Thursday, August 23, 2018

I heard a sermon once, years ago, on the first chapter of Galations.  The preacher rewrote the first few verses to read like this:  You stupid Galations!!  Who has put the double whammy on you so that you can't think straight.  

You would probably have to be my age to know what he was talking about.  There was a comic strip in the newspaper called "Lil Abner."  And one of the characters in the strip was an evil dude.  His name was Evil Eye Fleegle.  Evil Eye Fleegle would point one finger at someone that he wanted to demolish, cast his evil eye on that person and lay them low. 

But when Evil Eye Fleegle put both of his eyes on a person and pointed two fingers at them, this was a double whammy. The only person who could withstand not just a single whammy but a double whammy was Mammy Yokum, Li'l Abner Yokum's wizened old mother. She would whirl and spin and totter around, but still be standing when Evil Eye Fleegle tried to lay her low with a double whammy."  So Paul's statement to the Galations, "You stupid Galations!!  Who has put the double whammy on you so that you can't think straight," was a comparison that people my age would understand.

Paul must have been horribly disappointed to find that the people he had led to Christ had been so quickly turned from the truth of the gospel.  Diverted from the simple story of Christ's death, resurrection and intervention through his payment for sin with his blood--to a story that said there was something they could do for themselves to be saved.  

There is a hymn that says: "Jesus paid it all.  All to him I owe.  Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow."  That sums it up. 

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