How to Tell You’re Breaking Free

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

I want to talk to you today about the process of development, how something grows. For example, how a little baby becomes a 16-year-old boy. But the process of development is sometimes extremely difficult to see. It's hard to measure. Even in a time-lapse video like this, where it is easier to see, it's still slow. You have to watch intently to watch Vince grow up. The changes are subtle. They're difficult to capture. And when it comes to spiritual growth, it can be tough to know that we're making headway. When it comes to spiritual development, It is near impossible to chart our progress.

It's like moving slowly on a long car ride. We believe that we will get to our destination and we are even enjoying the view along the way. However, we aren't always sure how far we've gone. In life, we like check marks. We like to know when the lawn is mowed and edged. We like to know when the garden has been weeded. We like to know when we've made an A. We like to know when we've done well at work, when we get a promotion. But whenever we talk about our progress in the gospel, this is much more difficult to see. How can we tell that we are growing in gospel freedom, In our series, Breaking Free, we've been talking about this process of becoming more free over time. But the question still remains, how do we know we're breaking free? And although we do not get a full diagnostic in the Bible, there is no time-lapse video of what someone looks like as they grow in spiritual maturity.

In fact, the best we get are metaphors and illustrations and maybe just small glimpses of the life of one person over time. We don't...that's all really that we get. So we don't get this full diagnostic in the Bible. But what we do get is Galatians 5, 1 through 15, and that's where we're going to be today, Galatians 5, 1 through 16. And there he is. There's Vince, all the way up to 16. So if you wanna turn there, we're gonna be in Galatians 5 this morning. And we're gonna be talking about this question, or trying to answer this question, how do we know we're breaking free? How do we know?

All right, so in Galatians 5, chapter 1, let me turn there as you are turning there. Galatians 5, chapter 1, remember, Galatians is a letter written to churches in Galatia, which is a region. So it would be like writing one letter to all the churches in Johnson County. And so it is not something that is... It's not just something that's particular to one church, it's particular to churches in an entire region. There was something going on in these churches. Paul, the Apostle Paul, writes a letter to those churches and he begins to address what's going on. So here we are in Galatians 5. And in Galatians 5, we're talking about freedom. It says for freedom, Galatians chapter 5 verse 1, for freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. So when we begin with the question, how do we know that we're breaking free?

How do we know that we're progressing? We first must ask, are we growing in freedom? your belief in the Lord becoming more active. And I'm not talking about in the last two weeks. I'm not talking about since the pandemic. I'm talking about a longer arc. I'm talking like a three or four year period, a five or 10 year period. In that period, over that time, have you grown in freedom? Or maybe to ask in a different way, has your spiritual life become empty duty? That'd be the opposite of growing in the freedom. Is it just one commitment after another? Is it just one church service after another? Is it just one, you know, Bible reading after another? What Jesus plans for us is to see increased freedom over time, increased freedom over time. And if we are losing that freedom, if over the last for years or the last five or 10 years, you are beginning to say spiritually,

I'm not experiencing war freedom, I'm experiencing less. Then you have submitted to slavery of some kind in some way. And for the Galatian churches, what we've been looking at the last six weeks was that it was a slavery of acting like a good Jew, of pretending to follow all these rules that they can't actually follow. And we see some choice words here for the Jews in Galatians chapter five, verses two through four. And he says this, it says, "'Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, "'Christ will be of no advantage to you. "'I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision "'that he is obligated to keep the whole law. "'You are severed from Christ. you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace." The point that he's trying to make in these verses, in verses 2 through 4, he's saying, look, don't try to create your own avenues of freedom over here.

Don't try to break free on your own terms. But truthfully, when we read these verses, especially for the first time in a long time, maybe for some of you, when we read severed from Christ, When we read, you have fallen away from grace, we become concerned. It makes it sound like someone can lose their salvation. And so the question then becomes, can someone lose their salvation? All of us, we have parents, children's friends, coworkers, somebody that we want to know about their destiny. Maybe even we have lingering questions of our own, of our own salvation. Are we, did we lose our salvation some point along the way? What I want to give you in response to this question, because I feel like we cannot ignore this question. It is pregnant right here in verses two through four. I want to give you a biblical answer, and I will not give you homespun logic. I want to tell you what the Bible says.

First, I need to make a point about the question, can someone lose their salvation? The question itself creates a false choice. We want a yes, no to this question because we want clarity. And so when we ask, can someone lose their salvation? If it's no, someone cannot lose their salvation, then it's completely out of our hands. We don't have anything to do with that. However, the Bible clearly demonstrates our need to choose God. It makes no bones. In the book of Acts, particularly chapter 17, 18, 19, it all speaks of persuading people to follow Jesus, talking to people, asking them to make a choice to follow Jesus. So it appears we have choice there. Second Corinthians 5, 11, it's the same thing. It says, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. Romans 1 16, the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. Right? It's not just everyone whom God chooses, it's everyone who believes.

John 1 12, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. There is in scripture an overwhelming sense that we have real choices in real time with real consequences. there. But there's another side of this question, can we lose our salvation? Because if the answer is the opposite, if the answer is yes, yes, we can lose our salvation, well then we ultimately determine our own fate. However, the Bible is very clear that God determines our fate. Ephesians 1,4, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. That is God choosing us before the foundation of the world.

John 15, 16, you did not choose me, Jesus talking to his disciples. You didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. Galatians 1, 15, what we read earlier, a couple of weeks ago, it says, but when he who had, this is Paul talking about when Jesus came to him, he said, but when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by His grace." Biblically, when we pose the question, can you lose your salvation? Can someone lose their salvation if you're looking for a simple yes or no? This is simply not how the Bible answers that question. It doesn't give us a Yes or no? How does it answer the question though? How does the Bible address the question? Biblically, biblically, God's control makes a way for our choice. Let me say that in a different way. Or let me say that again, but more clearly.

God is in complete control over everything. The Bible calls that sovereignty. So God is sovereign over everything. However, in some mysterious way that I cannot explain to you, God in His sovereignty, in His infinite wisdom, allows people real choices in real time with real consequences. You see both in Scripture. You see both. And to be perfectly candid, this is what makes the gospel so good. In the gospel, God redeems us and He calls us to wonderfully cooperate with Him through His Spirit that lives inside of us. Right? We are called not just to be robots for the Lord, which God could use. If upon receiving the Lord, I lost my free will, then man, I think I could, you know, In theory, I guess I could glorify God more. However, that is not how the Lord in His infinite wisdom has arranged it. The way He has arranged it is He calls people to Himself. And when He does in some way, in some fashion,

within that sovereignty, we still have choices. The poet Martin Smith said that, I have chosen to believe, believing that you've chosen me. And I think that's a good poetic way to summarize what's going on in Galatians 2 through 4. And so with the Galatians churches in verse two, when it says, look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be at no advantage to you. The emphasis here is on accepting circumcision. In other words, you are accepting circumcision, you are accepting, hey, I'm going to try to live like a Jew so that I can be a Christian, so that I can be saved. I'm going to try to earn it at some point. They are trying to create freedom on their own terms. And so what verse 2 is saying in summary is that if you reject Jesus as the path to freedom, then you indeed are not a Christian. Not even close. Because the essence of being a Christian is asking Jesus for

the only freedom that can be had. The Bible stops, however, the Bible stops well short of saying, you used to be Christians, but now you're not. And our encouragement as we read verses two through four, as we struggle with that question, kids, I'm gonna lose this salvation, is not to grasp at a yes or a no, rather. Our encouragement is to lay our life, all of it. Our justification, our legacy, our pride, our goals, our family, our prestige, anything we own, all, lay it all down at the feet of Jesus and say, here it is, take it, it's yours. Jesus asks for nothing less than that. And if someone looks at that, sees that, and is unwilling to even attempt that, if they are unyielding to Jesus for whatever reason, they are not a Christian. Whether they ever were in the first place or not is no concern of ours, because the Bible doesn't concern itself with it either.

Not trying to answer that question. So back to verse 1, back to growing in freedom, it says, so eloquently, for freedom, Christ has set you free. For freedom. Jesus has set you free for freedom. So how do we know that we're breaking free? Gospel freedom leads to increased freedom over time. It means the trajectory of your life. And we're talking years here. Along the trajectory of your life, you can look back and see that you are wrestling free from old sin habits. You can see that you are experiencing slow victory in your relationships or your parenting or your career or particular areas, maybe you've got strained parental relationships and you've seen over the course of years, you have seen increased freedom over time. And if you are not experiencing that, if you look on your life in the last three to 10 years and you are not experiencing that, you are in the trap of trying to have freedom

on your own terms of trying to create your own freedom. And so the first mark of breaking free is that you are experiencing more freedom over time. Let's look at the second mark of breaking free. It's in Galatians 5, 5 through 6. So verses 5 through 6. And it describes the Christian who's breaking free as this. It says, 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. You are breaking free. You are breaking free. And I wanna summarize it this way. When you live for what really counts. You are breaking free when you find that you are living for what really counts. And as you gain freedom, and according to verses five and six, as you gain freedom, it changes how you hope, and it changes how you love. And we'll take hope first. Verse five describes a particular kind of hope. It says, for through the Spirit by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. We begin to live in a faith-powered hope. we begin to actively believe seemingly, seemingly foolhardy at some points, I'm sure. We believe that Jesus will give us what we need. We don't just hope like we're somehow like wishing that something would happen.

It's a real, tangible, earthy, realistic, pragmatic hope that you can put your hands on and you say, I'm going to make these choices based on the fact that Jesus said, He said, he's going to provide everything I need. This is hope. Then everybody hopes for something. And what they hope for determines how they act. If you're hoping to get married soon, well then you're probably going to start dating. If you're hoping to get a promotion, you're probably going to start putting in a few extra hours or trying to take extra responsibilities, extra projects maybe. when you hope for something, then you act on that. You work toward it, you bank on it. But there's bigger things that we hope for than promotions or even getting married. There's bigger things that we hope for. We hope, for example, for our families to be healthy and to thrive.

We hope our lives measure up to something when we die. We hope for these things. And when we are hoping for those things, really the only thing that we can hang our hat on, the only kind of promise that is out there comes from Jesus. And it says that, look, when you're breaking free, I'll say it in a different way, when you're breaking free, your horizon expands past your paycheck. Your horizon expands past the weekend. It expands past Christmas with your family. It expands past having a lot of money or being financially secure, however you wanna say it. You begin to wait and hope for something beyond all of that. You begin to hope that Jesus will not just come through this week, but that he will ultimately come through for you, that your life was not in vain.

You begin to live for what really counts. That kind of hope begins to change your actions. The other thing that describes this life that really counts or the things that really count is in verse six. It says, for free in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, counts for anything, but only, here's what does count, faith working through love. Christians are marked by faith powered love, where they begin to actively believe that Jesus died for people.

And so because that's true, I can love people. If God in heaven decided that he was going to live sacrificially on behalf of other people, whenever God needed nothing, owed nothing, then surely, surely I can find a reason. I can find in faith, I can find an understanding that these people, these people that I do not like all the time, these people that are cutting me off in traffic, these people that don't look like me, think like me, talk like me, aren't like me. These people that think I'm stupid, backward, a rude, anti-scientific, whatever else, you know, whatever else gets thrown around erroneously to describe Christians, Jesus died for those people just like he died free. You are no better. compassion, true compassion, is when we find out that we're all sinners and that we all need grace, right? When we see that we can reach out and see other people in

true compassion, we can understand that they are sinners just like us and that they need compassion. We can know empathy. We can know empathy because we all struggle through life. We all don't meet our own standards. We all fail other people. We all betray people that we love. We all hold back when we should give. We all hide whatever we should say something. We should stand up. All of us disappoint. We frustrate other people. And half the time we aren't trying. The And the other half, we are. And I hope, I hope that I am not guilty of giving off the impression

that I do not struggle significantly with sin, that I don't face battles every day that I don't give in to pride when I feel like somebody's talking down to me or that I don't give in to fits of anger whenever I'm frustrated. I mean, I do, and I won't make them, my family could testify, I mean testify, of how I messed up yesterday and it would take the rest of this service more. I mean, we wouldn't even go to lunch until 10 o'clock tonight. Just yesterday's sins, just the sins that my family saw are countenance, the way that we carry ourselves, the way that we respond to other people, the way that we hold conversation, All of that should be marked by the love that God has shown us in His just infinite grace. And should we not, should we not show that compassion, show that empathy to other people. I'm breaking free when in compassion I remember Jesus' grace toward me and I'm moved to treat

others with the same grace. I'm breaking free. can feel the weight drop when Jesus shows me how patient He is with me, and then I am empowered in that moment to be patient with others. When we are hoping and loving, like verse six says, there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision rules. Rules don't even belong in the conversation. We covered this last week at length. If we're waiting for hope, a real hope, if we're loving other people, if we're living for what really counts, then who the heck is keeping score over who's circumcised or not? Who the heck is keeping score over how good somebody was yesterday or not? So when we are breaking free, we are experiencing more freedom and we are beginning to live for what really counts. Lastly, we are breaking free when we want to help others break free. And for this, we're going to skip down to verses 13 through 15 in Galatians 5.

It says, for you were called to freedom brothers and sisters, 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. You are breaking free when you help other people break free. And we will get into this much more next week. But I will say something a little bit at this point. Ultimately, when you are breaking free, one of the things that you are breaking free from is the idea that you are the center of the universe.

Okay, and I know that's hard. We all believe, in our worst moments, we all believe that we are the center of the universe. We all interpret things through our own filters, right? It is a work, it is hard to empathize with somebody. It is easy to wonder why people can empathize with us. It is easy to see our own perspective. It is difficult to see other people's perspective It is easy to see my experience as normative and other people's experience as foreign and sociology There was a phenomenon called attribution theory. My wife and I talked about it a lot. I was a sociology minor She was a sociology major. So you can imagine the riveting dinner conversations about sociology that we have have, but there is a theory called attribution theory. Attribution theory states this, when you see bad behavior in other people, you attribute it to their character. But when you see bad behavior in your own life, you attribute it to circumstances or your

environment. So we all have this universal bias to excuse our own actions and condemn the actions of other people. Okay? The Bible was talking about this a long time ago, long before sociology called it attribution theory. But I think it's a really fun way to talk about it. What do you attribute other people's actions to and what you attribute your own actions to? And I would encourage you, I would encourage you, attribute everything, attribute everything to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ in your life in real time right now. Attribute everything to that. Attribute the guy cutting you off and attribute you cutting the guy off whenever you're afraid to get to work. attribute all of it. Because at the end of the day, you cannot make more sense of your life than anybody else can. But what does make sense, what does resonate with every person, whether we resist it or accept it,

is that we have been given more than we deserve. That we have experienced joy we should not have experienced. that we have people that love us that we don't deserve to have. All of us, all of us, the prince and the pauper, all of us have it. When you are breaking free, you will begin to be disabused of the notion that you are the center of the universe. And one small shred of evidence of that is that you serve another person, that you limit yourself, that you limit your time, your energy, you spend it on other people so that they can grow and that they can thrive. This is the last piece. When you are experiencing gospel freedom over the course of years, again, if you've had a bad two weeks, if you've been discouraged lately, I've been battling discouragement. If you've been battling that lately, take a longer view. When you are asking yourself, if I'm breaking, am I breaking free?

Look at the last few years and say, are we, am I growing in gospel freedom? Because progress, like we said at the beginning, is difficult to see. It's hard, it's slow, it's like watching fruit grow. That's an actual biblical illustration for growing in Christ is fruit growing on a vine. Have you ever watched fruit grow? I've never seen it, but I've seen it all the time. It just looks like fruit hanging on a tree. It doesn't look like much when we see our children, you know, unless we have a time lapse video, right? When we see our children, it doesn't look like they're growing, but they are. And so I want to ask you, I just want to leave you this question. If there were a time-lapse camera on the last 10 years of your life, what would it show you? What would you see? And I don't mean physically. Don't get on the train of how you used to look cuter. It's okay, me too.

I used to look cuter too. It's hard to imagine, I'm sure. But when you look back on that time-lapse, it's not just about how you, not how you look, but how you are spiritually. Are you more mature, are you less, Are you increasing or are you decreasing? Three questions. Are you increasing in victory over sin habits, right? You're increasing in freedom over time. Are you living for what really counts in increasing measure? And are you helping others break free? Are you really serving and loving others? We are gonna have a time of invitation. And during the time of invitation, you know, you've seen the time lapse video And you know you are not breaking free. Or you know, maybe I was a decade ago, but it's been a long time. Maybe you had a spiritual experience when you were younger. Maybe you went to camp, maybe you went to church, maybe you grew up in the church, maybe some,

but there's been some kind of break. There's been some kind of period, in law that has lasted not just a few weeks, not just a few months, but years. And maybe you've been meaning to do something about it. But the time lapse camera doesn't lie. And I want you to think about what that just showed you. And we're gonna pray, and we're gonna have a time of invitation, we're gonna be singing a few songs, and as we sing, I'm gonna be standing right over here, way down and off to the side. And if you, if you need help, if you need to talk through, hey, I've watched that, I've watched that camera in my head and I just, I haven't grown. It's been years since I've seen any kind of fruit. In fact, it feels, it feels like drudgery.

You need help. You can't fix this on your own. This isn't fixed by kneeling by your bed one time asking for help. This is fixed by a spiritual community. This is fixed by being open and honest with a few other people. This is why God gave us a church so that we could welcome one another, so that we could call each other out, and so that we could bring the comfort and the grace that Jesus brings to us. Let me pray and then I'll be over here and if If you want to make that kind of decision, get up. We're all going to be standing up here in the music anyway. Just make your way down the aisle on the side or around here and come and talk to me and we'll pray.

And if you just need prayer and then go sit back down, that's fine. If you want to make another kind of decision, if you want to join our church, you will be baptized. Come up and talk to me about it. I'll be right up here. Let's pray. Jesus, we ask for your help. We pray for you to help us to break free. Give us an honest assessment of our lives and help us know what to do next. That's your name that we pray. If the Father's love for us How vast beyond all measure That He should give His only Son To make a wretch his treasure

How great the pain of searing loss The father turns his face away As wounds washed by the chosen one Bring many sons to glory My sins upon his shoulders A shame I hear my mocking voice All out among the scoffers It was my sin that held him there Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought me life I know that it is finished He thinks no power, no wisdom But I am a boast in Jesus Christ His death and resurrection Why should I gain from His reunion? And Lord, I pray as we go out through this week, Lord, we see the world as you see the world. We see other people as people needing your grace and forgiveness just as much as we do. And I pray that through your eyes, we can just grow compassion for those around us. Father, help us to be honest and repent of our sins and do what's right so that we may progressively over time look back and say, Lord, you have grown me. It wasn't obvious at the time,

but Lord, you have used these experiences and these years to grow me up in you. Thank you so much for that. In your name we pray. Amen.