Sermons

Calling Crisis  
Galatians 1:10-24

Turn in your Bibles and read with me Galatians 1 beginning in verse 10:

10 For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: 14 And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, 16 To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: 17 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. 19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. 20 Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. 21 Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia; 22 And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ: 23 But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. 24 And they glorified God in me.


When I was a boy we visited Niagara Falls where I heard a story about a man by the name of Charles Blondin. It seems that in the late 1850’s he rigged up a wire from shore to shore, right across the falls, and was wowing the crowd by riding a bicycle along that wire. Back and forth he went, several times, and so, to make it more exciting, he asked the crowd if they believed he could make it across while carrying various things. 

First, he held up a suitcase and an umbrella, and asked, “Do you believe I can make it across the falls carrying these?” Since people had seen what he could do without anything in his hands, and it was very impressive, most of them shouted, “Yes, yes, we believe.” Sure enough, he got all the way across and back with no trouble. 

Next, he picked up a violin and a bow, and asked the crowd, “Now do you believe I can ride my bike across these falls, while I play my fiddle?” Again, they had seen incredible things, and so they shouted out, “Yes, yes, we believe.” It was astonishing to listen to a string of bluegrass fiddlin’ wafting out over the roaring waters of Niagara. He did it! 

And he did many other feats. Finally he picked up a chair, and said, “Now I have just one more question. Do you believe I can put somebody in this chair and balance them on my bike and ride across the falls? Well, the crowd went wild. They cheered and they whistled. They stomped and they shouted. “Sure. Yes. Go for it. We believe. We believe.”

“All right, if you believe, I now need for one believer to step forward and sit in the chair.” 

How many do you think stepped forward? 

This simply means there is often a tremendous gap between what we say we believe and what we really believe. A disconnect between our ideas and our commitment, a very large gap. 

Let’s pray: Father, let what we believe, truly be what we believe, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

When God invites us to do something, it will always lead to a crisis of belief. What we think we believe will go into tension with what God asks us to do, and there will be a crisis. When the moment of truth comes, and God invites us to sit in that chair, we will find ourselves in crisis.

A crisis is a dangerous opportunity; it is scary, but it holds out something wonderful at the same time. 

When the earliest Christians met the new convert Saul of Tarsus, it was not easy. It caused a crisis. This man Saul had been the most zealous persecutor of Christians. He had gone to great lengths to make sure they were stamped out. 

But Saul had met Jesus on the road to Damascus one day, and everything changed. Saul became Paul, the enemy of the church became its newest son. The preacher of death became the proclaimer of new life. 

Can you just imagine the folks in the Jerusalem church? “Do you know who’s coming to preach here today? I’m afraid to show up at church this week!” Crisis!

Well, the crisis got worse because as this persecutor turned preacher he began to say some things that were new. He began to think about the church in different ways. 

Paul said, if salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus, then doesn’t that mean that keeping the Jewish Law is not the way to salvation? 

And then he went on to argue, and if keeping the Jewish Law is not the way to salvation, then why are we still insisting that only Jews are to be saved? Why can’t we preach the gospel to everyone? 

Paul reminded people that Jesus Himself had commanded that they go into all the world and bring the good news to every person and every nation.

But then Paul went too far. Paul said, if anyone can be saved; and if it isn’t possible to be saved by keeping the Law, why do we ask these Greeks and Romans and Parthians and everybody to submit to Jewish ritual? 

Why do we ask their men to be circumcised and why do we ask them to keep all these rules? Why don’t we just receive these people into the church, openly and freely, because that’s the way God receives them?

Wow! Nobody had ever looked at it that way before. Nobody had ever thought of the Christian faith in such an open way before. Paul had a new idea. Crisis. 

Paul saw God’s invitation, God’s leadership. But it brought about a crisis. The early church went into conflict over this.

Remember, whenever God invites us to do something, that invitation will lead to a crisis of belief.
 

I’ve recently heard several preachers speak about not feeling worthy or wondering why God would call them or should I continue doing this so, I thought I would speak on that using Paul as an example.

When God invites us into some new truth, the first crisis of belief will come even before we do anything. The first crisis of belief will be within us. It will be within our own hearts and minds. 

We will struggle with God’s invitation on our own for a while, before we ever bring it out where others can shoot at it. 

God’s invitation will lead to a crisis of belief, our own personal beliefs, our own personal faith, long before we are called to do anything concrete.

And that can feel scary. That can feel like riding in the chair on the bike over Niagara Falls, and the tight-wire isn’t even tight!

The "crisis of belief” is a turning point where I must make a decision concerning what I really believe about God.

If I believe that God really does know what He is doing, that He really can do what He says he can do, that He really does know what’s best for my life, and that His cause is one worth giving my life to, then I will respond with obedience to His call.

If I really don’t believe these things, then I will not obey His call. It’s that simple.

It is at this point that we discover whether our belief about God is a belief of conviction or convenience.

A belief of convenience is one I hold to only when it is convenient, but a belief of conviction is one I hold to even when it is not convenient.

How I respond at this turning point will determine whether I cooperate with God in what He’s planned for me or miss out on what God has "prepared in advance for me to walk in " (Ephesians 2:10).

It is very important that when I sense God is speaking to me that I respond appropriately.

When something happens to reach down into our very core and make us change who we are and what we are about, that’s awesome, but that’s a crisis; that’s dangerous. 

But then again, it’s a dangerous opportunity. Because, tough as it is, there is nothing more powerful than our own story. 

Our own truth that we possess, because it has been worked out from within us. Truth that we have hammered out for ourselves. That’s powerful.

Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Through filling our lives full of God’s Word, faith rises up within us. But that faith must be applied if it is to grow. Through obedience, our faith is allowed to grow, what God has said is confirmed in our experience.

D. L. Moody once said, “If all the time that I have spent praying for faith was put together it would amount to months. I thought that someday faith was going to come down and strike me like lightening. But faith did not come.

One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ’So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to read God’s Word and faith has been growing ever since.”

Our faith does not rest in a concept or an idea. It must rest in a PERSON - God Himself. Faith is only valid in God and what He is purposing to do.

In fact, when God calls us to take a new step of obedience in our walk with Him, it will always be new territory for us.

It will always be something we have never experienced before. It will always be something only God can do. That’s why our faith must be centered in God and God alone, and that’s a crisis.

George Muller said, “Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man’s power ends.”

Our faith in God grows greater through obedience to His call. Through obedience we come to recognize more of the greatness of God. The only faith that God can respond to is faith that is used!

 

A Crisis of Belief is a turning point where we must make some decisions that will determine whether we go on to be involved with God in something God-sized or whether we will continue to go our own way and miss what God has for us. 

Paul tells us in the Galatians letter about his story. He speaks about what life used to be like for him. Think about what he walked away from when he became a Christian.

When God sought Paul out and Paul converted to Christ, not only did he walk away from all his props and supports, but he also had to learn a new way of thinking. 

He had to turn around in the road, change the direction he was going, and learn a whole new pattern of thought. Now that’s scary! That’s a crisis! That’s tough!

How did he do it? How did he work through this crisis? He spent time praying through, thinking through, the meaning of what was happening. The first thing he did was to give time to the Holy Spirit to teach him and shape him. 

Paul says that instead of just barging in with his new ideas, he stopped and he waited, to make sure he was doing the right thing. He took time to pray and think it through.

“But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me, so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem ..”

Paul recognized that when you are in a crisis, you have to spend some time in reflection, in thinking, and in prayer. 

There’s an old saying, “You can’t just rush out and do, You have to make the truth your own truth.”

The point is, you can come to a crisis moment when, if you listen to your heart, you hear change wanting to take place. You feel something new struggling to be born. That’s a crisis. 

The first task is to pray, to listen, to discern to what God is inviting me. Is there something new I need to be for Him? 

Three years in Arabia and Damascus, some sort of quiet time to listen to the Spirit. Time well spent when your life is in crisis.

But the day came when Paul had to do something with these convictions. The time came when the personal crisis had to be taken into the public arena. 

This thing of making people become Jews before they could be Christians had gone on long enough, in Paul’s mind. And so, he got up on his hind legs and marched out to see the leaders of the church, taking along a young Greek convert named Titus, just so they could see the evidence. So, they could experience what he was feeling.

And something very interesting happened. It tells us a lot about how when God invites us to do something for Him, that invitation leads to a crisis of belief. 

It tells us that when we get into crisis times, the crisis will always be the tension between what has been and what is to be. Between the old established pattern and what is about to be born. 

But here’s the good part. When you take your crisis public, and do something about it, genuinely spiritual people will go with it if it brings Kingdom spiritual and physical growth. 

When there is a crisis, and somebody has the courage to hang in there and work through it, the truly spiritual will change for Kingdom growth.
Peter, James, and John, the ones who had known the Lord’s heart; when they really listened to Paul, when they saw the product of his work in the young Greek Titus, they changed. They saw the new truth and they changed.  

They changed because it meant Kingdom growth. They dropped their resistance, because the new way was bringing Kingdom growth. More believers, more Christians, more Kingdom growth.

We must invest in Kingdom growth. Not just maintaining what we have. Not in just keeping up what we are now doing. 

Then there will be a crisis as we get into action. When we are out there trying to do something with our beliefs, there is going to be tension. And some will never accept what we are doing. 

But the most interesting of all is the crisis that comes after you think you have won the battle! Because the problem is that old habits die hard, and just because something new has been started, that doesn’t mean that it catches hold. 

You can have your most important dangerous opportunity after you think you have finished the fight.

Paul left Jerusalem thinking he had everything clear about the place of non-Jews in the church. He thought everybody now understood that Gentiles were to be welcomed on the same basis as Jews. 

Then he learned that Peter, of all people, had stopped sharing meals with Gentiles. That Peter was afraid of what people might say, and so Peter had separated himself from the Greek believers.

Paul called on Peter and the others to live in a way that was consistent with their beliefs, and not to fall back. 

Paul knew that when we get caught up in trying to win a popularity contest, we are going to break faith with what we have professed to believe. 

There are a hundred illustrations. Lots of us believe in helping the poor, the lonely, the sick, and the vulnerable. We believe in that. But if it costs us more than a few dollars or if it claims our time to tutor kids in the after-school program or if it requires us to drive out to the nursing home to hold somebody’s hand, well, that’s too much! 

Oh, how some Paul needs to meet us face to face on this.

We stand in this room and sing, “Where He Leads Me I will Go” “I can hear my savior calling…” “I’ll go with Him all the way.” Sounds great when we sing it, but oh my soul, if we are actually going to have to serve on a committee, shoulder a load, tell someone about Jesus, invite someone to church and be willing to go and get them...what we need is Paul to stand up to us face to face, now!

How many times have we sung “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.” A thousand tongues? Let’s use the one we have now! And be consistent with what we believe! 

“I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.” We love to tell the story? To whom have we told it lately? Where are the results of our story-telling? 

Oh, great God, we need a Paul to create a crisis among us, now that we are complacent and satisfied. We need a Paul to shout out the awful truth, that we are afraid, we are hypocritical, we are inconsistent with the truth of the gospel.

This is a crisis time! Church crisis, Spiritual crisis, Mission crisis, Kingdom growth crisis, Consistency

crisis. Standing for something crisis is a dangerous, wonderful, terrible, awesome, agonizing, glorious opportunity to be the church God invites us to be. Knowing all the while, that God’s invitation leads to a crisis of belief.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t fear the crisis. It may be dangerous, but it is an opportunity. And hear the greatest of news. 

When we obey and follow Him, “..it is no longer I who live, but it is 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.” In Jesus’ Name, Amen!