The Miracle of the Moment

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Good morning, CCW family.

And Merry Christmas.

I bring grace and peace to you in the name of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I'm so excited to begin our Christmas series this week.

This morning, in fact, in case you didn't gather that.

And we will be in Galatians chapter 4, if you want to go ahead and begin getting there.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

Now, I want to perform a little bit of an experiment.

You know, we've gotten to know each other quite well, but I think I want to just see it all in one big picture, what kind of people we're dealing with here at CCW.

So, if you are the kind of people who demand that Thanksgiving must be over before Christmas decorations and before Christmas music can begin playing.

Could you please boldly raise your hand?

Make yourself known.

All right.

Church, church family, look, see who among who among ye need discipling.

All right.

And hands down.

Alright, there's this middle group, I guess.

Raise your hand if you just don't really care.

Sometimes it's Thanksgiving, sometimes it's not, you know, it just depends on the year.

All right.

All right.

And who among us are the correct ones?

I'll stand over here to make a distinction.

Who among us are the correct ones that as soon as that last trick-or-treater takes that last twitch from the bowl, rocking around the Christmas tree is um, the tree goes up, that's right.

And the Christmas music starts playing either October 31st or in my household, it is November 1st at the latest.

But I want to one up you guys a little bit.

I want to see if there's anybody in this category.

I know I just described when Christmas music sort of starts versus stops in your home.

And I want to let you guys know that in my home, it never really stops the Christmas music.

We listen to Christmas music.

I mean, you're just as likely to hear rocking around the Christmas tree in August as you are in December.

I mean, we are serious about the Christmas music.

And while a lot of my family just enjoys the general vibe and happiness that comes with Christmas music, you know, we can kind of tell when someone's had a bad day if the Christmas music is playing, because we needed to pick me up, right?

But I legitimately listen to Christmas music, specifically Christmas hymns, all day long, all year long, because I think Christmas hymns contain some of the richest, deepest Bible truths about God.

I didn't coordinate with Benji, but Benji basically knocked down all my favorites one after the other this morning.

And so I just want to highlight to you some of these songs that we sang.

The lyrics of O Holy Night.

I don't know if you're aware of this either, but being married to Kirby, I've learned that some people, when they listen to music, they really hear the words.

Right?

They hear the words, they understand the meaning of the words, and that is what makes a song beautiful, right?

Kirby is not that way.

I am that way.

Kirby listens to the general sound and decides if it sounds good or if it doesn't sound good.

And if I tell her, oh, isn't that line just so beautiful?

She says, What did they say?

It just sounded really good.

I don't know.

I'm like, oh, hear how theologically Bible-rich this line of the song is.

And she goes, It sounded really pretty to me, right?

So in case you are in that boat, I just wanted to break this down and maybe take the instruments away and focus on some of these lyrics for just a moment.

Oh Holy Night says, Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

All right, that's old speak, new speak.

The sin was just wallering around in the world.

All right, and it was only getting worse.

It continues, it says, till he appeared, that is Jesus, and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope.

The weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Oh, Holy Night describes this terrible scene of the entire world just gripped by sin.

Paul describes in our text today, we're gonna see it in a little bit.

Paul describes the world as children.

And the children that he's describing aren't the also cute little baby children.

All right?

It's the defiant, terrible two just learned how loud they can scream, just how loud they can scream the word no.

Or maybe the defiant teenager that acts strikingly similar to the terrible two-year-old.

That is the way that Paul and O Holy Night describes the world.

But our text and Paul will not leave the world in hopeless despair.

Paul, just like the hymn, highlights that there is a hope that comes with Jesus' appearance on earth.

And then my favorite, we opened with it.

Hark the Herald Angels sing.

This is Charles Wesley, the best hymn writer of all time, with George Whitfield, perhaps the greatest evangelist of all time, before Billy Graham hit the scene and after Paul was on the scene.

All right?

So these two brains got together and wrote just the most theologically rich song, and I just can't wrap my head around how they somehow managed to make it rhyme and sound good musically.

But they did.

Let's break this one down.

It says, Christ, by highest heaven adorned, Christ the everlasting Lord.

Jesus didn't just poof into existence when he was born in a manger.

John 1.1 says that he was in the beginning with the Father, fully God, and worshipped as Lord.

The next line continues.

It says, Late in time, behold him come, offspring of the virgin's womb.

We're going to look at Galatians 4 4 a little bit today.

And the words that it uses are in the fullness of time.

In the fullness of time.

When his time had come.

Think of it as saying that at just the right time.

Or even one of my professors put it this way: think of it as time was pregnant, and it had come to full term.

It's time to have the baby.

Right?

Time was in its fullness.

And at just the right moment, offspring of the virgin's womb.

Continues.

It says, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.

Alright, a little backwards words because it's old speak.

But it's saying, see this, the Godhead, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the flesh.

We see Jesus, the Son, veiled in flesh.

John 1.18 describes that no one has seen the Father, yet through Jesus Christ, born as a helpless baby, we have seen God in the flesh on this earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

The maker of Mary, now Mary's son, as a song puts it.

Hail the incarnate deity.

The fancy word for the birth of Jesus is the incarnation.

Or in the flesh is the direct meaning of that word, right?

Incarnation meaning in the flesh.

God himself in human flesh with us.

Pleased as man with men to dwell.

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

Jesus being fully man was with you and me, mankind.

He was not just some weird cosmic God orb who put on some weird humanoid skin suit that he would later take off.

No, Jesus was fully God and fully man.

He was with us as a man to save us, to be Emmanuel, meaning God with us.

The Christmas season reminds us to hold two things in equal tension.

I think our church, I think most churches give a lot of attention to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is rightly so.

We pat ourselves on the back on that, all right?

We hang our hat on that.

That's what we do here at CCW, and we're not going to stop.

The one thing that we can't abandon when we talk about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the fact that he came at all.

Right?

There is equal importance found in the miracle of the moment that Jesus came to dwell with us.

Let's pray together.

Our Father, we come to you through your Son and by your Spirit, asking that you would be present with us today.

As Jesus is God with us, our Emmanuel, Father, we ask for your Spirit to be with us here and now.

We ask for the Spirit to be strengthened in the hearts of those who are Christians that believe in Jesus Christ for salvation.

And Father, we ask for the Holy Spirit to work in hearts that may be far from you.

We pray above all that you will conform us to look more like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name we ask it.

Amen.

Alright.

So the miracle of the moment, I must give some insight into my own personal life that I love the movie Miracle.

All right.

Do we have any miracle movie lovers in the house?

Yes, thank you very much.

In case you are one of the, you know, however many are in here, minus five people who didn't raise their hand, Miracle is based on the miracle on ice, when the United States hockey team beat the Soviet Union for the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.

All right?

And in the movie, based on this moment, the coach, played by Kurt Russell, but Coach Herb Brooks starts a little speech, and he says, Great moments are born from great opportunities.

That's what you have here tonight, boys.

That's what you've earned here tonight.

And then they go on and they beat the Soviets, and you know, you just want to join the military after watching that movie.

You feel so patriotic.

And what I think about this movie is just that there are great moments, and there are indeed great opportunities.

And our text talks about in the fullness of time, at the perfect opportunity, Jesus hits the scene.

So our first point is that Jesus is the right solution for the right time.

The right solution for the right time.

And so hopefully by now we've gotten to our spot in the Bible.

We're going to be in Galatians chapter four.

And if you will, please read along with me verses one through seven.

This is going to be our main text for today.

We're going to try to find out what is this baby Jesus the solution to?

This is the word of the Lord.

It says, I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything.

But he is under the guardians and managers until the date set by his father.

In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God.

The word of the Lord.

The chapter opens by describing our connection to these elementary principles as one of slavery, right?

That's not a very cheery connection to have with something.

As you're writing your Christmas cards, I don't recommend that your salutation at the end being, your slave, the Alexander family, all right?

It's weird, one, and two, it's just a downright lousy place to be, to be enslaved to something.

Some of us feel enslaved to our telephones, right?

Or enslaved to our job.

We can't peel away even when we're at home.

Some of us feel enslaved to a particular uh sin struggle in our life.

To feel completely and totally trapped by something is not a good feeling.

So, what are these elementary principles that we are so helplessly chained to?

The Greek word here is stoikea.

Stoikaea, and is translated as meaning elementary principles in verse 3.

And it literally translated means the ABCs or the building blocks of fundamentally anything.

Alright, so let's see where this word occurs a couple of times in the Bible.

We see, um, we see, excuse me, in Hebrews 5.12, which says, For by this time you ought to be teachers.

You need someone, again, to teach you the basic principles, or stoichea of the oracles of God.

It's also used in Colossians 2.20, where it says, If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits, or stoichea of the world.

So we see that there are puzzles that God has put together for us that we also have to put together when we read the Bible, that there are basics of God and there are basics of the world.

There are the ABCs of understanding God's doctrine.

That's what Hebrews is talking about, right?

The basic building blocks of understanding God's word, and then there are basic building blocks of the world.

And what do we see this meaning?

This little word study shows us that before Christ, we are all immature children, slaves to the law.

We are slaves to the law.

That's what this elementary spirits or elementary principles or primary principles or building blocks is talking about.

And we know that because of what it says in Galatians 2 19.

If you have your Bible, you don't have to go there, but you can just write it down in your notes that in Galatians 19 it says, For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

Now, this little dilemma of a slavery to the law or a slavery to the elementary principles of the world was certainly true of the Galatians.

Remember, this is the book of Galatians, a letter from Paul to a real church in a real place called Galatia.

And the Galatians were struggling.

They were slipping into something called legalism, meaning that they believed that they could earn a form of salvation by just doing enough good things, by keeping the law of God perfectly.

Paul's whole reason for writing this letter to them is to remind them of the true gospel, of God's grace that they seemed to have been abandoning.

Let's take another look at verse 4 again.

It says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

It is Jesus who is revealed as our solution by redeeming us from under the law.

You and I fall short according to the law.

The law is not the right solution to save you and I.

Instead, the law is more so a too little, too late kind of solution.

I want you to think of it this way.

If you are sick, there is a right solution, and there is a right time for which to take medicine, for example.

So, if I just get a splitting headache, and as soon as this splitting headache comes on, I decide that I'm going to take some medicine, that is the right timing.

But if I take Tums, or if I take some Pepto, that's not the right solution for my problem.

All right?

And the same is true if you flip the opposite direction.

And I think of my aunt when she was a kid, and if she was sick, she would take medicine, and no sooner than she would get done swallowing the medicine or the pill, she would say, I feel better now.

Right?

She had the right solution.

I trust that my grandparents gave her the proper medication, but she had the timing of the situation all wrong.

It was the incorrect timing.

Another example, a couple of years ago, you may have remembered when we dedicated the CCW Kids Building.

It was such an awesome celebration.

Unfortunately, I wasn't here.

The reason I wasn't here is because I had the flu and it turned into pneumonia.

And the thing about that is we didn't really think that I had the flu or pneumonia.

We thought it was just a little cold.

So we were just like, Eli, keep taking, keep taking some Tylenol, keep taking some Motrin, and it would make that fever go away for about four hours until the medicine wore off.

And then every four hours on the dock, it was time for more Motrin, more Tylenol.

Until eventually Sunday morning came, and Motrin and Tylenol weren't touching my fever and my illness, how bad I was feeling.

And the last thing I remember before going to sleep, before going to the ER the next day, is sitting on the tile floor in front of our tower fan, getting dabbed by a cold rag by Kirby.

And I was thinking, we've officially held it too late.

I'm I whatever I've got, this is it for me.

I'm I am not going to be okay.

All right?

We had what seemed to be the right solution for the right time, turned out not to be, and we certainly had the wrong timing.

I should have gone to the ER, should have gone to the urgent care far earlier.

I want you to apply this concept to your own life, though.

This concept of Jesus' redemptive work to your own life.

Are you committing yourself to obedience of God's law by sheer willpower?

Are you just white knuckling it to try to earn God's love and favor?

That is not the right solution for salvation.

Do you maybe think that it's too late to be redeemed by God because of something that you've done or something you might be right in the middle of doing?

And do you feel like you've blown your shot?

That's not the right understanding of God's perfect timing.

Jesus perfectly timed his assignment of redeeming you.

And the perfect time to respond is now.

Redemption frees you rather than burdens you.

We are freed to obey God because he loves us.

We are not obligated to obey him in order to earn his love.

Jesus' arrival on earth wasn't a second too soon or a moment too late.

It was all a part of God's wonderful work to redeem you from the law in the fullness of time.

Precisely on schedule.

Galatians 4 shows us our childhood is immature and sinful because it is enslaved to the law.

It also shows us that Jesus' childhood is sinless and redeeming, even to the point that we are considered adopted sons and daughters of God.

Let's consider a little more deeply our status under the law, the phrase that's used here in verse 5, where it says, I'll start in four.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions, adoption as sons.

We're gonna flip back to the end of Galatians chapter 3 to receive a little more background of this under the law business.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

I'm gonna start reading in verse 23, and I'm gonna read through the end of the chapter.

It says, Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs.

According to the promise.

What Paul is describing there at the end of chapter three is not some new age understanding of gender, right?

That business about there's neither male nor female is not some modern spin on male and female.

What Paul is saying is something that we've already discussed, which is that our identity in Christ supersedes everything else about us.

Notice the verbs and the prepositions that Paul is using here.

Verbs are these action words, and prepositions connect the words by defining their relationship, right?

In referencing the law, Paul says that we are held captive.

Paul says that we are, maybe this is more cheery for you, we are imprisoned to the law.

Some prepositions that he talks about regarding the law, we are under the law, right?

We are under a guardian.

The reason the law alone is characterized so badly is because knowledge of the letter of the law only leads to death, according to 2 Corinthians 3, 6.

That's not to say that the law itself is evil.

The law is actually in and of itself perfect.

The problem is that we are what's wrong with the equation?

We are sinful.

Galatians 3, 21.

It's the law then, contrary to the or excuse me, is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

Certainly not.

For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

Right?

So if righteousness could be attained by the law because the law is perfect, then that's what we would do.

But that's not how this works because of our sin.

So, how can we put that into more understandable pictures?

Let me put it this way.

My mom was not wrong to tell me not to touch the iron that was hot when I was a young kid.

But do you want to know what had never occurred in my little seven-year-old mind before being told not to touch the hot iron?

I'd never even considered touching that hot iron.

Until mom said, Eli, I'm going to take a shower.

Eli, I'm going to take a shower.

Don't touch that hot iron.

And do you know what I did?

The second she closed her bedroom door.

The very second the coast was clear.

I said, and that I've learned what throbbing was.

I'd never had a throbbing sensation before, but my pointer finger was ripping hot.

And I was caught red-handed.

Literally burned by my disobedience.

My disobedience was my own downfall because of my own sin.

It wasn't my mom's fault for making me aware of what was right and what was wrong.

Knowledge of the law brings death because of our sin, not because there's something wrong with the law.

Now let's look at the verbs and prepositions Paul uses regarding Jesus.

Verbs in reference to Jesus, we are justified by faith, meaning our relationship and legal standing is made right before God.

Doesn't that sound better than being enslaved or imprisoned?

I'd much rather feel justified than enslaved.

Prepositions in reference to Jesus.

We are in Christ through faith, baptized into Christ.

You have put on Christ.

You are all one in Christ.

Comparing those prepositions, rather than being under some great weight that we can't ourselves escape from, we are brought into something.

We are brought into Christ by Christ Himself.

Not because we earned it, but because He loves us and by faith, like it says in verses 3.23 and 3.26.

While we cannot keep the law of God perfectly, God's law is good because it shows us his holy character, it shows us our own sinfulness, and it shows us our need for a Savior.

The miracle of the moment is that because Christ was born, the Savior has been revealed to us, and we respond to him in faith and are redeemed from under the law.

Even more miraculous is that we are not left alone under the law by ourselves.

Remember, verse 4 describes that Jesus Himself, God Himself, being eternally worshiped in heaven, left his throne, became fully man, subverted himself in the form of a baby among us, sinful people.

He was born under the law to save us from the law.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled the perfect standards of God's law because he never sinned.

Second Corinthians 5, 21 says, He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf so that we might be called the righteousness of God.

That is the great exchange in the Bible, right?

Jesus taking on our sinfulness and dying on a cross.

And by faith, Christ's righteousness, the Bible word is imputed.

That means it is placed upon us, right?

Christ's righteousness is placed upon us by faith.

So that when God looks at us, he does not see some condemned, terrible, awful, no good sinner.

He sees his own child.

Again, apply this concept to your own life.

If you are a Christian, how do you grapple with this grace in your own life?

If you are a Christian, are your relationships marked by a dependence to the law or a dependence on God's grace?

Husbands, fathers, is your relationship to your wife or to your kids, is it one of demanding the law be followed?

Or is it one of grace?

Is it one of grace?

We've spoken a lot about the importance of the law and our respective condition to it.

But if the miracle of the moment means we are redeemed by Jesus, then we need to explore our status as sons and daughters.

That is point three.

Our status as sons and daughters.

We are redeemed so that we might receive adoptions as sons and daughters.

Read with me verses five through seven.

The Bible says it was to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so that you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God.

Adoption is something totally true and unique to itself.

There's no real illustration I can give that helps you capture all that adoption is besides adoption itself.

It is a beautiful picture of love extending from oneself to someone else.

If you want a real life illustration of what adoption is, we have people in our church who have adopted children, and I recommend that you ask them about their story because they can put some real flesh on the bones of that picture for you.

But I will try, I will try to illustrate, and I will try to illustrate by saying really what adoption is not.

In 2021, football player, defensive end linebacker Micah Parsons was a top NFL prospect, the 12th pick of the NFL draft to the Dallas Cowboys.

He immediately received access to the athletic facilities of the Dallas Cowboys, their state-of-the-art athletic facility, their cutting-edge athletic training facility.

He also immediately got access to boxes upon boxes of equipment, of jerseys, of cool shirts and sweatshirts, right?

He was fully folded within the Cowboys family.

He would go on to win Defensive Rookie of the Year.

He would receive four Pro Bowl selections and four all-pro recognitions.

He was a lifelong Cowboys fan, and he never would have dreamed that he was going to leave until this year.

When Cowboys owner Jerry Jones looked around, looked at Micah Parsons, and saw how much he was valued on the trade market.

And he said, Micah, it's time for you to pack your bags because you're going to Green Bay.

And now the Roper family celebrates every Sunday when they get to watch Micah Parsons line up for the Green Bay Packers.

No matter how much a sports team or Jerry Jones may try to portray a sports team as a family, I'm not saying it's bad to try to have a family-like environment at your work or on your sports team or in your schools or anything like that.

But just know that at the end of the day, something like a professional sports team is just business.

Know that God does not operate in that kind of way.

Jesus redeems you, and you are adopted by your heavenly Father in spite of what you bring to the table, not because of what you have to offer.

Take a moment and let that sink in and see the contrast that Paul is painting with verses five through seven.

We are either, according to Galatians 4, 1 through 7, we are either slaves, imprisoned and enslaved, captured by the law, or we are sons and daughters, redeemed, adopted, and royal.

One more time, according to Paul, we are either slaves imprisoned, enslaved, and captured by the law, or we are sons and daughters, redeemed, adopted, and royal.

To be a slave to the law requires painstaking observance of rules, of which we are guaranteed to fail because we are sinful.

To be a son of God requires only his grace, igniting faith within your heart.

Paul echoes this argument in Romans chapter 8, verses 14 through 17.

Romans 8:14–17

If you want to, you can flip there.

That's definitely where I'm going.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba Father.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

The preferred option is quite clear, isn't it?

Either slave to sin in the law, or king, queen, son or daughter of God.

I mean, I think it's time to strike up the choir and start singing, I'm so glad to be a part of the family, by the Gaether Vocal Band, and call it a day.

But the thing is, Paul continues in verses eight and nine with a startling reality.

He continues in verse eight.

We're back in Galatians.

Galatians 4, verse 8.

Galatians 4:8

And he says, Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not God's.

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles?

That's that stoicha again, of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more.

Rather than receiving redemption from Christ by faith, a gospel instructions which the Galatians had heard from Paul before, they are tempted to turn back again to those weak and worthless elementary principles, those weak and worthless laws of the world.

This is not an uncommon biblical pattern.

The Israelites, after they were freed from literal slavery in Egypt, literal slavery in Egypt, saw God literally split a sea in two, saw God literally perform ten horrific, unimaginable plagues in order to free his people from Israel.

When they arrived, or from Egypt, rather, when they arrived at the doorstep of the promised land, and they saw that the land was already inhabited.

This is what they had to say in Numbers chapter 14, verses 3 and 4.

Numbers 14:3

They said, Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword?

Our wives, our little ones, will become a prey.

Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?

And then they said to one another, let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.

Or Proverbs 26, 11, where it says, like a dog that returns to his vomit, is a fool who repeats his folly.

Or like the priests who are rebuked in the book of Malachi, they offer sacrifices because they were following the law of sacrifice, right?

Except they were offering polluted offerings.

Blind, handicapped, covered in feces, lambs, instead of the offerings of without blemish that God had commanded them.

Alright?

We are always tempted to go back on what we know we are supposed to do.

We always think that the grass is not greener on the other side, but maybe on the side where we came from.

And what we see here is that that decision to go back where we came is like a dog returning to his own vomit.

To go back to a slavery under the law is to go back to Egypt to live under slavery instead of entering the promised land before you.

To go back to where we came would be to try to cut corners with God's law instead of obeying him joyfully.

How foolish are we to desire to return back to our former ways of life?

Burdened by guilt under the law.

I don't know about any of you if you struggle with having some sort of tension of guilt in your own life.

When you do something wrong and you just can't seem to get over it.

And what makes it worse is that you just can't seem to stop doing what makes you guilty.

I want you to know that the Protestant Reformation started with a little man named Martin Luther.

When Martin Luther was still a Roman Catholic, he would go to confession.

And he would sit in that little booth and he would spill his heart for hours upon hours upon hours upon hours.

Sins he had committed, sins he had thought of committing, sins that he had thought of, not actually committing, but because he thought of them, they were a sin.

And then he would finally feel some bit of relief because he had confessed all his sins to the confessor.

And he would stand up and he would go to leave.

And then on his walk home, what would he do?

But think an unholy thought again and have to go running back into the confessor's booth.

Why return to this burden under the law?

This guilt that we feel when we can't obey God's law perfectly.

When this season that we celebrate is that God came to us to redeem us from under the law?

Why stoop to the status of a prisoner or of a slave when, if redeemed in Christ, you are heirs of God.

Co-heirs with Christ.

You are kings and queens in heaven with Christ when you are redeemed by Christ.

Why would we ever revile and turn away from that?

Where are we getting this co-heir language from?

Look at where it says it in verse 7.

So you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if you are a son of the king, what does that make you?

Then an heir through God.

You are royalty.

And so as we wind down to a close, we're going to have a sort of two-part application.

If you are a Christian, apply this formula to your life.

Receiving Christ equals obedience plus good works.

Notice we're reading that left to right.

What happens first is receiving Christ.

Receiving Christ results in obedience to Christ and good works.

Notice what that formula is not.

That formula is not read right to left.

It is not obedience plus good works equals being saved by God.

Our good works and our obedience to Him is not what earns us God's love.

God's love, rather, is unmerited favor.

It is based on nothing you could do.

He just lavishes his love upon you.

And so when you see Christ's love, all you can do is receive it.

And upon receiving it, just like receiving a gift rather than a wage, you are appreciative.

And because you are appreciative, you do good works.

You do obey, right?

I don't go above the extra mile.

Let me rephrase what I'm saying.

I go above the extra mile with my work here because I love my church and I love being here.

But when I was at Target, that's what I'm meant to say.

When I was at Target, you better believe I was not going above and beyond for nothing.

When I was slinging boxes out of the back of an 18-wheeler, I slung my boxes out of the back of the 18-wheeler, I punched my card, and I went home because I had earned my wage.

That is not what the formula with Jesus Christ is like.

God has given us unmerited favor in grace.

And as a result, we respond in obedience and in faith.

So I want to ask you, Christian, which of these two formulas represents your life?

Are you someone who is under such a burden of sin and you keep trying your hardest once again to white knuckle your way out of this sinful habit?

You're trying to guard your tongue, you're trying to quit this vice, you're trying to shelter your eyes, you're trying to be careful with what you see on the internet, but you just can't help but be that dog that returns to the vomit once again and once again and once again.

I want you to know that obedience and good works aren't what deliver you from this death of the law.

It is God's redeeming grace.

It is God's redeeming grace that covers a multitude of sins, that gives you the ability to overcome anything this world throws your way.

And so, if you do not believe in the true story of Jesus Christ coming to this earth for your salvation, I want to tell you a small story.

This semester I read from John Wesley's journal.

John Wesley is a very prominent church guy from back in the day, brother to Charles Wesley, who wrote Hark the Herald Angel Sing.

And when John was journaling about his conversion story, this is what he had to say.

He said, when he interacted, true heart religion, meaning when he encountered a place, a church where he heard the message of the gospel, where people really loved Jesus from the heart.

He said that he was, quote, strangely warmed.

He was strangely warmed from within.

And after encountering that true love from Jesus' heart, he exclaimed that for the first time, quote, even for my sins, he died.

This was John Wesley's conversion where he understood that for the first time, it was even for my sins that Christ died.

Dear friend, as we have talked about the incarnation of Jesus, God with us in the flesh, I want you to hear this miraculous truth.

That for you, Jesus came.

For you, he would live the perfect life that you never could.

And he would die the death that you deserved, so that you could be redeemed as a child of God by faith.

Trust in him.

In just a moment, we're going to enter a time of invitation.

The musicians are going to come back on the stage.

We're going to have keys and all of that.

And what I'm going to ask you to do is if you would respond to this gospel message, if you would hear that and say, yes, for the first time, even for my sins, he truly came to this earth.

I would just invite you to come to the front.

We would love to hear your story.

We would love to talk to you.

We would love to pray with you.

Joy to the world, one of the forgotten verses that isn't sung very much.

We didn't sing it today, but it says that He comes to make His blessings flow as far as the curse of sin is found.

There is not an inch of this creation, there is not a person on this earth not within God's reach for salvation.

He came to cure the world of sin as far as that curse of sin is found.

And one day he will return.

He's come once.

We celebrate the Advent season, the coming of Christ as a baby.

We are now in another Advent period where we await the second coming of Jesus Christ.

One day he will return and he will judge the living and the dead.

And those children of God who have put their faith and trust in him will be raised to heavenly places with him.

Maranatha, Lord, come again quickly.