This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida, where Reverend Kevin Labby is our senior pastor. Today Sermon is part three in a series titled Greater. This Sermon is by Dr. Steve Brown, and has taken from Galatians chapter five, verses one through nine, and has titled, A Greater Freedom. Now here Steve, with today's message. Let's pray. Father, sometimes we are overwhelmed with your kindness. Sometimes it's too much to grasp, too deep, too eternal, infinite. We're here, and you know every person in this room. You know the heart and places, the sleepless nights, the anxiety, the guilt, the secrets, and the sin. But we're here. May we hear the soft sound of sandal feet. And as always, Father, we pray for the one who teaches that you would forgive him his sins because there are many. We would see Jesus and Him only. We pray in Jesus' name. Unless you've been living on Mars, you know we're trying to pay off our debt here. I've been there, and I've done that, and I don't want to go there again. I've said often that if your pastor has been through more than one building programs go to another church, there's something weird about him. One is inexperience, two means there's something bent. But we have a beautiful facility, and now we've got to pay off the debt. When Kevin asked me to be a part of this series, the greater series wanted me to talk about greater freedom I thought when it gets cold in a very hot place. And then I thought about it. And I decided this is a good, good thing. Proverbs says that the borer is a slave to the lender. And the problem is we have so many resources that we're sending off to pay off this debt if we could get rid of it. Our leaders wouldn't it be great when they got together? They didn't have to say, you know, if only, or what if, a number of years ago when we were in the old building, I came out of choir just at the same time that the session was disbanding after a very difficult meeting. And they looked like they were all going to commit mass suicide, somber down, and I started laughing at them. One of the elders who was rather irritated said, brown, what are you laughing at? And I said, I just thought I never, for the rest of my life ever again, have to go to an elders meeting. Well, our elders have gone through some really tough stuff, and we ought to fix it for them. We ought to pay this thing off, because of the freedom that gives us. In the last church that I served, we had a very large debt, and I used to say to the congregation, because I was as nice as you could get. You don't stir up the troops when you're asking them for money. And I used to say to the congregation, when we get this thing paid off, there's some things I've been meaning to say to you. Sometimes I even lost it in the building program. We had one guy who had a foundation who gave $5,000, and every Sunday came in to criticize something with the building program. After about two months of this, I'd had it. Paulie Brandon's here, your husband was sitting there. When this happened, the elders were in my study getting ready to kneel down for prayer, and this twit comes in to criticize, and I said, Jack, hold it, that's not his real name. I said, Jack, listen to me, that's all $5,000 buys you. I am not going to listen to any more of your dribble. If you want to get some more money, then I'll listen to more of your criticism, until then you can leave. He left the church, and I celebrated it. I'd rather have him gone than his $5,000, but the truth is, we will have a freedom we haven't had before, so let's pull together, dig deep, do as much as we can, pay the sucker off. There I've said it, and I'm glad. If you have your Bible, turn to the 5th chapter, Paul's letter to the Galatians. We're going to talk about a greater freedom, and Paul writes as follows, starting the first verse. For freedom, Christ has set us free, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the Yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say to you, that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you, and I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You're severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace, for through the Spirit by faith we ourselves eagerly await the hope of righteousness, for as Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor un-circumcision, counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running so well who hindered you from obeying the truth. This persuasion is not from him who calls you. Just a quick, exegetical note on that text, Paul is saying by using the illustration of circumcision, but that if you decide to go in that direction, you have to go the whole way. If you decide that you don't have anything to offer and you can be good, but you can't be good long enough, and you say, God have mercy, and by faith you reach out to him, you've got to go the whole way with that too. For instance, I lean toward pacifism. I don't think there's any Christian that doesn't wish we never had a war and nobody ever got killed. And I lean in that direction, but if you're going to be a pacifist, for God's sake, be a pacifist. I was at Malone University not too long ago, debating Shane Claibern on civil disobedience and pacifism, and I said in that debate, by the way, that's a quaker institution. If you carry a gun and I do, you're not old together, welcome in a place like that. But at any rate, what I said in the debate is, look, if you're going to be a pacifist, then quit paying policemen to do your killing for you. If you're going to be a pacifist, don't defend anything and don't lock your doors. If you're going to go in that direction, go in that direction, but don't play this half-way game thing. Well, that's what Paul is saying. Paul's saying, if you're going to do the law, if you're really into religion, if you want to be pure and self-righteous and look down your nose at everybody else, then for God's sake do it. But if you've got nothing and you can't pull it off and you've got secrets that make you blush in private and reach out to Jesus, run to Him and His mercy is totally and absolutely sufficient. All right, enough about that. If you were here last Sunday and some of you weren't and we know your name, if you were here last Sunday, our pastor, Kevin, was talking about his church in Pittsburgh where they were inviting, trying to get people in the community to come in. People that hadn't had anything to do with the church and what man came in and dropped the f-bomb in the lobby of the church and everybody was upset. And Kevin said, I don't want to affirm that kind of language, but that's the kind of guy we want. We want somebody who uses that word and doesn't know that he's done anything bad. He said he didn't affirm that language, but I think he does. I certainly would not. I would not have used that ill-destruction. Remited to chapel the seminary, not too long ago, reggae kid was the dean of the chapel in those days and we were having sentence prayers and one young man got a big football player type and started shouting. And he said, God, I am effing glad that you saved me, man, I wouldn't have saved me. We are so effing bad and he just went on and on, and on boy, when he finished, he turned and left. Boy, you got her to pin drop, reggae didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to do. So he said, let's stand and sing and so he started singing. And I looked over to the side and his wife had her head on the pew and she didn't stand up to sing and she was weeping. My heart broke and I went over and put my hand on her back and I said, you stand up and sing. That's probably the most honest prayer that's been prayed in this chapel since we built it. And she said, thank you and she smiled and she got up and started singing. I just want you to know that her singing was more important than his language. It always is, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. In this text and it's good to look at it when there's a lot to be said about this text and I don't have time, but we're going to talk about freedom and there are two or three things in this text about what freedom isn't and I want to show them to you. First the Apostle Paul says that freedom is not ancillary to the Christian faith. It is the essence of it. We are defined by it. It is at the center of who we are. Some of you know, I wrote a book a number of years ago called Scandalist Freedom. You know what takes me on that I had to use the word Scandalist. Nothing scandalous about it is the normal walk of one who knows Jesus because it grounds a radical grace preacher. No, I'm not. I'm a grace preacher and the word radical drives me nuts because it suggests something that's abnormal. It's not abnormal. Grace defines us. That's what we're about. That is the essence of the Christian faith. We read to you a quote from Gerard Ferdy. If you see his name, it looks like Ford but it's not. He is a late Lutheran scholar who says things that just exploded in my mind. Listen to what he said. The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion because it is absolutely an unconditional promise. It is not an if then kind of statement but because therefore pronouncement because Jesus dies, rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God period. It burst in on our little world, all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comment from a goodness knows where place. Something we can't really seem to wrap our minds around. The logic of which appears to be close to us, how can it be entirely and totally unconditional? Isn't it kind of dangerous? How can anyone flat out say you are righteous for Jesus' sake if they're not some place that you've got to pay? Something however miniscule to be done after all, there can't be such a thing as a free lunch can there be? You see, we really are sealed up in the prudent of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bar's chances are we will stay in the prison anyway. We seem always to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something that we have something to do with an anxiety that betrays its true source, the old Adam that just does not want to give up control. Oh my, that's me. The reason I teach this is because if I didn't, I would revert. The reason I teach this is because there's something in me that draws me to religion. My friend Michael Kelly Blanchard, I love his song, be glad, be glad every death that you ever had is paid up in full by the grace of the Lord, be glad, what if you really believe that? What? I know what you were saying. You were saying, I get that. I understand. I have memorized the Westminster confession of faith. I know what the doctrines of grace say, but you know, but Steve is not talking about me, I am. You'll fool me. It's the sin that came to your mind just then when I said that, yes, everybody else but not me. Steve, if you knew what I've done, what I thought, where I've gone, the people I've heard, if you knew the evil in my mind, you wouldn't say that. You would want me to be better and better, and I don't know how to be better and better. Well, the promise is for you. The woman who came to communion in the English and church and straight back because of her sins and the priest stuck the cup in her nose and said, take it, woman, it's for sinners, real sinners, it's for you, it's that radical. It's the one you just thought about. Luther said, I've often said, and I've got it from him, I just translated it from the German into colloquial American. Luther said this, he said, find out what irritates the Pharisees among you, those sins that drive them nuts and then go do them sin boldly. And I say, so you live your life with freedom that uptight Christians will doubt your salvation. You've got to do it. You've got to do it because it's what we're about. It's what this thing is. It's not ancillary to the Christian faith. It's what the Christian faith is all about. Listen, Albal, opens up this fifth chapter. There's no doubt about it. This is what he says. He says, for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Everybody wants us to be a slave. There are preachers who are in the power and empire building. There are media teachers whose job is to make us feel guilty and manipulate. Don't let them do that to you. They're lying about God. God went through a lot of trouble to give you an unconditional promise. God did Jesus, and you're forgiven. When Jesus said, it's finished, it really was. The blood of Christ is really sufficient. You really are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, being glad, every debt that you ever had. Oh, my. That gives you freedom to a church if we pay off this debt. But the other one, we don't have to pay. The other one's already paid. Hey, God, does that mean, does that mean I can do whatever I want to do? Yes, child, that's what it means. God, does that mean I can say whatever I want to say and God says, yes, child. You can say whatever you want to say, hey, God, can I, does that mean that I can go wherever I want to go and God says, yes, child, you can go wherever you want to go. And with everything in my being, I respond by saying, if it's okay, I'm going to go with you. If it's okay, I'm going to go with you. Don't let anybody kid you. That's the Christian faith. I don't care where you've been or what you've done, that's the Christian faith. And if we turn religious in this church, I'm going to die. If Kevin, we have been so blessed with our pastor every morning, I say, God, you must like us a lot to send us Kevin. He never backs off. He never changes the message. He doesn't, chilly, shallow, solid as a rock. He teaches us week after week what I'm saying right now and that is your free. We're going to get to a greater freedom in this church, but you're free already. If you don't get that before we pay off the debt, then the second thing that Paul says becomes the reality of what goes on in your life. Paul says freedom does not assure our guarantee greater freedom. It just makes it possible. You say, Steve, he didn't say that, he did it. Look down at the seventh verse in the text that I just read to you and listen to what he says, you were running so well. In other words, you got it. You were dancing in the light. You were raising your hands and praising God. You told God you were going with him. You were running so well. Who in the world hindered you from obeying the truth? Folks, I know a church in New England that closed its doors and sold its facility. Now, that's not a big deal, but let me tell you the amazing part. They did it with over $3 million in the bank. When your debts paid off, whether it's paid off personally, and it is, if you belong to Christ, or we pay it off as a church, that doesn't mean we're going to be free because you know why there's something in us that makes us proud that now we've got grace and we are free and the rest of you creepers are not free. That's from the pit of hell, smells like smoke. My late mentor Fred Smith used to fill the story about a frog who wanted to go south with the geese, and he asked if they would take him and they said, we can't, how are we going to do that? The frog said, I've got a great idea, said, I've got a stick here, and you hold that stick in your mouth, and you hold the end of the stick, the other end, in your mouth, and I'll hold the middle in my mouth, and we can fly south, and they said, all right, we'll try it, and it worked. I mean, they were somewhere near South Carolina, and the frog was quite pleased with the freedom that he had to go south, and somebody said, hey, look at that, is that wild? Somebody else said, who thought that up? And the frog opened his mouth, the teller man fell to his death. That can happen to us, too. And then there's something in our DNA that makes us want to be religious. We just can't help it. And Shawshank, do you remember that when Red was talking about the prisons? He said, these prison walls were funny at first, you hate them. And then after a while, when you've been here, you abide them, and then after you've been here a long time, you depend on them. I love this church. You have no idea. When you do what I do, and you're as religious as I am, this is like fresh air. Your pastor and our staff, and the worship, and the small group, I just love it. It's the one place where I could drop the F-bomb if I did that sort of thing. And you would admonish me, but you wouldn't kick me out. Let me tell you something. If you turn religious on me, I'm going, I'm leaving. And Kevin, if you turn religious on me, I'm leaving, but he won't. And you won't, because we've tasted it. But freedom does not guarantee greater freedom. You can hear it all. You can understand it all, and become an uptight, self-righteous Pharisee, because it's in our DNA. It happens all the time. It happens all the time with me, on my knees, affirming and thanking, and then remembering that I'm called to be good and pure and obedient. People say, Steve, if you keep talking like that, people are going to take advantage of it. Of course they're going to take advantage of it. Are you crazy? I saw a bumper sticker. Jesus loves you. Don't let it go to your head. Let it go to your head. I mean, it's wonderful. It ought to make Presbyterian speaking tongues and dance and do crazy things. Of course we take advantage of it, but let me tell you something. When we slip off the edge, we come back wounded and bloody, but we always come back because nobody's going to love us the way he loves us. And nobody's going to forgive us the way he forgives us, nobody's going to hold us and promise us the way he holds us and the way he promises us and the Pharisees can't do it. I've been watching it for a long time, the zealous for God, changing the world. How could you do that? After all, Jesus says they go into the darkness too and they disappear, believe me, and they never come back. So let it go to your head. And you'll always come back to the one who loves you beyond anything that you can possibly imagine. And Paul has one other thing to say. He not only says that grace and freedom are not ancillary to the Christian faith. They are the definition of it. He not only says that freedom is not a guarantor of greater freedom, it just makes it possible. Thirdly, he says, in effect, that the purpose of what we're about, freedom is not just to fix bad language. It makes the bad language secondary. My friend Tony Campolo, he's going to be on our talk show this week. And I love Tony. He's a pinko comian. I'm a right wing to the right of gingous, con conservative, and we love each other because we both love Jesus and everybody who loves Jesus, all love everybody who loves Jesus. He was at Westmont College in California, it's kind of a snooty place. If you went there, I'm sorry, but it is. And Tony doesn't do snooty very well, and he used an illustration that was offensive. And I followed him the next year for their, they have a, let's get religious week every year. I got, I was the next person up. And the president was just fuming about an illustration that Tony had used. I said, really, he used that here, said, but I wrote him a letter, the president said, I told him that was inappropriate. You want to see what he wrote back? And I said, yeah. So I went into the president's office, and he let me read the note from Tony was gracious because he is a gracious guy, and he said, I'm so sorry. Thank you for being honest with me, iron shop and sorry, I've taken that illustration and I've set it off, not going to do it anymore. I was with Tony a month later in Canada, he brought it out, and he really meant not to. I mean, I know what happened. I mean, the audience was excited and he thought, I really said, I wouldn't do this anymore. But Jesus will forgive me, and you say, well, what would be illustration? He says this, there are millions of people dying of starvation, and you don't give up. And you're more upset that I use that word than you are, that millions of people are dying of starvation. Well, it's powerful. You know, there's something about freedom when you don't have to defend anymore. I'm very concerned, but I'm not real happy with the religious right, because we're too busy defending what we believe to save civilization. You don't have to save civilization. Jesus was doing good for you, came along, you do fine after you're gone. We don't have anything to protect. We don't have to pretend. We don't have to lie. We don't have to be ashamed because we're accepted because we are loved because we are free, really free. I think I've told you, and if I have, I'm sorry, we sing a hymn here that's one of my favorite, and I'm found of every blessing to love that hymn. And in the chorus, there's these words, prong to wander, Lord, I see it, prong to leave the one I love. I get that. About every other morning, I want to leave, I'm more religious than you are, and sometimes I just get tired of it. I understand that. We sing that here. I really sing louder than the rest of you, and we're singing that part, prong to wander. Lord, I feel it, some people don't know, that right shortly after Robert Robinson wrote that in the 18th century, he left the Christian faith. And there's a story, it may be apocryphal, but I don't think so, where Robert Robinson was with a lady friend, and they were in a carriage in London, and they went by a church where they were having an evening service, and the windows were open, and they were singing that hymn. And he began to weep, and his lady's friend said, Robert, why are you crying? He said, I wrote that. And I would give everything that I have to feel what I felt, and know what I knew when I wrote those words, as though I said, I wish I had been there, I'd really do. I'm old, I'm not that old. Wish I could have been there. I would have said, Robert, are you crazy? He loves you. That's a forever thing. He never stopped loving you. He never stopped forgiving you. You don't have to feel what you felt for reality is still there, because he never lets go of his own. You wasted all these years running and kicking against the goats, you didn't have to do that, you were free. You're here this morning, and once you get it, it affects your pocketbook and it affects your life, once you realize that God will never, ever say to you, I've had it. There's no line you can cross, there's no line period, there's no place you can go to get away from his love. He will never love you less, or more no matter what you do, or what you don't want you to get back, don't turn religious, stay, it'll make you free, or if you listen to what I just taught you, maybe not, you think about that. Willow Creek Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.Willow Creek Church.org, and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.