Free People - Free to Be Free

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Aw, come on.

How are we feeling, church fam, today?

So good to be with you, everybody.

Welcome to Access.

If we've never met, my name is Jason.

I'm one of the pastors here.

Thrilled you came to church on July 4th, Independence Day weekend, everybody.

Honored you're with us.

Love it.

And normally I like to look right in the camera and say hello to our church family that's joining us in North Lakeland, Nbarto, and everywhere at church online.

But today, when I when normally when I do that, I say let's give each other a hand clap and welcome each other.

But today we're not doing that.

Today, I want you to give a special hand to someone really special.

Today I want you to honor yourself for showing up to church on a holiday weekend.

Come on, make some noise for you.

You're the best, everybody.

And I want to start there for just a moment.

It's Independence Day weekend, so we want to wish you a happy Independence Day, everybody.

And um, I want to take a moment before I jump into the message and do something that I rarely do, but it feels like the last couple of years I've had to stand up here and address a problem or a challenge or a tragedy that's happened in our nation.

But I want to take a moment and do kind of the opposite of this.

I want to take a moment, I want to celebrate and say thank you to God for our great nation.

Aren't you glad to be an American, everybody?

It's a big deal.

And we turn 250 years old and we still look foin, everybody.

We look good.

And I'm grateful.

And here's the thing you become the product of your focus.

Well, what that means is what you focus on determines the direction of your life.

And it's really easy because the news and all of our social media can be so toxic and so negative.

It can be really easy to miss the beauty of all that is happening in our country.

I've been all over the world, and there is no place I would rather be than America.

I love our country.

I'm grateful for our country.

God bless the USA.

I love it.

And I'm thankful for our freedom.

I'm thankful that we can gather and lift up the name of Jesus.

I'm thankful for the freedom of speech.

I'm thankful for all of our freedoms.

I'm thankful that we had a hot dog eating contest yesterday.

And I'm thankful in advance that tomorrow we will send the Belgian soccer team back where they belong to their dumb waffles.

Come on, somebody.

Like, I love our country.

And if you're not cool with the competitive pastor, you're in the wrong church, everybody.

Like, I love it.

I love it, I love it.

And here's the thing I want us to take a moment and just a moment, and I want us to offer God an offering of gratitude and praise.

Because again, like travel the world and see what other people have and come home and you'll come back with a different kind of heart.

I was in Honduras just a couple weeks ago.

People live in absolute squalor, they have little to nothing at all.

Today, a team of 12 ladies from our church will board a plane and go across the world to the nation of Kenya, and they will minister to people who live on in a year less than you spend in a day.

Like you don't understand how blessed we are as a nation.

In the book of Psalm, David says this, Psalm chapter 33, verse 12, he said, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

Psalms 33:12

So in a moment we're gonna pray together, and here's the thing America was founded as a nation on Christian principles.

And my prayer in a moment as we pray is that God will draw us back as a nation to it.

Like we're the most blessed nation in the world, but I pray that it doesn't come crumbling down, but that we will turn our hearts back to Jesus as a nation.

Here's the point, church.

You and I get to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

And in a world full of toxicity where people talk negatively about everything, may you and I stand up as a light of the goodness and the graciousness of our God.

Now that was serious.

Let me say something really fun.

One of my favorite things the last two weeks during the World Cup has been all these people from around the world that are coming to America.

Have you seen the videos of these people?

Like one dude is like, hey, don't believe the news.

This is a wonderful nation.

It's amazing.

Have you seen the Japanese men who discovered barbecue, Texas barbecue for the first time?

Or all the people who are trying to smuggle ranch out of the country because it's so good.

Come on, are you thankful for America?

Hey, if you are, stand up with me, everybody.

At all of our locations, stand up.

We're gonna pray.

We're gonna pray, we're gonna pray, we're gonna pray, and then we're gonna give God a shout of praise together.

God, thank you so much for our great nation, land that I love.

God, thank you for a country built on your principles.

Thank you for a country who strives to keep a moral code that honors you.

God, my prayer is this: you've been so good to us.

We turn our hearts to you with humility.

And we say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your blessings.

Thank you for the way you love us.

Thank you for the freedoms that we share.

God, it's really easy for the things that are common in our lives to get forgotten.

But today we want to pause and say thank you, thank you, thank you.

You are so, so good to us.

God, we don't want to turn a blind eye.

There's there's issues in our country.

God, we pray for our government, we pray for our president, for our Congress, for our leaders, we pray for our Supreme Court justices.

God, give all of them wisdom as they govern and lead our country.

God, we pray for a country to turn its heart back to you.

And God, my prayer is as a result of that that revival will break out in our land.

And God, may Access Church be a part of the solution and never a part of the problem.

Give us the courage to speak up where there's injustice and may we stand up for what's right.

May we love those who need love.

May we love our neighbor as ourselves because that's what you've called us to do.

We thank you for a great nation, God, one more time, and we worship you in Jesus' name.

If you're thankful for our country, would you say amen, amen, amen, amen?

Yeah, boy.

All right, you can find a seat, everybody.

I love it.

It's okay to love your country.

I want you to know that, and I love the USA.

All right.

Glad you're with us today, everybody.

Today, we are in part five of an eight-week message series.

Eight weeks is a long time, but every summer we go through a book of the Bible.

This year we're going through the book of Galatians in a series that we've entitled Free People.

And this whole series is about learning what it means to live in and walk in the freedom that God created us for.

And so for eight weeks, we're digging through the book of Galatians.

If you've missed any of it, I'll summarize it very quickly.

Paul writes this letter to a group of churches in modern day Turkey, or as I've learned because of the World Cup, Turkey, I guess, you know.

Um, I don't know why.

How do countries change their names?

I don't know, but he writes this group of churches, this letter, and it's pretty strong.

And it comes out and he says, You're missing the heart of the gospel.

What is the gospel?

It's a fancy word that just means good news.

And you've missed the good news of Jesus.

You've added stuff to it, and you've made it worse than it was.

The gospel is Jesus plus nothing else.

You don't need to add anything to it.

The brilliant Christian author C.S.

Lewis calls it this.

He calls it the false doctrine of Jesus and anything.

It's the false doctrine of adding anything to Jesus, and you don't need to do that.

Jesus is enough to save you, change you.

His love, his grace can change everything in you to just live as if he's changed you.

That's the whole point of the message.

And so we've talked about those kinds of issues of what it looks like to live in freedom, but today I'm gonna break a rule.

Normally we go through the book just, you know, verse by verse, chapter by chapter.

We've gone through chapters one through three.

Today I'm gonna skip chapter four and jump to chapter five, and here's why.

Chapter four is going to be a real challenge.

Next Sunday, I want you to come and I want you to pray for your boy.

That whole chapter deals with slavery and moving from being a slave to seeing yourself as a son or a daughter of God.

It's gonna be full of landmines.

If you want to watch your boy tote a straight line, come next Sunday and pray for me.

But the reason I wanted to skip it is on this weekend, when we celebrate the freedom of our nation, by the way, estimates are that we set off one billion fireworks yesterday.

Take that, England.

Okay, like that.

On that weekend that we celebrate our freedom, chapter five is all about being free.

Series is called Free People.

Let's talk about what does it mean to live and walk in the freedom of God.

To get us started today, I heard a story some time ago about a man named Mike Anderson who got arrested and charged with an armed robbery.

It was a big deal, and he was sentenced by before the judge to 13 years in prison.

Okay?

Now the story's really interesting because he gets sentenced to this 13-year sentence, but then um I don't know all the details.

I know he was out on bond, so let's just kind of fill in a couple details.

Say he was scheduled to get picked up and start his 13-year sentence on Friday.

Well, he took the few days he had to get his affairs in order, get his finances set up, and then on Friday, he sat at home and waited to start his 13-year sentence.

He waited for the police to show up and nobody showed up.

Friday night came, no knock on the door.

He went to bed Friday and no one came to get him.

Then Saturday came and no one showed up, and Sunday came and no one showed up.

Pretty soon, several days had gone by, and he called his lawyer and he's like, Do I go turn myself in?

What do I do?

And the lawyer said, You can actually just wait.

It's on them to come get you.

That's what the sentence says.

And so he waited, and a few days turned into a week, a week turned into two, two weeks turned into a month.

One month turned into two, pretty soon months had stacked together, and a year went by, and no one came and picked him up.

So he just started living his life.

He he got married, had a child, joined his church, got involved in his church, started a business, did all kinds of stuff, and really turned his life around.

And 13 years later, to the day, this would have been the day that he was scheduled to get out of jail after a 13-year sentence.

All of a sudden there was a knock on his door.

And the police realized, because their computer system said this was the day to let Mike go, that they had never actually picked him up.

So they came, picked him up, and they said, You've actually got to start today.

Can you imagine that living with a false sense of freedom and then all of a sudden having that freedom stripped away from you?

And this happens, and then all of a sudden the story makes national news, and people are in an uproar over it.

And the judge actually goes and says, Look, you've we're gonna take those 13 years that you've turned your life around and we're gonna count those as your sentence, and everything is dropped.

It's as if you have served your time.

Now, here's the question I want you to answer for a moment, okay?

For those 13 years that Mike thought at any point there could be a knock on his door, for those 13 years where he was free and living not in jail, but not really actually free.

Here's the question.

Was he actually free?

Think about this for a moment.

He wasn't in jail, he was at home, he was living his life, but was he actually free?

And I would argue that the answer to this is no.

Because for 13 years he always had to be looking over his shoulder.

I promise you, for 13 years, this brother drove two miles under the speed limit.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, he probably didn't sign his name to anything, didn't put his social security number on anything, because he didn't want to do anything to get himself caught.

He was free physically, but his heart had to feel like it was enslaved in captivity.

You understand this, right?

And here's the question for you.

Are you like, are you actually free?

Like when you think about your life, when you think about your relationship with God, are you actually free or are you just going through all the motions?

Are you doing all the stuff that you think you need to do, but there's this part of you that's always kind of like looking over your shoulder?

There's always this part of you that's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

There's this part of you that feels like at some point the bottom's gonna fall out and God's gonna zap you for all the things you did before you came to faith in Jesus.

Like, are you actually free once and for all?

If you find yourself in any way, shape, or form feeling trapped by the weight of your past or your sin, if you find yourself not feeling really free the way God intends us to be, this is who Paul is writing to, and this is for you.

Galatians 5, verse 1.

Galatians 5:1

Paul comes out swinging and he says this he said, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Like that, like Jesus intended you to be free, and this is the reason he came, this is the reason he gave his life.

It is for freedom that Jesus has set us free.

And we love that word, freedom.

This weekend, I told you, we set off a billion fireworks in America to celebrate our freedom.

We love freedom.

The problem is, as Americans, we can conflate the definition of freedom.

Let me show you what American freedom looks like.

American freedom is always being able to do whatever you want to do.

Does anybody else like this?

I like doing whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it.

This is the American way.

If we want to have a hot dog eating contest, we will have a hot dog eating contest because we're Americans, we do whatever we want to do.

Here's another definition.

Another definition is never having to do something you don't want to do.

Like you can't talk to me that way.

Don't step on my right, stay off of my freedom, get off my yard.

Like, this is how we live as Americans.

And there's some beauty to this, but this it has this way of kind of running countercultural to the biblical definition of freedom.

Jesus was talking in the book of John, chapter 8, and he said this about himself.

John 8 · chapter mention

He said, So if the Son, talking about the Son of God, Jesus, so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Like what does that mean?

Here's the biblical definition of freedom that I want you to wrestle with today.

Biblical freedom is doing whatever Jesus asks us to do.

Like we think freedom is no rules, I can do whatever I want to do.

That's not true freedom.

Freedom is doing whatever Jesus invites us to do.

So today, as we turn to Galatians chapter 5, I want you to think about what freedom is.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

And I want to give you four different thoughts.

None of these are in your notes.

So I hope you can write in the margins, right really small, but write these down.

Number one, I need you to know that freedom is a gift and a choice.

Freedom is a gift, it's a gift freely given by Jesus from what he did on the cross for us.

But you have a choice.

It's the choice anytime a gift is ever given.

It's will I receive it and will I be grateful or will we reject it?

This is what it is.

So let's go back to the verse.

So when we read Galatians 5 1, we only read the first half of it.

Here's the rest of the verse.

Paul says, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Let's pause there for a moment.

Notice it's past tense, it's already over.

Like the freedom's already been decided for you.

That's why I said it's a gift, but it's also a choice.

He did his part, now you do your part.

Stand firm then.

And do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.

And we're gonna talk a lot about this slavery word next week, but I don't want to start here.

He says, do not let yourselves be burdened, weighed down.

And he uses this word that we don't use very much.

He says, by the yoke of slavery.

A yoke was this interesting device.

You don't really see them as much these days, but a yoke was this wooden device that would take two horse or two ox, and it would literally strap them together so that they could work together.

And the yoke was gonna do one of two things.

It was gonna either cause both of those animals to be able to work harder together, or if one was stronger than the other and pulled harder, it would literally break the neck and kill the other one.

So a yoke only gave two options.

It was either gonna require more of you, or it was gonna kill you when you're trying.

And this is where a lot of Christians live their spiritual lives.

I would say it like this: like if you can imagine that following Jesus is like walking down a sidewalk, and on either side of you, there's two ditches.

And if you're not careful, you'll just drift and you'll fall into one of the ditches.

Here's the two ditches we have to watch out for.

The first one is the ditch of religion, the second is the ditch of selfishness.

And a lot of people unintentionally they fall into these, and I want to start with this the ditch of religion, because here's what was happening.

Paul was writing to this group of churches who were these Jewish people, and there were these Gentiles who wanted to join them, they wanted to become these followers of Jesus, but there was this other group of people called the Judaizers.

And the Judaizers were coming in saying, listen, you can become Jewish, you can follow Jesus with us, you can become a Christian or a Christ follower, but you've got to follow the law.

What was the law?

The law was the 613 commandments, the rules, the regulations of the Old Testament.

And that's a lot.

That's a lot of rules for anyone to follow.

And if you go to the Bible and read, scholars say that there's a bunch negative and a bunch that are positive.

248 positive commandments, like you shall do this, and there's 365 negative ones, you shall not do that.

You understand this?

And here's how this played out for people.

It had to feel overwhelming because the belief was if you messed up on any of those 613 rules or laws, everything came crashing down.

This week I was kind of just scrolling on Instagram for a moment, and a clip came up from a TV show or a movie.

I don't even know what it was, it was just a clip.

And the clip shows this man, and he's like passed out hanging by some sort of some sort of strap, and he wakes up and he goes and it zooms out, and he's hanging off the side of a mountain, and you can see that he's strapped into a parachute that has gotten caught on the side of a mountain, and he comes to, and when he comes to, he tries to gather himself, and all of a sudden one of the straps holding him up breaks, and he finds himself holding on for dear life.

When I saw that, I I thought about us.

Because for a lot of us, the law is like hanging from a chain that has 613 individual links.

Imagine this.

Imagine you're off the side of a mountain hanging on to a chain, and you're hanging on for dear life.

Kinda doesn't even matter how good or how strong you are, if any of the links in the chain is weak, you will come crashing down as soon as it falls.

This is what the law had to feel like to those first century new believers, to that new church.

They're holding on for dear life, begging God, please don't let any chain break.

Please don't let any link break.

Please, please, please, please, please.

And they tried hard, exhausting themselves, trying to keep all of the commandments.

It's almost almost like this.

It's here's another way to think of it.

It's what I would call Santa Claus theology.

I I love Christmas, I love Santa Claus, I love all of it.

And uh this week I saw an ad online for Christmas in July sale, 20% off at whatever the store was, and it got me thinking about Christmas, and it got me thinking about Santa Claus, and I thought about the songs that we sing about Santa Claus, and some of them they're a little creepy.

You better watch out.

You better not cry, you better not pout.

I'm telling you why.

Santa Claus is coming to thank you, everybody.

Christmas cheer, right?

Um and then he's making a list, he's checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice.

Santa Claus is coming to sound.

It gets creepier, ready?

He sees you when you're sleeping.

Anybody ever thought about that?

He knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

Oh, you better watch out.

You better not cry.

Okay, so so hold for a moment.

Santa Claus theology says that there's someone watching every move you make, and they're taking notes and they're checking it twice.

They're gonna see if you're naughty or nice.

A lot of us, we don't think about it like this, but that's how we treat God.

That He's watching us as this cosmic kill joy, waiting to zap you if any of the links on the chain of your life come breaking.

This isn't how it is.

You can't fall into the trap of religion.

Relationship is what sets you free.

Third thing I need you to know is this is that freedom must be protected.

And this is fun, okay?

Now, you understand that we live in a very divided country.

People are on both sides of the aisle politically, and as a pastor, the last six, seven, eight years, honestly preaching about anything that that veers into the lane of politics feels like trying to walk through a field of landmines.

You never know what you're gonna step on and cause to explode in someone's heart.

But there's something I learned uh a long time ago that no matter how divided we feel as a country, there is something that is kind of political that I can talk about that everybody agrees about.

I don't care what party you vote for, I don't care where you lean politically, there's something I can say, and everybody claps and cheers.

It's when we take a moment and we say thank you to the people who give their life and who serve our country around the world in the military, in our armed forces, because they are there defending our freedom.

Come on, aren't you thankful for those who serve around the country?

And you understand it's the land of the free, we're free, because of the brave.

And it doesn't matter how divided we are politically, people understand that freedom has to be protected, otherwise, it will get eroded.

Freedom has to be protected or it will dissolve underneath you.

So people fight for our freedom.

When it comes to your freedom in Christ, you can't just receive it and walk in it, you gotta protect it.

Well, let's go back to Galatians 5, verse 1.

Galatians 5:1

It says this it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

So, what's your responsibility?

Ready?

Stand firm.

Go ahead and make this decision.

I'm not gonna fall into the ditch of religion.

I'm also not gonna fall into the ditch of selfishness.

I'm gonna stand firm in what I know to be true, and then do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.

Then, and then verse two, he makes it a little bit more practical.

He says, Mark my words.

I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised.

Anyone else besides me just tired of that word being in our sermons every week?

Ain't nobody have no idea how weird that is.

All right.

Says, if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.

Whoo, let me explain that.

Okay.

To this group of Judaizers, they they get a bad rap.

They were people who wanted.

To take the Jewish traditions, like the dietary restrictions and the covenantal act of circumcision, and apply it to all these Gentiles, which means non-Jewish people who wanted to follow Jesus, these new Christians.

They get a bad rap for it, but I think all they were really doing is defending what they believed to be the most important stuff.

This week I was like, where does all that come from?

And I need to read a verse from the book of Genesis.

Again, the word circumcision, it's all up in there a couple more times.

But here's why they held it to be so important.

Genesis chapter 17, God says, This is my covenant with you.

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

He's talking to Abraham, to you and your descendants after you.

The covenant you are to keep, every male among you shall be circumcised.

And he says, You are to, you are to undergo circumcision.

And here's the point: it will be the sign of the covenant between you and me.

Anytime you read your Bible and you see the word sign, ask this question.

What is a sign?

It's something that points to something else.

And he's saying, like, God's saying to Abraham, the reason I want the circumcision thing to happen is I want it to be a remember, a reminder, a remembrance of the fact, a sign of the covenant that I have with you.

So to these Judaizers, what they did is they said, You gotta you gotta do this.

And what Paul is saying is like, if you do this, you're buying into the lie that you have to do more to earn God's forgiveness.

You have to do more to earn God's salvation, his love, his grace, and all of those things for you.

It's kind of like this.

Like, we have the tendency to do the same thing.

We have this tendency to add stuff to the Bible, add stuff to the rules, add stuff to make ourselves feel like we're earning it.

Some years ago I had the privilege of spending um about 11 days in Israel.

And it was a bucketless trip for me because I wanted to go to Israel and see where the Bible happened.

But also, I specifically wanted to go on this trip where a mentoring voice in my life was leading the trip, and it was unbelievable.

And um, one day we were at the towards the end of our trip and we were in the city of David, Jerusalem.

We were staying in a really nice hotel on a Saturday.

And if you don't know this, Jewish people call Saturday the Sabbath.

And if you don't know what Sabbath is, Sabbath is a day that God instructs every person.

Take a day where what you do is you give that day towards joy and delight, where you don't work, where you do things that fill your heart.

You take a day where you rest, take a day where you're not really available to the world around you.

You just you do what refuels your soul.

And the heart of that is so good.

God wants you to remember that you're not the one who keeps the world spinning.

He is.

But we're in Jerusalem, and these people, these Jewish people there, they they take this so seriously that they've made rules around obeying it.

They have a certain number of steps you can take every day before it's considered work.

And we're in a hotel, and this was a nice hotel, it was a big high-rise hotel, and I don't remember what floor I was on, but let's just say I was on floor number seven.

The Jewish people took this idea of the Sabbath so seriously that they they turn the elevators off.

It's not off, but the buttons don't work.

And the reason the buttons don't work is they feel like to reach up and push floor seven would be considered work.

So we get on the elevator and we stand there and we push seven and nothing happens.

So we like do the American thing.

If it didn't work, I'll just try it again.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and nothing happens.

So then the doors close and it goes up one floor and it stops and the doors open.

And then it closes and it goes up another floor and the doors open.

And I had to wait like 15 minutes as it went from zero to seven because of the belief that it's just that doing that pushing of a button was adding work, which was causing the Sabbath to be missed.

We do that in our lives.

We do.

We add stuff, we we make up superstitions, we we believe things like if I do this, God can't possibly love me, and we miss the heart of it altogether.

Here's what Paul is trying to get at to these people.

It's that Jesus plus anything minimizes Jesus' sacrifice.

Here's another thing: Jesus plus anything minimizes Jesus and it elevates man's role in salvation.

Jesus plus anything, it ruins it.

Jesus plus anything is like taking a beautiful pitcher of sweet tea and putting a handful of mud in it.

It muddies it up and it ruins the beauty of what it was intended to be.

It ruins it altogether.

Next one I need you to know is this freedom to not become selfish.

And you need to know this about yourself.

You were born selfish.

Like, what is the third word you probably learned?

There's mama and dada.

And then what is the third word?

No, not mine.

Mine! They scream it so loud the bugs just die and fall out of the air, right?

You don't have to teach a baby to be selfish because we're born selfish.

That's how we are.

Have you ever heard the term born again?

It's an old term that churches don't use very much, but when I was a kid, that's what we would call a person who's made the decision to follow Jesus.

We would say they were born as a baby, but they were born again as a follower of Jesus or a Christian.

You are born selfish, but as a follower of Jesus, you are born again generous.

You are born selfish, but you are born again selfless.

This is the reason, by the way, I've never understood people who don't give.

I just don't.

Like, I don't I don't judge you.

I'm not here to judge you, but I don't understand in light of all that Jesus has done for us.

And the fact that he gave himself, gave his life, literally took the most excruciating form of capital punishment ever to give his life to pay the sins for you and me.

And we look at our bank account, we're like, Mine.

I've never understood it.

Because you're born one way, but you're born again when Jesus changes you, it should cause you to live open-handedly.

We the church should be a beacon of light to a selfish world around us by the way we live open-handedly, by the way we live selflessly, by the way we serve other people.

Eleven verses down from what we read, Paul says this.

He says, You, my brothers and sisters, my brothers from different mothers, and my sisters from different missers.

He says, You were called to be free.

Let's just pause there for a moment.

One of the number one things people ask me is, how do I know what the call of God for my life is?

How do I know what I'm supposed to do with my life?

You were called to be free.

Let me say this to somebody today.

If you came to church today weighed down by rules and laws like the Old Testament, if you came in today beaten up, I want you to leave built up.

If you came in today feeling like the life has been kicked out of you by the world around you, I pray that today is life-giving to you.

If you feel like your heart is living in the captivity of the opinions of others, depression, anxiety, fear, or worry, I pray today lifts that off, and I pray that your countenance literally goes from this to walking out with your shoulders back and your head up high because you walk in freedom.

You are called to be free.

Thank you.

Rather, serve one another humbly in love.

Okay, I want you to see this.

That freedom that you have isn't just about you.

It's not about selfishness, it's about generosity.

It's not about getting your needs met, it's about serving the brother or sister beside you.

And then Paul goes on and he says, For the entire law, the Old Testament, all 613 laws that make up that chain that we find ourselves holding on to with everything we've got.

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command, love your neighbor as yourself.

At one point, Jesus is out teaching, and this religious leader comes up to him and he goes, Hey, um, what's the most important commandment?

There's 613, but which one's the most important?

And Jesus answers, which one is the most important with two?

He says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor.

And he adds this little two-word phrase as yourself.

How do you love you?

You take care of yourself, you provide for yourself, you meet your own needs, you make sure you have rest, you make sure you have food, you take care of you every single day, and you're really good at it, by the way.

And Jesus says, You'll know you love when you love others the way you love you.

When meeting the needs of the world around you feels like an emotional need, the same as meeting your own needs.

That's how you know you love.

Final thought is this true freedom.

Only, and I want to emphasize this, and only can come from Jesus.

Don't buy into the lie that like one book's gonna change your life or some self-help talk.

True freedom.

It's not found in a seminar, it comes from Jesus.

And here's the question I want to land the plane with today.

How do you know if you're free?

How do you know if you're actually truly free?

Before I set it up, let me give you a picture to think about.

Imagine that you were in jail.

You were on death road.

You knew that at any day your life could be taken from you.

You're literally in prison, and some new evidence comes to light, and the sentence is overturned, and they come to you in your jail cell, and they say, Hey, good news.

You're a free person.

Who would sit there and go, I'm good here?

But we do that.

How do you know that you're still sitting in the prison of your own heart when you were created to be free?

Ready?

Here's the question.

Does Christianity feel like a burden?

Does following Jesus feel like 613 rules that you can't keep?

If it does, I want to read you Jesus' own words.

I'm gonna read it slow.

I'll add some commentary along the way.

But if you have a paper Bible that has red letters when Jesus is speaking, these letters would be red.

This isn't my opinion.

This is Jesus' words.

If you feel beaten up and not built up, if you feel like the life has been drained from you and not like life is being given to you, if you feel burned, out.

Here's Jesus' words, ready?

Come to me.

Jesus says, I just want you to come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.

Pause there for a moment.

Do those words feel like they describe you?

If I could just be honest, I know I'm supposed to have it all figured out because I'm the pastor.

There's a lot of days where I come home and I feel weary and burdened.

Burdened by the problems that I'm dealing with, the challenges that people in the church bring to me.

We have a big staff full of people now.

Sometimes there's drama in the staff.

Like stuff happens, life happens.

Then I turn on the news and social media and it gets worse.

It's easy to feel like your heart is constantly under pressure.

If you feel weary, if your heart feels burdened by fear or shame or guilt or condemnation, depression, anxiety, come to me.

And then Jesus makes this promise.

He says, and I will give you rest.

And if you if you put me on the spot and said, hey Jason, what gift would you give Access Church?

The church that has everything, the church that gives so much to meet needs, not just in our city but around the world.

The church that's literally changing a city, flipping a city upside down.

What do you give a church that's got everything?

I think Jesus nailed it.

It's rest.

Because it's really easy to fall into either of the ditches, the ditch of religion or the ditch of selfishness, to exhaust yourself or to do everything to just gratify yourself.

Both are exhausting.

And Jesus says, if you come to me and you feel weary and burdened, the gift I'm going to give you is like a real deep rest.

Then Jesus uses this word that we read in Galatians 5.

He says, Take my yoke upon you.

Remember a yoke, it either causes you to work harder or it kills you in the process.

And Jesus is like, Mine's really different.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

And it's different.

He says, I am gentle and humble in heart.

And when you take my yoke on you, you're going to find rest for your souls.

And here's why.

He says, For my yoke is easy.

And my burden is light.

I like to be a really practical preacher.

I like to give you some stuff that's going to apply to your Mondays and Tuesdays with your work and your family and your kids and your money and your job and all those things.

Here's the practical advice, ready?

If your heart feels burdened, if your heart feels weary, if following Jesus has felt like an exercise in futility, like a stairmaster, you just find yourself exhausted but not getting anywhere.

Ready?

Here's the advice.

Come to me, Jesus says.

And watch what I do.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes?

At all of our locations, everywhere you are today, I'm just gonna bow your head and close your eyes.

I ask you to do something.

I'm gonna ask you to take your hands and just open them up, just like this.

Open them up to God.

Your hands are open, saying, God, my my hands are open to reveal with the posture of my heart.

It's also open to you.

I want to ask you a question.

Are you free?

Paul says you were called to be free, created to be free, but are you actually free?

Are you like the person who's always looking over your shoulder?

Do you find yourself falling into the ditch of religion that says, I gotta add more to the grace of Jesus to get his forgiveness?

Have you found yourself taking license, which means to say it's like a fallen into the ditch of selfishness, which is Jesus saved me, so I can do whatever I want.

No, no.

He invites you to obey him because you love him.

With your hands open and your heart open, I want to pray for you.

And if there's any part of your heart that's felt weary or burdened, I pray that this is the moment that the love of God finds you, meets you, and changes you.

So, God, in this place, with our hands open and our hearts open, we're saying, forgive us if we've fallen into the ditch of trying harder to earn something you freely give us.

But also forgive us when we've bought into this lie, that because of your grace we can do whatever we want to do.

May we reject the spiritual idea of American freedom, and may we embrace a biblical freedom, which is Jesus, you call the shots.

I will follow you.

God, with our hands open, if if our hearts feel burdened, would you do what you promised to do, which is to sweep in, challenge us, change us, and give us that supernatural rest that can only come from above.

God, we thank you in advance for what you're doing in our hearts.

We thank you for it in Jesus' name.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed, I don't want to leave this moment without giving you an opportunity to actually follow Jesus.

Look, a lot of people in America would say they're a Christian, but they've never really truly decided to follow Jesus or they feel like they've walked away.

If that's you, this moment's for you.

If you say, Jason, look, I want to today, on this weekend that we celebrate freedom, I want to experience the freedom Jesus offers.

I want them to save me and change me, forgive me.

If that's you, would you raise your hand right now if this is you?

Yes, thank you right there.

I see you.

Thanks, thank you in the back at all of our locations.

Raise your hand.

People are responding here.

If this moment is for you, would you just respond in this way by raising your hand?

You can put it right down.

Here's what I want you to do.

I just want you to do one thing.

We're gonna pray a prayer.

And as I pray this prayer, have the courage to pray it out loud and mean it with your heart.

We're not gonna let you do this by yourself.

All these wonderful people around you who have already made this decision, we're gonna pray this out loud with you.

Come on, church fam, would you join your faith with theirs?

Let's all pray this together loud and proud.

I want you to say it like you mean it.

Come on, everybody, say, Jesus, I give you my life.

I need you to save me.

I need you to forgive me, be my Lord and Savior.

From this day forward, I choose to follow you.

Jesus, I love you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life, and it's in Jesus' name I pray.

Amen and amen.

Come on, fam, let's celebrate like it matters.