Deliver Us From Evil

Trapping Birds

Growing up we had lots of animals.

One of my favorite animals growing up was a rat.

He was a fairly typical pet rat.

The kind that you can purchase from any pet store.

He was a black and and white.

His name was Spike.

He was named Spike because of his interesting hair.

He was a fairly typical pet rat.

The kind that you can purchase from any pet store.

What set him apart is that he was what is called a rex.

He was a black and and white.

But his fur was short, matted, and curly.

But along the center of his head, was a single streak of white hair that stood up like a Mohawk.

It was because of that mohawk, that we called him spike.

The way we got Spike was he originally was used to trap a hawk.

In addition to my pet rat Spike, we had birds of prey.

One of the questions I always get, is how do you get a bird of prey, how do you get a hawk.

And the answer is we would trap our hawks.

We would make a box out of chicken wire.

So in essence it’s a wire box.

We would have a little door on the bottom of it, where we would insert our bait.

And in this instance, the bait was a black and white rex rat, that I would later name Spike.

Then, all along this wire box, we would take fishing line, and tie little slip nots all over it.

It was completely covered with slip knots.

Then early in the morning, we would go looking for hawks.

We’d find a hawk sitting on a telephone pole.

We’d drive right by the telephone pole, but as we drove by, we’d throw this wire box, with slip knots, and a rat out of the car door, right underneath the hawk, who was looking for a meal.

We’d then drive down the road a couple hundred yards and watch.

The hawk would see the movement of the rat in the box.

She’d drop down from the pole, onto the box and try and catch the rat.

She’d use her feet to try and get inside the wire box.

She’d stomp all over the box, looking for a weak spot.

The more the hawk tried to catch the rat, the more of those little nooses would get stuck on the birds feet.

Soon it was too late, the bird was completely stuck.

We’d drive back.

We’d free the bird from the little knots, and then proceed to train the bird.

The bird didn’t see the danger of the trap.

Because we got a new hawk, and I got a new pet rat.

In fact the more she moved on the trap, the more she became stuck.

I rescued Spike from the trap, and kept him as my own pet.

Have you ever experienced the grip of sin?

Sin can also act like a trap.

It grabs hold of you.

It ensnares you.

And it brings with it a feeling of complete helplessness.

Rending the victim unable to move.

And what we need is to discover the rescuing power of grace, in order to be freed from the imprisoning power of sin.

Which brings us to where we are today.

Today we will begin going through the book of Galatians.

The Galatian Christians were a group of Christians, who had become ensnared in sin.

Trap of Sin

Sin can also act like a trap.

It grabs hold of you.

It ensnares you.

The more you try and fix the problem, the more it grabs hold of you.

Have you ever experienced the grip of sin?

It brings with it a feeling of complete helplessness.

Rending the victim unable to move.

Rending the victim unable to move.

Sin can also act like a trap.

Sin can also act like a trap.

It grabs hold of you.

It ensnares you.

Beverly grew up in a strong Christian family.

Rending the victim unable to move.

She went to church every week growing up.

Her college years came and her attendance became rarer.

What began as a rare absence from church, soon became a habit.

And finally Beverly never returned.

Beverly wanted to go to church.

She knew it was right.

Somewhere inside there was a certain oughtness that she ought to go to church.

She knew the right thing was to surrender to the Lord and worship Him in fellowship with other believers.

She’d been gone for so long, she felt that she didn’t belong in the church anymore.

It would be weird.

People would whisper about her.

People would say things about her.

People would ask where she’d been.

These thoughts kept running through her mind.

And so she refused to go.

Beverly was in a trap.

She had become trapped in sin.

The trap of sin told her there was no escape, and she would never be welcomed in God’s presence.

She’d never be welcomed in the church.

Her sin had fooled her into thinking that she would never be worthy of coming to church.

That she would never be worthy of being a Christian.

That her best option was to just stay far away from God, religion, the church, Christ.

What Beverly needed to discover is what we need to discover as well.

She needed to discover the rescuing power of grace, in order to be freed from the trapping power of sin.

Sin traps us.

It fools our brain into doing everything, but the right thing.

And like the box I used to trap my birds with, the more we move in the wrong direction, the more ensnared to sin we become.

Which brings us to where we are today.

Today we will begin going through the book of Galatians.

Open your Bibles to .

Read Galatians 1:1-5.

The Galatian Christians were a group of Christians, who had become ensnared in sin.

Paul begins it like most of his epistles.

He says who he is.

“Paul, an apostle ...”

He says who he’s writing too.

“To the churches of Galatia ...”

But it’s also different.

There’s no positive greeting.

There’s no affirmation.

Let me give you an example.

I Corinthians.

It’s a letter written to a crazy church.

There are drunken parties going on.

There is chaos at the worship service.

There’s even a case of incest going on in the church, and they are proud of it!

And yet, when Paul begins his letter to the Corinthians, he says, “I give thanks to my God always for you ...”

That’s a positive statement.

Paul doesn’t have overflowing praise for the Galatians like he does for the Corinthians.

In fact, what you’ll see next week is that he says, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you ...”

That’s not a “I give thanks to my God always for you ...” kind of statement.

In chapter 3 he will says, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”

Again, not overwhelming praise.

He calls them foolish!

There is a problem in the Galatian churches.

They’d been ensnared by sin.

And like the hawk that is on the wire box, the more they moved, the more ensnared they got.

False teachers had attacked the Galatian churches.

Paul’s authority was put into question.

The Galatian Christians were becoming victims to works righteousness.

They were being told that they needed to obey the Jewish law.

They were Gentiles, but being forced into Jewish legalism.

Being told that it was Christ and works.

And they fell for the trap.

They became enslaved to sin.

And everything they did only pulled them deeper into it.

And it’s because of their entrapment that Paul writes this letter.

Though sin is a trap, and maybe you’ve fallen victim to it, there is an escape from it.

says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

There is a way of escape.

So, while Paul is writing a tough letter.

It’s a firm letter.

He holds nothing back.

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in grace.”

He says they are turning to a different Gospel.

He calls them fools.

It’s a correcting letter.

You may not like being corrected.

Where there is correction, there is hope.

There is a way out.

If you thought someone was a lost cause, you wouldn’t try and straighten them out.

In the past few years a new form of entertainment has popped up.

They are called escape rooms.

An escape room is a themed room, that the participants try to escape from.

There are clues and puzzles spread throughout the room that unlocks other clues and puzzles.

The participants are given a time frame to try and solve all the puzzles and then escape within that time.

I’ve done a couple of these.

One was a pirate theme.

We were locked in the brig of a pirate ship.

Some of us even had handcuffs on.

And another was escaping a jail cell.

When in these rooms, it’s easy to get frustrated.

You need to remember that everything in them is there for a reason.

Every clue is there to help you get out.

You have to think to yourself, “Why am I being given this?”

For example, you may find 4 numbers painted on the walls.

At first you don’t know what those 4 numbers are for.

Then you find a padlock, that requires 4 numbers to unlock it.

And you think back to the 4 numbers on the walls, and that’s what they are there for.

They are there to help you escape.

You may find yourself in the trap of sin.

But you are not hopeless.

God is providing a way out.

You don’t have to settle for the trap of sin.

The trap of sin says:

“It’s who I am.”

The trap of sin says:

“I can do this on my own.”

The trap of sin says:

“I don’t need others.”

Yet Paul is writing to correct a church that has given in to the trap of sin.

And the clues for our freedom are laid out for us within the pages of Scripture.

Paul writes this letter.

It’s a letter written under the authority of Jesus Christ.

He’s an apostle.

An apostle is someone who is commissioned for a reason.

An apostle is sent with authority.

He’s an apostle not because he decided one day to be an apostle.

You can’t just decide to speak on authority of someone else.

If I wrote you a letter saying, “The President of the United States wants you to know this” and I handed it to you, and yet, I’ve never met the President of the United States, you’d have to think something is wrong.

I do not have that kind of authority to speak for him.

Jesus Christ physically appeared to him.

Paul didn’t one day say, “I think I’ll write on behalf of Jesus.”

Saying that he was a chosen instrument.

Paul began as Saul, and he was a persecutor of Christians.

Jesus choose him and sent him.

And he’s not an apostle because a committee said, “You’ve got what it takes, we nominate you to be an apostle.”

He’s an apostle, because Jesus Christ selected him to be an apostle.

In , Jesus said of Paul, “… for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

He was commissioned by Jesus.

In fact, he can even write for Jesus.

His words carry some weight to them.

The weight that they carry are that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit themselves.

What he is going to write is Holy.

It is the Word of God.

One of the people he has rebuked, will be Peter.

But even Peter recognized the authority of Paul’s writings.

In , Peter calls Paul’s words Scripture.

And how authoritative is Scripture?

says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,”

And so, he doesn’t write to chew them out.

He writes to correct them.

To provide a way out.

And when we find ourselves trapped in sin, we need to find the clues.

Look at the information that is given, and know that it is there for a reason.

And where do we find it?

In the Bible.

That’s why they are given, so that we would have life.

says, “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Next, we see the Solution of Grace

Galatians is a great book.

It was influential in Martin Luther’s discovery of God’s plan of salvation.

It helped kick off the Protestant Reformation.

It’s been given some cool nicknames.

It’s been called:

The Magna Carta of spiritual liberty.

The Battle Cry of the Reformation.

And the Christian’s Declaration of Independence.

I would say the theme of the book is freedom.

Many times, it’s the book that is immediately gone to to argue against legalism.

I’d argue it’s even better than that.

This is a book for those have messed up.

This is a book for those who have sinned and want to know, “What do I do next?”

The Galatians have messed up, what do they do next?

Paul writes to correct them.

How about you and your own sin?

How do you respond to your sin?

That’s a real question.

How do you recover from your sin?

Do you ever struggle with that?

You sin.

You reflect on your sin.

You start beating yourself up.

How do you respond to your sin?

Do you ever make deals with God?

“God I promise, I’ll never do that again.”

We are told Jesus died for our sins, yet that seems like a cop out.

It’s like when a toddler does something wrong and the parents make the kid say he’s sorry.

He doesn’t even know why he’s sorry, but everyone’s happy when he says it.

It seems fake.

It seems insincere.

Do you ever begin thinking that maybe you’re not really a Christian?

“How can I be a Christian if I did that?”

“Christians don’t sin.”

Guilt overwhelms your conscience, and you decide to:

Take a break.

Hide.

Disappear.

Maybe you make promises to God.

You think that somehow you need to pay for your sin.

That you need to learn from your lesson.

“God, I sinned, but just to prove to you that I’m a real Christian, I’m going to feed the homeless.”

As if your acts of repentance will remove any charges against you.

How do you counsel a brother or sister in Christ who has sinned?

A Christian has sinned.

They know that they have done wrong.

They are grieving over their sin.

What do you say?

The false teachers in Galatia told the Christians there, that they needed to do something.

They said, “Believe in Jesus AND do this.”

They said, “Believe in Jesus and your sins won’t be removed, until you are circumcised … and stop eating pork.”

In their case it was be circumcised.

Obey the Law.

When you’ve sinned, and you are under the weight of sin, overwhelmed with guilt, the last thing that you need is to be told, “Go and be perfect.”

If I could be perfect, I wouldn’t be in this situation now would I?

I found a great article this past week, it was titled, “What it’s like to die from being sucked into quicksand.”

Because I’m sure, you’ve always been wondering what it’s like.

It sounded like a positive and uplifting read, so I read it.

I learned a few things.

First, quicksand looks solid.

it doesn’t look like a pool of water, that’s just brown.

It looks solid, it looks like you can walk on it.

Next, you don’t automatically sink into it.

I remember poor Wiley Coyote trying to catch the road runner.

There would be that pool of quicksand.

And he’d just step into it, and he’d start sinking.

Apparently that’s not how it works.

You don’t start sinking until you start moving.

And as you move, it loosens up, becomes liquid, and you start to get pulled into it.

Then as you get more and more stuck in the quicksand, you begin to panic.

And as you panic and thrash around, you sink even quicker.

And in the end if you continue in this, you’ll die … slowly.

But … if you relax you can live.

If you lie on your back, you can even float on quicksand.

But who wants to lie on their back while in quicksand.

That kind of trust, seems illogical.

Doesn’t seem right.

Yet, a calm approach is best.

Back to the Galatians.

They’ve sinned.

They’ve sinned bad.

And what is Paul’s advice to a deceived, works righteous group of churches?

He doesn’t say, “Quick, start thrashing around.”

He doesn’t say pull yourselves out of there.

His first words to a confused group of people, are the words that you would give to someone in quicksand.

Freedom in Christ

Relax.

Rest.

Calm down.

Verses 3-5, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

The solution here is grace.

It’s to lean back into the quicksand.

To not try and remove it yourself.

To not try and free yourself from it.

But to relax.

Paul’s advice to a works righteous church wasn’t , “Prove you’re sincere.”

Or, “Earn that forgiveness.”

It was “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins ...”

The Galatians are trapped in sin.

And what is it that they need more than anything else?

Grace.

When you are trapped in sin.

What do you need?

Grace

When you feel unworthy, and hypocritical.

What do you need?

Grace.

When you know someone is trapped in sin.

What do they need?

Grace.

How do we do that?

It’s not prove to me that you are forgiven.

We take them to the Cross.

Verse 4, it was Jesus “who gave himself for our sins ...”

You don’t give yourself for your sins.

Yet that’s usually our first reaction.

We try and do something to deliver us from our sins.

The more we wiggle, the more we try and fix it on our own, the more we sink.

The best advice you can give someone who is trapped in their sin.

Could be you, could be someone else.

The best advice you can give them … is to turn to the one who has died, and who gave himself for our sins.

You remind them of what Jesus has done.

They are burdened with sin.

When you are burdened with sin, you can’t see clearly.

When you are in that sin, your sin seems so much bigger.

Trust in Jesus.

And you begin to think that your sin is even too big for Jesus.

Or feelings of unworthiness rise up.

Maybe you think that it is a cop out.

It’s too easy.

They need to pay.

They need to learn their lesson for their sin.

You know what?

That’s what makes the Gospel so scandalous.

That’s what makes it offensive to the world around us.

Because that is exactly why Jesus went to the Cross.

Don’t pollute the gospel with anything except Christ.

It says that the people were cut to the heart.

They were convicted of their sins.

The solution to the trap of sin … is Grace.

They go to Peter, “What do we do?”

Galatians is perfect for the person who is caught in the trap of sin, because it comes back to the solution, grace and peace from God, come through Christ.

“Repent and be baptized ...”

It’s not a cop out.

It’s the solution.

And with that solution, comes Freedom in Christ.

You ever gotten a puppy and gotten to pick him out from the litter of puppies?

Roomba’s are these disc shaped home vacuums.

It’s a fun experience.

There’s nothing cuter than a bunch of puppies doing there thing.

You turn them on, and they go through your house vacuuming.

They do it all by themselves.

And you’re there to pick one out.

When you see that whole litter of puppies, they are all doing their thing.

And when they are done vacuuming, it returns to it’s charging station, until you call for him again.

We have a roomba and love it.

They are untrained.

Roomba is owned by a company called iRobot.

They are wild.

iRobot used to have a separate line, that they have since branched off to form it’s own company.

Some are afraid.

And that branch produces military robots.

Some are braver.

They are bomb disposal robots.

But they are all puppies, just doing their thing.

You make the decision, and you pick one out, and he’s yours.

And you begin to train him.

You teach him your expectations.

Overtime, those puppy traits disappear.

And eventually, he’s nothing like that puppy when you first got him.

But when you first got him, it’s what he did.

He was a puppy.

And he was wild.

Verse 4 says that Jesus came to deliver us from the present evil age.

In 1974, Patricia Hearst, the heiress to the Hearst newspaper empire, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

What began as a kidnapping, got stranger and darker.

Because she ended up joining those who kidnapped her.

Even taking part in a bank robbery.

It has been said that Hearst had what is called Stockholm Syndrome.

It’s where a hostage sympathizes with her captors.

Just as Patricia Hearst was taken hostage, and then developed Stockholm Syndrome, humans have Stockholm Syndrome towards sin.

We are taken captive by sin, something we wouldn’t want to admit, then become participants in it.

says that we were “slaves of sin”.

It says that sin had dominion over us.

We were held captive to sin, but we were not innocent in our participation of sin.

Jesus came on a rescue mission.

He came to rescue a group of people, who all were so blinded by sin, that they willingly participated in it.

It’s what they did.

In people’s free will, sin is what they desired.

And that is what frustrates us so much with sin.

The reason why grace seems like a cop out, is because we know we did the sinning.

The devil didn’t make you sin.

The devil doesn’t make you sin.

It’s you who sin.

And it sickens us.

And the good news is that Jesus came to rescue us.

He came to deliver us.

He came to the free hostages who were suffering from Stockholm Syndrome with sin.

This is freedom.

The human condition is not that we are innately good.

The human condition is that we are naturally not good.

We are slaves to sin.

Slaves to our desires.

Slaves to what is evil.

And now in Christ we have been set free from its power over our soul.

says, “… For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,” - that’s the Stockholm Syndrome, “so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.”

So if you are a slave to sin, your slavery to it should not make sense.

Being a slave to sin is like the prisoner who has been set free, but who voluntarily puts on chains and shackles himself to a wall.

That does not make sense.

If you are a believer you no longer are a slave to sin.

If you are in Christ, you have been set free.

Paul is writing to the Galatians, who certainly are sinning.

And reminding them of the freedom they have in Christ.

It is Christ who delivers us.

We do not deliver ourselves.

We do not make ourselves worthy.

And we need to hear that.

Because Sunday’s can be brutal days.

We worship.

We see friends.

We put on our smiles.

But at the same time, Sundays can become a day of guilt.

We sing and harbor sin, and feel unworthy.

We hear God’s Word, yet know of our sin and feel unworthy.

We take communion, and think of our sin from the past week and feel unworthy.

And we leave not experiencing freedom.

Instead, like the Galatians, we think that somehow we need to do more.

When in reality, this day should be about freedom.

The reason why Christ came was to give us grace.

So lean back in the grace of Christ.

Let me put this in layman’s terms.

S

Your worth is not in your actions, nor even in your obedience.

Your deliverance is not in what you’ve done.

It’s all in Christ.

As we start this new year, let’s begin relishing in the freedom we have in Christ.

What is the sin that plagues you?

What is the guilt that burdens you?

What is it that you come each week with and try to either whitewash over, hide or ignore?

Think of it.

Do you got it?

What do you need?

The solution is grace.

If Christ gave Himself for your sins, that sin is done with.

It’s gone.

So stop carrying it around like a pet rock.

What is it that you are a slave to?

It needs to be Christ.

You are free in Christ.

If you are in Christ, but if you are a slave you have voluntarily made yourself that slave to sin.

That doesn’t make sense.

So leave it behind.

As the band comes up, I’d like to spend sometime in reflection and confession to God.

Sin is a trap.

The solution is not to wiggle around.

That only ensnares you more.

What we need is grace.

To rest in the work of Christ.

Consider your sin.

Consider He who died for sin.

Consider your deliverance.