Sermon Tone Analysis

freed to humbly serve in love - our master’s pattern

What does true freedom really look like?

A few weeks back, I asked “If you were free, truly and totally free, what would that look like for you?” Three top answers?

doing very little, travelling the world - and farming!

Yep, we a bunch of farmer wannabes - who knew?

We’re continuing our journey through one of the letters in the Bible called Galatians - called that because it was written to churches in an area called Galatia - modern day Turkey.

We’re going to look at just a very short section each week for the next few weeks because there’s so much to think and talk about in each line.

We’re into the part of the letter where our writer, having explained a bunch of theology, is talking about how followers of Jesus should live as a result - how they should conduct themselves in life.

And this section starts with these words:

Galatians 5:1 (NIV)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

so if you wanted to put one banner over how it is that Christians should be living, it’d make sense for that banner to have the word “freedom” written on it in huge all-caps.

Very Scotland, right?

But we’ve got some thinking to do before we jump to conclusions here, and all take up farming or yachting or lazing.

What does true freedom really look like?

If we were to pull a truly free human into a lab somewhere and analyse them, observe their behaviour, what would we see?

Well, have you heard of the experiment where they put a child in a room with a tasty yummy marshmallow on the table in front of them, and tell them if they can hold off eating it for a while, they can have two instead?

I think that’s a bit cruel, really - Just staring at it, tummy rumbling away.

Now those researchers are looking at delayed gratification, seeing what’s associated with that sort of willpower that leaves the marshmallow untouched on the table - but I think this has something powerful to tell us about freedom, too.

Think about this here marshmallow: [marshmallow prop] let your eyes settle on it and - if you’re the marshmallow type - your mouth begins to water and you start to imagine the taste, the sensation of chewing it up.

And you want it more .. and more .. and more .. and that desire within you just to reach out and grab it is growing and growing.

Here’s my question: Are you more free if you grab it and stuff it into your mouth?

Or are you more free if you resist that desire and exert control over yourself?

Or .. would you be more free if you didn’t even feel that powerful draw?

Are we free when we indulge our desires?

Or is that actually giving up freedom, and we’re only truly free if we’re freed from those desires?

who wants the marshmallow?

it’s free!

Sorry viewers at home - no chance for you

What does true freedom really look like?

Could you and I ever really be free?

Remember, “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

Let’s read today’s short section together and then we’ll think some more about this.

We’re reading from the short letter to the Galatians which is towards the back of the bible.

If you have one of these blue church bibles, we’re on page 1172 - Galatians chapter 5 and we’re starting at verse 13.

Page 1172 and look for the heading “Life by the Spirit”.

Galatians chapter 5, verse 13.

Page 1172.

And Cameron’s reading for us this morning.

Thanks, Cameron.

So, freedom is the banner over the Christian life - see that there again in the first verse we read: we were called to be free.

You know how we use the word “vocation” to talk about work: vocational qualifications and the like?

Or talk about the job we were made for or designed for: “what’s your vocation?”

That word, vocation, comes from the Latin vocare “to call”.

It comes from the idea that we have a job to do because someone, because God, calls us to do it.

That’s what makes something a vocation rather than a job - you’ve been called to do it.

Well, the vocation of every Christian is freedom.

If you’d call yourself a Christian here today, you were called - called by God - to be free.

But that gets us right back to where we started: what does freedom, true freedom, really look like?

There are two sides, two faces to freedom as we’re reading and thinking about it here in Galatians.

First, there’s freedom-from.

This freedom we’re called into, our new vocation, is first of all about being released from something - that’s what a lot of the letter so far has been focused on as we’ve worked our way through it together.

If you’ve been with us these past months, hopefully you’ll understand that we’re freed from the Jewish Law, the Torah, which told them how to live in vast detail.

We’re freed from trying to get into God’s good books by keeping those rules.

A good thing particularly for the boys if you know what circumcision is.

But there’s more we’re freed from, too.

Perhaps you’ll remember us talking about what this letter describes as the “basic principles of this world”, the idea that’s woven into our world which tells us we need to perform, to measure up.

That we have to tick the boxes and make the grade in order to be “in” - most importantly, to be “in” with God.

Whether that’s talking a certain way, or acting a certain way; doing certain things or not doing them.

The bible, and this letter, Galatians, in particular, tells us we are free from needing to measure up, free from trying to justify ourselves - free because of Jesus.

Because he took all the penalty, all the punishment, that our failures deserve - so every way that we have - or we ever will - fail to measure up has been dealt with, put to rest.

Nothing is hanging over us any more.

So we’re free.

Released.

Free-from.

That’s the first side.

But there’s another side to this coin: there’s also freedom-for.

This freedom we’re called into, our new vocation, isn’t just about being released from something, but also being released for something.

And this is where we come back to what we started with.

What is true freedom at bottom?

I’ve talked before about the idea of freedom fundamentally meaning we’re free to be who we were made to be, to do what we were made to do, to live out the nature that’s within us.

Remember the dolphin jumping from the wave - freedom?

Or the cactus growing steadily towards the sun?

So the big question becomes what are we humans made to be?

What are we made to do?

Because that’s where freedom will take us.

At one end of the spectrum you have the evolutionary, Darwinian answer: we are simply gene-propagating machines.

Our design, our nature, our purpose is just passing on our genetic material.

If freedom is being who we were made to be, doing what we were made to do, and this is what we’re made to be and do… if this is our purpose and freedom means accomplishing this purpose - what would freedom look like?

A world where the only thing that mattered for anyone was whether their genes made it into the next generation or not.

Can you imagine that “free” world?

Where that purpose ruled, totally unrestrained?

If that really is our nature, our purpose, then freedom is not something we should wish for, not something which should even be allowed, let alone celebrated.

At the other end of the spectrum you have the Christian answer to that question, what were we made to be? what were we made to do?

We were made in the image of God, made to be like him, to reflect his nature and character.

We were made to live out this nature and character in the world he created.

And the Bible tells us we see God’s character revealed and lived out most fully and perfectly when He enters into His own world as a human, in Jesus.

The bible describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God”, “the radiance of God’s glory,” “the exact representation of his being”.

You want to see what we were made to be, made to do?

The Christian’s answer is to look to Jesus - and his life of love which you can read about in the bible.

If freedom is being who we were made to be, doing what we were made to do, and we take the Christian answer, that Jesus is the template, the pattern, the picture - then imagine a world filled with that sort of freedom realised!

That’s a freedom we can wish for, we can long for.

Now there’s a problem.

Right at the beginning of the bible, just after we’re told humankind is created in the image of God, to be like him, to reflect his character, things go terribly wrong.

Rather than using our freedom to live out that character and purpose, our first parents doubted God’s goodness, questioned his ways, and choose to go their own way.

In that moment our whole species was corrupted, twisted, tainted - we “fell” is the way the bible describes it.

Our very nature was corrupted - I think that helps explain the mess our world is in today.

We find ourselves in this place where freedom - telling people they are “free to do what they want any old time” - wouldn’t produce the heaven we long for, but a living hell.

That’s why we have laws and prisons and taxes and armies - because we can’t simply be free.

A world of freedom, where we all live out our nature together is an impossible dream for our corrupted species - we’d destroy each other.