A Life of Freedom

Welcome

Good morning everyone and welcome to church! I’m glad to have you here this morning especially as there are probably a hundred different events this morning that were trying for your attention. I hope everyone has a safe and good fourth of July and hopefully no one shoots a firework off in their hand today.

As we get started this morning I wanted to give you a bit of a road map of where we are going in terms of what we are going to be studying and reading from scripture over the next few weeks. Today, with it being the fourth of July and the topic readily engaged in, we are going to talk about freedom. What we think it means, what we think freedom should be, but ultimately we will look at what freedom actually looks like in Christ. But starting next week we are going to be starting a 4 week series called, “A How To Guide.” Throughout these four weeks we are going to look at how to pray, how to get closer to God, how to hope in God, and how to explain the Gospel. I know that is quite a mouthful, but I would love to get some wisdom from everyone in the church as we get ready to go through this series. If you would like to share a bit with me or be willing to share with the church, on how you practice these aspects of the faith, I would love to hear from you. So once again, those will be how to pray, how to get closer to God, how to hope in God, and how to explain the Gospel. This is farther out, but after that we are going to spend some time in the book of Ecclesiastes, so if you want to start reading through that on your own in preparation, I would highly recommend it. I know Ecclesiastes gets some unpleasant press sometimes, but it reveals a lot to us about life as a wisdom book, and overall I hope it causes us to look at our lives and what we are ultimately valuing.

But, this morning we are talking about freedom as seen in Galatians 5, so before we start in this morning, let’s spend some time in prayer.

Prayer

Engage

At the University of Oklahoma, for many years a project was underway to teach a fifteen-year-old female chimpanzee named Washoe to talk by combining sign language with simple recognition. Since 1966, this chimpanzee learned 140 signs.Finally, the project directors decided that Washoe was prepared to “conceptualize.” This meant that instead of merely imitating some human’s words, the chimp would express thoughts of her own. Now, understand, Washoe was a pampered animal in the university’s laboratory—well fed, physically comfortable, safe from harm. She had security. And yet, when she was able to put words together on her own into a phrase, these were the first three—and she has said them again, repeatedly—“Let me out.”

Freedom is a pretty common word, with a pretty simple premise behind it. It’s also a word that, if I can bring it up, got thrown around a lot within the last year or so. We are privileged to live in a country where we have freedom, freedom to live where we want, work where we want, and worship at how want, along with a host of other things. Most of the time when we think about freedom our minds will go to slavery and how important it was for those who are in slavery to be free. We see that in Exodus, we saw it in our country, and slavery is still an issue that we face in our modern world. In case you didn’t know, slavery is very active and present in our world. Research done in 2016 estimated that over 40 million people were in slavery. That is just over 5 out of every 1,000 people.

Why do I bring this up this morning? Because we have to be reminded how slavery still exists and how it affects people in our world. I know that for myself I didn’t realize slavery was still around until I was in high school and especially in college when I had friends who began to work in organizations that dealt with modern slavery victims. So it is important that we are reminded that slavery still exists and that it is still a problem.

Tension

In Galatians 5:1-6, we see Paul do a similar thing for the church in Galatia. He reminds the church and us how prone we are to fall back into slavery. Now, the slavery that he is talking about here is different than what we just mentioned. The slavery that Paul talks about is slavery to the law as opposed to living in the freedom of grace through Christ. While we might know that we have freedom from following the law perfectly, we have a tendency to fall back into it and becoming slaves to it again. Some of us might come from legalistic backgrounds. What is legalism? Legalism is treating that which is good as though it were essential. The way that we keep our freedom in Christ is when we keep what is essential to God as essential to us. Everything else has to be kept it its place. But what can happen is that we forget about legalism, being a slave to the law, and we fall back into it without even recognizing it. Similar to how we can forget or ignore modern day slavery, we can forget and ignore the legalism that we might begin to have within us. In Galatians 5:1-6 then, we see Paul remind us of the freedom that we really have through Christ.

Galatians 5:1-6

Galatians 5:1–6 NIV

1 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. 2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Galatians 5:1

Verse 1 really acts as the topic sentence for the entirety of chapter five.

Galatians 5:1 NIV

1 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.

Paul wants us to know that Christ has set us free. What are we free from? We are free from legalism, from this idea that we have to earn or work hard enough in order to gain God’s love and forgiveness. Paul refers to it here as a yoke of slavery and while not mentioned specifically in this passage, in Acts 15:1 we can see what some people were saying to the early Christians.

Acts 15:1 NIV

1 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”

This group of people began to tell the early church that in order to be saved from their sins, they had to do more than simply believe in Jesus. In order to be saved they had to be circumcised and keep all of the Jewish law. This is what Paul means here by a yoke of slavery. This burden was so great that everyone knew it was impossible. This was slavery to works instead of freedom of grace. When we look at Christ on the cross, we can see that we don’t have to add anything else to our faith in order for salvation and forgiveness of sins. What we need is to focus on Christ and live our lives out of him. When Christ is on the cross and he says, “It is finished” we have to believe him and trust that the work of salvation has completely been taken care of. To help the the Galatians and us see the seriousness of trying to earn our salvation according to the law, Paul continues in verses 2-4.

Galatians 5:2-4

Galatians 5:2–4 NIV

2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

If you believe that you need works to be accepted by God then you don’t have a proper understanding of Jesus and what he did on the cross. Jesus accomplishes the work of salvation completely and eternally when he died on the cross and rose from the dead. And hopefully you know this, if you don’t know this, then hopefully today you come to accept Christ because you realize what he has done. But what can happen is we forget that Christ has saved us completely and we fall into this legalistic way of living were we are trying to say ourselves. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t receive Christ and acknowledge that we’re sinners who are lost to our sin, unable to fix ourselves, and then try to do “things” whatever they might be, in order to save ourselves.

Paul says in verse three that if that is the path you want to try to take, if you want to take the legalistic route and try to earn your salvation, then you are obligated to follow the entirety of the law absolutely perfectly! It’s impossible, you can’t do it. Even if you decided today that you wanted to go this route, you have already failed! Because there is a 0% chance that up until this point in your life you have followed the law perfectly.

One illustration I have heard used is that of becoming a citizen of the US. If you become a citizen, there are obligations and duties of that. You have to pay taxes and obey the law. You can’t become a citizen and then decide, “You know what, I don’t think I want to pay taxes.” In the same way, if you were circumcised because of following the law, you take on the obligations and duties of the Jewish religion.

For us today, the issue likely isn’t circumcision, but when Paul is talking about circumcision here it has come to stand for human achievement. Whatever the human achievement is that you are trying to fulfill in order to gain salvation, it isn’t going to work. In fact, by pursuing it you are actively saying that Christ is not enough. For us today this might take form in a few ways. Maybe you think salvation is dependent upon church attendance, maybe it’s dependent on how often you read scripture, how much you give to the church, how often you help others. None of these are bad things, but as I mentioned at the very beginning, legalism is when you take good things and make them essential. So don’t fall back into that form of slavery. Don’t be a slave to the law, don’t be a slave to earning God’s love and forgiveness, instead live out of the freedom of the grace you have in Christ. We have to focus on that which is essential.

Galatians 5:5-6

Galatians 5:5–6 NIV

5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Kent Hughes, a pastor and author, says that within this verse we see an insight into gospel rooted living, he says “What ultimately counts in this life is what ultimately matters on the day of judgment.” We live in the freedom of grace, we don’t have to fulfill the law to be saved, Jesus has already done that, and we live in a way where our faith is expressed through love.

We need to keep the main thing, the main thing. (I think that was even a song that we sang in one of our Christmas musicals just a few years ago) While we can talk about our political views, about the kind of church we go to, debate different ideas on theology and doctrine, all of these things need to be kept in their rightful place. They cannot become the focal point of our faith and they cannot become checklists for whether or not we earn salvation. Now, this isn’t to say that you believe in Christ and then your life looks the absolute same. Our freedom doesn’t entitle us to sin whenever and however we want. When we see how Christ has saved us, when we appreciate the freedom from the law that we have in him, good works will follow. They will flow out of our life as a result of how Christ has saved us. But today, as you think about freedom and light fireworks off, remember how Christ has set you free. Think about the freedom from sin and from the law that you have and thank God for it.

John 8:36 NIV

36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Prayer

Communion