A pastor in Kansas City, Kansas, was organizing opportunities for people in his church to do small acts of kindness as a demonstration of Christ's love in the community. He phoned several neighborhood grocery stores and Laundromats for permission to do specific services.
In one call, the employee who answered the phone hesitated, then said, “I'll need to ask the manager, but first, let me make sure I understand: You want to clean up the parking lot, retrieve shopping carts, hold umbrellas for customers, and you don't want anything in return.”
“Yes, that's right,” the pastor replied.
After disappearing for a moment, the employee returned to the phone. “I'm sorry,” he said, “we can't let you do that because if we let you do it, we'd have to let everyone else do it, too!” (Ann Jeffries, Kansas City, Kansas, “Lite Fare,” Christian Reader; www.PreachingToday.com)
How silly. Why NOT let everyone else do it? Wouldn’t that be wonderful if everyone found ways to serve? It would be a little like heaven on earth.
Do you want to find a little heaven in your home? Do you want to find a little heaven in your work? Do you want to find a little heaven in all your relationships? Then learn to serve. It’s the reason why Christ set us free.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Galatians 5, Galatians 5, where we begin to see what our freedom in Christ means to us practically and how it can positively impact all our relationships.
Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. (ESV)
God called us to freedom, so we could love, not lust. God called us to freedom, so we could serve one another, not be in bondage to our sinful natures. So, since you are free…
DON’T SERVE YOURSELF.
Don’t indulge your sinful nature. Don’t give in to the demands of your baser desires. Literally, do not let your freedom become a base of operations (or a beachhead) for the flesh.
In the early morning of June 6, 1944, 5300 ships carrying 153,000 American and Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. It was D-Day, and the Allied Forces knew that if they could establish a beachhead at Normandy, they would eventually win the war, and that’s exactly what they did. They established that beachhead at Normandy, used it as a base of operations to push the Germans back, and eventually won the war.
That’s the picture we have here in verse 13. God is saying to us, “Don’t use your freedom as a beachhead for selfish indulgence. Instead, use it as a beachhead for selfless service.”
Leo Tolstoy's story Two Old Men tells the tale of two men, Efim and Elisha, who decide that before they die they must make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After months of planning, they collect what they will need and begin to walk. After a long day on the road, they come to a village that seems deserted. Seeing a small hut, they look in to see what has happened. They enter its darkness and smell death. As their eyes adjust to the lack of light, they see bodies on beds. With some fear and trepidation, they come close and see that the people are still alive, but barely.
Elisha wants to stay and help. He encourages his companion to go on beyond the village, “And I will catch up with you,” he says. But as Elisha opens doors and windows and offers them food and drink, he begins to see that their needs are more complex than he first imagined. And not only them, but the whole village is suffering. He finds his friend and tells Efim that he wants to stay a little longer. Elisha encourages Efim to make his way on to Jerusalem. “I will find you,” he says.
So one man stays in the village, helping the villagers find their way to health and happiness again. He eventually returns home, never making it to Jerusalem. The other man makes his way to Jerusalem, where he waits for his friend who never comes. Before long he too returns home to Russia, walking across a continent. At one point along the way, he comes to a village that seems strangely familiar to him. And then he realizes that it is where he left his friend – but everything seems very different now. Men and women, older and younger, are busy at work and play; animals are healthy, and the crops are growing, and so he asks, “What has happened?” In simple innocence, the villagers explain that a man stopped along the way and gave them back their life. (Adapted from Steven Garber, Visions of Vocation, IVP Books, 2014, pp. 112-114; www.PreachingToday.com)
There is so much we can do with our freedom. We can stay home. We can go on long trips, or we can let God use us to bring life to people. I, for one, don’t want to waste my life in self-indulgence. How about you? Don’t use your freedom to serve yourself. Use it to…
SERVE ONE ANOTHER IN LOVE (vs.13 says).
Use it to genuinely care for one another. Lit., through THE love, be a slave to each other.
There is a particular kind of love here that sets us free to serve, and that’s the unconditional love of God demonstrated on the Cross of Jesus Christ. There is no way in our own human strength that we would ever subject ourselves to one another, unless we knew first that God loved us and accepted us unconditionally.
But now that we KNOW we don’t have to earn God’s love, now that we KNOW we don’t have to prove ourselves, we are FREE to humble ourselves and become slaves to one another. God set us free from the pressure to perform. God set us free from the Law, so that we could freely and without fear submit ourselves to one another, putting their interests above our own.
Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, in 1820 to a very wealthy English family. She traveled and attended parties with the “chosen of society” on the family estate in Derbyshire. When she was 16, she received a divine call: “On Feb. 7th, 1837,” she wrote, “God spoke to me and called me into his service.”
At first, she didn’t know exactly what God wanted her to do, but she began what she called “cottage visiting.” Over family objections, she began taking food and medicine to poor farmers who lived on the family's lands. Then she began to think about nursing. Her family was scandalized, because, in the early 1800s, nurses were considered unskilled workers and had a reputation for drunkenness and promiscuity. Proper ladies kept a fine house, gave parties, and made brilliant conversation.
In 1844, American philanthropists, Samuel and Julia Ward Howe (the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”), visited the Nightingale home. Florence asked them, “Do you think it would be unsuitable and unbecoming for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to works of charity in hospitals?”
Dr. Howe replied, “It would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is thought to be unsuitable. But I say to you, ‘Go forward.’”
After that, she later wrote, “There never was any vagueness in my plans or ideas as to what God's work was for me.”
That work did not begin for another nine years. Family objections had to be overcome. Meanwhile, she studied nursing, first in books, then by visiting European hospitals, and finally by training at hospitals in Germany, England, and France. She was serving as director of a home for “invalid gentlewomen” when the Crimean War (1854-56) broke out.
When she heard about the deplorable conditions on the front, Nightingale took 38 nurses to see what they could do and found things worse than what they had heard. They witnessed filth, infection, disorganization, and an overwhelming caseload. Shiploads of desperately needed medical supplies sat in the harbor while men died, because some official had not filled out the proper forms. In that environment, 42 percent of the wounded never recovered.
Nightingale ended up organizing the barracks hospital, including a kitchen, laundry, and clean latrines. She opened windows to let in fresh air and provided supplies by cutting administrative red tape or buying them herself. She provided reading and recreation rooms for the patients, wrote home to their loved ones, and provided a safe way to mail their pay home. The soldiers adored her and christened her the “Lady of the Lamp,” after the Turkish lantern she carried on her midnight rounds.
Her efforts brought remarkable results: the death rate dropped from 42 percent to less than 3 percent. (Kelvin D. Crow, “The Lady Of The Lamp,” Christian history, Issue 53, vol. xvi, no. 1, p. 35; www.PreachingToday.com)
Florence Nightingale was free to serve, because God had set her free from the need to impress her family and her friends, and we too have the same freedom! We are free from the law. We are free from the pressure to perform and impress. So now we are free to be slaves to one another.
You see, rather than our liberty being used for lust, the real goal is love. Rather than being in bondage to the Law or to the sinful nature, [we are now free] to be in bondage to one another. So use your liberty in Christ, not to serve yourself, but to serve one another through the Love of God in Christ. Through love, serve one another. Then, through love…
SATISFY THE LAW.
Through God’s love at work in you, fulfill all of God’s commands, and complete everything He wants you to do.
Galatians 5:14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (ESV)
In other words, if we concentrate on loving others as we love ourselves, then we find ourselves doing all that God has commanded us to do.
Free from the law, oh happy condition. Now we can sin for we have permission? NO! That’s not it at all. We are free from the law, so we can better keep God’s law through God’s love at work in our hearts. You see, God’s love does for us what His law could never do. It motivates us to full, complete, and wholehearted obedience.
Wayne Cordero, pastor of New Hope Church in Honolulu, Hawaii, talks about the days when he was dating his wife, Anna. He admired her love for sports, which he also loved. In fact, there were only two sports he didn’t like.
The first was bowling. He says, “I can't understand it. You pick up this cannonball and throw it on this beautiful maple floor that's tilted. And it goes down and disappears, thank goodness. All of a sudden – swbump! – it comes back again. You throw that thing down again, and it goes down and disappears. All of a sudden – swbump! – it comes back. All night you're trying to get rid of it. Finally, when you're done and you try to leave, they make you pay for throwing that ball down on the ground. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,” Cordero says.
The other sport Pastor Cordero hated was roller-skating: four wheels, none of them turn, and they expect you to go around in circles.
Well, on his first date with Anna, he knocked on her door. He was so excited and asked, “Where would you like to go tonight?”
She said, “Do you like bowling?” And she picked up her own bowling ball. She had her own bag! Now, Wayne Cordero was in love, so when she asked if he liked bowling, his answer was, “I love bowling.” And they went bowling all night. They had a great time.
The next week he knocked on her door and asked, “Where would you like to go this week?”
She picked up her skates and said, “Do you like skating?”
He said, “I've been waiting for months for someone to ask me go skating. I love skating.” And they skated all night.
Pastor Cordero looks back on it now and thinks, “What made it easy for me to change? Did I have to work up this thing to change my desire for bowling and skating? No. It was because of my relationship with that girl. Because of the love that I had in relationship with her, change was easy.” (Wayne Cordeiro, “A Personal Relationship,” Preaching Today audio no. 225; www. PreachingToday.com)
That’s the power of love, my friends. It makes change easy, doing what will-power alone cannot do. Love does what the law could never do. It motivates us to be all that God wants us to be.
And it’s not so much our love for God that motivate us. It’s His love for us, as we respond to His unconditional love. You see, our love is fickle. It’s hot and cold and lukewarm often all in the same day. On the other hand, God’s love never changes. It is always constant, and “we love [only] because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19 says.
Dear Believer in Christ, please, KNOW that God loves you unconditionally. Please, UNDERSTAND that God accepts you and affirms you right now just as you are, because God sees Christ in you. He is proud of you. Please believe it! Please, BELIEVE that God cannot love you any more or less than He loves you right now no matter what you do.
Accept His unconditional love for yourself. Then through the power of that love, serve one another. Through the power of that love, satisfy the law. And finally, through the power of that love…
STOP FIGHTING ONE ANOTHER.
End the conflict. Discontinue the critical remarks, which only destroy relationships.
Galatians 5:15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (ESV)
Our mouths, like wild animals, can be very destructive. In fact, when we verbally attack each other, we only devour ourselves.
The last soldier to die in the First World War was an American, 23-year-old Henry Gunther. He was a private with the American Expeditionary Force in France. He was killed at 10:59 A.M., November 11, 1918, one minute before the Armistice went into effect.
Gunther's squad, part of the 79th Infantry Division, encountered a roadblock of German machine guns near the village of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers. Against the orders of his sergeant, he charged the guns with his bayonet. German soldiers, aware of the Armistice, tried to wave him off. But Gunther kept coming and was gunned down; he died instantly. His divisional record states: “Almost as he fell, the gunfire died away and an appalling silence prevailed.” (Joseph Loconte, A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, Thomas Nelson, 2015, page 185; www.PreachingToday.com)
How tragic to continue fighting when peace has been made. So it is when God’s people keep fighting each other after “we have gained peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Our sins had put us at enmity with God, “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God’s love made a way for us to be friends with Him and with each other, so we don’t need to bite and devour one another anymore!
Through that love, we can heal relationships rather than hurt them. Through God’s love, we can build one another up rather than tear each other down. Through God’s love, we can develop one another rather than destroy each other.
That’s the secret to finding a little heaven in all our relationships. Just understand and accept God’s unconditional love for yourself. Then through that love, serve one another, satisfy the law, and stop fighting.
I like the way Bill Gaither put it years ago:
I am loved, I am loved;
I can risk loving you.
For the One who knows me best loves me most
I am loved, you are loved;
Won't you please take my hand.
We are free to love each other;
We are loved. (William J. Gaither, 1978)
