Paul continued to argue with the Galatians regarding their having abandoned Jesus Christ in favor of returning to the practices of Judaism. In this passage Paul argues with the Galatians from their own experiences with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Paul helps to validate experience as a valuable tool to help us grow in our faith.
Questions for Reflection:
- What have you learned about the value of experience and emotion in our Christian walk? What was the reason you received for the evaluation of experience in emotion?
- How much of your life is dictated by reason and logic compared to being based on experience or the testimony of an authority?
- Describe your most dramatic experience with the Holy Spirit. How has that experience shaped your faith?
- What experiences do you look to as significant building blocks in your faith?
Sermon: Experiences Matter to Our Faith
Bob was a straightforward kind of guy. He was no frills, with not much emotion in his decision-making processes. He preferred logic and fact to opinion. This was Bob’s preference in both his personal life as well as in his life as a Christian. Bob had once heard and had come to believe quite strongly that emotion and experience in his Christian life were unreliable and could harm him and lead him into error. So Bob had come to mistrust emotional displays during worship. He had come to distrust preachers who showed emotion about what they talked about. He had come to distrust speakers and authors who relied on experience and stories more than logic and verifiable fact to support their arguments.
It’s not that Bob wasn’t led by the Spirit or uninvolved with Christian work that involved emotion and experience. He had been part of significant mission trips and evangelistic efforts as part of his ministry with his church. He had been there and had prayed for and counseled people who had responded to an invitation to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He had been there and together with church family and the elders of the church had prayed for someone to be healed and they had been healed. Despite all of that, Bob preferred logic.
It happened one day that Bob met someone who had a different theology from his. This person had received the gift of speaking in tongues. This fellow described his gift to Bob. He quoted Scriptures from the book of Acts and he began to put together a case that all true Christians received a second blessing in the form of the Holy Spirit from God and the sign that a Christian was Spirit-filled was the gift of speaking in tongues. Bob had ample experiences to draw on which would show that he was in fact Spirit-filled but he distrusted those experiences and wouldn’t share them. In his mind, his experiences were just that, experiences, and because they were only experiences they were less trustworthy in Bob’s mind than the logic of Scripture which his new friend freely quoted for him.
Bob began to agree with his new friend that he might not be a real Christian because he had never spoken in tongues. So one day he and his new friend prayed for an extended period of time that Bob would receive the gift of tongues, so that, in Bob’s mind, he could be a real Christian. They prayed and prayed. Bob wanted the gift so badly he began to make up gibberish syllables and speak them out loud in some ecstatic fashion so that his new friend would agree and allow that Bob was, in fact, a real Christian.
If you have your Bibles with you today I would invite you to turn with me to the book of Galatians chapter 3. A number of weeks ago we began a bit of a tour through the book of Galatians. The first week we were in Galatians we looked at the introductory words that Paul wrote to this collection of churches in the region of Galatia. In the introduction Paul emphasized his authority as an apostle. He emphasized his apostle-ness in such a way that the Galatians were to understand that they were not receiving a letter from a friend - they were to believe they were hearing from God Himself. Paul went on to say that the Galatians had believed a different gospel. His argument was that either Jesus is enough by Himself for us to gain a relationship with God or He is not. Nothing can be added to the gospel which Paul preached; as soon as something is added to the gospel it becomes a different gospel. If Jesus wasn’t enough then the Judaizers were right.
The second time we looked into Galatians we talked about the Rule Books by which we all live. We say we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone but we always seem to add rules to that gospel. For Peter and the Judaizers the Rule Book was the Law of Moses and the social customs of Judaism, like not eating with people who were Gentiles. We all have a Rule Book and that’s not all bad - holiness matters. But when we take our human Rule Book and use it to determine whether or not a person is part of the Kingdom or not our Rule Book has become our gospel; it’s become our Scripture and it’s replaced Jesus.
We talked about the freedom that comes with living our lives consistently - consistently obedient to the Holy Spirit. If we choose to live by only one pattern or code of behavior we will become legalistic and inflexible. We may call it consistency but it can easily become legalism particularly when we expect everyone else to live by our code. If we choose to live consistently in obedience to the Holy Spirit, the Word of God and the Son of God we may change our patterns of behavior as we move through life and as the Spirit moves us to new places of service and ministry but we will enjoy a freedom from the legalism of our Rule Book and live in the freedom which the Spirit of God gives.
In Galatians chapter 3 Paul continued to argue with the Galatians against the Judaizers. Beginning with verse 1 Paul wrote,
1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.
What Paul began to do in verse one of chapter three was he began to argue with the Galatians, not with logic or even from the Scripture, he began to argue from the experience of the Galatians. What I often heard in my younger years and in my years in college was that experience was at best an untrustworthy basis on which to build my faith. Book people will tell you that if it’s not found in a book it’s not reliable. I heard of and observed people who had experiences that led them into error and all sorts of pain. Some people believed that if something felt right it must be right and had thrown away marriages and all sorts of valuable things in their lives because they allowed those experiences to guide them.
We tend to minimize personal experience in our Christian lives. We don’t quite trust that experience won’t lead us astray. The one exception seems to be on Baptism and Membership Transfer weekends. Then we are tremendously blessed and encouraged by hearing the experiences of those who are being baptized or transferring their membership to our church. We love hearing of their experiences as they confirm and as they strengthen our faith.
The curious thing is that in the rest of our lives we are usually not that persuaded by logic. In the rest of our lives we trust experience almost more than anything else. A world famous logician once said, “You will discover, in real life, that people change their views, not as a result of logical reasoning, but as a result of arguments from authorities or as a result of appeals to experience” (NIVAC - Galatians p. 147). What that logician was saying was that in our lives most often we are persuaded not by pure logic but by some recognized authority who will tell us something. That authority could be a parent, a teacher, a pastor, a friend or an authority we don’t know - “if Billy Graham says that it must be true.” Or we are persuaded by personal experience and I would add the personal experience of some other person. TV advertising rarely appeals to logic - they appeal to personal experience. To get us to buy their detergent they will quote a normal suburban mom whose son ground in grass and dirt stains into the knees of his new pants and this detergent did the impossible, it got them clean. Well, if that detergent can get those pants clean maybe it can get our little Jimmy’s pants clean as well. Or the commercial will show a pickup truck towing an impossible load up a hill past a semi-truck and then leaping a tall building before it crests the hill. In the rest of our lives those two things - authorities or personal experience - will convince us much more frequently than logic.
Then we come to our faith and we expect that logic should be enough. I’m not suggesting that our faith is illogical; it’s not. I think, in the church, we’ve come to discount personal experience too freely. Paul didn’t quote personal experience often but he did on this occasion in this passage from Galatians.
Paul said the Galatians were foolish. That word means they were without knowledge. Because of that lack of knowledge they made a bad choice. He went on to ask who had bewitched them. I’ve heard that at one time there was a show on television that was called Bewitched. Did any of you watch it? I know it’s going a long way back, before the world was in color, to the 60’s and 70’s. Does anyone remember Bewitched. The research I did told me that a mortal man married a witch. Of course since this was the older era of television this witch was good and loving. But at times she and her family would manipulate the world and cast spells on her husband which would lead him to do strange and usual things that he was powerless to change until she could be convinced to undo the spell. That’s the sort of thing Paul talked about here to the Galatians. Who had put them under a spell so that they could no longer see what, at one time, had been so very clear to them.
Paul had clearly and plainly shown the Galatians who Jesus was. He had portrayed Jesus as crucified and risen from the dead. He had clearly shown how they could come into a relationship with God through trusting Christ to forgive their sin. They had come into that relationship with God. They had experienced the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Judaizers had presented a different version of who Jesus was and Paul argued with them about which portrayal was more accurate.
Beginning with verse two Paul asked questions about the Galatians’ experience in their faith. Verse 2 says this,
2I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
Paul did not argue from abstract theology which the people wouldn’t know. Paul was a theologian and he would argue the theology at other points but at this point Paul simply wanted to know, “How did your faith experience with the Holy Spirit start? Think through your testimony. How did it happen? Did you begin to observe the Laws of Moses one day after which the Holy Spirit came to you and empowered you for life and service or did you believe in Jesus Christ at which time the Holy Spirit became active in your life? Tell me your experience. How did it all start for you?”
Paul asked the Galatians to answer from their experience when they had noticed the Holy Spirit start to be active in their lives. He asked them how their life in the Spirit all got started. Paul knew the answer to this question. It was undoubtedly the same answer for the Galatians as it was for Paul. Paul had been a hero among Judaism but the Holy Spirit only became active in his life when he chose to follow Jesus Christ.
When did the Spirit become active in our lives? Or, have we always been so frightened of the Holy Spirit that we’ve never really allowed Him to move in our lives. I would argue from my experience that the Holy Spirit has never been active in my life or in any ministry I was part of whenever they have relied on the Rule Book approach to faith. The Spirit has always started to work as we sought the face of God and prayed and pledged obedience to the Spirit of God and the Word of God and the Son of God.
Verse 3,
3Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
In verse 2 Paul asked how, in their experience, they had started their walk of faith. Here Paul asked, if they were to play the movie of their lives and watch how it would end, how would they suspect they would best finish their lives of faith? Based on previous experiences, how would they think they would best attain the goal of a continuing, eternal relationship with God. Having begun that life with the Holy Spirit, would their experience tell them that there might come a time when they wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit? Paul is asking how their experience tells them they might finish their walk of faith. Will observing the Jewish laws help that or will the Holy Spirit help that?
Verse 4,
4Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing?
When the Galatians came to faith they experienced a measure of suffering. This verse leads me to believe there was some pretty significant suffering. Having gone through that suffering were they now prepared to say that they were wrong and all their suffering had been for nothing. Was their experience with Christ and the blessing of the Holy Spirit in their lives not worth suffering for after all?
I once heard the story of a family who had joined a different religion. They were supposedly Christian but the Rule Book of this group told them among other things that they couldn’t celebrate Christmas with family and friends. It meant their kids couldn’t take part in the gift exchanges in school and couldn’t go to Christmas parties at school. All that sort of stuff. Well, eventually the founder of this particular faith group died and the next generation of leaders moved the group to a more orthodox expression of Christian faith. Now the family was free to celebrate Christmas and they did. But the children had to deal with bitterness. “Do you mean to tell me that we went through all that teasing and ridicule in school all those years for nothing?” The parents of this family had to talk long and with great remorse for what they had led them into as a family. Their suffering, it turned out, had all been for nothing.
Paul asked the Galatians if based on their experience with the suffering they had endured, were they prepared to say that they had suffered for a faith that amounted to nothing.
Finally in verse 5 Paul wrote,
5Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
Finally, Paul asked the Galatians to think of their experience with the miracles that God had done among them. How did those happen? Was it because they played by the Rule Book of Judaism or did the miracles happen because the Holy Spirit had been given to them when they trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Miracles had happened among the Galatians. We’re not told here what the miracles were. I suspect that people were probably healed miraculously. I suspect that amazing things happened in their communities and cities that could only be explained as miracles. Maybe people had food where no food had existed before. Maybe people were miraculously delivered from severe injury or even death. Jesus said His people would do even greater things than what He did (Jhn. 14:2) and those were the miracles that were happening in Galatia. Paul’s question to the Galatians was to get them to think of these experiences and examine how they had happened. Had they happened because they’d all been circumcised and remained ritually pure or had they happened because the Holy Spirit had come upon them when they believed in Jesus Christ.
This was not a Mennonite Church. In most of the Mennonite Churches where I’ve been there is a sort of unwritten policy about the Holy Spirit. The policy says that the Holy Spirit is free to move whenever He wants, so long as He’s gotten approval from Church Council first. Just come to a meeting, tell us what you want to do and we’ll more than likely be happy to get on board with most anything God wants to do. We’re freaked out by the things the Spirit does, sometimes, and to avoid being freaked out by Him we just sort of stop looking and waiting and wanting Him to act in any sort of significant way - especially in any way that may get a little out there and out of control for us. We’re okay with the internal nudge of the Spirit but not the external, demonstrative displays of the Spirit. I’m trying to learn to listen to the Spirit and I’m trying to learn to allow Him to move us and to move freely among us so that we would allow Him to do miracles here among us as well. We can fall off both sides of this roof - I know that and we’ve all seen that. We’re in no danger of falling off the Charismatic side of the roof. We need to loosen the reins and let the Spirit move more freely among us.
Paul’s point in these verses is that the Spirit comes to us when we place our Faith in Christ. He does not come to us from obedience to the Law or the the Rule Book we may have learned in our lives. The Holy Spirit does not come to us when we’re good enough or when we’ve prayed hard enough. The Holy Spirit comes to us when we trust in Christ.
I think a secondary point of Paul’s in these verses was to communicate to the Galatians as well as to the church that our experiences with Jesus and the Holy Spirit are a valuable part of our faith. Experience matters to our Faith. Experiences, if we use them correctly, can strengthen our faith. That’s partly why sharing our testimonies at baptism and membership transfer are valuable experiences. Sharing our testimonies allow us to think back on our experiences and interpret them and see what they have meant to our faith.
There are a couple of things I want to say about experiences in closing to help us use them as a valuable tool in our lives.
The first thing is this: Every experience we have is valuable. Don’t waste them. I’m often embarrassed by the really dumb things that I have done in my life. I want to just forget those dumb things I’ve done and move along so that I can get over that embarrassment. What I need to learn is to see that experience, however embarrassing it might be, as a valuable experience, an opportunity to figure out something about life or about my Christian life. Some of us are experience junkies and I’m a bit that way as well. There are certain experiences I really enjoy and I’d like to have those experiences over and over again. I once rode the highest roller coaster in the park 20 times in one day and every other major roller coaster in the park 5 times that one day. Why? Just to say I had - for the experience. What’s the value in that experience? I don’t know but it sure was cool at the time.
There’s a danger of being an experience junky when it comes to the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit moves in a significant way one week we think we can re-create that experience again the next week and so we manufacture and manipulate but nothing happens and we become frustrated. We have to allow the Spirit to move however He wills. He’s the Spirit and He does that. Sometimes we’re so insecure that unless we get a significant experience of the Spirit in a certain way we start to wonder about our faith. Even that experience of seeming non-activity by the Spirit is valuable.
Often I’ve had tough times come my way and I want to just get through that tough time and get on to what’s next, because what’s next has got to be better than this tough time. If you’ve had Kidney Stones you know what I’m talking about. They never pass too soon. Never. I find I waste those tough times. I’m learning to reflect on them and to treat them as valuable because whether I admit it or not those experiences have shaped me. All experiences shape us and, if, for no other reason than that, they are valuable.
The second thing I want to say about experiences is this: Every experience is a positive or a negative example. I have a cousin Henry, who I’m told, once said, “Everybody is a good example. Some people are a good example of what not to do and some people are a good example of what to do; but everybody is a good example.”
Every experience we have is valuable. Every experience is either positive and we can look back at it and say it was a good thing to do and we should continue that pattern - at least until the Spirit moves in a new direction. On the other hand one of our experiences might be a good example of what to never do again. If we forget and move along from a bad experience and don’t value those experiences we risk repeating mistakes over and over again.
Especially in our Christian lives we need to see our experiences with God as valuable because they can be positives that affirm a direction in our lives or they can be negatives that steer us away a direction in our lives.
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