Lord, we thank You for Your word that comes to us in our moments of need and we thank you that there is so much of Your word that ministers to us whether we are in sorrow or whether we’re in plenty of in want or need.  Your Word meets us where we are.  We thank you that you are a gracious God who gives to us such amazing freedom.  As we try to comprehend your freedom, the freedom that we have in You, we pray that you would open our ears that we would hear You in new ways; that You would open our minds that we would be able to understand what we hear, and, having heard and understood You would open our hands that we may go forth and do.  It’s in Jesus’ Name that we pray, Amen.

 

            In some ways I wish this wasn’t just a meditation that I would have to abbreviate for there is so much to say about freedom; so much to shout out for joy about freedom.  We often talk about it.  We often don’t get passionate.  I have never (I don’t think) ever talked about the complete satisfaction that I have as a “free Christian”.  Freedom is something that most of us don’t realize that we have.  We’re thinking about vacations a lot lately.  It’s summertime and that brings vacation for most of us, but even if it’s not during the summer we can remember when we do take vacations.  I have to admit that as much as I like vacations I always wish that I had more time.  I say that, not because I want more days added to my vacation package, but, I say that because I wish that I could begin my vacation like I ended it. I wish I could not be plagued with questions like, “What should I do now?” or “What should I plan for”, or “What do I need to do to structure my first few days of vacation”.  Maybe you all know what I feel like.  It takes us awhile to adjust to our vacation freedom.

 

            I thought about this as I studied Paul’s words in Galatians today.  In faith, like vacation we have all the liberty and freedom that we could want, but we’re consumed by old thoughts of ‘what do we have to do?’  What do we have to do to get it right?  What can’t I do?  How do I have to please God?  How do I please the church when what God really wants us to do is to enjoy the freedom that he has bought for us with His blood?

 

            Several years ago I had a conversation with a guy who was an agnostic, who grew up in a fundamentalist church.  He grew up in a very legalistic kind of tradition and he went from childhood to college and college into the business world where he found that his legalistic faith, the faith that he had been given as a child really didn’t work for him anymore.  He found that the world challenged him to go beyond that and he didn’t find satisfactory answers from the tradition that he had inherited about Christianity.  So, he decided, he made a conscious decision, to abandon the faith.  He became an agnostic.  I remember suggesting to him in our conversation that maybe what he should have abandoned is his perspective about the faith rather than the faith itself.  It was sad to me to see how this man and I could begin our lives in the same faith but come out of it with such vastly different perspectives.

 

            You see, like Paul, I’m convinced that if grace is authentic, then gone are the days where we have to live in fear of losing what God has bought for us through Jesus’ death.  Gone are the days when our salvation is controlled by anything that we do or fail to do once we’ve put our faith in Jesus Christ.  There’s but one law to live by.  And it’s the law by which God himself abides.  It’s called the Law of Love!  What God did through Jesus isn’t just revising the old rules.  He didn’t take the text and put scratch marks through some, or highlights on some or correct the spelling, or edit everything – (Laurie, you know how that is you, you love doing that).  That’s not what God did.  God created an entirely new thing.  He rested on what was old, but it was a new thing.  It was a new faith!  And when we try to live this new faith that we’ve been given which is a faith of freedom, by the old rules of having to do or do not do certain things, then we totally misrepresent what our faith is.  It’s like showing up for a baseball game.  Dylan, I know you like baseball. But what would happen if you were given a basketball to pitch instead?  It would hurt your arm; it wouldn’t work, would it?  Baseball, to be played well, needs to be played with baseball rules and baseball equipment.  Marcia, I know that (do you like basketball?)  I know that Ann does. Miss Ann, you like basketball, but what if they started throwing around a baseball or football at a basketball game?   It just wouldn’t make sense.  The game wouldn’t work.  It doesn’t become a satisfying experience and that’s what we’ve done.  When we limit our faith to a set of do’s and don’ts, what we do is we put the effort of our faith, of our salvation back onto us, we say to Jesus,  “Sorry, Jesus, we appreciate what you did; we appreciate the cross, yes, thank you for it but you know what, we’re capable.  You did a good job but let us finish the work”.  Now who in their right mind would ever say such a thing?  It would be an incredible offence to the God of this universe if you ever stood before the throne of God and said to Him, in all sincerity, “Thank you for what you did, but I’ll finish it from here.”  That’s not what Jesus did on the cross!  Not even close, so why live our lives; why approach our faith as if that’s how it worked!  Christ died that you may be free in this life!

 

            I’m reminded of an episode that I had; I hope I don’t offend anyone, sometimes I’ll say some things and I find out next week that I shouldn’t have said it.  But I’m going ahead and say it because it fits and I hope you will find some humor in it.  A good sermon always has a little bit of humor.  I was in the check-out line of WalMart a few years ago, (not in Mobile, but in a much smaller town).  I was supposed to get some goods for a party that I was going to and so I bought some chips and all kinds of stuff and I also had some beer in the basket.  I came up to the check-out and the cashier looked in my basket and said, ‘That’s Satan’, she scoffed at me! ‘That’s Satan!’  I must have been in some kind of mood. You catch me in the right kind of mood and I’ll say some of the weirdest things, but I said, “Well, I looked back at the beer and I looked at her and I said, “Well, if that’s Satan, then Satan sure does taste good!”  She didn’t really expect that.  Then I added to it and said, “That comes from the Presbyterian minister in town”.  She looked at me and said, “You’re a minister?” and I said, “Yes” and she said, “Oh, I drink too!”  I kinda looked at her and said, “You do?”  And she said, “Well, my preacher just says that alcohol is a sin and if I drink I’m going to go to hell so I really can’t say that I drink”.  And we got into this very interesting, colorful, humorous conversation about Christian freedom.  And she ended the conversation with, “I better start going to your church instead of mine”.  So I said, “Come on”.  She did admit to me that she struggled with her faith.  She struggled with her church because it seemed like she could never do enough.  She could never do enough of the right thing to get where she should be.

 

            You know, people, there’s a law that we’re supposed to follow which Paul states in verse 14, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”.  Elsewhere Paul adds to that one law that we also are to love God above all else.  Now there are ways to love one another and ways not to and when it’s not clear how to do that, Scripture does give us a good deal of guidelines about this. They are the Ten Commandments that we have and beyond these in the New Testament we have ‘virtue’ lists.  But to look at these as laws is not the right perspective.  How we should look at these as the clothing that God has given to us.  He’s opened up for us a completely new wardrobe of the finest new clothing that you could ever choose from to wear and all of these clothes, if we would choose to put them on, are evidence of the love that we live by.  They are not supposed to be little teeny laws and sub-laws and do’s and don’t do’s, and if we don’t do them right and we don’t do them perfectly, then we’re going to hell.  That’s not what it’s about! All these things that Paul lists here in the last part of the chapter that we didn’t read are the clothing.  It’s the clothing that Christ has given us and he wants us to get used to this clothing because folks, the day is going to come that we will not be here anymore.  We will be in Heaven and then we will wear that clothing for all eternity.  What amazes me is that often when we live out our faith like people on the first few days of a well-deserved vacation, we don’t appreciate this new clothing, this new freedom that we have.  We’ve shown up at basketball games wearing baseball uniforms.  The freedom of that sort that Jesus bought for us with His blood, takes some adjusting to because it’s so contrary to the controls that we have bought into both from the faith world and from the fallen world.  From the faith world we are much that boils down to another form of works righteousness.  I know that some of you are familiar with all this but it leads to judgment and to despair that we will never get there.  There are those of us who think that they get there and they tend to lord it over the rest of us poor mislead souls.

 

            I’m reminded of the words of Brother Lawrence, Thomas á Kempis and many other spiritual writers from long ago who never claimed to have arrived but could only see their sin more clearly the more Christ became visible to them.  And because they saw their sin more clearly it created in them a great sense, not of fear but of freedom, freedom to love; freedom to love like the world can never choose to do because only by God’s grace could they ever enter His presence.  We are freed by grace to live in God’s presence; to live and love.  Likewise the controls of the following world lead only to despair.  People may think it’s freedom to pursue pleasure at all costs, to take on a hedonistic lifestyle and that’s really what freedom is about, but what the sins are doing is creating enslavement to sin and bankruptcy on all levels.  It can lead to bankruptcy financially, emotionally, spiritually in relationships; self-pleasure becomes god.  Then, in the end, all that people will have will be themselves, and folks, that’s a very lonely place to be.

 

            True freedom consists neither of a self-governed life nor a rules-driven life, but in being able to choose freely among many ways to glorify God and love others. Christian freedom also means that we are free to choose NOT to do these things.  As Christians we know the difference between right and wrong; we’re empowered to choose, and with each decision we face different consequences.  There is the law of love!  There is nothing that you will do, or I will do, that will break that law of love!  Let me use an example.  I drive over the speed limit, freely admitted; 65, right!  All right, but guess what? I’ve never broken the law!  If you’ve driven over the speed limit, you have never broken the law.  Why?  Because that law still exists.  You’ve not broken it.  You’ve broken yourself against the law!  Every time I get a speeding ticket, guess what?  I break myself against the law! But the law still exists.  That law is not broken.  There is nothing that you can do or not do that will break the law of love.  You will break yourself against that law by not adhering to it; by not putting on the clothes that God has given you, you will break yourself against it time and again. You will become more and more broken until finally you get to the point where you say “ENOUGH”!  I choose these clothes! But you’ve never broken God’s love for you!  And you will never break God’s love for you!  THAT’S FREEDOM!  Freedom is saying, ‘IF IT GLORIFIES GOD, I WILL DO IT.  IF IT LOVES OTHERS, I WILL DO IT!  THAT’S FREEDOM!  THAT’S THE LAW OF LOVE!

 

            So let’s remember a few things as we think through all of this.  First, remember the Good News: God gave us this life to enjoy, people!  He gave us this church, its building, one another, however we define the church, he gave it to us to enjoy, not to divide, not to skirmish over little things, but to enjoy!  He gave us each other to enjoy, not devour. Second: Let’s remember who died for us and who wants us to be happy! JESUS!  He gave us His life to learn from, that sacrificially we put others before ourselves and we have fun while we do it.  My Jesus is the Jesus of John 2, who, at the wedding party saved making the best wine after every one had already gone through the inferior stuff.  That Jesus is the God of freedom and He’s the Lord who loves to smile and for us to enjoy this life right along with Him.  My Jesus is the Jesus of Luke 7, who released a woman to live freely from her bondage to sin by forgiving her rather than being scornful toward her on account of her sin.  My Jesus is the Jesus of John 21, who didn’t chastise Peter for his denials but transformed his bankruptcy into life through love and made him the leader of the church anyway.  So, let’s just remember who we are.

 

            WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF GOD, SO WE BEAR THE CHARACTERIC TRAITS OF GOD’S FAMILY: OUR LOVE FOR GOD AND OUR LOVE FOR OTHERS.  SO, AS GOD’S CHILDREN, LET’S DO EXACTLY WHAT THE AUTHOR OF ECCLESIASTES SAYS WE SHOULD DO - LIVE LIFE WITH VIGOR, FREEDOM, JOY, AND AN OBSESSION TO MAKE THE MOST OF THIS SHORT LIFE THAT GOD HAS GIVEN US AND THROUGH WHICH WE GLORIFY HIM AND LOVE OTHERS!

 

            PRAISE GOD FOR THIS FREEDOM THAT WE HAVE.  LET US NOT DARE TAKE IT FROM OURSELVES OR FROM ANYONE ELSE.

HALLELUJAH,  AMEN