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Me Too
April 16/17, 2016
| The Freedom of Me Too
Aaron Brockett | Galatians 5:1- 6:3
How are we? Good. It’s good to see you. I do want to welcome you. I want to welcome anybody who may be at our North campus right now. We love you guys and appreciate you so much. Yeah, let’s go ahead and give North a hand. Love you guys. Before we get rolling here I just want to remind all of you ladies about our women’s conference coming up next month on May 13th and 14th. We have at least one person excited down here—a few of you. Ladies, we’ve been planning this and praying about it and preparing for a while now and we have some great speakers coming in and we have some special things planned for you—May 13th and 14th. You can register at tpcc.org/women’s conference. While this conference has been planned with Traders Point ladies in mind, it’s not just for Traders Point ladies. We want to encourage you to invite friends and family to come with you. Registration is going quickly so I’d encourage you to get online sometime today and get registered for that. Today we are finishing up this series that we have been in now for a few weeks. So if you are brand new today, if this is your first time to be with us, you’re kind of coming in as the curtain is beginning to drop and the credits are beginning to roll on this particular series. You can go back online or on the church app and get caught up with the rest of the messages. You might want to listen to this one today first, because you may not want to after today. I don’t know. Actually, next weekend we begin a brand new series. So you’re early for that one. Next weekend we’re beginning a new series in the Book of James and we’re calling it Walk The Talk. James is one of the most practical books in the Bible and I’m really looking forward to this study together. That kicks off next weekend. Today we are going to finish up this series that we’ve been in with these two powerful, little words. All of us need to say and all of us need to hear these words on a regular basis. And the two little words are me too. Yeah, you’ve been listening. Thank you for that. Last night they just kind of looked at me. This is good. The words me too are really, really important because they indicate that you and I are not alone in this world. That there are others who can relate to us and they’ve been where we have been and they’ve traveled where we have traveled. I confessed this last week, my natural inclination as a person is that if somebody confesses an issue or a sin, or a struggle or is just having a hard time—my natural inclination is not to lead with those two words, me too. My natural inclination is to lead with another set of two words. The words you should. Maybe some of you are right there with me. I have a tendency to be an expert in other people’s problems. I just kind of look at them and go, “Yeah, really you should think about doing this,” or “You should do that,” or “You should stop doing this.” Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the you should conversation shouldn’t happen because there is a time and a place for you should.
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Me Too | The Freedom of Me Too April 16/17, 2016
I know that there are plenty of times in my life when I need other people to kick me in the pants and look me in the eye and say, “Aaron, you should…” but it’s just that those two words aren’t really the best place or the most healthy place to begin. The best place to begin is to say, “Me too. I understand exactly where you are coming from. I’ve been in your place.” Here’s the most important part, “Let me help you carry your burden.” Now it would be important for you to understand that the concept of me too, maybe I should have said this in week one of the series, didn’t come out of some creative planning meeting in a conference room somewhere where we were trying to figure out how to package this series. The concept of me too is found all throughout the Bible. In fact it is actually a concept that Paul really drills down on, in particular, in these last few chapters of this letter that he writes to the Galatians. So if you have a Bible or a device with a Bible on it, go ahead and get to Galatians, chapter 5. Paul is writing this letter to a group of people who are trying to follow after Jesus. They’ve already received Him, they’ve already accepted Him, and they’re walking by grace and faith in Jesus alone. They’re trying to follow Him and they’re trying to grow up in Jesus Christ. But there is this other group of people and instead of saying me too they’re looking at them and they are saying you should and they’re actually blocking these Galatians from maturity in Jesus. See, that’s kind of the whole goal—that we would grow up in Christ. Many of you know that my wife, Lindsay, and I have four kids at home ranging in age from four to 13. That’s a pretty wide gap. So, as you might imagine our house can be kind of crazy at times with conflicting schedules and homework, and soccer, and dance, and all of those kinds of things that are going on. Now we’re beginning to enter into the years where adolescent hormones are kind of getting introduced in to the mix. So things are about to get a whole lot more interesting. You can pray for us at home, alright? Kids are a lot of work. Can I get an Amen on that? Yeah. And if there are kids in the room I don’t want you to feel left out. Parents can be a lot of work, too. Lindsay and I are chasing around our kids all day long and many of you in this room can relate to this or you can remember back to the day when you would just fall into bed in utter exhaustion. But it’s a good type of exhaustion. We wouldn’t trade being parents for the world. Now there are some days that we would trade our kids, but most of the time… We love our kids and we are relishing every moment of their childhood. There are a lot of times when I look at them and I’m like, “Stop growing. I just want you to stay just as you are right now because I love this particular season of life that you are in.” But I know that that can’t be reality. We would be really bad parents if we didn’t do everything that we could do to encourage our kids to grow up and to mature. But see, they aren’t there yet. Some days we feel really good about the progress that they are making and then there are other days like this one. I walked into my four-‐year-‐old daughter’s, Cadence’s, bedroom last week and I found her like this. Now if you can’t tell what she’s doing, she’s on her bed upside down and this is an iPad and she’s one inch from the screen watching cartoons. I walked in and I was like, “What are you doing?” And then immediately I took out my phone and I was like, “This is so cute. I’ve got to take a picture of this.” This is adorable! When she’s four, alright? But if I
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were to walk into her bedroom when she is 30—then I’ve failed, “Honey, we’ve got to help you progress.” Now I was thinking about this last week. When it comes to my kids, I want them to know that their position as my children is—and this is the word—secure. Nothing is happening to this. It’s not up for grabs, they can’t lose it, there isn’t anything that they can do that would sever their position as my kids and me as they’re father, yet they are in process making progress. That would actually make a pretty good definition of maturity. Now, here’s the thing. If we ever get the two concepts in this statement mixed up or dependent upon one another, then we’ve got some issues. In other words if I were to say to my children, “Hey, your position is dependent upon your progress,” then all of a sudden they are walking on egg shells. All of a sudden their maturity is going to be hindered. It’s actually going to have the exact opposite effect. However, I don’t want my children to think that because their position is secure that this [progress] doesn’t matter. This would be the same thing when it comes to our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. If you’ve placed your faith in Him, you are saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus, and if you’re already tired of hearing me say that, you’re going to be exhausted by the end of this message because I’m going to say that in as many different ways as I possibly can. Yet, at the same time, we are trying and attempting to make progress and to grow up in Christ. This is the idea that Paul is drilling down on. Really the greater idea that I want to get at is that, as a church, we will never progress and others will never progress in maturity in Christ until we live a me too kind of a life. See, if we’re always hindering people or we’re always trying to add to the work of salvation then we’ll actually keep people away— either we will push them away from Jesus or we’ll keep them in a spot where they are really immature. So as we come to this Book of Galatians we’re going to pick it up here, I’m going to read two verses out of chapter 4 and then we’re going to jump in to chapter 5. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover so I need you to stay with me, alright? Paul has been writing to this group of churches in a region of Galatia and just one of the things that he has been saying to them over, and over, and over again is that it is time to grow up. It’s time to mature. But he says this after their conversion. See, he says, “Listen, you have to move on from the elementary way of thinking about things, the way you used to think about things.” In other words he’s saying that before Christ this is the way that you thought about things but now that you know about Jesus, and more importantly, now that you are in Jesus this is the way that you should think, and this is the way that you should live but something is blocking your progress. In other words Paul said, “I’ve walked back into your bedroom and you’re upside down on the bed watching your iPad again. Why have you regressed back into that?” See, in the region of Galatia these Christians who Paul is writing to have grown up very religious before meeting Jesus. And that’s possible. They worshiped Greco-‐Roman, false, pagan gods. They were very, very religious. And just as a side-‐bar note, I just want you to know that you can be extremely religious and still not know Jesus. You can be in church every single weekend and still not ever come to know Jesus. They followed all kinds of religious rules, and rituals, and regulations but then Paul teaches them this mind-‐blowing concept of the gospel of grace, that they are not saved by their own merit, they are saved Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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by the merit of Jesus Christ on a cross on their behalf. And they receive it and then Paul moves on to start some other churches. Then there was a group of religious people who came in and they began to actually convolute his teaching. They came along and said, “No, no Paul actually left some stuff out. You can’t just embrace grace and follow after Jesus. There are some things that you need to do, not for your maturity but for your position.” That’s what they were teaching and this was an utterly false teaching. These were people known as Judaizers. They wanted to add to the work of grace all of these religious rituals and rules. We’ll talk about one specifically here in just a minute. In other words, they were saying at least a little bit of your salvation is based upon your own merit and your own works. And so Paul is going to spend all of chapter 5 and a good part of chapter 6 actually taking this idea to the mat. In fact, when he finds out that they had actually fallen into this, he’s just utterly perplexed. Look at what he says in chapter 4, verse 19, “…my little children,” this is not a condescending thing, this is a discipling thing. He says, “…my little children for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” Progress, alright? “I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” Paul understands that there may be some things that are going to get lost in translation as he is writing to them and he just wants them to know that he’s not angry with them, he is angry for them because they bought into this false and destructive idea and lie that they really weren’t children of God until they followed some religious rules or until they began to clean up their morals. In other words, the cross of Jesus Christ isn’t enough. They needed to do more to earn their title and position. They had just let go of and exchanged something incredibly valuable for something incredibly worthless. And the precise terms that Paul is going to use in this passage are these two words right here: the word freedom and the word slavery. Paul says, “You’ve had freedom in Christ but now you’ve actually given that freedom up and you’ve gone back into the slavery of religious rituals and rules. You know, it’s been a little while but there was a time in my life when I kept having this reoccurring nightmare. I usually had it a time or two a month when I found myself back in high school. I don’t know if any of you have had that kind of a nightmare, maybe you can kind of relate to that. What truly made it terrifying was the fact that I had already experienced and knew full well the freedom of being an adult but yet I found myself back in high school—my old high school body, which was slavery enough as it was, and my old book bag, my old locker, and all of the insecurities. I would wake up in a cold sweat because I had tasted the freedom of being an adult but I was actually going back into the lack of freedom of being in high school. This is essentially what the Galatians had done. So there are three big ideas that I want you to write down, the structure around this teaching. Here’s the first one. This is what Paul is getting at. He’s saying: Don’t lose your freedom. Those of you who are in Christ—don’t lose this. Those of you who are not yet in Christ, you need to understand this and I’m going to get to that here in a minute.
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Look at what he says in chapter 5, verse 1, “For freedom Christ has set us free; …” Now the way that that sentence is structured is really interesting because the word freedom is both the noun and the verb. So another way of reading verse 1 would be this: Christ has freed you to be free so be free. You look at that and go, “Well that’s a circular argument.” No, he’s actually driving down on the fact that freedom is really the central tenet or core of the gospel of grace. So here’s what this means. Freedom is both the means and the end of being a Christian. Question for you: Is freedom usually what you think about when you think about becoming a Christian? Is freedom what you usually think about when you think about giving your life to Christ? What about your friends? What about your co-‐workers? What about your family members? Is freedom something they associate with your life as a follower of Jesus? My guess is that, initially, the answer is no. Initially the invitation to follow after Jesus, to be a Jesus follower—we don’t associate freedom with that. We actually associate giving up our freedom. And we say, “Well, I’ll do that because when I die I’ll go to heaven so I guess I’ll give up my freedom now so that that way I get to go to heaven later.” And I’m just telling you that that cannot sustain. Eventually you’ll feel crushed by it. Eventually you’ll feel insufficient. Eventually you’ll say, “I’m messing up far too much. Forget it. I’m just going to live my life the way that I want to.” I’ve been a pastor here for eight-‐and-‐one-‐half years and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people who used to be in these seats who are no longer in these seats because they didn’t associate following Jesus with freedom, they associated following Jesus with rules that they couldn’t keep. So eventually they just got exhausted and they gave up and they walked away. So many people look at this and say, “Well, I can follow Jesus or I can live my life the way that I want to. I can go to church on the weekends, or on a day like today I could be outside enjoying the weather,” and many people are. “I could go to the lake instead of coming to church. I can have my freedom. I can tithe 10 percent of my income or I can buy a better car. I can suppress my physical desires or I can enjoy myself.” And many of us, that’s how we look at this thing called being a Christian. We say, “Well I can do this or I can do this so what are the consequences? What are the benefits?” And we kind of weigh it out. We have to define freedom, really—what does it mean to be free in Christ? Sociologist, Robert Bellah, concludes this. He says, “Freedom is perhaps the most resonant, deeply held American value; yet freedom,” this is how we define it, “turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other people’s values, ideas, or styles of life forced upon us, being free of arbitrary authority in work, family, and political life.” In other words, here’s how we define freedom. Leave me alone and let me do whatever I want to do. And that’s not what freedom in Christ means. If you’ve ever read through the gospels and you see when Jesus invites somebody to follow after Him, He’s always inviting people into something more. Jesus was never reducing life. In fact He would even say, “I come to give you life and life to the fullest.” Really all that sin is is just gifts that have become distorted and actually they terminate upon themselves as a selfish thing that we are running after. So food, and money, and sex all of those things are good gifts given to us by God but they are never meant to be gods in the lower case “g”. And that’s all that sin is. We take a gift and we turn it into an ultimate thing.
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I want to say it this way. The invitation to follow Jesus is trusting that God wants something for you not something from you. He wants something for you. So Jesus invites you into this fuller life. That’s what freedom in Christ means. Freedom actually has multiple meanings and layers and we’re going to get to a few of those here in just a minute. Maybe there are those of you in the room and maybe this whole talk about freedom makes you a little bit nervous, especially if you have teenagers because you’re like, “Okay, I don’t know if I want my teenagers to hear this freedom in Christ thing because won’t they take that and abuse it? Won’t they use this as a license to live their lives however they want?” And that’s not what it means. I’m going to get to that here in a minute. When we get nervous about freedom in Christ this is what causes legalism within the church. Legalism within the church motivates us—you read the passage in Galatians and most of us are going to side with the Galatians, we’re not going to think that we are the Judaizers but there are so many people—if you attend church for more than a year, you’re going to end up dipping into legalism. And what it is is that we establish unnecessary rules and we say, “That’s what it means to follow after Jesus.” And instead of people knowing, hearing, understanding, and most importantly seeing the gospel of grace lived out in our lives… In other words, when people walk in here do they see freedom in Christ lived out? Do they see and know what that means? Or do they see something fundamentally different. And that’s what they reject. They’re not rejecting the gospel, they’re rejecting all of these unnecessary rules that we’ve kind of thrown up. So can I just say this? Jesus died to give us freedom and if following Jesus doesn’t feel free to you, you’re doing it wrong. See freedom will never lead to more indulgence, and selfishness, and sin—that is slavery. We’re going to see that here in a minute. But true freedom in Christ—you’ve been transformed. You’re heart has been made new. It’s not going to result in rebellion toward God but it’s going to inspire gratitude, and obedience, and love, and devotion. Let me take this analogy back to my kids. When they know that their position is secure, they should feel free. But their freedom isn’t going to lead them—if they are maturing—to taking advantage of that. But actually, if I’m doing my job right and they’re maturing it’s going to lead them to further obedience and gratitude without any selfishness attached to it. Paul goes on and he says this at the end of verse 1, “… stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Stand firm is a military term that basically just means this: don’t give up your ground. He’s saying this. This is assuring. Some of you in the room and maybe at North need to hear this. You’re position in Christ—if you’ve responded by grace through faith in Jesus alone, then your position, and your salvation, and your status—it is finished. It is sealed. It is done. It is permanent. But you can lose your freedom. Not because God takes it away but because you hand it over, which is what the Galatians had done. Paul says in verse 2, “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision,” so this is the thing that the Judaizers were wanting the Galatians to do, alright? If you don’t know what circumcision is—google it. I don’t know what you’ll find. Do it at your own risk. So this is the thing that they were asking the
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Galatians to do. They were basically saying, “Hey, you’re not saved until you’re circumcised. And I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that room. All of the Gentile men are like, “What??” So he says this. If you accept that part of the law, listen to this, “Christ will be of no advantage to you.” That’s a heavy statement. So the yoke of slavery that they wanted to hitch them back up to is that they were saying, “Listen, there’s this part of the law of Moses.” Now if you don’t know anything about the Law of Moses, the law of Moses was in the Old Testament. The Old Testament law had 613 commands. And the law of Moses was never designed to save us from sin. The law of Moses was designed to reveal our sin. That’s what the law does. The law reveals our sins. The law does not save us from sin. It would absolutely be impossible. So what they were doing is that they were coming along and saying, “Okay, you need to attach the law of Moses to the gospel of Jesus Christ and until you do that you’re not really saved. You should be considered outside of God’s saving grace.” So Paul says to them, “Okay, if you want to do that knock yourself out, but Christ will be of no advantage to you.” In other words they basically had taken all of the power out of the gospel. So here’s a question. Maybe some of you should think about. When it comes to your position in Christ, when it comes to your salvation—you can say it that way—how much of it is on you and how much of it is on God? Is it 50/50? Is it 80/20? Is it 90/10? Paul says it’s 100/0. In fact in Ephesians 2 it says that you are dead in your sins. Dead people really can’t respond, right? The Spirit of God is the one who brings you to the place of recognizing that you need salvation. You can’t add anything to that. Now what is the place of works? Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. But he’s basically saying this: circumcision was a statement that Jesus wasn’t enough. They needed to do something more. As one author put it a few years ago, Jesus + anything = nothing. If you add anything to it then you’re basically taking the whole power out of it. Verse 3 says, “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.” He’s like alright, if you’re going to go after that one thing then you might as well try to fulfill all of the law, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” Now that last sentence there doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their salvation. He’s not suggesting that. What he’s saying is that if you choose to try to earn your way to heaven by your own merit and your own good works, then basically you’ve walked away from grace. The Judaizers were saying that Moses had to complete what Jesus began. That’s what makes it a yoke of slavery. And he says, “Go ahead and do it but you’ll just be subjecting yourself to high school all over again. If you’re going to let go of the cross and cling to that small part of the law thinking that that will save you, then you better keep all of it.” So you can either trust, hear me, you can either trust in your performance or you can put your trust in Jesus’ perfect performance on your behalf. But you can’t do both. It’s kind of like this. It’s kind of like a man who found a baseball in storage that was signed by the great baseball player, Babe Ruth. He knew that it was really valuable. So he was going to take it to an auction and sell it and get some money off of it, or at least take it and have it valued. But he was concerned Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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because the autograph had faded. So he foolishly took out a sharpie and he began to trace over the autograph to kind of darken it. So what did he do in his attempt to try to preserve the value? He ruined it. He made it worthless. That’s exactly what Paul is saying to us today whenever we try to refinish the finished work of Jesus Christ. What Jesus has done for us must be received by faith alone. If we try to add our feeble works to His finished work, then we make the whole thing worthless. Let me say it again in another way: You didn’t earn your salvation by your good performance; you don’t lose it by your poor performance. And I don’t know about you but that’s really, really good news. Last week there were lots of things that I really messed up but that doesn’t mean that I’m in, and I’m out, and in, and out. You see, practically, here’s why this is so true. I’ve gone over this before in the past. If you manage to do some things that are really, really good usually what that will lead to is pride. And spiritual pride is like the absolute worst. Spiritual pride in a church will kill it. It will kill the church because it will cause all of us—instead of living me too lives we’ll live you should lives. You don’t have to say the words. People will just walk in and they will feel it in the room. Or if you can’t ever live up to the law it will crush you and it will leave a spiritual depression. And if you walk away and say, “Man, there is nothing I can do…” How many of you just kind of live your lives in this low-‐grade fear that God is not happy with you? Like He loves you because He has to but He doesn’t really like you. See, that’s what this is. It’s this old merit kind of seeping out. The idea of circumcision and keeping that part of the law sounds crazy to us in our culture but we do all sorts of other stuff that is equally as damaging. We just kind of think, “Well, you know I’m going to clap whenever Aaron says that I’m saved by grace through faith but practically I’m still living my life by works. Practically, I’m still living my life like, ‘God, do you notice what I’m doing here?’” Paul says in verse 5, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly,” what’s the word there? Wait. Say it out loud with me—wait “for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,” and all of the men in the room are like, “Yes!” Maybe not, alright. So are you crazy? Google it! He’s like, “…neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.” So he brings up the idea of hope. Now here’s the thing, hope has sort of gotten watered down in our vernacular today. What does hope mean for us today? How do we use the word? We use it like a hail Mary pass, “I hope that I get the job.” “I hope that my finances work out okay.” “I hope the test results come back negative, I’m not really thinking that they will but I hope.” But the meaning of the word hope is actually much stronger in this passage. The primary meaning is this: powerful assurance. It’s certainty. It’s total confidence. Paul says, “Listen, you don’t work for it but you do wait for it.” In verse 6 he’s saying in Christ Jesus there is nothing you can do to make God love you more or less. We are saved. Our position as His kids—if you’ve responded to Jesus—is secure. But we are in process making progress. So in case you’re already tired of me saying this, I need to say it one more time. I want to say it in one different way and then I’m going to move on. Your good works don’t save you. Your mistakes and poor performance don’t unsave you. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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Salvation is done and now it is being worked out. So your character is not there yet but it’s being shaped. Your heart is not there yet, it’s being formed. Your attitude is not there yet, it’s being fashioned. Your mind is not there yet, it’s being transformed. Your actions are not there yet but they are being changed and your motives aren’t there yet but they are being adjusted. And can I just say to you, me too. This is why the gospel is not just for unsaved people. It’s for those of us who are in Christ because once you’re in Christ you begin the process of progress. And it’s only done when you rehearse the gospel over, and over, and over to yourself. Let me turn a corner here and kind of get to an issue that maybe some of you are hoping that I would cover. So does this whole freedom in Christ thing mean that we can do whatever we want? Absolutely not. It just means this. Our salvation is not based upon performance. Our position is secure. Therefore, we are free now so we no longer need to focus just on ourselves. So here’s the question that I’ve wrestled with. And I was talking to a friend of mine last week and he’s wrestling with this. What do you do when you’ve accepted Jesus—maybe for some of you it wasn’t that long ago, three or four weeks ago you walked out that door and you were baptized here on Easter weekend but since that time you’ve done a whole bunch of junk. That sin that you were thinking about when you got into the baptistery and you were like, “Okay, I’m never going to do that again.” You’ve done it, I don’t know, like 10,000 times since then. Maybe you’re like, “Okay, what if I keep sinning over, and over, and over again? Then what? Now, it does not mean that your position is up for grabs but it does mean that maybe you honestly need to evaluate some areas of your life that need to be transformed. Here’s what’s happening. The Bible talks about this. It talks about the desire—Paul’s going to get to this in a minute—it talks about the desires of our flesh and it talks about the prompting of the Holy Spirit. So when you’re a new creation in Christ you’re still clothed with this flesh suit, which is like the whole problem. So you’ve got surface desires and then you’ve got inner desires that are motivated by the Spirit and those two things are in conflict with one another. So what do you do—what does God do with your sin when you keep falling back into the same sin pattern? Here’s what it comes down to. It is as simple and complex as this. When you sin do you recognize it, and do you care, and what do you do with it? That’s really the pivotal thing. If you see it as sin, and you recognize it, and in humility you take it back to Jesus—man, you may do this over, and over, and over again but you repent of it and you say, “God, change my desires in this.” That’s a really, really, really good sign that the Spirit of God is working within you. If you no longer care, if you normalize it, if you think, “This is just me,” bad sign. Paul says this to the Galatians in verse 7. Paul was always using sports analogies to talk about our relationship with Jesus Christ. Maybe for some of you that connects and for others of you, you don’t care. Paul says this, “You were running well,” He equates the Christian life to a race. He says, “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion,” he’s talking about the false teaching, “is not from Him who calls you,” Jesus, that’s who he’s talking about there. He says, “A little leaven,” a little false teaching, “leavens the whole lump.” In other words it might seem small but it’s going to spread through the whole church, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever He is.” He’s like, “Hey man, I’ve got confidence that you’ll come back to the gospel that’s been so clearly taught to you, “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.” Here it is. He actually says this, “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” And if you’re going, “Did Paul just say what I think he just said?” The answer is, “Yes.” That’s what he just said and I’m not going to explain it, alright? So Paul is lit up here. This shows how upset and angry he is for a couple of reasons. He says, “Look, if you’ve got to be circumcised to be saved, then the whole message of the cross is completely… What Jesus did on the cross is worthless. And then number two, these are people who he loves and cares for and they are being lured away from the truth. So he comes at this really, really hard. And this same idea here is what motivated—if you remember the HILLS WE DIE ON series when we talked about relational evangelism and we said we want to remove unnecessary barriers that keep people from Jesus this is what we mean. Unnecessary barriers mean this: unnecessary rules; unnecessary religious behavior; unnecessary attitudes; unnecessary behaviors that keep people blind from what the gospel of grace really is and what the freedom of Christ can really look like in our lives. Now it is not circumcision today, thank the Lord. But it is a host of other things that, as Christians, as churches, we have a tendency to place over the gospel of grace as evidence that we are saved. Paul actually gives a whole laundry list of these things in his letter to the Corinthians. What are some of the things today? Well, Christians should dress a certain way, or you’re welcome here as long as you get your act cleaned up, or should Christians celebrate certain pagan holidays? Should Christians consume certain alcoholic beverages? All of these things—and maybe they should and maybe they shouldn’t but what ends up happening is that we focus more on these external rules and we never really get to the gospel of grace. Therefore, what people are rejecting is really not Christianity, what they are rejecting is the moralism that is attached to it. Believe me, I grew up in a Christian school and so many of my friends—what ended up happening—they were following after Jesus, going to youth group on Wednesday nights, and they’re not tracking now because they never tasted the gospel of grace. What did they taste? They tasted a therapeutic moralism that was called Christianity. And therapeutic moralism will always lead you either to spiritual pride where you look down on others, and you judge others, and you short-‐circuit the work of the church or eventually you get utterly exhausted trying to play that thing out and you walk away from God. So he says in verse 13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers.” Now here it is, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,” there it is right there. He’s like, “Don’t use this as a license to sin, but what do you do? “…through love serve one another,” me too. That’s where this idea is from. “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word:” Now, he’s not saying one single word, he’s talking about one idea, one statement and this is it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He’s like, “Hey, you want to fulfill the law? Do that.” That’s a me too kind of life. “But,” church people, “if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” Here’s the second idea. The first one is: don’t lose your freedom. Here’s the second one: don’t abuse it. Don’t abuse your freedom. Your freedom is not an opportunity to sin. In Christ you are free from the Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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Me Too | The Freedom of Me Too April 16/17, 2016
impossible struggle of trying to obey God to earn your salvation and you’re freed up to love God and love other people. So here’s what I want you to think about. If your life was 100 percent based upon your ability to perform, guess who you would spend 100 percent of your time thinking about? And as soon as you get the answer just say it out loud—yourself. That’s the danger of this teaching. That’s the danger of religion. If you are like, “It’s all based upon my behavior and my moralism, and my works I’m going to spend 100 percent of my time just focused upon me,” and you’re never freed up to focus on other people. But when your position in Christ is secure, you are freed up and motivated to actually live a me too kind of life. To be others focused. Instead of going, “God, I’m going to serve but will anyone notice?” “I’m going to do this good thing, God did you get that on my permanent record? Are we going to be good?” Instead you’re freed up to actually be focused on others and it’s impossible to love others until you get to that place. See, here’s the thing. I don’t know about you but I have a tendency at times, maybe all of us do, we kind of walk into a room and we try to figure out pecking order, “Where do I fit in this kind of thing?” And so somebody confesses a sin or shares a struggle and instead of having compassion on that person, do ever use somebody? You sit there and think to yourself, “Well you know, I mean I don’t have all of my stuff together but compared to her…looking pretty good, alright?” “Why don’t you be my new best friend because God grades on a curve and if He sees…” And we end up thinking, “Well that person is a really good Christian and that other person, oh my goodness. Have you heard about that person? Let’s pray about him, alright?” So we have a tendency to either villainize others, or condemn others, or judge others. See, here’s what freedom in Christ means. Your position is not based upon anything that you’ve done therefore you are free to have compassion upon others and to introduce them to the freedom that you’ve found in Christ. Paul says in verse 16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” See walk is just an analogy for the way that you live your life. He says here, “Live your life in a way that is reflective of what the Spirit has done in you and is doing through you.” See, one of the words the Bible uses to describe the Holy Spirit is the word Helper. The Spirit is to help you. You don’t worship the Holy Spirit in and of Himself. The Spirit has been given to you to minister to you, to help you in this life. So the Spirit shows you the way but also empowers you to walk in that way. Here’s the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. What the Spirit is doing in you makes you more and more of what you already are in Christ. The Spirit’s work is to align your progress with your position. Let me say that again. The Spirit’s work in your life is to align your progress with the position that you already have. In verse 17 he says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh,” they are at war with each other, “for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Paul talks about that in Romans 7. Remember that? He’s like, “Hey, the things that I want to do I don’t do and the things I don’t want to do I keep on doing.” So it's like this battle that is within us.
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Me Too | The Freedom of Me Too April 16/17, 2016
It’s kind of like this idea that if you get out on the interstate going 70 miles an hour with your emergency brake on—eventually there is going to be a problem. He’s like saying here that the Spirit and the flesh are sort of opposed to one another. So he’s saying on this side of eternity we can be saved but we just need to know that the reason that you’re going to continue to with sin, the reason that there are going to be some thoughts that run through your mind that you’re ashamed of is because you’ve got that old man and that old woman still draped all over you. It’s like carrying around an old corpse. Remember that great movie that taught such deep, theological truth, Weekend at Bernie’s? Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about, alright? This is how we entertained ourselves in the 80s, with movies. They wanted to go to their boss’ weekend home but he died—sounds so twisted to talk about it. So they dressed him up in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt and they carried him along so that they could go to his weekend house. They’re just dragging him all around. And you know what? We oftentimes do that with that old flesh. And he’s like, “Who’s going to win? The Spirit or your flesh? The Spirit or your flesh?” So he gives a description of the flesh. He says in verse 19, “Now the works of the flesh are evident:” then he lists them, “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” And I love that because what he’s doing—he knows me too well because I’m going to read through that list and I’m going to go, “Sweet, he didn’t mention my thing.” And then he goes, “…and things like these.” I’m like, “Oh shoot, he got me.” Then he says, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” So right there is the dilemma. Here’s the thing. I thought about reading this list and that when you heard the thing that you struggled with just asking you to stand to your feet. Then by the end… But I didn’t think that that would go over very well. Here’s what I want you to see. Was there anything on that list where you were like, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely gross.” And then there are some other things and you’re like, “Hmm.” So what Paul does in this list is he talks about the things that are easy to hide and the things that are really obvious and he puts them all together in one list. Things like these, me too. Then he says and the end of verse 21, and this could be a real problem—those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. What’s the problem in that? We’ve all done those things both before we came to Jesus and, yes, even after we came to Jesus. So the problem is, do we keep losing our salvation and then we need to keep getting baptized every Easter? No. The word do in verse 21 is a present participle referring to those who make a practice of doing, as a pattern of life, with no remorse. So when Paul talks about those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, who’s he talking about? He’s talking about people who are disconnected from Jesus; leaning on their own merit; living in a continual, habitual, constant, without resisting, without regret, without any shame or repentance kind of life versus the followers of Jesus who are living their lives connected to Christ, leaning on His grace and His mercy. And when we fail and when we give in to whatever your thing is on the list—and we will—we immediately recognize it as a failure, as a sin, and as rebellion against God and we bring it to Him again, and again, and again, and again and we thank God for His grace and we resolve to move on in the power of the Holy Spirit. Our position is secure but we are in the process of making progress. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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Me Too | The Freedom of Me Too April 16/17, 2016
So we come to what the Spirit is doing in our lives and what’s coming next—some of you know this passage. It’s called the fruit of the Spirit in verse 22. And we have to be really careful because, historically, this has been read in the church as a to do list—this is not a to do list, this is what the Spirit is doing within you list as you wait, as you work, as you continue to follow after God. He says in verse 22, “But the fruit of the Spirit,” and let’s just read the list out loud. You don’t have to read the whole passage with me. Let’s just say it out loud. And North, I’d like to hear you as well. The fruit of the Spirit is what? “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-‐control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” So what I want you to note is that freedom in Christ is always others focused. So here’s the last part of my outline. It’s just simply this: don’t lose your freedom, don’t abuse it, but don’t be selfish with it. Don’t be selfish with your freedom. This is where Paul is going to close out the letter. He’s like, “Hey, those of you who are following after Jesus be careful because we cannot be a me too kind of church if we don’t understand that we are truly saved by grace and therefore we ought to be gracious toward other people. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. So when other people come in here, do they sense that? Do they pick up on it? Verse 26 says, “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another,” that’s judging each other, that’s villainizing each other, that’s rating sin as worse and less or, “envying one another. See with that arrogance comes a tendency to start pointing fingers at other people and what they’re doing wrong and what they’re struggling with—how could they be here, how could they show their face in here, they need to get their act together and we start living a you should life instead of a me too kind of a life. He says, “Be careful because we’ve got to remember that the only thing that has saved or changed any part of my life is Jesus and I’m utterly dependent upon Him. You might write this down. The term arrogant Christ follower is an oxymoron. There are a whole bunch of them out there. Sometimes it’s me because I forget. See, usually this is how this goes down. Maybe there are even some of you who didn’t even realize this because you’ve been a Christian for a really, really long time; you’ve been attending church for decades and you can think to yourself, “You know there was a time when I was really moved by the message of grace, but not so much anymore because I don’t know that I really need it that much anymore. I’ve kind of got some stuff figured out. I’ve been through BSF like 20 times. I know the Bible really well, I know the answers, and you know I don’t really sin all that much—at least not on purpose.” So we have a tendency to kind of look down upon others and we forget that we are in as much need of grace now as we ever were. So he finishes up in chapter 6, verse 1, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual,” now that doesn’t mean super-‐Christian, you’re spiritual as soon as you accept Jesus, the spirit is living within you, “should,” what’s the word? “restore,” and we forget that word so much because what we want to do is we want to punish. He says, “…restore him,” or her, “in a spirit of,” what? “gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” And here it is, me too. “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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Me Too | The Freedom of Me Too April 16/17, 2016
Here’s how we take care of each other in the church. Whenever you see somebody drifting, whenever you see somebody in sin you attack the sin not the person being destroyed by the sin. And the goal in confronting people in sin is to restore them not to punish them, to get them back or remind them of that place of freedom that they’ve actually walked away from. Here’s how I’ve chosen to state this as I was studying this last week: Instead of putting a finger in their chest, put a hand on their shoulder and gently guide them back in to the freedom that can be found in Jesus Christ because one of the primary evidences that we have been saved by grace is that we are motivated to help others carry their burdens. How do you love your neighbor? Help them carry his burden with a goal of restoring him back to what God intends for him. And I want to be a part of a me too kind of a church and that’s what it means when the gospel of grace has infiltrated so much into our lives that we recognize it and we are freed up to not compare ourselves, or push others down but to lift them up to the freedom that we’ve found in Jesus Christ. And if you’ve never even associated freedom with following Jesus, then maybe today you are ready and willing to receive Jesus into your life. It’s as easy as saying, “Lord I give my junk to you and I want to be a new creation in Christ.” And you can do that right now, today. And those of you who may have drifted back into therapeutic moralism, you’ve taken the Babe Ruth baseball and traced over it, I need you to come back. Otherwise we’ll drift into hypocrisy, we’ll drift into moralism we’ll drive into religion instead of the gospel of grace. We’re going to take communion together. This is the perfect time for you to do that, to do surgery— allow the Spirit of God to do surgery on you. He’ll be gentle with you but He’ll also cut and He’ll convict. So we’re going to take communion together. And if this is new for you it’s just a cracker and a cup of juice. If you’re not comfortable with it, if you’ve not responded to Jesus, just let it pass. That’s totally fine. We’ll spend a few minutes reflecting and then we’re going to worship together. Let me pray. God, we just come to You today and we thank You so much for the freedom that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Forgive us when we wander away from it. Forgive us when we add to it. Forgive us when we live our lives in such a way that actually blinds others from seeing it. And so today we come back to the foot of the cross where the ground is level, rehearsing once again the grace that You have given to us. Our position as Your kids is secure in the finished work of Jesus on a cross but we are in process making progress. And we need lots and lots of grace and we need lots and lots of people to help us to carry our burdens so that we can get there. Help us to be a me too kind of church and we ask this in Jesus’ name. And the church says, Amen.
Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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