Sunday, June 19, 2016
Sermon Audio: Galatians 3:23-4:7, June 19, 2016
A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on June 19, 2016 at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Galatians 3:23-4:7. The text of this sermon may be found by clicking this link and you may play the audio of the sermon here.
Sermon Text: Galatians 3:23-4:7, June 19, 2016
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the third and fourth chapters:
My dear friends in Christ,
I’ve gotten a lot of questions this week with the whole shooting in Orlando. What’s the Christian response? How am I supposed to feel? Shouldn’t we ban guns? Shouldn’t we stop all the Muslims from coming into this country? Why did this happen? Whose fault is this? What can we do?
I can’t tell you I have all the answers. I can’t. Some of these are really hard questions that are more appropriate for our politicians, and us as the voters, to decide. I can’t say that there are Biblical answers to all of these things. What I can tell you is that our response to this horrific shooting, and to all disasters, both man-made and “natural,” is the cry of Christians for millennia: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”
And I can tell you that when we pray that prayer, we pray it for others and for ourselves. And He does. He does have mercy. And He leads us to understand, too, that we follow in His footsteps, and we have mercy towards others. We have mercy upon those who identify as homosexuals. We have mercy on Muslims. We have mercy on gun-toting, Bible thumpers. We have mercy on liberals. We have mercy on conservatives. We have mercy, for we have received mercy.
The text this morning is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the third and fourth chapters:
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
I’ve gotten a lot of questions this week with the whole shooting in Orlando. What’s the Christian response? How am I supposed to feel? Shouldn’t we ban guns? Shouldn’t we stop all the Muslims from coming into this country? Why did this happen? Whose fault is this? What can we do?
I can’t tell you I have all the answers. I can’t. Some of these are really hard questions that are more appropriate for our politicians, and us as the voters, to decide. I can’t say that there are Biblical answers to all of these things. What I can tell you is that our response to this horrific shooting, and to all disasters, both man-made and “natural,” is the cry of Christians for millennia: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”
And I can tell you that when we pray that prayer, we pray it for others and for ourselves. And He does. He does have mercy. And He leads us to understand, too, that we follow in His footsteps, and we have mercy towards others. We have mercy upon those who identify as homosexuals. We have mercy on Muslims. We have mercy on gun-toting, Bible thumpers. We have mercy on liberals. We have mercy on conservatives. We have mercy, for we have received mercy.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Sermon Audio: Galatians 2:15-21, 3:10-14, June 12, 2016
A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on June 12, 2016 at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Galatians 2:15-21, 3:10-14. The text of this sermon may be found by clicking this link and you may play the audio of the sermon here.
Sermon Text: Galatians 2:15-21, 3:10-14, June 12, 2016
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the 2nd and 3rd chapters:
My dear friends in Christ,
It’s been in the news this week: a young college man committed a horrible crime on a college woman. This happens a lot, sadly, regrettably, but it’s made the news because the man received such a light sentence compared to the crime. If he had shoplifted a loaf of bread, we would expect him to get six months in prison. In Connecticut, kidnapping gets a year minimum. A year. What should it cost a man if he takes away a woman’s chastity, her feeling of being safe, her trust in men, her belief that this would never happen to her?
Justice for this woman would be a short sentence for the man who committed such an atrocious act upon her. It’s not justice, and it seems that there is a moral outrage among most people. Most people seem to be saying that this is not right, that the judge should be removed from the bar, that the man should have gotten more time, that the woman deserves some kind of restitution.
We expect restitution in these kinds of crime. Really, for any crime, we expect that there be some sort of punishment, and we expect that the punishment would fit the crime. For those people of Jewish descent to which Paul was writing, there was a specific understanding that they had a leg up. It wasn’t for them that they thought they could keep the Law perfectly, although there were certainly some Jewish sects that did, or at least tried, but that the Law had been revealed to them and they knew what God expected.
The text this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the 2nd and 3rd chapters:
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It’s been in the news this week: a young college man committed a horrible crime on a college woman. This happens a lot, sadly, regrettably, but it’s made the news because the man received such a light sentence compared to the crime. If he had shoplifted a loaf of bread, we would expect him to get six months in prison. In Connecticut, kidnapping gets a year minimum. A year. What should it cost a man if he takes away a woman’s chastity, her feeling of being safe, her trust in men, her belief that this would never happen to her?
Justice for this woman would be a short sentence for the man who committed such an atrocious act upon her. It’s not justice, and it seems that there is a moral outrage among most people. Most people seem to be saying that this is not right, that the judge should be removed from the bar, that the man should have gotten more time, that the woman deserves some kind of restitution.
We expect restitution in these kinds of crime. Really, for any crime, we expect that there be some sort of punishment, and we expect that the punishment would fit the crime. For those people of Jewish descent to which Paul was writing, there was a specific understanding that they had a leg up. It wasn’t for them that they thought they could keep the Law perfectly, although there were certainly some Jewish sects that did, or at least tried, but that the Law had been revealed to them and they knew what God expected.
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