Forrest: Good morning.
Forrest: I'm Pastor Forrest Coleman, lead pastor here at Multiply.
Forrest: If I've not met you before, welcome.
Forrest: Glad that you're here.
Forrest: Hope that you feel at home.
Forrest: My family, along with many others, uh just about a year and a half ago helped to launch Multiply Church.
Forrest: And I'm very excited to get to uh celebrate with you today that this last Tuesday, construction began at the future home of Multiply Church.
Forrest: If you've not heard the news, uh we've secured a permanent location that's uh in the plaza across from Juniper Hills Park, and we're so excited that construction began this week.
Forrest: Uh more than just a hammer, there were jackhammers in there.
Forrest: There was like there's a lot going on there.
Forrest: Um and uh the Lord's already providing in in many, many ways.
Forrest: I've had a really uh a big a great start to my week this last week.
Forrest: It was a 13th wedding anniversary.
Forrest: Yeah, and Emily and I got to get away.
Forrest: A couple of years ago, uh, our wedding anniversary got to take a little trip up to Philadelphia.
Forrest: And uh the Philadelphia, the area that we were uh gonna go and go downtown and hang out and see all the sites.
Forrest: See my parents live outside of Philadelphia um here for a little while longer.
Forrest: And so we went up, got to see them.
Forrest: And Emily and I went all around uh Philadelphia having a great time for our anniversary.
Forrest: We got to see all the sites.
Forrest: We uh got to go to Independence Hall.
Forrest: Uh yes, we went up the stairs where the Rocky statue is, Rocky Balboa stood at the top.
Forrest: Um we had a great time together uh that trip, and we also got to see the Liberty Bell.
Forrest: The Liberty Bell is kind of like this iconic uh this iconic attraction, so to speak, or or uh iconic uh place that you can go.
Forrest: It's across the street from Independence Hall, where they now have the Liberty Bell.
Forrest: The Liberty Bell, it's a symbol of freedom for our nation.
Forrest: It was uh first made in 1752, and it was made for the Pennsylvania State House that now is known as Independence Hall.
Forrest: And uh, one year after it was made, it cracked, and they melted it down and and they reformed it, and soon uh in 1753 um they made it out of the the same metal, and on this version of the Liberty Bell was the names of the the two men who uh made it, the year that it was made, and then uh across the front of it, the the scripture, Leviticus 25, 10, proclaimed liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.
Forrest: Now, in the early 1800s, for those who wanted to outlaw slaver slavery, this became a symbol for them.
Forrest: And in 1850, 1846, the Liberty Bellet it cracked again and it was repaired.
Forrest: That same year they rang it on George Washington's birthday and it cracked again.
Forrest: And now it it rested its final place at the visitor center there across from Liberty Hall.
Forrest: Four cracks in total as a symbol of liberty.
Forrest: You know, in kind of the same way we talked about last week that we were born into from the Lord's creating Adam and Eve, our forefathers.
Forrest: We were born into freedom and liberty in the Garden of Gethsemane, but there was a crack.
Forrest: There was a crack that occurred.
Forrest: The crack was that Adam and Eve were disobedient to God and they sinned, and because of their sin, it has cascaded into effect that today that you and I, as descendants and ancestors, that we also have a crack between us and our relationship with God, and what we need is Jesus to repair it.
Forrest: What we need is Jesus to repair it, and so often, no matter what point you are at walking in the room today, whether you've been following Jesus for a long time, or whether you're just getting to know Jesus or you don't even know why you're here, somebody just dragged you this morning.
Forrest: I want you to know that you're not beyond repair.
Forrest: God loves you, He cares for you, and He's grafted us into His freedom if we will acknowledge the fact that we are broken, we're cracked, and we're in need of His restoration and fixing.
Forrest: The last few weeks we've been talking about being a fixer-upper and what our life looks like that when we get so easily entangled and trapped in sin, some things that we don't even commonly think about, but like laziness and greed, coveting what other people have, gluttony, vanity, gossip, judgment of others, sexual immorality, dishonesty, fear.
Forrest: These are things that are part of our daily lives in some respect that we need Jesus to, in his power and his freedom, and his liberty, to help us walk in the new life that he's granted us and walk away from sin and into the Spirit of God that He's called us to.
Forrest: Because here's the thing God wants us to walk in freedom.
Forrest: God wants us to walk in liberty.
Forrest: You may be here today and you've come in, and maybe there's something that is just holding you back.
Forrest: There's a sin that so easily just it keeps coming up in your life, and it's holding you back, and it's and it's hurting your relationship with God, and it's creating a wedge between you and the Lord.
Forrest: Can I tell you that all everybody across the room has some version of that?
Forrest: And we're in need of Jesus, our Savior, that wants to bring us into his freedom and liberty, that we would walk not in the sinful desires of our flesh, is how the Bible says, but walk in the newness of his spirit, the power of God.
Forrest: And so you've come in the room today, and every single one of you, front to back, there's something right now that is holding you back, and you're in need of God's fixing.
Forrest: You see, this was where the people of God in the New Testament book of Galatians, where they were at the time, this area of Galatia.
Forrest: And basically what's happening in these non-Jews, this area of Turkey, there are people that are in this area of Galatia, and the Apostle Paul is writing a letter to them and trying to encourage them because there's two different sides of the coin that they're dealing with when it comes to their freedom in Jesus.
Forrest: One, they have all these people who used to be Jews, who are former Jews who have come to Christ, and as they've come to Christ, they don't want to let go of the old Jewish laws from the Old Testament that Jesus has fulfilled, and instead they want to put on all these extra laws from the Old Testament so that people would have to be Jew first before they become a Christian.
Forrest: And then on the complete other side of the coin, there are people who were living in that area that didn't grow up religiously as Jews, but instead that they grew up in a tradition that they worship the stars and astrology, and they worship the earth and the seasons.
Forrest: And so there's this whole group that wants to have the cross plus codes and regulations.
Forrest: And there's this other side of the coin that wants to have the cross plus the earth and crystals and all the all the astrology, and it doesn't sound too far off from where we are today.
Forrest: And Paul addressed them plainly, and he tells them, starting in chapter 5, and we're gonna journey kind of through this whole chapter.
Forrest: We're gonna skip through the beginning here.
Forrest: So in verse 1, Paul says, So Christ has truly set us free.
Forrest: Now make sure that you stay free.
Forrest: Everybody say, Stay free.
Forrest: And don't get tied up again in the slavery to the law.
Forrest: And then in verse 6, Paul says, What's important is faith expressing itself in love.
Forrest: And then in verse 13, he says, If you've been called, for you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters.
Forrest: But don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.
Forrest: Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.
Forrest: For the whole law can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself.
Forrest: Paul, he quotes Jesus, who quotes the Old Testament in telling us that our call, that what we should do with our freedom in Christ, is not to serve our own selves and our own pleasure, but instead that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Forrest: And when we have freedom in Christ, it's easy for us to fall into a place where we feel like it's free to be selfish.
Forrest: We feel like that we're free to be selfish.
Forrest: I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but you ever heard somebody say, only God can judge me?
Forrest: What are they actually saying?
Forrest: Are they actually saying that they're under the headship of God and that they're submitted to a holy Lord that wants them to walk in freedom and in holiness and to die to sin?
Forrest: Or what they're saying is, hey, I want to do whatever I want to do, don't judge me.
Forrest: Only God can.
Forrest: I want to live how I want to live.
Forrest: Whatever makes me feel good, I'm gonna do it, and you can't judge me for it.
Forrest: But what we see from this passage is that when we have the freedom that we gain in Christ, the fact that we are forgiven of our sins, the fact that Jesus died on the cross 2,000 years ago to set us free, that we have the opportunity to take that freedom and use it for our selfishness, or we can use the freedom and be free to serve.
Forrest: That we can use this freedom that Jesus has granted us, that he's given us, that he's grafted us into, and that we use the new frown freedom that we have in Christ, and it flows out of us to love to a neighbor in the same way that you would love yourself.
Forrest: And we're in this tension.
Forrest: We're constantly in this tension of using our freedom to say, you know what, you know, God will forgive me anyway.
Forrest: You know, as long as I just go, you know, talk to the pastor or the priest, as long as I recite some prayers, as long as I do this, as I light a candle, then you know, it's all good, you know, God will forgive me no matter what.
Forrest: But instead, what Paul is instructing us and telling us is that we should use our freedom not to satisfy and to continue on sinning, but instead for us to love and serve one another well.
Forrest: This tension that we're in, he addresses and he addresses in verse 16.
Forrest: So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.
Forrest: Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.
Forrest: The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants.
Forrest: The spirit gives us desires that are opposite of what the sinful nature desires.
Forrest: These two forces are constantly fighting each other so that you are not free to carry out your good intentions.
Forrest: The sinful nature and the spirit inside of us, they're at odds, they're at opposition.
Forrest: And the freedom that we have in Christ, it makes us free to fight.
Forrest: It makes us free to fight.
Forrest: And and for the way that the scripture talks about the sinful nature of the body, the flesh, the cravings that we have versus the spirit, it's that when you become a follower of Jesus, when you have accepted Jesus' death and resurrection on the cross, that you're a new creation.
Forrest: And when you become a new creation, that's what the Bible says, you're born again.
Forrest: And the Holy Spirit comes and takes resonance up inside of your life, your heart and your mind.
Forrest: And now you have the Holy Spirit that you have the option to follow the Spirit's guide for your life, or you have the option to follow the cravings and the desires of your flesh, your sinful nature.
Forrest: It's in opposition.
Forrest: And for us, we want to not only follow the Holy Spirit for our lives personally, but also corporately.
Forrest: We know we're two or more gathered, that God's presence is there, that his that God inhabits the praises of people.
Forrest: So when we come into a place like this and we sing and ask for the Holy Spirit to be here, what we're asking for is for him to come in the midst of his presence, for him to be glorified, and for God to move powerfully when we gather like this on a Sunday.
Forrest: But it doesn't just mean that the Spirit of God is moving when we're all together, but the Spirit of God that you are listening and actively following the guide of the Holy Spirit in your daily life.
Forrest: That you know what the Word of God says, you know what is right, you know what is wrong, and that you're using the Holy Spirit's power inside of you to allow you to be free to fight.
Forrest: See, because if you don't have the Holy Spirit, if you're not following Jesus', you're trapped in some sort of sin, or if you are following some other religion, you don't have the Holy Spirit's power inside of you.
Forrest: You've not been born again, and because of that, your motivations are selfish.
Forrest: They're not motivations that are godly and holy.
Forrest: And so, in doing that, you are not free to fight, but instead you're walking in separation in a darkness.
Forrest: But it's God.
Forrest: It's Jesus who has paved a way and made a path and built a bridge for you to step into the purpose, the calling, and the plan that God has for you that you would walk in the spirit, not in your own self.
Forrest: These two sinful nature and the spirit, they're at odds.
Forrest: But can I tell you this?
Forrest: The spirit is stronger.
Forrest: We know that God, through Jesus and his finished work on the cross, that he has overcome this world.
Forrest: That he that is within us is more powerful than he that is in this world, the devil, the enemy.
Forrest: Paul goes on to say, when you follow your desires, when you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the result is very clear.
Forrest: Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.
Forrest: Let me tell you again, as I've told you, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Forrest: But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Forrest: There's no law against these things.
Forrest: Those who belong to Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.
Forrest: Paul goes on to list just to give a bit of a laundry list of things that are sinful.
Forrest: And it's important for us to know what is wrong and the things that we should stay away from and the things that the enemy in our flesh wants to pull us towards, but instead for us to walk in what the Holy Spirit will produce, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, singular fruit, these nine characteristics love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Forrest: They're not all just separate fruits, but they're a singular fruit.
Forrest: It's like if you were to describe a banana, but describe it nine different ways.
Forrest: When somebody looks at your life, the way they should describe is the outflow of these nine things, if you're following a follower of Jesus, to have love and patience and peace and kindness flowing out from your life as you follow the Holy Spirit and you follow God's call for your life.
Forrest: You know what's interesting about these nine characteristics of the Holy Spirit and of the fruit of the Spirit?
Forrest: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Forrest: They're worked out in relationship with other people.
Forrest: So when you're showing the fruit of the Spirit, when the fruit of the Spirit is overflowing in you, you're not just showing goodness to yourself, but it's to your neighbor.
Forrest: You're not just showing faithfulness for yourself, but to God and to others.
Forrest: You're not just patient with yourself, you're patient with others.
Forrest: And what I'm getting at is that this walk that we have as believers in Jesus, you're not supposed to do it alone.
Forrest: You're supposed to walk with others.
Forrest: And we're supposed to take others with us.
Forrest: That's why this week small groups are watching back.
Forrest: So that you wouldn't do it alone.
Forrest: But for you to get from a row to a circle and to begin to walk with other people and see the fruit of the Spirit produced in your life flowing out to others, and also so that you can have some people around you who can pray for you to help you if you're stuck in one of these sinful desires or cravings, that you can have someone pray for you and encourage you and walk with you so that you can grow.
Forrest: Can I just tell you this, church?
Forrest: If if if you are coming to church on Sundays at Multiply, I'm so excited.
Forrest: I'm so pumped that you're here, and I'm like through the roof excited that you're here this morning.
Forrest: But if you're coming on Sunday mornings and and you're not in a group, and you're if you're only coming on Sunday mornings, you're only experiencing about 25% of what I want for you to experience here at Multiply Church.
Forrest: I want for you to experience a group.
Forrest: I want you to experience, to, to serve the Lord.
Forrest: I want you to experience spiritual growth as you grow in Christ and as you make disciples of others.
Forrest: There's a full picture here for you as a follower of Jesus and specifically here in our church.
Forrest: And if you're only coming on Sundays, again, I'm glad you're here, but I want you to know there's more.
Forrest: There's more.
Forrest: And what it will help you to do is to identify those aspects of the sinful nature and have partners in the gospel to help you walk it out.
Forrest: And what is it you're supposed to do with these sinful desires?
Forrest: Is that we're supposed to feel shame and guilt and get depressed?
Forrest: No.
Forrest: Is it that we're supposed to hide and feel terrible about ourselves and push us down into more hardship and sinfulness?
Forrest: No.
Forrest: What the scripture says is that we're supposed to nail them to the cross.
Forrest: That you take your sinful desires, you nail them to the cross.
Forrest: You take lust, you nail it to the cross.
Forrest: You take words that are unwholesome, you nail it to the cross.
Forrest: You take envy, you take comparing yourself to others, you take coveting what your neighbor has, and you nail it to the cross, you give it to him, and when you nail it to the cross, it stays there.
Forrest: You don't take it back down, but instead, when you nail it to the cross, Jesus takes it, he forgives it, and he allows you the freedom to forgive yourself.
Forrest: Take it to the cross.
Forrest: Take it to Jesus.
Forrest: That you're walking with Jesus to the point where you can have a conversation with him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Forrest: It's called prayer.
Forrest: Those desires that you're able to crucify them by the power of the Holy Spirit and nail them to the cross and be free.
Forrest: And this is a tension that we as believers are in every single day.
Forrest: But if you're in it, if you're in the tension, that means you're in the center of God's will.
Forrest: If you're sinning and there's no remorse, there's no feeling of needing to repent, there's no action of asking the Lord for forgiveness, then you need to examine yourself.
Forrest: You need to examine yourself.
Forrest: We talked about these temptations last week when we talked about Jesus being tempted in the desert.
Forrest: The Spirit took Jesus to the desert and he fasted for 40 days, and while he was there, the enemy, Satan, came to him three different ways and tried to tempt him to do what he does.
Forrest: Wrong, and we talked all through what that looks like and what these different temptations were, and what he used, and the scriptures that he used in order to combat the lies of the enemy.
Forrest: Go back and listen to last week's message.
Forrest: But right after he overcame the temptation in the desert, Jesus got up, and the next thing that he did in Luke chapter 4 is he did this, verse 16.
Forrest: When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the scriptures.
Forrest: The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll and he found the place where this was written.
Forrest: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
Forrest: He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.
Forrest: Verse 20.
Forrest: He wrote the scroll and he handed it back to the attendant and sat down.
Forrest: All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently, and then he began to speak to them.
Forrest: Jesus steps up.
Forrest: And the synagogue where he went, which was his normal custom, that Jesus went and worshipped in the synagogue on a weekly Sabbath basis, as we should as well.
Forrest: Jesus steps up in front of the crowd and he reads Isaiah 58 in verse 6.
Forrest: And he proclaims the fact that he has come to bring freedom.
Forrest: The bounds and the bonds of slavery that people have been in because of the sinful nature, that Jesus has come to set free the people of God, the poor, the oppressed, the ones who are imprisoned spiritually and physically.
Forrest: This passage in Isaiah, what it's speaking about, it's speaking about that he read, it's in reference to this practice that Jewish believers at the time and Jewish people in the Old Testament did call the year of Jubilee.
Forrest: And we know that God told us that every seven days that we're supposed to rest, and that there was also a seven-year point where they were supposed to rest.
Forrest: But after 49 years, the 50th year was proclaimed the year of Jubilee.
Forrest: And what happened on this 50th year of someone's, of the people of God, of their of their lives, on this 50th year, after seven times seven, forty-nine years, on the 50th year, what they did was they had a whole year of rest.
Forrest: They didn't plant in the fields, they didn't harvest any crops, and in the year of Jubilee, all debts were forgiven.
Forrest: That sounds good, doesn't it?
Forrest: All debts were forgiven, all slaves were freed in the year of Jubilee.
Forrest: Jesus steps up in front of everyone, and he says, The year of Jubilee, the debt that needs to be forgiven, the captives that need to be set free.
Forrest: Today, this is fulfilled through me, the Son of God.
Forrest: No longer will it be once every 49 years, but instead, this is going to be an every single day access for people to be able to be forgiven, to be set free, to be changed, to be molded.
Forrest: You know what else is a reference to the year of Jubilee?
Forrest: It's Leviticus 1025, the scripture that's on the front of the liberty bell.
Forrest: Proclaim liberty throughout all of the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.
Forrest: This passage in Leviticus, it's given the instructions of how the people of God every 49 years, every 50th year, that they were proclaimed liberty to all that are there, that their debts would be freed, that the slaves would be let go.
Forrest: In 1835, the anti-slavery record and abolitionist publication was the first time that the Liberty Bell was ever referenced as the Liberty Bell.
Forrest: People here in our nation who were wanting to see the scourge of slavery end, wanting to see the sin in our nation be done away with and put to death.
Forrest: They began to refer to this bell as the Liberty Bell.
Forrest: In the same tradition that Jesus would forgive debts, set captives free.
Forrest: We have a reminder to our nation that we should be the ones to walk in freedom.
Forrest: And not just freedom as it goes to our rights and our government, but freedom when it comes to our souls.
Forrest: This is the year of Jubilee for somebody who's walked in in captivity, someone who's walked in with bonds of slavery spiritually.
Forrest: The enemy is taking you off course.
Forrest: You may have walked in today and you're bound in some way spiritually, and today Jesus wants to forgive you and set you free.
Forrest: That the hope of the gospel is not that we have done anything for ourselves, but instead, our Savior Jesus, the perfect Lamb and perfect sacrifice, went to the cross.
Forrest: And on that cross, He declared jubility every single day, every single year, fore and ever and ever.
Forrest: And then the good news is that nobody in this room today that is a follower of Jesus and has been born again, will ever die.
Forrest: But instead of death, that we will receive a reward in heaven, that one day when we take our last breath, our next breath will be in the presence of King Jesus in paradise forever.
Forrest: That's a good news that you need to hear.
Forrest: And today is a day of Jubilee for someone in this place who needs to receive the forgiveness of Jesus, myself included.
Forrest: You've come into the room today, and maybe you've been following Jesus for some time, but there's something that has got you bound, something that has gotten you ensnared, and Jesus is looking to you and saying, Be set free.
Forrest: Come to me.
Forrest: Be set free.
Forrest: We need other believers to walk alongside in our church relationships to encourage one another and lift one another up to fight towards freedom.
Forrest: But today it starts.
Forrest: It starts with you turning your eyes and heart towards God and saying, forgive me.
Forrest: Save me.
Forrest: Forgive me of my sins, restore my soul.
Forrest: This is the year of Jubilee.
Forrest: Will you bow your heads and pray with me, Father?
Forrest: All across the room today, Lord.
Forrest: There's those who've walked in, every single one of us in one way or another.
Forrest: God need your forgiveness today.
Forrest: Need your freedom today.
Forrest: Father, I pray all across this room, God, that there's anybody who is a Christian and following you right now, Lord, and is bound to God right now, Lord, that they would express to you in their mind, in their heart, ask for forgiveness, ask for restoration, ask for your power, ask for other believers to rest on, to lean on.
Forrest: God, as I pray over this room now, Lord, there very well may be somebody who walked in the doors today, God, and they have not received the freedom that you want to give to them.
Forrest: That they don't have the liberty because they've not given their heart and their mind, their life to you.
Forrest: So, Father, as I pray all across this room, Father, if there's anybody in this place who has not received you as Savior, who's not asked for your forgiveness and your salvation, that right now, God, that they would pray in their heart and their mind, God, they would pray, Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I believe that you're the Son of God, that you are alive, that you died on the cross for my sins.
Forrest: Forgive me.
Forrest: Wash me as white as snow.
Forrest: So I can be in heaven with you one day.
Forrest: Thank you for saving me, God.
Forrest: I give you my life as you gave yours for mine.
Forrest: In Jesus' name.
Forrest: Amen.