Freedom to Serve

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Transcript:

You know, there’s something in many countries called parliamentary immunity. And what that means is people who are serving in Parliament, people who are serving in Congress, can’t be arrested, can’t be charged with a crime connected to their service in the Parliament or Congress. Now, if our congressman or somebody’s congressman was stealing money or not paying his taxes or killed somebody, They could still be arrested for that.

They could still go to prison for that, rightfully so. Although there are some countries where even that, I think Brazil comes to mind, even that, a member of parliament could go out, I don’t think they have a Congress, could go out and kill somebody, and as long as they’re in Congress, they can’t be charged with that crime. In a lot of, I almost said in a lot of British countries, in Britain and a lot of countries that borrowed their political system from Britain, Members of Parliament can’t be arrested.

They’ve got a list of things that connected to their service, they can’t be arrested for. If they say something that the leadership of the country doesn’t like as a member of Parliament, they can’t be arrested for that. If they vote a certain way, if they propose a bill connected to their service, they can’t be arrested.

Now, they can’t be penalized for that. That’s particularly important in countries that have a history of the leadership of the government saying, no, we’re going to make the rules and you have to follow, you have to rubber stamp them for us. You know, in Nazi Germany, for example, when they were first taking over, they were able to tell the, what was it called at the time, the Reichstag, you have to vote a certain way or there are going to be consequences.

In a lot of countries today, they can’t do that. And that’s important in countries where they have a history of saying, you speak out this way in Parliament, we’re going to lock you up. You vote this way, we’re going to lock you up.

They can’t do that. They are free to serve according to the dictates of their conscience. As I said, that’s important in histories that have a country of not letting that happen.

It’s important that they put that in the law now. It’s also important in countries like ours that don’t have a history of that. In the United States, you can’t be charged with libel or slander for something you say on the floor of Congress as long as you’re in Congress.

You can’t be penalized for a speech you make in Congress. That’s why sometimes if there are things that the administration doesn’t like, members of Congress will go to the floor and read it into the congressional record because then everybody knows and they can’t do anything to stop it. My understanding is even if a member of Congress is arrested for something, say they killed somebody, they could be arrested, but they still have to be allowed to go to Congress.

So they’re in jail for most of the day, and when Congress is in session, they’re let out to go to Congress and vote. And all of this is meant to keep people from being penalized for the way they’re going to vote, for the way they’re going to speak, for the way that they’re going to serve their constituents. It’s important that members of Congress or members of Parliament be free to serve and free to speak and free to act on behalf of their constituents.

And you may be wondering this morning, why is he giving us a lecture on Parliament? or on Congress. There’s a reason for that, because they need to have this freedom to serve.

And as we’ve been talking through the month of July about freedom, the aspect of freedom that we have in Christ that we come to this morning is the freedom that we have to serve. You see, because of Christ, we are not bound to certain laws, and we are open for the first time to the possibility to serve others and serve Christ without fear of what’s going to happen if we mess up in the process of him. We’re given sort of this immunity in Christ, that we’re able to now go and freely serve Christ and serve others because of what he’s done for us.

And we’re going to look at a few verses here in Galatians that talk about this subject of this freedom that we have. We’re going to start in Galatians chapter 5 verse 1, and he 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 you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

Okay, what he’s talking about here is the idea of going back to the Jewish law. Galatians is one of my favorite books of the entire Bible because it does speak so clearly on this subject of freedom that we have in Christ. And Christ died, he shed his blood, and he died to purchase our freedom from sin, from bondage as we’ve talked about in previous weeks, but also our freedom from the law. Not that we’re now free to just go and run amok and do whatever we want, but we’re free to follow and serve him without fear of, okay, the hammer’s going to fall as soon as we slip up in a little way.

We’re free here, and we’re not bound to the Old Testament law. To give you an example, they were taught in the Old Testament to serve one another, to love one another, to take care of their neighbor. But what happens if on the Sabbath your neighbor’s ox falls into a ditch?

Well, if your own ox falls into a ditch, in some schools have thought about the Old Testament law, you weren’t even supposed to go and rescue it on the Sabbath. So, okay, I really want to help my neighbor, but is it worth giving up my good standing before God for him? And we’re torn.

Or what if I go down to help him and the sun goes down and it’s Friday and I’m breaking the Sabbath? You know, there are all sorts of worries and concerns that you would have to have. as one who was trying to serve God and serve others, what about if the law gets in the way?

And Paul, throughout the book of Galatians, writes to a group of Christians who had come from a Jewish background, who had grown up following the Old Testament law, and believing that that was how they were going to be justified before God, how they were going to be made righteous, was by following the law. And there’s a tendency to want to go back to that. Now, I don’t completely understand that, because it seems like the law would be such a hard thing to follow.

But Wednesday night I was at church and the question was raised in the course of discussion. You know, we’ve been saved by Christ from our sins. Have we been saved from our religion?

And what was meant by that question is think of all the traditions that we have and all the things that even though we say we’re not supposed to, we hold them up here as equal to scripture. And have we really been set free from those? We’ve got our own traditions and unwritten laws and things that we think are sacred cowls you can’t do anything about.

And we’re sort of bound up in religion too. So looking at it from that perspective, oh, as Baptists we can’t do this. As Baptists we have to do that.

And I’m not talking about things that are found in the Bible. I’m just talking about traditions. A good example, when I was at Pleasant Hill, Brother David Pickard talked about when he first came there.

Or I get, you know what, I may get the story wrong. But he’d either been there, he’d either first come there, or he grew up there as a kid and first went to another church. Anyway, they were told to stand up during the offering.

He said, can you do that? For the first time. Can you do that?

You know, we’ve always done it this way before. We have our unwritten traditions, don’t we? We know we do.

Well, can we do it this way? We’ve always. I think I’ve told you before.

When I first went to Fayetteville, I got in trouble from one of the deacons because after baptizing someone, I went back downstairs to my office and changed clothes. And the old pastor, he’d always, he’d always gone off into this little room behind the auditorium. I’m sorry, is that, and I got in trouble for it.

I’m sorry, is that biblical? Show me where it says that in the Bible and I’ll apologize. We have our traditions and our unwritten rules.

And so we can look at it and say, well, it’s hard to imagine why you’d want to go back to the Old Testament law. It seems so hard and so confining. But when we think we have our own traditions and rules that are not necessarily rooted in Scripture, that we sort of default to if we’re not careful, it becomes much more clear why they would do this.

And Paul has taught them, he’s told them, you are free in Jesus Christ. You have this liberty. You’re not bound by the law. Now, when God says something, even if it’s in the Old Testament, we still need to take it seriously and say, is there a reason why he said this?

Is there a reason why it’s still a good idea for us today? We don’t want to just throw out all of God’s law. For example, when it says, here’s how you do the sacrifices, there was a reason he said to do that.

And all of the sacrifices and the way he told them to do that was to point to Jesus Christ. Are we bound to do that anymore? No, it would be unnecessary because the perfect sacrifice has already been made. When God told them, I get so tired of hearing people complain, well, you’re against homosexuality, but you wear two different kinds of fabric.

You know what? God gave them specific laws about how to dress and how not to dress, and you’re not to mix two different kinds of fabric, because he was making a point to them about how they were to be and to live and think and act differently from all the countries around them. He said, you are supposed to be different, and so you’re supposed to do this.

You’re not supposed to do that. You’re not supposed to cut your hair a certain way. Does that apply to us now?

No, because we’re not the nation of Israel. You know, God gave some of the dietary laws. Are you going to go to hell for eating pork?

No. That’s probably a good idea if we listen to some of those just for health reasons. But then God has also given the moral law in there.

So God said homosexuality is a sin. Yes, he did. By the way, he also said adultery for straight people is a sin as well.

God lists all these things. We have to be careful and say, did he give it to them for a specific purpose, or does it apply to all people at all times, and go from there. Because we don’t want to completely throw out God’s law and say, well, everything he said before doesn’t matter.

But the fact of the matter is they thought that through the moral law, the civil law, the religious and ceremonial laws, that they, just by following those and being good enough and sticking to the law as closely as possible, that they were going to be righteous before God, that he was going to accept them on that basis. And that wasn’t the case. As Galatians also says in another place, the purpose of the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It was to show us how far short we fell of God’s standard of absolute holiness.

The law cannot be kept. The law cannot be obeyed perfectly. And so Paul says, why would you go back to that bondage when it’s not going to get you anywhere?

Yes, the law, there’s some good things in it that we’re supposed to follow, but it’s not going to get us to heaven. It’s not going to earn us salvation. And so he says, you’ve been given this liberty in Christ. Your sins have been forgiven.

You’ve been set free. He says, stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. He’s not saying you’re free, go crazy.

Again, I think I’ve made the point fairly clear. There are things that we should and should not do because God says so. But as far as going back and saying, I’ve got to legalistically follow every point of this law because that’s how I’m going to get to heaven.

They knew better than that. They had been shown that there was a different way because Christ had fulfilled the law. And that is how we get to heaven, because Christ died to pay for our sins.

And so he says, don’t even go back. Don’t even flirt with this idea of going back to the Jewish religion and being entangled in the law as a way of salvation. He said, if you’re circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

That does not mean that men are going to go to hell if that has been done. What he’s talking about is those who went back and said, okay, yeah, Christ has died for us. Christ has paid for our sins, but we still need to follow the law of Moses.

So we still need to be circumcised in order to be saved as, as would have been the case under the Old Testament law. He says, if you’re going back and you’re relying on other things, whether it’s the law, whether it’s circumcision, I don’t care what it is. If you’re going back and relying on other things instead of Christ or in addition to Christ, then he says, Christ profits you nothing.

Hear me on this very clearly. You cannot, you cannot gain God’s acceptance. You cannot gain forgiveness of sins.

You cannot gain eternal life in heaven by trusting in Christ plus something else. It has to be Christ alone or it doesn’t matter. You can trust in Christ 95%, but if you’re still trusting in your own works or something else that you’ve done or someone else has done that other 5%, the other 95% is worthless because we have to trust entirely in Jesus Christ. He said, if you’re circumcised, and again, for that purpose of being justified before God, then Christ, Christ profits you.

He gains you nothing. You might as well not even believe in Christ at that point. For I testify again to everyone, to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

So they are being taught, you’ve got to go back and follow this part of the Mosaic law. You’ve got to go back and be circumcised. He says, fine, if you’re going to do that, if you’re going to say we’ve got to follow this part of the law in order to be saved, then you’ve got to go back and follow the whole of the law.

And by the way, you’re not going to be able to do it. Christ is become of no effect, verse 4, unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. Okay, that doesn’t mean they’ve lost their salvation.

It says nowhere in here that they’ve lost their salvation. The best explanation that I’ve heard of this verse, of this passage, says that what he’s essentially saying here is you have this heaping plate full of grace in front of you, and yet you’ve drawn back here to starve under the law. When he says fallen from grace, you know, Paul was pretty blunt with people.

You go back to Galatians chapter 1 and he talks about those who preach any other gospel. He doesn’t say let’s just agree to disagree. He says let them be accursed.

And so we don’t think he just got excited and spoke out of turn. He repeats it, says it again for emphasis, meaning I meant to say this. He says I say to you again, let them be accursed.

Paul was pretty blunt. And I have to imagine that if he meant to say you’ve lost your salvation, that he would have said, you’ve lost your salvation. What he’s saying is you’ve drawn back from grace.

By trying to have grace plus the law, you’ve completely negated grace here. You’ve completely taken grace out of the equation when you tried to add something else to it. And so Christ has become of no effect unto you whatsoever.

In verse 5, he says, For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. He said, instead of being tempted to go back and make ourselves righteous, because we think we’re able to accomplish that because we can be so good. He says the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to sit here and wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

That we have been promised that it’s by faith in Jesus Christ that we’re justified. And even though we don’t see that now, we don’t have what you’d call proof of it now. We’re not in heaven yet.

We have this hope, which again, if you remember back several months when I first came back here preaching on hope, It’s not wishful thinking. It’s something you can take to the bank. We have this hope.

We have this assurance that even though we don’t see the final result of it, now we can be assured that it’s coming. The effect of this righteousness by faith, that one day we will be justified. Well, we are justified now, and one day we will see the final result of our justification by faith.

We don’t have to fall into the temptation of going back to trying to do it ourselves. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh love. This is where I get the confidence of saying that simply having that operation done, even though he said Christ profits you nothing in verse 2, simply having that operation done doesn’t mean that men are going to hell.

He says it doesn’t matter either way. In Jesus Christ, neither of them matters either way, but faith. Faith is what’s important.

Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in what he did on the cross. Faith in what he accomplished when he shed his blood and died for us, paying for our sins. And he says in verse 7, he sort of, I just imagine that he, if I could hear his voice, that he sort of changes his tone and softens a little bit at this point in verse 7.

You did run so well. Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? He’s been lecturing them up to this point.

And now he turns in verse 7 and looks at the people in Galatia and says, What happened? What happened to you? You were doing so well.

You trusted Christ and you decided to follow him and you turned to follow him. What happened to you that all of a sudden you think you have to earn your salvation? What has happened to you that all of a sudden you think Jesus Christ is not enough and it depends on you to be good enough and to hold on to it?

What happened to you that you want to go back into bondage? He says in verse 8, this persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. He says, I can tell you what didn’t happen to you.

It wasn’t that God persuaded you this was the right thing to do. It’s not that you searched the scriptures. It’s not that you prayed and this is the direction the Holy Spirit led you.

Because God had called them into the liberty of Christ. So he says, what happens? What happened? Verse 9 says, a little leaven.

Leaveneth the whole lump. He’s talking about yeast. You can’t put yeast in just a little bit of the dough and say, just that part is going to be leaven. And we would say, what’s the big deal?

We want the bread to rise and be fluffy. They were not, you know, in certain circumstances, they weren’t supposed to put the yeast in their bread because of the Passover. And the yeast often represented sin in the Bible.

It spreads through the whole thing. I took the kids yesterday to a water park out at Clinton, and there was a sign that said, well, gave all the rules for the pool. And one of the rules said, weren’t supposed to go in there if you had a communicable disease or an open cut, which is very good advice.

I just hope everyone followed it. In the course of being out there playing in the water, my kids both drew blood yesterday. I don’t know how, but they did.

Benjamin, I think, ran into one of his little cousins, probably face first. Next thing I know, I’m being hollered at and saying, can you, one of my parents, can you go take care of him? He’s got a bloody nose. Great.

So I’ve got to get him out of there, got to clean him up, set him down, set him down in a chair for a little while just to make sure everything coagulates or whatever the medical term is for it. And, and, you know, the cut is not open because, you know, I know he’s disease free, but I don’t want his blood getting in the water because I don’t want anybody else’s. Later on, Madeline fell on bitter lip and there was blood.

Had to do the same thing. So we’re talking like 30 minutes out of the, out of the pool, out of the little river thing and out of the slides that they enjoyed so much. Now, why did I do that?

I could have very easily cleaned them up and thrown them back in the pool. Because if they got their blood in the pool, or somebody else did that I didn’t know, gives me the willies just thinking about it. I had to not think a lot just to be able to be in the water with other people.

I’m kind of a germaphobe. You know, if they had gotten a little bit of blood into the water in the little slide area where they were, all of this stuff was on different levels. But you see where the water runs into the drains, and I know they’re recirculating water, because otherwise their water bill would be astronomical. You’re not just going to keep the blood in the kids’ department, or kids’ area department.

You’re not just going to keep the blood in the kids’ area. It’s going to recirculate, and there’s going to be blood throughout the whole place. If somebody else went in there with a disease, there was going to be infectious material through the whole place.

You can’t confine it, and that’s what he’s saying with the yeast, with the leaven. You can’t confine it and say, well, it’s just in this half of the dough. It’s just in this quarter of the dough.

The rest of it’s fine. He said, no, it spreads. And he’s talking about this sin of legalism the same way that, well, in just a little bit of this, I think I’ve earned my way to heaven.

I think I’ve earned my acceptance before God just a little bit, maybe through circumcision or maybe through this law or keeping the Passover. But he says, you know what? A little leaven leavens the whole month.

And you may think you’re relying on grace, but if you go back to legalism just a little bit, eventually it’s going to permeate, it’s going to spread through everything you do, and it’s going to infect everything. And so he’s telling them, don’t even mess with this. Don’t even get a little bit of this legalism in there.

I have confidence, verse 10, 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. He said, I’m confident in the Lord that you’re going to come back to the right perspective. And whoever has led you astray, because there were a lot of people going around teaching this very thing and leading the churches astray.

He who has led you astray, I think, is going to have to stand before God and answer for what he’s done. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased.

So evidently there were people who were saying that Paul even says you’ve got to be circumcised. Paul said, if that’s what I’m preaching, why are the Jews persecuting me? If I’m agreeing with them, why am I being persecuted?

Why are people trying to stone me in nearly every town I go to? Why am I having to flee from places in the night? He had to be let down the walls of Damascus in a basket because the people were ready to kill him for what he was preaching.

He says, if that’s really what I’m teaching, why do I still get persecuted? Because if the idea is that Jesus, you know, you can earn your way to heaven and Jesus just helped a little bit, nobody’s going to take offense to that. It’s when you’re told you’re not good enough for God.

It’s when we’re told I’m not good enough and neither are you good enough for God. That’s when people start to take offense. If the gospel was that you just be good and Jesus helps you along, the world is ready to believe that.

We don’t want to believe that we need to humble ourselves before God in our sinful condition. So he says the offense of the cross has ceased at that point. Nobody’s going to take offense to that.

Why am I still being persecuted? In other words, it’s not true. And Paul, in his characteristic righteous anger here, says in verse 12, I would they were even cut off which trouble you.

I don’t know exactly what he means by cut off, but I know it’s not a good thing. I know it’s not something I want to be. Basically, he’s saying here in one form or fashion, I wish they were out of the equation.

I wish they were just out of sight and out of mind that are giving you this trouble. And he has spent the last 12 verses. Now, he didn’t originally write it as verses.

The verses were divided up in the 1500s. But he spent this time up to now talking about the liberty that they have in Christ and the fact that there are people trying to take it away and why that is such a bad idea to try to go back and go back to bondage. He turns to them in what we have as verse 13 and says, For brethren, ye have been called into liberty.

We didn’t just stumble into freedom as Christians. That was God’s design that we be free in Jesus Christ. There’s this idea that if we trust Christ, if we become Christians and then turn our lives over to serve him, that it’s just a list of rules of do’s and don’ts and that we can’t step out of line. We can’t have any fun.

We can’t enjoy ourselves. We can’t. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t rules. But he’s called us to freedom. Freedom was God’s design that we would not be stuck in bondage to sin and to consequences of sin.

He says, you have been called unto liberty. That was God’s design for you. He says, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

This liberty, he says, don’t use it as an occasion to serve the flesh. Freedom in Christ is not about. Great, I can do whatever I want and run amok and I’ve got fire insurance.

If that’s our idea of salvation, we probably need to check and make sure we’re really saved. Because there should be a part of us that says, why do I keep sinning? I hate this.

Why do I do it? I realize that we do it. But there should be something in us that says, what is wrong with me?

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to disappoint God. And if we go to use our liberty as an occasion to serve the flesh, we might want to step back and see if the change was real, if the conversion was real. But he says as Christians, don’t use the liberty as an occasion to serve the flesh, but by love serve one another.

Use the liberty that we have in Christ as an opportunity to serve one another. He says, for if for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And if you’re wondering as I have one word, that’s several words.

Well, he doesn’t mean, you know, like I’ve got two words for you and then they say two words. He means it as a, I guess, like we would say a word of advice. Usually somebody says, I’ve got a word of advice for you.

And then many words come out. more words than we ever cared to hear. He says, the whole of the law is fulfilled in this one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

He said, all the law you’ve got to follow as a Christian is fulfilled in this, love thy neighbor as thyself. Now he said in other places as well, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what Jesus said.

And I really have, you know, we could say, well, there’s a contradiction there. No, because I really have trouble separating those two. You can only love your neighbor as yourself if you’re loving God as you’re supposed to.

And if you’re loving God as you’re supposed to, you can’t not love your neighbor the way you’re supposed to love your neighbor. But he says here, you know, instead of all of these laws and regulations that we think we’ve got to follow in order to be saved, he said because we are already saved, the entire law that we’re to follow is summed up in this, this love that he talks about. He says in verse 15, but if you bite and devour one another, if you bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

He’s not saying here, but if you choose instead to beat up on one another, just make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. When he says, if you bite and devour, just make sure you’re not consumed. That’s not what he’s saying.

You can do it, just make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. It’s a warning that if you use your liberty as an occasion to serve the flesh, and we begin to bite and devour one another because if we are living fleshly lives and doing what we want to do without regard to God or other people, we will eventually begin to hurt each other. If you bite and devour one another, he says, you better watch out that you’re not consumed.

That’s a warning here. That if you do that and you begin to hurt other people, it’s going to hurt and destroy you as well. This I say then, walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

And in verses 13 through 15, We are coming to the close of the message. I always feel bad when it’s been 30 minutes and I’m saying, now point one, but explain the passage and then keep the point short, I figure. I try to, anyway.

It’s a goal. I don’t always make that, but that’s what we try to do. Three things that I see in these verses that we need to know about this freedom that we have in Christ to serve. We’ve been set free not just for running them up, but we’ve been set free to serve.

First of all, Christ sets us free to minister to others. He sets us free to be able to minister to others. Whenever we see serving or service in the Bible, we can use ministry almost interchangeably there because that’s what it is, serving somebody else in Christ’s name.

We think of ministry a lot of times as what I’m doing up here in the pulpit. That’s just one aspect of ministry. Or we think about what Brother Shank does up here when he’s leading the music.

That’s just one aspect of ministry. Ministry doesn’t necessarily need a job title. As a matter of fact, I think there’s more ministry that’s supposed to go on without the job title than there is with it.

I’ve said at every church I’ve ever pastored, if I’m the only one doing ministry, I realize I get paid for it because I do a certain aspect of ministry that’s sometimes labor-intensive. But if I’m the only one doing ministry, there’s a lot of ministry that’s not going to get done. There’s a lot of ministry that won’t get done.

Because one person cannot do the work of the ministry for the whole church. And so we have this call to serve others in Jesus’ name. Anything we do to serve others in Jesus’ name is ministry.

And we’ve been called to minister to each other. And he set us free to do that. He says, for brethren, you’ve been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh,