Sermon Transcript
Well, we’re going to jump back in again this morning into Galatians. We’ve been doing a continuing study in the book of Galatians. If you’ve been with us, I hope this has been encouraging to you. Today we’re in chapter 4, and we come back to this continuing theme of freedom. As you see up here on the wall, we are to live free.
A Christ follower is to live free from the restraints of legalism and free from the restraints of Judaism. And so Paul brings this subject up again. If you’ve been with us in this study, it kind of feels like this is about the 100th time, you know, he comes back to this same theme, which tells us that it’s important, but also it tells us that getting past our religious past can be difficult. It can be difficult. So said differently, if you find it difficult to say no to dessert, or to sugar or grain or, you know, dairy or whatever it might be, whatever your diet is, if you find it difficult or somewhat impossible to say no to those kinds of things, well, letting go of legalistic religious rules and regulations could prove to be even more difficult.
So if we’ve had a religious past, many of us have had a religious past that included all kinds of possible rituals such as prayers or dietary restrictions like, you know, no bacon. Infant baptism has been a part of many of our pasts. Certain holidays or Sabbath restrictions might have been a part of your past. Maybe idol worship or figure worship in some way where there might have been altars or figures in your home that were a part of your worship. Any of that could prove difficult for you to get past.
I mean, to just let go of the practices connected to that religious past. Or it could just be difficult to, you know, embrace a different worship style. Now, you’re in the modern service here, and so this may not be of, you know, value to you because you can embrace a style that isn’t particularly like the first worship service. But for some people, it’s a struggle to embrace what might be called modern worship or contemporary worship. I mean, you know, there are people that feel that the violin is still the devil’s instrument.
I don’t know if you can go back in history and remember that. And along with that, drums and guitars got put into the devil’s instruments. As, well, some people are still praying for the resurrection of the organ from the dead. You know, we just got to bring it back. And it may be hard for some people to go to a worship service on any other day other than Sunday, or some long for the return of the altar call at the end of the service or repeating the Lord’s Prayer.
That was so much a part of my culture and the church service that I grew up in where we repeated the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday. We only sang out of the hymnal. Some people long for going back to the hymnal or Bible readings only from the King James Version of the Bible. Yeah, see there, that’s what I’m saying. It was good enough for the Apostle Paul, so it’s got to be good enough for us, right?
You know, I mean, he obviously used the King James Version, didn’t he? And then, of course, the closing benediction. If there is no benediction, then I’m not sure it was a worship service. And then following the benediction, Of course, you’ve got to have the glorification of the worm ceremony. What’s that?
That’s where the pastor stands at the door. He’s the worm, and people come by and glorify him. Oh, that was such a wonderful, wonderful sermon, Pastor. Thank you, and that sort of thing. And so, oftentimes people feel that, you know, this has just got to be a part of the Sunday morning experience.
And it could be a struggle for people to just, you know, move on. We want to go back to, quote, the good old days, the good old Christian days, no dancing. No drinking, especially, you know, even a toast at a wedding or something like that. No playing cards. No going to movies.
I mean, no game tables. Just card tables, I think, is what it is. No card table. You can have game tables. But anyway, so you kind of understand.
Now, some of us might say, okay, well, good. Well, I don’t have any problem with any of all of that stuff. I don’t have any issues with that at all. But you know what? As I’ve been thinking about this, All of us can fall into a religious lifestyle, sort of rituals and rules that we follow or practices.
So we can have faith practices that become routine, or they can become thoughtless or heartless so that we end up doing those things kind of as a religion thing, but not really as a relationship thing, a relationship with God. So when we just had this time of worship this morning in our singing, we could have actually been singing but not really worshiping. Where our hearts and our heads, our hearts and our heads were connecting with what it was that we were singing. We could have done the ritual or the rote thing even this morning, the religious thing, by singing but not being connected to what it was that we were singing. We can pray without thinking.
That can become rote too. So we’re just going through the motions. We can give without really having our heart in what it is that we’re giving. We could read the Bible. We take communion.
All of that we can do because it’s on the checklist of things that, you know, Christian people do or faith people do. And so we can do them and all the while look very religious but be as far away from God as irreligious people are. We could do the same thing but really not connecting with God. And so as I was looking at this passage, I thought, you know, it seems like the 100th time that we’re talking about the same thing. But it occurred to me that there’s still something here that all of us can grasp with regard to this faith thing that we believe is important and we want it to be a part of our life.
And so, as I was looking at this passage, I had to ask myself, are some of the things that I’m doing in regard to faith practices just things that I’m doing by rote? Or by ritual?
Is it just the religious thing with me? In fact, I found— I caught myself this week in rote. I was moving through a quick devotional time. You ever had these? So I only had so much time, and it wasn’t a lot of time, and I wasn’t able to kind of focus on several things that I wanted to focus on because I ran out of time.
And I had not prayed, so I got a brief prayer off before I left, you know, before I got out on the road. I got a brief prayer off. And I remember when it was happening, I remember thinking, why did you just do that? What was behind that? Were you connecting with God, or were you just, like, covering yourself?
You know, I gotta cover my bases. I gotta have this prayer right now so that, you know, I’ll be okay with God today. And so, as I was looking at this passage, this awareness factor can be so helpful, I believe, to all of us, not just the church at Galatia who was struggling with Judaism and legalism. Say, the awareness factor? Well, Paul brings it up in verse 21, Galatians 4:21.
He says, tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware that There it is. Circle it, underline it, highlight it, whatever. Are you not aware of what the law says? And he’s going to go on and make them aware of what the law says. And the reason why he’s going to make them aware of what the law says is because they need to get past their past.
They need to let go of this legalism thing that’s, that’s driving behavior now for some of the believers who are in Galatia who are buying into Judaism. And so, he takes them back into their past and he says, verse 22, for it’s written that Abraham had 2 sons, one by the slave woman and the other by a free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, and if you have a New International Version of the Bible, it says, according to the flesh. But his son by the free woman was born as a result of a promise. So, right here at the outset, what Paul does, and I really love it, is he goes back into faith matters, and he goes all the way back to the father of faith, to Abraham.
And really, the reason he does this is because he’s going to take this history and draw it into a lesson of application. I think it’s interesting because when you’re working with somebody, or maybe you’re struggling with moving past the past, or somebody’s struggling with moving past the past and into the future, one of the things that you can do is just bring history into play. You can review relevant history, which the Apostle Paul does at this point. He goes back to Abraham, who at that time had lived about 2,000 years before the time of Jesus Christ. And he goes to the law, it says there, as you can see that in verse 21, you who want to be under the law, are you aware of what the law says?
Well, he goes back to a book that gives us Abraham’s story, and this book was one of the first 5 books of the law. The book of Genesis. The first 5 books found in the Bible are what are often called the Law or the Torah or the Pentateuch. And so, he goes back to the Law and he draws out from the Law Abraham’s story, especially focusing on the first 2 sons that Abraham had. He goes back to Ishmael.
Ishmael was the son that was born to a slave woman. Her name was what? Who was the mother of Ishmael? Anybody know? Hagar.
Okay, Hagar. So he goes back to Hagar and, and he talks about how Ishmael was born by an ordinary birth. You see it there, ordinary birth, meaning natural or, or a normal birth. But it was according to the flesh, as the New International Version tells us, which is focused then on man’s design or man’s schemes or man’s ingenuity. Ishmael was the product of, of, of not God’s plan, but man’s plan.
But then you have Isaac, and Isaac is the son who’s born to the free woman. And what was her name? It was Sarah. So you’ve got Hagar over here, you got Sarah over here, and Sarah had a son by supernatural birth. It was the result of God’s incredible promise that even a woman at 90 years of age would end up having a child.
Abraham was 99. So, you probably know this story. Go back into Genesis chapter 12 where God made a promise to Abraham. He promised him a land, and ultimately He gave him the Promised Land. He also promised him a seed or descendants, and through his descendants, the world would be blessed.
Well, Paul is going back to this story, and he’s recounting Ishmael, who was the son of impatience, we might say, Because after they had been in the Promised Land for 10 years and still not had a child, they figured they would help God out with his promise. By the way, if you’re thinking about helping God out with his promise, don’t go down the road, okay? He can take care of the promises that he makes himself. He can, he can do just, just fine with that. But 13 years after Ishmael was born, the, the son of promise, the one who was named laughter.
Can you believe at 90 and 99 we had this child, this son of laughter, and his name was Isaac? And so Paul brings up this historical account to help them embrace freedom. Freedom. But for them to embrace freedom, he’s going to kind of, you know, if you will, give some perspective to them through somebody that they would have respect for and through the law that they had respect for. So he takes them back to the law, the first book of the Bible being the beginning of the law, and he focuses on the foremost Jew who was Abraham, who was highly respected and highly revered.
And from that, he’s going to help them come to see that they need to move past their past, which was steeped in legalism, into a present that is built on freedom, this freedom that’s found in Jesus Christ. Let me just make a note here. I think it’s good to, when you’re working with somebody who can’t get past the past, to actually take them into the past to help them move to the present. That’s what the Apostle Paul is doing here. Before I began ministry here in And at Bridges, we were living in Phoenix, Arizona, and that last month or so before we moved over here, I had the privilege of playing golf with Bob Deal.
Some of you recognize the name Bob Deal. Bob used to be the music pastor at this church for probably, I don’t know, 20-some years, 23 years, somewhere around there. So he had an incredible ministry, highly respected, a person that God used greatly in the church, wonderful, wonderful season of ministry in the church. So I had the honor of meeting Bob, and we played golf together. And while we were playing golf, Bob made this statement.
He said, you know, Dave, I’m concerned that FBCLA’s memories could be bigger than their dreams.
I’ve never forgotten that statement. It just hit me so hard. And after he made the statement, I wrote it down, you know, and said, man, I want to think about that. That, that their memories could be bigger than their dreams. And what he was saying was, is that it’s possible that this church that has such a wonderful history could get stuck in its past and not continue to dream about the amazing work that God still has yet to do here and get into the future.
I’m concerned that they could get stuck in the past and not move into the future. You know, I didn’t realize it at the time, but That statement has come into many conversations that I’ve had over the past 8 years. I’ve had conversations with staff members and leaders and members and attenders, especially long-term members, people that respected Bob Deal highly, and basically brought into the conversation the possibility of us getting stuck in the past and how perceptive Bob was about that. And of course, in saying that, He was saying, I just hope that they embrace this new future that God has for them. Now, that adds a lot of weight.
That adds a— if you will, it adds, you know, permission, permission to move from these great days on forward into what could be great days in the future. And that essentially is what Paul is trying to do here. He’s trying to go back to somebody that they would revere and respect and say, you know, let’s think again about Abraham. Here’s somebody that you respect. And he brings that into the conversation so that they might move past their past and into a future that God has for them.
So he goes on and he says this in verse 24, these things, talking about these 2 births, the birth of Ishmael, the birth of Isaac, these 2 things may be taken figuratively. And notice this word figuratively. So he’s going to draw out an analogy or an illustration, which is fascinating because I don’t know that you’re going to see this anywhere else in the Scriptures. But he says, for these 2 women represent 2 covenants. A covenant is an agreement.
A covenant is a contract. Or a covenant is just a different way of doing things. So we got 2 different ways of doing things. So he says, one covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. This is Hagar.
Now, Hagar stands, he says, for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem because she is in slavery with her children. But— and you might want to circle the word but because he’s going to contrast what he’s just said here— but But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, Be glad, O barren woman who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband. Now you, verse 28, you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. And then add here verse 31, therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but we are children— we are of the free woman.
So what he does is he contrasts the differences, contrasts the differences of these, these stories. And one of the things that you can do when you’re trying to help somebody get past their past, or you’re just trying to get past your past, is you can contrast differences. So, in this case, you have 2 women, verse 24. You’ve got Hagar on the one side. You’ve got Sarah on the other side.
You’ve got 2 covenants, verse 24. There’s a Mosaic covenant. This is a conditional covenant. It’s a works-based covenant. It was a law that was given to Moses at Arabia at Mount Sinai, in Arabia on Mount Sinai.
On the other hand, you have another covenant. It’s called an Abrahamic covenant. This is Not a conditional covenant like the one over here. This is an unconditional grace-based covenant. It was given to Abraham.
You have 2 different births contrasted here. You have Ishmael, who was born due to man’s plan. It wasn’t God’s plan. It was the ingenuity of man and woman, what they came up with. And then you have on the other side Isaac, who is due to God’s plan, to God’s promise.
You have 2 different outcomes, verses 25 and 26. You have religious slavery on this side, and you have religious freedom on this side. You have 2 different cities that are pictured here. Verse 26, you have the present Jerusalem, which is a city at that time that was enslaved by Rome, and the people were living under the law. On the other hand, you have a future city, a city that’s above.
It’s the Jerusalem that is above. She is our mother, he says. She is our mother. She is a mother in this sense that she brings grace. It’s through her that we have grace.
Interesting, because when we talk about Jerusalem above, we look forward to the coming of Jesus who by grace is going to eagerly come for his church and take his church ultimately to be with him in this heavenly city, this place where we have citizenship, citizenship in heaven, those who are Christ followers. And then you have 2 lifestyles, verses 23 and 28. You have a works-based lifestyle, which is according to the flesh, and you have a faith-based lifestyle, which is according to God’s promise. Verse 31, you got 2 families. You have those who are the children of the slave woman, and then you have those who are children of the free woman.
Now this is interesting. Because what he is trying to do is paint the picture of the differences between the two, because they’re stuck over here. They should be living over here with this mindset, but they’re living over here with this mindset. So he wants to get them out of the past and into the present. He wants to get them out of the old and into the new.
He wants to get them out of living with this attitude of works and living with the perspective of grace. So it’s not a life of works, it’s a life of grace. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find contrast really helpful because sometimes I use contrast that’ll help me, you know, get into what it is that you have a sense that you should be moving toward, and essentially that’s what he’s doing here. I’m sure all of you from time to time use contrast. You say, should I eat this dessert or should I pass on this dessert?
Let’s see, if I eat this dessert, it’s gonna, You know, I’m gonna— it’s gonna be a wonderful moment as I eat this dessert. I’m gonna love it for just a moment, but then in a little bit, it’s gonna make me feel terrible. But however, if I pass on this dessert, it’s gonna be a terrible moment right now ’cause I’m not eating the dessert, but ultimately, I’m gonna feel better if I do. So you contrast the two. Should I get married or should I remain single?
Should I go to Cal or should I go to Stanford? That’s an interesting conversation. We won’t have it here, but you know, where should I go? Should I do homework or should I just go out and have fun? So I know what I want to— maybe your parents want to talk to you about that before you make this decision in these 2 contrasts.
But one of my favorite matters to contrast is this difference between these 2 kinds of faith, because really religion all falls into 2 categories. You have the category of the do, and then you have the category of the done. The do faiths and the done faiths. Titus 3:5 says, he saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done, which we have done, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. So we’re not saved by things that we do, but it’s the result of what He has done, what Jesus has done that we receive as a gift.
You can contrast that with works and grace. It’s, for by grace are you saved, for by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not as a result of works that nobody can boast. So there’s the works and the grace contrast. There’s the sin and salvation contrast. The wages of sin, Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus my Lord.
So sin, salvation. In fact, you have this picture of death and life, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Life. Perish over here, life over here. You have the penalty-promise contrast.
John 3:36, he who believes has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life— this is penalty— but God’s wrath remains on them. You have the rules-relationship contrast. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. Even to those who believe in his name. He wants a relationship with us.
It’s all about a relationship. It’s not about the rules. And so what Paul is doing here is he’s painting this huge contrast between these 2 approaches to God, 2 approaches to faith. There’s the way of the law, there’s the way of grace. There’s a way of slavery, there’s the way of freedom.
There’s a way of man’s work, there’s the way of God’s supernatural work. A few weeks ago, we had a conversation with a woman who told us her salvation story. Bernice and I were at a couples conference, and we were having a wonderful time. We sat at a table where we didn’t know this couple who was there, and we got to know them a little bit, and, and she shared her salvation story. She was a recovering drug addict.
She’s a recovering drug addict right now. She’s been clean for 10 years, but her life was transformed by Jesus Christ. That came about because another drug addict came over to her home— wasn’t a planned visit— and shared Jesus with this woman. It was an unplanned visit. The person came by and shared Jesus with this— another drug addict came by and shared Jesus with this woman.
And he told her, you are never going to be able to get past your addictions until you come to faith in Jesus Christ. And this other drug addict told her all about Jesus Christ. He knew the gospel, and he explained the gospel to her. He helped her realize that drugs were enslaving her, but only Jesus could free her. And so she received Jesus Christ, confessed her sin, received Jesus Christ by faith, and Jesus has freed her these past 10 years from drug addiction.
She is a completely different person. She is living a life of freedom in Jesus Christ. You know, she went on to say, oh, by the way, this other person This other drug addict that came over and told me about Jesus was my drug dealer. It was my drug dealer. Now, I’ve never heard a story like this before.
I said, you serious? She says, yes, this drug dealer knew the gospel story and told me the gospel story that I received. And my life has been different ever since. Now, that’s what Paul’s going after here, isn’t he? He’s not going after, you know, a religion.
He’s not going after something that you know something about. In fact, you might even be able to tell another person about this spiritual thing. He’s going after transformation that comes in a relationship. And so, he taps into history and he contrasts the differences between these 2 lives, and then he says this in verse 28, now you brothers, Like Isaac. You are children of promise.
At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It’s the same now. But what does the Scripture say? Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son. So having tapped into history, having contrasted the differences, it’s interesting now he highlights any similarities or some similarities between these stories.
In fact, the story of old and their story that’s being lived out now. He goes back first of all to the brothers, the brothers Ishmael and Isaac, but he He focuses first on Isaac, and he says, like Isaac— there’s your similarity— like Isaac is a child of promise, you are a child of promise. You are in Jesus Christ a person who God promised in Abraham to bless, and your blessing in Abraham isn’t something that comes through law, but your blessing is something that comes through, through a birth, through a birth, a promised birth, through a supernatural birth, through God’s work in you. Even as Isaac was born supernaturally by an act of God, you’ve been born supernaturally by an act of God. You have been adopted into God’s family.
And then he goes on and he says, and at the same time, at that time, the son born in the ordinary way— this was Ishmael— persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. Who’s that? That’s Isaac. So he goes back into this history and says, you know, in that family there was persecution, and this persecution came from Ishmael toward Isaac. This persecution came toward This one that was born by the power of the Spirit, by the promise of God.
And he says, you know what? This persecution continues now. This persecution continues now from religious people, from religious people toward those that God has saved, not by rules and regulations, but by a person, and his name is Jesus Christ. And again, why is he bringing that up? Because he wants them to not fall for what these religious people are teaching.
But then he goes on and he says, but what does the Scripture say? It says, get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son, which is a fascinating passage. But what you want to see with verse 30 is what you want to draw out of there is the analogy or the figure that the Apostle Paul is working with here. And the figure that Paul is working with here is this incident, or actually an ongoing matter that was pervading the home, where Ishmael was ragging on Isaac, where there was this tension between brothers, so that ultimately Sarah said, get rid, get rid of the slave woman and her son. And you remember that actually that happened.
There was a separation.
The son of Ishmael and the woman Hagar were kicked out of the home. They were kicked out of the home. They got rid of them. What Paul is saying here is that you need to get rid of the Judaizers. You need to separate yourself from the Judaizers because the Judaizers are putting into your minds truth that is not from God, but truth that will separate or stand in the way of the relationship that our God wants to have with you.
So he’s not saying, you know, this isn’t a moment where he’s making a statement here about Israel and the Arabs. He’s not going there. All he’s doing is he’s drawing an analogy. And then the analogy is, is that if you’re at a place where negativity is standing in the way of the connection that God wants for you as a son of promise, if negativity is standing in the way, if other people’s religion is standing in the way of you embracing this new way of life through God, then you need to remove that. You need to get rid of that kind of thinking.
You say, has that been a problem in the church before? Like all the time. Like when people have their way of doing things, they have their way of doing things and they can’t see it any other way. In fact, students and young adults can even fall into this trap where It becomes the way of religion. And this is the way that we practice, and this is what it is that we hold on to.
And yet, oftentimes, that is built not on God’s law, but that’s built on man’s law. And so, the church over the years has ended up with the 7 last words of the church prominent as what happens in the church. We’ve never done it that way before. Well, we can’t do that because we’ve never done it that way before. And the church, therefore, is stuck in rituals and rules and regulations and religion and unable to move into the future that God has for the church.
See, what Paul is trying to do is help these people get past legalism, get past the rituals, get past the Judaism, and get into this relationship that God wants so desperately for them. Several years ago, I was reading James White’s book, Rethinking the Church, and in it he told the story of a time when he was leading a conference in Florida, and he was focused on the issue of contemporary worship. You know, the work that God was doing in churches to bring a whole different way of worshiping into the church, and people at the time were really struggling with, you know, do we, do we go down that road? Do we permit that, or do we embrace contemporary worship in the church? Well, after he finished his lecture, there was a woman, an elderly woman that walked up to him, and she took a long time to get up to the front because she walked with a cane.
But when she finally got there, she said, young man, I have a word with— I want to have a word with you. I want to have a word with you about what it was that you said tonight. White said, you know, I thought to myself, oh no, here it comes. She said, are you trying to tell me churches should use contemporary music to reach people today? White wrote, he said, you know, I had just spent 45 minutes actually saying that very thing, but this lady had a cane.
And so, I chickened out, he said, and I said, well, ma’am, I don’t know. It might help. What do you think? She said, young man, I want you to know that I’m about as contemporary as I can get, and that would be, you know, Montovani unless it’s the weekend, and then maybe it’s Lawrence Welk. But then she took her cane, he said, and she held it up and she pointed it right in his face and said, so, if rock and roll is what it takes to get people back to church, all I’ve got to say is, let’s boogie.
White said, I couldn’t believe it, but then she said something I’ll never forget. He said, it’s not my style of music, she said. It’s not my style of music, but if it will reach people for my Jesus, then I like it. Besides, she said, the church doesn’t exist for my needs. It exists to win the world.
Now, that belief for her at that moment in time after a 45-minute session came from some awareness that came to her. She began to have a different perspective, a different outlook, and it resulted in a permission-giving freedom for the church to move past its past and into whatever future God had for it. Friends, the point of this is we’re not bound. We’re not bound by legalistic rules. We’re, we’re not descendants.
This is spiritual concept here. We’re not descendants of Ishmael. We’re descendants of Isaac, of the son of promise, of the son of promise. And as descendants of the son of promise, through which ultimately Jesus came, through that genealogy came, as Jesus came to give life, to give freedom, we want to embrace this life, this sonship, this relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ. We are no longer bound.
We are no longer slaves, but we are free. So, it’s not about the rules. It’s not about the rules. It’s about a relationship. It’s about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That’s— see, that’s what Paul is saying. He says, that’s what matters most. So, faith people, religious people, let’s not get caught up in religiosity. May our faith be something more than rules and rituals. Regulations, but may it be all about a loving, living relationship with God.
Now, what that means then is that for us who’ve been around the church for a long time, we may need to do some reevaluating.
Like, the next time we pray, why are we really praying? Are we connecting with God, or are we just going through this? You know, this is just part of the checklist. It’s just the thing that I do. And when we sing, when we sang this morning, were we connecting with God or were we just looking at the kids going, you know, they’re pretty happy?
Well, that’s good. But in the words that we were singing, were we connecting with God or were we just going through the deal until it’s done? And when we read the Bible, are we connecting with God? Are we really tuning in and hearing the voice of God and what it is that he’s saying as we read the scriptures? You know, it’s a wonderful thing to say, I’m going to be in the Word of God every day.
In fact, you could even make one of those year-through-the-Bible commitments. You know, I’m going to read the whole Bible in a year. And I’ve done this on I don’t know how many occasions, but I’ve done that. I got to be careful if I go down that road in any given year. You know why?
Because it can become a ritual for me. It could become rote for me so that, you know, when I don’t have much time, but I’ve got to get this thing done, right? I got to get this passage done so I could get the check. At the end, I got to get on that checklist. It’s not about the relationship at that point.
It’s about getting it done. It’s about the commitment I made. No, when we read the Scriptures, as we were here this morning, have you been connecting to God through the Scriptures in a way where you’ve said, Lord, just teach me what it is that you want me to hear today? And when we witness, when we share our faith with others, this isn’t about a project. This is about loving people.
It’s about connecting with real people, people that God loves, and joyfully telling them the story, the gospel story of Jesus Christ, how God wants relationship with us through Jesus Christ, his Son, and he’s made that possible. And when we gather in occasions like this, why are we gathering? Is it, you know, ’cause if I don’t do this, then it’s not gonna be a good week? And in some ways, that, you know, maybe it will be true, ’cause this is a refocusing of our mindset, possibly. A week, a time where we can encourage each other?
Or are we just, you know, gathering, we just go through it, and, you know, this is my church and this is what I do? Or is it about the relationship with God? So I think as I look at this passage again, it feels like the 100th time that we’ve looked at the subject, that maybe the 100th time is the time where it finally sinks in, where we finally say, wow, I need to have some more awareness in my relationship with God. I need to be more aware of why I’m doing what I’m doing. I don’t want to be a person who’s just enslaved by rules and rituals and regulations.
I don’t want to be enslaved by the law. I don’t want to be enslaved by practices. But I want to be liberated. I want to be liberated. I want to be free.
I want to be liberated by this relationship that God wants for me now and for all eternity through Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Lord, thanks for speaking to us again from this passage this morning. May we see it for what it is. May we really connect with you even right now.
May we connect with you. Show us what it is you want us to get from what we’ve been talking about this morning, from this time of worship. We pray that we’ve pleased you, that our hearts have been open, that we’ve been open to what it is that you want to do in us, what you want to teach us.
Lord, if there’s somebody here that doesn’t have a relationship with you, we pray that even today that relationship would begin. It would not be religion for them. It would be about a faith journey, a journey that begins with a supernatural birth where you save them as they embrace you by faith, receive the gift of life that’s found in your Son Jesus. If that’s your heart’s desire, tell God that right now. He’ll hear that prayer.
He’ll adopt you into his family. You’ll become one of his children.
And Lord, his children, then help us live in a vibrant, vital relationship with you, our heavenly Father. May that happen so in the future in even more meaningful ways. May we not just go through the motions, but may we truly connect with you. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
