This past week, I read a book by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones titled Communicating for a Change.  As you might guess from the title, Andy and Lane’s goal is to help communicators—preachers among them—to communicate effectively so their listeners’ lives will be changed.  I’ve always preached with the goal of having your lives changed by Jesus.  Actually, I’ve always preached with the goal of having your lives and my life changed by Jesus.  Ever since I was a teenager—which has been several decades ago now—I’ve believed that Jesus Christ is the only one worth investing my life in.  I’ve been preaching for 33 years now—I preached my first sermon when I was sixteen--and I’m always looking for ways to challenge and motivate people to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, so their lives will be changed, transformed to be like Him.  Along the way the challenge has been to get out of the way as a communicator—to keep my quirks and idiosyncrasies from setting up roadblocks to your meeting Jesus in the message.  Over the years that’s meant I’ve preached with notes, without notes, with an outline, without an outline, with a manuscript, without a manuscript. And whatever I’ve done, I’ve always wished it could’ve been more effective, more impressive, that more people’s lives would’ve been changed for Jesus. Many of my prayers over the years have been for you and people like you to grab hold of the message, so you would grab hold of Jesus!  Andy’s book challenged me and inspired me.  One of the most important questions he asked was this, “If you have not internalized your message, then how can you expect your listeners to internalize it?”  He went on to ask, “If you can’t remember what you’re going to say without a manuscript, then how are your listeners going to remember what the message calls them to do.”  Andy doesn’t like fill in the blank outlines for sermons.  He thinks they’re great for passing on information, but that they don’t do much for moving people to transformation.  So what does it matter what Andy Stanley thinks?  Andy’s one of the most effective communicators in America today, so that counts for something.  On the other hand, another of the most effective communicators in America today is Rick Warren.  He ALWAYS uses a fill in the blank outline when he preaches, so the question isn’t, “Is it right to use a fill in the blank outline if you want to be an effective communicator?”  The question is what’s the most effective way for Chris Marshall—the pastor who happens to be communicating with you right now—to communicate with you so that your lives will be changed?  You know sometimes I stand up here and wish I that I could be more impressive, that my words would flow in such a way as to captivate everyone here and send them out so pumped up for Jesus that everyone in Butler and Allegheny Counties would know about it in some way.  Actually, I always wish something along those lines, because I know people need to know Jesus.  The challenge is when I start wishing I’d be more impressive, sometimes it isn’t for the right reasons.  It feels good to impress others.  Have

you ever wished you were more impressive to others?  Have you ever wanted to be noticed? Have you ever wanted to go to school and have people turn and say, “Wa!  Here she comes?”  Have you ever wanted to go to work and have everyone ask YOU your opinion?  Have you ever wanted to be the center of attention?  In this morning’s worship drama “The Beetle with the Rolls-Royce Nose,” we have a fable about a car who held those kinds of aspirations.  Let’s turn our attention to the drama team right now for “The Beetle With the Rolls-Royce Nose.”  [Worship Drama:  “The Beetle With the Rolls-Royce Nose”]

     All it really takes for us to be content in life is to recognize that isn’t how we look, or whether people notice us that counts.  What counts is being known by the one who created us in the first place.  What would happen if we woke up everyday and remembered that God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us?  What would happen if we would remember throughout the day, everyday, that we matter to God, that He’s looking at us and loving us, and challenging us to be like Him?  Would it make a difference in our lives if instead of a desire to impress others and have them notice us, we would focus their attention past us to Jesus?  If we really believe that Jesus died on the cross to cancel the debt of sin and death in our lives, then wouldn’t we want to focus others’ lives on Jesus?  As the Apostle Paul closed his letter to the Christians in Galatia, he reminded them that we are not all that impressive apart from Jesus.  He reminded them that if they want to brag about something, if they want to draw people’s attention to something, that it needs to be the cross of Jesus.  In the end whose we are defines who we are.  Let me say that again:  Whose we are defines who we are.

     Let’s stand and read the Apostle Paul’s vital reminder of that truth together.  As we read, I’m going to point out a few things AS WE READ, so let’s read verse 11 aloud:  ¹¹Notice what large letters I use as I write these closing words in my own handwriting.  Paul didn’t always write his letters himself.  Sometimes he had a scribe, a secretary, write his words.  In this letter, Paul wrote the words himself.  When we take the time to do something ourselves it underscores the importance of it.  Let’s continue: ¹²Those who are trying to force you to be circumcised are doing it for just one reason. They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save. ¹³And even those who advocate circumcision don’t really keep the whole law. They only want you to be circumcised so they can brag about it and claim you as their disciples.  Hold on for a moment.  This point may be a little arcane or hidden to us.  What Paul’s saying is that there was a group of people—who we’ll talk about a little more—who wanted to draw attention away from Jesus alone. They wanted some of the credit for themselves when it came to their salvation.  For them whose they were wasn’t as important as who they were.  Let’s continue:  ¹⁴As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world’s interest in me is also long dead.  See that?  Paul was an impressive man. He had diplomas on his diplomas.  He was zealous—passionate, but his zeal and passion had often been misplaced.  He had learned the key to life:  It isn’t who we are, it’s whose we are that matters.  Okay.  Let’s read the last couple of verses ¹⁵It doesn’t make any difference now whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we really have been changed into new and different people. ¹⁶May God’s mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God.  Galatians 6:11-16 NLT Let’s pray… Amen.  (Please, be seated.)

     As we read the Scripture, I said that there was a group of people we needed to know a little more about who wanted to draw attention away from Jesus alone.  Actually, in order for us to understand what’s going on in the Scripture we just read, we need to know a little of the background of the early church, because these folks were part of that background.  After Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to His followers on the day of Pentecost.  From that moment forward the reality of God interacting with His people changed.  Before Pentecost only certain privileged people received the Holy Spirit—prophets, kings, and priests.  When people saw those prophets, kings and priests they KNEW that those people belonged to God.  Those people were impressive because of whose they were.  But the average person on the street in Israel either felt that they weren’t all that important to God, because God wasn’t working in their lives, or they felt that because they had been born in Israel God was with them.  They had inherited God’s blessing.  It’s not all that hard to relate with those attitudes, is it?  Sometimes I don’t feel all that important to God. It doesn’t seem like He’s working in my life.  Have you ever felt that way?  At other times all of us have felt that God was “there,” somehow, maybe because we’re Americans, or because we go to church. But on the day of Pentecost, that one specific Pentecost that took place 10 days after Jesus went back to heaven after His resurrection from the dead, God poured out His Spirit on every believer.  At first it was only 120 people, but by the end of that day it was 3,120 people.  Soon it was more than 5,000 people.  Every time a person heard the Good News of God’s salvation in Jesus, believed it, and repented of sin another Spirit-filled life began. Their lives were noticeably different from the people around them, not because of self-righteousness, or because of some holier than thou attitude.  Not because they had been “Beetles” and suddenly became “Rolls-Royces” or “Ferraris”, but because the people knew whose they were, and who they were.  That meant they started thinking, speaking and acting like Jesus.  They were baptized in obedience to Him and they lived out His teachings. 

     As this was going on, some of the believers started asking the question, “Doesn’t a person have to fulfill the Law of Moses before he or she can become a follower of Jesus?  In other words, to become a Christian, doesn’t a person have to become a Jew first?  We can read how these ideas conflicted and played out in the Book of Acts.  In Acts 15, the Church held a big meeting in Jerusalem.  Believers from all over the place came.  At that meeting it was decided that if a Gentile, that is a non-Jew, wanted to become a Christian, he or she would NOT be required to follow the Jewish law. That was the established teaching of the early church, but some wouldn’t accept it.  They became known as Judaizers.  They were the traditionalists of the day.  They believed that a male who wanted to be a Christian had to be circumcised before he could be recognized as a Christian.  The Apostles Paul and Peter and the core of the early Church taught that it was God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus that brought salvation and no external act such as circumcision. It wasn’t who a person was, or what a person did that matter. It was whose the person was—Jesus’ person--that made all the difference. That’s the context in which Paul wrote these closing words to the Galatian Christians.  After Paul had started the church in Galatia and moved on to other places, some Judaizers came to town and caused a great deal of concern and questioning.  Thus, Paul’s letter to them.

     In closing that letter, Paul did what most of us do when we close an important letter—we reiterate the most important point!  That’s why Paul’s letter closes with this truth: SALVATION COMES ONLY THROUGH THE CROSS OF JESUS!  He wrote:  ¹¹Notice what large letters I use as I write these closing words in my own handwriting. ¹²Those who are trying to force you to be circumcised are doing it for just one reason. They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save. Galatians 6:11-12 NLT Teaching that the cross of Jesus Christ is all that’s necessary for salvation may not seem like a reason for persecution, but in Paul’s day it was.  The Jews persecuted Christians for teaching that Jesus was the Messiah—God’s appointed deliverer.  They didn’t believe it and they wanted to stamp out what they considered to be a heretical sect.  The Romans persecuted the Christians, because they wouldn’t bow down to Caesar as God. They believed that Jesus was God.  The Judaizing Christians compromised the cross of Jesus for the traditions of the Jews. Everywhere Paul went, they followed, always seeking to turn believers away from a “CROSS of Jesus alone faith”—a whose we are determines who we are faith,  to a Mosaic Law plus the CROSS kind of faith, a faith that says, “Who we makes a difference in addition to whose we are.”

     Paul made an important point in His closing regarding the motivation of the Judaizers.  He tells us that THOSE WHO TEACH A LEGALISTIC FAITH ONLY WANT ADDITIONAL CONVERTS! Listen again to His words: ¹³And even those who advocate circumcision don’t really keep the whole law. They only want you to be circumcised so they can brag about it and claim you as their disciples.  Galatians 6:13 NLT  It seems that even in the days of the early church people were concerned with HOW MANY people they could get on their side, or HOW MANY people they could count as belonging to them.  It’s often been said in our day that churches measure success by the “A,B,C’s” – A for Attendance; B for Buildings; and C for Cash.  These outward and measurable signs can’t tell us the condition of folks’ hearts, and what Paul was saying is that the Judaizers weren’t really concerned about the condition of people’s hearts. They just wanted to be able to say they had more “members.”  They may not have called them members, but that’s what they were doing.  Paul wasn’t concerned about gaining “converts” to his agenda.  Paul wanted people to know Jesus personally.  He knew that knowing Jesus is literally a matter of life and death—for all of eternity, because whose we are determines who we are.  While the Judaizers argued over whether a person had to be circumcised, or follow certain dietary customs, Paul’s goal was that people claimed the cross of Jesus as the source of forgiveness for their sins, and the path to new life.  In our day the drive for “success,” the push to “grow,” and the “competition” of one church with another can move congregations to forget about the cross of Jesus, and seek to foster only their own agendas, or the theology of a certain man or woman.  Paul warned of this danger 2,000 years ago, and called us to remember to keep Jesus central!

     As the Judaizers argued their viewpoints and boasted of their heritage, or their scholarship, or the rightness of their views, Paul stepped forward and reminded us that AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS OUR ONLY REASON TO BOAST IS THE CROSS!  Galatians 6:14 is a verse all of us ought to remember:  ¹⁴As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world’s interest in me is also long dead.  Galatians 6:14 NLT Do you see the double emphasis Paul makes?  First, he reminds us that the only reason any of us has to boast is the cross of Jesus.  It doesn’t matter whether we’re a Rolls-Royce or a VW Beetle.  It doesn’t matter whether we’re the president of the company or the newest employee in the mail room.  What matters is the cross of Jesus.  If not for the shed blood of Jesus we would all be in the same predicament—enemies of God, with no way to be reconciled to Him.  Secondly, Paul reminds us that once the cross of Jesus becomes the primary reality in our lives we will lose interest in the things of the world, and the world will lose interest in us.  That may seem rather extreme to our ears, but Paul’s point rings true, doesn’t it?  When Jesus is first in our lives, it doesn’t matter to us if someone has more than we do—if their cars are faster, or if their houses are bigger, or if their clothes are finer, of if their bank accounts are fuller.  And quite frankly, when Jesus is first in our lives, Paul tells us, the world loses interest in us.  Paul had been a rising star among the ranks of the Jewish leaders.  Remember, he was a chief persecutor of the church.  Then Jesus grabbed hold of him—nearly literally—and everything changed.  Paul’s influence became even greater than it had been in terms of the sheer numbers of people he had the opportunity to teach, equip and lead to the Lord.  But the outside world eventually lost interest in Him, other than to call him a criminal. 

     We have to be prepared for the world to forget about us, when we take Jesus seriously.  The question is do we want the applause of the world, or of God?  Our goal is to receive the applause of an audience of one, right?  Right?  When we believe that our lives take a major turn. Whose we then does determine who we are.  In fact, Paul tells us NEWNESS OF LIFE IS THE CONFIRMATION THAT THE POWER OF THE CROSS IS AT WORK IN US!!  Paul put it this way:  ¹⁵It doesn’t make any difference now whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we really have been changed into new and different people. ¹⁶May God’s mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God.  Galatians 6:15-16 NLT  As I’ve said many times, Paul didn’t write his letters just to pass on information.  His goal was to see His readers transformed.  Paul always communicated for a change! He always concludes with a call to action.  Here, the call to action is to live as new and different people.  The Judaizers sought converts who would follow a certain set of rules and regulations. They would just be “better” versions of their old selves. Paul sought to offer the new life of Jesus Christ to people, so that Jesus could transform them into people who were totally new and different, people who identified themselves as belonging to Jesus. 

     Many times the reason we get frustrated as followers of Jesus is we’re just trying to live “better” lives, instead of letting Jesus live in and through us.  Jesus died on the cross to cancel the sin that separated us from God. That’s amazing!  But when He rose from the dead and then sent the Holy Spirit to all believers He gave us the power source for actually being new and different.  We must always do our best—that’s what God expects, but when we get to the end of what we can do, God takes over.  That’s why we have no reason to boast when we actually become new and different.  We aren’t the ones who initiated the change and we aren’t the ones who complete it. God does both!  Jesus died so we can become new, and the Holy Spirit came so we can continue to grow into the people that God created us to be! Whose we are always determines who we are.  When we belong to Jesus we start looking like Him in our thoughts, our words and our actions.

     Paul’s final words were words of blessing, but it was a conditional blessing.  Do you remember what he wrote?   ¹⁶May God’s mercy and peace be upon all those who live by this principle. They are the new people of God.  If we want the blessing of God’s mercy and peace, then we must live as new people in the power of the cross.  We CAN do it, but only when we transfer the ownership and registration of our lives to the one who created us!  It really doesn’t matter what we start out as in life—a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce or a VW Beetle, when God’s in control we find true peace and happiness.  We learn what it means to boast in the cross of Jesus!  Imagine what it would be like in our lives this week if we remembered whose we are.  Who we are would be different.  I’m going to challenge each of us to make one change this week in seeing that become a reality.  It’s a simple challenge, it may seem too simple, but here it is.  Every morning when you get up and go to the bathroom to shower or do what you have to do, look in the mirror and say, “I belong to Jesus. He is in charge of my life today.”   Try that with me:  “I belong to Jesus.  He is in charge of my life today.”  Whose we are determines who we are.  What will it look like if Jesus DOES run our lives this week?  Will our conversations be different at school, at work, at home?  You bet they will.  When that guy cuts off in traffic, will we respond differently if we remember whose we and that determines who we are?  You bet it will!  Who will we try to impress this week if Jesus is in charge of our lives?  Jesus, right?  We can boast in many things or we can boast in the cross of Jesus. We can say I belong to Jesus and…. and then add other things as the Judaizers did making it seem that we are the ones who are in charge of our lives and our salvation.  Or we can remember that whose we are determines who we are and let Jesus be in charge.  What are you going to say when you look into the mirror this week?  I BELONG TO JESUS. HE IS IN CHARGE OF MY LIFE TODAY.

     Let’s stand right now, and pray that the words we just said, will be true in our lives this week.  Let’s pray….. Amen.