Sermon Tone Analysis

Fight for Freedom: fight Legalism

Title: Freedom: Apart from the Law

Text:

CIT: Every Christian should live in freedom by avoiding the dangers of legalism.

Proposition:

Interrogative: Why?

Unifying Word: dangers

Major Objective:

Specific Objective: Receiving God grace allows us to have freedom and experience freedom.

Introduction:

Braveheart clip of FREEDOM.

Talk about Braveheart.

Talk about how they were slaves: Scottish Lords were sell outs.

I loved Braveheart growing up, I could actually quote the movie.

‘I came back to raise crops and God willing a family.’

Every Man dies, but not every man really lives.

In the movie there is a noble Scotsman who wants to follow Wallace and he wants to be free but he is scared to lose his land and his pull with his family.

But after William Wallace dies he takes the lead and at the end there is this really powerful seen where he is shouting.

Freedom.

The Scotsman did not want to fight for their freedom until William Wallace showed up.

SO many people do not want to fight for their freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Freedom is not the word that most people who grow up in Church would say that comes to mind.

As a matter of fact I when I was a non believer I would not have associated the word freedom with Christianity.

The word boring would come to mind.

The stats tell us that youth are leaving the Church in droves.

I did not like Church as a young person.

I thought it was just rules and regulations.

Most Church people would not say freedom is a word that comes to mind when they think about Church.

They would say they do not want anymore rules and regulations.

Since I have become a believer I have experienced some of the freedom that God desires me to experience.

However sometime I can relate to this character in Braveheart who wants freedom and has even experienced it but finds himself sitting in the middle missing out on the freedom God has for me.

This is a freedom not just from sin but a freedom to serve God wholeheartedly.

However there are times when I don’t walk in this freedom that God has given me.

How about you and freedom.

Would you agree or disagree with these statements:

Is freedom a characteristic that would define your relationship to God?

I feel like I don’t measure up to God’s expectations of me.

Rigid rules and strict standards are an important part of the life and teaching of my walk with God.

YOu see God’s desire for us is that we can love and serve him wholeheartedly.

Not out of fear that he will punish us for every mistake we make but because he loves us so much.

Summary of Galatians:

Ch. 1-Gospel essentials must be clear-

Those who preach a false gospel should be accursed.

Ch. 2-Gospel Unity (arguments about circumcision) and clarity-saved only by grace alone

2:16  nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

Ch. 3-Justification by faith hashed out more-

Ch. 3-Justification by faith hashed out more-

Abraham

the law’s purposes

Ch. 4-Justification by faith hashed out even more-

Ch. 4-Justification by faith hashed out even more-

Results in that we live as sons

Pauls spends the first four Chapters telling us about how we are saved by grace and who we are in Jesus Christ: we are justified [made right before God, we are his sons and now he is going to show us how to live.

A certain note is that God in his epistles tells us who we are before he tells us what to do.

Now what we do is important, but we won’t do it right if we don’t know our position in Christ.

Pauls spends the first four Chapters telling us about how we are saved by grace and who we are in Jesus Christ: we are justified [made right before God, we are his sons and now he is going to show us how to live.

A certain note is that God in his epistles tells us who we are before he tells us what to do.

Now what we do is important, but we won’t do it right if we don’t know our position in Christ.

Pauls spends the first four Chapters telling us about how we are saved by grace and who we are in Jesus Christ: we are justified [made right before God, we are his sons and now he is going to show us how to live.

A certain note is that God in his epistles tells us who we are before he tells us what to do.

Now what we do is important, but we won’t do it right if we don’t know our position in Christ.

Right doctrine should result in right living-And in this Church that Paul had started there were people that were saying that Salvation was not through Christ alone, You are not made right with God by simply believing in Jesus, you also have to be circumcised.

These legalists were adding to the gospel.

They were using the Law in a bad way.

You see after God tells them who they are in Christ and how they are justified by faith he then tells them how they ought to live.

How we live is important!

There are two things that will keep us from freedom two extremes.

License vs legalism.

License says I have God’s grace so I can do whatever I want to do.

Legalism says I have to follow a certain code of ethics to earn God’s love.

Legalism elevates the tradition over the cross.

There is a tension with grace.

LEGALISM DEFINED: The belief that salvation demands or depends upon total obedience to the letter of the law.

Examples of legalism include an excessive concern for minute details of the law coupled with a neglect of its fundamental concerns, and a\ preoccupation with human legal traditions.

That would erase the song that says, What would wash away my sins nothing but the blood of Jesus.

There are people who will want to take your freedom away but there are some good meaning people who will try to take it away.

Legalism when we take a conviction and make it a standard for others.

God wants us to be free to love him with all of our heart and to love our neighbor as ourself.

God wants to give us freedom to be all that he has created us to be

Today we are going to see that God wants us to walk with him not because we have to but because we want to.

Share our faith

The Law is good but if it is miss used it can be a bad thing.

But legalism can keep us from freedom.

IT IS DANGEROUS!

If the Law doesn’t point to Christ we are missing the point of the Law.

The Law is good.

However we are going to see how if we turn to the legalism we can lose the freedom God desires us to have.

We lose freedom when we turn to the Law.

Today we are going to see the negative dangers of turning to legalism.

T.S.: Let’s discover how our freedom is in DANGER of legalism [unifying word] if we turn to the Law.

[structural bridge]

1.

The first danger of legalism is that it makes us debtors (1-3).

Body:

How do we avoid living as debtors?

a. Stand in the freedom that is already ours in Christ.

Story of Tiger.

Tim Keller

Tim Keller

Turning to Legalism ruins grace (5:1-2) 1 aIt was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery 2 Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

Exposition: Jesus is the great liberator.