The Alien Message

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“…the number-one rule of acting is, ‘Do not seek approval from the audience.’ People don’t realize that. You can’t do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.”

~Chadwick Boseman (1976-2020), award-winning actor

When we “think we are most free, we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture. For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our private selves.”

~Robert Bellah (1927-2013), UC Berkley professor of sociology

“Christianity is the only major faith built entirely around a single historical claim. It is, however, a claim quite unlike any other ever made, as any perceptive and scrupulous historian must recognize. Certainly, it bears no resemblance to the vague fantasies of witless enthusiasts or to the cunning machinations of opportunistic charlatans…. [For Saul of Tarsus] it is the report of a man who had never known Jesus before the crucifixion, and who had once persecuted Jesus’ followers, but who also believed that he had experienced the risen Christ, with such shattering power that he too preferred death to apostasy. And it is the report of countless others who have believed that they also—in a quite irreducibly personal way—have known the risen Christ.”

~David Bentley Hart, philosopher and scholar, in The Atheist Delusion

“God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life to only the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to fools. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched…. Therefore, no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God’s material, and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite.”

~Martin Luther (1483-1546), German reformer

“Like wheat and tares, true ideas and false ideas have grown together throughout church history, and it’s up to faithful Christians to be watchful and diligent to compare every idea with the Word of God and see if it lines up.”

~Alisa Childers in her book Another Gospel?

“We need the gospel…. We need the life-giving, identity-establishing, purpose-defining gospel of Jesus Christ.”

~Eric Mason, Philadelphia-based pastor

SERMON PASSAGE

Galatians 1:1-5, 11-24 (NASB)

1 Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead), 2 and all the brethren who are with me,

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.

6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

13 For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; 14 and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased 16 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

18 Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20  (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; 23 but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they were glorifying God because of me.