Freedom is hard. We all want it, but it's hard. It's hard in every sphere. A few years ago, when the press secretary for the president was Sarah Huckabee, she wanted to go to eat in a restaurant. And so she went to a restaurant in Maryland and the restaurant recognized her and didn't like her and refused to serve her. And so she got on Twitter and talked about being refused to service. And all her Twitter followers started protesting that restaurant and the restaurant got mad about that and started protesting the protest. And one of my favorite writers, David French, took to Twitter and he said, Sarah Huckabee is free to eat wherever she wants to eat. Restaurants are free to deny service to anybody they want to deny service. Sarah Huckabee is free to tweet whatever she wants to tweet. Her followers are free to protest anybody they want to protest. Freedom is hard. Freedom is hard. If you figure that out, we come into the world wanting freedom. I don't want one of our first sentences with something along the lines of me do it. Leave me alone. Let me be free. Let me do it my way. But we also come into the world designed hard-wired for approval. You need approval. You need approval from someone. And that approval that we need from first from our parents and then from our peers and then from ourselves, it ends up becoming a slavery and we can't live without it. We need that voice saying, good job. You did it today. And until we get it, we become slaves of work, slaves of success, slaves of just seeking something. I had a intern, a female intern when I was a campus minister and she said whenever her mom wanted to comfort her, whenever she would come home from school crying because the girls at school had been mean to her, her mom would look at her and say, honey, you're much prettier than they are. And she became a slave to her appearances and the mirror became a slave master for her. My wife is a personal trainer now and she does these assessments. When you join her gym, she'll take you in and help you decide what your goals are and make those goals smart, you know, attainable and reachable and blah, blah, blah. And one of the things she has you do is stand on the scale and it is funny. Some of these women, and she only gets women, this is not sexist comment, will not stand on the scale. Just won't, just her, nobody else in the world is going to see it, will not do it because there's slaves to the scale. That number is not a number of how much they weigh, that number tells them how valuable they are as a human and there's slaves to it. We become a slave to approval, most of us, some of us, we decide we're going to ignore that voice. We run away from that need for approval and we hush it and we run and we just decide we're going to seek pleasure wherever we can. We're going to seek freedom wherever we can and all is well and good until we try to stop living that life of freedom. When we find out that we've become slaves to our addictions, slaves to the food, to the drink, to the entertainment. If you tried to put your phone down for a week, I was playing golf Thursday with a good friend. And he, we met here at the church and he threw his golf gloves in my car and we drove out to the course and he was shocked and appalled to find out he had left his phone in the car. And had to spend four hours without it. I mean, he must have grabbed for it for a thousand times. Slaves to the phone, slaves to those people who were sending him life-changing texts and needed him desperately at that particular moment. And some of us, we reject the need for approval from others and we reject this self-medicating freedom for ourselves and we just kind of become the voice of slavery, telling everybody else whether they match up or not. We've been good. We've kept the rules, but nobody else has. No one else really lives under our approval because I mean, if people would just do it right and do it the way we want them to do it, then everything would be fine, but they just won't do it right. And we've lived our whole life serving God and he's kind of should be in servitude to us too by now. Why won't he give us what we deserve? And we live our lives and slave to this box, this solitary confinement prison that we built for ourselves because nobody's good enough for us. Freedom is hard. Freedom is hard. And the book of Galatians, which we're going to be studying from now on Thanksgiving, is the book of freedom. He concludes it in chapter five by saying it is for freedom that you have been set free, do not submit to a yoga slavery to anyone. It has been for freedom that Christ has set you free. And what the book of Galatians teaches us is this, until you have been captivated, until you have been taken captive by the love of Christ, you'll never be free. The only freedom comes from hearing from him who you are. And once you receive that, you can never be a slave again. Let's start this study now about reading the first nine verses of the book of Galatians. Please stand with me. Paul, an apostle, not from man nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who were with me. Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. To whom be the glory forever and ever? Amen. So far so good. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but that there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. And even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Thus far the reading of God's word all men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers in the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's word. God's word stands forever. You may be seated. The gospel is good news. It is the good news of this perfect truth that frees us from all forms of slavery and delivers us into the freedom of being captivated by Christ. The gospel is the perfect truth of our freedom. It is the perfect truth of our freedom. It is perfect and it is true. What is the truth? First thing I want you to say is that the truth is that you have been delivered, if you were in Christ, you have been delivered by the giving of Himself for our sins. He sacrificed Himself for our sins from our sins. He sacrificed Himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age and the sins of the world. He sacrificed Himself to deliver us by the will of God the Father. And you know what's beautiful about that and we're going to see this over and over again pretty much every week. That is 100% passive on your part. He did it. He did it all. He gave Himself for you to deliver you according to the will of God the Father for you. You were passive. You did nothing to on it. You did nothing to deserve it. You did nothing to present yourself to Him as a worthy option. You simply received it. You simply received it. You were like a caterpillar surrounded in a ring of fire according to Martin Luther. There's no direction you can go. You're just not fast enough to get through those flames. You had no hope. And you were saved by someone else sticking your hand in and pulling you out. You just received it. We are desperate and we're in need of freedom. We're in need of to be free from that feeling of judgment that we carry around. Either it's our dad's voice from years ago or our mom's voice or our own voice. We know we're unworthy. Maybe we're slaves to regret. Maybe we look back over our lives and we wonder... Was anything I did worth it? Did I waste my whole life? Did I really love anybody? Was I loved by anybody? Am I just a king of a junkyard? I've lived my life amassing stuff and amassing credentials that honestly just don't matter to anyone. Am I a slave to my resume? If I'm not the best in my field, I feel unworthy but take one step away and I'm forgotten immediately. Am I a slave to myself? I live with this voice of self-condemnation. This appointment becomes despair because I just feel like I can't forgive myself for what I've become or what I've done or what I've not done. And my own voice is the voice of a condemnation. I can't get myself out of it. Somehow me looking at me saying, I forgive me isn't enough. I can't get myself out of that because I am the failure. That makes sense. I'm the one who is disappointed with me. I'm the one questioning me, it's like when children are coming in from playing mud pies, making mud pies, the last thing in the world you want them to do is to even come in your house. And you certainly don't want them to come in your house and try to clean themselves up because they can't, they are the problem. And all they can do is passively stand there while you clean them. I remember, gosh, as clear as it was yesterday, my little herald coming up to me going, Jack, can we play in the mud? Yeah. Can we bathe in mud? Sure. You're not coming in this house. And when they're finished, I wouldn't even let them touch the water hose, right? It's just stand there. Let me spray you down. You are the source of dirt. You can't be the source of cleanliness. We're the source of what's not working out in our lives and doing more of it or doing it harder, is it going to make us all of a sudden clean? We have to receive it. We're helpless. We are like the land that receives the rain. We're parched as it rains in June. We're desperate. We have seeds within us. Something good could happen to us if we were to just receive rain, but we can't do anything in our own souls and our own hearts. We can't do anything to make it rain. We can just receive it. That's where we are. We're passive. We're waiting upon God. And that's good news. You may not think that's good news. But it's the only thing that will free you from wondering if you've done it right. It's the only thing that will. And when you're at loan and bed, when you are facing your own mortality, when you're facing, you know, looking back over your life and wondering, did you do it right? And can it be redeemed? Can you be redeemed? Can you be said, were you good enough? The only thing that will give you peace of conscience is the absolute knowledge that your salvation is passive. That you did nothing to earn it. If you go to bed wondering, was that good enough? The answer is nope. Was I honest enough? No. Did I come to God with a clear enough modus? Was my coming to God free from selfish desires? No. You came to God because you were afraid. Because you wanted to go to heaven. That's a selfish desire. It didn't want to go to hell. That's a selfish desire. And I love those people who are trying so hard to thread the needle between works and righteousness and faith. And so they say, well, if you called out to God and you did it sincerely, were you sincere enough? Absolutely not. You were not sincere enough. So you can't thread the needle between works, righteousness and passive grace. It's either passive or it's not. It's perfect. You can't mess with it. It's like black cherry coolade. I feel sorry for those of you who grew up in a crystal light world where all you had to do is add water. Black cherry coolade was the first thing that most of us, many of us, my age and older, the first recipe we ever got to follow. It was a simple recipe and it was the best substance on earth. It was deep red. It stained everything it touched, including your lips and many, many t-shirts. It would never wash out and it was rich and taste and strong and I want it right now so that I can't stand it. And the recipe was simple. Two quarts of water and a cup of sugar. That's right, the cup. No wonder it was wonderful. We used to call it diabetes in the cup. But you know, when you're a little boy and you're making black cherry coolade, you think you can improve it. If one cup of sugar is good, two cups of sugar must be awesome. If one package of black cherry coolade is good, then three will be great. And you soon find out there's no improving perfection. It's either perfect or it's not. And that's the gospel. You can't add anything to it and it still be perfect. And the gospel of our passive obedience, our receiving salvation without doing anything to earn it, it sounds scary to those of us who've earned everything our entire life. Right? That's scary. I am who I am because I'm better than you. But if this is passive, if all I can do is nothing, then how do I know I'm better than you? What do I have to trust? If I can't trust this, if I can't trust me, what can I trust? If it's passive, if all I can do is receive it. Martin Luther can ask himself that question in his introduction to Galatians. He says, so is there nothing I can do? I wish I spoke German. I do know this German word, right? No, nothing. You can only receive it. And as you receive it, it changes you and it makes you perfect. You're unable to do anything and you're not ready to for this salvation until you understand that you are not ready. You're not able to do anything as long as you assume that you did it yourself. You'll never be able to give grace to anyone else and you'll never be able to live without self-condemnation because you just always are wondering, is it good enough? The answer is, it's perfect. But as God's word, it's not yours. And it's the truth, like I said, that cannot be improved upon, it cannot be taken away. Look at verses 6-9. Paul's angry because this perfect gospel that he left in Galatia is being polluted. It's being polluted by the addition of works, it's being polluted by the addition of our effort. Sure, it's great that you're saved by grace, but surely you're not going to live by that stuff, you've got to get that law back into you and you're going to start obeying it. And he says, I am astonished, he's very angry. You're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ. He says, you're turning to a different gospel, those are two powerful things. You're not deserting a message, you're deserting him who called you, you're deserting God. God only works with us receiving. He doesn't work in tandem with us, he doesn't work at our back and call. He only works as our Lord and Savior. And so if you desert this message, you're deserting him and you're deserting him about turning to a different gospel, which is not good news, because there is no other gospel. There's only the truth, the perfect truth, and distorted gospels. And then he goes on to say, if we, this is powerful, right? He's not saying that the authority comes upon me, the authority is from the message, even if I try to change this message. Let me become a nathema. Let me be cursed. Let me spend my eternity under damn nation if I try to change a word of this message. And I've already said, and he repeats it, and I've already said, I'm saying it again, if anybody reaches any other gospel truth, good news, word of redemption, other than this, let him be eternally condemned. It's perfect. And you need to know that was a challenge in Galatia 2,000 years ago, and it's a challenge today. And there's two big ways in which we pollute this truth. And for lack of a better term, I'm going to call him the young way and the old way. But you need to know that despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm including myself under the young way. And so you get to pick for yourself. So the young way is to say that it's one of many truths, right? It's one of many. The gospel's good news, yoga's good news, Buddhism's good news, Hinduism's good news, don't get news. And this is, it's a very current flavor in the world today, the world today is asking basically says, whatever works for you is fine. There's no worse than anybody else. Whatever works for you is fine. You know Tim Keller says, when people leave his church, it's always the same. They'll come, they'll get converted, they'll be baptized, they'll be active, and then all of a sudden he won't see him again for six or seven months. They'll come on and someone will go after them and they'll say, well, yeah, you know, the gospel really works for me then, but I'm living with my girlfriend now, and this is working for me now. And I just, I need you to understand this. If your mentality is that whatever works for you is true, then it's still up to you, and it's going to fail you every time because it's up to you, and something that is up to you cannot save you from you. If it becomes meditation, are you doing it good enough? If it becomes Buddhism, are you striving hard enough? If it becomes Confucianism, are you studying the wisdom hard enough? If it's up to you, if it's just one of many truths, then whether or not it works is up to you, and you will never be good enough. And that's just not the message. It's like, well, more importantly, it's like this. If your mentality about religion and religious truth, it's kind of like you're walking through a celestial hallmark gift shop, and you know, here's your little Buddha statue, and he's off cute and cuddly. He kind of won't poke his belly, and here's your little meditation garden, and here's your little Jesus. If y'all seen the plush Jesus doll that they sell at home work these days, oh my. And you know, and you get to decide which one to pick up. I want to say this is gently as possible. God does not work that way. He decides who to pick up. God, Jesus gave himself for our sins according to the will of God the Father, and he's never going to let you be the Lord of the gift shop. You either receive it, thankfully, wonderfully aware of your own inability, or you get the wrong thing. There is no other gospel. There's no slightly improved gospel. There's only one piece of good news that God has come and sent his son. God has come in the form of a man to save us from this present evil age. So the way we pervert it today is by denying it exists. We say there is no truth, or worse, and we'll call this the older way, which is also me. We just get it wrong. We believe there's truth, but we're committed to the wrong truth. We're committed to the truth of morality. We're committed to the truth of being good. And if I'm good enough, if I'm obedient enough, if I'm patriotic enough, if my grades are high enough, if I don't chino my wife, if I marry as a virgin, then everything will work out for me, then I am a Christian because I've done everything right. And that's not possible, but you see, there's the opposite of it. And that's the truth that we believe, but it's not the gospel. It's not good news, because we're not good enough. And what it does, if you look at it individually, people like me and around me, and you look at us as a culture, you'll see that our gospel has turned us into prideful, angry adults. Who just don't understand why everybody else won't behave, and we're angry at them for running our world. And we don't understand why God hasn't given us what we deserve, because we followed His rules. There was a terrible movie in the 90s called Legends of the Fall, and I kinda hope you didn't see it. But if you did, you may remember the final scene, Aiden Quinn's looking at Brad Pitt, and Brad Pitt's looking very studly. And he's been the rabble, the whole show, and Aiden's been the good brother, the whole show is the story, the prodigal son, essentially, but without repentance. And at the end of the show, Aiden Quinn looks at Brad Pitt and says, all my life, I followed all the rules of God and man, if they loved you more. They just loved you more. And we're all Aiden Quinn looking at our younger prodigal brothers, going, why are you running things? Why can't you just be good? And that anger, that self-righteousness, that pride, should show us that we have it all wrong. Then our gospel is a false gospel, the gospel can't make you arrogant if you understand that it's passive. All you did to attract God to you was lie there dead in the morgue, and he walked in, and he woke you up, and he showed you your need, and he gave you the grace, and he gave you life. And if you understand that, you can't be judgmental, you can't be angry, because all you've done is received it. The gospel comes along and says to us, those of us in the older group, all you need for salvation, for joy, for true freedom, all you need is nothing. But when I look at you, I can clearly see you don't have it. Your hands are full of your good deeds, are full of your resume, they're full of your success. And you're going to have to throw that junk away, to have hands empty enough to receive grace. All we ever need for salvation on the only thing God requires of us is nothing. But those of us who grew up in the church doing the rules right, we simply don't have it, do we? Was the apostle Paul say about that stuff? He says, he looks over his life in Philippians chapter 2, and he says, when it comes to the law, I was perfect. He would say that. He would look at their life and go, when it came to following the rules of God and man, I was perfect. That's what he says about himself. And he says, now I counted all as scubula. Let's teach you a little Greek word, scubula. You're wondering, what scubula I wonder? Well, if you ever walk your dog, and he squats and someone else is yard, and he leaves a package of scubula, you're expected to pick it up in the baggie. That warm steaming pile is scubula, and that's all your righteousness, and that's all your rule keeping, and that's all your Sunday school memorization, and it's all your sacrifice, scubula. I say it calls our righteousness filthy rags. All you need is nothing, but we just don't have it. But there is this truth, and the truth is that the Lord has saved us too, not even arrogant fools like us or beyond salvation, and he's come to us, and he saves us too. And this truth is practical, and it changes us. It validates who we are. Look at what the Apostle Paul says. The first word of this book, after his name, is not. Paul, not an apostle by human tradition. Not. Isn't that funny? What a nine percent of you struggle with. Why are you so tired all the time? It's because you can't say no. And you can't say no because you don't know who you are. You only exist, but what other people think about you. And if you said no to something, they might think it's your week, or they may think you're a bad person. Not the Apostle Paul. His first word out of his mouth is no. I don't live by what you think of me. He says, at the end here, am I still trying to please man? I was trying to please man. I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. It's not that I just dain't you. It's that I know who I am and who I am as who God has made me to be. I am his son. Or in the Paul's case, I'm an apostle by his word. Don't you want that? Don't you want that kind of freedom? Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 says, I don't even judge myself. Don't you want that kind of freedom? You say when your righteousness is passive, when it's given to you, you can't mess it up. Not. You're free. You know exactly who you are. And it gives you perfect boundaries. You're free from the judgment of men. You're free from sin. You're not an addict to sin. You've been freed from this present evil age. He says you can enjoy God's good gifts without becoming enslaved to them because you're a new creation. You can say no now. You have to exercise those muscles, but you're free from sin. You're free from your own standards. You're free from your own works. You're free to say, you know, I did, I didn't do my best. Nobody's ever done their best. But I did good work today. I'm free to walk home. I'm okay with that. I don't have to live according to what my boss thinks or I do better than my colleagues. The only question is, am I God's son? And the answer is yes. Yes, I know who I am. That's true freedom. Freedom from addiction, freedom from judgment, freedom from approval, freedom from regret. If it's passive, then God did it at exactly the right time. There's a man named John Boring. Imagine going through life with the last name of Boring. That would be tough. A junior house is hard for him. He was converted at 78 years old. He's in his 90s now. And when he was converted, the first words out of his mouth were, I just wasted so much time. I'm sorry that it took me so long and sweet John Lynch looked him in the eyes and said, you brother are right on time. You're right on time. This is the day God has appointed for you. This is the day of salvation. If it's passive, you're free from regret. It came in exactly the right time and exactly the right day because it was God's work. Wasn't yours? Do you want that kind of freedom? Freedom from regret, freedom from judgment, freedom from self-condemnation, freedom from the condemnation from the world. You want that? It only comes by being captivated by the perfect, passive righteousness of Jesus. And it's for you today. If you come today, you're right on time. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, we do receive it. We receive your righteousness. This word of grace. We receive freedom from all those regrets that we carry around. We receive freedom from the fear of a life that was poorly lived and it's going to fall short. We receive your freedom from death. We receive your freedom from self-condemnation. We just lie here on the ground as the ground, receiving your sweet reign of grace. In Jesus' precious name, we pray. Amen.