Dance Lessons: Freedom! (Part1)
Galatians 5:1-6
Chenoa Baptist Church
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
5-3-2020
Free at Last!
On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and gave one of the most memorable speeches in our country's history.
He ended, with a rising crescendo, with these words:
“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Freedom is worth dying for. Freedom is worth fighting for. And in these next verses of Galatians, the Apostle Paul is going to make the case that freedom is worth living for.
Hagar vs. Sarah
Last week, we studied the hardest verses in the book of Galatians and I was very encouraged by all the responses I received about the sermon.
Boiling it down to the very core of the argument, there are only two ways to approach God. You can be in Hagar’s family tree and try to earn brownie points with God by following the law and all its rules and regulations. Or you can be part of Sarah’s family tree and recognize that it is God’s divine initiative that saves and not anything you can do.
While the Jews were interested in their Father Abraham, Paul says the better question is who’s your momma? Sarah or Hagar?
If you didn’t watch that sermon, you can find it on our FaceBook page as with all the other Galatian sermons.
In chapters one and two of Galatians, Paul is making a point with his personal testimony.
In chapters three and four, Paul delves deeply into doctrine to show that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone and that keeping the law only leads to slavery.
In chapters five and six, Paul is going to make some very practical applications about how we are to live once we have been set from by the power of the Spirit.
These chapters are where we learn some brand new grace/freedom dance moves!
Remember, those who dance are thought crazy by those who can not hear the music.
Turn with me to Galatians chapter 5. We’ll cover the first six verses this morning.
Prayer
Christian Liberty
Patrick Henry stood at the pulpit at St. John’s Episcopal Church at the Second Virginia Convention on March 20, 1775 and passionately proclaimed:
“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
Americans have always prized their freedom. Sociologist Robert Bellah haw concluded that:
“…freedom is perhaps the most resonate, deeply help American value…yet freedom turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other people’s values , ideas, or styles of life forced upon one.”
But that’s not the freedom that Paul is talking about here. Let’s look at the proclamation.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”(Gal 5:1)
I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse:
“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.” (Gal 5:1, The Message)
What has Jesus set us from from?
We have been set free from the burden of our sins
We have been set free from the guilt of our sins
We have been set from from empty religion
We are free from the penalty of sin (justification) and from the power of sin (sanctification)
We are free to call God “Abba” has His children
We are free to approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16)
We are set free from the fear of death
I love what Matt Chandler says, “We have been set from from fear-based behavioral modification.”
We no longer fear that God doesn’t love us when we fail. We live in the freedom knowing that grace covers those failures!
Once we understand that, Romans 8 becomes much more than just a verse to memorize:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)
Jesus said:
“Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34-36)
This is the good news of the Gospel! We are free from the burdens of the law and have been set free to obey God out of love and not fear.
Paul then gives a positive command and a negative command.
Stand firm then
This phrase is a military term meaning to “hold a line, being strong, resisting attack, sticking together.” Think of it like this - when you were a kid and played tug-of-war on grass, in order to get some traction you would have to dig your heels into the dirt.
In the climax of the movie BraveHeart, William Wallace addresses the Scottish troops that are assembled but afraid to fight:
“You’ve come to fight as free men and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?…Fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live, at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for one chance, just once chance to come back here to tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom!”
Paul told the Corinthian church:
“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.” (I For 16:13)
Positively, we need to stand firm and protect our freedom in Christ. Martin Luther said that one of the best ways we can do this is by preaching the Gospel to ourselves every day.
The old hymn says it like this:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus' Name
Oh Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand
But then he gives them a negative command:
do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
With all that our freedom entails, Paul tells them to not go backwards in their spiritual journey. Paul understands the yoke of the law. He lived under it his whole life. He pictures an oxen weighted down with a heavy yoke to the point he can’t go forward.
We are free. The only way to be enslaved again is to volunteer!
Notice Paul uses the word “again.” The Gentile Christians of Galatia were once enslaved to pagan religion. Now Paul is warning them not to allow the Judaizers to enslave them all over again with the law and the rite of circumcision.
Jesus described the Pharisees this way:
“They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them…You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. (Matthew 23:4,15)
But Jesus offers us a different kind of yoke:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Paul is going to highlight three consequences if they chose to go back under the law.
Mark My Words
“Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” (Galatians 5:2-4)
Paul begins with an emphatic term, “mark my words.” This could translated, “Look! ”or “Behold!” He wants to make sure that the Galatians are listening carefully. He asserts his authority as an apostle again.
But it’s more that that. It’s “Paul, whom you know, your friend and Father in Christ.”
He us going to address the elephant in the living room. All of this boils down to circumcision.
From Acts we know that the Judaizers were saying, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” (Acts 15:1)
If they go all in with the Judaizers demands and go through the rite of circumcision, three things will happen:
If you accept this message, Christ will be of no value to you.
The rite of circumcision is not on trial here. It’s the motivation for being circumcised.
The Judaizers were telling the Galatian Christians that their faith in Christ was a good start but to truly be a Christian they first had to follow the Mosaic laws, the dietary rules, and, most of all, circumcision.
Circumcision was the rite of entrance into the Jewish covenant community. In order to be a Christian, they had to become Jews first.
Paul vigorously denies this and says that if they chose circumcision they were choosing works over grace. They were saying with their actions that Christ’s death on the cross wasn’t enough. It was Jesus + circumcision.
If you add anything to Jesus you get nothing. If you want to try to earn God’s favor, then Jesus will not rescue you from this present evil age (1:4) or redeem you from the curse the law (3:13)
Paul has already said something similar:
“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 2:19-21)
If you accept this message, you will be obligated to keep the whole law
Circumcision was like a gateway drug into legalism. It is’t like a buffet where you get to choose which rules you want to keep and which you want to ignore.
James, the half brother of Jesus, wrote:
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10)
Remember that Paul told the Galatians earlier:
“ For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” (Gal 3:10)
There is no middle ground. You are either descendants of Sarah or of Hagar. The choice is perfection or repentance.
Right now, we don’t know if Kim Jong Un is alive or not. One of the things that remember reading about Kim’s dad is that as a god he does everything perfectly. The first time he played golf, he got an 18, a perfect score, all holes and ones. Amazing!
But us mortals aren’t like that. We can’t keep the law. That was the whole purpose of the law - to drive us to our knees and help us to realize that we are helpless and hopeless to save ourselves.
But Jesus fulfilled the law for us, every single rule, perfectly. And then His perfect obedience was credited to our account!
That’s why it doesn’t make any sense to go back to the slavery of the law when Christ has offered us this kind of freedom.
* If you accept this message, you are turning away from the doctrine of grace.
Paul says that if they go the “works” route, then they will be “alienated from Jesus” and you “have fallen away from grace.”
If you believe that you can add to your salvation, then you have abandoned the doctrine of grace.
Although it sounds like it, this is not a text that shows you can lose your salvation. How do we know?
Because Paul calls them “brothers” throughout the letter. These brothers are believers and, if they are in Christ, they can not lose their salvation. I believe the Bible is very clear that if we are in Christ, “nothing can separate us from Him.” (See Romans 8:38-39)
Imagine that you are holding on the the grace rope with both hands. The Judaizers were swinging the works rope out to them and encouraging them to grab it. If they grabbed the rope then they were suspended between the two and they could not hang there forever. Sooner or later, they would have to chose. If they let got of the grace rope to grab the works rope with both hands, Paul says this is an abandonment of Christ and of the system of grace for a system of works.
Paul is not talking in terms of the individual but of systems. Which system will you rely on?
Paul now gets to the Good News of the Gospel, the antithesis of works and circumcision.
Waiting vs. Working
“For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. (Gal 5:5a)
What does Christian freedom look like? How do we live it out?
Live through the Spirit
In chapters 5 and 6 of Galatians, Paul is going to spell out what a Spirit-filled life looks like.
If you have been watching my Fruit of the Spirit video devotionals on FaceBook, you know that spiritual fruit isn’t grown by our effort or by white knuckling. As we stay connected to Christ, the Holy Spirit will grow the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
The Holy Spirit allows us to experience the presence of Christ living in us and unites our lives with Christ:
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)
Because Christ lives in us by the Spirit, we are free to enjoy being obedient to God. We are not set free to what whatever we want to do.
There are people that say, “Hey I’m free. I can do whatever I want to and God will forgive me. That’s his job!”
This shows that they don’t understand the Gospel at all. It’s Janis Joplin singing, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing else to lose.”
Paul saw this attitude in the church of Rome and didn’t stand for it for a minute:
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” (Romans 6:15-18)
We are now slaves to Christ. And if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (I John 14:15) out of love for Jesus.
Live through faith
Paul says that we eagerly await by faith…
We are saved by grace alone, by faith alone. Or you are not saved at all. When you try to earn God’s favor by anything other than faith, then Christ will be of no value to you:
“Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.” (Romans 4:4-5)
We live through hope
Let me read the whole verse again.
“For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope.”
Paul says that there is something out there that we are waiting on with hope. What is it? Righteousness.
Wait. Hold on. I thought that by virtue of the cross, Jesus exchanged His righteousness for our sins? That is absolutely true!
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21)
But our righteousness is not in full yet. We are waiting, in expectancy, for the manifestation of our fullness of in Christ.
We don’t work; we wait. This word means to with with effort, persistence, and intensity. We wait in hope for the day of judgement. Do you wait in holy anticipation of the day of judgement? For the completion of our redemption in our glorification?
Do you fear death? If you do, that might mean that you don’t really understand what we are waiting in hope for.
“Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Romans 8:23-25)
Paul told the Philippians that they could trust in God to complete the good work in them:
“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1:6)
On that day, it won’t be about circumcision, or whether you danced, or played cards, or who you voted for, or what church you went to. On that day, the only thing that will matter will be our right standing with God through our faith and trust in Christ.
"Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Tim 4:8)
We live through love
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:5b-6)
Paul slams the door on circumcision with these verses. If someone is in Christ, whether they be a Jew or a Gentile, circumcision no long matters.
The only thing that matters is “faith expressing its through love.”
When I was in seminary, I often was amused at the very serious students who wanted to argue about everything. I would often respond with, “It’s all about the love, baby.” Said this one time and a friend responded, “Well that’s not going to get you an A on Dr. Kelly’s test.” I responded that it was okay because Jesus would still love me.
We have been set free from being a slave to the Law and now we can joyfully be a slave to love.
Through the Spirit, by faith, we can truly love our neighbor as ourselves.
Jesus came not to be served but to serve and we are given the same mandate.
John writes in his first letter:
“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him….This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” (I John 3:14-16)
We’ve got four more weeks of shelter in place. Let’s make sure our faith is expressing itself through love to our neighbors, families, and friends.
I’ve heard stories of people giving gift certificates for meals, participating in drive by birthday parties, making masks, and donating to support first responders.
Maxine and I had the honor of being part of a parade to honor the residents at Evenglow, especially our dear friend Gene Wiles.
The Cost
Richard Stockton, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was a prominent lawyer and a wealthy landowner.
Because he supported the war effort, he was driven from his home, which was then burned to the ground. He was imprisoned and was subjected to harsh treatment. He died a pauper at the age of 51.
Most people have never heard of him but he is one of the heroes of the American Revolution. When those men signed that document that pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
We take their sacrifice for granted. Much like we often to take the cross for granted. When’s the last time you simply marveled at the Gospel? When’s the last time you considered your freedom and how much it cost Jesus to redeem us? What kind of response should we have?
The story is told of a man who went to the slave market to buy a slave in 1865. He selected a young girl and bought her. When she came to meet him, he smiled and said, “You are free. I paid the price for you and now I choose to set you free.” The young girl couldn’t believe her ears.
“Free to do whatever I want?” She asked wide eyed.
Yes, free to do whatever you want.”
“Free to say whatever I want?” She asked.
“Yes, free to say whatever you want.” He replied.
“Free to go wherever I want?” She asked with tears in her eyes.
“Yes, free to go wherever you want.” He said trying to hold back his own tears.
She stared at him for a minute and finally grabbed his hand and said, “It’s decided then. I will go with you.”
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We are free to dance the dance of grace, joy and freedom .What are you going to do with that freedom?
Let me end with these words from Philip Bliss;
Free from the law, O happy condition,
Jesus has bled, and there is remission;
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall,
Grace has redeemed us once for all.
Refrain:?Once for all, O sinner, receive it,?
Once for all, O friend, now believe it;?
Cling to the cross, the burden will fall,?
Christ has redeemed us once for all.
