Father, we know that there are great blessings and promises of things that you have promised us and given in your Word. And many of those, Lord, it does not appear sometimes that we live in those. We don't often understand why, and sometimes we are maybe tempted to even give up on ever being in the place that your word says that we ought to be. But I thank you this morning that these things are not ultimately dependent on us, but they're dependent upon you, the one that made the promise. So Lord, we do pray that as we study this morning, that your word would light our path. Lord, that we would come to know you better. We'd gain wisdom. And Lord, hope. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Will you turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5, please? Galatians chapter 5, and we're going to begin reading in verse 1. I'm working out of the English Standard Version. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 1. Here we go. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. Verse 3. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, and you have fallen from grace. 5. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Verse 7. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. For you who were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another." I will feel fortunate if we get that far. So let's go back to verse one. We know that in the context of all that we've been talking about, we've been hammering over and over again the idea that we cannot earn our salvation. We cannot earn justification. We are not to keep certain laws and certain rules and certain customs in order so that we would please God. But that God is pleased in what he has done in Christ for us. And that our position always needs to be that we are saved by grace through faith. That God is holy and that we are not and that we need to be rescued. That's the position that we come from. So in this discussion, where Paul is writing the Galatians and telling them, you cannot go back to the old Jewish law. You cannot go back to the ceremonies. You cannot go back to the sacrifices. You can't go back to the festivals. You can't do those things and expect to please God. In that argument, we begin in chapter 5 and verse 1, and this basically sets up the rest of the book for us. And so we'll spend a little bit of time, particularly in verse one. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For freedom, Christ has set us free. In the Greek, it's basically the same word. It uses both a noun and a verb. But before we go any further, just in the first phrase of the verse, we have to determine whether or not we believe what's being said here. See, even those of us who have been believers for a long time, it's good just to not make assumptions about how we feel about what the Bible says. We actually need to look at what the Bible says and ask the Lord to stir up faith within us and to examine ourselves to determine whether or not we believe it. Because, as you know, within your own heart, and certainly within the world, Christianity, Biblical Christianity particularly, is not something that is associated with the word freedom. Is that true? Yeah, that's true. So biblical Christianity is not freedom. When people view the church, using that word loosely, and when people view Christians, what they view them as they're people who can't have any fun. These are people who must keep a set of rules to please a deity. That's the idea. These are people who have to do certain things so that God will be pleased with them. They have to take certain positions. They don't get to enjoy life because they're under this yoke. It's funny that word's used in the verse. We'll get to that. What the Lord is saying to us here is that we are promised absolute freedom. That we are promised freedom and in only one way are we promised it. This is in Christ. And it says Christ set us free. In other words, we could put it another way. Christ died on the cross. Christ was our propitiation for sin. He took God's wrath upon himself. All of those things so that we could be free. But now we have to define freedom, don't we? Because if we don't define freedom, then we'll get lost in the weeds pretty quickly. So, the way that most of us would define freedom looks like this, right? Freedom means that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. It's a pretty good definition of freedom, with no consequences. Well, you're going to expect me to contradict that, except for I'm not going to. That's what freedom means. Freedom means that I can do what I want when I want to. It means that I don't have any external bondage, any external bonds, any chains, any fences, that I can do anything that I want to do. That sounds really weird to you, doesn't it? But the question is, what do I want to do? That's the question. Christ has set us free for freedom. Let's define freedom another way. I'm going to come back to that, because I want it to percolate for you a little bit. Maybe this is simplistic, and maybe it's not a great analogy. But it works for me, so I'll give it. I was thinking last night about freedom. And I wanted to make it simple for myself. And so I started thinking about the simplest inanimate objects that I could come up with. And if I were to personify them, if I were to give them a personality, what would freedom look like for them? And so here's what that looks like. Let me see if you can think. Let's see if I'm just crazy and way off base, or if you guys could get where I'm going with this. If you were a hammer, what would freedom look like for you? If you were a hammer. If you were a hammer, what would freedom look like? Or a shovel, or a spoon. Right. A hammer is built to pound in nails, right? That's what they do. If I could personify a hammer, I would think that, now you could say, the hammer could say, I don't like that, I want to brush teeth, and freedom for me is to be able to brush teeth. However, because hammers are not designed for brushing teeth, that's probably not going to work out that well, regardless. I always tell people in the job that I am, I deal with folks with disabilities and problems and those kinds of things. And what I always tell people is, when I was a kid, suppose I had had the dream to be a professional basketball player. You can, you know, because the whole thing is that freedom means that whatever you set your mind to, if you work hard enough, you can do it. I assure you that it would not have mattered how hard I had worked. I would never be a professional basketball player. If you don't get that, it's not going to happen, right, for lots of different reasons. Freedom for those things is being used for what they were designed for. And what I want you to get this morning, we'll talk about it a little more, is that freedom for you, complete and total freedom, is to get to be used for what you were designed for. So what's that? Yeah, we can even simplify it. Your purpose on this earth is to glorify God. That's what you're supposed to do. You will feel as a human being, as a creation of His, the most happy, the most fulfilled, in the place that you feel like that you should be if you are glorifying God, if you are in partnership with Him glorifying God. And so when Christ, when He says, for freedom Christ has set you free, here's the thing. When a person is born again, when they're regenerated, saved, use whatever terminology you want to use, God gives them a new heart and while it's not perfect, it's there and their desires grow and they change and they begin to love what God loves and they begin to hate what God hates and as that happens more and more, It's not a matter of I have to do all of this stuff that I don't want to do or I have to not do these things that I really would like to do. That's not Christianity. That's what Paul is preaching against and to the Galatians. Christianity is my heart has been so changed that the only place where I can find any fulfillment where I feel really free is when I'm doing what the Lord wants me to do, and I'm staying away from those things that He doesn't want me to do. Another way to put it, and this sounds counterintuitive to us, so we have to think about it. The path is narrow, right? The path is narrow. The gate's narrow, right? To life. That doesn't sound very free. You mean I can only stay right here, and I can't go over here, and I can't go over here. No, it sounds that way, but that's counterintuitive. You want to know why it is that the scripture spends so much time saying, don't be like the world. Don't be like the world. It's not to take all your fun away. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's to pull you out of slavery and to actually give you freedom for real life. And what happens is is that we get that backwards and even those of us that are believers get that backwards. And so the gospel that we preach to people actually is something that's not very attractive to them because what happens is is that why don't you look like us. Why don't you look like a sad people who are having to go through life doing these things that we really don't want to do. It's the opposite right. It's the opposite. We are truly free in Christ. because the only way that we can meet our given purpose, fulfill it, feel satisfaction, is if we walk in the freedom that he has given us. And what's happening here is that these people are finding all of these worldly things to get involved down. Some of them look very religious, but it's still just another name badge for the same thing, and it is in our day, too. And they are giving that up. So when he says to them, Don't submit again to a yoke of slavery. He's saying Christ bought you freedom. Freedom to do what you were made to do at great cost. Don't submit to a yoke. Now, that word yoke, that's important. Of course, we understand that in the agricultural use, a yoke is something that keeps an oxen going the way he's supposed to go and he doesn't run off. But this terminology was also used when people in this day and time began to study the law and they began to study to become a rabbi. They would say, they're coming under the yoke. They're coming under the yoke. Don't submit to a yoke of slavery. And we skipped the middle of the verse, so let's deal with it. Christ saved you to be free. And the verse then says, what are we going to do? Stand firm. What does that tell you? That your freedom in Christ is under attack. Your freedom in Christ is under attack and it's under attack constantly. It's under attack from those who would want you to be rule followers legalists and it's under attack from those who would want you to be pagans and atheists because the slavery is still the same it just comes out in different places but it's still slavery. Crisis I buy you to be my sons to be free. Don't give place to being a slave to anything. Now, I don't know if you're taking this right because I'm trying to communicate it and I don't feel like I'm doing a very good job, but the thing is this. Sometimes when you hear, don't be a slave to money. Someone preaches a sermon about that. Don't be a slave to money. And you think, okay, I'd really like a lot of money, but I know that I'm not supposed to. do that, so I guess I'm not. No, you missed the whole point. Maybe the guy didn't preach the sermon right, but whether he did or not, you didn't get it. If you're not being a slave to money, that means that you're standing firm and saying, no, that's not going to control me because Christ has bought me freedom. I'm not going to be a slave to lust. I'm going to stand against that. I'm not going to be a slave to, we're all going to dress the same way and do the same things out of some traditional thing that doesn't have anything to do with scripture. I'm not going to do any of those things. I'm going to stand against those things. It is so easy. You say, well, this is not altogether clear. This seems like it's nebulous. Yeah, maybe sort of. But let me just tell you this. It would be so easy for me to stand up here and to tell you each how all of your household should look. The books you should have on your shelves. The things that you should take in the movies that you should watch or not watch The people that you should associate yourself with or not associate yourself with and of course We need to make general as generalizations about those things and to help each other But it would be so easy if we just started preaching this thing so that we all looked exactly the same way and we all dressed exactly the same way and we all thought exactly the same way we could do that and And that would be easier. That would be easier on my part. But the problem is that I would be enslaving you. Because then what would happen is you would think if you met all of those external standards that you would be pleasing to God. And we can't do that. We won't do it. And I fear sometimes there are places where it may be being done and we're not aware of it. And this is why it's so important. Stand firm. Stand firm. All right, verse two. This is how he wants these guys to stand firm. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. So what he's telling them is if you believe that on top of repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, you think that you have to be circumcised in order to please God, then you're not saved. So we have to put it into our terminology because for most of us anyway, circumcision is not the issue. If anyone tells you that repentance and faith plus anything is necessary in order to come to Christ, then Christ becomes worthless to you. There's no advantage and you're not a Christian. This is how serious this is. It's not just that we have a difference of opinion on something. Certainly we'll have those things. But this is a gospel issue. This is a gospel issue and it is do not add to the gospel. Do not add to it. And what do we do? I see it myself and I see it in you guys some looks in different ways What we do is is we begin to try to disciple people Which is a good thing, but we think that discipling people means that they had to do things like we do them Even though we don't and and and maybe the way that we do things is not wrong, but it's not necessarily biblically mandated that they be done that way, but we assume that If I'm doing it this way and it's working for me, then everyone should. Be very, very careful. We can make suggestions, and we certainly need to be involved in folks' life and try to be helpful. But if you don't have biblical grounds, strong biblical grounds for telling somebody that they need to do something a certain way you need to be careful and here's how you need to be careful you will find nine times out of ten you will find that it is easier to come up with a list of stuff that doesn't necessarily have its basis in the word of God those things sometimes are a lot easier to come up with we should all have white refrigerators If you have a television in your house that's bigger than 20 inches, it's sinful and you should get rid of it. these things happen. And it's not that I'm advocating television. That's not the issue. The issue is, do bad things come from that? Sure. Do they? But here's how we act. I walk into your house, and I see some stuff that's not in my house, and I think, this brother needs a little help. He's not quite as spiritual as I am, because look at that thing sitting over there. At least I got mine in a locked cabinet. You know, The brother may have some issues there. He may be young in the faith. There may be some things that he doesn't understand. But be awfully, awfully careful about what you tell him about those things. Because what you'll do is you'll create something in him that's no more than legalism. And what will happen is that Christ himself, the sacrifice that he made, the sin removal that happened there, is not going to become valuable for him. I testify again to every man that accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You're severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. This is how serious that is. This is how serious that stuff is. Right? Now, this is not always easy, right? Because people want at least some people want, specific questions answered in specific situations. So I'm going to help you now, I'm going to try anyway, to provide specific answers to specific questions that are in people's lives. And here's how it starts. You have to look at your own self and that thing that's inside of you that's called the advice giver. And of course, we all have an advice giver, right? Most of y'all have an opinion on everything. Me too, right? But when you're dealing with someone's life, You have to be able to come to the Word of God, and you have to be able to justify what you tell them from there. You have to. Otherwise, it might just be a good practical suggestion, but it's not going to be something that's going to have any authority. The only authority we have comes from the Word of God. But what do we do? The opposite, right? So when someone asks us a question, we want to seem knowledgeable. Sometimes we maybe want to even be helpful, but certainly we want to have the answer to the question. We very often don't, the words I don't know very infrequently come out of our mouths. They don't, they should come out more than they do in my own life. What we do is we say well I've got an answer for that but is that answer based on my own prejudices and my own belief system and the way that I live or is it based upon the word of God. The Pharisees were accused of a horrible thing by the Lord Jesus Christ. They said you'll go. Oversee and land for miles and miles and miles to make a convert and when you do you make him a twofold son of hell more than yourself. This is what's happening in Galatians and we don't want to be the kind of people that do that. Right. We're not looking for conformity to us we're looking for conformity to Christ and I think some of us including me have a hard time recognizing that there is a difference in between those two things sometimes. People can live very differently than you live and be pleasing to God. Maybe that's the way to put it. I'm not talking about sin. I'm not talking about things that are obviously encouraged or prohibited in the scripture that we can go there. But I'm talking about preferences. And part of being free in Christ is that we're going to look a little different. And the way that we're doing things this morning might not work in some tribal village in Africa. It just might not. And you best figure out how to do it another way because the gospel cannot be choked to this methodology. We've got to be careful. OK. And really though the difference isn't so stark the culture within the quote church is become in some way so much different than the culture out in the world that we're getting to where we can't relate to them anymore. Now, in a way, that's a good thing, right? I mean, some people would say that we need to be seeker-sensitive, that we need to go look at all the stuff that they look at and be like them in order to reach them. No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, when we are preaching the gospel and trying to get people to come to Christ, What we are not doing is say, come be like us, come dress like us, come do things the way we do. We're saying Jesus is wonderful and he died for your sins. Repent and believe the gospel. And then how about we just lovingly shepherd them and let him work it out. This last part of this we need to deal with this. If you if you the circumcision thing if you do that then you have to keep the whole law. That's what Paul says. So if you think that being good for God is going to make you acceptable then you better get to be in pretty good because the reality is is that what's going to happen there is if you start down that path. if we are good little moral folks who go to church on Sunday and and do all the things we're supposed to do and we think God should be happy with us because of that if we do that then you have to keep the whole thing if you do that I need to get through this but I need to share something with you that may help because it sounds like I'm talking against a lot of the things that I believe that believers should do And so I need to draw a distinction for you. And the only way I know how to draw the distinction is in my own life. Why are you here this morning? Why are you here? Don't answer the question. Just think about it. Don't answer it out loud. I'm going to answer it out loud. I am here because I'm a weak, pathetic man and I have to be here. I walk the edge of a knife in order to be able to walk with Christ and don't even do that very well most of the time. I am here because Christ calls me to be here. And I love hearing his word. This is why I'm here. You see the difference in between that and I'm here because I will earn a few brownie points with God. I'm here because, well, this is just what we do and what my parents did and what my grandparents did. And this is what all good Christian people do. I'm here because I have to be. I mean, you guys are great, don't get me wrong, but if there was another way to do this, I would do it without you, probably. I mean, and vice versa, right? I mean, because as we get to know each other, we see all those things that are not so special about each other, right? So, I'm here because I have to be. That's the difference. And so, he's saying, don't do these things to be justified. Because if you do, you're going to have to keep the whole law. Then he says, you're severed from Christ if you live like that, if you want to be justified by what you do. Now, there's going to be a lot of questions about that. I read a lot of commentaries on that. They're good brothers from certain doctrinal persuasions that want to protect those doctrinal persuasions to the point that they're willing to ignore the scripture. Look, I believe that when God saves a person, that that person stays saved, okay? When they're truly saved, I believe that. But at the same time I have to deal with the scripture and I'm not going to explain it away because it's inconvenient for my overall belief system. Now I believe that what is being said here is this. We don't know about you yet. If you look at the world in terms of being a rule keeper and a religionist. then the reality is that grace doesn't have any place in your life. But let's not misunderstand. We can have somebody who seems to be walking along in the faith for a good long time and then all of a sudden gets swept up into this thing and all of a sudden starts thinking that they can keep rules and comparing themselves to other people and judging and doing all of these things. And that brother is confronted and told to stop and he doesn't stop and he joins other people who are doing the same thing and he gets into this and he keeps going and he won't stop. Well that's evidence that grace doesn't have any place in his life and it never has regardless of whatever else is there. That's the issue. You're severed from Christ, fallen from grace. Verse 5, for through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. Through the Spirit, that is that seal, that personal part of God that comes to live with his children. Through that spirit, through faith, we eagerly, what do we do? We wait. What do we wait for? The hope of righteousness. Sometimes English is not good. The hope of righteousness. The word hope, we turn it into English. That's a maybe word in English, right? I hope it'll rain today. That's not the kind of word it is in this text. In most of the New Testament, it's the same way. The hope is, I haven't realized it all yet, but it's coming. It's absolutely coming. It's a confident expectation it will be here. So this is a compare and contrast. Did you catch it? Those who have fallen away from grace, those who have been severed from Christ because they want to be justified by the law, we come at this another way. Our freedom is in the Spirit, by faith, and we wait. for righteousness, the righteousness that's coming. What does that mean? It means the same thing that it always does. You know, we get bound up in time, right? So, well, I was saved, so that means I'm already righteous in Christ because I've been justified. Yeah, that's true. I am being saved right now. That means I'm being sanctified and I'm waiting for the righteousness in Christ. I will be saved in the future, out into glorification. And again, I'm waiting for the hope of the righteousness of Christ. I am not what I ought to be, but I'm not what I was, but by God's grace, I'm not what I will be. That's the issue. And so we wait for that. But do you see the difference in between I am waiting in faith with God's aid through His Spirit on the work that He's going to do in my life instead of doing it all myself? That's the contrast that's being made there. Verse six, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything. This is very important. There's a dear brother of mine who hung on to this verse for a long time. Only faith, working through love. But I can't quantify that. I can't objectify that. That doesn't say how big my TV should be. I don't know that anymore. I'm kind of lost. I don't know whether it's OK for me to buy a vehicle that costs $5,000 or one that costs $10,000 based on that. But if you were in my little religious cult, I could tell you that you all need to drive white cars, and they can cost no more than $4,500. OK? You want to play that game? No, you really don't. You should fire me if I start that. The thing is this. Faith working itself out in love. I believe what God has said, and because of the work that he's done in my life, I care about other people more than I care about myself. You know what? That's going to deal with a lot of our problems. That's going to deal with a lot of our selfishness. That's going to deal with a lot of our religiosity. That's going to deal with a lot of our liberalism. That's going to deal with a lot of stuff. I believe that what God has said is true, and I know that God loves people, and so I need to love them too. 7. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? That's a good question. I was going to spend a lot of time there. I don't think I will, but I'll do this with 7. This is important sometimes. Sometimes you can get so far off the mark that you can't figure out how to get back sometimes. And we know the Lord is gracious and he welcomes us back with open arms as we repent and believe. And even that repentance itself is a gift from him. But the thing is, is sometimes we drift along, get off course, and don't know how we got to where we got to. And sometimes it's a great deal of help if we would pray and ask the Lord to help us think and say, what is it, who is it that got me over here? What little change, what little course correction, what little disobedience, what little lack of faith, put me in a place where I started headed in this way and I kept going there. Look back. When Paul asks this question, I don't think it's that he's trying to gossip and he wants these folks to give him the answer. I think it's more, look at who did this to you. Examine that. Look at what did this to you. Verse 8, This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. We know about yeast. Put a little bit of yeast in a lump of bread and pretty soon it goes through the whole thing. This is helpful to me. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view. And the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. Faith, working itself out in love, means that Paul, who can't even be there with the Galatians, is writing them a stern letter. But faith, working itself out in love, says that, I am believing, God, that when you hear the truth, that you're going to turn. that you're going to turn. He also says, whoever did this to you is going to bear a penalty. And that should both encourage us, but it should also worry us. Because if it's us who's doing this to other people, there are penalties involved in that. If we are laying rules of men on people in order to follow them, it's dangerous. And there are penalties. Paul says, if I'm still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? Paul is saying, you know what, here's the deal. Some of these people may be saying that even Paul says that we should be circumcised. Maybe they're even using him for a reference. If you haven't noticed, you can take anybody out of context. Look at our political situation now. I've seen people take the scripture so out of context that they somehow in several verses picking words out of them can determine that they should buy a $20,000 red motorcycle because they found it in the Bible. what's being said here is I'm not telling you that you should be circumcised. I'm doing everything I can to say that and if I had been saying that if I was playing the same game that these false teachers are playing then there would be no offense to the cross which brings us to a point. What is the offense of the cross? The offense of the cross is everything that the book of Galatians is about. The offense of the cross is this. God is holy and you are not and there is not a thing you can do about it besides throw yourself on Jesus Christ. You want to be offensive to sinful people? That's how you be offensive. When you tell them that they must rely completely on another That's the offense of the cross. When you tell them that they are not good people, but they are sinful people and that they are an affront to God and the only way to get out of that is for God himself to fix that problem through the cross. When you tell them that, that's the offense of the cross. But so often, we take the offense away because we just say, nah, don't worry about that stuff. You're basically good people. You just need to follow a few rules. Work hard. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Do a good job. You'll be okay. God will be happy with you. He'll take care of the rest. That's not the gospel that's blasphemy. That stuff sends people to hell. We've got to stop doing that. We've got to stop thinking that way. Paul is persecuted not because he is trying to get them to follow rules, but because he's trying to tell them that's not the gospel. Now, one of the strongest things he says in verse 12, I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Pretty tough. Pretty harsh. Jeez. What are you saying, Paul? Gosh. This is how strongly he feels for people who mess with the gospel, who mess with the church. Paul has given his life for preaching the gospel, for building up local churches, and those who would destroy that, he has little sympathy for. wants them to come to Christ. Don't get me wrong. But the issue is this. Anyone who would make one of these little ones to sin should have a millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea. It's serious. And this is the other thing too that I should say about this. Part of our rule keeping as believers is that we all have this nice little soft little language and we don't get excited and we say amen at the right time and we at least put on a veneer of being calm and cool and collected and maybe some of that's good and we all have different personalities in that realm. But there are some times when you want to be furious. When somebody comes in and preaches a false gospel and tears people up about it. Biblically, you should handle that well. But I don't think that Paul was saying Oh, I just think that they should just castrate themselves because I'm feeling a little bit miffed because of what they did. He's saying, I wish these people would go away and that they would go hurt themselves someplace else and leave my people alone. That's what he's saying. I say I can lean a little heavy on that side, so I'm good at that part. I'm not so good at the other, so it probably wasn't so convincing. Everybody's shocked. But the thing is, there are times when you get serious and you get hard. You do it for the right reason. That standing firm for the freedom is important because all around the true church, people are trying to take it away. The devil wants to take it away. We have an enemy within ourselves that wants to chase those things. The whole law, verse 14, the whole law is summed up. Jesus said this, right? Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. The law is summed up in a command that you can't keep. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself apart from Christ. That's why you need Christ. Because in that one command, we're all down to hell apart from Christ. Do you recognize that? But in that one command, there's the sense in which we see the freedom that Christ gives us because he puts a new heart within us and gives us the ability over time to begin to actually live that out. And that's freedom. And the last part of this, in verse 15, we'll just deal with it briefly because it bears on this. If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another. Disagreements in churches and among Christians in general, for the most part, are things that have to do with legalism and following rules. And we can have honest disagreements, but scripture tells us how those ought to look. We can look at certain things different ways than our brothers and sisters do, and that's okay. But when it comes down to things that are outside of the scripture and yet we're judging one another and we're looking at one another and we're saying well we have the spiritual group over here and we have the unspiritual group over here and the unspiritual group we recognize that they're unspiritual because they want to spend a bunch of money on carpet for the building and the spiritual group over here wants to send the money to missions Pretty clear cut. Right. We should always send money to missions. Maybe. Maybe it is. I said that on purpose. Right. Because you assume some of you assume one way and some of you assume another. But most of you because I know you're going to say well yeah who cares about the carpet. Let's send let's send the money to the missionaries. There may be times there could be a time when the Lord would say put the carpet in. But you buy it and devour one another over these things. The problem is that whenever we start comparing ourselves to ourselves, and we do that by looking at ourselves and saying, I follow the rules better than you do. That's going to cause tension. It's going to cause fights. OK. And we have enough enemies trying to take away our liberty in Christ. That we should not allow. That to come from within. We should not allow that to come from within. I skipped 13 and I did it on purpose because I think Paul just kind of stuck that in there to cover the other side. So let's look at 13. For you who were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. I don't think we need a lot of time on that because I think we understand what it means but I will cover it briefly and I'll do it this way. There are those people and there were letters written to them as well who would say well that's good I'm free in Christ and that means I can do anything I want to do. And true freedom in Christ does mean that I can do what I want to do because what I want to do if he really lives within me is what he wants me to do. But it can be twisted and how it's twisted is like this. I don't have to do what's in the scripture. Grace means that I can do things that God hates and I can love them because after all I'm free in Christ. I have that much liberty. Paul, just to be sure that we understand, is being certain that we don't go off that edge either. The path is narrow. We have to fight for it on both sides. We don't get all hard-nosed and a bunch of pharisaical rule followers over here, and we don't get so loosey-goosey over here that anything goes, because neither one's right. Freedom involves walking down the middle of that thing with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it means. And the reason I didn't spend as much time on that one is because I'm not sure that we don't already understand that. We have spent a long time in this church talking about those things. cheap grace and all of the things that go with that. So I don't feel like you need a sermon based on that one verse about that because that's not what the book is about. But you just need to be reminded that Paul is saying while I'm talking about legalism here. Please remember I'm not saying that it means that we can go live like pagans. OK. I'm not saying that. So. The end of this is. By the spirit live in faith. Serve one another in love. and you'll be free through the gospel. You gotta decide whether you believe that or not. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful this morning for your word. And I do get the sense that there are some ways in which we do not yet recognize all that you have purchased for us. I do ask, Lord, that in this day and time, so much tumult in the religious world and in the secular world and in all these places, I ask that you would give us the ability to stand firm in the freedom that you have given us. And Lord, those of us who don't feel very free right now, I pray that you would demonstrate to us what freedom truly is in Christ. Lord, make us, have us the ability to sense that as we look at your word. I pray you bless the services to come. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.