The Church of Eleven22 - Do You Want To Be Free?: Be Free - Wk 1

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

Jesus + Nothing = Everything - The Church of Eleven22® is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To find out more about how God is moving at Eleven22, go to coe22.com

Well, church, good morning. Hope you guys are doing great. If you've got a Bible, you're going to want to turn to the New Testament, go to the letter of Galatians. And if you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you, so you can grab one of those. That's our gift to you. You can have it.

And then in a resource center, there are these journals. And if you're into black like I am, you can have a black one. You can get a black one, or there's one that's a little prettier. But the cool thing about these journals is it's got the book of Galilee. in them and they're printed on one side and then spot to write on the other. And so you can take notes and track along in this sermon series. But grab one of these there for sale for our cost on them. And so we'd love for you to have them. And we are studying the book of Galatians, about to start studying the book of Galatians. It is our 40th book of the Bible that we have

preached all the way through. How cool is that as a church? Some of you think it's cool. I think it's pretty awesome. We're into the Word of God around here a lot. And so we're doing that. But I love that we are studying this particular book of the Bible right now because it was just Easter. And at Easter, we talked about how Jesus said, it is finished. And the question is, okay, it's finished. So how do I live in that? What does that mean? And what it means is you're free. You're completely, totally, utterly free. It was all accomplished by Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection. And therefore, what it means to live in light of Easter is you get to be free, totally free. This is the reason that I love that we're studying this book in particular is because

the book of Galatians is the earliest letter that we have from the Apostle Paul. The book of James is the earliest document that we have in the New Testament, and then Galatians is the earliest letter that we have from the Apostle Paul. And so the Apostle Paul, in this letter, it's probably written around 49, 50-ish AD. The Apostle Paul had been traveling around on his first missionary journey all over kind of Asia minor, southern Turkey, northern Syria, and he'd been going area to area, town to town, and He was planting churches all in these different areas. And as he planted these churches, when he got done, he went back.

His kind of home church, sending church was Antioch. And then from there, most people believe that if you look in the book of Acts in chapter 15, there's a thing called the Jerusalem Council. And the apostles, Peter, all this guys that followed Jesus, they kind of all huddled up with Paul. And they said, okay, the gospel has gone out from Jerusalem, out from Israel, beyond the Jewish people. to the Gentiles, what most of us are. And the question is, do the Gentiles need to become Jewish in order to become Christian? And what they decided is, no, you don't. All you need is the finished work of Jesus. You don't need to add anything to it. And so what happens,

though, is when the Apostle Paul writes this letter, what we're going to see is not only the earliest kind of proclamations of the gospel, but you're also going to see some of the earliest opposition to the gospel. And so Paul traveled around, started these churches, appointed elders and pastors in these different churches. And then what he starts to hear is this, that a group of people that they call the Judaizers had come in. And what they were telling the churches in Galatia was, hey, that's wonderful that you believe in the finished work of Jesus. But now you need to add, and in particular they said, you need to add circumcision if you're a man. to it. And circumcision is the particular issue, but what is really, what they're really saying is,

you have to add keeping all of the religious law of what we consider the Old Testament. You need to follow all of the Jewish law in addition to following Jesus. And so the issue at stake is, is it Jesus plus nothing equals everything? Or is it Jesus plus being a really good? good religious rule follower equals everything. Which one is going to set you free? Now, what's interesting is Paul's tone in this book is as direct and as forceful as he writes almost anywhere in the New Testament. And you really won't catch it early on, but it's not so much what he says early on is what he doesn't say. Because in every other, he writes nine letters to churches in the New Testament. In every single one of those except one of them, he starts this way. He

He says, he starts by thanking them. Then he calls them saints or brothers and sisters. And then he prays for him. Can you guess which one? He doesn't do any of those things. This one. This one. He doesn't thank him.

He doesn't call them brothers and sisters. He just says to the churches. And he doesn't pray for him. And it's because of this issue. It's like he just needs to get right to it and he's going to talk to him and he's going to address this whole issue of, do you have to add anything to Jesus or not? And his answer to this thing is that we, when we follow Jesus, we have been set free.

And if you add anything to that, you negate the work of Jesus and you actually re-enslave yourself. And every single one of us, every single one of us are prone to that. every single one of it, and especially the longer you've been in church and the longer you've been a follower of Jesus, we all have a tendency to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love Jesus, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the gospel, and you have to do a quiet time, and you have to go to this, and you have to, and you have to, and we start piling on whether we know it or not, a bunch of have-toes, and we get right where the Judaizers were, and we get right. right back to the book of Galatians.

And so Paul's going to speak to us and remind us that real freedom is found in Jesus and Jesus alone. And he's going to pick up on this language of freedom. This is what the book of Galatians is about. If you want one word for the book of Galatians, it's the word freedom. And he doesn't just kind of make it up. It didn't just because this is their particular issue.

The reason he talks about freedom here and in this way to them is because, it's one way of seeing the whole kind of narrative of all of scripture. You can understand all of the Bible by the word freedom. Because if you go all the way back to Genesis 1 and 2, here's Adam and Eve, God creates them and he creates them to live in total freedom. Complete freedom. Like they have a free relationship, they have free access to God,

they have everything they could ever possibly want. They are naked and unashamed. That's how free they are. They are totally free. And then sin enters in and they don't become more free, which is what they think they're going to get. They actually end up enslaving themselves because of their sin. And God removes them from the Garden of Eden and they lose their freedom. and the rest of the rest of scripture is telling the account of how God enters in to rescue captive

people and set them free again. You take the Hebrew people in the book of Exodus, they get enslaved under Pharaoh and what does God do? He shows up and sets them free. And then along come the Babylonians, they enslave the Hebrew people and what does God do? Set them free. The Assyrians show up. He sets them free.

free. The Romans show up, enslave them, and what does God do? Set them free. And it goes all the way through, and you can trace this all the way through, and you get finally to the book of Revelation. And the picture in the book of Revelation is that the God's people are completely, totally, utterly free forever and ever with God in the new heaven and the new earth. That's what eternity is. And so Paul picks up this language of freedom, because it's the way to understand. what God has been doing through all eternity. And he picks it up because Jesus understood his own life and ministry as being about freedom. He says in Luke 418, he says this, he meaning God, sent me to proclaim liberty to the

captives in recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are being oppressed. Jesus saw his ministry as shouting from the rooftops be free, and he saw his ministry as helping make people free. He was going to proclaim it and bring freedom to those of us that were captive by our sin. And he would say things like this in John 832. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You know what the truth is, right? The truth is Jesus.

What Jesus is saying is, if you know me, not me plus a bunch of rules, if you know me, you will be free, you will be set free. He says in John 836, he says if the son, he's talking about himself, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. He saw his own life and work and ministry as proclaiming freedom and set, people free. And so Paul picks up on this language of freedom. And then the early church comes along and they saw that what Jesus was doing was setting people free. So you have things like Acts 1339 that says everyone who believes, everyone who believes in Jesus is freed. You're free if you

believe in Jesus. Paul picks up in Romans, like in Romans chapter six, he'll talk about the way he'll define sin is he'll define it as enslavement or slavery. And then he'll come along in like 6-7 and 618, 622. And the way he'll describe the work of Jesus is to set us free from our sin. He says this in Romans 8.2, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. He goes on in 821 and he says this, creation itself, think about this, creation itself will be set free from the bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. What God is doing is he's setting individuals free who come to faith in Jesus and he's setting all of creation free.

The way he's thinking about is like creation is subject and capital. to sin and corruption and evil. And in that day, what Christ will do is he'll set all of creation free. It will be as free as it was ever meant to ever be. That's what he's doing here. Second Corinthians 317, Paul writes this, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. If you walked in here and you thought, well, this is where the Spirit of the Lord must be.

and it must be a bunch of rules and regulations and dues and don'ts and all of that other stuff that's not the way it works. Where Jesus is, there is total freedom. Now, I know what you're thinking, because somebody came up to me on Thursday night and was like, well, there are don'ts in the Bible, like don't steal and don't murder. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. do those things make you more enslaved or do those things make you more free they make you think about it think if we just followed don't steal how much more free would we be you wouldn't have

to have keys you wouldn't ever lose your keys again you wouldn't have to lock your car you'd show up the grocery store you'd just get out of your car you wouldn't even have a key to start your car just be a button nobody would take you we would be we don't even have a category to understand how free would we would be Christianity at its core, I mean, I can read you dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of other passages about the freedom we have in Jesus. And at its core, Christianity is a freedom. It is a freedom. And so here's my goal for us today. It's two things. One, I want to give us some context because over the next 14 weeks, we're just going to work our way through this letter.

and we're going to unpack what this freedom means. And so if you've got all kinds of questions and everything, we're going to get to them over the next 14 weeks. So I want to give us some context to understand it. And then the other thing is this, if you're not free, I want you to be free today. Like, I want you to be free in knowing where your eternity is and what eternity is.

And I want you to be free like right now today, that you would walk in abundant life and in freedom. like freedom from addiction and freedom from pride and freedom from selfishness and pretending and performing and all that I want you to be free so if you got a bible you got enough time to find galatians 1-1 all right you ready here we go paul okay we got to stop that's why it's going to take us you know 14 weeks to do this thing okay when we write letters today you write letters. You should write somebody a letter, like handwrite them a letter. That'd be amazing. But when we write letters today, most often what we do is we'll say, who's the letter to,

then we'll write the letter, and then we'll sign it, like from Adam. That's not the way they wrote letters in the first century. They started with who the letter was from. And so this letter, it's not to Paul. It's a letter written by a man named Paul. And so what Paul's going to do is right off the that, he's going to tell us two really important things about himself. The first thing he's going to tell us is his backstory. So hop down, look at verse 13. And here's his backstory. He says, for you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many my own age among my people. So, extremely, my own age, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

Now, if you go to the book of Acts, there's Acts chapter 9, Luke kind of tells the story of Paul, and then in Acts 22, you hear Paul recounting his story again. And so in Acts 22, verse 3, here's what Paul says about himself. He gives a little color commentary. He says, I'm a Jew, born in Tarsus in Solicia, but brought up in the city educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers and being zealous for God.

So Paul's like, hey, here's who I was, okay? I was born a Jew in a Roman province, so I'm Jewish and I have Roman citizenship, and I was educated at the feet of Gamalio. Gamalio was a man, It would be like going to the best of the best of the best of the, I mean, the greatest university you could, it would be like going to the University of Florida, all right? That's what, I mean, somebody's got to even the playing field around here, guys. He's going, listen.

I think they turned off my microphone at the first service at this point. I'm educated at the feet of Gamalio in the strictest manner of the laws of our father being zealous. In Philippians 3, 4, and 5, he says this. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day. What he's saying is, I was following the rules of God from the moment I was born. I came out of the womb following religious rules. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee.

I am the elite of the elite of the elite of the elite of the best, of the best, of the best. of the religious people. That's who I am. And the question is this, where did it get Paul? Where did all that zeal and all that legalism and all of that self-righteousness? Where did all of that get the Apostle Paul? And the answer is it didn't make him more godly. It didn't draw him closer to God. It didn't set him more free. Listen, this is what Paul says in Acts 22, verse 4. persecuted this way. He's talking about the way of Jesus. I persecuted this way to death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women. Acts 3, verse 3 says Saul was ravaging the church. Acts 9 1 said it is he was breathing threats and murder against the disciples.

all of that religious zeal, all of that rule following, all of that legalism, all of the half-toes at every moment of his life trying to be better than everybody else in all of those religious categories, the place that it got Paul was it made him more violent, more angry, he was he was committing murder, murder. He was going into people's homes in the middle of the night, finding men and women and dragging them out and throwing them in prison. And he was doing it personally and he was getting letters where he could go into whole regions and systematically persecute the church. It didn't set him free.

If anything, it enslaved him and made him more captive to more hate and more vile and more and more and more anger and more self-righteousness. It enslaved him more and more and more. And Paul tells us this part of his story so that the people in Galatia would understand that adding all of those things doesn't make you more godly. It doesn't set you more free. Because that's exactly what the people that had come in, the Judaizers that had come in, were telling them you have to add all of these things. And Paul goes, look, look where it got me when I did all of that. goes on in verse 15, but when he, you should circle that and underline it and scribble all over

your Bible. And if you don't write in your Bible, this should be one of the places you write in your Bible. You should just start in big, like get crayon and color, but when he, but when God who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased. to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who are apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. And then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Seifus, he's talking about Peter, and remained with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other

apostles except James, the Lord's brother. What I'm writing to you before God, I do not lie. And then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, now listen to this. This is what they were hearing about Paul. He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. And they glorified God because of me. What Paul is talking about at this point is he's talking about what most often gets referred to as his Damascus Road experience.

This is when God reached down and saved Paul, set him free, transformed his life. In Acts chapter 9 in verse 3 through 6, it says it this way. Now as he, Paul, went on his way. approached Damascus. And suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, falling on the ground, heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul is just the Jewish version of Paul. Paul's the Gentile version, name of Saul. They're the same person. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise, enter the city. and you will be told what you are to do.

So Paul has this, he's walking down the road, he's going to systematically persecute, kill, murder, imprison out of his religious pride. And all of a sudden, Jesus shows up, knocks him to the ground. And then he says, okay, here's what's going to happen. You're going to get up. And so he gets up, his friends, take him into the city.

And there's a guy named Ananias that's in there. Anonis meets him. He had had a vision, he had prayed, and God said, you're going to lay your hands on Paul. He does. He lays his hand on Paul. Praise for Paul. It says something like scales fall from Paul's eyes.

He regains his sight. And then Anna says, okay, Paul, you now are going to go from chief persecutor to chief mouthpiece of this thing. You're going to be the greatest proponent of the gospel and of Jesus whom you have been persecuting up to this point until you've ever, ever seen it. And the question is, what takes a guy like that? and makes his life do a 180 degree turn? What takes the most ardent opponent and turns him in to the most ardent advocate?

What makes him go from persecutor to preacher of this thing? Here's what it doesn't. Here's what doesn't cause it. But when I. Paul doesn't say, here I am, I'm murdering people, I'm hating people, I'm throwing them in prison. but when I kind of came to my senses, when I hit rock bottom, when I figured out what I was doing was wrong, when I saw how much it was hurting people, when I saw how enslaved and bound up I was, and when I kind of went back to God and said, hey God, I'm so sorry, I messed it up.

I'm going to ask you to forgive me. That's not the way he describes it. It's not but when I. He says, but when he, but when God. broke in to Paul's life in the middle of all of his religious rule following that resulted in vile anger and hate and murder and persecution. But when he, listen to what he says, but when he set me apart before I was born, what did Paul do to deserve having God set him apart before he was born? The answer is nothing. It was totally free. But when he said,

set me apart before I was born, called, not like, not like wooed. That word is more like he summoned me. But when he set me apart before I was born and he called me by his grace, not by my religious works, but by the undeserved, ill-deserved favor of God, the free gift of God. God was pleased. I love this. God was pleased to reveal his son. It wasn't that God was begrudgingly doing something. He was happy to take the worst person and totally completely of his own free grace and of his own free work completely, totally freely set him free. That's what he did. And he's telling them this. Now remember, remember the context that's happening in Galatia. There's a bunch of people that came in and said, that's fine, believe in Jesus, but now

you need to add some religious rule following. And Paul comes in and he goes, no, no, no, listen, it's not but when he and me, it's just but when he. Amen. period. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Jesus plus anything else equals nothing. Paul gone later to say that if you go back into this works of the law, you actually negate everything that Jesus did for you. You put yourself right back in total captivity. It is always only but when he.

And he writes it so that you and I, right here, right now, would see how free God is with his grace and how freeing he is with his grace. And he writes it so that you and I today, right here, right now, would see there is nobody that is too far gone for God. Amen. I don't, I mean, I don't know about you. I'm pretty sure there is nobody in here that is personally and systematically on a rampage of murder, killing, breaking into people's homes, dragging them out in the dark of the night,

throwing them in dungeons in order to completely eradicate the way of Jesus. You're not worse than Paul. And God freely was pleased, happy. to set a man like that free. And he's writing it so that you and I would know that God is freely, joyfully happy to set you free. And so that you and I would see that all of Christianity is a but-win-he-religion,

not a but-win-I religion. We're a third-person religion, not a first-person religion. every other world religion is a but when I take take Islam but when I keep the keep the commands the pillars go on a go to Mecca whatever it is I mean Buddhism Hinduism Mormonism any of those things are all but when I take atheism agnosticism they're all about what you do to try to construct your world to make you believe you're as free as you can be and the exact opposite happens you get enslaved more and more and more and more and more and more.

And Christianity is the only faith in the world that's not but when I, it's but when he. And so he tells us this. And the question is, have you moved from but when I to but when he? Have you done that? I remember when I was 15 years old, I went to a camp in upstate New York called Lake Champion.

It was a young life camp. I wasn't searching for God. I wasn't asking questions about God. I wasn't interested in God. I wasn't curious about God. I didn't, I wasn't like, huh, maybe this is something I should investigate. None of that. And on Wednesday night,

guy named Pat Goodman stood up, gave a talk about Jesus, the finished work of Jesus on the cross in his life, death, and resurrection. And I'm telling you, it's like I saw the world for the first time. I mean, it was like it went from black and white to technicolor. It's like I went from dead to alive. I can't even begin to describe. 34 years later, I still can't begin to describe what happened. And what happened was God took me from but when I to but when he.

Have you had a movement from but when I to but when he in your life? And it's not like, it's not how big and monumental that moment is. That's not it. We don't put our faith in how dramatic the conversion is. I pray all the time as my kids were growing up that they would have the most boring testimonies ever. Because that's not the issue. The issue is, have you moved from?

from but when I to but when he. Have you done that? Have you had that happen in your life? So that's the first thing Paul tells us about himself. It's his backstory. Then Paul tells us the second thing. We're one word in. Paul, an apostle, this is verse one,

an apostle, not from men, meaning his home church, Antioch, didn't like give him a position, nor through man, Peter. it didn't the Pope that does this for me, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. That is an astonishing statement Paul makes right there.

If you look down in verse 11 and 12, he makes another one. He says, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. That claim to his position and his message, these are claims to unique, divine, authoritative apostleship.

I mean, who are the apostles? Like capital A apostles. Capital A apostles are the 12 and Paul. That's it. No more. and and what makes an apostle an apostle is that they saw bodily saw the resurrected Jesus not a vision saw the bodily resurrected Jesus and were commissioned by Jesus to take this divine revelation one time divine revelation and write it down as a foundation for the church for all eternity

that's who an apostle is the apostle Paul says it this way says in 1st Corinthians 9 1. He says, am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? He said, I saw, on the road to Damascus, I saw the bodily resurrected Jesus. He was there. 1st Corinthians 15, 8 through 10. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

For I'm the least of the apostles. unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. He's saying, I saw the bodily resurrected Jesus. And that's why I am a capital A apostle and commissioned by Jesus. He says this in 1 Corinthians 14. If anyone thinks that he's a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things that I am writing to you are

command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. He's saying, my message is a unique, divine revelation from God. So why does he write all this? Well, he's telling us not only his backstory, but he's telling us about his position, his apostleship, because there are people that have come into the churches that are claiming authority and claiming they have the right gospel message, he plus me. And so what he wants to say is, no, they're not apostles. The apostles are done. There were 12 in me. That's it. There are no more apostles. I have more authority than they have. And my gospel message was not a man-made thing, meaning theirs is. Mine is a direct revelation from God. Now the other reason that he says this,

It's so that you and I would know there are no more capital A apostles. Period. If anybody, if anybody claims to be a capital A apostle and to have scripture level divine revelation from God, run, run for us, run. Just leave your stuff and go. Get out. And he's saying this, listen, there are like little A. A people that have little A apostolic gifts. People that apostolic gifts mean like they go to start churches, they plant churches,

they begin new movements of God, things like that. That's fundamentally different than claiming to be a capital A apostle. There are no more of those. The other thing is that Paul says these things so that you and I, when we're reading this, like over the next 14 weeks, reading the book of Galatians, What we're reading is not just one man's thoughts. We are reading the infallible, the divine revelation of God. We have the very words of God when we're reading this over the next.

We should be in awe. Like how good is God that he would give us? I think we can so easily take for granted that we're reading the Bible and like we're just reading some book and we forget this is God's word to us. I mean, we should just be jaw dropped in awe over that. And may we never get over it. And he tells us this so that we would understand that the gospel is a thing that's received. It's not achieved.

It's totally free. God is free. His gospel is free. His work is free. And he freely gives it. And when he freely gives it, he sets us all free. free. And so Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me. So he's saying,

hey, I'm an apostle. I have a right to just tell you, and it's authoritative. But I went back to the church, gathered up the leadership, we discussed what's going on, and we all agree, this thing is not right what those Judaizers are talking about. It's not he plus me. It's just he. It's just he. And then he writes to the churches of Galatia. Almost all the rest of his letters are written to a church. So this is a letter that would have been circulated around all of these church plants that Paul had helped establish. It's why we, it's why we as a church are involved in church planting. So why to this point, we've been able to partner in planting 621 churches. Amen. It's the natural outcome. It's just the free flow outcome of the gospel, is that this thing

would happen. And then here's what Paul does. He's going to give a one-sentence summary of what the next five chapters, the rest of the book of Galatians, is all about. It's three verses. It's a run-on sentence, but it's one sentence. And here's what he says. So here's what we're going to, here's what we're going to unpack for the next 14 weeks. Verse three, grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver. That is the key word, to set free us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.

This is the gospel. That's the gospel. In one run-on sentence, that's it. That's the good news of Jesus. Look what he says. He says, okay, grace, grace is God's heart, his disposition towards us to treat us better than we deserve. and it's God's power to set us free.

It's his free heart towards us, and it is his power to set us eternally free, and then to grow us every day into this freedom through Jesus Christ. And so he says, grace to you. Grace doesn't flow up and out of us from us. Grace always flows to us. Grace to you and peace. The result of grace flowing to us is that we get peace. And not just peace like a peaceful, easy feeling,

but we get peace as in you and I because of our sin. We willingly stepped across enemy lines. Put ourselves in captivity to the enemy and then in service to the enemy, and we become enemies of God in our sin. We're not morally neutral towards God. We are enemies of God. And when Christ comes and rescues us and delivers us and sets us free, he takes us out of that bondage of captivity and delivers us over to God.

And he puts us at peace, makes us so that we are no longer at war with God. And we are set free. You're set free to be with God. Grace to you and peace. From God, it only comes from God, our Father. The way grace and peace come to you is when God moves from being God the Father to God our Father. So the question is, well, how does that happen? Glad you asked, says Paul, he answers it, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for our sins.

Here's the thing. Sin is not simply religious lawbreaking. Sin is not just like I lied when I shouldn't have lied. It is that, but it's not simply that. Sin is us choosing ourselves and living into our temptations. And what that does is we willingly place ourselves. into captivity. Sin is an enslavement to ourselves. It is a captivity to our own fleshly desires. It is an enslavement to our own temptations and sins. That's what it is. It's placing ourselves

into captivity. And the problem with it is we can't set ourselves free. We can't do it. We can't break the chains of sin and evil in our own. own lives and we are held captive. But Jesus gave himself. Nobody forced him. He gives himself. He leaves his freedom at the throne of God, steps behind enemy lines. And at the greatest cost to himself gives his totally free life, places himself into that enemy territory in order to come and find you and me, seek us out, grab us, snatch us up, drag us back across to the line and over from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. That's what he came to do. And nobody forced him to do it. He gladly, because it pleased him for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. And he sets us

free to deliver. Deliver. He could have chosen any word he wanted to. And he chose the word that means to set free. He delivers us. And delivering is the key to the rest of this book. It's what we're going to unpack for the next 14 weeks. And so he then ends and he says it all happens, not according to our behavior, not according to our rule following. Look what he says. The end of verse four, according to the will of our God and Father. It's totally free. Totally free. And so here's the question. Do you want to be free? That's not a rhetorical question. Do you want to be free? Like right now do you want to be free? Do you want to be free now and forever to live the abundant life in Jesus? Do you want to be free from the shackles of sin that separate you from God

and free for the presence of God now and forever? Do you want to be free from being trapped by your temptations and free for walking in the power of the spirit. Do you want to be free from being bound up by the spirit of fear and be free for the Holy Spirit's power, love, and self-control? Do you want to be free from the prison of people pleasing and free for God's unconditional approval? Do you want to be free from the bondage of holding on to old grudges and free for forgiving those who hurt you. Do you want to be free from being subjected to the wrath of God forever

and free for adoption as a child of God forever? Do you want to be free from the gallows of guilt and free for all of Christ's righteousness being yours? Do you want to be free from the enslavement of shame and be free for confessing your sins to one another? and so therefore be healed. Do you want to be free from the cell of self-centeredness and free for selfless generosity and love? Do you want to be free from the captivity of constant condemnation and free for living for God's purpose and pleasure and glory?

Do you want to be free from the incarceration of the myth of control and free for resting in the sweet sovereignty of God. Do you want to be free from the imprisonment of pretending and performing and be set free for the authenticity and the joy in the way of Jesus? Do you want to be free from being subservient to culture's idea of sex and sexuality and be set free for your identity to be determined by the one who created you and loved you and gave himself for you. Do you want to be free from the chains of anxiety

and worry about the future? And be free to be at peace with a God who provides all your needs. The way Paul says this at the end, he says, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. All that little word amen means is, let it be so. Do you want that to be so for? for you. Maybe for the first time today, maybe you've been living in the bondage of but when I. And you've been doing it under a religious veneer, but if you're really honest, it's been

but when I. Or maybe you've even said, yeah, yeah, I love Jesus, but I. And maybe today, for the first time, you would move from being a but when I person to living in the freedom of but when Jesus. And the way you do that is you just say, well, God, let it be so. Amen. Let that freedom be my freedom. And maybe you've never done that before.

And today would be the day that you take that step. And maybe you've walked in that freedom for a while. Like you would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. I said amen. I said, let it be so. And it came to me. But for some reason, life has kind of got me all wound and bound.

back up into captivity. Addiction, people pleasing, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, whatever it is. And you'd say, no, I believe Jesus set me free for eternity. I just need to walk in that freedom now. And I would say, you say let it be. You go to God right now and you say, God, let your freedom be my freedom, not at someplace off in eternity, but God, would you set me free today to walk in freedom? Let's pray to go. and if for the first time, you would say, Jesus, set me free, let it be so, I don't want to add anything to you, Jesus, I believe your work is free and it sets me free now and forever. Would you raise your hand? Would you just freely, boldly, free to raise your hand as high as you can as a way of saying,

let it be so? Come on, way up. You're free. You're free. You're free. Father, thank you for your freedom in Jesus. If it weren't for your freedom, God, we'd be done for. Thank you that you came and set us free. God, would you lead us into freedom, especially over the next 14 weeks? Would we want it, desire it, search after it, seek it out?

God, keep us from going back into captivity. Keep us from adding back on to your finished work. We love you. It's so worth worshipping you for. We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Would you stand? And we're going to respond in freedom. In freedom, we're going to sing like free people. And so here's the thing. You're free to sing loud.

Who cares about the person next to you, you're free. Don't worry what they think about your voice. I don't have no pitch, no tone, no the, I'm going to sing as loud. I dare you. You sing loud and free. You give freely. Maybe you come down here and you pray in free abandon that God would set you free from whatever it is you go through and we're going to worship our God for setting us free. Amen? Let's let it be so.