Lawless
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Announcements-
1. Church Party Next Sunday 6-8PM
We will invite the kids from the group home to come and hang out with us and there we will present their church gift cards to them’
We will cater dinner
food, games, and fellowship
Get a rough count of how many will come for food
2. Special Christmas Service next Sunday
3. Christmas Eve Service on the 24th at 6pm
a. Special speaker from Spokane Washington
4. Baptisms- today after church at Lake Tyler Marina
a. 18183 Concession Rd, Whitehouse, TX 75791\
5. Announce full time starting at the first of the year
Testimony
Testimony
Now We are going to start out with a testimony today from Donald birch. Now for a couple of years now I have been trying to get people to go to an event that is called Quest that the Lord used very powerfully in both Stacey and my life. For me the Lord used the event to bring some much needed deep healing that took place in my life that revolved around church hurt.
You see many of you have heard my testimony of being raised in a family that was the poster child for dysfunction and destructive behavior.
When I came to the Lord I was in a mess. I was going through a divorce at the time. I was a drug addict, I was unstable, I was suicidal at times, I was in a lot of trouble with the Law, I was completely broken.
And when I met Jesus, the great physician, he did a miracle in my life.
I mean showed up to a young man that did not deserve anything good from him and he showed me this radical grace that it seems like few people truly experience
But it did not take me long to encounter religious people in the church, and I use that in a very negative manner, who did harm, who couldn’t see past the brokeness to the potential.
And it did not take long for me to lose my freedom that I had in simply following Christ and began to try to conform to their religiosity. And that led me to pretending and confirming instead of following Jesus.
Felt like I was a second rate Christian because of my life before Jesus
It was at Quest, a five and a half day event in a place where I could just be real, that the Lord healed me of that. Because before when I encountered the pride in the church it would cause me to spin out of control. it would bring up these raw wounds that I didn’t really know what to do with
For my wife it is a completely different. You see she was the church kid that did everything right, grew up in the Church, but can tell you had a very legalistic spirit.
And it was on fast day there at Quest that the Lord broke through the religious Spirit and gave her true freedom in the Lord. Its funny how God puts people together, because in the beginning of our marriage we were like oil and water. She saw me when I had incredible freedom in the Lord, then she saw me when I lost that freedom and how miserable I became.
Healed her heart from loss, losing a couple of babies and infertility
When I tell you that there is life in the Spirit, free from the Law simply following Jesus, becoming more in love with Jesus, your perspective turns to I just simply want to please jesus, love Jesus, walk with Jesus. There is something to what Jesus said that we must become like little children. The joy of a child, the absence of what people think
Donald’s Testimony
We aim to lead people to radical freedom with Jesus.
Unfortunately where people immedietly go with that today is that you can basically live like hell without going there
All religions basically point to three things!
a. You ought to, you don’t, your toast
A. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis lists several common “oughts” of American Indians, ancient Greeks, ancient Chinese, Judaism, and Christianity.
1. Don’t harm others.
2. Don’t lie.
3. Don’t have sex with another person’s spouse.
4. Care for those who are weaker
UNFORTUNATELY THIS TEACHING HAS CREPT INTO THE CHURCH
a. religion has become about following rules of your particular religion, the teachings of the church, which unfortunately don’t always add up to scripture
But I have good news for you today! Jesus and Paul taught something totally different
Paul understood the endless cycle of trying failing, trying failing, discouraged, cant live up.
15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Religion asks how or what can deliver me from this body. Christianity asks Who can deliver me from this body of death, and then Gives the Answer!
Dont stop at verse 24, go on to verse 25 because jesus is the answer as simple as that may sound.
you see Christianity is not about living up to the standard of Jesus
My gosh how hard is that
Where we miss it is that we think that Jesus only came to give himself for us
Jesus came also to give himself to us
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Its not about imitation, its about impartation
Christ in you, by the holy Spirit. God doesn’t want you to do anything for him, He wants to do something through you
B. Paul wrote that the purpose of the Law was to expose your inability to live up to God’s standards. It was a neccesary path of failure
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
You see because of the fallen nature and that absence of the Spirit of God living inside of you made you incapable of living for God. Try fail try fail, get more rules when you break the ones that you already know
The church began to teach that when you broke the law, there were other laws that you could practice.
Penance when you lusted, or saying a 100 hail marys
3, Thats all they could come up with because they only experience the first part that we were grounded by the law of sin and death
There is a law at work right now that you are experiencing but are not conscience of. It is at work right now all across the world. It is the law of gravity
Up until the early 19 hundreds it was the only law that men understood until the Wright brothers came along. milton Wright the Father of the boys said in a sermon that he preached at his church that if God meant for me to fly he would have given them wings
But you see what Milton Wright was ignorant of was another law that over ruled the law of gravity, and that was Newtons Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
They discovered the Law of jet propulsion.
You see for man gravity used to be King but when Jet propulsion was discover it propelled man to new heights
What Paul is saying is that if you are feeling a little grounded by the Law of Sin and death, there is a new law, that like jet Propulsion can overrule what used to rule.
This is how jesus described this new life, this fruitful abundant life:
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
That doesn’t sound like follow a bunch of rules. That doesnt sound like the motto in a lot of churches today which say I dont Drink, smoke or chew and I dont date girls that do
It soulds like something that is living inside of you’
It sounds like a love relationship with a King that makes himself available to you
Paul laid it out like this
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
You see this doesn’t say oney the ten commandments, it doesn’t say
It sounds profoundly relational
you see trying to follow a bunch of rules have no power against the lust of the flesh
You start condemning someone for something you may not fall but buddy you will start sinking
17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.