CHURCH: Faith

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.

Glad you guys are here.

My name is Lance Williams.

I'm one of the pastors on staff here at Grand Parkway.

Neil is in the building.

He's actually leading the intro class.

We f we uh we flip-flopped today, so you gotta love that.

Uh it's always my privilege and joy to preach here at Grkway, uh, much less teach and do all the other things, but but certainly preach.

Uh, we are gonna be in Galatians chapter five today uh as we get going.

Uh and if you haven't been here, or maybe it's it's your first time here, uh, we've been in a series on the church for probably the last several weeks.

Uh, and kind of the latter part of our series on the church, we've been going through uh uh an acrostic.

Uh and if you didn't know this, this is great news.

Uh Jesus does have a wife.

Okay?

Uh there's I don't know if you're on the same email threads that I'm on, or or or or or or you know, uh whatever, watch the same newscasts that I've watched, but apparently they found out that Jesus had a wife.

Uh what is new?

Jesus has a wife.

It's called the church.

Okay?

And no matter what, no matter what somebody wrote down on a piece of parchment in the three or four hundreds, it it's probably later than when Jesus was on the earth.

Uh, and so that probably doesn't make sense.

Uh and so uh he does have a wife, and we are the bride of Christ.

We are attached to him, he is our bridegroom, and we wait for him to come and rescue us.

Uh, that is the reality of every believer.

That is the reality of the church.

We are his bride.

We are his wife, and so we've been going through this acrostic W-I-F-E.

We have learned that we, uh distinctives of the church, uh, is that we are people who worship.

That is the W.

I was last week.

It was instruction, and today is faith.

Okay?

Uh and then next week we'll end with the E, and then in two weeks, on October 7th, we dive in uh to Romans.

And it'll be like much like we did Luke, uh, which if you remember, we were there from like oh five to like uh 2010 or something like that.

Uh but we but we'll we'll we'll we'll take a good thorough journey through the book of Romans starting on October 7th.

Uh but today we are in the church.

We are the church, and we focus on the F and the acrostic of wife, with which is faith.

Now, last week Neil did talk about instruction out of Deuteronomy 6, and as he did, he talked about, well, you gotta do all these different uh you know routines that you can you can set up in your life, such as when you lie down, talk about the Lord, and that he's one and that he's good.

Excuse me, he's good.

Uh and so we we we we have these little uh uh I've talked about it before, and some of you have ridiculed me for this about how we put our kids down uh uh with with Reese and with Ellie now.

Uh and we were putting Reese down.

I was putting her down this week, and we kind of switch off because they kind of favor one or the other, and we don't want that.

And so uh we were switching off, and it was my night with Reese.

Uh, and Reese is just fun and and also very frustrating at sometimes.

But uh so I'm I'm putting her down, I'm laying with her, and I'm I'm telling her, All right, all right, Reese, I just want you to find just one thing.

She doesn't like to pray yet, and we're trying to get her there.

Don't want to make her, don't want to force her.

Uh that would be bad.

But instead, let's just let her figure it out on her own, and we'll be there to guide her and create some boundaries for her, and it'll be good.

But I said, Reese, just give me one thing that you want to thank Jesus for tonight.

One thing in your day.

No.

And she turned the corner, you know, turned the covers over and turned her back to me.

She said, But I do want you to hold me.

What?

Hey, this what is going on here?

Uh but my wife came in and she grabbed some kisses and some hugs from Reese, which is always a good thing to do.

And she came in and I said, Hey, honey, please, can you just explain to her why it's important to pray?

And my wife, Melissa, just said, Hey, honey, Reese, it's important to pray because Jesus loves to hear your voice.

He loves to hear your heart.

And not to mention uh that you get to hear his heart and to hear his voice.

Now tell me, why is it that you would not want to pray?

First thought, she's way better at this than I am.

Second thought, uh, well, let's just see what Reese says.

She actually responded, she got past that.

Well, because, because, because.

She actually responded, she said, Jesus isn't real, I don't see him.

And I thought, wow, that's that is revealing on all sorts of levels.

And we had to just say, He's here, he lives in us, he's in this room.

He is real, realer than more real than your mom and your dad.

We he is so real, it's not even funny how real he is.

But I just started to think about okay, a good bridge from instruction to faith.

And a four-year-old showed me, my four-year-old, thank God, she's my four-year-old who showed me.

That's how we live.

That's how we live a lot of days.

We just live, Jesus, hey, I don't see him.

He's not in here, he's not doing these things, and so we become certain of the things that we can see, and instead, faith is described in Hebrews as become of certain of things we don't see.

That's the biblical model of faith, going way beyond a four-year-old, my four-year-old, my beautiful Reese, and coming and hitting it home as we look at Galatians chapter five.

What does it look like for us to be a people who are known by one thing?

Faith.

What does that look like?

Galatians chapter 5, 1 to 6 says this.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bible with you, we do have a uh a Bible on the end of your road.

Uh hit your neighbor and uh they'll hit their neighbor and they'll pass it down.

We're on page 974 uh where we'll be reading uh from that Bible as well.

Galatians chapter 5, 1 to 6 says this.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

For freedom, Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law.

You have fallen away from grace.

For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

It's the only thing that matters.

But Paul will tell the Galatian church what God is telling us today.

The only thing that matters when we live in this life is faith working itself out in love.

And that's where we're going to end today.

But what we begin with, our first point is this the purpose of faith.

The purpose of faith is freedom.

That is the very purpose that the author and the perfecter of our faith left heaven, where he was worshiped, uh, and feared, just like we talked about, all the things that the Bible was written for to give us instruction, all the things that were already happening in heaven with Jesus, he left all that, submitted himself to being a human for the rest of all of eternity, not just while he was here on earth, and as he did, he became an infant.

The stage of life where you're dependent upon humans for everything.

And he did that.

And when he did so, he did it for the purpose of freedom.

To set us free.

For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery.

The very purpose he came to earth was to set you and I free.

That's why he walked the way he walked.

That's why he lived the way he lived.

That's why on the Sabbath his disciples were found uh crushing the wheat and the kernels, and the people of the religious duty of the day went up to him and said, Hey man, what's the deal?

This is a Sabbath, man.

You guys can't be working.

And he's like, Really?

Like, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath.

I created it.

He's come to set us free from rules, from regulations, from anything that is not faith working itself out in love.

Freedom cannot truly be fully described.

You could go home and you could read all kinds of things on freedom and that would be great.

I probably should have done that this week.

But what I came to realize is that freedom cannot be fully described.

It can only be experienced.

It can only be experienced.

It's like the cool front that came through on Monday or Tuesday of last week.

I could tell you about it, but unless you walked outside like around sunrise on Tuesday or Wednesday, you wouldn't realize how truly refreshing that cool that cool front is.

Yes, some of you did that.

Yes, you were on your way to work.

It was beautiful.

You may have even ridden to work with your with your with your windows down, but not if you already did your hair.

I don't have that problem, so we're good to go.

Windows down.

But that's what freedom is like.

It's like the sun coming up over Alaska over a six-month-long winter where there is no sun.

I remember when I was in college, uh, I played intramural sports, and uh that, by the way, is where mediocre athletes go to die.

Uh because that was me.

I was like, ooh, I'm real good at this.

No, no, pretty much no.

Uh and so I played basketball, and after I became a believer, I had to take myself off of the basketball team uh because I was too angry to admit that I was really bad.

And so I just took it out on everybody else.

I would foul people and use language that I won't use here today from where I am.

Uh and so I just I had to go to the principal's office, which is the director of intramurals at AM, and he said, Hey, look, man, if you get if I have to see you one more time, if you get kicked out of one more game, you can't play it in one more intramural game ever.

Well, that was like death to me.

Are you kidding me?

Uh but one time, and this is right as I became a believer, uh, I was playing football and uh flag football, and I blew out my knee, like tore my ACL, which those two things, that's just the ridiculous.

To play intramural football and to blow your knee out, you can't find any more desperate situation in life, probably.

Uh but that but that was where I was, right?

And so uh so I blew out my knee and I went to the doctor, and because I'm desperate and I'm a mediocre athlete and I gotta work out my competitiveness like with everybody else, with fear and trembling.

I went out the next week and tried to play again, blew it out again.

Uh, and so I went to the surgeon and he said, Look, we can do surgery on you first of the year, just so you know, it's gonna be six months before you can do anything.

That was death to me.

But if anybody's ever had a surgery like that, which many of you have, uh just like I have, you kind of submit to uh this regiment, for any lack of a better word, uh, of physical therapy.

And if you do it, you do it well, you commit yourself to it, then in six months you really might be able to run.

You really might be able to go do the things one day that you did before you blew out your knee or whatever else.

And so we did it and it was fun.

And I remember the first day I went running.

I probably had like a walkman at the time, but I remember the first day I went running, I was listening to whatever music, and I was running in college, I was just like, oh, baby.

I mean, it took everything in me to not weep with every step.

Because that was freedom.

And I just remember thinking, oh, baby, freedom, here we go.

This is what I'm talking about.

I hate running.

I hate it.

But for some reason that day I was like, woohoo hoo! This is great.

That's freedom.

Now you look at me like I'm crazy whenever I tell that story, but that's freedom.

You can't fully understand that unless you've experienced something like that.

You've been brought out of something that's been so terrible, six months for me, maybe it was a lifetime, and all of a sudden you've been set free to go do things that oh, you only wish you could do when you were enslaved.

That's been the heart of God from the very beginning.

And I'll just give you one example in John chapter 8, when Jesus comes to the earth and he says to people that are standing in front of him in John chapter 8, great, beautiful little little passage that I just want to read read uh to you.

John 8 · chapter mention John 8 · chapter mention

John chapter 8, verse 31, which just says this.

John 8:31

Now notice one thing when he when Jesus is talking, he's talking to people that believe in him.

Okay?

Now this is gonna this is this should just change my life, I think, this week.

He's talking to people that believe in him when he talks like this.

So you can put yourself in that situation.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

It's the heart of God to come and set the captives free.

Keep going, verse 33.

They answered him, We are offspring of Abraham, and have never been enslaved to anyone.

How is it that you say you will become free?

Jesus answered, Let me tell you the truth.

Truly, truly, I say to you, anyone, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever.

So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

I know that you're offspring of Abraham, I get it, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you.

I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do what you have heard from your father.

The believers.

And so Jesus is standing before people, and he says to all of us today, we are one of two people.

We are either the people that have found freedom, yoked up to the Son of God, where we were once weary, now we're rested.

Where we were once burdened, now we are like.

We're like, as Josh Garrett says, we're skipping like a calf loose from its stall.

And I'm free to love once and for all.

We're either that person, absolutely free, skipped out, ready to roll.

Or we're the person that stands before Jesus and we say, You got freedom to give us?

We're good.

I'm freed up.

I got all the freedom I need.

Based on my heritage, based on me, based on what I bring to the table, based on whatever somebody somebody else has given to me.

One of those is true, and one of those is false.

And we stand before Jesus, and Jesus says, Hey, it's in your heart to kill me.

And Jesus has already died, he's already been killed, and so we can't do that again.

But how this applies to us today is that we stand before Jesus and he says, It's for freedom that I've set you free, and you go, I'm good.

No thanks, freedom.

I'd rather have rules, regulations, and formulas rather than living by the Spirit, which is supposed to fill me.

That's too great for me, Jesus.

I'll I'll pass.

Give me a how-to.

We get to that point, where the latter, we're enslaved.

And it's no wonder that Paul tells us at the end of verse 1, chapter 5 of Galatians, for freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Ever wonder why slavery is so it's so attractive to us?

Why in the world is he telling us, hey, it's for freedom, you got it.

By the way, don't go back to slavery.

Why is that so appealing to us?

Because it rescues us from not knowing what to do.

And the reality is that this has been in us from the get-go.

It's the kind of freedom that uh Jesus tells us and Paul tells us to stand firm and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

And this is the kind of freedom that's worth fighting for.

Uh Jesus is telling us, God is telling us, stand firm that you have nothing to offer God in this whole process of salvation except the sin that makes it necessary.

That's the only thing we have to offer.

Stand firm because Jesus is sufficient, you and I don't have to be.

Stand firm that you are free to be wrong because Jesus is right.

Can you imagine that in your marriages?

I'm free to be wrong today.

Not because she's right, but because Jesus is right.

And he sees all this.

We're all good.

Stand firm that you don't have to be contemptuous.

You don't have to be the judge because Jesus is the judge.

Stand firm that you're free to be ordinary because Jesus was extraordinary.

When's the last time you sought to go out and just be ordinary?

Live a life where no one will remember your name.

Outside of cheers.

Stand firm that because Jesus died, you can live.

Stand firm that you are his.

And because you're his, he's given you freedom.

Freedom to be wrong?

All those things I just listed.

Because here is the deal.

Robert McGee talks about this in his book, The Search for Significance, which I talked about in my class last week, which is great.

But he just says this that we we there's this fear that's kind of crippled us.

Jesus has come to drive out that fear with his perfect love, and yet there's this fear that's crippled us as Christians, and it's basically this that that we just believe the devil's lie, that our self-worth, it's not based on his identity, on our identity with him, on what he's done for us, on his adoption as for us as sons and daughters.

Instead, our self-worth is based on our performance.

And not only is it based on our performance, but then we add into that what other people think of that performance.

And so you go to work and you perform a certain way and you earn uh success or you earn failure.

It's at the root of everything that we do.

And yet God stands before us and said, freedom.

Freedom.

What are you standing firm against these days?

And is it something that Jesus stands with you?

What are you standing firm against these days?

Second point.

Basically this not just freedom that God has set us free with, and not just the purpose of faith being freedom, but faith never earns.

Never at the heart of faith is there an earning motivation.

Uh let me let me just tell you what I mean, and I'll just read it actually.

Let me just read it.

Verse 2.

Verse 2 through 4, Galatians 5.

Look, I, Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ, that's just a little part of the law, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, that he's obligated, you're indebted to the entire law, all 613 of them.

You were severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law.

You have fallen away from grace.

Fallen away from grace.

Isn't it interesting that Paul talks about falling away from grace, not by just pursuing and pressing into a licentious nature of life, that you're just gonna go out and sin all you want?

Say, stink on you, Jesus.

I'm going out and doing whatever I want.

Isn't it interesting that he doesn't talk about that?

Instead, he talks about falling away from grace by saying, Yeah, good, Jesus.

Now I want some rules.

Now I want a little bit of law to go along with my faith.

That's what separates you from trying from from Jesus.

That's what severs you and I.

It causes us to fall away from grace.

Why?

Because all of a sudden, what is now more measurable, rules, regulations, and formulas, becomes comfortable, and I start to rely on those things.

I mentioned it before, I'll say it again.

It's been at the heart of who we are.

Uh humans love humanity.

Uh we can do anything that we put our minds to, pull your pull yourselves up by your bootstraps.

Yes?

You've heard these things before?

I was raised on these mantras.

So everything that we have in life, we earn, right?

Whether it be success, whether it be failure, whether it be a raise, whether it be a demotion, all earning.

And not all bad thing.

Uh the rise of the do-it-yourself network, DIY, HGTV, there's a reason why it's there on your cable package, is because we humans think we can do it all.

It's why I tackled my cabinets this this summer and nailed it, by the way.

Okay, redid those bad boys, they're looking good.

They before, not even not good, just terrible.

Now, oh yeah, now we're rocking.

Get community group over there, not ashamed, we're ready to roll.

We're weakened warriors.

It's why Home Depot and Lowe's are opening stores all over the place in a down economy.

Because with a little instruction with the right tools, we think we can handle it.

It's been that way since the beginning, back in Genesis chapter 11, uh, the Home Depot of the day in the Tower of Babel, uh, basically says this.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

That was good.

Uh Genesis chapter 11 says this.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

This is who we are.

This is who we are at the core of our being.

We are these people in Genesis chapter 11, which says this, I'm just gonna read four verses.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of uh Shinar and settled there.

And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and bitumen for for mortar.

Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

I read that too, and you might be saying, What in the world does that have to do with faith?

Well, back in Genesis 9, when Noah and his family got off the boat, they were told to do basically one thing: be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

Fill it.

Cover it.

And two chapters later, we have all of humanity saying, I would rather not fill the earth.

Let's congregate.

Matter of fact, when we congregate, let's build a city and a tower, and we'll do this by our own bricks.

And we'll do this and we'll build a tower all the way up to heaven.

Why are we gonna do this?

Verse 4 Come, let us build ourselves a city.

City and the tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

Here's why this is a big deal.

There's no one else on earth.

In Genesis chapter 11, there's no one else on earth.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

All of humanity has gathered around this city.

Who are they making their name against?

God.

So they build this tower based on their own strength, their own ability, what they see around them.

They build it all the way up to heaven as if to scream, hey, we're awesome! And what I love about the scriptures, no matter how high it was, God still came down from the heavens.

God has always been in the business of coming down, correcting us, encouraging us, telling them in Genesis 11, hey man, you can't do this.

Matter of fact, I told you to live by faith and fill the earth, live in abundance and multiply.

I'm gonna make it happen now.

Now you can't understand her, and you can't understand him, and I'm splitting up families, y'all all have different languages.

Ready?

Go.

And that's how we have different nations.

And that's why we're called to go and meet the nations.

To reverse this curse.

But at our very core, we are a people who look around, find our own accomplishments, our own rules, our own regulations, and build it up to God, to this to the heavens and go, look at me! I'm awesome.

God comes down, corrects us, encourages us.

And we go back to Galatians 5.

Because there's the reality.

If we rely on anything besides faith, which is a gift, something that God has given us, if we rely on anything besides faith, we miss the point.

We miss the point completely and entirely.

And back then it was building bricks of whatever they had around them.

And for us, it's legalism.

Legalism in the church, Chuck Swindahl said, is one of the greatest enemies of the church.

And so legalism, what does that look like?

It's certainly alluring.

Each one of us are guilty of legalism, at least at one point in our lives.

This whole idea of legalism, here's what it means: it's the false belief that you can approach God based on your own abilities.

You can build that tower.

It's the false belief that you can approach God based on your abilities, intelligence, discoveries, whatever.

And it allures us.

That's why there's the stand firm.

Don't be yoked up to slavery, be yoked up to the Son of God.

Stand firm, therefore.

It is alluring.

It is like this sneaky little enemy that spies in on our freedom and tells us, well, Jesus is good, but maybe a little bit of this.

There's five advantages of legalism.

At least that's what's in our heart.

We see these advantages of legalism.

I'll put them on the screen.

Here they are, right there, all C's.

Goes against my nature to start all with a C, but there you go.

You get it all.

It's easy to remember.

Five advantages of legalism.

Number one, creativity.

The one thing that was reserved for God to be creator, we come into this world and we go, I'd rather have my own rules.

These are good rules, but subconsciously I'm going to create my own rules.

And they're outside of the Bible, and so we've created them.

The second thing is control.

Control.

We look around, and we'd rather have how-tos.

We'd rather have formulas that create this false sense of security, and it just feeds this incessant need for control.

Comparison.

You ever just seen something?

Seen somebody act a certain way or be a certain way and just go, man, I'm glad I'm not like that.

Comparison.

Competition.

Oh man, this is the heart, this is what gets me right here.

This is right to the core right here.

Competition.

You set the rules.

You set the rules.

And because you created the rules and you've set the rules, you're going to keep those rules secret, or at least difficult to find, so that everybody around you has no chance of competing on the same field as you.

And then all of a sudden you've got this competitive spirit of all these different rules that you've created, kept hidden, kept secret.

No one else can really do the things that you're doing.

And all of a sudden you set yourself up to be winner and everybody else loser.

Finally, contempt.

You become the judge, jury, and executioner.

First over yourself, because you could never keep your own rules.

And then over your brethren.

Right?

You become judge, jury, executioner because they're not doing it.

So you walk into the foyer or wherever you may be, and you just go, ah, yeah, you're good.

I'm gonna waste my time with you.

You can't give anything to me.

And then all of a sudden you become contemptuous before God.

You stand before Jesus and He says, Hey, I've come to set you free, and you go, I'm good.

Appreciate you.

And not only am I good, but you're wrong, Jesus, because look at all this stuff that I've done, look at all the formulas that I've followed, look at all these pithy sayings that I have, and you get to the end and you just kind of go, I'm good.

Because when it comes down to it, none of that works.

And it just falls off and gets burned up and doesn't last.

And you may say to yourself, man, I'm not that bad.

Yes, you are.

Yes, I am.

You may say, I don't struggle with legalism.

Yes, you do.

Yes, I do.

Yes, in fact, we all struggle with holding on so tightly to rules and regulations that we will strangle out the Son of God in order for us to be oh in control, competitive, contemptuous.

I uh say all of that because I've been teaching a class on the sufficiency of Christ, and I was telling Neil or the staff uh maybe last week or so, I just said, man, one of the things I'm just learning over and over again is how much I don't believe in the sufficiency of Christ.

I say I do, but I don't live it.

And I just want to hear from everybody else.

Are they struggle with the same thing?

So last week we had a little share time.

Let me hear about you.

Let me quit confessing my sin.

Let me hear some of yours.

One of the things that's truly at my core is uh self-reliance, of course, but there's a guy named Tulian.

Uh he's Billy Graham's grandson.

I can't pronounce his last name, so I won't try.

Uh, but he's a pastor out in Florida.

He wrote a book called Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Now that's a formula I can get behind.

Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Now, I don't need to tell you a whole lot about the book.

I just need to give you the title and compare it to what we really believe.

What we believe is that Jesus plus something is more Jesus.

That's what legalism teaches us, that's what rules and regulations and formulas teach us.

Instead, what Jesus is trying to tell us, what he told the guys in John 8, what Paul is telling the Galatian believers, what God's telling us today, Jesus, if you add anything to Jesus, you have nothing.

You've been severed, you've fallen from grace.

And so Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

It is a life that is rooted in the gospel.

Because the reality is that a lot of us walk and live this life, not based on faith, but out of fear, and we look at God as kind of our second grade teacher.

I don't know about y'all, but second grade was the first time that I got put to the principal's office, so I'll just go with second grade teacher on that one.

I won't tell you what it's for, it was bad.

Uh and so, uh, but that's just where I was.

And so uh and so second grade teacher, and you have this God who's a second grade teacher and kind of grades you all day long for what you did or didn't do.

Did you do this?

Did you go A plus B equals C?

What about here?

How about there?

Oh, I saw that with your wife.

Yeah, not so much.

That's not him.

He doesn't have a scorecard grading your performance.

Instead, he knows you can't perform, you add nothing to who he is, or this whole idea of salvation and says, hey man, I'm gonna rescue you from that.

I'm gonna rescue you from thinking like that.

How?

By sending the Son to be redemption.

For Christ has come to set us free.

Free not just from sin, but also from the idea that faith earns you something.

What are you trusting in these days, other than Jesus?

What are you trusting in these days other than Jesus to gain acceptance with Him?

Have you built a tower full of your works and righteousness and said, Look at me! This bad thing that's happening, I don't deserve it.

Remember?

Woo.

What are you trusting instead of Jesus to experience security, significance, to find purpose, and identity?

Brings us to our third point.

Not just that faith never earns, but faith works.

Yeah, faith works, like it definitely works with life, but it works.

It gets to work and it works itself out.

That's what the whole book of James is about.

That's what Matthew 5 through 7 is about.

Hey, you can't just talk about faith and not do anything with it because that's a dead faith.

It never really existed to begin with.

Instead, faith works not to earn, but because you're grateful.

One of the things that Pastor Tulian writes in that book, he says, somewhere in there, I'm sure it's there.

It definitely didn't come from me.

I'm not creative enough to come up with this.

But faith is not opposed to effort.

Faith is opposed to earning.

That's why 2 Peter 1 tells us to make every effort to add to our faith virtue, godliness, brotherly love, all these beautiful words.

Faith works.

Here's what he says in Galatians chapter 5, verse 5 and 6.

Galatians 5:5

He says, For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

What do you mean by all that?

You mean tell me that I got Jesus and I can't add to that?

No.

In fact, by faith, by the Spirit, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

A lot of words.

A lot of words there that we're not really accustomed to.

Maybe we've been coming to church for a while, but let me just break them down.

Faith.

It's this certainty that's activated.

It's a certainty of the things that we cannot see, and it's active.

Hope.

It is this certainty that is anticipated.

Jesus is going to come back.

And that is our hope.

Not like, ooh, I hope he does, but like, that's my hope.

That's the whole reason for me to live in the way I'm living, because when he comes back, he says that he is going to bring the standard of righteousness upon the earth.

Righteousness.

It means that we've been certainly accepted.

We've been accepted.

And there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

When we place our faith in Christ and He gives us that faith, that's it.

We can't lose it.

Did nothing to gain it.

We've been certainly accepted.

So that when he comes back, and he says we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

When he comes back, he's not going to go, all right, I see all these pluses by your name until about 1998.

It got a little stressful then, did it?

A whole lot of negatives.

Not even a check mark.

We got negatives everywhere.

All the way until the end of your life.

What happened?

No.

He's not a second grade teacher, he's not an accountant, although great occupations.

Not the nature of God instead.

He's a freed man.

He's the kingdom owner.

He's the master.

He's the king.

And he's come to set up his shop to set captives free.

Unbelievable heart of God.

Well, no wonder he calls us to have nothing besides faith that works its way out in love.

Let me read verse 6 and then we'll be done.

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

The only kind of faith that matters is the faith that is rooted in the gospel love that was personified in Jesus Christ.

What in the world does that mean?

Great sentence.

What does it mean?

It means this that when Jesus was on the earth and his last night, and he was teaching his disciples what to do with their lives, he gave them one last command in John 13, 34 and 35.

He says, A new command I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

Not that you have loved me, just as I have loved you, and you also are to love one another.

And by this people will know that you are my disciples if you have loved one another.

The main distinctive of the church and how we are going to make our impact on this world in our neighborhoods, which is changing drastically, is if we love one another.

Is if we are freed up from whatever has got us enslaved to be able to just love our fellow neighbor.

And not just our neighbor, but our believing neighbors, the people that are sitting next to you in the pews.

That's how God is going to be made famous on the earth is Christians loving other Christians.

Deeply rooted in the love of the gospel, because he says, as I have loved you, so love one another.

What kind of love is that?

It's this love that looks at somebody else, and there's no benefit to himself, but a cost to himself and at the benefit of someone else.

It's while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Not while we were still earning his favor, although that probably was true, we were trying.

Not while we were good enough, not while we had built our tower up to the sky to the heavens and gone, ooh, take my hand, I've made it halfway there.

Come on, Jesus.

No, it's when we've been in the pits.

When we were in act of rebellion against him, when we just absolutely stood at the cross, put our nail in there.

When we deserted him, we rejected him, when in his hour of need we ran away, that's when he continued to go to the cross and die for sinners.

That's the kind of love.

That's the kind of faith working out through that kind of love.

That's the only thing that matters.

It's not a faith that works through rules, it's not a faith that works through our pet obsession, like organic foods.

Anyone?

No?

Okay.

It's not, it's not our faith working itself out and voting Republican or Democrat.

It's not a faith that is dependent upon where you go to school or your spiritual pedigree, like the guys in John 8.

It says, I'm Abraham's descendant.

And he says, I don't care.

It means nothing to me.

I'm come.

That you be free.

It's not a faith that works out being right.

It's not a faith that depends on Jesus plus our strengths or our abilities.

It's not a faith that is Jesus and our reputation.

It's not a faith that we have Jesus and our busy calendar that we've just filled.

And we can get to the end of time and we go, oh, you understand Jesus.

I have a lot of stuff to do.

It's not a faith that does anything except work itself out through the type of love that is poured out for the benefit of someone else.

At the cost of yourself.

Paul tells the Galatians, that's the only thing that matters.

That's it.

And God tells us today, if there's one thing that we're going to be known for as the church, yes, worship, yes, instruction, yes, faith that works.

Never earning, never earning God's affection, never earning God's grace, but a faith that works itself out in love.

What does this type of faith look like?

What's it look like when you go to work tomorrow?

What does it look like when you go home today?

And perhaps you may want a nap and no one gives it to you.

I'm not talking about my wife, I'm talking about Reese, who will jump on top of me and never let me go.

What will that look like for you?

What will it look like when you go to work?

What will it look like with your family?

What will it look like with your with your neighbors?

Maybe you hadn't seen your neighbor in a while, and you just need to drop everything and forget the Texans and go over.

Barge in.

Risk facing rejection.

And go, hey man, I haven't seen you in a while.

How are you doing?

Been out of town?

Cool.

Just want to make sure.

I know I look silly, but I just wanted to express my love for you that I'm concerned.

I just want to see how you were.

Everything looked good in the house.

Just want to make sure you were good.

What does it look like with your enemies to be able to be poured out with their benefit in mind instead of what you think you deserve?

That one hurts too.

Let's pray and let's just think about it.

Let's pray about what this looks like for us.

Let's pray about what we needed to hear today and working through that.

Let's just take some time and understand truly the heart of God who just says, Hey, I've purchased you, I've claimed you to be mine.

And because that's true, you are freed up, like a calf loose from its stall, to live in love once and for all.

Would you guys stand with me and let me uh speak a word of blessing over you?

I mentioned it before, but uh I'll just say it again.

We're here, we come up front, not because there's pressure or guilt, but because we would love the opportunity to uh to process with you.

Whatever you've heard, or maybe whatever God's shown you today or this week, uh we just love truly that opportunity.

Well, hold out your hands like this, and let me speak a word of blessing over you.

Your God has come to set you free, free from thinking that anything or anyone else provides freedom.

He's come to tell you the truth about yourself, about himself, and about what you're here for.

That's unbelievably gracious and good news.

Go now and discover what that is within the context of a relationship with Jesus.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.