Holding Fast Our Freedom

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Transcript:

Galatians chapter 5, turn with me to Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse 1. I feel like I’ve been, and y’all may feel this way too, I feel like I’ve been preaching in Galatians for half my life at this point, as we’ve gone through it on Sunday nights. But I also, it’s such a rich book, it’s such an important book, that I also feel like I’ve barely scraped the surface.

So I hope you all will be encouraged to dig a little deeper into this book, even after we’re finished. We’re going to start in verse 1 tonight, chapter 5, verse 1. It says, Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you.

Whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. And we’re going to stop right there at this point. We’ll talk about a little bit more of the passage tonight, but I want to stop there just for now.

He has discussed with them the reasons why God’s grace is sufficient, well, why God’s grace is sufficient, and why as a means toward justification it’s superior to the law, that we would be justified by faith, that we would have access to the grace of God instead of trying to be justified by the law. He has spent the previous three chapters just about explaining this to them, going back to Abraham, the one that they looked to and said, we’re all right with God because we’re descended from him. Well, they forgot all about the fact that the reason Abraham was all right with God was because of faith.

So they hung their hat on Abraham, but they forgot the importance of that message. They forgot the lesson that there really was there to learn. And so now he comes back and having explained to them that they’re now free from the law, free from the Old Testament law as a means for justification, as a means toward having the slate clean, as a means toward being righteous in our standing before God, he now says we as Christians have this liberty, and he says hold on to it.

I should have looked this up beforehand, but I believe it was, if not Benjamin Franklin, if Benjamin Franklin is not the one who says this, he probably wishes he had, but I believe it’s Benjamin Franklin who said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Anybody familiar with that quote? Can you tell me who?

Okay. That’s all right. Like I said, if it wasn’t Benjamin Franklin, he probably wishes he had said it.

But somebody, brilliant, said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We know that’s true in the political realm. If we don’t watch out for our rights, if we don’t watch out for our God-given freedoms, they will be taken away from us.

That’s the way the history of the world works. It’s no less true in spiritual matters. Christ has made us free.

Christ has made us free from bondage to sin. He’s made us free from the demands of the law. And yet, everything in our world wants to try to enslave us again spiritually.

And so Paul wrote to them, stand fast in the liberty. Stand fast means to stand firm in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. And be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.

They knew exactly what the yoke of bondage would have been because they had already been entangled in it before. And he spent chapter upon chapter explaining to them what the yoke of bondage was. The yoke of bondage is the heavy burden that we were under before Christ came and took it off of us.

Now he’s explained to them throughout this entire letter that they were free in Christ. And he goes on in the rest of this passage that we’re going to look at tonight, really verses 1 through 15, he explains to them, okay, you’re free, so now what? What do we do with it? And he tells them, number one, stand firm.

Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. Hold on to it. Grab on to it with both hands.

And be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Very easy to fall into the old patterns of doing things. It’s very easy to fall into sin.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of trying to justify ourselves by our works or by our own goodness. And it takes a diligent effort to stand firm on the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. And he tells them.

He goes on again. Just in case they’re still not getting this, he goes back to sort of the hallmark of their faith, of believing they were justified by works, this circumcision. He goes back to it and said, Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

Now, this is not saying that to be circumcised means you cannot be saved. If that was the case, then Paul himself could not be saved. If that was the case, then Paul made a horrible, horrible error when he took two different men with him on trips to go and minister and share the gospel, and one of them, I can’t remember which is which, I think Titus is the one he insisted not be circumcised, And Timothy, he insisted, be circumcised.

Now, I may have those backwards. But one of them, he said, don’t you dare. And the other one said, based on where we’re going, you need to do this.

If so, if this was saying that to do that means you couldn’t be saved, he’s made a ghastly, ghastly mistake and condemned somebody to hell for eternity. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s speaking to people who thought that their circumcision, their Jewish identity, their adherence to the Old Testament law, all summarized and symbolized by that one outward act where what was going to take them to heaven.

And so he said, when he talks about them being circumcised, it’s not so much the physical act that was going to make Christ of no effect to them, it was the importance they placed on it. It was the condition of their heart. And he said, if you’re circumcised, if you’re putting your faith in that, then Christ shall profit you nothing.

if you’re putting your faith at all in this outward sign of following the law, if you’re putting your faith in this genealogy you have, if you’re putting your faith in any of this, Christ isn’t going to do you a bit of good. Because just as we said this morning, God will not be added, even if He’s first on the list, God will not just be added to the list. He’s got to be the whole list. And when it comes to our faith, if Christ is just something added to the list, folks, He may very well be the top of the list. But if there’s a list besides Him, we’re putting our faith in something else, and it does us no good because we’re still trusting ourselves. We’re still trusting something outside of Christ. If He’s not the whole list, we really haven’t trusted Him at all.

For I testify again, verse 3, to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Again, Paul had talked about himself and so many of them being free from the demands of the law. He’s not saying that by circumcision, just by the outward physical act, that you’re a debtor to do the whole law.

What he’s talking about, again, here is those people who are putting their faith in the outward signs, in the keeping of the law, in all of these things, the Jewish customs, that if they were putting their faith in that, if they say, oh, because some of these people were teaching that in order to be saved, yes, you had to trust Christ, but you had to do this as well. You had to have this surgery. And what he’s saying is that if you think that’s important, and somebody has to have this surgery done in order to be saved, then what you don’t realize is if you’re going to put that much importance on the law, you’ve got to do the whole law.

And as he’s already pointed out to them throughout the book, they can’t keep the whole law. Christ has become of no effect unto you. Whosoever of you are justified by the law, you’re fallen from grace.

He’s made it clear already that nobody is justified by the law. And so what he’s talking about here are those people who would presume that they could earn their justification by the law. Those people who in their mind, this is what I’m working toward.

Those people who have not said, I’m justified completely by faith in Christ and have instead said, I’m going to work harder, I’m going to do the right things in order that I can be righteous before God. Whosoever is justified by the law, you’re fallen from grace. Now this has been a passage that has troubled a lot of people over the years.

It’s troubled me before as well. When he’s talking about somebody that has drawn back completely from trusting in Christ and said, no, I’m going the other way. It has to be the law.

The Bible makes it clear in so many places that if somebody makes a profession of faith and then completely goes the opposite direction, what we see from so many passages is that they never really were in the faith to begin with. And what they had in the churches of Galatia were people who had made outwardly a profession of faith in Christ, a profession that they could be justified by faith, And yet now they’re going back to the law and saying, well, it’s got to be Christ plus the law, or maybe even it’s got to be mostly the law. And what he’s saying is if you’ve drawn back from it, you never really had it.

You’ve fallen from grace, so to speak. When they tried to be justified by the law, there was no more grace, because grace and the law do not coexist as far as our justification. Grace exists because we can’t keep the law.

But if we try to, we’ve got to entirely trust on God’s grace. And if we’re trusting in the works of the law, that’s trust that’s not going into grace, if that makes sense. And so when they tried to be justified by the law, when they said it’s not Christ, it’s the law, he said you’re fallen from grace.

The grace you imagine that upheld you is not there. Now this does not say that somebody sins and they fall from grace. They lose their salvation.

I believe the Bible is, you know, I can understand why people don’t believe eternal security. I can see where their arguments come from. But at the same time, based on what the Bible actually says and what the Bible actually means, I believe that once you truly have it, you never lose it.

And so many places where the Bible talks about people falling away, it’s talking about people who never were truly converted. And if you’ve truly trusted Christ, I don’t believe you can fall away. I believe you can wander astray for a little while, but I believe you’ll come back.

So when it talks about falling from grace, it’s not threatening people with a loss of salvation. I believe it’s talking about false professors who never really had it and now have gone back to the way they always have walked in. For we through the Spirit, verse 5, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision. He said it really doesn’t matter. This outward sign that he had talked about so much, this surgery that they had to have, It’s not that having it gets you to heaven or keeps you out of heaven.

He said it really has nothing to do. The outward symbol really has nothing to do with your standing before God. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.

He said in verse 5, we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. We know what we’re going to receive. We know that the righteousness of Christ is there for us.

We know that it’s there in our account. It’s there on our behalf. When the Bible uses the word hope, it’s not talking about an empty hope that we say in our world.

Oh, I hope it rains tomorrow. I do hope it rains tomorrow. But whether the weatherman says it or not, I have no absolute assurance that it’s going to rain tomorrow.

What I’m meaning is I wish it would rain tomorrow. When the Bible says hope, it’s talking about an expectation of something that we know is certain and just has not happened yet. And so we, through the Spirit, through the Spirit of God, wait for the hope of righteousness, the thing that we look forward to and are assured of, this righteousness that comes by faith.

And he says, because in Jesus Christ, none of this outward stuff has any bearing on our standing before God, because it’s the righteousness by faith, but faith which worketh by love. He said, ye did run well. Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth?

That you should not obey the truth. I was looking at this as we were finishing the song service. I was looking over this again, and I saw that phrase again, that ye should not obey the truth.

I thought, that sounds familiar. And I got to flipping through the book of Galatians, and it says that on at least one other occasion. I’ve lost it again.

Oh, chapter 3, verse 1, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth? There may be, I knew it sounded familiar from in the book. There may be other occasions when it says that, but that’s at least twice in the book of Galatians.

He talks about them not obeying the truth. And what that tells me is that the truth of the gospel, the truth of God’s word is not just something to believe. We’re supposed to do something about it.

It’s not enough just to say, oh yeah, Christ died for me. There really has to be a belief in here, a life-shaking belief that changes the way we try to relate to God. If we truly understand the truth of God’s word, and we don’t just get it up here, but we get it right here, folks, we should obey the truth.

we should realize that we cannot earn it on our own, that we cannot do enough good to earn God’s forgiveness and stop trying. I don’t mean stop being good, but stop trying to earn God’s forgiveness and obey the plan that he has set in place. The truth is not, it’s important that we obey, excuse me, it’s important that we believe the truth, but it’s just as important that we obey the truth that we know and believe.

Ye did run well. Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? You were going along, Galatian people, you were going along so well.

What happened? Who did this to you? And Paul knew full well, I think, who did it to them.

Paul knew who was teaching these things, but he asks over and over throughout this book, who bewitched you? Who has led you astray? Who has done these things?

He asks over and over so that they will realize, not only is there something wrong with the idea that we can earn our forgiveness before God, but somebody has been teaching us wrong, because they needed to identify those people and know not to listen to them. this persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. This persuasion, this way of thinking, did not come from the God who called you by his grace.

This persuasion, this way of thinking that they had fallen into, came from someplace else, from these false teachers who wanted to drag them back into bondage. A little leaven, he says in verse 9, leaveneth the whole lump. We know that’s true.

You put just a little bit of yeast in the bread dough, and that’s enough. I don’t pretend to understand everything about it, but it’s a living organism, and it lives and eats and reproduces and spreads throughout the whole loaf of bread. You can’t put a little bit of yeast in the lump of bread dough and just put it on this side and say, I’m going to bake it, and this side is leavened bread.

It’s going to rise, and this side is unleavened bread. It doesn’t work that way. A little bit of the yeast of the leaven leavens the whole lump.

What he’s saying here was a little bit of this false teaching corrupts everything. And they needed to realize that somebody had been telling tales. Somebody had been leading them astray, and they needed to recognize who it was and be on guard against it.

I have confidence in you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded, but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment whosoever he be. These people that were trying to draw them back into bondage, Paul said they know who they are. Those that troubled them, those that tried to shackle them again with the law, even in some of the churches, those who tried to shackle them again to sin by saying, it’s okay, do what you want.

Because as we talk about liberty, as we talk about the liberty in Christ, it’s not our American concept of liberty that means I can just do whatever I want. Actually, following our Constitution, our concept of liberty doesn’t even mean I’m free to do whatever I want. That’s something our society has, I won’t say progressed to, it’s regressed to in the last few years.

But he says these people who’ve tried to bring you back into bondage, they know who they are, and they’re going to stand in judgment. They’re going to bear his judgment. Folks, not everybody, not everybody, and it sounds awful even as I think to say this, but not everybody needs to teach.

I’m not saying in this church, but everybody who professes the name of Christ doesn’t need to teach. Everybody who professes the name of Christ doesn’t need to stand up and preach before a church full of people. And I’m not saying about any of you in here, but I know when I was pastoring in Bethany, we had this couple that lived in the neighborhood and came in, and they claimed to both be Christians, and they’d done music.

And they wanted to come in. Again, they said they were Christians. They wanted to come in and lead in the music.

We didn’t have anybody doing music. Half the time, we didn’t have a piano player, and it was me leading the music and then preaching. You can imagine how exciting that was.

And so they came in and they said, we want to lead and we want to. . .

Oh, and she said, I’ve taught women’s ministry and I’ve done this and that. And some of the people in the church said, we really need to latch on to them and let them serve here. And I thought, well, that’d be good if they wanted to come here and serve.

But the more I talked to them, they were just way out there in the things that they taught. They taught some really, really wrong things about God. And I just did not have a good feeling about them teaching.

Yes, they claim to be Christians. They claimed to have been born again. But their testimony, when you talk to them about what they meant by that, when you talk to them about their understanding of God, it did not match up with what I knew to be the truth of the Bible.

And some people got mad at me for not letting them minister. Well, this isn’t always the case, but come to find out, they moved on to the next church, and then he went to jail for trying to kill her and setting their house on fire. So I guess God averted a little bit of a crisis for us.

So I’m not saying, you know, a mature Christian, I’m not trying to say that I’m the only one who can preach. I’m the only one who can teach. What I’m saying is everybody who claims the name of Christ does not need to teach and preach.

And when you do go to teach or preach, when you preach up here, when you teach in here, when you teach downstairs, folks, it’s not something we should take lightly because these people, I think just like with the cults today, I think there were some people who knew that they were teaching wrong things and did it anyway. And I think there were some people who were sincere but sincerely wrong. And what Paul said is they were all going to bear his judgment.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a responsibility before God for the things that I tell you. And I may not always be 100% accurate, but I try very hard and try to make sure that what I tell you follows according to what this book says. That’s one reason I always encourage you to bring your Bibles, open your Bibles, tell you where I’m going to be, and have you check it out for yourselves too.

But not everybody who names the name of Christ should teach. And when we do, we shouldn’t take it lightly. Because these people, he said, were going to bear judgment.

God was going to judge them for the things that they had taught. And I, brethren, verse 11, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased.

He said, if I’m still preaching that there’s something you can do, and I don’t know if somebody had accused him of this. You know, Paul, when God started working through him, I’m sure he got attacked from every side. And some people are saying he’s too free and loose because he tells them you don’t have to follow the Old Testament law.

And he probably had people on the other side saying, you know, that he wasn’t liberal enough and he preached too much of God’s law. And he says, do I still preach circumcision? If I still preach circumcision, why do I suffer persecution?

He could have very easily gone along with the Judaizers and said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Folks, whether he meant to or not, Peter went along with the Judaizers, and I’m sure won their approval for it for a while until he wised up. He said, if I still preach that, why am I persecuted?

He said, because then is the offense of the cross ceased. He said, if I was preaching that, it would be so much easier, because people even today are offended by the idea of the cross. As somebody who is born again, and you all who are born again as well, we think a little bit differently.

And to my mind, I can’t understand why somebody’s offended at the fact that God in the flesh would die on their behalf for something they couldn’t earn or deserve. In my thinking as a born-again person, that’s the best news anybody’s ever been told. And I’m sure you think, why would anybody be offended by that?

And yet the Bible tells us here and in other places that the preaching of the cross is offensive to the world. And my best guess as to why it’s offensive to the world is the thought that, what do you mean I can’t be good enough for God? What do you mean I can’t do enough?

There’s pride in saying, well, I’ll just be good enough, and surely God will have to let me in. He said, if I went back to that way of thinking, it would be so much easier because the offense of the cross would be ceased. He said, I would they were even cut off, which trouble you.

They come in with their messages and it sounded so good, and it’s easy for them because they’re preaching what the flesh wants to hear. He said, but I wish they were cut off that trouble you. They were trying to drag them back into bondage.

For brethren, verse 13, ye have been called unto liberty. You have been called to liberty. You have been set free in Christ only.

And this begins to set up what the next chapter and a half are about in the book of Galatians. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. There are some people who went completely the opposite direction and said, wow, we’re free.

We’re free to do whatever we want. We see that a lot of times in churches too. Well, not necessarily so much in churches, but among those who profess to be Christians, whether they’re in church or not, oh, well, I’ve got fire insurance.

I can just do whatever I want to because I prayed a prayer or somebody said some words over me. And I can just do what I want now. And people think eternal security is a license to sin.

They think grace is a license to sin. But he says so many times, should I sin the more that grace may abound? And he says, God forbid.

You see, when we’re really born again, the desire of our heart changes. He says, you’ve been set free, but this freedom is not an opportunity to just go hog wild and do whatever you want to do. He says, use the opportunity, use the liberty as an occasion, not to the flesh, but to by love serve one another.

This freedom that you’ve been granted by God, use it for good. You see, I’ve told you before, we are either servants of Christ or we’re servants of sin and of this world system. Either one.

There are no free agents. And people think, oh, as Christians, we are so repressed. We can’t do anything.

We can’t have fun. What they don’t realize is they sin because they can’t help it. We as a human race sin because we cannot help it.

We are in bondage to sin. And when Jesus Christ sets us free, it means for the first time we are free to do what’s right. We are free to follow God.

Not just free to run around as we please. We are free for the first time to make the right decisions. Not to say that lost people can’t do good things.

Lost people have done some good things, some great things. But as far as making decisions of following God and seeking His will for the first time, we are free to do that. And he says, take this liberty that you’ve been granted by God, and don’t squander it in serving the flesh, but take that liberty that you’ve been given, and use it to serve God and to serve one another.

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another. We’re going to stop there tonight, and we’ll start in two weeks in verse 16.

But as I told you at the beginning of this, he’s telling us what to do with our liberty. I see some of y’all are putting your Bibles away. I didn’t say the sermon was finished.

We’re just about finished, but I meant what we were reading. We’re not going any further in the passage. As I told you at the beginning, he’s telling them what to do with their liberty and what not to do with their liberty.

He has spent the last four chapters convincing them that they are free in Christ. Now what do they do about it? They were free. Now what do we do?

And I told you already that liberty must be diligently preserved. The cost of their liberty was to stand firm, to make sure, to be on guard, that nobody came along and subtly or otherwise convinced them to go back into bondage. Because the Judaizers were there, the pagans were there, all manner of false teachers, false prophets, and people of this world were there just waiting to get their hooks into the believers and lead them astray if they could.

And he said, stand fast in the liberty you have. Hold on to it. Ladies and gentlemen, Christ has made us free.

We’ve got to hold on to that because the world wants to take that liberty from us. The world wants to put us back into bondage to sin, even to the works of the law. The world talks about hypocritical Christians or Christians that think they’re better or think that we’re good enough to get into heaven.

And they seem to hate that. And I could understand why they would hate that. But what they seem to hate even more is the message of the cross.

What the world hates even more. I think the world would prefer self-righteous Christians to people that tell them that we’re no good and they’re not good enough either. And that it took Christ being good enough for us.

And we’ve got to hold fast to the liberty that Christ has given us. Second, he talks about what not to do. He says, hold on to it, and here’s what not to do with it.

And first of all, liberty is not bondage to sin. As we read in Galatians 5, verse 1, he says, Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. When it comes to being bound, when it comes to being shackled, this is something that’s universal. The one thing that everybody has been bound in before coming to Christ has been sin.

There were some people that added the further burden of trying to follow the law, being under that, but we’re told not to be in bondage to sin. We’re told not to return to the yoke of bondage. And everybody, before being set free in Christ, is in bondage to sin.

As I said, there are no free agents. The lost world sins because it can’t help itself. And he says not to go back to that.

The world tells us if we’re really free, just go do whatever you want. Freedom is not returning to the bondage of sinning because we can’t help ourselves. Freedom in Christ, liberty in Christ says, I don’t have to choose the way of the world any longer.

I don’t have to be bound up in the spiritually destructive behaviors, the things that are going to consume me and destroy me spiritually, physically, destroy my family. I don’t have to follow those things anymore. He says, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

And folks, liberty in Christ is not bondage to sin. Liberty in Christ is not legalism in religion either. You know what?

There are probably people who would call me a legalist too because I believe the Bible and follow the Bible. But legalism is not following the Bible. Following the Bible is not legalism.

Some people would probably see us as Pharisees because there are certain things that we stand on as a church. But adherence to the Bible is not being a Pharisee. The problem with the Pharisees, the problem with the legalists, was that they added to God’s Word.

Strict adherence to what God’s Word says is faithfulness, not legalism. Legalism goes beyond that. And in verse 4, he tells them that Christ had become of no effect to them because they’d gone back to trying to be justified by the law.

They added their religious rituals and traditions to what God’s Word said about justification and said, there, we’re good enough on that basis. Folks, legalism and religion is not liberty in Christ. I’m not saying we loosen up our standards and we’re no longer bound by what the Word of God says. But when we begin to take things, when we begin to take rituals and traditions and add them to this book, there’s nothing wrong with traditions as a church so far as they go, but when we put them on equal footing or superior footing to what this book says here, it’s legalism.

When we say, oh, if you don’t have Fifth Sunday meeting the way we do, you’re just not. And nobody would go to that extreme, I know. But to say, well, if you don’t go through this ritual or this ceremony, you’re not part of us.

You’re not in with God. If you don’t dress the way I do, if you don’t talk the way I do, you’re not good with God. You’re not righteous in your standing before God.

Folks, that’s legalism. I’ve been to churches, and I’ve read articles on the Internet. I thought they were parodies or satire at first, only to find out they were serious.

There are people out there who preach that if you don’t dress a certain way when you go to church, you obviously serve Satan. That if women wear pants to church, they obviously serve Satan. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe the Bible teaches modesty.

I don’t believe it