Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 14, 2016 | Route 66 - Galations

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August 14, 2016 | Route 66 - Galations · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
0:04
SPEAKER_00: I haven't been up here for a couple weeks.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago, I had such a good time.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Melody and I did sitting over here over there.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Watching our kids up front here.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: It's wow.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: That was so much fun.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: And then last week it was Student Ministry Sunday.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I wish I could have been here.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: I had such a good time with those kids in New York City, and I hear that you heard some of the stories.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So appreciate so much all of the cards that have come from many of you and the celebration we had two weeks ago where you honored Melody and you honored me, and hopefully honored the church and the Lord.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: At the 40th celebration, that was an amazing, an amazing time.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And then after that, we Melody and I uh had a family reunion of our of my siblings, my 10 uh living brothers and sisters and their children.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: We had 112 uh out to Living Water Ranch.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: They came from around the world and had a great family reunion.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And then we went to Alaska.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: That was uh an item on my bucket list for the last 30 years or whatever, and uh had a great time in Alaska.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had I I thought I died and went to heaven, and I think it was last Wednesday we were at a stream and we were watching these big red salmon uh clamber to try to swim upstream, and then 50 yards up, a big black bear came lumbering out and ignored us and got into the stream and started slapping at fish and finally pinned the big one and stuck it in its mouth and went over and started eating it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, it was amazing, it was so much fun.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: So uh now we're back, and this is the book of Galatians.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: We're back on Route 66, and Galatians is a really cool book because it's sort of a miniature Romans.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Romans, my favorite book of all time.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Galatians only six chapters, but it has a lot of the same themes.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Paul is writing to uh towns in present-day Turkey, then called Asia, uh uh to the churches where they were getting succored by false teachers into believing that they should get back under a performance standard with God.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: So I've entitled uh my message this morning and this book, Born Free, Live Free.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: And when I say Born Free, Live Free, the title I I confess is sort of inspired by a couple of pictures in my mind.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: One is a picture of a uh lion cub that's born free, I think of the book that's just been republished in its 50th anniversary.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: It was a New York Times bestseller back in 1960 for months, about a lioness named Elsa.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: It's by Joy Adamson.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And she wrote about uh the freedom of born-free animals in Africa.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And I also think the live-free side, I think of uh Lady Liberty, who I stood at Lady Liberty a month or so ago with the students last week who shared here on the stage.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could have been here.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh had such a great time with them in New York City.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think of us living in a stormy world with these dark clouds around, and Lady Liberty standing there, you know, holding up the torch of freedom, welcoming immigrants, escaping, running from tyrants and slavery from around the world to come to a place, and Lady Liberty shouts, live free! And that's what the book of Galatians does.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Paul's put that in the Bible, God's put that in the Bible, actually, as a book, to cry out to you and to me, and to all who uh people of the world who live in slavery, born free, live free.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: For the book of Galatians sort of uh suggests that there's bad news and good news.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: And the bad news is that all people in the world who are without Christ, all people as they naturally are, are in slavery.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: You're enslaved to sin, enslaved to death, enslaved to the devil, and so forth.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: And there's more bad news.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: According to Galatians, even our churches are filled with people, born-again Christians, who themselves, unfortunately, are living in slavery, slavery to anxiety, slavery, enslaved to a performance standard, enslaved to feelings of judgment, and judging themselves and judging others, enslaved some of them to addictions and so forth.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: And this book comes along and holds up the torch of freedom and cries out, uh, you've been born free, you ought to live free.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: On your study sheet, on this sheet that I've passed out, I summarize the book in this way: Galatians is the charter of Christian liberty.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: It's Paul's defense of salvation by faith alone, apart from works.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: The apostle writes this freedom letter to Christians who are being seduced by the teaching of legalists.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe Paul.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: He's preaching cheap grace, said these teachers.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Get back to the full gospel, to food laws and keeping all ten commandments and circumcision.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Paul minces no words.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: He, you entered God's family by faith without works.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: He said, Don't turn back now.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: You were born free, live free.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 and 2, he proves from his own life the gospel that his gospel of freedom is superior, because he didn't make it up himself.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: He got it from God.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 3 and 4, he proves from the Bible in the Old Testament that his gospel is superior, because it's the gospel for sons, not slaves, and in 5 and 6.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: He proves his gospel is superior in Christian living.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: It's the gospel of deliverance from sin by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Legalism says the way to get right and stay right with God is to live by the rules.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that's a lie.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: It's a lie for the unbeliever who is justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's a lie for the believer who is sanctified not by rules, but by keeping in step with the Spirit.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: 525.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Galatians is the Christian's declaration of dependence.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: So this is an offer of freedom.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And there is a path or a doorway to freedom, says this book.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: And if you'll take it, you will find that your life is transformed.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: But it's not an easy decision.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like the story that came out of the Middle East some years ago of the of the Persian general who captured a spy and told him, you know, that his life was forfeit, that he was condemned, but he had a choice.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: He could go before a firing squad, or or he could uh or he could choose the black door, that mysterious and scary and horrifying black door.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: And he could have a night to think about it.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Next morning the spy came in.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: General said, Have you thought about it?
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Which shall it be?
7:07
SPEAKER_00: The firing squad of the black door.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Not an easy decision, and the prisoner wavered, and finally he decided that he preferred the known to the unknown, and he chose the firing squad.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And as the volley went off behind the tent, the general uh dropped his eyes to the floor.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: And his aide said, said, What's the problem?
7:29
SPEAKER_00: And he said, General said, You see how it is with men.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: They always prefer what they know to what they don't know.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: It's characteristic of people to be terrified of the unknown.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: And the aide said, Well, what is behind the black door?
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And the general said, Freedom.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And I've only known a few men brave enough to take it.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, Galatians challenges us to be brave enough to take the door of freedom.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: It's a radical step for some of us, it will be, and yet it can be a life-changing step.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: Galatians is the charter of freedom, freedom in Christ.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: On the back of your sheet, I've decided that this book could be boiled down to three questions.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And now I've boiled it down because it's been a couple days since I wrote this.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: It's been boiled down more.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: I've boiled it down to two questions.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: The first and the third.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: And the answer to the second question, I'm going to put underneath the third.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: That's my choice.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm going to do.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: And the first question is: do you know how to get right with God?
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to get right with God?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: By right, I mean righteousness, where the word justification is the same word in Greek.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: What was happening in Galatia is that these teachers were coming in and they were saying, listen, you're saved from your sins by keeping the rules, keeping these rules.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: And Paul goes after that like kids go after a pinata on Cinco de Maya.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: He's going to demolish that.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: He says, listen, there's only two choices, grace or law.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: By law, he's referring to the law of Moses, 1400 BC, given at Mount Sinai.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: But now Paul, Paul doesn't, it's not that he doesn't like the law.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: He loves the law, like King David, who said, Oh, how I love thy law.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just that the law was never given as a pathway or a doorway or a ladder to heaven.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: The law was given to people who were already children of God.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: They'd come out of Egypt.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: And it was like a railroad track, if I could paint a picture.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: It was like a railroad track guiding their obedience, the obedience of children of God.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: But what had happened over the years is that the Israelites, and now especially the Pharisees, the legalists, they'd ripped that railroad track up with the ties and the steel pegs and everything, and they'd propped that thing up against the doorway to heaven, and they were telling people that to get to heaven, what you had to do is you had to climb the railroad.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: You had to climb that ladder.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: You had to climb all the way up, all the way up those, you know, you know, the ties and everything else.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't miss one, you had to hit it all.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, that's just not, I mean, if that was true, he said, why would God have sent his son Jesus Christ?
10:14
SPEAKER_00: There's been no need for Jesus to come if you could somehow get into heaven that way.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: But that's an impossible way to do it.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Plus, that's not why the law was given in the first place.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And he begins his book by saying in verses six and seven, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: So there's really no gospel at all.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: In other words, X, he's gonna say, X plus N is less than X.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: X is an abbreviation for Chris, Greek word Christos, the first letter of Christos.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: You've seen it before in the front of a communion table.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, it looks like an X.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: So that's why you hear people say Xmas.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: That's an abbreviation for Christ.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: So X, X plus anything, plus any rungs, any ladders, any rules, tithing, going to church, being better than my neighbor, anything else, anything is less than Christ.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: You end up with less.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says it's false, though we or an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached to you.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Let him be accursed.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of salvation by faith alone is the only gospel.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: There's no other good news.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand how to get right with God?
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 and 2 of Galatians, you get right with God not by works, he says, but by faith.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Key verse here is Galatians 2.16.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Now, just personally, I think of this as the nickel verse.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: For me, this is the nickel verse, because when I was seven years old, I went to my dad.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I needed money for candy or something.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: I asked him how I could earn money.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: He said there's five minutes till supper.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: You learn Galatians 2.16 and say it at supper, I'll give you a nickel.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, this last week as an Alaskan, and I was reading a book that somebody had brought, you know, on learning and education, schooling, the best way to teach and the best way to learn, and it made the argument as these books always do, that rope memorization is not the best way to do it, just goes in one ear and out the other.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, because it's Galatians, wow, a verse that I went in a coat closet to get away from seven or eight brothers and sisters, turned on the light, you know, with the Bible, and spent the five or ten minutes and learned this and went out and recited it and got my nickel, and I still remember the verse 50 years later.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: So, so, or maybe more than that, but whatever it is.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: But isn't it amazing?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: So maybe it's true that there are a lot of things you shouldn't learn by rote memory, but the fact of the matter is, just say this to parents of young children, this is still the best time and the best way to learn the Bible.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you may have to offer more than a nickel to get them to memorize Galatians 2.16 now, but but this is a great verse on how to get right with God.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: He says, We know that a person is not justified, that is, he doesn't become a Christian, he's not made just or made right with God by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: So we also have believed in Jesus Christ, believed in faith, exactly the same word, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because, and now he returns to the first line of the verse, by works of the law no one will be justified.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: That's how you get right with God.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not by doing, it's by believing that it's been done on the cross.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says that now in a number of other ways.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm not about to set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: That's Galatians 2.21, Galatians 3.11.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Because, he said, you know, quoting a verse that's repeated four times in the Bible, the righteous will live by faith.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Life comes by faith.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: For, he continues a few verses later, you're all children of God.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: You become sons and daughters of God.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: How?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: By faith in Jesus Christ.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know I'm speaking to the choir here.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I think all of you, pretty much all of you, will believe this.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: This is if you're not sure where you stand with God as far as salvation, this is where you must realize that you are enslaved to a performance standard, no matter who you are.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're not a Christian yet, then you need to understand that you somehow are enslaved to this performance standard of achieving and doing before God, and that your whole life will change when you realize that it's been done and you simply need to trust him by faith.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: It's been, what, a hundred and some years ago, since one of the great songwriters of all time, uh P.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: P.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Bliss, I think it's Philip Paul Bliss or something, wrote, Free from the law, O happy condition, Jesus hath bled, and there is remission.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall, grace hath redeemed us once for all.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Once for all, O sinner, receive it.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Once for all, O friend, now believe it.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Cling to the Savior, obey his call.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Christ hath redeemed us once for all.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: And someone who will remind us a whole lot of Pee-Pee Bliss, MC Hammer, the rap, a hip-hop artist, remember the guy wore uh, you know, um parachute pants and special dance moves, you don't want to see him.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: And uh saying, You can't touch this, remember?
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good Christian song.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Um well, he became a Christian, and when interviewed, um the guy who sung You Can't Touch This and Too Legit to Quit and other stuff put it this way, he said, I now believe in Jesus Christ, and I now know that the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Being good won't do it for any of us, good hammer can't make it.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: My name MC Hammer, he said, now stands for man of Christ hammer.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's the message of chapters one and two of Galatians.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to get right with God?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Answer by faith, not by works.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, the other main question of the book, the third one on the back of your sheet is do you know how to live now?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to live now?
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's a great question, isn't it?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Having been born, how should we then live?
16:52
SPEAKER_00: That's not just a question for um seminary theologians uh in horn-rimmed glasses.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: That is actually a question being asked across the world by nations and peoples who've recently been born into freedom.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: The good news, by the way, is that in the last 40 years, the number of nations in the world that have become free nations has more than doubled, according to the Freedom House, a non-government organization that's been measuring these things for decades.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: There were 41 free nations 40 years ago, and today there are 86 nations in the world that can be called free.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: There's other some nations that can be called partly free, and there are a number of nations, I think 30 some now, that are not free.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: They're slave societies.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: But while that's the good news, the bad news is that most of the freedom, you know, nations moving to freedom happened in the 80s and early and 90s, but now there's a move back the other direction.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Over 100 nations have moved back towards some sort of slavery in the last 10 years.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in just the last three years, the world has dropped from 90 free nations to 86, because nations that have moved into freedom don't know how to handle it and oftentimes move back into slavery.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Example number one being, of course, the Soviet Union.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Remember, in about 1990, the Berlin Wall came down, they became free, but a leading Soviet uh spoke in Time magazine and said, Finally, after 70 years of slavery, mentioning Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev, finally, after 70 years of slavery, we have our freedom, but after 70 years of slavery, we don't know what to do with it.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: And they did struggle, as you know.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: They struggled greatly in the 90s.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: There was poverty.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Having been used to a government that sort of took care of them for good or ill, from cradle to grave, they didn't know what to do with freedom.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, we struggle with the same question.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: In America, we constantly struggle with wanting to uh give our freedoms up to the government in order that we can have security, security in this way or that way, whether it's health care or life or death or whatever else.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And and and and so the Soviet Union has been moving back towards slavery as you know, they elected Vladimir Putin four years ago, and Putin has taken Russia on a quick train trip back towards slavery.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: So that just recently, Policy Review magazine entitled an article, um, Under Putin in Russia, the doors are closing.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: The freedom of assembly, the freedom to speak, and so forth, these freedoms, freedom of the internet.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: No longer do you have complete freedom of the internet and Russia, they're closing off, closing uh what can come in on the internet.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: They don't want their people seeing uh truth around the world.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And just last month, and this is this affected us in Jews for Jesus a lot.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: We were talking about it because freedom of religion is now about to be taken away.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: This may be the last summer we're able to witness on the streets in Moscow because uh the doors are closing and they're moving back into slavery.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul isn't addressing religious uh uh uh I mean political freedom, is he?
20:29
SPEAKER_00: He cares about freedom for born-again Christians.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: And he says, now the problem is having been born free, uh are you gonna live free?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: And and you and I say, Well, I want to live free, Paul.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: I want to live free, but uh, but I struggle.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: I get back in bondage, I know.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me how to do that?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And in short, Paul's answer is gonna be something like this is you're gonna say, Well, okay, you just walk down your life as a Christian.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Just live your life, put one step in front of the other, but live by faith.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: And once in a while, what you're gonna see is you're gonna look over, and you're gonna see your path is kind of dusty and dry and boring and and and you're and and not have, and you'll look over a fence, and you will see on one side, you'll see fruit trees and beautiful verdant gardens and so forth.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: You'll be tempted to climb over that fence.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Like remember, Christian did, the pilgrim and pilgrim's progress, you know, and he talked hopeful and they climbed over the fence, and the bypath meadow turned out to be the property of the giant despair.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And and Paul says, watch out, you don't want to climb back over into legalism, into rules, and so forth.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: You'll you'll get hurt that way.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: There's a giant over there.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Nor, as you're walking along, you'll be tempted at other times, and especially young people are going to climb over the fence into license.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: That is, live as I want, live for me, myself, and I loose living, do whatever you want.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not the solution either.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: So Paul is going to talk.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: About both of those things in this book, and he starts with the legalism aside.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: He says, Do you know how to live now as a Christian?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You don't live by rules, you live by faith.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: That's you don't live as a Christian under a performance standard.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And he jumps right into that in chapter three by saying, You foolish Galatians, speaking to the church, who's bewitched you?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: This is what I want to find out from you, verse 2.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: Did you receive the Spirit and become Christians by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: Faith, obviously.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: So are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit, or you're now being perfected by the flesh?
22:42
SPEAKER_00: So what we have here is a story of Christians.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: That's people like us who are living, putting themselves back under performance standard.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not going to say anything you don't know, even though it's going to sound critical, but you do know, I'm sure, that the way the world, the secular world, looks at Christians is they look at us as sort of hard, insensitive, uncompassionate, rules-oriented people who judge themselves and judge others.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
23:14
SPEAKER_00: I thought this morning.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I inserted this this morning.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking of a book by Leon, I love Leon Euris.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And in his book about Ireland, called Trinity, he speaks as here of Robin McLeod, I'm quoting from the book, remembered his mother as a woman with the severity of her religion etched as deeply in her soul as the lines in her face.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: She was never given to laughter, only to screeching prayer.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: She had the face of a winter's night and a heart to match, he recalled.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it awful when you run across true Christians like this?
23:51
SPEAKER_00: They have themselves underperformed.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And bless you if you're one of these kinds of people, because you live under a burden and you judge yourself and you rarely come up to snuff and you're unhappy and you're anxious and you're oppressed, and even though you teach Sunday school, even though you're deeply involved in stuff, and even though you get up early and have your quiet time and pray, and maybe even have led some people to Christ, you live a life that I don't want, you know.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And I admit I'm a recovering legalist myself, you know, constantly.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Because we tend to live under a performance standard, and when we do that, we become severe, we tend to judge ourselves, but we also then seep out and we start judging others and we become unpleasant to live around.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, that's not the way Christ lived.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to live that way either.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Do you don't you know who you are now?
24:42
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer under that slavery you were on.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: You're now no longer even who you used to be.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: It's an you are now a Christian.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: You're now a Jesus person.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is inside you.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: You're not the person you used to be.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And in the most important spiritual life verse in the Bible, in my view, one you should know, say it with me, Galatians 2.20.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Say it, I have been crucified with Christ.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: He begins that verse by talking about the past.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: I have been crucified with Christ.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: That means if the grace of God came down from heaven and met your faith coming up, you became a Christian at that moment, and in that moment, you were planted, in a sense, into the body of Christ.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: You died with him on the cross, buried with him, you were raised with him.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: You are no longer the person you used to be.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
25:53
SPEAKER_00: You were crucified with Christ.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: So that presently, Paul says, this is something you need to believe if you're gonna live a free life.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: You need to believe it's no longer you, that old you who lives, but it's now Christ who lives in me.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Pull Christ out of you, dear Christian, and all you're left with is I-A-N.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: I am nothing.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
26:17
SPEAKER_00: You're nothing.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: It is Christ who lives in you, who is you.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the life you now live in the flesh, you must live by faith in the Son of God.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Christ living through you, living a life of faith.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Christ, you remember, was not mean, uncompassionate, and severe, right?
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Christ was this person who was magnetic in his personality, drew everyone to him, everyone loved him.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: You can be that kind of a person.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: In present, you live by faith in the Son of God who in the past loved you and gave himself for you.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Do you know who you are?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: You're not the person you used to be.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: You it's not you anymore, but Christ who lives through you.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, you're not a slave, but a son.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: How do I live now?
27:06
SPEAKER_00: I live differently.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I live in light of who I am.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
27:13
SPEAKER_00: I am a Jesus person first, and secondly, I'm a son and not a slave.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Paul puts it this way in Galatians 4 7.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know you're no longer a slave, but a son or daughter, and if you are his child, then you are also an heir through God.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And that can transform the way you live.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Just that concept that I'm no longer enslaved to those addictions, to those habits that used to enslave me as a non-Christian.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Why?
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not the person I used to be, I've been set free.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: So Abraham Lincoln goes to the slave auction.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And he sees a young woman clearly filled with hate, animosity.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: She's been used, she's been abused, she's standing on the auction block.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: He puts in a bid for her.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: He gets outbid.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: He bids again.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: There's counterbidding.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Finally, the story goes Abraham Lincoln wins her.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: He goes up to her, she says, What are you gonna do with me?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Filled with hate.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm gonna set you free.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: She backs up.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: She says, Free to do anything I want to do, free to do anything you want to do, free to say anything I want to say, free to say anything you want to say, free to go wherever I want to go, free to go wherever you want to go.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Then she said, I choose to go with you.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And a Christian who fully realizes that at the moment they became a Christian, they were set free by Jesus Christ.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: They're no longer a slave, but a son welcomed into the palace to the banquet table with God.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: That kind of a Christian will willingly and happily put themselves back under a kind of slavery to God, a kind of a willing obedience to all that God wants.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's ringing the bell in this book about not realizing you're no longer a slave.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: He starts chapter 5 with what I have written down.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Your sheet is the key verse of the book.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: It's for freedom that Christ has set us free.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Stand firm, therefore, and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to live?
29:30
SPEAKER_00: First answer, it's not by rules, but by faith.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: In my favorite Broadway musical, I love that moment where the young uh heroes of the French Revolution stand and sing.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear the people sing?
29:48
SPEAKER_00: It is the song of angry men.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And this book says it challenges us to stand and to hate slavery and to fight against the slavery which is constantly wanting to move into our lives and to enslave us to a performance standard, that standard that didn't get us saved, and it won't make us holy, and it certainly won't make us happy.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we must fight against it.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: I think I've told you already, sometime in the past, quoted the book by Jerry Schizero, the pastor's wife from New York City, who's who writes back in the day, I helped start a new church in New York City.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: It was an incredible experience.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Church really grew.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I look back with loads of nostalgia, all of that.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: But can I be honest with you?
30:41
SPEAKER_00: She says, as great as that experience was, there came a time when it was just plain exhausting.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Because, like a lot of well-intentioned, passionate people, my relationship with Jesus started to revolve around a whole lot of work.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: And then she talks about all the shoulds.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: She lives full of anxiety and full of judgment and trying to do this and trying to do that.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: And she says at one point, Jesus invited me into the Christian life to enjoy a rich banquet at his table, but instead it often felt like I was a galley slave, laboring to serve everyone at the feast instead of enjoying it myself.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And one night Jerry came into the bedroom and told her husband, I quit.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: What?
31:30
SPEAKER_00: She said, I quit.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: And in the book, she says, He says it was the best thing that ever happened to either one of them.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: But you know what this is like.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: You can be so involved in Christian activity because you love God and you want to serve him.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And so you basically rate yourself on the standard of these rules and you and you begin to think God's kind of a scary God, isn't he?
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And so the only way I can sort of handle him is by the magic of knowing that if I get up early in the morning and have a certain length of quiet time and do this much prayer and come to church and act, you know, and serve in this way and give my money and so forth, then I know I can control.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: I'll have his affection if I'll only do that.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And since, of course, you always fall short of that standard that you set, you end up feeling anxious and depressed and downhearted and unhappy.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the way to live, Paul says.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Jesus didn't live that way, and now Jesus is living in you.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Let him live through you, right?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: And he also says, and quit living like a slave.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer a slave.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Live like a son.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Now that then he says, of course, there's some, there's this other danger, of course.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: You know how to live now.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: He says, not by rules, but by faith, but you don't live by flesh either.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: You live by spirit, because of course there's this other fence.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, there are people who sort of leave church and don't serve at all, and then they sort of live for themselves, and it's this life of what theologians call license, or what we'd call loose living, or what I call living from me, myself, and I.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, not that's there's no freedom there either.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: If you watch the people who do that, they end up enslaved what?
33:18
SPEAKER_00: To themselves and to the flesh, and to something that's that's just as horrible.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: And so he spends chapter five, Paul does, saying, That's that's not freedom either.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: He says, live by the spirit.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: And you won't gratify the desires of the flesh, the sinful nature.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: For you have these two warring things, that your flesh, the simple nature, is desiring what's opposite the spirit, and vice versa, and they're in conflict.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: So you turns out if you just live by performing, you're you're not going to do what you want to do.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: So be led by the spirit or keep in step with the spirit, and you won't be under law, he says.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's a it's a life of walking down, you know, the pathway or driving down the highway, realizing, you know, even though at times the the rules thing looks good, you know, you compare yourself with others and they're performing better than you are.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And you go, I I I want to get over there and compete, compete with that.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: And then on the other side, you go, Well, those people, they're really having a good time.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: They're they're not involved in this thing at all.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a group of us that want ahead that.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, neither way, you just stay in the middle and you and you walk by faith, that is, believing that you're not the person you used to be, that you're now a Christian, a Jesus person.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: He lives through me.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: And you you keep in step with the Spirit.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Spirit, do you want me to, is that, are you telling me, you know, maybe I should go over and love that person now or help that person?
34:42
SPEAKER_00: And so you walk by faith and you live a free, an absolutely free life.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: And if you'll do that, then he says the fruit of the spirit will start to just come out of you.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not a production thing, you don't have to work it up, start a company, it'll just start flowing through you.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: I preached a series on this called Juicy Fruit several years ago.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: That the juicy fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, these nine things love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: By the way, there's no law against these things at all.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, those of you who belong to Christ Jesus, you Christians, you crucified, right?
35:21
SPEAKER_00: The sinful nature with its passions and desires that happened on the cross.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Since we live by the Spirit, since you're alive, since you were born again that way, let's keep in step with the Spirit.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: So, moment by moment, day by day, like you just carry each other's burdens.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's how you fulfill the law of Christ.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: It's not a bunch of rules and so forth, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 5, verse 14.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: See this way of living?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: And you're not used to that way.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm not used to that way.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: We live in a performance country where somehow, you know, you have to perform in certain ways.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: And so we find some people, some people heading completely away from that and living for me, myself, and I, no rules at all, and falling into that abyss, and other people heading into the performance standard and showing that they can do it better than all of us, but yet being anxious and depressed.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, Let me ask you these questions one more time.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to get right with God?
36:30
SPEAKER_00: You say, Yeah, I do.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not by works, not by me, it's by faith, by trusting Christ as my Savior.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Congratulations, Paul said.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, don't let anyone mess with you.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to live now?
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Don't let anyone tell you that the way to live now is to head back to under the same rules you were under, you put yourself under before.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way to live.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: You'll do those things automatically, most of them, if you just simply love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to live?
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Live as a Christian, as a Jesus person.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: Let Christ flow through you.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Tanya Tucker was a star at age 13.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: That's when she sang her first country hit.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: She was a star in all the boys' love.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact, she became a teen idol, a teen pop star, a teen country star in the 70s, and then her life fell apart.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: She became an alcoholic in the 80s.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: Somebody was telling me after the last service, she was in the military with her brother in the 80s, that her brother absolutely hated her because she was an alcoholic, raging alcoholic, she was addicted to cocaine, treated her family, treated everyone terribly.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: She fell off the face of the earth and so forth.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: But then she came back in her whole life.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: She went to a treatment center and she got free and so forth.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: And and uh and uh some people say, Bet Jesus Christ.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what exactly happened to her, but in 1988, she was, she she experienced her period, and she wrote a song which immediately became a number one hit.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: And the title of that song was I Won't Take Less than Your Love.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And the lyrics to that great song in 1988 go like this.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: How much do I owe, said the man to his Lord, for giving me this day and every day gone before?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Tell me, Lord, and I will pay the price.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, I won't take less than your love.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: No, I won't take less than your love.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: Which is a great expression of the book of Galatians, that our tendency is to offer up to God our legalism, our performance, our attendance at certain events, right?
38:48
SPEAKER_00: And our our Bible study or our money or our performance, our actions in some way, our charity work.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And God says, you know, I, you know, I'm not gonna take that.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna take anything less than your love.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna take anything less than your love.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: For this book, the book of Galatians, sets us free from the performance standard once and for all.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: It was 56 years ago, I think, that Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon sat opposite each other and they were not friends at that point.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: And Khrushchev says, I'm gonna tell you, your grandchildren will live under communism.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: And Richard Nixon responded, shot back, no, your grandchildren are going to live under freedom.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: It turned out Richard Nixon was right, but the jury is still out on whether Nikita Khrushchev's grandchildren, who presently live in a kind of free Russia, whether or not they will continue to live free.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: More importantly, that's the question that's still out there for you and for me.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: If you're not a believer yet, then you need to go through the black door of Christ's death into freedom, into the light of freedom.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: And even if you're a Christian, you know, I know personally how easy it is to get back in bondage.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: And this book is saying you don't have to live that way.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: Walk through that black door of Christ's death.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: I am now Christ living through me.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm led by the Spirit.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I live by love, not by rules, and you can live a life of freedom.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for the offering, the provision of your Son Jesus Christ, to do what we could not do, to give us open entry, free entry into eternal life and forgiveness of sin, heaven, forever.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: For that gift, we thank you.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: We have embraced that gift.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: This morning we would also embrace the life that you've provided that follows it, the life that avoids, a standard of performance that puts us and others under guilt and condemnation, a life that is a life of joy and freedom, and living Jesus Christ.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: In whose name we pray.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Amen.