Northside Church - Sydney
Realigned to Freedom – The Book of Galatians Week 3: Experience of the Gospel
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Oh, well I shared with the morning congregation a couple of weeks ago that there is a vast difference between Christianity and Christianity. I want to talk about Christianity. I'm not talking about the New Zealand church. I'm talking about the sort of Christianity that goes like this. It's a sort of Christianity that I've just got to believe the right stuff. I've got to believe the right doctrine. It becomes brutal. It becomes hard. It becomes Christy. Christy-anity. And what I was saying is that Christianity is not just simply adhering to the right set of beliefs. It's something radically different. It's a power from outside of you. It's something that comes in. It's an experience. And we've been looking at different aspects of the gospel as we travel through the book of Galatians over the past couple of weeks. And tonight, that's what we look at. How do we experience the gospel? And so the basic way it's been going in the past couple of weeks, in weeks one to two, and the passage we heard from last week in chapter two verses 11 to 21, is that Paul was saying to a series letter is that we're saved when we stop trusting in our own moral efforts to be right with God and we trust in the work of Jesus Christ. That is the gospel is that we're not constantly asking what would Jesus do and think about every single action and try and replicate how he lived his life. But we ask ourselves a question, what has Jesus done? That's a gospel, not what would Jesus do, but what has Jesus done? And then we rest on that and look at our heart motivation. And so the chapter that we'll skip over chapter three tonight has an incredible claim. It says that we're not only saved through the gospel, but we grow through the gospel. We just don't, it's not a matter of knowing the gospel, but it's about growing through the gospel. And that the gospel changes us and grows us. And so Paul's summary is that both our acceptance with God and our growth in that relationship with him is based on his grace. And it's got absolutely nothing to do with our pedigree. It's got nothing to do with our practices. And so when we get to this passage, we'll read through verses 26 to 29, we see the absolute high point of his letter in Galatians. And Paul has said that what he's been saying is that to Abraham, God gives a promise that he would be a blessing into all the nations and that to Moses, God gave a law which didn't nullify the promise, it didn't negate the promise, but there wasn't a fulfillment. And so through Jesus Christ, God gives us the fulfillment to all that he has promised. And that basically anyone that believes in Jesus receives the promise that God gave to Abraham. Now what does that look like in simple terms? What it's saying tonight is that through faith in Jesus, you can be adopted into God's family. Through faith. And so the doctrine of adoption, perhaps the crown jewel of theology is one author put it is the highest privilege of the gospel. It's the apex of creation and the goal of redemption. It's something so far beyond what we've been reading through and what it's teaching to us tonight that through the sun we become God's children legally, but through the spirit we become God's children experientially. We feel it. We experience it. We're talking about Christianity, not Christianity. That is, that Christian faith is not just an adherence to right religion or practices, but it's an experience. It can be an experience and that's what I put out to you tonight. This passage shows us tonight the significance of sonship, the experience of sonship and we're going to see it shows us the responsibilities of sonship. We'll wonder why I'm using that term, we'll get to that in a bit of a second. So if you've got your Bibles, iPhones, iPads, whatever sort of technology you're using to get the word of God delivered to you tonight, then you can get straight to Galatians chapter 3 verses 26 and we're going to read through from chapter 4 through to verse 7. It says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you were baptized into Christ, have closed yourself with Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What I'm saying is that as long as the heir is a child, they know different from a slave, although they own the whole estate. They're subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by their father. So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts. And the spirit who calls out, "Abba Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has also made you an heir." There are rumors going right around. The cafes of Potts Point, the cafes of Double Bay of Edge Cliff of Point Piper, yes, it's true. The packers are looking for a new school for their son Jackson. He's all of our one-years-old, but these rumors are out there. And believe it or not, I was hearing on the radio this morning that some people are actually trying to work out which school they're going to go to so they can enroll their kid in the same school in the hope that they might become friends with young Jackson. And so when they grow up, if they go to Cranbrook or whatever it might be over there on the Eastern suburbs, that maybe just maybe they'll grow up, they'll be friends with him. And maybe just maybe, if they're lucky enough, it'll be a long-term relationship. And maybe if it's long enough, some of the privileges, some of the blessings of one of Australia's richest family will overflow into their lives as well. Can you believe it? Now, the principle that Paul gets to tonight is not much different. The situation is not much different. How can you say that? Look, the gospel says, "You are sons of God." And that's an identity statement, if I've ever heard one. You're all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ, verse 26. And so right now, about half of the congregation are listening to me and saying, almost like the little girl of kindergarten cop, "I'm not a son, I'm a princess." Now, girls, what I have to say to you tonight, girls, is that you are a son of God. And before we're too quick to substitute the language in and out here and be non-gender specific, if we do that, if we're quick in there, we miss one of the most profound statements in the entire book of Galatians. You see, we didn't have all the equal rights back then in his culture there. And see, one of the key things was that daughters didn't have a right to inherit property. And so this is an amazing statement. Paul is very deliberately when he uses this word. The gospel tells us we're all sons of God and Christ. It's saying, "Girls, you too are sons of God. You too are heirs to the kingdom." See why we can't translate the word out there? You are sons. And so we think, "Well, who cares? Why is heirs so important?" Look, Paul's using a very purpose, a very specific image here. He's talking about the concept of Roman adoption. And here is one commentator puts it. He says, "The profound truth of Roman adoption was that the adoptee was taken out of their previous state and placed into a new relationship of son to his new father. All his old debts are canceled and in effect the adoptee started a new life as part of his new family." This is an incredible thought. This is something totally utterly unique. It means you're the sons of God. It means that there's a legal transfer happening. One of the things is when we first hear, like we heard last week in the nosebleed theology of justification by faith alone, we're hearing that there's this transfer off of sin and condemnation from us. But what we also don't get in that transfer, there's not only a transfer off, but there's a transfer on, a transfer off of all the sin and condemnation and a transfer on of all the rights and the blessings and the privileges of Jesus Christ. It's utterly unique. Now where the gospel says, "If you believe in Jesus, you're the sons of God." That means you're two girls, okay? Sons of God. The message can be a little bit confusing is that in chapters 1 to 2 of verse 4 Paul uses this metaphor of child slaves. This is what he says. He says, "What I'm saying is that as long as the heir is a child is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate." Now I'm thinking, what's Paul going on about there? What he's doing is he's using an illustration to illustrate what's happening to people when they want to use obedience to God's law as the means to being right with God. And what he does is he uses this illustration of a child that's heir to an estate but he hasn't come of age yet. He's not 18 yet. He's still a minor. He's like a slave and so he still has to listen to his guardians and his trustees and he still has to do it. He's a child. He's got heir to the throne, heir to the estate just like Jackson Packer. He's one year old. He's got access to all the Point Piper mansions and Channel 9 and whatever stakes of Channel 10, good old James Owens. He's a son but he's only two years old and so his wealth is by promise, not by experience. He knows that that's his. And that's what Paul is saying is that until you come of age, you can't have access to it. And so what Paul was painting for us here is he was saying that people that live underneath the law of God, the people at the time of Moses that were living by the law, look they knew the promise was there but they didn't have full access to it. And there was a freedom that they were yearning for. And what's Jesus's work in all this? The work of Jesus makes you come of age. It gives you the status of an 18 year old, it grows you up into an understanding, not only an understanding but an experience of your inheritance in everything that is God. You see kids can understand their legal right but they can't have access to it unless they come of age. And so what Paul is describing for us and the way that Jesus works in verse 5 is that he's redeemed us from the law but he's also given us full rights, full rights, full access, full privilege. What's Jesus done? He's taken heirs apparent and he's made them act, look simple terms, you know what Jesus has done? He's changed our hairstyle. He's apparent to heirs actual he's changed our hairstyle so the work of the son is that he's changed our hairstyle. He's taken us from heirs that should have access to it and that he's saying that we should have the confidence to step into that fully tonight, today. And so whereas justification gives you the right legal standing before God, this is profound stuff. This is saying adoption goes far beyond that it says that you've got present access to your inheritance in God right now through Jesus Christ, privileges that will look at tonight, privileges of assurance, privileges of intimacy, privileges of fellowship, privileges of inheritance. Now here's the challenge though we're totally loving our new hairstyle, fully adopted children of God. We can go backwards all the time, we can slip back into that and keep living like child slaves. Why? Because look if I come and said you hear a son of God, you go well that's nice. I'll give you a bit of paper, yeah that's nice but you're not going to fully get it. You're not going to experience the rich flavours. It was like a guy, it was on sunrise the other day and he was a food specialist and he was talking about the difference between taste and flavour, I don't know if you saw this guy and he made Melanchoschi eat a bit of apple and he said he got to hold your nose first while you eat the apple and so when they did that, they're eating this apple and it tasted pithy and it tasted really bad that he said take your hand off your nose and then they began to sense the flavours and the aromas coming through. You see God sends the son to do the legal work of procuring our adoption but through the spirit he brings the flavours of that out. So we see the significance of sonship but then we also see the experience of sonship and this is incredible, these amazing parallels happening here in verses 4 to 5 and 6 to 7 we see that there are two persons from God doing all this work for us. Jesus comes and he procures for us the adoption into God's family but it's something that happens externally, he goes into the world and then you have the spirit who assures us of the adoption by moving into our hearts internally. You see it's exactly the same order. One goes external, one goes internal and that's why we've got to ask why do we need the spirit, what is the work of the spirit? Well it became apparent to me this week as I was chatting to a lady at a wedding rehearsal and she was a non-believer and we were yacking away and she was asking me all these questions about the faith and she said to me, "Look here, I'm not a believer, the tough thing for me is I think I could have faith but all those stories they just don't seem real to me, how do they seem real to you?" It's because I've got the spirit. The work of the spirit is to develop in us like a deep-seated persuasion that we really are, the kids of the king, that we're children of God, that's what the spirit's here to do. And why is that so important? Because look we all have this naive ability to always sort of wander back into the past as child slaves or slow to realize that we're sons of God and we're in danger of having the mindsets of hired slaves. Look what does that look like? One commentator Sinclair Ferguson said, "Looks a bit like this, you may say in your head, 'Oh, I'm a sinner saved by grace, I'm similar useless at Pequeter last week, homework. I'm a child of God, I get it, but you don't. Why is that?" It's because, ask the question, why is it that you feel like such a failure? Why is it that when you do wrong it takes you so long for you to live a normal life again? Why is it that you're secretly comparing yourself to other people all the time and jealousy and self-doubt? You say, "Yeah, I believe it." He says, "No, you don't." You don't get it. Looks a bit like this. I was just perfect this morning, I'm up the back of the auditorium and talk about the way that parents placate their kids these days. I've checked with them if it's okay to share this and it is. Shane and Sara had lovely little six-month-old Isabella up the back there. She's making a bit of noise this morning, Julie noted. So this she is playing and she's got Shane's debit card in her mouth and she's waving it around everywhere and she's drooling all over the thing and it was one heck of a sight. She's got it there and I'm thinking she's slobbering all over this thing and I said, "You've got no idea what you're holding on your hands, little girl. That's your inheritance." You see, she had her inheritance and she was using it like it was a toy. I mean, she needed to grow up, she needed to come into an understanding of that. She was just a six-month-old. It was right there in front of her face but she hadn't been grown up. I want to come alongside her and say, "Hey Isabella, this is what it's really for." Hey, if you're grown up in an understanding, look, imagine her once she hits 16, put a credit card in her hand, Shane, and see what happens then, mate. You get what I'm saying, unless you're grown up by the spirit of sonship, you'll sit around like a six-month-old sucking on your inheritance, drooling all over it, having no idea what it's for, you constantly need a reminder of who you are and the inheritance that you've got in your hands tonight. You need the gospel and you need the spirit of sonship to grow you up. You need a spirit of sonship to come and say, "Hey, this is what it's meant to be used for." And so, look, here's the thing, if we only had the sun coming into the world externally and doing all this stuff for us, then it just would be transactional. We'd have no concept of it. It would be like receiving an inheritance in the bank account and just seeing the balance sheet the whole time instead of writing on the jet ski. You see, the Holy Spirit is the great one that comes up to that spiritual ATM and says, "Look, I want to show you how you can draw down on an inheritance that is now presently yours." If you get what I'm saying, please don't get me wrong, it's not all a financial thing. The metaphor's a bit weak, but from a Christian's perspective, that's the role of the Holy Spirit. It brings us into an experience. What does it feel like? First of all, it's intimacy. It's a feeling of intimacy. Look at verse 6, "Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his son into our heart, the Spirit who calls out Abba Father." Now, look at the word here, it says, "I call out." It doesn't quite do it justice, it means to call out passionately. And so, this word, it implies a close relationship with God. How? Well, yes, there's a cry out, there's a passionate cry out, but what does the Spirit that calls our hearts to cry out, Abba Father, Abba Daddy Papa, an address that's only reserved for the closest, for the most precious of relationships. And this is not some address that's reserved only as a Jewish term. It was a loaded phrase, it's a loaded phrase that's got deep implications for our relationship with God. A kid doesn't, a kid doesn't, a three years old, you know, a little Daniel, his abilities, brother, he doesn't run up to Shane and said, "Father, may I have a moment of your time for a minute?" No, he runs up, he grabs his leg, he says, "Daddy, I want you, Daddy, come and look at this, Daddy, come and look." That's what Paul was implying here. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones puts it like this, "Grown-ups may be standing back at a distance and being very formal with some great personage, but the little child comes running in, rushes right in and holds on to his father's legs." He has a right that no one else has, it's instinctive. We cry Abba Father Daddy Papa. The experience of sonship is intimacy, Daddy Papa, which leads us to the next major privilege of sonship and that is assurance. You see, if you're crying out Abba Father, if you're crying out Daddy Papa, it means you've not only got a confidence of God's love, but you've got a confidence in his assurance. That's something radically different about Christianity. Christianity is the only religion in the world where you can have an assurance of the Father's love. That's what makes it so different. Now it's one thing to have assurance in the first place, but it's one thing to have different levels of assurance. The role of the Spirit is to come in and constantly whisper to us in those quiet moments of prayer and solitude and read in the Bible to say, "You're my beloved child, I love you, I care for you, I'm here." The Spirit gives us an intimacy and assurance, and Paul is saying, "Once you are slaves, now you are sons." Girls included. Once you are slaves, now you are a son, and so Paul is saying it's dangerous stuff to go back to your past and start playing around with your past because it's going to affect who you presently are. It's going to affect who you're going to be in the future. It's the Marty McFly principle. As the back to the future principle, Marty McFly and the first back to the future is playing Earth Angel, and as his mother is falling in love with him, he's starting to muck up his whole future, and as a result, he starts to presently disappear. He becomes less and less mighty in playing with his past, mucked up who he presently was and his future person. It was dangerous. He could have led to his death. Paul is saying it's back to the future principle. Don't go running back to your child's slave past. You are a kid of the king. You are a son of God. Don't muck it around with it. Once we begin to experience this intimacy and assurance with the spirit, only then will we begin to realign to the freedom that is promised, slaves to sons. Can you see the parallels? The work of the son. God sends into the world to give us the legal status of sonship. The work of the spirit, God sends into our hearts. It's internal. We can experience the sonship, and there's no doubt that that's what it's all about here. There's no doubt that Paul is saying that we should approach God with a bold assurance, the same sort of assurance that Jesus had, because Abba was the same word that Jesus used, the same level of intimacy. If the work of the son is something done externally to us, then the work of the spirit is internal to convince us, to move us, to exhilarate us, intellectually, emotionally by the experience and the love of God. Otherwise it just sounds a bit piffy. It tastes a bit disgusting. We want the flavors of our sonship to come through. Guys, finally, tonight the responsibility is a sonship. We've seen that the significance of sonship is that we've had a changing hairstyle by the external work of the son. Then we see that there's been an experience of sonship and intimacy and assurance. The spirit grows us up that we're no longer drooling over the debit card. Tonight we ask a question, "If Christianity is an experience, where do I get it?" That can be one of the problems, because we are very experience focused in the church these days to how the church would have been back 100 years ago, a couple of hundred years ago. We've got a very experiential slant on our church, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a great spectrum of diversity in the spirit spectrum in the way that churches are these days. So the question is, on one hand, you've got churches that are all truth and no experience, and then you've got churches that are all experience and no truth. Which way is it? Well, hey, take a look at the connection between verses 4 and 5 and 6 to 7, because you just can't separate the two. Listen to this, verse 4 to 5, "But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive the full rights of son." God sends his son. And then in verse 6 to 7, "Because you are sons, God sends the spirit of the son into our hearts." Can you see the order there? You can't separate the two. God sends his son that you can be your son, girls included, and because you are sons, God sends the spirit into your heart. What it says to us is that we must remember that the spirit's work is because of the son's work. And what that means is a profound Christian experience is based on objective truth, not the other way around. It means we must spend time to focus and remember the work of son and remember the role of the Holy Spirit. As J.I. Packer said, "I've said it once before, the role of the spirit is to have a spotlight ministry on Jesus." That is if the spirit's doing its work then Jesus is illuminated, Jesus is lit up, Jesus is highlighted, Jesus is colored, and so Christianity is not just all truth and no experience, and it's not all experience and no truth. The work of the spirit is to take these doctrinal truths and stuff that can feel dry and pithy and make it wonderful and exhilarating and aromatic flavorsome to the very center of who you are. And so it also means, that's the first one, we must remember that the spirit's work is because of the son's work. That's our responsibility. Second responsibility, if you would ask the question, "Am I acting like a slave afraid of God or a child who is assured of the father's love and assurance?" You know, when we hear this, we ask the question, "Yep, I get you, I hear it, I'm hearing the sonship stuff, I'm hearing it, I'm getting the doctrine, but why do I still struggle with feelings of inadequacy? Why do I still beat myself up? Why am I still dealing with negative feelings in my life? Why am I still not feeling the intimacy with God?" And if it's any encouragement to you tonight, it's because you're never going to get it perfectly right. You see, there's a now but not yet of the inheritance that we're to receive. There's a now but yet, not yet, John Stott puts it this way, that we're God's children, but it does not yet appear what we shall be in the future. Similarly, Paul teaches that although we've already received the spirit of adoption, we're still waiting for the full experience of our sonship, for the glorious freedom of the children of God, the redemption of our bodies, our adoption in all its glory takes place at the final resurrection, then and only then the image. The family resemblance, now presently under repair, will be complete. So when we believe in Jesus, we become members in His family, but in the fullness of these privileges, they're not going to be there until one day we meet Him face-to-face. So in the meantime, our responsibility is to constantly focus on who we are in Jesus Christ, to not go back to the old ways, to focus on who we are. And so in that way, J.I. Packer puts it, "To live by faith is not a general positive attitude, but it's a deliberate attempt to fire the heart with the knowledge of who we are in Christ, and to live consistently without knowledge, sonship therefore must be the controlling thought, the normative category if at every point." We've always got to come back to that, re-teach it, preach it to our own hearts. It's been the whole heart of what this series is about tonight, so final application. Final reminder of who we are, verse 7 says, "So you were no longer a slave, but a son. And since you were a son, you two girls, you God has made you an heir. There is a rumor going around that through cafes, through school, mothers meetings, at rugby training, all the great schools of the Eastern suburbs that the Packers are looking for a new school, and maybe if we're lucky enough, maybe if we moved house, or maybe if we changed this kid's school, or maybe just maybe someone could be friends with Jackson Packer, and maybe we would be lucky enough if it was a good relationship, and at last at long enough that they would become good friends, and all the blessings and the privileges of Australia's richest family would overflow into our lives as well." Would that be the main driver for your life? Would you seriously do that? Would you change schools? Would you change where you live? Would you move the kids? Would you play for private school transition? Would you even send your kids to Cranbrook? Come on. Just to get on the inside, just to get access to their son. Look, guys, the good news of the gospel is tonight that is that God gave you full access to the ultimate son, and he offers you not only access to the son, but he offers you the chance to be one yourself. Tonight, it won't sink in until the spirit beds that into your heart. It's not going to sit in until maybe you're driving down the highway and listening to this on podcast, and your nails start to dig into the steering wheel by the power of the Holy Spirit. What I'm talking about tonight is an inheritance that is so grand, so amazing that it makes Packer's Point Piper pads look like a caravan park. Guys, you have free access. You don't have to send your kids to private schools. You don't have to go to private school. You don't even have to move to the Eastern suburbs. You have full access to the ultimate son, and the ultimate inheritance in the universe here tonight. Is that true of your life? Do you know Jesus Christ? Have you become a son by faith in him? I urge you, I plead with you. Don't go to all the other hassle. Just give up early. Avoid the rush. Give your life to him tonight. And for the rest of us, Christians, kids, that's the truth, you're a son of God. It's your job this week to work that into your hearts with the help and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I'll go second on the credit card. Move into, live, breathe, the inheritance that is presently yours right now. In Jesus' name, let's pray. Lord God, we are talking through concepts that we know for sure are beyond comprehension. I just pray tonight and this week as we move out into our world so you give us a fresh perspective, new perspective, Holy Spirit perspective on the richness and the blessings that are in you through Jesus Christ. Lord tonight, for those that have been seeking to get access, look, it's not into private schools, it could be into certain workplaces, it could be into certain careers, it could be into certain families. Lord, for those that are chasing access into a place with a heart-father that thinks that they're going to be filled right and at peace, if they just make it, Lord, I pray that tonight through your Holy Spirit, you might stir them and draw them close to you. That they might grasp the profound truth that the only access they ever would need has been blown wide open through Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. They might receive you through faith in him tonight. I'll just pray that they might come and talk with one of the team and come to know what that really means for them, but for the rest of us, Lord, help us, help us by your spirit, help us to experience the aromas, the flavours, the experience of Christianity, in Jesus' name. Amen. (gentle music)