SPEAKER_00 0:06

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North. Well, I want you to imagine with me that, and maybe it's not too hard to imagine this, you want to get in shape. Anybody in that category? So someone gets rid of all your excuses for you by getting you 10 free sessions with a trainer. And so you feel obligated, it's like, oh, they got me this. So you go and you're kind of excited, but you go and the first thing you acknowledge is that this trainer is not a nice person. And he is just sarcastic and mean. He says things like this. Uh these may or may not be funny to you, but is that all the weight you're gonna use? Okay. I guess you don't want really want to get in shape or live a long life. Maybe they say that. You look like a frog in a blender. All right. This is the last one, so give me a courtesy laugh, even if you don't like it. Are you not yet? You gotta. Humor is all about, or at least humoring the pastor is all about timing. Uh are you doing Pilates or just fighting the mat? Yeah. So not real great, but but think about this. Maybe you've had a coach like this, maybe your parents were like, but it's just overly critical, and you feel obligated to keep going. What is your spirit going to be like during those times? Well, you may dread it, you might get angry, you might be anxious, but when those 10 times are up, you're like, I'm out of here. And maybe you still have a membership to that gym, but you just hesitate. Like, I don't want to go back because I don't want that guy seeing me. Now, just parallel that with maybe you have a trainer at this place who's just the best friend you've ever had, the most encouraging person you've ever seen. How does that change longevity for you? How does that change your attitude and going? Because when you go, you're actually encouraged and they receive you. There are two different voices, two different invitations, and two different results. Now, what's interesting is that the first one, the critical gym guy, we we have that voice inside each of us. Sometimes we call it the inner critic. Sometimes it comes to us from our own voice, or maybe a voice from someone in the past. It's never satisfied. And it says, if you don't do good enough, it says, wow, you messed that up. You might as well not try, or you better try harder. And then if you do well at something, it's never good enough. It's just used as fuel to try harder the next time because I got to do this, I got to accomplish this. And it just leaves you tired and anxious, this voice that says you've got to perform to be accepted, to belong. And it's just like, oh, this is so exhausting. But there's another voice that says, you are accepted, you belong, you're free. Which voice do we listen to? Well, that's what Paul is getting to as we get to Galatians chapter 5. We've walked through the first four chapters, a lot of messages that are the same using the Old Testament, using life experiences that Paul had. And we've been getting to this point with chapter 5 where he kind of ties everything together and he says, it's for this why you were given all that you've been given. It's so you would be free. Live into this freedom. Don't live into this other voice. And I do believe, and I'll say this a few times today, living into the freedom that's been purchased to us by Christ, it's a lifelong journey. You're never gonna fully arrive. You will never fully arrive, but you're not supposed to. Which voice are you listening to? Don't walk backwards out of the story you've been brought into. And you will. And that's why this is the encouraging good news is like we just return. We drift, we come back. You drift, you come back. It's returning, it's this pilgrimage we're on. So as you hear today's passage, I want you to pray in your heart. What beautiful liturgy we had this morning. Thank you, Brian, for speaking over us. Your sins are forgiven. I receive that. I want us to hear and just say, Lord, speak to my heart. Because in a time like this, we may have so many things going through our minds and our hearts, but this is the eternal truth of God that he speaks over you today. Let us receive it. If you wish, you may stand for the reading of God's word. We're gonna read Galatians 5, 1 through 12. Paul writes this. For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don't submit again to the yoke of slavery. Take note, I, Paul, am telling you that if you get circumcised, get yourself circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. Again, I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ. You've fallen from grace. For we eagerly await through the Holy Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. For in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything. What matters is faith working through love. You are running well, you were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. I myself am persuaded in the Lord you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. Now, brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished. I wish those who are disturbing you might also let themselves be mutilated. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. There's so much in this passage, but we're gonna mainly camp out in the first verse. So we're gonna talk about this is in your bullets, and stand in the freedom you've been given. And then secondly, beware the subtle yoke of slavery. And then our third point, we're just gonna hit barely because we're gonna let that push us towards next week for Mother's Day. Mental note, if you need to get something, don't really don't rely on Amazon to get it there in time. Maybe, maybe you can, but Mother's Day's next week. Note to self. Point one, stand in the freedom you've been given. Paul starts with this declaration, this command, and we could sit here all day long with this one statement. For freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand firm then. For freedom, Christ has set you free. Therefore, stand firm. Why did Christ set us free? It sounds like a circular argument. It's like, why did Christ set you free? For freedom, what's Paul saying here? He set us free so we would be free. That's the point. It's not theoretical, it's not just theoretical. It's our truth. It's positional, it's relational. That he has set us free. You are free. And we're going to talk about what is true freedom in just a moment, but he says, stand firm. When do you have to stand firm in life? Like right now, I actually put my feet in the ground and I stand kind of firm, but I don't fear falling over right now because I don't have oppositional forces pushing against me. We had a game because when I was growing up in the 70s, we didn't have a lot of electronics. The ones we did just had little red dots that you'd push and it'd move right and left and be like, oh, this is so awesome. Look, the dots going right and left. It's called football. That was you just moved up and down. That was the but we made up our own games. And then we had this game. I don't even know what the name of it is, but we would stand with our feet, you had to put your feet together, and then the person in front of you stood facing you, and the goal was to get the other person's feet to move. And so all you could do was use your hands and touch the other person's hands. So you were standing and you could either push them on the hands or you could pull back and make them fall out of balance. But in doing that, you had to stand firm because you had an oppositional force pushing against you or trying to draw you off. Now, why is Paul saying you have to stand firm? It's because we have oppositional forces. It's what uh Jack Miller calls uh the unholy trinity. We have our individual flesh nature that Paul talks about in Romans 7 and many other places that wars against us, the desires of the flesh that just draw us to different things, that we'll war against for the rest of our lives. We have corporate flesh, which is the whole world and its messages, the fallen world's messages. And there is spiritual warfare. Even in Ephesians 6, when Paul says, put on the full armor of God, he says it again. It's stand firm. Because we have oppositional forces that push against us. They are waging war against our soul. And so when you feel resistance in your life, it's gonna be there. It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. Jesus was tempted yet without sin. We read that. Is temptation a sin? No, it's not. It can lead us to sin? Absolutely. But I know a lot of Christians that live defeated because they have all these temptations come into their mind and their heart. It's like that's just par for the course. You're gonna be tempted. You may be tempted to give up, or you may be tempted to say something hateful to somebody, and you might actually say it. But there's grace, you ask forgiveness and you keep walking. So he says, stand firm. What do we stand firm in? It's in this message, it's in the gospel message in Galatians 1. He reminds us, you didn't start this story. When I was preparing the sermon, I was like, Do you remember a Billy Joel song, You Didn't Start the Fire? I don't even remember what that song's about. I just remember he sings really fast. But maybe we could make our own version of you didn't start the story. It was always writing. I don't know how we'd do it, but you can help me out there. But you didn't start the story. It's God's story. In Galatians 2 and 3, you were received by grace, you didn't earn your way in. This was given to you. Galatians 4, he says, this promise was given to you. It was given all this time before the law was actually given. The promise is fulfilled in Christ. And so he's saying, don't drift. Stand firm in these truths, in these precious promises that are given to us. And so it behooves us to move from that to say, okay, what freedom are we standing firm in? What is true freedom? Well, in our culture and throughout history, so many say true freedom is autonomy where you don't answer to anybody, where you do whatever you want because you're the master of yourself. You just do whatever you want, whatever makes you happy. The cultural say that too. Is that what true freedom is? I love documentaries, so I've been watching a lot lately. I go through seasons where I watch a lot, but there, how does it work out for people who get absolute, or the closest thing in this world to absolute power, where they have a billion dollars and they can make any decision they want to. It's like they got a get out of jail free card because it's just like they have so much power and influence. Are they happy people? It's like, no, it doesn't work out well for them. And when we think about this, it has been true from the beginning of time. One of the greatest examples in scripture is King Solomon. He had everything. He could have any woman he wanted, had all these wives, he had all these concubines, he had all this gold. He could make any decision. It's the closest to absolute power that on this earth he could do anything. What does he write? He writes the book of Ecclesiastes, where he says, everything's missed. What's it all matter? I've tried everything. I've tried this and this and this, and nothing fills my soul. Nothing will fill your soul. Because nothing is created to fill your soul but God alone. It can't. It's the kindness of God that He won't let these things fill our souls. So it's not autonomy that's freedom. What is freedom? And I'll say this a few times. Freedom is to live into the life that God created us to live into. It's about relationship. No one's devoid of relationship. Even if you live as a popper in the woods, a popper? Is that right? Yeah, it is a popper. A poor man in the woods, a poor woman in the woods, just all alone. You just all alone. You're still bound from the relationships from your past. You have a relationship with yourself. You've got the thoughts in your mind. Like you will not be satisfied because we're created for relationships. From the beginning, before the fall, God created us for relationships. It's good. It's not good for man to be alone. We're formed by God's breath. We're placed in a world we didn't make. We're shaped by people and stories and other people's lives. And it's like that's that's just the reality of the world. So freedom, when you think about Paul, when you think about what Jesus has invited us, you think about the teaching of Jesus, it's not just freedom from something. It has to be freedom from something, but it's freedom to something. Because if you're not free from something, you can't really go to something else. But the truth also is, if you're freed from something and you don't go to something, something else is going to fill up that void inside. That's just the way we're created. So Paul says you're free from the life of sin and slavery. You're free from the yoke of slavery, which is law's identity, you're freed from self-justification. You're freed from this cycle of being curved inward towards yourself and just saying, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this to belong. So we're freed from that, from Satan's sin and death. We're freed from that. But what are we freed to? It's a life with God. Communion with God. So, in summary of the first point, freedom's not doing whatever I want. It's not the idea that I have no one who's in authority over me. It's not the idea that I can have self-definition without limits. That's not freedom. All of those things will lead you to a different type of slavery. Play out every scenario you want, it will lead you to another type of slavery. Biblical freedom is the ability to become who you are actually in Christ. So we talk about standing firm in the truth that we have. The second one is second point, beware the subtle return to slavery. And so let's look at the rest of verse one. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm then. Don't submit again to a yoke of slavery. You can feel Paul's urgency, and I always try to think about how kids receive things. It's like if you're a kid in here and you're like, yoke of slavery, yolks are in eggs, and it's like that's a different type of yoke. That's Y-O-L-K. Yoke is Y-O-K-E. I also think about kids where they're like, there's uh cars in the Bible, because they were in a caravan across the desert. It's a bad joke. I'm gonna keep going. All right. So I have some pictures here of yokes. This is what a yoke is it's a piece of wood between two animals. If you see the arrow there, that arrow's for you, just so you don't forget. Uh the next one's a real life example uh from a yoke. And what it is, is you're paired with another beast or another person or something else that you you go with. It's a relationship. And a lot of times in this day, like the people of the day would have been like, oh yeah, of course, a yoke, because they see it all over the place. I didn't see it much growing up, even in Oklahoma. My great-grandparents had cattle on a farm in Oklahoma, but they used tractors. So, but back in the day when they were pulling something or they were plowing, what would happen is they would put these things on and they would put sometimes an older oxen who was stronger and knew how to pace itself with a younger oxen. So the older, stronger oxen, the more experienced ox would be helping carry the weight, setting the pace, training up the younger one. And as they went, the younger one could learn. So Paul's not saying don't be yoked to something. He's like, don't go back to the yoke of slavery. And I want to ask you this, and it goes back to even something Brian said at the call to worship that sparked my, it's like these messages we receive. What messages are we receiving? Let's call it the core message. When you feel anxious or pressured, what's the core message that comes up? Maybe for you, it's usually like an I statement or they statement. It's like they won't accept me. Or I'm going to be destroyed. It can be very extreme, it can be not so extreme. But if you look at these core messages that come up, you can get an idea of what has you imprisoned sometimes. Look at how it feels. Some of us are yoked to the quiet pressure to perform, and it's like if I don't perform, then people are gonna think poorly of me, and I will be destroyed. Now, do you see how it got really exaggerated there? It's like people may think poorly of you. There are people who think poorly of me, and you're like, no, Chad, not you. And it's like, yeah, some do. I'll give you a list afterwards so you can email them. But it's like that's reality, right? But in the older days, I was more imprisoned to being like, I gotta make sure everyone's happy with me. I gotta, and I do want people to like me. I do want to have a good reputation, but it I cannot live my life based on that. And so if you see what is imprisoning, what hooks you, what drives you, what would it look to always be driven away, to be driven by fear and guilt and shame, and then you hear Jesus using this and knowing Paul knew all of Jesus' teaching. I can't, I can imagine he has this in mind as he writes this. Don't go back to the yoke of slavery. Remembering Jesus' teaching in Matthew 11, 28 to 30, where he says, Come to me. All of you, you're weary and worn out. Come to me. And what's his promise? He's like, I'll give you rest. He does a lot of teaching. He says, the yoke of the Pharisees are gonna, it's gonna crush you. That legalism is gonna crush you. Paul's writing the same things in Galatians. He's like, that that's not what we are called to. And he says, I'll give you rest. And Jesus says this, he says, Take my yoke upon you, younger ox. Can you say your pastor called you an ox today? Take my yoke upon you. And what's he say? Learn from me. How does he describe his heart? He says, For I am gentle and humble in heart. I will not drive you, I'll invite you. This is our Jesus. He doesn't use coercion. He doesn't say, go, go, go. He's like, come on. Let's go together. Does he pull most of the weight? He does. He's like, let's go. I'll teach you. And our whole lives are Jesus teaching us how to live in this fallen world because we cannot do it on our own. It's too complex. There are too many moving parts. There's too much you cannot control. You will find rest for your souls. Saying, walk with me. Come to me. So when you think about your everyday experience of life, and you can do this as the non-judgmental observer, what's it like? Is it heavy? Is it driven? Is it never enough? Is everything up to you? It's really interesting. Some of us that struggle with depression or anxiety, and it's just a constant thing because we had it all throughout our youth, and that's the way our body and our nervous systems respond to stuff. We can say, okay, I can't ever do anything because I'm anxious every day. Therefore, I'm a failure. It's like, no, no, that's not true. Anxiety can drive you to a bunch of different places, but it can drive you to the Lord. And I say it quite often because I find people are crippled by this. Is anxiety feeling, let me rephrase it, is feeling anxious a sin? And I'll say, no. Jesus was anxious in the garden. What did he do? He took it to the Father. Feeling anxious, the feeling that I can't control, but what you do from your anxiety, of course it can be sinful. My goal in life is not to rid myself of my anxiety, but let everything drive me to the Lord. And to follow in obedience. Because that is life. He's like, I know what's best for you. Come follow me. A couple weeks ago, I was going to another state on a Monday to sit with a church leadership team that was struggling with a lot of conflict. And so they said, Chad, would you help? And so I spent a month and a half just interviewing people, just on my own time, just like, I'll interview and took notes. I just listened. I saw some themes. And so now I'm driving up to meet with them all face to face in the same room and walk through the things I saw and engage them with it and share with them what the Lord might be inviting them to. Now it's kind of a tense situation. And I've done things like this before, but it's interesting how when I was driving up to the church, it was a few hours away, so there was something that was brewing inside. Some core messages were coming up. Ones that have imprisoned me in the past. And these were the two messages that were coming up. The first one was if you don't do this right and you don't lead well, then people are going to be disappointed and it's going to get out that you can't lead stuff like this. And my instant thought was like, I don't even want to lead stuff like this, so that'd be cool. So maybe I should fail. So I can my reputation's like, he can't handle this. And it's like, okay, that'd be cool. Man, someone's upset. There's a core message of hunger, I think, going on. But um that was a message. It was just kind of like swirling inside. It's like, and so it made me feel anxious. And then there was a second message, too. It's like, Chad, it's up to you to make this go right tonight. It's up to you. You better do good enough. Message. So I stepped back. Those can both be imprisoning messages. Christ has set you free for freedom. Stand firm. So I heard these and I said to the Lord in conversation, Lord, I want to look at these. And these are old messages that have been rattling around forever, and they probably will forever. They don't have the power they used to, but they still can be very powerful. And so something I was teaching in class recently was the paradigm that we can slow ourselves, we can notice what's going on, we can turn to the Lord and then in trust. And so I sought to slow and just notice what's down there. And in turning, this was my turning, it's like, Lord, I have to trust you with the outcomes because I can go in and what I do, I'll be as faithful as I can. I've already done all this pre-work, I've covered it in prayer. I have done all this work. I tried to love them well, and so I go up there and I say, Lord, the outcome has to be yours because I can't change. And really, they have agency too. They have choices to make. So my call is to go and be faithful, devoid of any choices they make, no matter if they get up and start fighting or whatever else. That's not up to me. And as I pray to the Lord and just turn this back over, in this particular circumstance, I had a steadiness in the midst of my anxiety. And I reminded myself, Chad, you're free. You do the best you can, and you're free. And by the grace of God, it was a four-hour meeting, but it went beautifully. There were tears shed, and they still have a lot of choices to make, but it was redemptive. And I've been in meetings like that that did not go real well because of people's choices. But once again, that's not my calling is not to change anyone's life or to control. I'm free from that. So most of us, when you think about this, we don't wake up and choose slavery. We don't look to like, I'm gonna rebel, I'm gonna rebel. Usually slavery feels a lot like false responsibility. Go back to my story here in my illustration. It's like I've got to change, I've got to do it right so that that's a false responsibility. That's an entrapment for me, that's an imprisonment. It's not up to me. I've got to add things so God will be happy with me. No. Your position in Christ is secure. You can't earn anything. That's the grace, that's the rest. And it leads us to our final point that we'll we'll camp out on next week. What does this produce? What is true freedom? And when we're in this relationship with the Lord, when we're communing with him, what flows from that? It's the fruit of the Spirit, and we're going to get there. But in this passage, he says it's love. Verse 5, for we eagerly await through the Spirit by faith the hope of righteousness. For in Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything. These ways of trying to relate to God by doing our own thing, but trying to obey a law, that doesn't amount to anything. What does amount to something? What matters is faith working through love. Faith working through love. Get the order right. Faith from the story we received, it all started with God received faith. Changing flows love. Do you like my head and sand signals? I'm gonna just remember that. Maybe you can do that with me. You don't have to. So freedom is this. It's a spirit life, spirit-formed life that grows in giving and receiving love. And as we grow in freedom, think about it logically. Like, doesn't it make sense that when we're not entrapped by these things, we're not imprisoned, that we can receive love more and we can give more love more? Because we grow more to be like Christ. Freedom is not proven by independence, it's proven by love. And here's your sentence to carry this week: a reminder to stand firm in the freedom Christ has given you. And love will grow. Stand firm, brother and sister. The war has been won. There are many little battles, but the war's won. Stand firm in the freedom Christ has given you, and love will grow. So we come to the sacred symbol each week, and it's for freedom Christ has set us free. And maybe that needs to be on your lips as you come up in a moment as we have a song to reflect on, and you take the juice and the bread back to your seat and you hold it and wait, and we'll take the communion together, but that, Lord, I am free. Thank you. What messages am I believing that are keeping me imprisoned? How have I drifted back to the yoke of slavery? It's all of us in some area, all of us wrestling with something. But the grace is we can look at it non-judgmentally and just say, let's turn. Let's turn. And the image that I want you to see over and over again is God with his arms open wide. He's like, Come home. Think about the prodigal son. What does the father and the prodigal son do? Who wasted his inheritance, that went and shamed the family, who basically said to the father, I wish you were dead so I could be rich. The father sees the son from a distance coming back shamed. The son has these words on his lip, this pre-recorded statement where he says, I'm sorry, Father, I did wrong. I don't deserve to be your son, but can I at least be a servant so that I can live, so I can survive? The father sees him. It's shameful in this culture for a father to run towards a son. You wait for the son to come to you. But this is a picture of God, the Father. He takes off running, embraces the Son, doesn't even let him get out of speech, and welcomes him home. Those are a big party. That's the posture of God that I want you to see. And I want you to feel and experience at times. Because that is God. If you're a Christian here today, after I pray, I'd invite you to come up and receive the communion elements, and you can take them back to your seat. But let us reflect and ask God to do a work in our hearts. Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your amazing grace that you started this story, that you have woven this theme throughout all of human history where humans have rebelled and gone wayward, and you continued to bring people back so that your story would continue to be revealed and that our purchase would be sealed through you, Jesus. And I pray as we look at these things in our lives, as these core messages come up, Lord, that we would continue to learn how to not just even beat ourselves up and run back to the yoke of slavery, just say, like, I can't do it. Lord, that we would a thousand times, ten thousand times continue to look at you every day, every moment of the day, and say, Lord, you receive me. Father, I'm free. I don't feel free in this area, this area, this area. But Lord, I am free. Help me grow in that freedom. And that, Jesus, you would continue to teach us and that we would be humble learners as you, our Savior, our teacher, our Lord, creator of the universe. You are humble and gentle department. We thank you for your posture towards us and your love and acceptance. And I pray that you would move in our hearts even now. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.