Palm Sunday.
We have also been in a series in our church focusing on the theme of emotionally healthy
spirituality, talking about the fact that when we are called to follow Jesus, Jesus
wants every part of us, and asking ourselves what that means when it comes to our emotional
maturity.
You can't be spiritually mature if you remain emotionally immature.
And so, we're going to continue that series.
One of the things that is worth noting is that any time you talk about growth, any time
you talk about progress, any time you talk about developing as a human being, I think
many of us often have this idea of a kind of line graph going up and to the right.
And we like to imagine that our lives are kind of more or less making steady progress up and
to the right.
Now, there might be a few setbacks here and there, but generally, we like to imagine ourselves
as progressing up and to the right.
And what's interesting is this idea of progress is probably more inspired by corporate America
and American culture and values than it is a Christian vision of life and progress.
In Christian tradition, there's a different image that we use to talk about making progress
in life and it's the image of the labyrinth.
And a labyrinth is not a line graph going up and to the right.
A line graph, I mean, a labyrinth has a lot of twists.
It has a lot of turns.
In a labyrinth, you sort of start out on your journey.
But then as you look at the labyrinth, over time, you're going to circle back.
And you're going to circle back almost to the beginning of your journey.
And then you'll move away from it again.
And then you'll circle back almost to the beginning of your journey.
And every time, if you're not prepared for that, I can feel like I'm no longer making progress.
I'm moving backwards in my life.
But the key point of the labyrinth is actually a very important spiritual principle.
And you see this all around.
You even see it kind of hijacked in commercials and things like that.
But the point is this.
Sometimes we have to go back in order to actually move forward.
Sometimes the only way to make progress in your life is to be willing to go back.
And that's what we're going to focus on this morning.
We're going to look at Galatians chapter 1, verses 11 to 17.
Going back in order to move forward.
We're going to see this in Paul's life.
So first we're going to look at this passage.
What does it mean?
And then we'll talk most of our time about what it means for us.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank You for Your Word.
And we thank You for its inherent objective power.
That there is a way that we open Your Word and do our best to interpret it faithfully in accordance with tradition.
And yet we also know it's a living Word.
And Your Holy Spirit can use this Word in mighty, powerful ways, independent of anything that we say.
And so I pray that that would be what happens right now.
I pray that as we are here, even though we're distracted by our masks and maybe some of us with our kids and some of us with things that we have to do after the service,
that, Lord, amid all these distractions, that we would be attuned to the voice and the leading of Your Holy Spirit.
And I pray that that would happen through Your Word, Lord, for our good and for Your glory.
In Your Son's name, amen.
Amen.
So first of all, let's look at this passage.
Let me give you a little context so we understand what's going on here.
Paul had come into Galatia with a very, very, very disturbing message for many people.
For some people, it created a lot of hope.
For other people, it was very disturbing.
His message was essentially this.
Jesus Christ, who suffered and was crucified, died and was buried, has risen from death.
This is what we're going to celebrate in just a week.
And he says that because Jesus rose from the grave and because the Holy Spirit has come upon God's people,
Jesus is calling into existence a new worldwide family.
He's establishing one great new multi-ethnic, multicultural, worldwide family.
So people no longer have to become Jewish in order to know God.
Now knowing God isn't dependent on your ethnicity or your cultural identity.
All people who trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sin can become a part of this new family.
And so a lot of Jews, a lot of very faithful Jews, were objecting to this.
And they were challenging Paul and saying, you're no real apostle.
This isn't legitimate.
So in verses 11 and following, Paul describes his encounter with Jesus and how that encounter changed everything about him.
And he says, starting in verse 13,
For you've heard of my former life in Judaism.
He's talking about his past.
How I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.
And then here's the key phrase.
So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
That's what we want to hone in on.
Because Paul says, in my former life, I was completely defined by the traditions of my fathers.
These are traditions that he had been born into.
He was born into a way of life.
Born into a particular culture.
Born into an entire array of assumptions about the world.
Then he says in verse 15,
But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me,
in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles,
I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.
Next thing we want to focus on.
But I went away into Arabia.
Now I have to confess, I read this passage for years and just skipped right over that part.
Okay, Arabia, then Damascus, then on to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.
Okay, great.
That's a very important little verse that is very easy to skip over.
Because you need to stop reading and you need to ask, what could possibly be in Arabia?
Why did Jesus encounter Paul?
Paul recognizes that everything that he was persecuting is actually legitimately of God.
Everything has changed.
He realizes Jesus is the son of God.
He rose from death.
First thing he does is go to Arabia.
Arabia.
Commentators tell us that Arabia is the place where Mount Sinai is located.
Sinai was the birthplace of Paul's spiritual family that he was born into, the Jewish culture, right?
Mount Sinai is the place where God defined his relationship with his people.
He set them free from slavery.
He brought them out in the wilderness.
He brought them to Sinai.
And this is where God defines the terms of their relationship.
So this is where God gives them the law, which if you've been in our foundations class, you know the law is all about teaching people how to live as free human beings in the world.
And then he gave them basically their identity.
This is who you are.
This is who I am in relation to you.
And so think about this.
The first thing that Paul does after he encounters the risen Jesus is to take a spiritual pilgrimage back to Sinai.
The birthplace of his spiritual family.
And the reason is that Paul is coming to terms with the fact that Jesus is building a new spiritual family.
Unlike the Jews, this new family is not defined by their ability to keep God's law.
They're defined, as verse 15 says, by grace.
So here's what Scott McKnight says in his commentary.
He says, Paul seems to have stayed there in Sinai for three years.
And in this period of withdrawal, as he meditated on the Old Testament Scriptures, on the facts of the life and the death of Jesus that he already knew,
and on his experience of conversion, the gospel of the grace of God was revealed to him in its fullness.
So that's what it says.
What does it mean?
Well, here's what it means.
Paul has to go back before he can go forward in his life of following Jesus.
He meets Jesus.
He believes the gospel.
But then he has to go back to Sinai.
What this means is that Paul realizes that he has to reevaluate all of the ways and traditions of his old spiritual family in light of the gospel.
He has to break away from the traditions of his fathers, to use his phrase.
And what we need to understand is we often see this, and we only think in religious terms.
The theology of fulfilling the law versus the theology of grace.
And certainly that's at the very center of it.
But we don't want to make the mistake of separating the religious from every other aspect of life because Paul wouldn't have made that mistake.
And as you read the New Testament letters, which is essentially the fruit of this pilgrimage,
what you see is that Paul is rethinking every aspect of his life.
Not just the religious traditions that he was born into, but the social traditions.
The emotional traditions.
The psychological traditions.
The political traditions.
The cultural traditions.
So Paul, as we see later in this letter, he's rethinking race.
He's rethinking ethnicity and ethnic identity.
He's rethinking gender.
He's rethinking socioeconomic class and how we think about people of different classes.
He's rethinking who can associate with whom.
Who can visit which house.
Who can I eat with when I sit down to eat food.
What kind of food is it okay to eat.
He's rethinking clean versus unclean.
He's rethinking what relationships should look like between husbands and wives, between parents and children,
between employers and employees, between subjects and their government leaders, right?
He's rethinking every corner of life in light of the gospel.
Only then is Paul able to move forward as part of the new spiritual family of Jesus Christ.
He has to break away from the traditions of his fathers in order to move forward into the new traditions of Jesus Christ.
That he's received through the gospel.
The implications of this are fairly straightforward.
This is something every Christian needs to do.
Every Christian.
As soon as we begin to come to an understanding of the gospel, whether you became a follower of Jesus as a young child,
or you became a follower of Jesus a year ago,
as we come to understand the gospel, it is more and more and more important for us to go back
and to rethink and to reevaluate the traditions of our mothers and fathers that we have inherited,
and to see all of them through the lens of the gospel as we move forward following Christ.
Right?
So every Christian, all of you, those of you who are Christians, we all have two families.
There's the family that you were born into,
and there's the new family of God that you have been reborn into through faith and your baptism.
That's your birth certificate for God's family.
Right?
So like Paul, we've all been profoundly shaped by the traditions of our fathers and mothers,
our families of origin,
and we bring all of that with us into the family of God.
You know, you bring all kinds of assumptions and traditions and ways of thinking into the church family.
And to be totally frank, some of those things are compatible with following Jesus,
and some of those things that you have brought into the church are incompatible with the gospel.
And we need to do the hard work of figuring out what needs to be stripped away,
what we need to break away from.
So I want to apply this in a couple of ways.
Going back and moving forward.
First, let's talk a little bit more about how to go back.
How to go back to Sinai, so to speak, in our own lives,
the birthplace of the culture that we were born into.
In order to go back, you need to take some time to reflect on your past,
your own childhood, your upbringing, your parents, your siblings.
What your childhood home was like.
So I want you to think about your childhood home, your childhood environment,
your primary caregivers, who was in the home.
And I want you to just ask all kinds of questions about your upbringing.
What did you learn about money?
What did you learn about money and what money represents?
For some people, money represents security.
For some people, money represents power.
For some people, money represents influence or importance or control.
What did money represent?
Did your parents even ever talk about it?
Did you know how much your parents made?
Were you expected to help pay the bills?
How was money treated in your home?
How did your family define success?
Was it nothing less than an Ivy League education will do?
Right?
Some families are okay with C's.
Some families see anything less than an A plus as a failure.
Was success getting married and having lots of kids
and staying within 10 miles of where you were born?
Was success just doing whatever made you happy as long as you're happy?
Right?
How was success defined?
Were people in your childhood home open about their feelings?
Did people express all their feelings, the good, the bad, and the ugly?
Or were only certain feelings allowed in your home?
If other feelings got expressed, you got in trouble.
If you had two parents in your home, two primary caregivers,
whose approval did you crave the most?
And then, very important, what did you have to do in order to earn it?
Was sex a topic for open discussion in your family?
Or was that kind of a taboo topic?
Were there other taboo topics that you just don't talk about in our family?
How was conflict handled in the house you grew up in?
Did people get angry and yell?
Did people throw things?
Did people slam doors?
Was there abusive behavior, physical, emotional abuse?
Or were you expected to keep the peace at all costs?
Nobody ever raised their voice.
And if you got mad, you went and you got mad in a room by yourself.
Was conflict handled indirectly, passive aggressively?
Right?
Were there mountains, cauldrons of resentment under the surface
that you knew were just simmering away?
How were politics handled in your home?
Was politics something that was openly discussed?
Did you have to conform to a particular political ideology
in order to fit into your family?
Are you a black sheep in your family because you've broken away from that now?
Was your family super close and enmeshed where everybody was always up in everybody else's business?
Or was your family more disconnected where everybody kind of does their own thing
and maybe as adults you're spread all around the world?
Right?
Were gender roles fixed?
Men do this?
Women do this?
That's the way it is?
Or were they more flexible and interchangeable?
If you grew up in a Christian home,
what was the attitude toward the surrounding culture,
toward secular music, toward movies, toward books?
Right?
Was there any difference or was there a barrier?
Were there certain things that you're not allowed to read, watch, or listen to?
What attitude did you inherit toward people from other racial backgrounds
or other ethnic backgrounds?
What attitudes were held in the home that you picked up on?
Right?
I know there's a lot of questions,
but what I want to get across to you is that we have to pepper our childhood
with many, many, many, many questions like this
in order to begin to get a sense of what traditions we have inherited
from our mothers and fathers.
So all of these factors shape us in ways that we're largely unaware of.
In addition, all of those questions will help you understand
how you think about the world around you and people around you,
but we also gain traditions that shape how we think about ourselves,
that actually shape our very personalities.
We all have these kind of unconscious childhood messages
that we have internalized that shape our personalities.
Right?
And I say unconscious because you could be sitting here,
you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years old
and have no idea that they're in there.
Right?
So let me give you a couple examples of what this might look like.
Maybe you're the oldest in your family,
and maybe you had several younger siblings,
and maybe your house was fairly chaotic,
and so your parents always praised you
for being the one sibling that they could count on
to hold everything together to help with the younger siblings.
And your parents always said things to you like,
I can always count on you.
You're the one sane one in this family.
I can always, you know, rely on you.
And they gave you lots of responsibility,
and you were operating like another parent from a very early age.
Right?
Maybe that was your childhood.
And even though your parents didn't mean it,
maybe the way you internalized that
is that you learned as a child,
it's not okay for me to have needs.
It's not okay for me to be a child.
It's not okay for me to be overwhelmed.
I'm the one my parents are counting on
to be the anchor for all the other people
who are freaking out and have needs.
And so maybe what you began to learn is,
it's not okay for me to have needs,
and the way I earn the love and approval of other people
is by helping them.
Right?
It's not okay for me to have needs.
I need to help.
And the more I help, the more helpful I am,
the more love and approval and attention I will get.
And then you take that into adulthood.
You don't even realize you did.
But what you realize is,
that message gets carried with you,
and then you start to become someone
who doesn't even know what you need.
You've lost touch with your needs.
You certainly don't know how to express your needs
or wants or preferences to other people.
When people say, what do you want for dinner?
You're like, I truly don't know.
I truly don't know.
You know, what do you want to do on the weekend?
I have no idea what I want to do.
I've never thought about it before, right?
And then you're the kind of person
who ends up going above and beyond
to help the people in your life,
and it's partly because you're helpful,
but it's also partly because you think
that's the only way they're going to love you.
And if you're not helpful to them,
they may abandon you, right?
So this is just one example
of how this thing can happen.
Let me give you one more example
for the sake of time.
Maybe you grew up with a parent
who always made you feel like
you were just falling short.
Good job on the A minus.
Should have been an A plus, right?
And maybe anything less than straight A's
was failure in your home.
And so what you learned as a child
is it's really not okay to make mistakes.
You internalize this sense
that there's perfection,
and then there's failure.
And anything less than perfection is failure.
And what you begin to realize
is you feel like you're not quite ever meeting
the standard that your parents set for your life.
Unless I'm perfect, I'm worthless.
And that's the message that you internalize.
See, this can happen in all kinds of ways.
Let me just give you a few more examples
of internal messages.
Just see if any of these resonate with you.
Some of us grow up feeling like
it's not okay to have my own feelings,
my own identity.
That's not okay.
Some of us grow up thinking
it's not okay to be too functional
or too happy.
I mean, some people grow up
and it's never okay to be happy.
If you're happy, you're naive.
Somebody's gonna take advantage of you.
Some people grow up saying
it's not okay to be
too comfortable in the world.
Some people grow up
internalizing the message
it's not okay to trust yourself.
You really should get a second opinion.
You can't trust your own judgment.
Some people grow up
internalizing the message
it's not okay to depend on anyone
for anything
because if you depend on people,
they're gonna let you down.
They're not gonna be there for you.
Some people grow up with the message
it's not okay to be vulnerable.
It's not okay to be vulnerable.
If you're vulnerable,
people will hurt you.
You gotta be strong.
Some people internalize the message
it's not okay to assert yourself.
If you assert yourself,
you're gonna push people away.
Nobody wants to hear.
Right, so these are all examples
and there are myriad other examples.
So these are just a few.
There are a couple of helpful tools
for people who wanna go deeper
and try to get a sense
of what's in the past.
What we've brought into the church.
One, if you're in a core group,
if you're new to our church
and you're not in a core group,
I'd strongly encourage you to join.
That's where we do
a lot of the day-to-day discipleship
and application of some of the things
we talk about here.
This week in our core groups,
we're gonna be focusing on
and are using a tool
that helps you kind of map out
unconscious childhood messages,
cumulative messages
that you've received
and also kind of earthquake events
in the life of your family growing up
and ways that those have impacted you.
So that's one opportunity.
But another opportunity
is to sit down
and to do what's called a genogram.
A genogram is a tool
that I used to use as a counselor
and I still use it
when I do premarital
and marriage counseling sometimes.
But a genogram is a very helpful tool.
I don't have time to explain
all of the genogram to you right now.
The good news is
if you go online
and you Google the word genogram,
there are tons of online tools
that make it a whole lot easier
for you to do a genogram.
All you need is the information.
But a genogram is essentially
a way of mapping your family history
with an emphasis on things
that are gonna be relevant
to the questions
that we're asking this morning.
Questions like history of mental illness,
substance abuse or addiction,
the spiritual condition
of various people in your family,
who was a believer,
who was part of another religious tradition,
who wasn't a believer,
when people came to faith,
when they lost their faith,
if they left the faith,
you can track,
you know, as I said before,
mental illness, mood disorders,
patterns of abuse,
emotional abuse,
sexual abuse, physical abuse.
You can track those things.
The more information you have,
the more you can put
into your genogram,
and then you can begin
to see patterns here.
So in this example
of Julia's genogram,
this is a fictitious family
that I created, by the way.
This is not a real family
in the church.
But you see some clear patterns.
There's a pattern
of heart disease, right?
There's a pattern
of alcoholism
and substance abuse.
There's maybe even
a pattern of emotional abuse.
There's certain trends
that you see,
and you realize,
when the Bible talks
about generational sin,
there's really something to that.
Generational sin
that is passed
from one generation
to the next,
to the next.
Do a genogram,
you'll see it.
You'll see it in your own family.
I see it in my family, right?
There are clear things
that I've inherited
that Laura and I
need to be aware of
as we're parenting
our own children, right?
So we need to go back.
We need to understand
the culture
that we were born into,
the family traditions
that we inherited.
But we don't stay there.
We're Christians,
and so ultimately,
we know that our hope
is in the new family,
God's family,
established in Jesus Christ.
And so moving forward
means taking all of these
unconscious childhood messages
and then re-examining them
in light of the gospel, right?
So maybe you grew up
being told
it's not okay
to make mistakes.
But then the gospel
comes along,
and the gospel tells you,
listen,
your worth is not based
in your performance.
It's okay to make mistakes
because your security
is not found there.
Your worth is secure
because it's based
in God's love
and delight
in who you are.
It's not based
in anything that you do.
Or maybe you learned
that it's not okay
to be vulnerable
with anyone
because if you're vulnerable,
that means you're weak,
and people will hurt you
and take advantage of you.
But then the gospel tells you,
Jesus,
the most powerful being
in existence,
was willing to make himself
utterly vulnerable
on the cross,
and he did it
for your sake.
And so if there's anybody
in the universe
that you can trust
with your own vulnerability,
it's him.
Right?
So you begin to rework
everything in light
of the gospel.
Now I realize
that some of you
may be hearing this
and thinking,
you know,
this sounds a lot
like a psychology lecture,
and this is a church,
and we should really
be talking about
what it means
to follow Jesus,
especially on Palm Sunday,
and here's the point
I want to make to you.
That's exactly
what we're talking about.
That's exactly
what we're talking about.
The point that we often
overlook as Christians
is that you can
consciously follow Jesus
with one part of yourself,
and at the very same time
be unconsciously
following someone
or something else
with another part
of yourself.
And so most of us
remain disconnected
in our lives.
We are conscious
followers of Jesus,
but unconsciously
I am following
the things
that my family
taught me
about the way
the world works
when I was six years old.
And there is a disconnect.
And what we need to do
if we truly desire
to follow Jesus
with heart, soul,
mind, and strength
is to bring
all of that together,
to align all parts
of ourself
with the gospel.
Speaking of being
aligned with the gospel,
there's a great example
of this very point
later in Galatians.
Paul comes to Galatia
and he confronts Peter
over his racism.
You know, and today
people are very happy
to confront other people
about racism
and people get called out
all the time online
and in person,
but you very rarely
see somebody
confront racism
in the way
that Paul does it.
Here's what Paul says
in chapter 2, verse 14.
He says,
the reason that racism
is wrong
is because it is
not in step
with the gospel.
So what he's telling Peter
is this,
Peter, you know better.
You were in Cornelius' home.
You saw the Holy Spirit
fall on the Gentiles.
You know better,
but what's happened?
Peter has fallen back
in the traditions
of his fathers.
Peter has fallen back
into the culture
and the traditions
he was born into.
He has started to operate
out of that childhood messaging
that he received
instead of the gospel.
And so Paul has to come
and say,
this is not in line
with the gospel.
You need to go back,
you need to rethink
what you believe
about the Gentiles
in light of the truth
of the gospel
and then you'll understand
that this racism
is incompatible
with Jesus Christ.
It's incompatible.
It had a place
in the old family.
It does not belong
in the family of God
and Jesus Christ.
Christ.
Right?
So we have to do this
again and again and again
because Jesus wants
all of us.
And you know,
following Jesus
means asking this question
about every aspect
of our lives.
Is this in step
with the gospel or not?
So like the labyrinth,
you have to go back
and then you go forward
and then you go back
and then you go forward
and then you go back
and that is progress
in the Christian life.
We have to circle back
again and again and again.
And the last point
I want to make is this.
The good news is,
friends,
we don't have to do this alone.
As I said before,
every Christian
has two families,
the family you were born into
and the family
that you have been reborn into
in Jesus Christ.
And that is meant
to be true.
In other words,
you're not meant
to do this alone,
you're meant to do this
in a community, right?
That's why it's great
that we can be together
here in person,
those of us who are here.
We're meant to do this together.
And I think the family
of God at its best,
I think a church like ours
can be like a laboratory.
It's like a laboratory
where we can all
take risks,
fail if we need to,
but ultimately relearn
how to be human beings
who are in step
with the gospel, right?
We can celebrate
the good things
that we inherited
from our mothers
and our fathers.
We can unlearn
the ungodly,
unbiblical,
dysfunctional things
that we learned
from our mothers
and our fathers.
Some of us, frankly,
need to be reparented.
We need to be reparented.
Some of us need to learn
what a healthy family
looks like.
Some people come
into the church,
they have never been part
of a healthy family ever.
And that's why things
in churches can get
really, really, really messy.
People come into church
and people are fighting
and talking behind
each other's backs
and slandering,
and there's divisions,
and they say,
man, this is a really
toxic church.
No, it's a lot of people
who came out
of really toxic environments
who are simply
doing what they know.
And so the church
needs to be a space
where we can take risks
and relearn how to be
a family together.
Right?
Because listen,
this church is not just
made up of people
in the pews,
and it's not just made up
of the people
who are joining us online.
Each person sitting here
is an entire community
of people.
Right?
You're sitting there,
but guess what?
Even though you can't see them,
your mom's there,
your dad's there,
your uncles are there,
your siblings are there,
their parents are there,
your grandparents,
great-grandparents,
great-great-great-parents,
all the way back,
they're all sitting there
with you.
This church is super crowded.
It doesn't feel like it,
but it's packed.
Standing room only.
All your friends and family
are sitting here with you.
Right?
We bring family dysfunction
into the church
like you track mud
into the house
on a rainy day.
It just happens.
And so the thing
that we need to recognize
is to be the kind
of laboratory
that we need to be
as a church,
we need enormous amounts
of grace.
And the main thing
that Paul learned
at Sinai was this,
chapter 3,
verse 26,
for in Christ Jesus
you were all sons of God,
you're all part
of this new family
through faith.
So what God doesn't say
is this,
you need to deal
with all your past,
you need to deal
with your dysfunction,
go to a therapist,
get better,
and then you can be
a part of my family.
That's not what God says.
It's the opposite.
He says,
come as you are,
track all the mud
you want into my house,
I'm the one
who's going to wash you
and make you clean.
I'm the one
who's going to give you
a new identity.
And knowing
that we are loved
and accepted
as God's children,
here and now,
knowing that our identity
is secure in Christ,
knowing that we are
members of this family,
objectively,
for all time,
that's, I think,
what gives us
the courage we need
to go back
to deal with our past
so that we might
move forward together
as God's family
in the world.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you
for your word
and we thank you
for the gospel
and we pray
that as we celebrate
your passion
today
and this week,
Lord,
as we celebrate
your entry
into Jerusalem
and where that road
would ultimately lead,
Lord,
I pray that you
would give us
gospel vision
to see those parts
of our past
that need to be ended,
the generational sin
and brokenness
that needs to be halted
and I pray that you
would give us a vision
for what a new life
looks like
as sons and daughters
of the King
in the new worldwide family
that you're building
in the world
and I pray that all
this would happen
in the power
of your Holy Spirit
in the name of your
Son Jesus Christ
and for your glory.
Amen.