One time there were three sons who left home and all three had become successful and wealthy. They were competing with each other to get their nearly blind mother the best gift. The first son bought her a large expensive home. The second son bought her an expensive car with a driver to chauffeur her anytime anywhere she wanted to go. The third son bought her a parrot. But not just any parrot. A $50K parrot. This parrot was specially trained and had memorized the entire Bible. It could recite the whole Bible from beginning to end, or it could recite any verse upon request. Knowing how much his mother loved reading the Bible and how she couldn’t see anymore, the 3rd son thought it was perfect. Not long after their mother wrote to each of them responding to their gifts. To the first son she said, “Thank you but the house is too big I could never find my way around or keep it clean.” To the second son she said the car was pointless since she never went anywhere. And to the third son she said “Thank you for the chicken, it was delicious.”
Our sermon title today is “All For Nothing.” The Apostle Paul worried that all his work to bring the Galatians to faith in Christ and build them up as Christians will have ultimately been “all for nothing.” He worried greatly about the condition of the churches he founded.
- He said to the Thessalonian church, “When I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had temp[ted you and that our labors might have been in vain.” (1 Thess 3:5)
- He said to the Philippians, “As you hold firmly to the word of life. Then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.” (2:16)
- In 2 Corinthians 11 he famously details all the suffering he has undergone in his missionary journeys. Then in verse 28 he says something that at first you can almost fail to really appreciate. It is a burden he carries that he probably would have said was worse than any beating, any hunger, any pain he has undergone. He says, “Besides everything else I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.” That pressure is one of the marks of a pastor’s bone fides.
Paul was deeply worried that his work to bring people into the faith and establish them in it would be undone by various threats. For the Corinthians it was the false teachers and divisions growing within their churches. For the Thessalonians Paul was worried that Satan, the Tempter, had led them away from what he had let them to. And all Paul worked for would have amounted to nothing.
His concern was the same for the Galatians. The particular threat to his work in the Galatian churches was the Judaizing influence that came in after he left. People were trying to compel believers to follow the Law of Moses. As a quick reminder of this remember:
- Paul said in 2:3-5 that Titus, a gentile, refused circumcision when Judaizers pressured him and that he and Paul refuted them so as to keep the Gospel pure
- He talks about dying to the law (2:19); he says they received the Spirit by faith and the Spirit does not lead them back to following the Law (3:1-5); he says the Law operated until Christ came (3:19, 23-25), and he says living in God’s grace is mutually exclusive with following the Law (5:4)
- His tone is clearly rebuking in 4:21, “Tell me you who want to be under the law, do you even know what the law says?”
- In 5:2 he says do not give into the pressure to be circumcised
- In 6:12 he says those who are pressuring them into circumcision do it out of fear of persecution and a desire to please men.
- He was referencing the Law in 4:10 when he talked about them being enslaved again to the Law by “observing special days and months and seasons and years.” That’s what Paul had in mind when he said, “I’m afraid I’ve wasted all my efforts on you.” In other words, “if that’s the direction you Galatians go then all my work among you will have been for nothing.”
The very simple point is that if the Galatians started following the Law of Moses, for any reason, then all of his work would have been for nothing. I want to pull out five quick points
WASTED EFFORTS (11)
Notice verse 11, “I fear for you that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.” The word “wasted” means something that is “in vain,” or “for no purpose,” or “for nothing.” The basic idea is that all the work put into something turned out to be worthless, a waste of time.
The word is used by Paul a lot. He used it earlier in Galatians 2:2 when he said he was afraid he was running his race in vain, meaning he was afraid all his hard work preaching the Gospel may have been for nothing. Then he asked the Galatians in 3:4, “Have you experienced so much in vain if it really was in vain?” In other words, “All of your Christian experience will be pointless if you are thinking about turning to follow the Law.”
Paul wants the Galatian believers to stay on track with Christ and in God’s grace. To do that he is pressing them not to give into the Judaizers and not to begin following the Law. If they do then all his work and all their experience so far will be for nothing. All the blood he has shed to get the Gospel to them, all the imprisonments, all the beatings and bruises, all the long days and long nights teaching or travelling, all the going without….it will all mean nothing if they turn to the Law.
APPLICATION: Do not let your Christian life be wasted. Do not “believe in vain” as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:2, do not let all you’ve experienced as a Chrsitian be for nothing.
APPLICATION: Do not let the work of your pastors be in vain. All we do to shepherd you so you grow in Christ and are established in the faith, and all we do to prepare you for meeting Christ, do not waste it.
IMITATE ME (12)
Next Paul says something he said quite often to the churches. He calls on them to imitate him. Verse 12, “I plead with you brothers and sisters, become like me….” He told the Corinthians “Imitate me because I imitate Christ” (11:1). He called on the Philippians “Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.” He commended the Thessalonians by saying, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord…” (1:6).
And Paul begged the Galatians to imitate him also. His point is that they should become like him in living free from the law, no longer seeing themselves as under the law. That is the specific context here, and that is exactly how Paul saw himself:
- In 1 Corinthians 9:20 Paul says, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law).”
- In Galatians 5:18 look at this very important truth about Christians and the Law, “But if you are led by the Spirit you are NOT under the law.” Again, just like in 3:2-3, we see Paul asserting that people who have the Spirit are not bound to the law. Only Christians have the Spirit, and Christians did not become saved and become Christians and get the Spirit by following the Law, and now that they are CHristians they are led by the Spirit and NOT the Law.
Paul understood very clearly that he was not under the Law anymore now that he had faith in Christ. He knew faith in Christ and following the Law were incompatible. And THIS is what he wanted the Galatians to know also, because if they knew that like Paul knows that, then they would be like Paul, firmly established in God’s grace, and unaffected by the error of the Judaizers going around.
APPLICATION: Follow the right examples
APPLICATION: Be the right example
APPLICATION: The purpose of imitation is to better imitate Christ. That’s the goal. Not imitate this person or that person, but to imitate Jesus. Our aim is following His example. Jesus said in John 13:15, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Our purpose is to follow our Lord’s example, and for that, we need the Word, the Spirit, prayer, AND we need examples of His example! The purpose of a local church, like here at EFC should be that we are better followers of the example of Christ because within our church there are men and women who are more Christ-like that we can learn from. I pray that not one person here is basing their Christian example on some online influencer, some supposed Christian politician, or some supposed Christian athlete. I pray that people are finding such an abundance at EFC of godly people to learn from that they can know and watch in the flesh, live, and interact with, that there’s no need for that kind of long-distance imitating needed. So I say again: be an example worth imitating. And if you’re not yet, then find others here who are that you CAN start imitating.
IMITATE THE LOST (12)
Our final point for today is we should “imitate the lost.” Paul says in verse 12, “I plead with you brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you.”
Let’s immediately rule out that Paul in any way engaged in sin. Paul would never say that he became like the Galatians in their sin. What Paul meant was that he adapted to who they were in certain ways so as not to become an unnecessary offense or hindrance to them receiving the Gospel. If they had particular customs or ways of seeing things in their culture Paul was willing to fit in. This is the missionary principle from the Apostles all the way down to today – all through the Church’s history. (In a moment I’ll actually source it in Jesus’ incarnation).
Turn to 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 with me….Again Paul had in mind the Jew/Gentile dichotomy. All food was in fact clean, but if you were trying to reach Jews who considered certain foods to be unclean then you would voluntarily refrain from eating those foods so that in your efforts to reach them you don’t needlessly upset them and cause them to reject you – and the Gospel you’re trying to bring them.
This is actually what Paul was getting at in chapter 8 where he is talking about food sacrificed to idols. After a cow was ritualistically sacrificed in some pagan ritual, the leftover meat was often sent to the market and sold. Some people would have a real hard time eating that meat because it came from an animal that was used in a pagan sacrifice – a ritual to an idol/demon. But Paul states the objective fact that it is fine to eat that meat, because of what we know as Christians. We know that there is one God, and no other God, and all things come from that God, and in eating that meat – regardless of what it went through before arriving on our dinner plate – we were giving thanks to God (not an idol) for that food. And thus it would not be sin.
However, Paul says that in knowing that, and in fully understanding our own freedom, we should refrain from eating that meat in front of someone who in their conscience does not quite understand this truth. If for them that meat is unclean, and if for them that meat is off limits because it was used in a pagan ritual, then Paul says voluntarily restrict yourself for the sake of that other person. That may be a fellow Christian, but for the point of evangelism, do it so that the person you’re trying to reach for Christ does not become upset with you for eating the meat and then in being upset with you reject you and what you’re trying to tell them about Christ.
APPLICATION: Do not cause needless hurdles for people you are trying to reach for Christ.
CONCLUSION: Christ Imitates Us
The idea of imitating the lost to reach the lost does not originate with Paul or any Apostle. It doesn’t originate with any man for that matter. In fact, it originates with God. Consider the very act of the 2nd Person of the Trinity coming down and becoming a man. He became like us. To save us. Paul became like the lost to win the lost. But he did not sin. Just like Jesus in becoming a human being did not become a “sinful” human being. He was sinless. Think about this: Jesus came as a man to save man. Jesus became like you, a human being, to save you. But you have to come to Him. He won’t meet you just anywhere. He will only meet you at the cross. Why? Because it was at the cross that as a man he died for your sins. You have to go to the cross and meet Him so that there you can see what He did because of your sins.