Sermons from Tim Reed

Here’s my sermon on Galatians 4.

Here’s the audio.

Here’s the powerpoint.

 

 Galatians 4: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Matthew - Jewish writer, relates the story of the magi who were gentiles. Matthew was also a tax collecter, so chances are he was in financially difficult circumstances, and being a tax collecter made him despised by his fellow Jewish comrades. The magi were rather well off and respected in their culture.

Luke - Gentile writer, a doctor. Now, given, I don’t know what all being a doctor consisted of in the 1st century, but I have to guess it provided a decent life, and involved not a whole lot of manual labor, and probably brought some esteem with it. Luke writes about a bunch of shepherds. They were uneducated, scraped out a living, extremely blue collar and Jewish.

Each of the writers of the nativity writes about a different group visiting Jesus. And each of the writers writes about a group that is the polar opposite of what they are.

Mini-outline.
I. Luke and the Shepherds.
II. Matthew and the Magi.
III. Jesus drawing people from all backgrounds.
- The church reaching out to all people.
* Cultural backgrounds.
* Sin backgrounds.
- Unity issues within the church.

1. These non-Jewish sorcerers knew about Jesus before the vast majority of the Jewish people. They were probably top 20 out of millions.

2. They practiced non-Judaism religion and lived far far from the holy land, and yet God reached out to them.

3. Herod strong-armed everyone, why didn’t he strong-arm the magi?

This would be a sermon series based on seeming contradictions in scripture (ie lose your life to save it, first become last and last first, weak to be strong etc).

Maybe as a crowd partcipation hook having the crowd say “that makes no sense” or something along those lines after the intro of the title of each sermon would be a good way to go.

Sunday nights we’ve been going through Matthew and we’re on the visit of the magi to Jesus this week. Someone asked this question: if Herod believed in God, and believed the scriptures (which being an Edomite, and consulting priests when the magi inquire about the King of the Jews indicates he leaned that direction) then why did he act the way he did? Here he is slaughtering people to stay in power, the scriptures themselves say, “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” Its a despotic ruler that causes his subjects to be disturbed when he is disturbed.

So why did he act that way? I have a couple of ideas.
1) He just didn’t care. He was more interested in consolidating power in the here and now than in the eternal.
2) Justification. Sure what he did was wrong but it kept the Romans from wiping out the Jews.

Of course this doesn’t take into account how he expected to keep the Messiah who was sent by God from coming. I suppose after wielding power so successfully in his own service for so long you think you can make war on God Himself and win, call it the boastful pride of life. Either that or Herod thought this was yet another false messiah and wanted to keep people from getting all stirred up.