"Extreme Faith Makeover: The Reason For Freedom"

I heard of a story that Thomas Costain tells in his history, “The Three Edwards”.

He describes the life of Raynald III, a 14th century duke in what is now Belguim.
Raynald was extremely overweight and commonly called by his Latin nickname Crassus which means “fat”.

After a violent argument, Raynald’s younger brother Edward led a successful revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald but did not kill him. Instead, Edward had a room built around Raynald in the Nieuwkerk castle and promised him he could regain his title and property as soon as he was able to leave the room.

This wouldn’t have been too hard for most people since the room had several windows and a door that was pretty much normal size. Not only that, none of the windows or the door was locked or barred. So why couldn’t he escape?

The problem was Raynald’s size. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother well, so each day he sent over a whole bunch of different, delicious foods. Instead of dieting his way out of prison, Raynald grew fatter!

When Duke Edward was accused of cruelty, he would just say, “My brother is not a prisoner. He can leave whenever he wants!”

Raynald stayed in that room for ten years and wasn’t released until after Edward died in battle. By then his health was so ruined he died within a year -- a prisoner of his own appetite.”

Many of us know what it’s like to be a prisoner of our own desires. We each have areas of weakness that we’ve struggled in for years. Today, we’re going to discover answers to two questions: “Why did Jesus set us free?” and “How can we experience this freedom more in our everyday lives, so we can be freer in these areas of weaknesses?” Before we get into today’s message let’s do a quick review of what we looked at already…

The idea of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

Most other religions are based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

We’ve seen that grace doesn’t mean God overlooks or ignores your sin. He doesn’t just let you get away with it. God NEVER overlooks sin! The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made. God was the just one to do it! That’s what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is our 5th message in our 6 week look at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about the about what grace is and how to live in it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

So far we’ve seen that when you add anything to the gospel you actually subtract from it.

We saw that sooner or later every believer discovers that they are still a sinner. This leads us to either cling to the law (rules) and become slaves again or run to Jesus and become free. How you respond to this discovery of your own sinfulness will reveal your true opinion of grace!

We also saw that the same way we started in this walk with Jesus is the same way we finish this journey with him. The purpose of the law was to protect us and to show us how guilty we are so that it would to lead us to Jesus.

Last week, we saw that there is a life-giving equality in Jesus. Whatever was once to your disadvantage doesn’t hold God back from giving you grace and using you!

We saw that it doesn’t matter what race you are, what social status you have, or what sex you are. You have an equal chance and an equal opportunity with God!

Nothing can hold you back from God’s love and all that he wants to do in your life. In Jesus, we’re all equal! We saw that our faith makes us become that offspring of Abraham’s - heirs to the promise!

We also saw that through Jesus we have gone from being slaves to the law to becoming heirs of God’s blessing and promises! If you didn’t get a chance to hear any of these messages, I’d encourage you to listen to them there or download them and burn them on a CD to hear later!

Today we’re going to look at Galatians 5. Go ahead and turn there in your Bibles right now. As you do, let me remind of some things…

Who Paul Was
Written by the Apostle Paul a man who knew what it was like to live his life trying to live according to the law. He was a Pharisee and persecuted the church, but, it all changed when he had a miraculous experience on the road to Damascus. Jesus appeared to him, revealed who he was and helped Paul to understand grace.

Who Were The Galatians?
“Galatians was written by Paul to congregations he had founded in the region of Galatia in central Asia Minor. (Show pictures of two areas they could be.)

Reason For The Letter
Some Jews had come and attacked Paul as a person (1) and what he taught (2). They said that Paul hadn’t given them all the information they needed to be saved. These people told the Galatians that they had to come under the law and be circumcised (live by the old rules) in order to be saved. They said Paul wasn’t a real apostle.

Last week I ended the message at Galatians 4:7, because we ran out of time. I’m not going to go cover all the verses that we missed last week, because I want to stay on schedule and end the series next Sunday. But I do want to look at the last section.

Let’s look at Galatians 4:21-31… (NLT)

Listen to me, you who want to live under the law. Do you know what the law really says? The Scriptures say that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife. The son of the slave-wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God's promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God's own fulfillment of his promise.

Now these two women serve as an illustration of God's two covenants. Hagar, the slave-wife, represents Mount Sinai where people first became enslaved to the law. And now Jerusalem is just like Mount Sinai in Arabia, because she and her children live in slavery. But Sarah, the free woman, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. And she is our mother.

That is what Isaiah meant when he prophesied, "Rejoice, O childless woman! Break forth into loud and joyful song, even though you never gave birth to a child. For the woman who could bear no children now has more than all the other women!"

And you, dear brothers and sisters, are children of the promise, just like Isaac. And we who are born of the Holy Spirit are persecuted by those who want us to keep the law, just as Isaac, the child of promise, was persecuted by Ishmael, the son of the slave-wife.

But what do the Scriptures say about that? "Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the family inheritance with the free woman's son." So, dear brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, obligated to the law. We are children of the free woman, acceptable to God because of our faith.

Paul uses Hagar and Sarah here to symbolize God’s two covenants.

Hagar represents one way to try and become right with God and gain his acceptance and Sarah represents the other.

Hagar = Abraham’s human effort to fulfill and accomplish the God’s promise.= Effort
Sarah = God’s miraculous fulfillment of his own promise. = Gift

This is what I want you to see…

**Salvation is as much a miracle as God causing Abraham and Sarah to have a child in their old age. Our own salvation can’t be accomplished by us!**

What is a miracle? One definition…

Miracle: “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”

That’s what salvation is: a miracle! And salvation comes to us through God’s new covenant with us.

Listen to how Bruce Shelley describes "The Difference Between A Contract And A Covenant". He says…

“In modern times we define a host of relations by contracts. These are usually for goods or services and for hard cash. The contract, formal or informal, helps to specify failure in these relationships. “The Lord did not establish a contract with Israel or with the church. He created a covenant. There is a difference.

"Contacts are broken when one of the parties fails to keep his promise. If, let us say, a patient fails to keep an appointment with a doctor, the doctor is not obligated to call the house and inquire, "Where were you? Why didn't you show up for your appointment?" He simply goes on to his next patient and has his appointment secretary take note of the patient who failed to keep the appointment. The patient may find it harder the next time to see the doctor. He broke an informal contract.

“According to the Bible, however, the Lord asks: 'Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!' (Isaiah 49:15)

“The Bible indicates the covenant is more like the ties of a parent to her child than it is a doctor's appointment. If a child fails to show up for dinner, the parent's obligation, unlike the doctor's, isn't canceled. The parent finds out where the child is and makes sure he's cared for. One member's failure does not destroy the relationship.

"A covenant puts no conditions on faithfulness. It is the unconditional commitment to love and serve.”

God has made a new unconditional commitment with us through Jesus. This miracle of salvation will never be taken back! And it’s a miracle that we can never make happen OR pay for!

I heard a story about the reaction of a little orphan girl when a lady came to adopt her. It reminds me of the reaction that we have when God adopts us….

There was a ripple of excitement all through the orphanage, for a great lady had come to take little Jane home with her. The girl herself was bewildered with the thought.

"Do you want to go with me and be my child?" the lady asked in gentle tones. "I don't know," said Jane timidly.

"But I'm going to give you beautiful clothes and a lot of things, a room of your own with beautiful bed and table and chairs."

After a moment's silence, the little one said anxiously: "But what am I to do for all this?" The lady burst into tears. "Only to love me, and be my child," she said as she folded the little girl in her arms.

We can’t make ourselves worthy of being adopted by God. We can’t pay him back. It’s just a miracle done out of love! All we can do in return is love Him, and be His children.

Let’s now look at Galatians 5:1-15...

“So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ cannot help you. I'll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey all of the regulations in the whole law of Moses.

For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace.

But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.

You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? It certainly isn't God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others—a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough!

I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will judge that person, whoever it is, who has been troubling and confusing you. Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching that you must be circumcised—as some say I do—why would the Jews persecute me? The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through the cross of Christ alone.

I only wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate (castrate) themselves.

For you have been called to live in freedom—not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.”

Charles Swindoll, in his book I’ve mentioned before, “The Grace Awakening” tells this story…

”It was on New Year’s Day 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was publicly stated, but it was not until December 18, 1865, that the Constitution made those convictions official… Headlines in newspapers in virtually every state had the same message “Slavery Legally Abolished”.

“And yet something happened that many would never have expected. The vast majority of slaves in the South who were legally freed continued to live as slaves! Most of them went right on living as though nothing had happened. Though free, the Blacks lived virtually unchanged lives throughout the Reconstruction Period."

Swindoll later says this…

“I call this tragic. A war had been fought. A president had been assassinated. An amendment to the Constitution had now been signed into law. Once enslaved men, women and children were now legally emancipated. Yet amazingly, many continued living in fear and squalor. In a context of hard-earned freedom, slaves chose to remain as slaves. Cruel and brutal though many of their owners were, black men and women chose to keep serving the same old master until they died.

"They were a few brave exceptions, but in many parts of the country you’d never known that slavery had been officially abolished and that they had been emancipated. That’s the way plantation owners wanted it. They maintained the age old philosophy, ‘Keep’em ignorant and you keep ‘em in the field’”

Many Christ followers live that way today!

We keep living as slaves of our old masters even though Jesus has emancipated us! Paul says we’be been set free from two kinds of slavery:

1. Slavery to the law: In verse 1 Paul said, “So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law.” That means you need to stop judging yourself and trying to make yourself righteous by what you do! You’re free!

The second kind of slavery we’ve been freed from is…

2. Slavery to sinning: In verse 13 Paul said, “For you have been called to live in freedom—not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.” That means you should stop running towards sin and enslaving yourself to your desires! You’re free!

We need to live in this freedom from these two things and quit living as their slaves! I want you to notice this… We not only need to be told to be (live) free, but we need to be told to stay free!

Voltaire said “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” That’s true for us! We love our sins so much that we don’t want to let them go! Can you imagine someone that would want to enslave themselves again AFTER they were FREE? But it happens all the time!

According to a report from the BBC 60% of prisoners in United States will eventually commit a crime again and end up back in prison! We’re the same way!

Legalistic Christians will tell you that’s why you have to have rules to live by or you will just be free to sin all you want!

But in verse 3, Paul tells us basically that if you want to live by the law, then Jesus is of no use to you. You pick one area to claim yourself righteous by and you will have to fulfill it all.

Not only that Paul says the scariest thing he’s said in this whole letter in verse 4… “For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace.”

Trying to be righteous through obeying rules will alienate you from Jesus. You will fall away from Grace. Think about this…

Grace doesn't need the law, but the law needs grace! Grace is enough to justify us alone, but the law never is!

You might think, “Well if I’m free why don’t I feel free? Why isn’t it easy to stop sinning?” You need to understand something here…

Being set free from the law and from sinning doesn’t mean you’re now forced to make the right choice. It just means that you have the chance to choose it! Let me tell you the way I’ve been thinking about how it personally applies to me…

I have been set free from the law so that I could be free from condemnation, NOT so I could be a slave to sin. When I try to justify myself by relying on the law I am relying on myself NOT on what Jesus did.

So why were you and I set free? What are we supposed to do with this freedom?

I was set free so I could serve God and my neighbor in love, which I was unable to do before. If I live my life out from under the law, then I won’t satisfy my sinful desires because I’ll be relying on Jesus constantly and never on my own strength. That’s what Paul tells us in V. 16-18.

I need to, by faith, constantly rely on Him for my righteousness (v. 5). It is a constant submission and trust in God. The original Fall of humankind happened because Adam and Eve rebelled from God to rely on themselves.

What we’re talking about here is a turning from the fall, back to a life of based on reliance on God! We will do a better job at fulfilling the law when we live our lives out of love than when we live them out of duty.

Think about a marriage. Would you rather have a marriage based on rules or based on love? Everyone wants one based on LOVE!

When you have a marriage based on love someone is doing something for you because they want to not because they have to! And in a marriage based on love you don’t have to worry about being accepted by your spouse ONLY if you obey every rule, instead you’re accepted and loved, so you WANT to please them!

It’s that love can conquer selfish desires and help you to do things for your spouse that you normally wouldn’t do! That’s what Paul’s been talking about this whole time...

• Grace VS. Law
• Living for God out of love VS. Duty
• Doing things for God because you want to VS. HAVE to

It’s that love that can inspire us and give us incentive to deny ourselves and live for God and others.

We now choose not to sin NOT because we have to or are afraid of punishment. We can now choose NOT to sin because of God’s love for us and what he’s done for us, -- because we want to show him our love back and show the love we’ve received to others!

Michael Horton in a book called, "The Agony of Deceit said it like this…

“Someone confronted Martin Luther, upon the Reformer's rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of justification, with the remark, 'If this is true, a person could simply live as he pleased!' 'Indeed!' answered Luther. 'Now, what pleases you?'

"Augustine was the great preacher of grace during the fourth and fifth centuries. Although his understanding of the doctrine of justification did not have the fine-tuned precision of the Reformers, Augustine's response on this point was similar to Luther's.

"He said that the doctrine of justification led to the maxim, 'Love God and do as you please.'

"Because we have misunderstood one of the gospel's most basic themes, Augustine's statement looks to many like a license to indulge one's sinful nature, but in reality it touches upon the motivation the Christian has for his actions.

"The person who has been justified by God's grace has a new, higher, and nobler motivation for holiness than the shallow, hypocritical self-righteousness or fear that seems to motivate so may religious people today.”

Paul says it in verse 6 “What is important is faith expressing itself in love.” And in verses 13-14 Paul says, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

This is the only way to begin conquering sin and not using our freedom from the law to make ourselves a slave to sin! Paul calls this living “a new life in the Holy Spirit”.

Let’s look at v. 16-26…

“So I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit wants.

"And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, and your choices are never free from this conflict.

"But when you are directed by the Holy Spirit, you are no longer subject to the law. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, idolatry, participation in demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kinds of sin. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God."

(NOTE: V. 21 The word translated “living” means “what one does repeatedly, continually, or habitually.” This is not talking about someone who falls into a sin once, but someone who falls in it, rolls around in it and decides to live there!)

"But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or irritate one another, or be jealous of one another.”

Paul says when you live by the Spirit that your life will stop producing the fruit (results) of your sinful nature, but instead you’ll start producing the fruit of the Spirit = results the Spirit produces!

I used to always wonder what it meant to “live in the Spirit” or how I could actually do this. One day after reading through Galatians it suddenly hit me!

I wrote this in my journal on October 10, 1993…

“What is living by the Spirit?Living my life out from under the law in faith in Jesus only, for my salvation and righteousness. It is the absence of performance and the presence of submission. It is living out my freedom in Christ in love towards him and my neighbor. It is letting the old man stay dead!”

We will never be sinless in this life, but we can sin less! We don’t have to be prisoner our our own appetites anymore like Raynald III in the story we started with!

Salvation is a complete miracle! It’s something we can never add to or achieve on our own. We have been set free from the law and from our own sinful nature, so we need to live that way and stay in that freedom.

The reason not to sin now is out of love for God. We’ve been set free so we can serve God and others. When we do that we’ll fulfill the law better than any rule ever could ever get us to.

MY CHALLENGE:
This week I want you to try living this way this week. Realize that Jesus paid the full price for your sins and you’re completely forgiven and free from condemnation. Live for God this week, not because you have to, but because you WANT to. I’m going to be doing that this week.

I have one other new thing we can try…You can go to my blog at ChurchGatherer.Blogspot.com and I’ll post up other thoughts and ideas about trying to live this out. You can click on the “comments” section of any post and add a question or your experience or thoughts. It’s a way to continue this conversation this week!

Next week:

• We’ll look at how we can help each other when we fall in sin.
• We’ll take a look at one HUGELY IMPORTANT reason at why we should be careful not to use our freedom to sin.

“Our New Identity”

You’ve heard of Dejavu right? It’s the feeling that you’ve experienced something before.

Tom Kelly author of “The 10 Faces Of Innovation” in a blog recently said that this…

“When you go out to do field work you should try to do the opposite of Dejavu.

He says his friend, Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford calls this "vuja de." Tom says this in the blog…

“Vuja de happens when you enter a situation you've been in a thousand times before, but with the sense of being there for the first time.

“As French novelist Marcel Proust said, ‘The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.’ So if you want to find untapped innovation opportunities, watch the world around you with "fresh eyes." Go for a sense of vuja de, and then ask yourself why things are the way they are.”

He ends with this… ”Once you start asking the right vuja de questions, you might find that the answers can lead to big opportunities for your business.”

That’s what I want to do with this series is get us to see old things in a new way. Many of you have probably heard of grace before, but I want us to have a new, more accurate understanding of grace and how amazing it really is. When this happens our life will transform! You’ll be in situations that you’ve been in a thousand times before, but things will be different, because YOU’LL be different!

Before we get into today’s message let’s do a quick review of what we looked at already…

The idea of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

Most other religions are based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

We’ve seen that grace doesn’t mean God overlooks or ignores your sin. He doesn’t just let you get away with it. God NEVER overlooks sin!

The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made. God was the just one to do it! That’s what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is our 4^th Sunday in our 6 week look at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about the about what grace is and how to live in it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

So far we’ve seen that when you add anything to the gospel you actually subtract from it. We learned that there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves. We’re helpless to save ourselves. The only thing we can do is believe in what God did.

We saw that sooner or later every believer discovers that they are still a sinner.

When we make this discovery we can either cling to the law and become slaves again or run to Jesus and become free. How you respond to this discovery will reveal your true opinion of grace!

Last week we saw that the same way we started in this walk with Jesus is the same way we continue and finish this journey with him.

We started by admitting we were sinners – that we couldn’t save ourselves. We confessed our belief in Jesus’ payment for our sins through his death and resurrection and then we relied on him. That’s the same way we have to live everyday to the end as a believer!

God hasn’t changed the rules. We were saved and given new life because of faith and the only way we grow and conquer sin in our lives is by faith. It’s all still by faith!

Paul is saying you have two different tracks to run the race of life on:

• Law: you live a certain way to be accepted/forgiven.
• Faith: you live a certain way BECAUSE you have been accepted/forgiven

These two things are opposite ways of living. They can't exist on the same level at the same time. They work against each other!

Paul says in v. 13-14 that Christ rescued us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse! We don’t have to run on the track called the Law anymore!

What is the purpose of the law? To protect us (by showing us what was wrong), show us how guilty we are and to lead us to Jesus.

The law was never given to make us right. It was always only given to show us our need for Jesus! Paul says in v. 22 “²²But the Scriptures have declared that we are all prisoners of sin, so the only way to receive God's promise is to believe in Jesus Christ.”

Now that Jesus has come the law isn't needed. “²⁵But now that faith in Christ has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.”

If you weren’t here with us to hear those messages, I want to encourage you to go to our site and listen to the messages. PathwayPaloAlto.com

Today we’re going to look at Galatians 4. Go ahead and turn there in your Bibles right now. As you do, let me remind of some things…

Who Paul Was
Written by the Apostle Paul a man who knew what it was like to live his life trying to live of to the law. He was a Pharisee and persecuted the church, but, it all changed when he had a miraculous experience on the road to Damascus. Jesus appeared to him, revealed who he was and helped Paul to understand grace.

Who Were The Galatians?
“Galatians was written by Paul to congregations he had founded in the region of Galatia in central Asia Minor. (Show pictures of two areas they could be.)

Reason For The Letter
Some Jews had come and attacked Paul as a person (1) and what he taught (2). They said that Paul hadn’t given them all the information they needed to be saved. These people told people that they had to come under the law and be circumcised (live by the old rules) in order to be saved. They said Paul wasn’t a real apostle.

Last week I ended the message at Galatians 3:25, because I felt like Galatians 3:26 thru the end of chapter 4 went together, so let’s start at 3:26…

Hear the message below:

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Picture from story I tell of Chris Wendelberger

"Back To The Starting Block"

(Note: The recording from this week got deleted. This is straight from my notes. I didn't get a chance to edit/correct them before uploading. Sorry in advance for any spelling or punctuation errors!)

People have a habit of taking simple things and making them complex.

• Do you know how many pages were in the 1891 basketball rule book? Just 2 pages.
• Do you know how many pages are in a current basketball rule book? There are 114 pages!

Do you think every one of those 112 pages they’ve added has actually made the sport any better?

Making something complicated doesn’t always make it better! I believe one of the devils greatest tricks is to get us to complicate the gospel.

What if being free from the affect of sin and freer power of sin is much simpler than we’ve made it?

Jim Collins is a best-selling author who wrote business book “Good To Great”. This book reveals why some companies go from good to great and why others don’t.

In the book, he talks about something called “The Hedgehog Concept”. This concept is all about how success is found in simplifying things. This is what he says…

---
In his famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.

Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner.

The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.

The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox.

“Aha, I’ve got you now!” thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, “Here we go again. Will he ever learn?”

Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defense and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack.

Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.

Berlin extrapolated from this little parable to divide people into two basic groups: foxes and hedgehogs.

Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,” says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision.

Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything.

It doesn’t matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.

Jim Collins goes on…

Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointed out the power of the hedgehog during one of our long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.”

Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs.

They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’”

Jim Collins ends with this…

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2?

What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand?”

No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

---

Today we’re going to untangle the mess that legalism has made of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We going to look at what the essentials are so we can learn to ignore the rest.

Before we get into today’s ideas let’s do a quick review of what we looked at already…

We’re looking at the most amazing idea found in the whole Bible: grace. The idea of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

Most other religions are basically based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

Some people think grace just means God overlooks or ignores your sin – that he lets you get away with it. But we saw that that’s wrong! God NEVER overlooks sin!

The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made. That’s what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

For the next 4 Sundays we'll be looking at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about the about what grace is and how to receive it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

The first week we looked at Galatians 1. The message was “Jesus Plus Nothing”.

During that first week we saw that when you add anything to the gospel you actually subtract from it. Adding rules to the gospel just makes us a slave again.

We learned that week that there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves. We’re helpless to save ourselves. The only thing we can do is believe in what God did.

Last week we looked at Galatians 2. The message was “The Inevitable Discovery”. We saw that sooner or later every believer discovers that they are still a sinner.

When we make this discovery we can either cling to the law (rules) or to Jesus. One will enslave us and one will free us. How you respond to this discovery will reveal your true opinion of grace!

If you weren’t here with us to hear those messages, I want to encourage you to go to our site and listen to the messages. PathwayPaloAlto.com

Today we’re going to look at the Galatians 3. Before we start, let me remind you of some things…

Who Paul Was
Written by the Apostle Paul a man who knew what it was like to live his life trying to live of to the law. He was a Pharisee and persecuted the church, but, it all changed when he had a miraculous experience on the road to Damascus. Jesus appeared to him, revealed who he was and helped Paul to understand grace.

Who Were The Galatians?
“Galatians was written by Paul to congregations he had founded in the region of Galatia in central Asia Minor. (Show pictures of two areas they could be.)

Reason For The Letter
Some Jews had come and attacked Paul as a person (1) and what he taught (2). They said that Paul hadn’t given them all the information they needed to be saved. These people told people that they had to come under the law and be circumcised (live by the old rules) in order to be saved. They said Paul wasn’t a real apostle.

Let’s look at Galatians 3…

v.1-5

“Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has cast an evil spell on you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ's death as clearly as though I had shown you a signboard with a picture of Christ dying on the cross. ²Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you believed the message you heard about Christ. ³Have you lost your senses? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? ⁴You have suffered so much for the Good News. Surely it was not in vain, was it? Are you now going to just throw it all away?

^“5I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law of Moses? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.”

Paul right from the beginning is telling them what I want you to hear today…

The same way we started in this walk with Jesus is the same way we continue and finish this journey with him.

We started by admitting we were sinners – that we couldn’t save ourselves. We confessed our belief in Jesus’ payment for our sins through his death and resurrection and then we relied on him.

That’s the same way we have to live everyday to the end as a believer!

Jerry Bridges in his book “The Discipline of Grace” says it like this…

“…it is important to realize that we were not only saved by faith at a particular point in time, but we are to live by faith in Christ every day of our lives.”

Paul asks them in verse 2 “Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law?” No!

He then asks them, “After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?” Let me ask you…

Did Jesus forgive you because you deserved it or because of Jesus’ payment on the cross? Then guess what? The only reason WHY he forgives us now that we’re believer sis for the same reason!

It’s never because we deserve it. It’s never because we were good enough before or because we promise we’ll be better next time. It’s ALWAYS because of Jesus!!

God hasn’t changed the rules. We were saved and given new life because of faith and the only way we grow and conquer sin in our lives is by faith. It’s all still by faith!

In fact, Paul reminds us that this isn’t just true about how we started as followers, but it’s how God’s made people righteous from the beginning!

Look at what he says in V.6-9

⁶In the same way, "Abraham believed God, so God declared him righteous because of his faith." ^{F9 7}The real children of Abraham, then, are all those who put their faith in God. (This was a slam against the legalistic Jews believers who came to confuse the Galatians, because they thought they were the real children of Abraham, because of circumcision!”)

⁸What's more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would accept the Gentiles, too, on the basis of their faith. God promised this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, "All nations will be blessed through you." ^{F10 9}And so it is: All who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.”

Faith is how Abraham was made righteous with God! We are considered Abraham’s children and we receive the same blessing he did because we believe.

Let’s keep reading. Look what Paul says in v. 10-14

^“10But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, "Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all these commands that are written in God's Book of the Law." (deut. 27:26)^{F11 11}Consequently, it is clear that no one can ever be right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, "It is through faith that a righteous person has life." (Hab. 2:4)

"¹²How different from this way of faith is the way of law, which says, "If you wish to find life by obeying the law, you must obey all of its commands." (Lev. 18:5) ¹³But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (Deut. 21:23)^{F14 14}Through the work of Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, and we Christians receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith.”

Paul is saying you have two different tracks to run the race of life on:

· Law: you live a certain way to be accepted/forgiven v. 10 “those who depend on the law to make them right”

· Faith: you live a certain way BECAUSE you have been accepted/forgiven v. 11 “It is through faith that a righteous person has life." – Hab. 2:4

These two things are opposite ways of living. They can't exist on the same level at the same time. They work against each other!

Phillip Yancey in his book “Soul Survivor” looks at what he calls “13 unlikely mentors who helped his faith survive the church”

One of these 13 people he talks about is the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Leo Tolstoy was a man who became a believer who tried with all his effort and heart to put the teachings of Jesus into practice.

When he read where Jesus told the rich young rule “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Tolstoy freed his serfs, gave away his copyrights, and began to dispose of his immense estate.

But Tolstoy had a problem. Yancey says this, “What Tolstoy encountered in the gospels attracted him like a flame; his failure to attain it ultimately consumed him.”

Yancey later says this about Tolstoy, “His desire to reach perfection led him to devise ever new lists of rules. He gave up hunting, tobacco, alcohol and meat. He determined to sell or give away everything superfluous – the piano, the furniture, carriages – and to treat all people alike, from governors to beggars. He drafted rules for developing the emotional will, rules for developing lofty feelings and eliminating base ones, rules for subordinating the will to the feeling of love.”

Tolstoy is the perfect example of someone who tried to find salvation in rules and living out the law! And he’s the perfect example when someone decides to run on that track in life…

Yancey says this about Tolstoy, “Yet he could never achieve the self-discipline necessary to abide by his own rules. He kept the piano and the furniture after all, He signed the estate over to his wife, but continued living in it, and was served his vegetarian meals by a white-gloved servant.”

Sometimes Tolstoy was able to accomplish great good. When famine hit the area he spent two years organizing relief.

But in the end he died a deeply unhappy man. That’s where the track called the law leads to when we decide to run on it!


But Yancey in his book “Soul Survivor” gives us another mentor he learned from that gives us a different example. He is another Russian novelist named Feodor Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky was a believer too. Early in his life he underwent what Yancey calls “a virtual resurrection”. He had been arrested for belonging to a group judged treasonous by Tsar Nicholas I, who to teach these young radicals a lesson staged a fake execution.

After spending 8 months in jail awaiting sentence, suddenly on a freezing morning 3 days before Christmas the conspirators were ordered out of their cells and to a public square where to their horror an official read the sentence condemning them to death.

They had no time to absorb the news, and no possibility of appeal.

A firing squad stood ready. Bareheaded, robed in white burial shrouds, hands behind them, they were paraded through the snow before a gawking crowd.

A clerk pronounced the words, “The wages of sin is death” to each prisoner, and held out a cross to be kissed. The first 3 were selected to die and then tied to posts.

At the very last instant, as the order “Ready, Aim!” was heard, as drums rumbled and rifles were cocked and lifted to shoulders, a horseman galloped up with a prearranged message from the Tsar: he would mercifully lower their sentences to hard labor.”

Dostoevsky never recovered from this experience. He had faced death and from that moment on life became precious beyond all calculation. Back in his prison cell, he walked up and down the cell, singing in sheer joy of have life restored.

He wrote his brother, “Never has there seethed in me such and abundant and healthy kind of spiritual life as now… Now my life will change, I shall be born again in a new form.” He folded away the burial shroud to keep as a memento.

His next ordeal was being shipped to Siberia on the stroke of midnight on Christmas day. Three Women had made it their mission to welcome new prisoners and try to bring them comfort. One lady handed him a New Testament, the only book allowed in prison.

Believing that God had given him a second chance to fulfill his calling he poured over it during his confinement. He spent the next 4 years in hard labor and then 6 after that in exile. At the end he came out of it with unshakable Christian convictions.

Dostoevsky suffered badly in prison physically and emotionally. But instead of letting it turn him bitter he returned to civilization with a renewed joy and optimism.

He tucked away memories in his mind of peeking through a gap in the fence for hours watching the green grass and staring at the blue sky. He saw it as the only place God’s world was.

He remembered the generosity of the woman who gave him that N.T and others. He later went on to become a writer. He last and greatest was “The Brothers Karamazov” which Yancey called “one of the greatest novels written”.

Yancey says this “Two days after completing the novel, as if he had nothing more to say, he died virtually penniless. On his lap lay the N.T. given on his to Siberia so many years before.”

He lived a life with ups and downs, but one that was sprinkled with mercies and a life where he never forgot the grace that was shown to him.

Paul says in v. 13-14 that Christ rescued us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse!

We don’t have to run on the track called the Law hoping it can make us right like Tolstoy! We can now run on the track called faith like Dostoevsky!

Let’s go back to the Abraham example, cause something important was left out…

V. 15-18

¹⁵Dear brothers and sisters, here's an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or amend an irrevocable agreement, so it is in this case. ¹⁶God gave the promise to Abraham and his child. And notice that it doesn't say the promise was to his children, as if it meant many descendants. But the promise was to his child—and that, of course, means Christ. ¹⁷This is what I am trying to say: The agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later when God gave the law to Moses. God would be breaking his promise. ¹⁸For if the inheritance could be received only by keeping the law, then it would not be the result of accepting God's promise. But God gave it to Abraham as a promise.”

Did you catch what Paul is saying here?

The law came 430 years AFTER the promise – the covenant. Think about that for a minute… God already declared Abraham righteous and made a covenant with him 430 years before he ever gave Abraham’s descendants the law!!!

The promise came first! That means the law was a result of the promise, not the promise a result of the law. If you really understand that, then that’s HUGE! Why?

God gave the Israelites the law because he had already declared they were his people. The law was the benefit for being his people. They didn’t see it as a list of do’s and don’ts!

They saw it as God telling them, “Here are some things (and 10 in particular) that if you do them, then you will succeed in life! If you don’t follow these things, then you’ll hurt yourself, others and me!”

All that God told Abraham he would do for him, and eventually did do for him, was because Abraham had faith in God! It was not because he obeyed the law!

So what was the purpose of the law? Look at what Paul says in v. 19-25…

¹⁹Well then, why was the law given? It was given to show people how guilty they are. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of the child to whom God's promise was made. And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people. ²⁰Now a mediator is needed if two people enter into an agreement, but God acted on his own when he made his promise to Abraham.

²¹Well then, is there a conflict between God's law and God's promises? Absolutely not! If the law could have given us new life, we could have been made right with God by obeying it. ²²But the Scriptures have declared that we are all prisoners of sin, so the only way to receive God's promise is to believe in Jesus Christ.

²³Until faith in Christ was shown to us as the way of becoming right with God, we were guarded by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could put our faith in the coming Savior.

²⁴Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian and teacher to lead us until Christ came. So now, through faith in Christ, we are made right with God. ²⁵But now that faith in Christ has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.”

What is the purpose of the law? To show us how guilty we are and that is supposed to lead us (expose us) to Jesus.

Illust. Speed Limit Signs
The speed limit signs can’t to stop you from speeding. They’re there to protect you by warning you. But they can’t stop you!

They’re there so you have no excuse. If there wasn’t any signs you couldn’t get a ticket! But since there is you can!

The law was never given to make us right. It was always only given to show us our need for Jesus! Paul says in v. 22 “²²But the Scriptures have declared that we are all prisoners of sin, so the only way to receive God's promise is to believe in Jesus Christ.”

Now that Jesus has come the law isn't needed. “²⁵But now that faith in Christ has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.”

Close

Luciano Pavarotti tells this story…

When I was a boy, my father, a baker, introduced me to the wonders of song, tenor. He urged me to work very hard to develop my voice. Arrigo Pola, a professional tenor in my hometown of Modena, Italy, took me as a pupil. I also enrolled in a teachers college. On graduating, I asked my father, "Shall I be a teacher or a singer?" "Luciano," my father replied, "if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair."

I chose one. It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance. It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera. And now I think whether it's laying bricks, writing a book--whatever we choose--we should give ourselves to it. Commitment, that's the key. Choose one chair.

Today I want to tell you to do the same thing: Choose one chair. Choose one way to live for God: either by faith or by the law. You can’t live both ways.

Next week:
We’ll continue to find the answer to this question:

Did Jesus die on the cross just so you can be forgiven or did he die so we could also live better lives?

We’ll look at the difference between living like slaves and heirs.
We’ll look at the only way to find joy

In the coming weeks:

We’ll also look ways to use our freedom to become freer instead of using it to become slaves.

"The Inevitable Discovery"

A single discovery can change things forever.

Two Australians, doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, won the Nobel Prize in medicine last Monday for a discovery that defied decades of medical belief and revolutionized the treatment of ulcers.

They showed that bacterial infection — not stress — causes ulcers in the stomach and intestine.

The long, classic teaching in medicine was that the stomach was sterile and so nothing was supposed to be able to grow there because of corrosive gastric juices. Everybody believed there were no bacteria in the stomach.

The idea of stress and other things like that, as the cause of ulcers, was just so locked into people’s minds that no one could really believe that it was bacteria.

But Marshall and Warren believed the bacteria came first, causing inflammation, then ulcers. So they began testing their hypothesis.

To make his case, Marshall even deliberately infected himself by swallowing a culture of H. pylori.

He said this...

"I developed a vomiting illness and had severe inflammation in the stomach for about two weeks," he told The Associated Press. "I didn't actually develop an ulcer, but I did prove that a healthy person could be infected by these bacteria, and that was an advance because the skeptics were saying that people with ulcers somehow had a weakened immune system and that the bacteria were infecting them after the event."

Dr. Warren, a retired pathologist, said it still took a decade for others to accept their findings.

But their 1982 discovery eventually transformed peptic ulcer disease from a chronic, frequently disabling condition to one that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and other medicines.

One discovery can change everything forever.

Today, we’re going to talk about a discovery that’s more personal – a discovery that when every follower of Jesus first stumbles upon it.

How we deal with this discovery will free us or enslave us.

Last week, we looked at the most amazing concept the Bible teaches us: grace.

We talked about a new comedy on NBC called “My Name Is Earl”. It’s a show about a guy who’s had bad luck his whole life and discovers the idea of karma. He makes up a list of everything he’s ever done wrong and attempts to make things right. He hopes to fix his karma and tip the scales back so that good things begin to happen in his life.

In our society, karma is a very hip and easily digested concept.

We talked about the difference between karma and grace:

• Karma says we get what we deserve based on what we’ve done.
• Grace says we get what we don’t deserve based on what God’s done!

Like I told you last week, I’ll take grace over karma any day!

The ideas of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

Most other religions are basically based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

Some people think grace just means God overlooks or ignores your sin – that he lets you get away with it. But last week we saw that that’s wrong! God NEVER overlooks sin!

The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made. It’s just that God paid the cost for our sin when he had Jesus died on the cross to make the punishment for our sins. He conquered death for us when Jesus rose again from the dead.

For the next 5 Sundays we'll be looking at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about grace and how to receive it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

I’m calling it this because just like on the show Extreme Makeover where they take someone who’s body has been sagging and dragging and make them not just as good as they were before, but even better. (*Show before and after picture)

I want to help adjust our faith and understanding not only back to what it was, but get it to a place where its even better than it was before.

We can’t live in the freedom God has for us unless we understand and believe the right things! That’s the goal of this series: to give our faith an extreme makeover!

Today we’re going to look at the Galatians 2.

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"Jesus Plus Nothing" - Galatians 1

This is the first message in our series "Extreme Faith Makeover"...

What we’re going to be talking about over the next 6 Sundays could be the most important thing that we’ve talked about all year.

I want to help you to be free. But, you see we have a problem in life.

The problem is that we do wrong things. The Bible calls it sin. Our bad choices – or sins - end up separating us from God and others.

This leads to two other problems:

1. Having to figure out how to make up for or fix the wrong things we’ve done
2. How to escape out of this endless cycle of making bad choices.


NBC has a new show out called, “My Name Is Earl”. It’s about one guy’s struggle with this problem I’ve been talking about.

(From NBC site)

Earl is a guy who has taken one too many wrong turns on the highway of life. But, a twist of fate turns his life around.

Earl wins a small lottery, and, after deciding to transform his good fortune into a life-changing event as he sets out to right all the wrongs from his past.

But, before Earl can begin his journey, he has some bad luck again. Seconds after winning the lottery, he is hit by a car and while unconscious; the winning lottery ticket blows away. Later in the hospital, Earl watches "Last Call with Carson Daly" where Carson says that his success is a direct result of doing good things for other people.

It’s at that moment Earl discovers karma- and in hope of a better life, he decides to set out to correct every bad thing he's ever done.

He makes up a list of all the people he’s ever done wrong and begins a journey to make things right. He starts with a grade school geek, named Kenny, who Earl used to pick on.

Earl says this, “The secret to life is fixing all the bad things that you’ve done.”

---
The whole idea of karma has some basis of truth to it, but it also has a lot to it that is wrong.

You do reap what you sow and we’ll talk about during our last week in this series. You can make a good choice and expect the direct result of that choice to be something good.

But one of the wrong parts of karma is expecting that if you pile up enough good deeds in your life that you will then attract good results in your life. That’s not true!

We see in the Bible that God offers us something better than karma. He offers us grace!

Grace is one of the most important concepts in God’s word. Grace is the word translated in the Bible to describe God’s undeserved favor towards us.

Someone once described grace this way…

"When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day's pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements, that is an award.

"But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award--yet receives such a gift anyway--that is a good picture of God's unmerited favor. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God."

Romans 6:14 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The payment we earn from our sin is death.

When we sin the results end up destroying our life in small ways – killing off the chance for us to experience some of the good things that making the right choices would have given us.

The payment we get from sin is that it destroys the chance for us to be all that we could be.

Sin, little by little, ultimately gives us only death! Look at a person in prison or look at a drug addict and you can see how sin kills off the good experiences in life.

But, it’s subtly doing the same in us who look cleaner. It’s just harder to see!

The gift we receive through deciding to follow Jesus is life.

When we follow Jesus he begins to show us the right choices to make and he frees us to make them. This choice gives us the results that lead to real life both here and in eternity! It’s not what we earn. It’s a gift!

I’ll take grace over karma any day!

• Karma says we get what we deserve based on what we’ve done.
• Grace says we get what we don’t deserve based on what God’s done!

The idea of grace is what makes Christianity different than any other religion.

All other religions are basically based on what you can do to get to God/heaven, but Christianity is all about what God did to get to us!

There’s a great story that shows what grace is all about…

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.

One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.

Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving.

But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor." the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions--ten dollars or ten days in jail."

But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket.
He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

God did the same thing for us.

Some people think grace just means God overlooks or ignores your sin – that he lets you get away with it. That’s wrong! God NEVER overlooks sin!

The punishment still had to happen. The payment for sin still had to be made.

It’s just that God paid the cost for our sin (the fine) when he had Jesus die on the cross to take the punishment for our sins. He conquered death for us when Jesus rose again from the dead.

God deserves a standing ovation for what he's done! That is grace!

Here’s the crazy thing…

God wants us to be free, but most of us most of the time we live in slavery. Slavery to our own evil desires. Slavery to guilt. Slavery to living life by the rules.

The reason that we stay trapped when God wants us to be free is because: we believe the wrong things about grace, we don't fully understand it and we don’t know how to receive its full benefit.

For the next 6 Sundays we'll be looking at the book of Galatians. It's a book that is all about grace and how to receive it. I'm calling this series “Extreme Faith Makeover”.

Here's why…

On Extreme Makeover, they take someone who’s body has been sagging and dragging and make them not just as good as they were before, but even better.

What I want to do with this series is help adjust our faith and understanding back to what it should be and get it to a place where its even better than it was before.

We can’t live in the freedom God has for us unless we understand and believe the right things! That’s the goal of this series: to give our faith an extreme makeover!

Turn with me to Galatians chapter 1.

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Powerful Gratitude

Glen Davis spoke last week and shared a great message on "The Impact of Gratitude".

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God’s Marketing Plan Pt. 2: Word Of Mouth

Last Week Review:

Last week, we began a series called “God’s Marketing Plan”.

We talked about choosing to live a life of influence.

I told you last week that God wants you to be a person of influence. That God wants us to influence our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and one day the world!

I told you that that’s God’s dream for us! And it has been from the beginning.

We saw in Genesis 1:27 that it says, “So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them.”

I showed you that one of the things this implies is…

That God’s plan from the beginning was that, in all the diversity of his creation, we would stand out as a constant reminder that he exists.

And I said that you can think of ourselves as God’s advertisements, because we are God’s main way to make himself known in this world.

When we looked at 2 Cor. 5:14-21 and saw that God has given us all “The Ministry Of Reconciliation”! God wants to make his appeal through you to the people you come in contact with on a regular basis. He wants to use you to reconcile people with himself!

And then, I read you a quote from Dale Carnegie where he said, “There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.”

I told you last Sunday that these 4 ways are the only way we can stand out as reminders of God in this world. That we can only reflect or reveal God by what we do, how we look, what we say and how we say it.

We then spent the rest of our time last Sunday looking at how we can reflect God by what we do. We looked at how as followers of Jesus, we should stand out by accident – without trying! I called it being “Accidental Witnesses”

We saw this in Matt 5:13-16 “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden...” And it ends with this, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds (the things we do) and praise your Father in heaven.”

• We said that to be salt means to influence the people or situations that we’re a part of by what we do.
• To be light means you reveal the truth or the right direction by what you do.
• To be a city on a hill you have to be willing to live in a way that lets you stand out.

Because, if you’re going to be a witness you’re going to have to stand out. We have to stop trying to blend in.

I read you a quote from Seth Godin about his marketing book “Purple Cow” and at the end of the quote he summed it up with this…

“Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.”

I told you that what Seth says here is true for business and it’s true for us as individuals!

God wants us to live such remarkable lives that the people around us are attracted to Jesus, because of us.

I hope you’ve been praying about and thinking about how you can live this way! *This is the foundation for you to be an influence on the people God brings in your life.

If you weren’t here last week, I want to encourage you to go to our website and listen to the message. Download it and burn it onto a CD, then you can listen to it in the car.

Today, I want to start looking at one of the 3 remaining ways that we can be advertisements for God in this world. We’re going to talk about how to reflect/reveal God by what we say.

Do you know what the most powerful form of advertising is?

Word of Mouth Advertising!

John Milton Fogg, a well-known network marketer said this, “The recommendation of a Friend is the single, most powerful Marketing 'force' in the world.”

Word-of-mouth advertising is powerful, but for some reason, God has such a hard time getting many Christians to ever mention him to anyone!

Today I want us to begin to learn how to get over this problem. To do that let’s start by looking at John 1:35-51...

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“God’s Marketing Plan” Part One: Accidental Witnesses

In life, you can either influence, or be influenced.

Most of us have experienced being on either side, but when your life comes to an end which will describe your life as a whole?

• Will you be a person who lived a life of influence?
• Will anyone’s life be different because they knew you?

This is the good news…

God wants you to be a person of influence. His whole plan is for us to affect the people around us until eventually our affect touches the whole world!

God wants us - this small group of friends who are gathered in this theater - to influence our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and one day the world!

That’s God’s dream for us! And it has been from the beginning.

Have you ever thought about this?

God made us in his own image. Genesis 1:27 says this, “So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them.”

Do you realize one of the things that this implies?

God’s plan from the beginning was that, in all the diversity of his creation, we would stand out as a constant reminder that he exists.

C.E. Orr in his book “How To Live A Holy Life” says it this way…

“In the vast created universe, what place does man occupy? He stands out as a creature that bears the stamp of the divine image, a creature that is endowed with eternity. The heavens shall pass away, but man shall be forever. He was made capable of holding communion with the Creator. He occupies the relationship with God as child with parent. Being made in the likeness of God, he steps out upon the stage of the mighty universe to play the highest and noblest part in the entire drama of createdexistences. The songs of the morning stars as they sing together, pouring their anthems into the ears of God, are not such sweet music as is the voice of praise and adoration from the holy soul of man. Man was created for the very highest purpose in the mind of God. He is chosen to represent the divine character.”

What an amazing part God’s chosen for us! And that was God’s plan from the beginning of creation and it still is now!


There’s a fictional story about Jesus and the Archangel Gabriel that shows how important this plan is to God…

After Jesus returned to heaven, he and the Archangel Gabriel were talking. Even in heaven Jesus bore the marks of the crucifixion.

Gabriel said, “Master, you must have suffered horribly! Do people know and appreciate how you love them and what you did for them?”
Jesus replied, “Oh no; not yet. Right now only a few people in Palestine know.”

Gabriel was perplexed: “Then what have you done to let everyone know about your love?”
Jesus answered, “I have asked Peter, Andrew, James, John and a few more friends to tell others about me. Those who are told will tell others about me, and yet others still others, until the last man and last woman in the farthest corner of the earth will have heard the story of how I gave my life for them because I love them so much.”

Gabriel frowned and looked rather skeptical. “Yes, but what if Peter and the others grow weary? What if the people who come after them forgot? Surely you have made other plans?”
Jesus said, “Gabriel, I haven’t made any other plans. I’m counting on them.”

The events in this story are not true, but the message of it is true!

We are God's main tool to make himself known in the world! Do you realize this?
We are God’s advertisements to the world!

Today, I want begin a two part series called “God’s Marketing Plan”. Over the next two Sundays, I want to look at God’s plan to make himself known and get his message out to the world.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Cor. 5:14-21.

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“The Hidden Opportunities Of Life”

Max Lucado tells a story about a bird named Chippie in his book “In The Eye Of The Storm”…

Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming.

One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.

The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage… with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She'd barely said "hello" when "ssssopp!" Chippie got sucked in.

The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie -- still alive, but stunned.

Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do . . . she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.

Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.

A few days after the trauma, the reporter who'd initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the bird was recovering. "Well," she replied, "Chippie doesn't sing much anymore -- he just sits and stares."

It's easy to laugh at Chippie, but all of us know what it's like to go through a trial and feel afterward like we don't sing much anymore -- we just sit there and stare. :)


But, trials and problems are a normal thing in this fallen world we live in. We shouldn’t be surprised by them. We should really expect them!


In John 16:33, Jesus said, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

If we can’t stop trials from coming into our lives, what can we do?

The only thing we can do is learn to see them differently. And when we learn to see them differently, we’ll discover something amazing.

I want to look at a passage of scripture that tells us a surprising way to look at our trials and problems.

Turn with me in your Bibles to James 1:2-12.

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“There’s More Than Meets The Eye”

A human eyeball weighs just an ounce.

But we rely on these two ounces of jelly in our skulls to know what reality in life is.

The main function of the eye is to convert light from the outside world into electrical nerve impulses, so our minds can take in the outside world.

Our eyes are one of the main organs that help us to perceive, understand and interact with the outside world.

If you really think about it the way our eyes work is almost miraculous.

Here is all that’s happening right now in order for you to see me...

1. The light bounces off me and into your pupil.
2. The light crosses your lens and the images of me gets focused.
3. The image of me turns upside down and at shines on your retina. Your retina contains two types of photoreceptors called rod cells and cone cells. They help you to see colors and sharp details.
4. Then, your optic nerve carries the picture of me you see and the message goes to the brain.
5. The first thing your brain does after the message goes there is turns the picture of me right side up.
6. The second thing your brain does is figure out what you’re seeing and what you should do.

All that is happening right now as you look at me! It’s crazy isn’t it!

Charles Darwin in his famous work on evolution called “Origin of Species” admitted that the eye is so complex that saying it could have been formed by natural selection is pretty absurd.

Our eyes help us in so many ways in life it’s hard to imagine living without them.

But have you ever thought how they limit us?


Let me show you how with an example from the animal kingdom…

“An African impala can jump 10 feet high and cover a distance of more than 30 feet. But do you want to know what’s strange? These amazing animals can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with just a 3-foot wall. You want to know why? These animals won’t jump if they can’t see where their feet will land.”

Impalas stay trapped because they refuse to go where they can’t see!

So many times in life we’re the same way! We won't go in a direction in life where we can't see.

Today, I want to talk about how following Jesus on the journey of life means we need to learn to see beyond our sight – see the invisible - the not yet.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews 11:1-2

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“A Better Way To Live Life"

I heard a story about a guy who was sitting in a hotel lounge listening to a life-or-death struggle going on just a few feet away.

He could hear a small fly burning out its short life’s energies in a futile attempt to fly through the glass of a window pane.

The whining sound of its wings told the story of the fly’s strategy: try harder.

But it wasn’t working.

The frenzied effort offered the fly no hope. It was impossible for the fly to try hard enough to succeed and break through the glass.

But, the little insect had staked its life on reaching its goal through effort and determination.

The fact is that this fly was doomed. It was going die there on the window sill.

This is the ironic part…

Across the room, 10 steps away, the door is open. Ten seconds of flying time and this little creature could reach the outside world that it seeks.

With only a fraction of the energy that was being wasted, it could be free of its self-imposed trap. The breakthrough possibility was there and it would be so easy!

So the question is…

• Why doesn’t the fly try another method? Something totally different?
• How did it get so locked into this idea?
• What logic is there in continuing until death, to try and see a breakthrough, with just doing more of the same?

We’re taught in our culture that if you want to succeed, then you need to work hard. You have to be disciplined. You have to go out there and do it on your own.

Some of us have tried to take these same ideas and apply them to our Christian walk.

We’ve tried living for God for years and when we’ve failed our only thought is… “I must not be trying hard enough. I just have to try harder.”


But can I tell you something?

These “try harder, do-it-on-your-own” methods might be true to some point in business or in school, but it’s NOT the way to succeed in following Jesus or becoming all God created you to be.

And you know what?

When we’re doing something the wrong way, then trying harder just doesn’t help.

I found some pictures online of some guys who are trying hard, but there methods aren’t so great.

Click here to see them.

These guys really need to try something else instead of just trying harder!

If these guys aren’t proof enough that trying harder isn’t always the best plan…

On a website called DumbCrimminals.com I found this story…

----
Police in Virginia Beach, Virginia charged a 19 year old man, with bank robbery after he made a series of dumb mistakes. After handing the teller a note of demands, hegrabbed the money and began to flee.

When he realized he forgotten the note, he ran back to the bank and grabbed the incriminating evidence.

Once he got the note he ran back to his getaway car and he discovered that he had left the keys at the bank. He ran on foot and somehow made his way home without being caught.

But there was another problem, he had to tell his roommate, whose car he had borrowed, that the car had been stolen.

His roommate was so upset he called the police and reported his car stolen. Less than 20 minutes later, an Officer spotted the car just a block from the bank.

The officer retrieved the keys that had been left at the scene of the crime and when the keys fit the car, the officers went to the address the car’s owner had given and arrested the robber.

Sometimes trying something else is better, than just try harder!
----

Many of us who have been trying to live for God are like that fly. We’re pushing against a wall using a method that will never move it.

What if there was a better way for us to live our life for God?

That’s what I want to talk to you about today. Turn to Matt 11:28-30.

I want you to listen to an invitation Jesus gave over 2000 years ago.

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How Jesus Taught Us To Handle Stress

Worry... Stress... Whatever you want to call it - It’s everywhere!

And in our fast-paced, jam-packed society it seems to be hitting more and more people of all ages.

The way we deal with stress is as different for each of us as the things that cause us to worry or have stress.

Some people drink to deal with it. 72% of high schoolers in a recent anonymous poll said they drink alcohol – mainly at parties - to relax and deal with stress.

Some people exercise. This is one of the best ways to deal with it, because experts agree that exercise is one of the best remedies for stress.

Some people’s response to stress is to run from it.

Earlier this month, a woman named Jennifer Wilbanks made national headlines, because she went missing days before her wedding.

Her fiancé called police and they began a Manhunt looking for her. She later called the police and said she was kidnapped, but had been released because of all the news coverage. Finally when they went to meet with her she admitted that she got cold feet and couldn’t handle the stress of her upcoming 600 person wedding, so she ran.

Some of the ways we deal with worry and stress are healthy and some are unhealthy. In fact, some of the ways people deal with their stress just add more stress to their lives!

I want to take an honest look at worry and stress today. We’re going to look at "How Jesus Taught Us To Handle Stress." We'll look at:

• Where it comes from
• How to avoid it
• What it does to us
• What’s the right way to handle it

Turn with me in your Bibles to Matt 6:19-34.

As you turn there let me remind you of something.

The subheadings, chapters and verse numbers in our Bibles were all added later to help people to use the Bible more easily.

We’re about to look at a well-known passage in the Bible. But, instead of starting at verse 25 - where a lot of people start teaching on this and where the subheading in some translations are - we’re going to start with verse 19.

Why?

I’ll show you. Look at verse 25. What’s it start with? “Therefore” or “So.”

That means it’s referring to the verses before it. If you look at the verses before it you will finally realize this whole discussion starts in verse 19 and that’s where we’re going to start!

One more thing before we see what Jesus says…

Many of the reasons WHY we worry, or experience stress from come from our own bad choices!

There are many days where we waste our time on things we don’t need to do and then we end up worrying or getting stressed out, because we don’t have time to do what we need to do.

There are many days where we waste our money on things we don’t need and then we end up worrying or being stressed out, because we don’t have money for what we need.

There are many times where we neglect or waste the relationships we have until one day we lose them.

I’m not trying to make us feel bad today.

I just want us to be honest with ourselves. I know that a lot of the stress that I deal with is from my own bad choices!

The truth is this…

*If we’re going to be able to keep from being worried and stressed, then we have to learn how to make better choices.

How To Prevent Worry And Stress
In this first section of verses we’re about to read, Jesus shows us what causes stress and how to make our lives more worry-resistant or stress-resistant.

Let’s look at just the first two verses: Matt. 6:19-20…

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Discovering Your Potential

(This was spoken on April 3, 2005. )

Potential. It’s something that’s really hard to see.

You can guess about it, but you’re not always right. Would you guess that these people would be a success?

(Show Microsoft 1978 picture. )

And, you know what? The hardest place to see potential is in yourself. It’s hard to see your own potential.

Today, I want to take a look at our potential as a group of friends trying to be the church and also look at our potential as individuals.

You might be thinking…

How are we going to see our potential today if it’s so hard to see it in ourselves?

Here’s the trick.

The best place to look for your potential is not in you. The best place to see your potential is in God.

That’s because your ultimate potential comes from him, not from yourself!

2 Cor. 1:20 says, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ.”

I want to start by looking at a person who found his potential, not in himself, but in God.

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