Galatians chapter 5, we're going to read the first six verses. Beginning at verse 1, the Apostle Paul 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. 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, you are fallen from grace. For we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love. I've entitled this message, Free in Christ. Freedom is something that men value. If you think for just a minute about your own self and your own experience, what freedom means to you. I remember sitting in class, in school, waiting for the recess bell. There didn't seem to be any happier sound than that bell going off so I could get out and go do something profitable, like play. You know that feeling? It's just like a ball of energy. You can't get it out. Or maybe when you got your driver's license for the first time, the freedom to be able to go where you wanted to go. That made you feel something. There's a lady whose name is Alice Marie Johnson who recently was released by the president after serving 20 years in prison for a first-time offense, a drug offense. If you listen to her, you get the sense of a person set free. You don't. You see many people so happy and thankful as that woman is. And you've seen pictures, perhaps videos of people. Getting off of a plane, having been a POW, a prisoner of war for years, never seeing their family and suffering under the ravages of that, emaciated and barely able to walk and just so thankful that tears come to their eyes and they fall on the ground and kiss the pavement on the tarmac where they get off the plane. Bob Dylan said, you got to serve somebody. Freedom, freedom. That's what we want to talk about here. Free in Christ. What does it mean to be free in Christ? When Bob Dylan said, you've got to serve somebody, he was really saying we have to serve somebody, and we have to serve them either against our will or constrained by our own will and our own nature. We either serve against our will someone else, constrained by their will, or we serve willingly and submit to the will of another in freedom. But you've got to serve somebody. That's what he said, and it's a truism. All men, without exception, do serve God's secret will. God says in Psalm 76 10, even the wrath of man shall praise me. That's what the Lord says, the wrath of man. The evil men intend God turns to his good and that was his will from eternity. Remember when the Jews and Gentiles killed the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter told them that you did it according to the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God. It was used for God's will to bring about this good, the salvation of his people. Pharaoh served God's secret will, but in rebellion to God's revealed will. He rebelled against God's command to let Israel go, and yet all of his rebellion was in accord with God's secret will to actually bring him to destruction and bring Israel to freedom. And so we have Judas, remember? He was serving God's secret will when he betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ. And we could go on and on. The God's sons are free. Galatians chapter 4 said Abraham's two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, are really a picture of all men. All men are either in bondage, like Ishmael, or they're free, like Isaac. And it's not talking there about a physical freedom. Many died in America in order to be free. They came from England and moved to America and were willing to live off the land, laboring with their own hands in order to be free. from the tyranny of someone else. They weren't looking for a handout. They were looking to be free. So freedom has to do with something that costs something. It costs something. Freedom doesn't come cheaply, does it? Freedom costs something. But we are all, by nature, not free. By nature, God says, we are slaves of sin. We're slaves of sin. And we're slaves to God's law, actually. God requires from us. to obey Him without fail, perfectly, completely. And His threat is that if we do not, then we will suffer the curse of God's law. But because we're sinners, we can't do what God requires. And that's the hardest thing to learn as a sinner, is that God does require of us, and He does so justly and righteously, but we can't provide one thing of all that He requires. And He gives us His law in order to show us what we truly are. like Adam in the garden. He hid because he didn't know that though he was a sinner, what God required and demanded of him because of his sin, he could neither give nor did he have any influence over God to give it for him. God had to come up with everything in his salvation. And so this is the way that God teaches us that we're slaves to sin under the curse and the bondage of God's law, and we need to be free, but we can't bring about this freedom. And so in verse 1 of Galatians 5, the apostle summing up all that went before, he says, Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Christ has made us free. That's what he's saying here. Christ made us free. We didn't free ourselves. Salvation is not a process that we go through in order to achieve something. Salvation is like the drowning man. The lifeguard comes out and rescues him from his inability to swim. or the strength of the current or the water to have power over him. We can't deliver ourselves. That's the big news to us that comes to us as sinners. We are sinners. We are guilty. It's all our fault. And we're helpless to do one thing about it. God has to act and he has to act out of his own purpose and will in order to save us from what we deserve. All by his grace to remove our offense to God, to reconcile us to himself. And so freedom is what Christ has done for his people, not what we do to get ourselves free. And it comes at a high cost. Remember the cost that the Lord Jesus had to pay in order to free his people. In Matthew chapter 20 and verse 28, he says, I didn't come, Jesus said, he says, I didn't come to be served. I didn't come from heaven to earth in order that I might be served. You would think he certainly deserved it, didn't he? But he didn't come to be served, he says, but I came to serve, to minister and to serve in this way, to give my life a ransom, a ransom for many. A ransom is a cost. It's the price paid, demanded by our captor in order that we might be free. Our captor, is our sin, in God's law, the death we deserve. God has to have a payment in order to release us. And the payment he required was the ransom price of Christ, giving himself in sacrifice and offering. So freedom comes at the highest cost. It comes, he says in Matthew 20, 28, the ransom of the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself a ransom, that we might be released. And released from our, from what? From what we've been made free. And first of all, we're released from the debt of our sins. If you look to Luke chapter 7, you'll see this scripture that explains that in a little parable Jesus gave in verse 41. Jesus was at the house of a Pharisee and a woman came up behind him while he was in the house of the Pharisee and this woman was a sinner. If you read this, in fact, I'll read up before verse 41. He says in verse 36, one of the Pharisees desired him, Jesus, that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meet. And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meet in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment and stood behind his feet, behind him, weeping. and began to wash his feet with her tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, speaking about Jesus, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that touches him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, this Pharisee who had these thoughts in his heart. Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee. And he said, Master, say on. Probably expecting him to congratulate him on the dinner or something. He said there was a certain creditor which had two debtors. A creditor is someone who has money. A debtor is someone who borrowed the money and owes it and owes it back to the creditor. A certain man, a creditor, had two debtors. The one, the one debtor, owed 500 pence and the other 50. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. And so Jesus asked the Pharisees, he said, tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave the most. And Jesus said to him, thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman with Simon looking at him. Jesus turned to the woman and said to Simon, you see this woman, I entered into your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, this is freedom. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much, that's the evidence that she was forgiven, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said to her, thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, thy faith has saved thee, go in peace. The Lord Jesus Christ forgave this woman all her debt. And what was that debt? It was her sins. Her sins were an offense to God. and yet he forgave her all that debt. We really don't know what sin is, do we? How do you understand what sin is? If you sin against somebody, you really don't feel the impact of that sin unless you understand what your sin did to them. Isn't that true? If you were in the place of the one against whom you sinned, then you would understand what your sin truly was. You think about that, you get in a line at the grocery store and somebody runs their cart right before you, like, oh man. And you kind of get offended at that. So you understand something about how it's rude to take someone else's place in line. And that realization of that should make us more sensitive to doing those kinds of things, and it does too. But I wanted to give you an example of this, our sin against God and the debt we've been forgiven. Remember King David in 2 Samuel chapter 12. There's a summary of what took place after this and I'll read it to you in a minute. But let me give you the background. King David was the king in Israel. That means he had all the authority. He could set laws and he could bring judgment upon people. He sat in the place of the judge over everybody. He was the absolute ruler in Israel as a man rules over people. And he was actually a good king. But one day he saw another man's wife and he wanted her and coveted her and he committed adultery with her. And this man, his name was Uriah, this man was out fighting the king's battles. He was a very loyal man. And so David wanted to cover up his sin and he tried to get the man Uriah to come back to the palace. But when he came back, he wouldn't go home to his wife. He stayed at the king's steps and slept there outside all night. And even though King David tried to get him drunk to go back, he wouldn't go. He was so loyal to King David. And so, because David couldn't cover up his sin that way, he sent Uriah out to the hottest place in the battle Knowing that by his enemies, Uriah would be killed. And this was a great sin of David. But David, who was a man after God's own heart, as the king, didn't realize what his sin had done. And so God sent a prophet to make him feel what his sin had done. And that's what happened in 2 Samuel chapter 12. Take a look at this with me. This is the way God made David understand how evil his sin was. He put David in the place of God in order to feel what this sin he did was in 2 Samuel chapter 12 verse 1. And the Lord sent Nathan, he is a prophet. He sent Nathan to David and he came to David and said to him, there were two men in one city. So he's giving him a parable, a story. The one rich and the other poor. Now David realized this is after he committed these terrible sins against God. And he's living as if nobody knows about it. Everything's okay. And so Nathan the prophet comes to him to tell him God's thoughts. Because David was okay as long as men didn't think anything of him. But God wants him to understand his thoughts. So in verse 2, Nathan the prophet goes on. The one rich, the other poor, the rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, a female lamb, which he had brought up and nourished and it grew up together with him and with his children. It did eat of his own meat and drank of his own cup and lay in his own bosom and was unto him as a daughter. That's how dear this one little sheep was to this poor man. It was the only sheep he had. And then Nathan goes on telling David the story, he says, and there came a traveler unto the rich man, a visitor, his guest. And he, the rich man, spared to take of his own flock. In other words, he wouldn't take one of his own sheep. He spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for the man that was come to him. And David, the king, is sitting in judgment over what Nathan said. Because that's what they would do in those days. They would bring a difficult matter to the king and ask the king to give judgment. And so David's thinking about this, about this rich man. Not giving from all of his flock, but reaching over into this poor man's place and taking his only dear lamb, this sheep that was so dear to him that lay in his bosom like a daughter. And he took that man's only sheep and he killed it to feed his guest when he had that so much. He was so covetous and cruel. And here's David's reaction. David felt anger. David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that has done this thing shall surely die. Now, David felt the offense that he just had a natural reaction in David, the offense of this rich man that he would so covetously and cruelly take this poor man's sheep. He's worthy of death. He didn't kill a person. He took a sheep. But David saw the injustice in it. And so it raised his indignation, his righteous indignation. And that's what this was intended to do. Because God knew that David's heart was like his heart and he could make the judgment that this was a great evil that this rich man had done. And so in verse six, David goes on, he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. No pity. And Nathan said to David, thou art the man. You're the man. Now, David is looking at himself through God's eyes. And he sees this rich man. He had no pity. And he realizes that the sin he had committed against Uriah, the man, the loyal servant of his who he had killed at the hand of his enemies and took his wife. He realizes now what God truly thought of that. He himself was so covetous that he took this man's only wife for himself when he had a wife. And not only that, but when he knew that others would find out about what he did, what did he do? He killed this man in order to cover it up so that men would not think less of him. Now that's a great evil, isn't it? He killed a man because of what other men would think of him. He didn't care what God thought, but he did care what man thought. That's hypocrisy. And so Nathan goes on, verse 7, Nathan said to David, Thou art the man, thus saith the Lord God of Israel. I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul. And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah. And if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with a sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and thou hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. these wicked people. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel before the sun. And David said to Nathan, this is what David confessed now. Now he sees from God's eyes, I have sinned against the Lord. And in Psalm 51, he said it this way, against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. You see, David saw his sin in the eyes of God, his offense, what it was to God, and he suddenly realized, I have sinned against God and God only. And that was a huge, huge debt. And listen to what the Lord said. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also hath taken away thy sin, thou shalt not die. This is the debt, this is the burden, the load of guilt and shame before God. The load of condemnation and the curse of God's law lifted from David. Everything taken away, the guilt of his sin, the condemnation for it. all taken away. What would you do in order to have a full conviction in your heart that all of your sins against God have been lifted and taken away, and God will not remember them anymore, nor will he call them into remembrance? That's what freedom is. Freedom is being released from the debt of our sin and from the curse of God's law and from the fear and torment that come from these things. Because you see, the sting of death is sin. The reason death has torment and fear is because of our sin. We know we have to stand before Almighty God in judgment and we can't answer for one thing. And so here in scripture, God shows that he is a God who lifts the burdens of our sin from us. And he does so by the ransom price, paid, the high price for freedom, the blood of his own son. This is amazing, isn't it? Release from the debt of our sins. The woman who had been forgiven so much, what was her response? She loved much, she loved much. But I want you to think about how God's grace in Christ frees us. Look back at Galatians 5. In Galatians 5, stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. How did Christ make us free? Well, if you look at chapter 3 and verse 13, it says, He was made a curse for us. He bore our sins and the curse for our sins in order that we might be free from our sins and from the curse against us because of our sins. We are made free by Christ in his substitutionary suffering for us that made satisfaction to God for our sins. Because there's only way that God can forgive sin. Is it if he receives to his justice a full payment for our sins? That's why there was a ransom paid in the death of Christ. That ransom price was his blood, it was paid to God, and God in justice released us from the debt we owed. There's nothing like that on earth, is there? Have you ever seen a murderer go free because someone else stood in his place? I don't know of any case like that. Perhaps there has been, but what God has done in Christ goes well beyond anything that we could ever imagine. So we were set free from our sin and God's judgment against us by the death of Christ. And so the apostle says, don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. If you do, and what is this entanglement? Well, the bondage that we had before was that we had lived our lives thinking that God's favor to us, God's blessings on us, God's love to us, somehow dependent on our own performance. That God's grace and God's gifts and God's favor somehow were linked to what we did. Have you ever felt that someone, maybe your boss at work or one of your friends, their friendship or their loyalty to you depended upon your performance? That's the way the whole world's set up, isn't it? I love you if. And it's a rare thing to have love that, to us, seems unconditional. But I don't know that there's really much of an example of unconditional love on Earth, except perhaps some of the closest things to it are the love of a mother for a child. Where the mother bears the child in all the pain and suffering, her body, she spends her life caring for her children, and then she's given up her life. And we see that love of a mother for her child. That seems to be pretty unconditional. And then, of course, there's the love of a man for his wife and the wife for her husband. Those things are pretty amazing, too. But love that doesn't depend on us is God's love. You see, God is love. The love of God towards us is not because of what He finds in us. Our nature is to think exactly the opposite of that. We see somebody who suffers a great deal, we think, well, God must really love them because they suffered so much. Or we see somebody who's a really good person and we think, God must really love that person. How many times have you been to a funeral and they talk about somebody being with, in heaven? Maybe they even say, with the Lord, and they then begin to talk about all the good things they did. And how seldom or how rare have you ever heard someone talk about somebody being in heaven for nothing that they did, but for all that God did. That's giving glory to God. That's the only true way of having eternal life. So when God speaks here in verse 2 of Galatians 5 through Paul, he says, If you're circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. If you do something in order to gain or make certain to yourself God's promises and blessings, if you do anything, no matter how holy it seems to you or to others, it will profit you nothing. That's completely backward of what we're geared to think. If you look at Matthew, I won't take you there right now, but if you look at Matthew chapter 7 and verse 21 through 23, people will appear in judgment before the Lord Jesus Christ and give an answer for themselves. And the answer that the men in Matthew 7, 21 through 23 give is they stand before the Lord and they say, Lord, Lord, haven't we prophesied in your name? We were preachers and teachers. Haven't we done many wonderful works? We cast out devils in your name. And Jesus said to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. And so we think that what we do, no matter how holy it is, that's the basis on which God will accept us. What are you gonna say when you appear before the Lord Jesus Christ in judgment? And we begin to gather in our mind, well, let's see, I have to have the right, have done the right things, I have to know the right things, I have to have all these things, I gotta get my ducks in line. But the love of God and the grace of God depend nothing upon us. There's no part of God's grace that depends upon us. It only depends on Christ. That's the gospel. All that God requires of us is necessary. We can do nothing about it. We can bring nothing for our sins. We can do nothing to fulfill the obedience God requires. We're helpless to save ourselves. God acted, and He acted in His Son, and that's the good news of the Gospel. And so He says, but if you go about trying to earn this from God by your circumcision or something else, take something else. then Christ will profit you nothing. Verse three, for I testify again to every man that is circumcised, he's a debtor to do the whole law. You see, there's two ways of coming to God. Based on your works or based on the work of another. Based on your holiness or the holiness of another. God looks either upon you entirely or he looks on his son entirely for you. It's not what God thinks of you that will justify you. It's what God thinks of Christ for you that will justify you. And so he says, if you want to come to God that way, if you say, Lord, I'm coming to you, I'm bringing all this stuff, like the Pharisee in Luke chapter 18, God, I thank you, I'm not like other men are. Not like this publican over here. I fast twice a week, I haven't embezzled money, like this guy. I haven't committed adultery, haven't done all these things. And I'm even here praying before everybody so that they would know what a good man I am. And Jesus said, this man did not go down to his house justified. He did not, because he trusted. He came to God like Cain, bringing something from the fruit of the ground. It was a blessing God gave. It was fruit from the ground, and yet he added his work to it, the sweat of his brow. He didn't come through the blood of the sacrifice that pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he was rejected. He was a debtor. A debtor to God, he had to do the whole law. He had to answer for all his own sins. He had to fulfill all of the obedience God required him personally. He had to do it. The law is a covenant. It either stands or falls all together. You can't have part of it. You have to have all of it or none of it. It's not our works plus Christ's works. It's not a mixture of what we do and what Christ has done. It's only what Christ has done that saves. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And there's no other way, no other truth or life but by Him. And so in verse 5 he says, for we through the Spirit, we don't do this out of our own internal intrinsic goodness, but we through the Spirit, by God's power, by God's gift of His own Spirit in us, we wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. So by the Spirit of God, we are expectant and waiting patiently for the reward of Christ's righteousness. The hope of righteousness is the promise God has given us because of what Christ has done. The hope of righteousness is the blessing, the inheritance of eternal life and eternal blessings. with God, with Christ in heaven, because of what Christ has done. And we wait for that by the strength of God's Spirit, by faith. We look at it. We look at God's Word. We hear what God has said and we rest our eternal souls on Him. And that's it. And then he says, for in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision. It's not about you. It's about Him. but faith which worketh by love. You see, faith looks away from itself and sees Christ only. In Isaiah 45, 22, the Lord Jesus spoke. He says, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there's none else. And so we see here that we've been set at liberty by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. set at liberty, and we walk in that liberty, not by what we do, but by looking to Christ, that's faith, and seeing in Him, not in ourselves. In fact, looking away from all that we are, or all that may be called ours, to all that He is, and all that may be called His. That's what faith is, is finding our all in Christ and resting upon him only and coming to God that way. Imagine yourself as a sinner over here and the Lord Jesus Christ is there, all these people surrounding him, and you know the guilt of your sin, like David perhaps. You've done worse than David. And here he is, the Lord Jesus, holy and harmless, without any sin. sent from God, God in human flesh, and there He is. And what do you think? I can't go near Him. I can't come to Him. What am I a sinner to do? Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin-laden, guilty, condemned, lost man without strength. He says in Matthew chapter 11 verse 28, come unto me, come unto me. You who are heavy laden, burdened and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. That's what the Lord Jesus himself says. And so what does this freedom do? Well, it frees us from the guilt of sin before God. It frees us from the guilt of sin in our conscience, because in our conscience we're persuaded that God has received payment from Christ for us. And it frees us from the bondage of trying to earn God's favor, earn His blessings, secure for ourselves eternal life by our own personal obedience. It does all those things and more. It frees us from the torment of fear because of our sin and the torment of death which the devil holds over us because we know we're sinners and he accuses us. And we know it's true, and so we walk in life mostly subconsciously aware of this. But when God sets us free by giving us this faith to see that everything that he requires of us, he found in Christ, that's freedom. That's freedom. What does this freedom do that God gives to us? What does it do? Well, it makes us feel a load lifted, doesn't it? Freedom causes us to serve God We've never served him until we're free. In Exodus chapter 21 verses 2 and following, the Lord says if you have a Hebrew slave and he comes in as a slave and he works for you and then the master gives him a wife and children after the slave has served a time, you can let your slave go. But if you let him go and the wife and the children were given to him by his master, then he can't go out free unless he goes out by himself. But if he loves his master, if he loves his master, and his master has given him a wife and children, and that slave comes to his master, he says, I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free. Then his master is to take him and put his ear against the post and bore his ear through with an awl, and he will serve his master forever. You see, this is a freedom that we know nothing about until God makes us free in Christ and makes us free in our conscience through faith in Christ. He makes us free in the court of heaven by the blood of Christ, and He makes us free in our conscience through faith by the Spirit of Christ, as we just read in Galatians 5. What does this freedom do? Well, it causes us to have joy in God and peace with God we've never had before. How can you have joy before God if you're always thinking God's looking for something from you? and he's never going to be happy because you know you can't give him what he requires. How can you have joy working for someone like that? You do everything. You think you've done it all right. Well, yeah, but what about this thing over there? There's never any satisfaction. But when God gives us faith to see God is satisfied, in fact, He's delighted with Christ for His people, then we can have joy. Because we know that there's nothing God can ever find in us, but we know and we're convinced that God has found everything in Christ. That gives us joy. And we have peace, we rest. Before we were in unrest and turmoil and torment, now we rest in Christ. For the first time in our life, we are happy to serve God, not men. Served not by our own strength, but by His. Not out of our own goodness, but by His grace and to His glory. Knowing that all of our labors as a free man are accepted because of Christ. by God's strength. He'll work it all out. He will get glory. He'll take it to himself. That's freedom. Freedom is to know that God in all of his holiness with no compromise to his justice and righteousness is actually delighted with me. And I don't have to do one thing to earn his delight because he looks to Christ for all. And he's given me this faith to do so also. And so doing, I see the truth that God sees. Free to know all my sins, past, present, future, sins of thought, sins of word, motive, deeds, all of them, small and great, the ones I know about, the ones I forgot about. The ones that haunt me and keep me awake at night, all my sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, and he will not remember them anymore. Look at Hebrews chapter 10. I have to take you to this scripture. This is such a wonderful scripture. This is freedom. Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 14, and read this carefully here. This is the gospel in a verse. For by one offering, he's speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ, for by one offering, the offering of himself, offered himself to God, by one offering, he, not we, he, hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, them that God has set aside and given to him to save. He absolutely, completely, and perfectly made them holy before God, and he goes on. that this is something God has spoken about before. Verse 15, whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us. In the Scripture, God's own Spirit has recorded this truth. After that, He had said before, this is my covenant, or this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them. And listen to this next verse. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. It says in Jeremiah 50 verse 20, the Lord looked in that day and he found no sin in all of Israel and all of his people. God writes his gospel on our hearts. The gospel is what Christ did. We see in the gospel Christ fulfilled all obedience to God for our righteousness and covered all our sins with his blood. And therefore God remembers our sins no more because a ransom price has been paid, a full remission has been made, and God will not remember our sins anymore. That's his promise. That shows that he's satisfied with Christ. Now, verse 18, now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin, no more need to offer for sin, because one offering has been made and a full remission has been paid and Christ has perfected forever by his one offering all those God gave him to save. That's freedom, isn't it? Knowing this, this is free. I am free of all debt. Have you ever paid off a bill? Man, I'm so glad to have that paid off. Or maybe, I remember I was in the fifth grade in school. And in those days, I don't know if they do it nowadays, but the teacher would send home a report card every quarter. And I had one class where there was a report was required, and I didn't do the report. And I was always getting good grades in school, but I got a D on my report card. And there it was, written in ink by the teacher. And I took that report card home. I knew I was in deep, deep trouble. Because my mom and dad would ask me what happened. And I would have to tell them, because I didn't do the work. I was lazy. And I was, I had to get out of this. So I got a pen. And I changed that D into a B. And then the next time the report card came out, they would put a carbon copy of the last one. So they had that same D showed up again. So I had to find a pen in that color and change it again. You see, the weight of this sin went with me. And it wasn't that I was trying to remove it before God. I was trying to remove it before my mom and dad. But the principle still applies. The memory of my sin tormented me. Here's the good news. God has forgiven all of our sins for Christ's sake. This kind of freedom is something that you cannot purchase. Christ purchased it. Something you cannot acquire. God gives it for free. It's called grace. But when he gives it, it does something. Look back at Galatians chapter five. He says in verse 6, in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision. It's not what you are by nature or what you are by religion. None of that is going to profit you. But faith which works by love. It's looking to Christ, God's gift of grace that allows you to see in Christ all God ever intended. to glorify himself in his righteousness, and holiness, and justice, and his grace, and his wisdom, and his power. Everything about God is magnified in the obedience of his son unto death for his people. An obedience of love, self-sacrifice, without measure, all of that. He says, seeing that, he says, faith which works by love. That kind of faith, what does it do? It causes us to love. Now, we talk about freedom. But you know, and I mentioned this about Bob Dylan's song. He said, you got to serve somebody. And I said, there's two kinds of ways to serve people. We either serve them constrained by their will against our will, or we serve them according to their will because we are compelled to out of love. But that's something that we rarely know about. But I know that this is true for a husband and a wife, because when they get married, a young man and a young woman are saying, I pledge myself to you and you only for the rest of my life. And they're happy to do that. There's nothing that could be more. This actually for the young man is the greatest freedom. And that's why you hear all these country and western songs saying that she's a ball and chain or something like that. Because they want to turn it around and make it seem like marriage is slavery. It's not. Not when it's done out of love. That's freedom. That's the greatest gift on earth a man could know is to have a wife that he, he himself can give his life for her in order that he might please her and raise their children out of love together. That's a great, great thing. It's called freedom of love. We see that. But there's another example here I want to take you to, and I'll close with this real quickly here. In Mark chapter 12, verse 41, Jesus sat over against the treasury. So he's sitting in the temple where the people would come in and they would put their money in the treasury. And he beheld how the people cast money into the treasury. Many of them were rich and cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing, the smallest possible money. And he called unto him his disciples. And he said to them, Verily, I say to you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury. For all they did cast in of their abundance, But she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. When Jesus saw the people cast into the treasury what they were giving, and he saw many rich cast in much, he brought attention to this woman. In his own estimation, This woman's two mites amounted to more than all of the much that was added together of these other people, which the rich cast in. To the Lord, her two mites were of greater value than the whole treasury. Can't you admire this woman? Out of her want, she gave all that she had, even all her living. And do you ever, like me, read scripture and find that your best, the best you do, is to admire those who so act out of their God-given faith? That's the best I can do, is just admire these people who do that. And when I read the Sermon on the Mount, for example, I think, my master is so good, and my own heart is so evil, I'm so far from the description he gives his disciples. At best, I can only admire those qualities that he describes and then pray, Lord, make me go in the path of your commandments. That's the way we are, isn't it? We have no strength in this thing. I find such a gap between me and my Savior that there seems to be in me opposition to him. Opposition rather than alignment. I see how far, how far short I fall and I feel my shame. Just listening to this woman, don't you feel your shame? Yet I admire my master for his goodness. How thankful I am for those words he spoke in that Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit. This woman was poor, wasn't she? But the Lord Jesus is teaching us about poverty of spirit. I have no spiritual value, I have no spiritual savings account, I have no good deeds in store, no experiences to bring, only my spiritual bankruptcy and poverty. I have nothing to pay, and I lack anything, any potential for future value in myself worthy of God's investment. And so the Lord says, blessed are the poor in spirit. And so here we see that Christ treasures the empty. He treasures the barren. He treasures the spiritually bankrupt. The one with nothing is said to be blessed. Why? Why is the person with nothing blessed by the Lord Jesus? Because all who have nothing find their all in Christ and their glory in him alone. So in spite of my shortcomings, I greatly admire this woman. You know, in absolute terms, she had nothing, really, that amounted to anything, really. And yet, she gave all that she had. Like infants and children who can do nothing to help God, we are in constant need. And her two mites, in these absolute terms, were of no value. And yet, Jesus scolded his disciples when they thought, along these lines, that there was no value in her. Perhaps this woman thought about the Sidonian woman in the Old Testament who gave the last loaf of bread she had to Elijah and her son and her were going to die. Or perhaps she thought of Hannah in the Old Testament who had no children but when God gave Samuel to her she gave her son back to the Lord. But whatever she thought, she actually is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because through this woman, God teaches us about God's giving. God's giving. If God blessed the two mites, think about this, if God blessed the two mites that this woman, this poor woman gave, how much more Will he bless the emptying out of his only begotten son who gave himself and gave his all, who gave heaven for sinners? How much more will he bless Christ who obligated himself forever to his father for his people and who poured out his soul and suffering to death and did all that he did in love and in worship to his father for his undeserving people? Can anyone deserve or earn this love? To think so shows a complete ignorance of love. True love is free. It looks for nothing before and looks for nothing after it gives itself. To attempt to earn or repay love is the greatest insult of love. The only appropriate response to love is to believe and worship God who gives it in Christ. When God gave his son, He emptied heaven. He gave everything. And think how that, please God, just like this widow woman, she gave everything. It's freedom, you see, to know that in Christ we have all things, and therefore give all that God has given us to Him in our lives, knowing it's not the value of what we give. It's what He has given to us in Christ, that we come to Him And we bring it back with thankfulness, like this woman freed from prison, or like so many, freed from the debt we owe. Let's pray. Dear Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for us. We pray, Lord, that we might be given eyes to see it and a heart to believe it, persuaded of it in our conscience, so we might live at freedom, freedom with such an unburdened heart, resting in the Lord Jesus Christ, never attempting to add to or compliment what he did by what we do, but giving to you only praise and worship and thankfulness from our heart, even the grace you've given us to do that, acknowledging that we only give to you what you've first given to us. Help us, Lord, we pray. Give us this faith that sees Christ and so loves as he loved, not for what we can get, but because he's worthy of it all. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.