I want to introduce a new series of messages today called “Jesus Sets Us Free.” The book we’ll be going through is sometimes called the “Letter of Freedom” – Galatians. Jesus said that whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.
5:1 is the key verse, because the Galatian Christians were being led back into slavery, only it was a different kind. There were teachers who were insisting that keeping the law was the way a person could be saved. Paul will tell them in 5:4 “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”
The OT Law was fulfilled in Jesus, like an apple fulfills the apple blossom. It was superseded by something better.
"Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes" (Ro 10:4). With Jesus, there was something better that came.
-Ill - There are certain old laws still on the books that, to us, really don’t make any sense anymore:
• Young girls are never allowed to walk a tightrope in Wheeler, MS, unless it's in a church.
• In Blackwater, KY, tickling a woman under her chin with a feather duster while she's in church service carries a penalty of $10.00 and one day in jail.
• No one can eat unshelled, roasted peanuts while attending church in Idanha, OR
• Honey Creek, Iowa, no one’s permitted to carry a slingshot to church except a policeman.
• No citizen in Leecreek, Arkansas, is allowed to attend church in any red-colored garment.
• Swinging a yo-yo in church or anywhere in public on Sunday is prohibited in Studley, VA
• Turtle races aren’t permitted within 100 yds of a local church at any time in Slaughter, LA
This whole letter to the Galatians will explain how Christians are to relate to Law as a means of being saved. By the end of it, I hope we’ll understand it well and be able to explain it to anyone who asks. In the meantime, let’s just be glad that there’s something better than law when it comes to the way we relate to God!
Ill - The following hand-lettered signs were prominently displayed around a drive-in restaurant in Pine Grove, CA:
Do not back in
Restrooms are for customer use only
(On a trash can) Not for diaper disposal or auto trash
Local checks for amount of purchase only
Vanilla frosties dipped one size only
Please order by number
Observe all signs.
Story - Jack Eppolito of Tulsa also appreciates that God doesn’t relate to us just by law: He writes: “Hurrying my 11-year-old daughter to school, I turned right on red where it was prohibited. "Uh, oh," I said, realizing my mistake. "I just made an illegal turn."
"It's all right," my daughter said. "The police car behind us did the same thing."
In Galatia, the church was in danger of losing the freedom they had in Jesus. Jesus had set them free, but something was going wrong. Their free relationship in Jesus was turning into another form of oppression.
So, I ask, has the church of today become such a place?
Does the world look in on Christianity as a freeing thing, or a confining thing?
And how do we look at life in Jesus – as something that binds us or something that frees us?
-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.
How do we “stand firm, then.” And how do we keep ourselves from being burdened again by a yoke of slavery? How do we stay on the path to real freedom? The path to real freedom in Jesus is unchanging. It’s a path of consistency. To stay on it, we’re going to need consistency in some particulars.
Ill – Remember Mr. Banks, in Mary Poppins: “Consistent is the life I lead.” We’ll need a certain element of that if we’re going to know real freedom in Jesus. For instance,
We’re going to need a
I. Consistent Message (1:6-9)
The Galatians haven’t been consistent. While Paul begins this letter with the standard kind of “return address” information, he then gives the shortest complimentary greeting of all his letters. There’s not much paper and ink spent on compliments and pleasantries. He goes right to the point…*vv6-7
1. There isn’t really “another”
-There are 2 different words here for “another.” One means “another of the same kind.” One means “another of a different kind.”:
“You’ve deserted your relationship of freedom with God for a completely different gospel, which isn’t another gospel – there isn’t more than one.”
One of the great challenges before the Church today is to find more and new and different ways to relate the truth of the gospel to a rapidly changing world without changing the message in any way. This not only creates a lot of challenges, but it causes a lot of different opinions to surface – like different tastes in music, different ideas about what media we should and shouldn’t use, and exactly what it is that we have to include when we invite someone to meet Jesus.
What we need to watch is that the substance and the intent of the message we present is never compromised. If the medium doesn’t get in the way of the message, let’s use it. Paul said,
(1 Co 9:22-23) “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”
Ill - He did it. He preached in the synagogues of Jews who were ready to hear about Jesus. He preached in the houses of people who would allow their homes to be used that way. He preached in the outdoor idea pool of Athens. He preached in prison. He preached to Greek philosophers, Roman government officials, guards, Jewish mobs, and women gathered at a prayer meeting. He traveled by foot, by sea, and on horseback. He even escaped in a big basket let down a window in a city wall. He used quotes from pagan philosophers and poets, illustrations from sports, farming, the army, the family, and nature. He wrote, he spoke, he sent fellow workers, and he lived an exemplary life – all of it for the sake of the gospel.
I’m of the opinion that the Apostle Paul, if he were alive today, would have used everything he could get his hands on to tell the message in different ways. Yet the message wouldn’t change.
We have a great example there – to do whatever it takes to proclaim the love of Jesus to Joplin and the world, and to be consistent with the message.
The Galatians were struggling with this… *vv8-10
2. Accept no other!
The words here are strong. Paul repeats it so no one will miss the point:
“If we ourselves or an angel from heaven should preach a different message, let him be condemned to hell. If anyone is preaching a different gospel, may he be condemned to hell.”
-Different message? Yes. It was people who were trying to make them go back to the Law as a way of gaining heaven.
- We have the same problem in our own current world. It might also include the number of people teaching that there’s more than one way to be saved. Maybe it would include the teaching that Jesus doesn’t have to be Lord of our lives in order to be our Savior.
-Not only is it essential that we be consistent in the message we tell others, but it’s essential that we be consistent in the message we accept.
-There’s no room in God’s plan for preachers and teachers of a changed gospel. We can’t be tolerant of an altered message about how we can be saved. We can’t allow anyone to add to what has been plainly given to us from the Lord. And I’d caution you to use discernment whenever you hear someone presume to be a preacher or a teacher. Don’t accept the words of someone who has changed the message. God’s word has pronounced a curse on that person!
The path to real freedom in Jesus hasn’t changed. It teaches and listens to a consistent message.
[II. Consistent Source (1:10-2:10)]
The consistent source of that message is the key to having a consistent message. That’s what Paul addresses starting in 1:10. Actually, he touches on it in the first verse: *1:1
-not from men at all
*vv10-12
Clear up to chapter 2, v10, he’s saying: “What I taught and what I teach didn’t come from people. It came from God.” It wasn’t what Peter told him, what John told him, what anyone else in Jerusalem told him. There was no room for error in the message that Paul had received.
If a message comes from just people, we can’t always trust it; even well-meaning people.
Ill – It happens all the time. Someone calls into the church office with some information about someone having a surgery or something. The message that should have been “Mrs. Jones is having her appendix removed at Freeman West on Tuesday” by the time it gets to me is sometimes like “Mr. Jones gave birth to twins at Freeman East today.” (Not always, but things do get turned around!)
-We make mistakes! We forget! We misunderstand! When something comes through people, we have to allow for what the FAA calls “human error.”
But the message of the gospel, and the message we teach, didn’t come just through people. The Bible’s very clear at this point. It claims to be the very word of God – not just God trying to contain His will in man’s words, but God saying exactly what He wants us to hear.
And when a message comes from God, it’s unchanging.
How we can apply this is pretty simple – we have all kinds of ways to listen to God’s word and to teaching from God’s word. There are more resources, books, study guides, commentaries, videos, CDs, study Bibles and devotional books than there have ever been before. And tomorrow, there will be more than there are today.
-Lots of these helps can be great, but they come with the danger that we’ll let them usurp the place that the Bible deserves in our learning and thinking.
-The church in America hasn’t split into over 350 different denominations and sects because everyone’s going to the same source for truth. Our source has to be consistent. The only way that can happen is for us to take God at His word, and take His word, and let everything else, everything that comes from man, take 2nd place. We need a consistent source.
There’s a final area where consistency is vital if we’re going to be on the path to real freedom:
III. Consistent Lifestyle (2:11-21)
Paul didn’t get his teaching from man. In this last section, he makes it clear that he doesn’t live according to man’s ideas either.
-You have to picture the scene: Peter has spent most of his life keeping his distance from Gentiles. He was a good Jewish boy, even though he was a kind of rough guy, he still knew that you don’t associate, let alone eat a meal with, a non-Jew. Then God straightens him out and helps him see that anyone can accept Jesus – Jews or not. So, while visiting with Paul, Peter sits down to a meal with a whole table full of non-Jewish Christians – maybe they were eating BLT sandwiches! Anyway, the doorbell rings. It’s a bunch of the Christians (formerly Jews) from James’ congregation! They come into the dining room where everyone is eating, and start to say hello. Paul says, “And here’s your good friend Peter… “ but Peter has disappeared! While everyone wasn’t looking, he snuck out the back door. He was afraid of what the Jewish Christians would think. In fact, later, he says to them, “Hey, let’s all go find someplace where we can eat.” And everyone follows along with his bad lead.
It was an inconsistency. Peter wasn’t living what he was preaching. He let his fear get the best of him, and what people thought became more important than what God thought. It was a serious problem – *2:13
-It was an inconsistency – *2:14 That won’t do on the path to real freedom. Our walk has to match our talk. More specifically, we can’t try to go back to law as a means of being saved.
-It’s too easy to take our relationship with Jesus and turn it into a brownie point-earning attempt that we hope might save us if we’re good enough by the time we die. That’s where the Galatians had been before learning about Jesus, and now they were headed back there again.
The rest of this letter is directed at the tendency we all have to say that we’re saved by grace but fear that maybe it’s not true. In other words, an inconsistency. There’s not much peace if you’re always trying but never sure about making it to heaven.
-One reason this is all so important is because of our witness to the world. What used to be at the forefront to validate our message was polemics and apologetics – all the proofs and evidences that demonstrate by science and logic and testing that God’s word is true. Low and behold, the post-modern person isn’t moved by these good and necessary things. They want the proof of experience and pragmatism, and “how does this make me feel?” The big question in the mind of the postmodern person is, “Does this work?”
-More than ever, it’s necessary that our relationship with Jesus be something that’s not just consistently learned in our study but consistently proven by the way we live.
-Yes, your next-door neighbors need for you to say what Jesus means to you and you may even need to talk to them about why the Bible is credible, but even more than that they’re looking to see if your family enjoys being together, if you’re satisfied with your work and home life, if you really do treat people different than their neighbors on the other side. They’re trying to catch from you if you attend church every week because you want to or because you have to. They’re looking at you and asking, “Does Jesus really work?” And the only way we answer yes to that is to consistently live it out.
Quote - Madeleine L'Engle – “Evangelism is not what we tell people, unless what we tell is totally consistent with who we are. It is who we are that is going to make the difference. If we do not truly enjoy our faith, nobody is going to catch the fire of enjoyment from us. If our lives are not totally centered on Christ, we will not be Christ-bearers for others, no matter how pious our words.”
What’s the value of VBS? One value is it permits non-Christian people to witness how we live:
• To see that a person’s race or social status doesn’t matter in this bunch
• To see that joy isn’t just some put-on thing – that we really do have joy in our lives, and that we’re not afraid to let others see our down times too
• To see that we’re serious about serving others – not just in the body but outside it as well
• To see that the business of proclaiming the love of Jesus is something worth committing our time and our efforts to
We’re not in this to be people-pleasers. We’re here to be God-pleasers, and I’m so glad because what He wants from us doesn’t change. The path to real freedom is paved with a consistent lifestyle
Conclusion:
(Jn 8:34-36) Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
There’s a simple message today. We all need to be freed, and the only way we can be freed is through faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul says in Romans that the occasion where that freeing takes place is when we’re united with Jesus in Christian baptism.
(Ro 6:6-7) For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
(Gal 2:20) I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
