Sermon Tone Analysis

For Freedom, Christ has set us Free.

What Paul is showing us is that we only have one way.

Against such thing there is no law.

Let me read for you , so we can read the whole section as a whole before focussing on the 9 fruits of the spirit.

Freedom is the name of Jesus' game.

When God created man and woman, He created creatures who could respond to God freely.

As they worked in that garden that God had created, they had full access to their volition.

So many good things were there.

But there were also moral choices to be made.

When our original parents fell, they were no longer free in a very important sense.

They had become slaves of that original disobedience.

Now no longer able to respond in obedience, Israel increasingly repeated the sin of Adam and Eve.

Now the pattern was God continuously giving new opportunities, and man being unable to choose freely.

We had a new law ruling in our hearts, and it lead always to death.

God even created the law of Moses.

Even before the tablets were etched, Israel proved that the slavery to sin was active, and so to this very day, we are born in slavery to sin.

There is a bit of an optimistic story going around that everyone is good 'at heart', but do some things wrong.

The Bible teaches us that this has a grain of truth, but it incorrect.

Everyone is actually a slave at heart, but because we have been made in the image of God, although the image is marred, it is still there.

Jesus, by coming the way that he did, in his life, death, resurrection and ascension, made it possible for us to become truly free again.

That is an incredible story.

We have had two terrible stories again this week that show the shocking reality of the slavery of life.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain - both people with (on the surface) so much achievement and accolades, and material benefits, yet they both committed suicide.

I read stats out of the US, talking about a progressive increase in the rate of suicide over the last 10 years.

We need Jesus.

But it is more complicated than we might think on the surface, but we will get to that.

Before we get to the complications, I want you to think of the simplicity of V1

For freedom, Christ has set us free.

Isn't that just beautiful!

He came to restore our dignity to choose Life, or to choose another way.

He has restored to us the choice that our original parents frittered away.

You know, one of the great universals, is that in Africa or Australia, having free will restored to us is hugely important.

I refer you to and for cross references.

He came to set the prisoner free.

I am so glad that Jesus set me free, and continues to work out my freedom.

I'm so glad that he didn't just stop at - YES, you are my son now Clinton.

Now I have done my work.

NO WAY! Now he wants to complete my freedom.

That is what we are talking about when we talk about the fruits of the Spirit.

It is Jesus completing our freedom.

I have represented the path here with a diagram, to try to explain Paul’s argument.

I don’t have it as a powerpoint, but as a handout.

If you have a pen and would like to fill in the blanks, I have a handout for you.

I want you to first write your name down inside the box.

On the left side, write slavery - law and on the right hand side freedom - grace.

What do we do with that freedom?

That is the question!

Well, Paul points to a narrow path.

You will remember that Jesus told us about the narrow way, and this path was brought to life in Pilgrim's Progress.

There are two wrong ways, and one correct way.

In verse 1 he points to the path to the right: So do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

This slavery submission happened to the Galatians with the thought brought in that one of the old Judaistic laws - circumcision - was a requirement for Gentiles to come to Christ.

It was something that had to happen to qualify for salvation.

We have our own substitutes for this in our day.

But it is the classic statement of legalism.

n verse 1 he points to the path to the right: So do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

This slavery submission happened to the Galatians with the thought brought in that one of the old Judaistic laws - circumcision - was a requirement for Gentiles to come to Christ.

It was something that had to happen to qualify for salvation.

We have our own substitutes for this in our day.

But it is the classic statement of legalism.

The story goes that in order to be saved, we need to shape up first.

The statement God helps them that helps themselves, is a statement of self-effort.

Paul tells us that there are two big problems with this approach.

The story goes that in order to be saved, we need to shape up first.

The statement God helps them that helps themselves, is a statement of self-effort.

Paul tells us that there are two big problems with this approach.

You lose Jesus we read.

Once you need something else, then Paul says that Jesus is of no advantage.

We will get back to that further in, but verse 4 tells us that we are severed from Jesus.

The classic statement of this truth from Jesus mouth is : I am the way, the truth and the life.

No man comes to the Father but through me.You gain more rules - many more.

The Jews of the church felt that circumcision was the one rule that they needed.

But of course God had already laid down the way of righteousness.

He gave his Law.

The illustration is from the passage itself - from Chapter 4 - Abraham was promised that God would grant him a son, even though Sarah was barren.

Abraham chose the way of self-effort - having a son via Hagar, the servant girl to try to fulfil God's promise in his own way.

******

So much for falling off the road to the left.

Freedom is next mentioned in our passage in V13.

"“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters.

But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.

Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.”

(, NLT).

We have the first approach to freedom - to hand it back.

But the second wrong approach is take it and keep it to satisfy our sinful nature.

Here we have the danger that fell first to Adam and Eve.

Eve was lured by the thought of personal gain - that God was holding out on her.

So we are tempted to think that God holds out on us.

Jesus gives us the freedom to think that we know better than him.

That we can use our freedom selfishly.

The best illustration I can think of here is that of commons: imagine 3 people live around a Lake.

The lake is big enough, with enough fish, to support all three, if they just take enough for their needs.

But there are no rules - each must trust that the other 2 will only take what they need.

Play this game on any computer, or at any lake, and someone will use their freedom to take more than their share, the fish will not be able to re-produce quickly enough, the others will distrust the others, and before you know it, there are no fish left.

Freedom is so powerful, yet it is so dangerous!

How does God trust us with Freedom?

Our world introduces rules to try to keep everyone in line.

Do you feel God's vulnerability here?

Think of that movie "For Better or Worse", why the church is both better and worse than we can imagine.

This shows both the beauty of God expressed through the church, and the ugliness of Man, also expressed through the church.

I am so looking forward to seeing that movie!