Galatians 5:17,18 - If you are led by the Spirit

5:17

The flesh and the Spirit are opposed to each other. As mentioned in my comments on 5:13, the flesh is referring not just to overtly sinful desires. Our whole human nature is opposed to the Spirit. Living by the flesh means making ourselves king or lord, and whatever desires and aims we may claim to have, may even truly believe that we do have, we will end up opposing God, opposing the Spirit. And if we seek to live by Law we are making ourselves lord, for we are saying I can do what is right, I can live righteously by my own efforts. We cannot. The flesh will subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, lead us to do the opposite of what God wants. “There is a way that seems right to man, but it leads only to death” (Prov 14:12).

5:18

If we live by law we will find that it is our flesh that is in control, our flesh is corrupted and even though we might want to do what is right we will inevitably end up going against God. Instead we need to be “led by the Spirit”. If we led by the Spirit then we are not “under the law”. Now this does not mean that the Law is wrong nor that it does not matter, for it expresses the heart of God, it tells us much of what is right and wrong. It means that we are not living by the principle of being under the Law. Ie here are the rules, now go and get on with it. We are not able to “get on with it”, we need the Holy Spirit.

Malachi - Introduction

Introduction

This is the last of the books in our Bible. It was probably written about 450 BC give or take twenty years. It was written after the second temple had been completed. But although the temple had been rebuilt, the nation was far from enjoying much of the promises and blessings spoken of in the various prophets. Politically, the Persian and Greek kingdoms were vying with each other for superiority. In this situation there was a world-weary cynicism about religion, and it is into this situation that Malachi speaks.

It is worth looking at an outline of the chronology of the return from exile:

538 BC - 50 000 Jews return from Babylon

519 BC - second temple completed, with the ministries of Haggai and Zechariah playing a key role.

457 BC - Ezra arrives and applies the Law to the province.

444 BC - Nehemiah arrives as its governor and administers the building of the walls.

431 BC - after a period pack in Persia, Nehemiah returns to be governor again.

Malachi means “my messenger” or “my angel”. Obviously the former applies in this case, the two possible meanings arise because angels are messengers. There is debate over whether this is a general term, or whether it refers to a specific individual. The former is supported by the lack of any personal details or genealogy concerning Malachi, and there being no one else by that name in the Bible. However, the latter is still the most likely.

The book focuses on a personal relationship with God, a deep relationship with Him.

Galatians 5:14-16 - Walk by the Spirit

5:14,15

These verses confirm that backbiting was happening. The Judaisers were claiming that by following their way the Galatians would be following the Law and so pleasing God. In reality the exact opposite would be happening. Paul quotes one of the two greatest commandments, and note that it is the second one, loving each other. And he says that the heart of the Law is loving each other. Now this does not mean we can do what we like as long as “love” each other, if we break God commands we are not loving each other, no matter what we might claim. It is a key feature of Paul’s theology, especially in Romans, that it is only by trusting in Christ that we truly fulfil the Law. That is true in “theological” terms (ie we are justified through Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us), but it is also true in practical terms. It is only if we live by faith in Christ that we will love God better and love each other better.

5:16

In understanding the last part of Galatians we need to appreciate the situation. Galatia was not Corinth. In Corinth all sorts of sins were on the go, that does not seem to be the case in Galatia. Rather it was a matter of a church wanting to please God, wanting to resist sin, but going about it in the wrong way. They thought that living by the Law would help them “not gratify the desires of the flesh”, when in fact it would do the complete opposite. It is only by living by the Spirit that enables us to “not gratify the desires of the flesh”.

Zechariah 14:16-21 - Holy to the Lord

14:16,17

The end result will be that all the nations will worship the Lord. It is significant the the Lord of Hosts is seen as the king. This reminds us of Phil 2:5-11 where it speaks of every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord. We find the Feast of Booths in Deut 16:13-17. All nations were allowed to come to this, and it was closely associated with the Lord blessing the harvest, hence the reference in v17 to those who refused to come not receiving any rain.

14:18,19

So Egypt is singled out as receiving punishment if she does not honour the Lord. She is seen as emblematic of what will happen to the nations. So why is Egypt singled out? It is because Egypt was not actually that dependent upon rain for her harvest, the flooding of the Nile that was crucial for her. So God is making it clear that there is no escape for Egypt. She could not say “we can survive without rain”.

14:20,21

We see here everything being devoted to the Lord, even the most ordinary of vessels. The words Holy to the Lord were engraved on the plate of gold word on the turban of the high priest. The aim was that everything in Israel was consecrated to the Lord, and at the end of days this will eventually become true. The reference to Canaanites is not racist, indeed some translations have “trader” (eg ESV). They were representative of those who made excessive profits out of worshippers. This helps to explain Jesus’ anger at the presence of money changers in the temple.

Galatians 5:11-13 - You were called to freedom

5:11,12

Paul was not afraid to use earthy language! It seems that the troublemakers were saying that Paul actually preached circumcision. Paul points out that if that was the case then the Jews would have no cause whatsoever to object to him and he would not be persecuted. At this time most of the persecution came from the Jews. Paul then closes this section by saying he would wish the agitators would castrate themselves! It isn’t always right to be nice about people!

5:13

So far Paul has been emphasising the freedom that we have in Christ, but there is a danger and he now addresses this danger. The danger is that we think, “I’m free, I’m forgiven, I can do what I like”. Our sinful nature will twist God’s grace into an excuse or a licence to sin. This happened in the early church, and happens at every stage in Christian history.  But we must not use our freedom to indulge the flesh. Older versions of the NIV (and some other versions) translated “flesh” as “sinful nature”, this is misleading. Flesh refers more widely to our human nature (which the Good News Bible used, and is actually a much better translation of the Greek word sarx). As Paul explains in Romans 8, we must not live by the flesh, but by the Spirit. If we do live by the flesh it will lead to what we think of as overtly sinful things (as listed in 5:19-21), but that is not all. It is impossible to please God if live by the flesh, including things that are not overtly sinful. For instance, if we live by the flesh we will be governed by fear and cannot please God. Look at the life of David. There were two major sin incidents in his life. One was what fits our natural conception of what living by the flesh means. This is when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had Bathsheba’s husband killed. He was motivated by illicit sexual desires. We have no problem with seeing this as sinful. The second incident, however, is quite different. This is when David counted the fighting men. This second incident was counted as equally serious by God, yet to us it seems a small thing, certainly not meriting the judgement that came. But David was acting out of the flesh, rather than trusting in God.

The freedom we are given in Christ is the freedom to be the people that God made us to be, people who love and serve Christ, and, as focused on here, humbly serve each other. When people start living by Law one of things that happens is that we become competitive, seeing each other as rivals, or looking down on each other, trying to prove ourselves better than others. It seems that this is what was happening in Galatia.

Zechariah 14:12-15 - A panic from the Lord will fall on the people

14:12

So the outlook for God’s people is rosy, but for the enemies of Jerusalem it is very bleak. This destruction that will come upon them is very grim indeed, and for us we can think of it in terms of the after effects of a nuclear war, or some deadly virus or nerve agent. In Zechariah’s time there was, of course, no nuclear weapons, but the flaying of the skin, the gouging out of eyes and cutting out of the tongue were all known of by victors over the vanquished. In this case it seems to happen by plague or some other means.

14:13-15

The enemies of Jerusalem will be seized with panic from the Lord and will start to attack one another. “Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem”. The text is ambiguous about whether or not Judah is fighting with or against Jerusalem. The wider context of Zechariah would seem to imply she must fight with, rather than against. The wealth of all the surrounding nations would come to Israel, this reverses the situation described in 14:1. The animals too would be stricken with plague, so no one could escape.

Galatians 5:9,10 - A little leaven

5:9

It might be thought that a little wrong teaching does not matter, but in some cases what starts off as a seemingly small error starts to infect everything and causes major problems. Of course, we can can go to the other extreme and start pouncing on every little point of disagreement as a major doctrinal error. We need to recognise what matters and what doesn’t.

5:10

Paul has been very forthright in what he has been saying, even so he expects, or at least hopes, that the Galatians will realise the truth of what he has been saying. It appears that there was one person who was the source of all the trouble, though Paul, apparently does not know who that person was. Paul is clear that whoever they are, they will have to pay the penalty. It is not clear whether he is thinking of a church imposed discipline, or judgement from God. Whatever the case, the key point is that God is no respecter of persons. So they do not need to fear if the trouble maker is an apparently “important” person. This may be part of the reason why back in the first two chapters Paul went on about not caring about whether or not someone was “important”, it was the truth of the gospel that mattered.