The scripture reading this morning is taken from the New Testament letter of Paul to the Galatians. I invite you to turn with me to Galatians chapter 6. As you're turning there, you, I'm sure, are aware that this was a letter written to address the error of a group of very conservative Jewish Christians, Many of them probably of Pharisaic background who insisted upon the observance of all the ceremonies of the Mosaic law, circumcision and dietary laws, etc. Feast days in order that that may also be a part of their righteousness before God. Paul writes to address that other gospel, which is not really a gospel at all. Galatians 6. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you may also be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions, and then he can take pride in himself without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives instruction in the Word must share all good things with his instructor. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. And now verses 11 to the end of this chapter are the text we consider this morning. See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand. Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised, that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. This truly is the word of the Lord. And I invite you to keep this passage open as we consider together this morning. In the congregation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, when the Apostle Paul says in verse 17 that he already bears the marks of Jesus, we get the impression that from very earliest days of his own apostolic ministry, the Apostle Paul got bruised and injured or marked from the conflict that inevitably arose with the coming of the kingdom of God. And as that encountered, first of all, Jewish opposition and later, of course, Gentile opposition. For this letter to the Galatians is probably one of Paul's earliest letters. one of his first letters that he writes to the many churches and Christians of his day and age. And already, therefore, early in his ministry, he has been nicked, marked, bruised, beaten for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. We all know that conflict can bring some strange rewards. In my own state of Indiana, where I live now, I occasionally see a license plate in which it says on their Purple Heart. And I know that the owner of that vehicle is a man or possibly a woman who has been injured in conflict, stood the test, received a wound, and was rewarded and awarded a medal and colored ribbon to say that they endured injury for the sake of the defense of this country. Or maybe closer to home. In a good schoolyard fist fight during recess, the opponent lands a nice blow on the face and you go home with a nice black eye and you boast about what you got or boast about what you gave. Well, mom is not always pleased, but conflict brings injury. Conflict brings wounds. And sometimes we even boast about what we receive. Well, may Christians boast. Paul says that they may, but for only one reason. May I never boast except in this, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's consider Galatians 6, the verses 11 through 18 this morning. Under this theme, even bruised, we can boast in the cross. And let's consider these thoughts together. First of all, how Paul talks about those who are ashamed of the cross. Then about being crucified at the cross, bruised because of the cross, and finally, blessed through the cross. Even if you are bruised, congregation, maybe even because you are bruised for your faith, you may boast in the cross. Paul is, of course, near the end of this letter. More than likely, Paul had dictated his letter to some secretary or assistant, a scribe perhaps, and now he adds his own words. It receives a personal touch from the apostle himself. Possibly like when you send out a card to someone you attach, members of the families may attach their own personal notes. Well, that's what Paul is doing here. Verse 11 says he's adding a few lines, his signature, and he writes with large letters. Again, we cannot be exactly sure why he writes with large letters. Possibly his eyesight was poor. Possibly it may be to draw attention to these final remarks. Maybe his hand had been injured and writing was difficult. We cannot be sure, but in any case, the Apostle takes writing instrument into hand. And he pens what are these last words, these last jabs at the Judaizers who are teaching that circumcision is a necessary practice in the Christian life, the observance of the feast days, the dietary laws of Moses, so that we might, through these things, as well as belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, commend ourselves as God's holy and righteous people. Paul comes out in all honesty to say what he thinks of these people, that they were troubling the Galatians, that they were teaching a different gospel, a different gospel, not just a variation of the one and only gospel, but a totally different gospel, which was not a gospel at all. He considers them to be fearful. He thinks of them as inconsistent and insincere. They want to put on a good show in the flesh. They want to make a great impression outwardly. Now, why would that be? To the Gentiles, the practice of circumcision was considered to be a very severe tattoo. But, if you are straight-laced, conservative, orthodox, Pharisaic, Jew, and now you come into Christianity, they might be quite impressed. Because even Pharisees would sail the many seas, sail the Mediterranean, to find those synagogues where Gentile God-fearers were worshipping and urge them to take that final step, not only follow the moral laws of Moses, but to take that final step and undergo the ceremony of circumcision. Because then they could count numbers. Numbers, statistics, how many souls walk forward and put their all on the altar and now we're embracing all that God's Word taught. Circumcision, you see, was a gateway to the covenant. To the covenant that God made with Abraham and Moses and God's people. And so these Judaizers in the church were pressing this, these practices upon new Christians. Now, I suppose there were some Judaizers who did this out of sincere motives. But look at verse 12. Paul strongly implies that they are neither genuine nor are they sincere. Braggarts, windbags, boasting, not in Jesus Christ, not in his cross, but in circumcision, the cutting of flesh. And so Paul in verse 12 denounces their motives. Now, as I said, some may have had good motives, misdirected, but they were sincere in their motives. But many Judaizers were not. Forcing circumcision in order to avoid, avoid, get away from persecution for the cross of Christ. Because they knew they were coming under intense pressure from other Jews, especially Jews who were not Christians. So Paul is basically saying they're cowards, they're chickens. running around, ashamed of the cross, afraid of getting bruised and marked and nicked because of what Jesus Christ has done. Glorying, boasting, empty. But he also denounces their actions in verse 13. Consider, they insist that circumcision, a fairly minor Jewish ceremony of the law, be kept. But they themselves were not actually observing the law. Our Lord laid His finger on that when He said, You Pharisees tithe. You keep that meticulously. But you miss justice and mercy, the weightier matters of the law. Paul says, they insist on one thing, but they don't even keep the law. Therefore, in their actions, these Judaizers are hypocrites, straining out gnats, watching for the mosquitoes, but swallowing camels whole. For if the Jews do not keep the whole law, why drag Gentiles into it, forcing compliance with a ceremony? What has gone wrong? Is it possibly because the Jewish community had a strange kind of secularism? Now, what do I mean when I say that? Well, in which life, which is of one piece, life, which is of one piece, gets cut into sections and areas, and religion is one area. And therefore, since you reduce it to only one area, you take that area and make it also important. Which is why for some Christians, all right, if religion is only one small corner of my life, I will doll it up. We'll have elaborate and gaudy worship services, pageants, color, smells, actions. And we might link that with some personal habits. We'll try to clean up our personal morality. We'll say quickie prayers at mealtimes. Lord bless us, food and drink, for Jesus' sake, amen. Prayers that bounce off ceilings because they never pass through the heart or arise from truly thankful lives. We might even promote traditional values. I'm not sure what tradition they're talking about, but I get mailings in my mailbox asking me to support traditional values. I'm not sure what they mean. And that's Christianity. To be a good and moral person who once in a while attends worship services that are pageants. But then, the claim of the King, Jesus, For political life, and educational life, and business life, and entertainment. That's all shoved aside. Business is business, you know. Keep Christ out of that area. Keep Christ out of every area except personal behavior, church worship services. Keep your religion in the closet. Is that what had affected the Pharisees? Is it this idea that attention to meticulous rules commends us, justifies us, makes us look good, not only to our neighbors, but actually makes us look better to God? Whatever it was, Christianity without the cross is Christianity without Christ. christianity without the whole cross of the lord jesus christ is not christianity it becomes then a secular show a place where people can hide in order to be to avoid being persecuted for the cause of king jesus our lord and savior who died and rose again for us. What then is your boast if your religion has become nothing more than personal traits coupled with gaudy services? Many Christians mean well, but they are afraid when they encounter people who make it uncomfortable that we are the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior the Son of God the mediator who died and rose again I've had the experience and I'm sure many of you have as well how do we feel when those people at the workplace find out that we are Christians that we claim to follow the Lord Jesus Christ that is our hope that is our confidence we believe in him and you can sense that they're very uncomfortable maybe even angry. Will they treat me differently? Will they make fun of me, pester me, ignore me, bypass me in promotion? What? Freedom-loving Americans can be quite intolerant, very intolerant when Christianity tries to make itself heard in our land. Keep it private in your closet. That's where we can tolerate you. In Israel today, Jews who acknowledge and come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah will be persecuted by other Jews. Their property will be damaged. Their children will have stones thrown at them. They may be beaten by other children. In many Muslim countries today, many Muslim countries, when a Christian is baptized, that's the defining moment to his Muslim family and friends. They may very well disown him. The police will watch him or her. They may even lose their life. I once asked an Egyptian Christian. Now, Egypt is, among many countries, relatively tolerant of its Christian minorities. But I asked, what would happen if a Muslim student were to leave Egypt, come to some Western country, and on the university campus where he or she studied, would become a believer, and then would go back to Egypt? I asked, what would happen to him or her? I was told, they will kill him. They will kill her. No, not the government arresting them and executing them as an official act of government, but the people who are opposed to that, to us, to the faith of Christ, will kill them. You see, many Arab Christians then are not baptized, or they fear it. They avoid persecution and being bruised. But how many of you here in Escondido would have come to church this morning if it were against the law of California or the United States? Would we have so quickly gathered if we knew that police were parked in certain spots watching who comes to take down license numbers and get photographs of those of us who assemble here? I don't mean to point at our brothers and sisters who undergo persecution in other lands. The freedom that we have is a freedom we take for granted. Christianity, reformed Christianity, is not for cowards, it is not for weaklings. Because weaklings cannot boast in the cross. And the reason that Paul dares to say and dares to commend to us the boasting in the cross of Christ is because of what the cross is. It is a stumbling block to Jews. It is foolishness to Gentiles. Because on the surface it appears that a very good rabbi from a village called Nazareth met his end. And his movement died. For it's like a hangman's gallows, the electric chair, lethal injection, the cross. The cross, it speaks of failure and defeat. And according to God's Word, it declares that whoever hangs on that cross has been cursed of God. And yet there's glory there. There's glory. The cross was the great circumcision of our sin and death through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it represents God's judgment on your sins and my sins. On your fears and rebellions and our cowardice. It is God's awesome justice. It is that cross in which Paul will boast, in which he will glory. It's a killer, verse 14. Because it sees the death of Christ, but more than that, it sees the death of the world to us and the death of us to the world. Three deaths. Christ's death. The death of the world. The death of us to that world. How can that be? Paul desires the world about as much as a person could desire a carcass rotting for two weeks around his neck. Because Paul's life is so governed, so controlled, so ruled by the cross, that the sinful world no longer holds any charms for him. Paul had been, you remember, a faultless, observant of Moses. A Pharisee, observant of the law. But no longer. No longer. It's like this. Imagine the richest man in the world giving up all of his possessions and all that he owns in order to live in the humblest, dingiest, smallest little apartment and is perfectly content. The world would consider that to be crazy. Makes no sense. The sinful world must consider us dead. They take one look at us, Christians, and think, What a bunch of deadbeats. They never want to do anything. In the Roman Empire already, in the days of the Roman Empire, the pagan world observed Christians and considered them to be dead. They are apathetic. They don't go rushing off to the Colosseum to watch the games. They're not interested in pursuing dishonest money, lots of property and pleasure as the world defines it. The Christians shunned the vain philosophies of their day. They rejected the public religion. They would not burn incense to the Caesars. What the world considered to be important and the avenues of advancement, the Christians rejected and turned their back on it. And what the world rejected, like their children, like the poor, the world the Christians gave attention to, embraced and raised according to the will of God. What causes this? Good Friday causes this. Easter morning causes this. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. An execution spot that sees our Lord go through hell for you. But not only that. The cross and resurrection, the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, brings to an end once and for all the old order of things. We can't go back there. And it introduces the new order of things. The Kingdom of God in which love and joy and peace and patience and kindness marks those who have been engrafted into the cross, into the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross puts to death the old order. And therefore, we are dead to that old order. And that old order is dead to us. If that be the case, if that's the power and the reality of the cross, then tell me, you can see this yourself, what's a greater cause for boasting? The cross with its ability and its reality of a whole new order of things through Christ? or cutting flesh. For the Christian, there can be no choice. The answer is obvious. There is no comparison. If you want to boast, and you may, it is only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. But then, in the third place, we are bruised at the cross. What I mean is this, that to claim the cross, That is to say, to claim Christ as your only way of salvation and the only means of holiness will endanger your life. It did for Paul. If you boast in the cross, you will offend people. You really will. Now, we don't want to be offensive. We are called to live as much as within us lies at peace with all men. But at the cross, that is, if Christ is the only way to new life, with God and the only door to a new creation. And if you value your life in any way, then you stick close to Christ, His cross. Come what may, beatings, bruises, maybe even your life. Again, think of Paul. When Paul preached in the city of Lystra, which was close to the Galatian churches, influential Jews stirred up so much trouble against Paul, that they stoned him and left him for dead. Let no one trouble Paul. He said, don't bother me. I bear in my own bodies, my body, the marks, the stigmas of Jesus. He's carrying on his body those very things. Verse 17 tells us, Judaizers boasted of flesh, big deal, means nothing if the heart and that the life are not converted by the power of the Spirit. Paul, as a Jew, yes, he was circumcised on the eighth day as a good Jew. No one can criticize him for that. But for Paul, the concern with all those ceremonies, the sheddings of blood, it's all over. The new order has come. The new reality has come in Jesus Christ. His own body, Mark's and Nick's, shows that he is Jesus' man, you know, during the Middle Ages. And even to this modern times, there are some mystics who claim that on their body, blood oozes in their hand, their feet, and their side. The stigmas. St. Francis of Assisi reportedly had them. The Bible doesn't talk about that. It doesn't mean that. The Christian stigmas are those bruises and those wounds that we willingly suffer and we are prepared to endure because we know deep in our soul that our life belongs to Christ, that He purchased for us with His own shed blood on the cross. That's why Christians always have this mysterious, is that the right word? the mysterious sharing in the sufferings of Christ. His own would not receive him. And he said, if they hated me first, they will hate you as well. Do you expect society to love you and understand you if they are the ones who have crucified our Lord, the Lord of glory, the Savior of the world? This is why in history there have been Christian husbands deserted by unbelieving wives. And there have been Christian wives who have been beaten and bruised by husbands because their wives took a stand for the Lord Jesus Christ. Christian children scorned and ridiculed by unbelieving parents. Christians who will lose their jobs, not be hired, not be promoted, because they will not compromise in terms of their stance as believers in the workplace. You see, if Christians compromised or treated their faith as just a nice, little, comfortable, glorious corner kept in a closet, the world will never bother you. But if the cross determines your life, if Christ determines your whole existence, and He must, then when you boast in the cross and let its shadow fall across your life, you will then be persecuted. For as Paul says to Timothy, all those who seek to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, rejected, and bruised. We sing so easily that wonderful hymn, Jesus, keep me near the cross. But I'm afraid, brothers and sisters, that the cross of Christ and its killing nature is often covered over by a lot of pietistic sentimentality that hides the truth of the cross and its power. Therefore, to sing that hymn, Jesus, keep me near the cross. Don't sing it lightly, thoughtlessly at all. The Judaizers would keep the cross at arm's length. But we cannot. Because in the Gospel we learn that it has introduced, that Christ has brought about the new creation. Circumcision doesn't mean anything anymore. Uncircumcision is meaningless. What counts, says Paul, is a new creation of which we are a part. Therefore, we remember our Lord's words even before He went to the cross. In this world you will have tribulation. But cheer up. Rejoice. Boast, I have overcome this world. Then he goes to the cross for us, for you. For you. For you, that you might find real and everlasting life. Real blessing in the cross. We will boast, congregation, because we know that our blessing, the benediction of the peace and mercy that belongs to all the true Israel of God, comes through Him who died and rose again that we might have life, more than that, life in all of its abundance. Are you afraid ever? I am. But I look to the cross, to Christ crucified for me. Ever troubled by persistent sins and temptations and the burdens of living, you look to Christ who understands, made like us in every way, A high priest who sympathizes with us in all of our weaknesses. Your life lacks power? We again look to the cross where it puts to death that old order. And through the Spirit, the new reality begins to take shape in our lives. A new creation comes from God by His grace in Christ at the cross. At the cross. Boast? You must boast. You may boast in the cross because though beaten, though bruised, there we are safe. There we are forever blessed. This is good news. Amen. Let's pray. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the work that Jesus Christ undertook so that your people, your church, gathered here and gathered in many places around this world, might be strengthened by grace, strengthened by what your Son has done for us. May we, O Lord, be filled with that great joy of the Gospel, but also a profound and wonderful love and loyalty and affection for your dear Son, our Savior, our sympathetic High Priest, who not only brings the sacrifice, he is the sacrifice for all of our sins and has delivered us from the grip and power and shame of hell. Bless us, O Lord, in that gospel. For Jesus' sake, amen.