What Does Freedom Look Like?

Good evening Connection Students. Its so awesome to be with y’all tonight one last time before I move off to Athens.

So what’s our mission statement of Connection Students? (Love God, Love People, Reach the Nations). That’s right. Tonight we are gonna talk about how we do that.

So over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at what Paul wrote to the church of Galatia. In the last chapter of this letter to the Galatians we talked about how those who have accepted Jesus in their heart as their Lord and Savior are no longer slaves to sin, but are children of God. Today we’re gonna be talking about what that freedom should look like.

Today we’ll be in Galatians 5 and we’re gonna start by talking about verses 1 through 12.

Galatians 5:1–12 (NIV)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

Don’t think you are saved by the good things you do

Something Paul has really been trying to get the Galatians to understand is that the only way to be saved is to put your faith in Jesus as your savior. You see we, as humans, are naturally sinners. Unfortunately its just what we do. So we could never save ourselves by being pure because we can’t not sin. You may remember earlier in the book of Galatians Paul was writing that you are not saved by your “good works”. But in this passage, he is addressing the Galatians that are claiming that you have to be circumcised to be saved.

Back in the old testament, one of the commands that God gave to Abraham is to circumcise every male that is born. And if they’re not circumcised, they’ll no longer be part of His people. But when Jesus died and rose again, this covenant wasn’t necessary anymore. Yet people were still preaching that you have to be circumcised to be saved.

One of the most difficult habits the 12 apostles had to break in the church was the idea that something else other than faith in Jesus will save you. This was probably because the Jews used sacrifices of animals as offerings for their sins. Believe it or not, we struggle with this so much today as well.

How many of you have thought or said that to grow in your relationship with God, you need to be a better person? THIS IS NOT TRUE. To grow in your relationship with God, you need to be in His word, you need to be in prayer, you need to spend time with Him, and as you grow in your relationship with Him, He will make you a better person. He will mend and mold your heart to be more like His.

The relationship leads to growth, and the growth leads to obedience.

Later in the passage, Paul addresses the dangers of false teaching. He brings up a metaphor that is used pretty often throughout the Bible. Leaven, or yeast is a commonly used as a metaphor for sin. When the Israelites were delivered from Egypt and wandering the wilderness in the book of Exodus, God blessed them with unleavened bread. This period is actually what brought about the passover feast. In the new testament, when Jesus has His last passover with the disciples, He holds up some unleavened bread and said “this is my body,” essentially saying that He is without sin.

So here, Paul is saying that a little deception can work through an entire local church and cause false doctrines to become the normal.

Now let’s take a look at the second half of the chapter...

Galatians 5:13–26 (NIV)

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Use the freedom that God has given you to walk by the Spirit

The last time we met, we learned that as we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are no longer slaves to sin, but children of God. AJ said that before we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are bound by sin. And Jesus gives us the freedom to no longer be bound by this sin.

As Americans, we are given certain rights and are free to do much of what we please. And we are given a choice to use these freedoms to do good for others or to leverage that freedom to take advantage of others. In the same way, Jesus has given us the freedom from sin to walk by the Spirit and no longer be bound by our sin. We can either use this freedom to commit the acts of the flesh or to walk by the Spirit. Serving and loving others is the route to be free from the bondage of sin.

But this isn’t something that God has called us to just so we can be free from the bondage of sin. God hasn’t called you to do good because you are supposed to do good, He has called you to do good because it is glorifying to Him and it is good for you.

So how can we use the freedom that God has given us to walk by the Spirit? Here in this passage we see that all these fruits of the Spirit fall under this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This means we will have to turn away from the desires of the flesh. It says in verse 17 that the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, so this means that as we walk by the Spirit, we will continue to turn away from the desires of the flesh.

So lets talk about the desires of the flesh. We see in verse 19, the first of the desires of the flesh are sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery. These include having sex out of wedlock, pornography, adultery, and the list goes on. Now scripture says that no one sin is greater than another unless you are blaspheming the name of God, but these three things are extremely common today and I’m glad they’re first here because these sins need to be emphasized.

As I’ve lived my life, the sin I’ve seen most common in everyone’s lives is sexual immorality. Sexual immorality is a huge problem in our world and seems to be getting worse with pornography becoming more accessible and the ideology of the marriage becoming less sacred. And it goes hand in hand with impurity and debauchery. We need to be on guard to not give in to any sin, but I feel we need to put an extra emphasis on not giving into the lusts of the flesh because of how ingrained it is into our culture today.

The next two things Paul focuses on is idolatry and witchcraft. Before this past weekend, I would not have had near the amount of understanding on this topic that I do now. When we went to Engage Global last weekend, we saw the darkness that existed amongst these cultures that live across the world. We saw people essentially worshipping demons because they thought they were spirits they needed to appease to keep living. Guys we truly saw the bondage of sin. People would buy these artifacts, burn incense, and even pray to these demons to appease them so they could continue living their life. And the thing that breaks my heart even more is that even though we live in a christianized culture, we still struggle with this ourselves.

How much more time do we spend watching tv and playing video games than with God? How much more time do we spend with our friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends than with God? How often do we sing the praises of a famous actor, athlete, or influencer more than we sing praises to God. Christians even often lift up teachers, preachers, and christian artists more often than we lift up God. This is idolatry!

Paul also addresses selfishness. Notice though that he said “selfish ambition” and not “selfishness” here. So he is saying it is not only a bad thing to hurt someone else for your own gain, but it is also a bad thing to do something with the wrong motives. A viewpoint many christians have these days is if they tithe to the church they will receive money for all of their wants. And while it is true that God will provide for your needs as long as you are faithfully following Him, that new video game, those shoes you really want, or a new phone is not really a need. Yet many people give to the church expecting to receive this great abundance of money in return. Yes, God gives blessings, but this isn’t the right reason to give. And the sad thing is, the enemy is giving these things to them and allowing this selfish version of the Gospel to become normalized.

Another common sin I see that is often overlooked is dissensions, or division. I see this happen often even among leaders in various churches. This is basically anything that causes division between one another. One example of this that is a big problem is gossip. People are quick to talk bad about others nowadays and it can cause division in the church.

Paul also mentions envy. How often have you looked at something your friend had and wished you had it? God calls us to be grateful with what we have.

So we’ve been talking about the desires of the flesh, but now lets talk about the fruits of the Spirit...

I believe love is first here in the fruits of the Spirit for a reason. What do y’all think that reason would be?

1 John 4:16 says, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” And 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” So our greatest commandment is love. What’s our mission statement again?

Paul then goes on to say that walking by the Spirit leads to a joyful life, a peaceful life, tolerance of others, kindness towards others, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Did you know God has called you to live a joyful life? This doesn’t mean it’ll always be easy. There’ll be some difficult times ahead, but God says no matter what, everything will be okay. Because as long as you are saved by the blood of Jesus, you will be in Heaven making a joyful noise for all eternity. You see joy doesn’t come from what is going on in your life. Joy comes from where you run to NO MATTER what is going on in your life. Let me challenge you with this. What are you running to in your life when things get hard? Are you running to food? Are you running to a person? Are you running to sexual sin? If you want joy and peace in your life, you should always be running to God. No matter if you’re in the good times or bad.

I want to talk about self-control for a moment. You see self-control doesn’t just apply to sexual immorality. If someone has complete control over their own fleshly desires, they can choose to never do any of the sins listed in this passage. Yet self-control is just one fruit of the Spirit. So you cannot have complete control over one sin and have no control over another sin. We do still have sins we struggle with more, but using self-control in other areas of our life will also help us to have control over the areas we struggle with the most.

Call up worship team…

Application

[LAMP ILLUSTRATION]

I want to show you why this is important. Have you ever used your phone to reflect the light of the sun on the wall? So I used to think that we functioned as children of God in the same way. I used to think that God’s light shined on to us and we reflected His light on those around us. But I’ve come to realize this is wrong.

Now I’m gonna turn on this lamp and turn off the light. (Turn on lamp and turn off light). You see how the light of this lamp shines in this room?

It isn’t incorrect that God uses us to shine His light on to others. But His light doesn’t reflect off of us, His light shines through us. God’s Spirit lives in You and when you accept Him in your heart as your Lord and Savior, you become the light as He shines through you. And not only that, but as you grow in your relationship with Him and you walk by the Spirit, these fruits of the Spirit will be seen in what you do and God’s light will shine brighter through you.

So you can’t reflect God’s light on to specific people around you, but as you are walking by the Spirit, His light will radiate around you and it will expose the darkness in the heart of those around you.

Now you don’t save people, God saves people. But the first step of salvation is knowing that you are a sinner and have darkness in your heart. So God uses you to shine His light on to others so that they may see they are a sinner and need the light of God shining in and through them, and if it is His will He will give them that light also. But you have to be willing to not be ashamed of God and allow His light to shine bright through you.

The Gospel

So for those who have realized they don’t have God’s light shining through their hearts tonight, I ask that you don’t leave here without accepting Jesus in your heart as your Lord and Savior. And let me tell you why. We need the sun. The sun gives us energy so that we may grow and stay alive. But without the sun, we and everything on the earth would die. It is the same with God’s light. If you don’t have God’s light in your heart, your spirit will die. When your physical body dies, your spirit will be damned for eternity in hell and be considered dead. I can promise you that I, AJ, and every leader here at Connection doesn’t want that for you. We want to lock arms with you in heaven and praise God for all eternity with you beside us. But you can’t do that without accepting Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior.

Jesus is the son of God that came to this earth to die for your sins. So if you accept that He died for you and put your faith and trust in Him, you will have that light, otherwise known as the Holy Spirit, in your heart.

Now your life will not be easy. When the darkness of your heart is exposed and you decide to live by the Spirit, you will be convicted of those things we talked about earlier. It will hurt emotionally and spiritually when you do those things. So when you commit sexual immorality through having sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend or watching pornography, hold other things before God through idolatry, hate another person, be jealous of another person, go into a fit of rage, have selfish motives, cause division, get drunk, envy what others have, and the list goes on, you will feel convicted of that. But God will forgive you as long as you ask for it.

Now I want to challenge those who may have thought they accepted Jesus as their Savior, but they now realize they don’t have that light and are not walking by the Spirit. I can tell you with confidence that if you do not feel convicted about those things we just talked about and are not walking by the Spirit and get in a car accident when you leave here without truly giving your life to God, you will be damned for eternity in hell. But you don’t have to be. You can have that light right now.