Set Free to Live Free - Appreciating the Church - November 23, 2025

With a knock at the door, Saul began his destruction of the

church because he noticed that the followers of the way had put

so much value in Jesus and they had so much value in their

gatherings of believers. And I imagine the persecution

because it says they started going door to door and dragging

the followers of way out. It started with a knock at the

door. Barnabas arrived in Antioch to

hear about some of the Christians who had been

scattered that they had shared the message of Jesus with people

who were not real Jewish people. And so Barnabas came to see.

He knocked at the door. And when Barnabas walked into

that grand living room of that house, he saw the grace of God.

He saw the grace of God because there he saw Judah and Gentile

together worshipping Jesus, gathered together under the

banner and name of Jesus, where the Spirit of God was doing a

new thing in their midst. And he was amazed.

In the meantime, Paul would become a Christian.

And so Saul sent friends to go find, or actually Barnabas sent

friends go find. Saul, also called Paul, started

with a knock at the door. Hey Paul, it's time for you to

start teaching more people about Jesus.

We've got a Jew and Gentile audience that need to hear you

talk about Jesus and the law and how the Scripture has been

fulfilled. And so he travelled back with

them to Antioch. I imagine it started with

knocking the door in the Galatian churches as the

Judaizers came to see the freedom that was being enjoyed

by Jude and Gentile worshipping Jesus together.

And we want to come to your house church too.

But when they got in, they said you're not doing it right.

And so just in the same way that the church in Galatia had had a

crisis because of a knock at the door by the Judaizers, the

church in Galatia was experiencing the same thing, the

knock at the door. What's your automatic question

when someone knocks on your door, on your door, Who's there?

Who's there, Who's there? Do I open the door ready for an

attack, or do I open the door in freedom?

I hope you actually asked that before shooting.

This has become a problem in North America that people are so

afraid of the knock at the door. But she first asked questions

later instead. But that's how it starts, with a

knock at the door. Maybe you've had a knock at the

door and there's there's someone there wanting to talk to you

about Jesus in that church, and maybe you're afraid of being

that kind of person. He walks down the hallway of

your dormitory and knocks on the door.

I'm so grateful for the person that came and knocked on the

door of my dad when he was an engineer with Lockheed Martin,

knocked on the door and stuck his head in and said, hey,

O'Brien, you ever read the Bible?

And my dad, sort of taken aback, said, no, but I know it.

I was in church every day of my life almost growing up.

And the guy said, I I didn't ask if you knew it.

I asked if you read it and disappeared.

The next day he came back, hey, O'Brien.

And he came in with a great big Bible and he plopped it down on

my dad's desk and said, there you go read it.

And my dad did started with a knock on the door.

And it launched my dad on a spiritual journey to change the

trajectory of my own life because someone dared to knock

at the door. Now he was pointing the way to

Jesus, but he was also inviting my dad into a fellowship of

Christians. And my dad began to attend with

him and others a fellowship of Christians, a variety of groups,

Full Gospel Business, Men's Association, Charismatic Home

groups, Baptist Church. And it set my dad on a new

spiritual jacket of life under the all in Christ in his word.

My dad really appreciated the church and the churches.

And one of the things he told me when when I became a pastor and

indicated I wanted to go into ministry, we went on a walk and

he sat on the walk. He said, well, I have to ask you

to not become one of those kind of pastors.

And I said, OK, what's that? He says one of those kind that's

always criticizing all the other churches.

Instead, appreciate the churches of Jesus.

I wonder how it is with you. Are you appreciating the

churches of Jesus? I sort of accept you're

appreciating this one. You're here.

Do you really appreciate the church?

So the situation that Paul was writing to when you wrote the

letter we call Galatians is that there were people who were not

appreciating the church as Jesus was constructing it, Jew and

Gentile together. They were not appreciating it.

And it created a kind of doubt within the congregation where

those who were Jewish were wondering, well, do we really

have the right kind of church? And those who were Gentile were

wondering, do I really belong in this church?

And maybe they were running around with a sense of trauma

for being rejected. And so Paul was having to

reconstruct the church to rebuild the appreciation of the

church. Do you know when you appreciate

something, it means the value of it keeps going up and up and up

and up and up. My mom passed away in October

and in preparation of of her on incoming death, she knew it was

coming. She would go around the house

and she would put little stories with pictures and little jars

and she would put a price tag with them and she said don't

throw this away without seeing if it's worth something.

It looks like junk but it's not. My mom appreciated it because of

the story. So do we.

The value kept going up, but for someone else looking at it, they

might think, oh, that's just jump.

And so they put it in a garage sale and they miss the true

value of it, She says. I know that picture is sort of

ugly, but it's worth about $13,000.

I'm like, I'll never go in my house.

And so I wonder, we live in a day and age where a lot of our

friends don't really appreciate the church, and we get nervous

about that. We feel anxious about that.

And Paul is riding exactly into that situation.

And he's riding in such a way that he's wanting them to

appreciate now what they have, that they're actually part of a

bigger story. They're part of a story that's

intensely personal. And they're part of the story

that's going on and on and on. It's an ongoing story.

So I hope this adds a little bit of life to a text that you might

feel like this seems a little drunk, but here we go.

OK, here's the text from Galatians Chapter 3.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

He says this. Listen, brothers and sisters,

let me take an example from everyday life.

Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant, we

might call it a will. You know, people who are getting

ready to die should have a will, and those who are not should

also have a will. But this is what he's describing

here. Just as no one can set aside or

add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is

in this case. The promises were spoken to

Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say unto

seeds, meaning many people, but to your seed, meaning one person

who is Christ will come back to that central oral confusion.

What I mean is this. The law introduced 430 years

later does not set aside the covenant previously established

by God and thus do away with the promise.

Now wait a minute. The law.

We probably ought to personalize this a little bit and give it a

capital L Is that the right word?

L? There it is an L, the capital L

of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which are

big numbers in your army called the Torah.

And he's saying, look, when the Torah was given, the law was

given. It came 430 years after God had

made a promise to Abraham. Now, the if you were to ask

people who was more important, Abraham or Moses, to whom the

law was given in their daily life, they were probably more

keyed up about Moses. And so Paul's reminding them

there's actually another promise given.

We talked at length about it last week, the promise to

Abraham to create a family and through him to bless all the

nations of the world with a special blessing and

inheritance. And so he says, look, when the

law came, when the Torah came, even though it was 430 years

later, it didn't do away with what God promised to Abraham.

Here's why verse 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law,

then it no longer depends on the promise.

So he's saying God's covenant is like a will.

It's a promise that's been activated.

Appreciate it. Appreciate the will more than

you appreciate the law. For if the inheritance depends

on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, But God

in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

Why then was the law given at all?

It was added because of transgressions until the seed to

whom the promise referred had come.

The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.

A mediator, however, implies more than one party, but God is

1. Is the law therefore opposed to

the promises of God, particularly the promise given

to Abraham? Absolutely not, for if a law had

been given that could impart life, then righteousness would

certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up

everything under the control of sin so that what was promised

being given through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to

those who believe. We're going to come back to

that. It's like, wow, look at Paul's

dense argument. He's like a lawyer who just has

constructed an argument where every sentence takes you one

more step to his grand conclusion.

So you got to follow along. You got to turn on your coffee

buzz, pay attention. Here we go.

Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under

the law. Custody.

Have any of you been in custody? You don't want to tell us.

Maybe, maybe you were, you know you, you got taken up.

But by custody, he doesn't mean you were literally arrested.

But he takes the language. He's Infirmary.

He means you're not of age yet. So you are under the custody of

a guardian. A parent is, is there anybody

here who's 17, 1819 You're adults.

You know, if if you're 17 and, and you sign up to go on a

retreat, some groups are supposed to ask their parents

for permission. And you're like, I'm in

university, I'm 17. Why are you making me go get a

permission slip from my parents? It's because you are in custody.

OK. Do you get it?

This is the use. This is the idea of the use of

the term. It's difficult.

I told you before the coming of the stage, we were held in

custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come

would be revealed. So the law was our guardian

until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.

Now he's talking to the Jewish believers.

The Jewish believers were under the law.

Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

How many of you when you came to university and you're 18, when

you're like, yes, I'm an adult, I'm free.

Not really true. Guess who's paying the bill?

But this is the idea. And so he goes on to say, Look,

so in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed

yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor

Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs

according to the promise. What I'm saying is this, that as

long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave.

Although he owns the whole state, the heir is subject to

guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.

So also when we were underage, we were in slavery under the

elemental spiritual forces of the world.

Mind blowing, Yeah, speaking to the Jewish believers in the

churches of Galatia. But when the time set had full

account, God sent his son, born of a woman born under the law,

to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption

to sunshine. This would have been mind

blowing to the Jewish believers. They're like, wait a minute, we

thought we were sons the whole time, he says.

You didn't fully have your inheritance yet.

You hadn't realized the full benefits of your sonship yet, so

you might as well have just been a slave in that state because it

wasn't yours yet. But now in Christ, you have been

adopted to a full sonship. You get your inheritance because

verse 6, you are his sons. God sent the Spirit of His Son

into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out the Spirit who calls

out haba ha. So you are no longer a slave,

but God's child. And since you are his child, God

has also made you an heir. Wow, I think Paul wanted them to

appreciate you're part of a bigger story.

You keep letting the story in with a with Moses, but you need

to go back a little bit further. Let's go back all the way to

Abraham because God made a promise to Abraham where the

righteous will live by faith. And he uses a metaphor here to

say that the the promise made to Abraham and his seed is now

fully fulfilled in the person of Christ, his seed.

So he's saying there's a long line.

And if you were to read the genealogy in Matthew, you would

see a long line going from father Abraham.

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

This is a reference to who comes after him.

And he says it's not really just a plurality of children.

It's actually this main child Jesus who would be born.

And so Paul does some work here to connect the promise of

Abraham to the promise of Jesus and then to those who believe in

him. And if you are of Christ, he's

saying you're part of this. You're part of a bigger story.

You know, when you learn the story of your parents, sometimes

your appreciation for them goes up.

Maybe you learn the story of a grandparent and your

appreciation goes up because you're like, wow, they have a

struggle. Look who they became and maybe

you find some hope in it. Paul wants them to understand if

you're part of the church, you're part of a bigger story.

It's a story that goes back to the past.

It's a story that comes from arise in the present for you,

but also has a great future. It's a bigger story.

It behooves you become familiar with it.

And so in a sense, Paul is teaching them how to read what

we call the Old Testament. He's teaching them how to read

the Old Testament through the limbs of Christ and to go to

Abraham instead of getting just mired down and stuck in the law

that was given, he says, for a season.

And so the right reading of the law, the right application and

fulfilment of the law in our lives will be seen when we see

it through Christ. And we go back to Abraham.

What was God doing there? How was he showing how to live

in relationship to him? Of Abraham it said he became the

friend of God. Maybe in Christ Jesus now both

Jew and Gentile can be the friend of God.

We're part of a bigger story. If you're part of a bigger

story, the lessons are infinite. This is the great thing about

the story is that it's been given to Abraham, granted to him

by God's favour. It was a gift.

God picked up Abraham by grace. God gave a promise to Abraham,

and Abraham didn't earn it. He just believed it.

And so I'm part of a bigger story just by God's choosing and

grace is my Lord. Same thing.

Because it's mind blowing. It's really personal and and

Paul's trying to remind them just how personal this story is.

And there's a couple parts of it.

It's personal even for the Gentiles because their problem

was that they were locked up under the control of sin.

This was a common belief. Just ask the Jewish person

what's the the Gentile problem? They're sinners and we don't

like that. But, you know, if you had a

problem with your neighbor and you're like, look at their life

and how they live, and you were really, really frustrated, you'd

be like, wow, they're just sinners.

Maybe your neighbor just does something that they don't even

need to do. Like this week, I reflexively

landed on this. I'm walking across.

I've been trying to park in front of my house, and I

couldn't fit the van into that spot.

And Ellen says to me, oh, she'll move up.

But she was being a screenager. She was stuck in her phone and

she didn't move up even though she was parked in two spaces.

I was so frustrated. And so I just said to Alan, I

hate when people do that. Actually, I think I said I hate

people who do that. I was so frustrated and the

Jewish problem with the Gentiles was that their problem to them

was they're just under sin. But Paul here calls it out and

says, yes, we were all locked up under the control of sin, for

this is what Scripture does. Scripture gives us sort of God's

parameters that says here is the worldwide global problem,

www.lockedupunderstand. This is our problem, our common

problem, our common address. But the Jewish problem wasn't

just that they were under sin. They were also under the law,

for they had committed themselves to this set of

covenant issues of either blessings or curses.

You can go back to last week's message and review it.

So they needed to appreciate that they were under the custody

of the law and locked up, almost as if they were immature, not

yet fully realizing their inheritance.

For their inheritance was contained in one person.

It was contained in Christ Jesus who was coming, who would live,

who would die on a cross, be buried, defeat the powers of sin

and death and be raised from the dead as evidence of it, ascend

into heaven and then give an incredible blessing.

The Jewish problem of being under the law and being under

sin, they understood in the matter of slavery to say we are

actually enslaved to this. So if you sort of study the

psychology of sin, instead we become enslaved to things.

Something that was good started out in our life and became an

addiction to which we couldn't shake free.

Something that was good in our life became something we relied

on our life and they controlled us.

We are enslaved by it. Russell Moore recently wrote how

AI is sort of like the idols described in the Old Testament,

and he says we must be careful that we are not enslaved by it.

And this is what idolatry does. It takes something that's good,

then we give ourselves to it, and it has powers over us.

Enslaved. So both Jew and Gentile then

have a common testimony. So in Christ Jesus you are

children of God through faith. For you all were baptized into

Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ.

There's neither Jew nor Gentile, nor slave or free, nor is there

male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham, see.

And heirs according to the promise.

So I'm part of the bigger story, and it's really personal.

I mean, no one got baptized for Diego.

He was baptized. It was intensely personal.

He got in the water, he was put under the water.

He came up above the water. It's just descriptive of his

intense personal experience with God, that now he is with Christ,

who died his death in sin, was buried in death, common death

with us, but raised to life. I'm now denied with Christ.

That same power is at work in US.

The power of the Holy Spirit is at work in us.

So we're going to have a personal story.

All of you, I hope, have a personal story of your encounter

with God and how He is freeing you, empowered sin and death,

and freeing you to live into the power of His life in Christians

so that you know He loves you. It's personal.

And when you appreciate the personal stories of people in

the church, you'll appreciate the church a little more.

The danger of coming to church for the first time when your own

life is a wreck is that you look around and you're like, the only

thing I see that's problematic here is that everyone is

sleeping. But they all seem to have their

life going pretty well. They clean up good.

They don't smell hungover, and they seem OK.

And so the, the misconception is that our lives are all OK, that

we have no struggles, that we never had a struggle, and that's

why we came to church. But that's not the truth.

The truth is we have a very personal story of God freeing us

from condemnation under the law, that we have a personal story of

God freeing us from the shame of our slavery and sin.

And we have a personal story of God continuing to help us grow.

Right. Do you?

Yes. Yes, I heard you all say I do,

right? Yeah, I do.

So then we have our common testimony.

And if you learn the common testimonies of people in small

group life and time over coffee, if you say, hey, I'd like to

meet up with you and hear your story, you'll love your church

even more. You'll love the church even more

when you know the story. And then the third thing, it's

an ongoing story and you're part of it.

And Paul wanted them to know you're part of an ongoing story.

So then I think This is why he emphasized the metaphor of the

child. When you look at a child, do you

think, oh, their story's done? No.

When you hold a baby, you think, my goodness, who will they

become? I mean, I watched one of my

children run around the living room and come through that

circle in the kitchen and surprised me.

And I looked at them and I thought, where did you come

from? You're amazing.

But I always wonder, what will they look?

And so whenever we use and accept the moniker of I'm a

Child of God, it immediately says, hey, my story is not done.

I'm a child of God. My story's not done.

There's still a story to be written, and I'm going to get to

be a part of it. And indeed, we are in

relationship with the God who rejoices to call us children and

not robots, children and not Ottomans.

We're children because now we're participating in writing the

story of the Kingdom of God. Look how Paul says it.

Look, he says, when the time set had fully come, God sent his

son. A son means there's some kind of

story coming, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem

those under the law, that we might receive adoption to the

sonship. There's a story coming.

Your story's not finished even if you fail an exam.

Your son's not finished even if you really mess up in a

relationship. Your story is not finished even

if you lose a game. Your story is not finished as

your son and daughter now of God because you are his sons and

daughters. God sent the Spirit of his Son

into our hearts that the Spirit who calls out ABBA father so

that you're no longer a slave, but God's child.

And since you are his child, God has made you and care.

And what are you an heir of? What is your inheritance?

Paul had already said your inheritance is the Holy Spirit.

Your inheritance is the Holy Spirit.

He now has you calling out in prayer, ABBA Father, say

anything ABBA Father. And if you call out ABBA Father,

it means the story is not finished.

There's still a story to be written.

There's still something coming. And when you see a church that

calls out, ah, the Father, you know the story's not over for

that church. They are still praying.

They are still calling on God. If you find a church that's

committed to the life of prayer for a people, you know that

story's not finished because they're still calling out to the

God and raises the dead. They're still calling out to the

God who changes things. They're still calling out to the

God who draws people to himself. They're still calling out to the

God who sets people free. Their story's not done.

It started with the Malik. I wish I could tell you the full

story of the Moravians and Count Zeisendorf.

It looks like a very pleasant guy, doesn't he?

Count Zeisendorf, Ludwig Zizendorf.

He grew up in a in a home that was committed to Jesus, but a

home that had power, had position, and had land.

But after youth, Zizendorf believed that his vocation in

life was to win souls for the Lamb, the Lamb of God.

And one day there was a knock at the door, and a man named

Christian David showed up and said, hey, we need help.

We're running for our life and we need a place to live.

We've become refugees in our own land.

That's actually Germany. I don't know if any of you

recognize anybody know that was Germany.

Yeah. There we go.

And he was, that's modern day Germany, but he grew up in an

area called Saxony. And that area had now

experienced over 200 years of oppression of people who are not

a part of the official state church.

They were followers of Jesus and there were lots of different

groups, but over 200 years of persecution and they were almost

wiped out. And so they came, right?

Christian David said, Would you give us a place to live?

And the count says the north, moved by the story, offered land

on the estate's hilltop. And there they established a

place called Hermit, the Lord's watch.

The Lord's watch, like guardians on a wall.

And before you knew it, multiple families came, and these

families came from all types of different groups.

It's not going to mean anything to you, but I'm going to read it

to you. Pietists, Lutherans,

Separatists, Schwinn King Felders, spiritual refugees of

every kind, they all came. And before you know it, this

group of people who came from all kinds of different

backgrounds, trying to live together in the same place.

Do you know what they started doing?

Fussing. They started fussing.

There was a crisis in the church.

They started fussing together about who was doing it right,

who had the right way. Sounds familiar.

Sounds like Antioch. Sounds like Galatian.

Sounds like made in the place they started fussing.

Ziesendorf really showed himself as a leader.

He moved out of his estate and had a small Hut built in the

village of Hernhut, and there he began to visit people daily.

He began to pray with people daily.

He began to teach the word of God daily.

He called them into a covenant of how to live together.

It was called the Brotherly agreement.

Nothing seemed to really be changing though until August

13th, 1727 and they were in a worship night together.

And they were. They liked worship nights too.

They were in a worship night together and the Spirit of God

moved among them and they began to weep and repent of their

heart heartedness and there was a fresh move of the Spirit of

God among them. They got so excited about it

that they began to organize themselves differently as a

community. There's lots to tell you about

it, but not for today. Here's the main thing I want you

to know is that they knew they were part of an ongoing story,

and so they organized themselves into prayer 24 hours of the day.

They organize themselves into 24 groups of prayer for every day

for 100 years. And out of that was born the

modern missionary movement among Protestant churches.

We're part of an ongoing story. Appreciate your church,

appreciate the churches. Beware the move to just

criticize, to disassociate, to feel embarrassed, to feel like

you always have to defend. Just admit the truth and then

say, our Father, there's an ongoing story.

That's great. Heavenly Father, I really thank

you. For the patience of my brothers

and sisters here today as we made our way through what feels

like a really difficult text, but it gives us glimmers into

how Paul wanted them to appreciate the church again.

And maybe we need a fresh touch. We need a fresh move of your

spirit to really appreciate each other and the church and what

you're doing that together we're part of an ongoing story.

So Lord, even now, we, we thank you for Jesus and we're we've

been baptized into Jesus and we're now clothed with Jesus.

We're clothed with the righteousness that Jesus

delivers to all. And we thank you as we come to

this table as a church where status doesn't play, where

degrees and pedigrees don't play, where being male or female

doesn't really play out in the standing before Jesus in the

cross, whether we were slave or free, where we're an

entrepreneur, we an employee, we know we stand a level ground of

the cross. And we say thank you for this

grace. Let's stand here.