Grace Saves Everything - 08.23.26 - Kyle Morris

And children who are headed back to school this week and last week.

And we're gonna start with a liturgy from this work called Every Moment Holy.

This is from the volume three.

Um, it's liturgies over everyday moments in our life, and this one's called For Dropping Off a Child at School.

Creator God who parents us all, hold my heart as I practice letting go.

Hold this child as the school day begins.

There was a time when I celebrated each small milestone, witnessing steps as they were taken.

Yet now I watch those same sweet legs walking away from me towards people and spaces I know little about, and I feel at my best an urge to slow down time.

At my worst, a fearful grasping for control.

May this bittersweet pang point towards me point me towards a deeper truth, where each small goodbye, be it silly or tense, tired or tender, is a chance to give thanks for the gift of this child, and to remember that they are neither my possession nor my identity.

I am not the author of their story, Lord, you are.

I am not their ultimate protector, Lord, you are.

This is both a relief and a surrender as I release the prideful notion that my proximity secures their safety.

I have no shield for which to guard them, but your unending faithfulness.

No comfort to console them, but your transcendent peace.

No assurance to offer them, but your perfect love.

Creator God, who parents us all, hold my heart as I practice letting go.

Hold this child as the school day begins.

Every day my child is more aware of this beautiful, hurting, complex world.

As their mind grows in understanding, may they also grow in faith, seeking and finding your presence, Lord.

Be to them a constant friend through the crowded and lonely hallways of these formative years.

When they feel anxious or insecure, remind them they are loved.

When they feel pressured to impress and prove their worth to peers, remind them they are already loved.

When they make mistakes, great and small, and feel the sting of shame, remind them that no matter what, they are fiercely and completely loved.

May this buoyancy of belonging fill them with a confidence to extend your generosity towards others.

May they have humility to learn from those who are different from them, and a soft heart for those who are struggling.

May each of their own hurts become a source of empathy and compassion, fueling the courage to choose kindness over what is popular or easy.

May they see themselves as part of your kingdom already breaking through, shining light into shadows with every action done in love.

Creator God who parents us all, hold my heart as I practice letting go.

Hold this child as the school day begins.

In this passing moment full of backpacks, buses, and bells, I pause and acknowledge your goodness, shown in and through this unique child and the person they are becoming.

May they open their heart wider to you today, allowing your hope to shimmer through them, even as they rest in the truth of who they are already who they already are, a beloved child of God, woven and held together by your gentle and mighty hands.

Let's pray together.

Dear Lord, what an awe and a wonder it is that you've trusted us with your most precious creation, these children that you've given to us to disciple and to shepherd, Lord.

I pray as this school year begins that your hand of protection would be over the schools in our area, Lord, and that your hand of protection would be over the teachers who are walking into those buildings every day, who have given their lives to educating our kids.

I pray that you would just protect the eyes and the ears and the hearts of our children as they learn about the world around them.

I pray that as they learn and they grow, that it would teach them how to ask questions, deep questions, that they would think critically about what they're being told.

And Lord, that all of those skills would translate to their faith, that they would more deeply ask questions about who you are, and through that questioning and that wandering and that wrestling, Lord, that they would find you and find you deeply and know you, place their identity on you, Lord.

I pray for the parents who are sending their kids off to school.

Would you just give them your overwhelming peace?

Would they rely on you and you alone, Lord, for the safety and the protection and the learning of their kids?

I pray for our families who are making the choice for alternative schools, that you would give them wisdom and discernment, Lord, that you would take away the pressure that they might feel to be perfect or to achieve, that they would just enjoy the time with their children as they watch them learn and they watch them grow, Lord.

As we go into this school year, we believe that your mighty presence is going to transform the lives of children, the lives of the teachers that our kids are in their classes, Lord, that your presence and your Holy Spirit would be in every hallway and in every school, Lord.

You are so much bigger than our systems that we have in place, Lord.

I pray that we cast our fears upon you and that we trust you this school year with everything that it has ahead of us.

It's in your precious and holy name, Lord, that we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Berkeley.

You may be seated.

Welcome to Revived Church.

My name is Pastor Kyle Morse, and I'm excited that you're joining us, and I'm excited to open God's Word with you.

If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn to Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Uh, we're gonna finish up a sermon that I intended to finish two weeks ago that I just hadn't preached in a long time and got carried away.

And so we got to come back to this and then we're gonna pause our Acts series for about three weeks, and I want to encourage you to make sure the next three weeks, as much as you were able, that you would commit to being here, we're gonna be looking at our vision as a church through the lens of where we've been and where we are right now and where we're going.

And so it's gonna be an exciting few weeks as hopefully many of you, you'll get caught up on the story of Revived Church.

We've been a church for, I think, 38 years.

We've been a church 38 years, and uh God's done some incredible things, and uh we want to celebrate those things as well as look forward to the things that he's doing.

And so that series will start uh next week.

If you were not here two weeks ago, I want to get us caught up together so that we're tracking and we're moving along through this text.

We started last week with some simple math, and I told you I'm not a math guy, but thankfully the math and the equation that was set up in Acts chapter 15 in the first half, it's simple math, and it's the equation of salvation.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

It answers the question, how is a person saved?

And the equation of salvation, as we put on the board a couple weeks ago, is Jesus plus blank equals salvation.

And really, this is the question that's at the entire center of Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

What does it mean for a person to be saved?

How is a person saved?

You see, the gospel, it was going out throughout the ends of the earth.

And in chapter 15, we see the very thing that Jesus promised in Acts chapter 1, verse 8 becoming true.

Acts 1:8

What began in Jerusalem on Jewish soil had spread to Judea and to Samaria, and now it was spreading to the ends of the earth.

The gospel was going everywhere.

And there were some Jewish believers as the gospel was going out and as people were being saved by Jesus' grace, there were some Jewish believers who raised their hand and said, Hey, hold on, hold on.

We know Jesus is good and all, but these people who are outside of the Jewish nation, these people who are not Jewish, they need to do more in order to experience salvation.

They need to be circumcised, they need to follow the Mosaic law.

And so in their mind, the eval the equation of salvation went something like this: Jesus plus circumcision plus the law equals salvation.

Now, they weren't saying that Jesus was unnecessary.

They believed in Jesus.

They had been baptized, they had received the Spirit of God, but they were essentially saying Jesus is necessary, but Jesus isn't sufficient.

You need Jesus, but you also need circumcision and you need the law, and you need your own human effort in order to finish the job.

All of these people who are coming to Jesus, that's great and all, but they need to be a little bit more Jewish.

And so their equation, Jesus plus circumcision plus the law equals salvation, it brought about a huge debate in Acts chapter 15, a monumental debate, the kind of debate that you just can't agree to disagree or move on to the next thing.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And so what we see in Acts chapter 15 is we see all of the who's who of the early church leadership, Paul and Barnabas and Peter and James, all of them gather together in what's known as the Jerusalem Council, and they have this big debate on how is a person saved?

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Is a person saved by being circumcised and following the law?

Or when Jesus came, did he fulfill all of that stuff in the Old Testament and now a person is saved by grace and grace alone?

And so Peter stands up as we read a couple weeks ago, and he stands up and he speaks on behalf of these Gentile believers who these Jewish people want to jump through all of these hoops in order to experience salvation and come into the family of God.

And he stands up and he says, Hey, listen, God knows the hearts of the Gentiles.

God, he doesn't look at outward performance, he doesn't look at religious checklists and duties, but instead, he looks at the heart.

He makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile.

In fact, Peter had this up-close personal experience where God led him to a man named Cornelius, a Roman centurion, literally the enemy of the Jews.

And God not only saved Cornelius, he saved his entire family, they were baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit.

And so Acts chapter 15, verse 9 says that God cleansed their hearts by faith.

Acts 15:9

They hadn't been circumcised, they hadn't been keeping these Jewish ceremonial laws, they hadn't checked all the boxes, and yet God had given them his spirit, had already demonstrated his acceptance of them.

And so in Acts chapter 15, verse 10, Peter he asked this incredible question.

Acts 15:10

He says, Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

In other words, here's what Peter said to all of these Jewish challengers who came against the grace of Jesus Christ.

He said, Why in the world would you require something from people that God doesn't require for salvation?

And then Peter gives the answer in verse 11.

He says, We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.

And that's a mic drop moment.

That's a walk out of the room moment.

And that's the gospel.

If you are saved today, if you are a follower of Jesus and you understand the gospel, then you know that you are saved by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone.

There's nothing that we bring to the table.

It's not Jesus plus circumcision or keeping the law.

It's not Jesus plus our church attendance.

It's not Jesus plus our 10% of tithing.

It's not Jesus plus being a good person or good morality.

It's not Jesus plus get your life cleaned up and then you can be saved.

It's Jesus plus nothing equals salvation.

And that is the equation that we see set up in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Jesus plus nothing equals salvation.

Christ's finished work on the cross is what actually makes us worthy to be in the presence of God.

Amen?

That's gotta be good news or we're in trouble.

Now, before we get back into Acts chapter 15 and go into the text and read it, I want us to understand something that's also happening in this chapter that is also very important.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

So this chapter is not just showing us how a person is saved.

This chapter is now showing us how when a person is saved by grace, that the grace of Jesus Christ is meant to invade every aspect of their life.

Listen, I hope that you realize the more that you follow Jesus Christ and the more you surrender your life to him, it's actually the more grace you need.

If you're at a place where you're thinking that you don't need the grace of Jesus Christ in the same way you needed it when he rescued you and saved you, you're in a dangerous spot.

Because if you are a follower of Jesus and you really understand the transforming nature of grace, you realize you need it more today than you've ever needed it before.

And so this chapter, here's what it's going to show us.

As the gospel of Jesus Christ is going throughout the world, and as people are getting saved in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and now people are getting saved all over the ends of the earth, this part of Acts chapter 15 is going to show us what does it look like for all of us to live in community with one another?

Acts 15 · chapter mention

What does it look like for this one big family under God to be in relationship with one another, guarded and growing in grace?

Right?

Jew and Gentile, people with different histories and different cultures and different customs and different religious practices.

How do we how do we live together?

And that's what we're gonna see when our passage picks back up.

Let's pray and then we'll dive in.

Father, this morning, uh no one in this room needs to hear what I have to say.

It's just not very good.

No one online needs to hear what I have to say, but what they need is they need your precious spirit to take these words that are unique and special because they were breathed by you and to make these words come alive.

Not as words that we think might be antiquated or 2,000 years old, but words that are life and death today.

And so, God, would you do that work?

You are eager to do that work today.

God, we just take a moment right now, in each of our hearts, we just take a moment, we just ask for your presence right now.

Holy Spirit, show us what we need to see this morning.

Illuminate these words, speak to our hearts, change our minds.

Help us to live holy lives because holy lives are lives that are lived according to the manufacturer's design, and that's who you are.

You are the manufacturer of life.

And so when we live by your design, we experience love and we experience grace and we experience peace with you, but also with others.

It's in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Alright, Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

We're gonna start in verse 19.

I'm gonna read all the way through 19 through 35, and then we're gonna take a few minutes, we're gonna set up what's going on in this text because uh, if we're not careful, we'll read this back half of Acts chapter 15, and it's kind of like it's almost like theological whiplash happens.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Because what James is about to include in this letter to these Gentiles is a little bit confusing without context.

And so let me read verse 19.

This is the decision of the Jerusalem Council after coming together and hearing the arguments for how a person is saved.

Here's the letter that's being sent to Antioch to encourage the Gentile believers who are there.

And don't you know those men in Antioch, boy, they were on the edge of their seats.

If you got it, you got it.

Verse 19.

Therefore, my judgment is that we should not make trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but we should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

For from ancient generations Moses has had every city, those who proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders and the whole church to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

They sent Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, leading men among the brothers, with the following letter.

The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Sicilia, greetings, since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having to come to one accord to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Paul and Barnabas, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you all the same things by the word of mouth.

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to not lay on you any greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood, and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these things, you will do well.

Farewell.

So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter.

And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.

And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words.

And after that, they had spent some time.

They were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them.

But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also.

So the debate is solved, the major debate of how a person is solved.

The answer is a person is saved through faith and grace in Jesus Christ.

And so now we have the church leaders who draft this letter, and these trusted leaders, they send these Gentile believers this letter, they're encouraged, especially the men.

And then look at verse 28.

It says, For it had seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay hands on you, no greater burden than these requirements.

I love that.

These men are walking in such lock step with the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God is so leading them.

They're keeping in step so closely with the Holy Spirit that they are actually able to speak on behalf of God.

There's literal unity in the room around this decision that not only do they feel good about it, but they know that the Spirit of God is pleased with this decision.

They're not simply asking a question like, hey, what are we allowed to require of these people?

No, they're asking, what is the Holy Spirit doing?

And how should we live in response to him?

You see, the Holy Spirit in this moment is creating a new people.

He's teaching people how to live a new life in a new identity together.

It's not just about the Spirit of God saving isolated individuals.

No, these individuals are coming together and they're making up a community.

You see, this is what the gospel does.

The gospel brings people together who would not naturally be in community with one another.

The gospel breaks down all kinds of barriers that would never be touched if there wasn't this unifying belief in Jesus Christ.

People would not naturally worship together or eat together.

People who would never have called one another brothers and sisters, all of a sudden now they're gathering under one roof.

Now, did you notice the church leaders here?

They included some instruction on how the Gentile believers were to live as part of the family of God in this new community.

And this is confusing at first read because didn't we just spend a whole lot of time saying that salvation is Jesus plus nothing?

And now, James in this letter, he's like, great, you guys are all saved by grace.

Now, just here's four things you need to stop doing.

Like it sounds a little contradictory.

I mean, which is it?

Is it salvation by grace alone, or is it salvation by my behavior?

See, this is where we have to understand the difference between salvation and transformation.

The gospel is not change your life, get your stuff together, and then God will accept you.

That's the opposite of the gospel.

That is religious legalism.

The gospel is this God has already accepted you through Jesus Christ, therefore, he's going to change your life.

You see, the reality is this Jesus plus nothing equals salvation, but guess what?

When you experience that kind of grace in salvation, Jesus changes everything.

He changes everything about you.

If you have a Bible outside of the Oxjournal, flip over to 2 Corinthians 5.17.

In this one little verse, Paul's reminding the church at Corinth of who they are.

He's reminding them of their identity.

2 Corinthians 5 17 says this therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation.

The old is gone and the new is here.

What is Paul saying in that moment?

And what are we reading in Acts chapter 15?

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Here's what we're reading: Salvation is not the end point.

The goal of life with God through Jesus Christ is not that one day we would realize that we need the grace of Jesus for our salvation, that we would pray a little prayer and that we would go back to life as normal.

Just kind of waiting for heaven to arrive.

That's not what salvation is all about.

In fact, what Paul is saying here is that when you become a Christian, when you are in Christ, your entire identity has changed.

The old is gone.

The person you once were, you are no longer that person.

Instead, there is a new person that has emerged, a change of identity.

You are, we are being transformed.

The Holy Spirit does the work of changing our hearts and our desires and our thoughts and our relationships, our worship, the way that we live with one another.

And so the moment we trust Christ, the moment we experience the equation for a salvation, Jesus plus nothing equals salvation, that is justification, which is a fancy word of saying God has declared us righteous because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

But then the next part comes.

Justification is a one-time act.

The whole rest of our lives is what's called sanctification.

You know what sanctification is?

That painful moment when you realize that you're not who you want to be.

That painful moment when you realize that that thing that you've struggled with, man, it just seems to keep coming up over and over and over again.

You're tripping over your feet, you want to be different, but there's a fight to be different.

And so in that lifelong work, he changes our desires and our habits, he changes the way we think.

He teaches us what to love, and he teaches us to hate the things that destroy us and destroy others.

And so justification is God's declaration over us, but sanctification is God's transformation within us.

And both of those are acts of grace.

And so the question is no longer, what do I have to do for God in order to be accepted?

No, the question is because I have been accepted by God through Jesus Christ, how does that now change the way that I live?

So when Jesus comes into our lives, he changes everything.

It's not just about getting into the family of God, it's then by faith learning to allow God to shape us into being the kind of people who are part of his family.

Does that make sense?

So back to that list of what's included.

Look at verses 28 and 29.

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood, and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.

Farewell.

First, I want to just say this at the outset because everything we just read is odd language to our ears for the most part.

And so I just want to say this first and foremost: these things that are in this word are not antiquated, they're not 2,000 years old and therefore no longer relevant for us today.

These are actually principles that help us to evaluate how to align our lives with Jesus Christ so that we can become people who are a part of the family of God in identity.

We already are, but this is how we live into that identity.

Now, let me say at the start that this is one of those passages that scholars and theologians they've studied for years and years, and they're still arguing exactly over what was meant by James when he drafted this letter.

And so this is not a black and white explanation, but there are some principles that we're gonna see, regardless of the interpretation, that are transcendent.

So let me let me set some context for these examples that are given here because they are strange.

Many of these Gentile Christians, so Gentile Christians were those who were not Jewish.

They were living all throughout the Roman world.

Many of these Gentiles who had put their faith in Jesus Christ and were now living as part of the family of God, they were from places that were heavily dominated by idol worship.

Where you would walk into the city and there were literally temples to false gods everywhere.

We talked about this in the book of Revelation, that the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire was littered with temples to Zeus and other gods, all representing the Greco-Roman pantheon.

And so idol worship, which at its core is demonic worship, these places were filled with all kinds of holy, unholy, and detestable practices.

For example, within these temples, they would sacrifice animals to these false gods, and in some cases, those animals were strangled and the blood was consumed as part of the ritual.

Not only that, but there were all kinds of sexually dark and deviant immoral things that would happen in the place of a temple.

So it wasn't just about these animals who were being sacrificed, and then you would eat the meat and drink the blood.

There were also temple prostitutes, and there were things that were happening within the temple that were just a part of everyday life and worship that were actually evil and detestable.

And so what James might be doing here in giving some of these restrictions, he might be looking at these Gentile Christians who this is a part of their daily life.

He might be looking at them and going, hey, when you when you bow your knee to Jesus Christ, what you need to realize is Jesus Christ, he doesn't just kind of come alongside these other idols.

He is supreme.

Meaning, all of that idol worship, all of that showing up at the temple and sacrificing and eating this meat and drinking this blood and these sexual practices, you got to leave all of that behind.

That's not who you are.

That's who you were.

You're a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Don't mess with idols.

And that's consistent with what we see in the Old Testament, right?

God has a disdain when his people in the Old Testament worship and give themselves to idols.

So that's one way of looking at the text.

But there's another interpretation.

For me, this one is more compelling, but I think both are important as we think about what principles we are to take away from this.

You see, all of these Gentile Christians who had converted and were living throughout the Greco-Roman world and who had all of this in their past, who had this temple worship and this animal sacrificing and this sexual immorality, all of these Christians were now beginning to be in relationship with Jewish Christians.

And so you had all of these Jews who had scrupulously followed the Mosaic law.

Their entire lives were built around and programmed around and formed around the idea of these 631 laws that God had given in order to shape his people in the Old Testament, to set them apart from other nations.

Well, now something completely radical had changed.

Those Jewish Christians were no longer identified as people who followed the law as a way of pleasing God.

No, they were being identified as they were God's children because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

They were now in Christ, no longer bound by the law for their salvation, but they were bound by grace.

Well, but you also have this growing number of Gentile Christians.

They didn't follow the Mosaic law.

It wasn't a part of their everyday life in the households they grew up in.

Their history was not bound up in the law or in the sacrificial system.

And so now you have this group who has come to faith in Christ, they're filled with the Spirit, and there's a major dilemma going on.

How do we all get along?

How does the church move forward in unity?

Now, I want you to think about these requests in light of that interpretation.

These people, they're now going to be gathering, Jew and Gentile.

They're going to be gathering together with one another.

They're going to be sharing meals.

They're going to be in fellowship at the table.

And you've got this percentage of Jewish Christians who have spent the entire lives, spent their entire lives avoiding these foods, living under these dietary laws and customs.

Right?

They were forbidden to eat any kind of meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

They were forbidden to eat any kind of meat that still had blood in it.

They were forbidden from eating any animal that had been strangled to death.

And even though in this moment they had been set free from these aspects of the law, I'm going to tell you what, all of those convictions didn't go away for them overnight.

They had learned to live this way.

They had learned to eat this way.

They had learned to fellowship this way.

And although Peter had been given this beautiful vision of God, of this white sheet coming down from heaven, communicating that they had the freedom to eat the things that were unclean, that he had now made clean because of Jesus Christ, even though they had all the freedom in the world, many of them were not free to do it.

And actually, it was highly offensive for them to be in the presence of any of these kinds of things.

And so what we see here is we see an interpretation that says, hey, James is writing this letter and he's giving these instructions because he wants the church to walk forward in unity with one another.

And he realizes that you have a lot of people coming from a lot of different backgrounds.

And if you take all of this together, James was essentially telling the Gentile Christians, hey, you're a part of a new family.

And in order for there to be peace and unity, you have to think of your brothers and sisters who are Jewish in everything that you do.

And yes, you are absolutely free to eat that meat.

And yes, you are absolutely free to do those things by the letter of the law, but I'm asking you to practice something greater than the letter of the law.

I'm asking you to practice love.

To allow love to rule the decisions that you make.

So these requirements, they may have been doing two things at once.

They may have been James telling his Gentile audience, hey, don't go back to that old life.

Don't try to set your idols or your false gods alongside the worship of Jesus Christ.

That doesn't work.

May have been that.

Or it may have been James saying, hey, don't use your freedom in a way that unnecessarily divides your new family.

I actually think both principles are helpful for us.

And probably were both intended on some level.

And so I want to think about this passage in the context of 2,000 years ago to what it looks like today for us.

Because here's what I think James is laying out for us.

James is laying out for us, as people living in 2026, ways that grace can reach into our lives.

And these are ways that we can evaluate in our own minds and our hearts.

Has Jesus' grace reached that far?

First principle is this grace changes what we worship.

Grace changes what we worship.

Again, these Gentile believers, they were coming from very, very polytheistic places where there were multiple gods.

And again, it was a regular practice for them to go to a temple and to sacrifice an animal and to eat the meat from that animal and possibly drink the blood from that animal.

This was common practice in their day and age.

And so what the church leaders are doing in this moment, they're making sure that these Gentile believers, although circumcision is not necessary for their salvation, and honestly, following any of these requirements is not necessary for their salvation, he's making sure that they understand that when you give your allegiance to Jesus Christ, worshiping Him as the ultimate is the standard.

See, this is different for us because we're not going to like worship here today and then go grab a heifer and take it to a sun God temple and sacrifice it.

Like nobody's doing that in this room.

That's not the point for us.

But the point is actually the same from a heart perspective.

That each one of us in this room, we have a propensity to give our hearts.

We have a propensity to align our affections to other things that we put in an ultimate place other than Jesus Christ.

Right in the Old Testament, this is the story of the people of Israel.

Even though God had chosen them, even though God had made a covenant with them and God was faithful, they chose other gods over and over again.

We know the story in Exodus.

We studied it where Moses went up to get the law from God and he came down, and what had the people done?

They had literally built an idol to worship.

They had substituted the very presence of God with this idol that they had placed their affections on.

And so an idol is not just Zeus or some sort of false God that we worship.

An idol is anything good that becomes ultimate.

Anything that we begin to believe we must have in order to be okay.

And again, idols are not always bad things.

I've said that before.

Oftentimes they are good things that become the ultimate thing.

They can be our careers, they can be our children's accomplishments, they can be relationships, they can be success, money, reputation, possession, anything can be made an idol.

Even good things can become ultimate things.

And so a really good way of getting at the heart of what you might be looking at in your life as an idol is just to answer this really, really simple question.

What do I fear losing?

What do I fear losing?

What do I think about all the time?

When I'm anxious or afraid, where do I run?

What do I believe ultimately will finally make me significant?

What am I unwilling to surrender to Jesus?

Like I've got such a tight hold on it.

It's so important, it's become so ultimate in my life.

I'm actually not I'm actually not willing to let it go out of my hands and to hand it to him.

What I realized a long time ago after preaching some really bad sermons about this topic is the answer, the answer to idolatry or the answer to the things in our life that are oftentimes good but they become the ultimate, the answer to that, the anecdote for that is not to just try harder to stop loving these things.

The answer is actually to learn to love Jesus more.

To allow our affections to be so enamored with Jesus Christ and who he is that everything else just fades away.

I mean, that's what the lyrics of a song we're gonna sing in a moment.

Right?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

The response to anything in our lives, even the good stuff that's become ultimate, is not just to go, man, I need to stop loving that thing more, or that person more, or my career less, less, less, less.

It's to fix our eyes on Jesus, to worship him, to be so overcome with his word and his character that everything else is secondary.

This is where we need a new heart.

And so ask God to give you a heart that worships him and desires him and him alone.

Grace changes what you worship.

Second thing, grace changes how we use our freedom.

And Ben, I might have called you too early.

I'll let you know when to come out.

Grace changes how we use our freedom.

The letter clearly includes instruction for these Gentile believers in how they relate to their new Jewish brothers and sisters.

He's clearly saying, hey, you have the freedom to eat meat that's sacrificed to idols.

You have that freedom.

And Paul says this later in his letters.

He talks about this topic a couple of other times where he's looking at these believers who are living in these different places, and he says, You have the freedom to eat whatever you want to eat.

But there are some among you, there are some in your new family who do not.

And so the purpose of this instruction is to encourage these Gentile believers to actually use their freedom in a different kind of way.

For the Jewish people, they they just weren't comfortable eating meat sacrificed to idols.

They weren't comfortable eating meat, they liked their steak well, well, well done.

And so this was this was uncomfortable for them.

And so James is coming alongside this newly forming church, and he's saying, Hey guys, uh, hey, hey, hey, listen, I know you got the freedom, but when if you walk into that potluck with uh pork baby back ribs, if you walk into that, you you're actually gonna create a problem for the fellowship among the church and believers.

And so this is a request.

It's a request for Gentile believers to use their freedom to love and to serve these Jewish believers, not to use their freedom to indulge and to create hostility in the church.

He said, for the sake of worshiping together and for the sake of fellowshipping together, would you use your freedom to serve and to love your new brothers and sisters?

You see, this is one of those areas where I believe when when you really start to see the grace of Jesus Christ reach into your heart, this is one of the evidences.

It's one of the profound effects of grace of Jesus Christ in our lives.

We no longer look at situations and we simply ask the question, what am I allowed to do?

We look at our freedom and say, How can I use my freedom to love other people?

When grace is really beginning to reach your heart, you stop looking at how your own freedom can be used for your own benefit, and you start looking at how your freedom can build up the Church of Jesus Christ.

What will serve the most people?

What is the most loving thing that I can do with my freedom?

Because guess what?

Even within the church, we're coming from different backgrounds, different states, different cities, different families.

Hey, everyone in this room, from time to time, on some level, we are going to disagree.

Stephen will have to tell me the exact numbers on this, but I remember in late March, early April, everyone wants to forget COVID-19, but in 2020, when we found out that basically everything was shutting down, and we had very little information, and we were still trying to make the best decisions that we could without having all of the information, we sent out a questionnaire to you guys.

And the goal of this questionnaire was just to kind of get a feel for how everyone was looking at COVID and how everyone was looking at the shutdown.

And I remember one of the questions, and I know Stephen remembers one of the questions was how do you feel about masks?

Yes or no?

And Stephen, correct me if I'm wrong.

It was like 147 yes and 147 no.

It was higher, but yes.

It was higher, more people took part of the survey, but it was split down the middle, and you knew in that moment, as a pastor, you can't win.

And so you spent the next two years losing.

Now I want to applaud our church because I think we handled COVID not perfectly, and we certainly would do things different on some level now that we know more, but I watched most of you, and some people left, but I watched most of you disagree respectfully and remain in community and in unity with one another.

It wasn't the case everywhere.

Churches split, churches shut down, pastors quit.

And so I think for us as a church, we we get this on some level that we have an opportunity, each one of us, to use our freedom not to ask the question, what can I get, but how can I serve?

Here's a modern-day example of this that I think is really important because both sides of this are represented in this room right now.

And alcohol is a great example.

There are many of you in this room right now, you have the freedom to drink a beer, you have the freedom to drink a glass of wine, and the Bible speaks directly about drunkenness, but there is no prohibition in the Bible that says that any consumption of alcohol is wrong.

With that said, there are also many of you in this room, you might even agree with that statement, but you're not free to consume alcohol.

It's not something that your personal conscience will allow you to do.

Or maybe you grew up in a home where you watched.

One of your family members abused alcohol, and so you saw the effect of that.

Some of you like, you have a history.

Like I have a history, and so you're just like, I'm not gonna touch it.

I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm not saying it's categorically wrong to ever have a glass of wine or to drink a beer, but for me, I can't.

Now, if we were to take this principle and apply it, we would say this.

Hey, if you're in this church family, if you're a part of this church family, and you're in fellowship and you're in community with other people that are a part of this church family, the question is not, am I allowed to drink?

Because we know that the Bible doesn't prohibit you from drinking, but the question is, hey, if I know there's someone within my fellowship or my community that has a history either in recovery or have a history in abuse because of the effects of alcohol, or just have a history with this is not a personal, conscious thing that I can bear.

Here's what it looks like to apply this principle.

It looks like either to abstain or to be so thoughtful and intentional about a conversation that if you were to consume alcohol in the presence of that person, it's not a surprise.

I mean, I think this is one of the many examples we see today.

And the point is, how do we use our freedom to encourage one another to serve and love our community over and above ourselves?

I mean, what would a community look like this?

Not just with alcohol, but in every sense of what James is trying to get across here.

What would a church look like if every single one of us deferred to one another?

I'm not talking about deferring to one another on theological principles that we should be willing to die on a hill for.

I'm talking about in areas where there's disagreement and where there's personal conscience, where there may be that you're permissible to do it, but it may not be beneficial.

A community where people didn't make decisions based on their own preference, but each one was willing to surrender their rights for the sake of the family.

Now we're gonna see in Acts chapter 16, we're gonna see an insane example of this.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

When you turn to page to Acts chapter 16, Paul had a traveling companion named Timothy.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

And Timothy was someone who Paul walked with closely.

He basically was his mentee and he brought him up as a pastor.

Timothy's mother was Jewish, but his father was Greek.

And so when Timothy was born, he was not circumcised.

And so when you look into Acts chapter 16, something absolutely crazy happens.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Paul asked Timothy to be circumcised as an adult.

Why?

We know not for his own salvation.

But he asked Timothy to be circumcised.

Why?

Because he knew Timothy's heart.

And he knew Timothy was completely surrendered to Jesus Christ.

And he knew Timothy was going to pastor and minister to Jews, and he knew that for him to be most effective in that ministry to that group of people, he had to be circumcised.

And guess what?

He did it.

Timothy did it.

Not out of obligation, but guess what?

He did it out of love.

He chose to use his freedom to honor and encourage others.

See, our model for this is Jesus.

He can be the only model.

Jesus surrendered his rights to the throne room of heaven and came to earth to live as we live.

That's humility.

That's what it means to love someone else first.

Jesus had every right, and yes, he humbled himself.

Jesus had every right, and yes, he chose to serve and not be served.

Jesus had every right, and yes, he gave himself up as a ransom for us.

Grace changes how we use our freedom.

Last one quickly.

Grace changes how we live.

James concludes the letter by saying something very plainly.

Abstain from sexual immorality.

Now, when you take these four approaches, when you kind of parse them out, there are some things that are clearly meant to be instructive in the moment for these Gentile believers living with Jewish believers.

Right?

There's nothing in the Bible that says that today we can't eat meat with blood in it.

There's nothing in the Bible that says we can't eat whatever.

But here we see James in the letter by saying abstain from sexual immorality, which as we read scripture and as we read the rest of the New Testament, this is consistent in Paul's other writing.

The word here for sexual immorality, it's pornea, it's a catch-all term.

It refers to sexual sin, whether thought, desire, action, or behavior outside of God's covenant for marriage, between one man and one woman for life.

It's where we get our word pornography.

You see, these Gentile believers, as we said, they had come from cultures where sexual practices that scripture had forbidden were normal.

Sexual morality, it was intertwined with the culture and in some place with pagan worship.

And so James's message is simple.

You have been made new.

You belong to Jesus Christ.

Don't keep living that old life.

You see, it was entirely possible then, and guess what?

It's entirely possible now to gather faithfully with the church while remaining deeply enslaved to something that Jesus has intended us to set us free from.

And I understand what it means to be enslaved in sexual sin.

I've shared 21 years ago that I fell into an addiction, and by God's grace, my wife stood by me.

By God's grace, I stand here and go, hey, I got sin areas, but I've seen what freedom looks like in this area.

I know what it means to experience healing and forgiveness and freedom.

Even in the midst of pornography, even in the midst of you filling the blank with your sin, this is who God is.

This is how far the gospel reaches.

Because the gospel doesn't simply tell us don't do that.

The gospel says you belong to Jesus.

Your body belongs to Jesus.

Your desires belong to Jesus.

Your future belongs to Jesus.

Your sexuality belongs to Jesus.

It all belongs to Jesus.

We've been made new.

We've been given a new identity.

So that grace can change how we live.

Now, you may be sitting here and you're like, I feel in bondage to whatever.

It may not be something that sexual, and you may go, I don't know, I've been trying to do this for 10, 20.

Like one sermon isn't necessarily going to fix that, but Jesus can.

And I believe that if you're willing to humble yourself, if you're willing to repent, and if you're willing to ask the Holy Spirit for help, God will join you in that desire.

He'll join himself to you in that desire.

See, Jesus, He changes everything.

He changes what we worship, He changes how we use our freedom.

He changes how we pursue holiness.

He changes the way we see other people.

He changes how we worship and who we worship with.

Because he's creating something new, not just in us, but he's creating something new in us.

A new family.

And so let me just invite you to close your eyes for a moment as the band's coming out.

Let me just ask you a couple questions to consider.

And the question I'm not asking is, what do you have to do?

That's not what I'm asking.

What I'm asking is, where hasn't Jesus' grace reached yet?

Maybe it's your worship.

Maybe there's something that you're so afraid of losing that that thing or that person or that relationship has so captivated your heart, it's so captivated your affections, it's so captivated your worship that there's actually not room for Jesus.

Maybe it's how you use your freedom with someone else.

Maybe you're in a disagreement with someone right now, and it's on one of these kinds of issues where you have two people who love one another and have come to very different conclusions.

And those conclusions are not conclusions that we would die on a hill for, but those are conclusions that are deeply affecting your relationship.

And so, what would it look like this week to use your freedom in love to approach that person with humility?

Maybe it's how you live.

Maybe you feel stuck, maybe there's an area of your life where you are enslaved.

And today Jesus is inviting you to say, turn your eyes.

Turn your eyes upon me.

Look at my face.

The things that you're enslaved to, they'll grow dim.

And the light of my glory and grace, it will overcome you.

Father, this morning, as we respond in worship, would you move in our hearts?

Would you allow us to be honest this morning?

At least with ourselves, because you know all things.

Would we be the kind of people who are allowing your gospel to shape every part of who we are, allowing your grace to reach the places that maybe before this moment were off limits.

Because that's your desire.

Your desire is that grace would reach everywhere.

It's in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I'm going to invite you to stand.

And just as you stand, we have our prayer team who's going to come forward.

We also have a cross on either side.

And so today, a response for you might not be to talk to somebody.

It might just be to bring whatever it is that God's put on your heart to the cross.

Maybe it's a relationship that God is inviting you to use your freedom in humility.

Maybe God's inviting you to come up and just be at the cross and confess the areas of your life that have grabbed your attention and your affection.

Maybe it's an area that you feel trapped, stuck, enslaved to.

And this morning, this is just an act of surrender.

I'm going to invite you to respond.