This or That: Truth in Balance | Obedience: Liberty or Law | 23 Aug 2026

Opening Welcome, Prayer, and Galatians 5 Reading Hi everyone, my name is Sarah. It's my pleasure to read the Bible for you this morning. But first let's pray. Lord Jesus, you call us to walk by the Spirit, but we cannot do that in our own strength. Left to ourselves, we default to impatience, pride and self interest. But you have promised that if we abide in you, your spirit will bear fruit in US, fruit that we could never grow on our own. So today we ask you to plant that fruit in the soil of our hearts. Where I'm selfish, grow love, the kind that gives without keeping score. Where I'm not weighed down, grow joy, a gladness that does not depend on my circumstances. Where I'm anxious, grow peace, the peace that guards my heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Where I'm quick to react, grow patience to wait well on you and on others. Where I'm harsh, grow kindness that my words might build up and not tear down. Where I'm compromising, grow goodness, the courage to do what's right, even unseen. Where I'm inconsistent, grow faithfulness, a steady, dependable heart. Where I am forceful, grow gentleness, strength that is tender, not harsh. Where I'm undisciplined, grow self control to master my desires instead of being mastered by them. Spirit of God, do the work in us that we cannot do ourselves. Prune away what doesn't belong and nourish what does. Until this fruit grows deep and lasting in our lives, let it be evidence not of our effort, but of your life in us, so that everyone we meet today encounters more of you. We ask this in your holy name, Jesus, Amen. The Bible verse today comes from Galatians 5 reading from verse 13. Life by the Spirit. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather serve one another humbly in love, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command. Love your neighbour as yourself. If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you were led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. Unpacking the Tension: Liberty or Law for Christians All right. Well, good morning again, everyone. Again, my name is James, the minister here at Living Church, and you're joining us here. If you're visiting for the first time or the first couple of times in the middle of a series that we're doing, either we've called this or that where we look at truth in the balance, looking at a variety of different topics where there seems to be some tension in Scripture or in culture, and these different truths we need to hold together in some. Speaker 1 Way, shape or. Speaker 2 Form and this week we're looking at the topic of obedience and whether as Christians we are meant to be people of liberty or people of the law. And this is a really interesting question. In some ways it's an internal question, like it's a question about how Christians live, but it absolutely impacts upon how the world perceives Christians. So last week at the last week five of our discover course that we just finished up one of the questions that we ask people to come along is what is a Christian? And there's always sort of various answers to that question. For some people, it's that are Christians really big on rules? You know, it's always about the, the, the law and what you're meant to do in this, just all these different things that if you're a Christian, you get the impression they're all about rules. And some people are like, oh, they're just, they're sort of, they're sort of loving and gentle and kind and meek and mild and nice and sweet and just, you know, just the gentlest, nicest spoken, all that sort of thing. But The thing is, is that we need to recognise that when it comes to this question of how we live as Christians, whether we have freedom or whether we're bound by the law it. Speaker 1 Really, really impacts not just upon us as individuals, but upon our church community as well and how we walk out this Christian faith together. So I'm super excited about this topic. It's what I'm really passionate about and I can't wait to get into it. So some of the questions that this will help you answer is do Christians have to? Speaker 2 Follow God's law? Is that still a thing? Does the law of God apply to us if we're saved by grace? Last week our student minister and our apprentices took us through this question of how we saved. Is it by works or is it by grace? And they did a great job in packing about how it is by grace. But then what we do, our works are really important, but how does this actually work with God's law and that sort of stuff? And also, if we live under the New Testament rules, do we still need to study the old? Speaker 1 Testament like what? Speaker 2 About all those laws in in, you know the the start. Speaker 1 Of the book that you know, some of you just flip past until we get to the Jesus bit. Speaker 2 You know, whatever it is, all right, how we meant to relate to these things, Lots of different things. Conflicting Bible Verses on Law and Grace So we're going to look at this under 5 little parts here, OK, The tension between the law and liberty. We'll sort of unpack that to start with. What is the law for? What is our relationship? Speaker 1 To the law. What does? Speaker 2 It mean to live by the Spirit and then also. Speaker 1 How to live by the Spirit? Speaker 2 OK, so first one, let's just, you know, unpack what this tension is that exists here in Scripture. Why do we feel this tension? Why is this an issue? So we've put our scales up here on the law side. We have a verse like this. This is from Jesus, His own words from the Sermon on the Mount. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them. For truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. That seems to be a pretty big statement in favour of there being a law and that being a big deal for us still. But what about this? The formal regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless, for the law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near. Speaker 1 To God, that would seem to go the other way, right? Speaker 2 What about this Jesus talking to the Pharisees? Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy and faithfulness you should have. Speaker 1 Done the the the 1st. Speaker 2 Stuff like you should. You should have practised the latter without neglecting the former. It seems to be a strong statement. And yeah, you should be following the law down to the tiniest bit, but also be concerned about justice. But then it started Galatians. It says it's for freedom. The Christ has set us free. Stand firm them, and do not let yourselves be yoked again by a yoke of. Speaker 1 Slavery. Talking about the law. OK, so happening there. Another one. Speaker 2 For it's not those who hear the Law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the Law who will be declared righteous. Obeying the law seems to be tied to righteousness, but now apart from the Law. Speaker 1 Righteousness, the righteousness of God has been made known. So is righteousness by the law. Is it apart from the law? I will more how about this. This is Paul speaking in Acts. Speaker 2 He says I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the way which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the prophets. Speaker 1 And I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have. Speaker 2 But that same guy wrote For sin shall no longer be your master. Speaker 1 Because you are not under law, but under grace. Speaker 2 So we've got these different verses in Scripture that seem to push us in different directions. On one side, it seems to say the law is really important. We absolutely need to uphold it and and and stick with it. But on other. Speaker 1 Parts it sort. Speaker 2 Of seems to be saying that we're no longer to be bound. Speaker 1 By it or under it, or yoked to it or whatever the case may be. Speaker 2 So the law is upheld and set aside. There are weightier and lesser parts. Speaker 1 Of the law. Speaker 2 Moses is about the law and Jesus is about grace, but Jesus is also about law. Righteousness comes from the law, but is also apart from the law. And we follow the teaching, the law, but we're not under the law. Simple, right? So how are we going to break this down? Understanding the Law's Purpose: Sin, Protection, Gospel Well, look, let's start by thinking. Speaker 1 A little bit about what is the law, because it's actually really important and helpful to realise that when the Bible uses that phrase the law, it can actually refer to a whole bunch of different things. It's not always talking about the same thing. So here's a list of the way that that phrase the law is used in Scripture at different points. Speaker 2 The whole of God's moral order. Speaker 1 The Torah Like the first five books of the Bible. You can sometimes talk about the Mosaic covenant as a whole, but sometimes it's just the Mosaic commandments that are in the covenant. Sometimes it refers to the entire Old Testament, sometimes it's just talking about a principle. Speaker 2 Or power. Sometimes it's talking about specific laws, and so the phrase the. Speaker 1 Law and it's the the same, you know, Hebrew and Greek words that are getting used every single time really differs depending on the context. Speaker 2 So we need to sort of just ask this question, OK, what, what is the law for as it talks about the entirety of it, if we can sort of bundle it together, what, what is? Speaker 1 The point of the law. Speaker 2 Well, from the New Testament, we get three things I'm going to. Speaker 1 Give you now and then I'll come back and give you a fourth a little bit later on. The first thing that we're told in the New Testament is that the law, OK, gives us knowledge of sin. Through the law, we became conscious of our sins. Sin was in the world, but it was through God giving the law to Moses that we'd really sort of got clarified. This is what God's moral order is in lots of different spaces, in lots of different ways. Paul writes in Romans 7 for I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Now we've always had a conscience. There's always been a part of us on some level that has the the law of God written on our. Speaker 2 Hearts, so to speak, but the written law revealed to us much more clearly. Speaker 1 What God's plan and order was. So that's number one, knowledge of sin. But #2 the law was also designed to protect us from sin. So it says in Galatians before the coming of this faith of Jesus Christ. Speaker 2 We were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be. Speaker 1 Justified by faith Paul writing to. Speaker 2 His fellow Israelites and people that had followed the law as he had done, he said, look, the law was a good thing. The law was putting a boundary in place that was protecting us from the evilness of our hearts by sort of boxing us in until we could receive the faith of Jesus. Speaker 1 Christ and understand this new way that Jesus was going to bring. So the law brings us knowledge of sin and also is a guardrail against our sinful hearts, but also the law brings us knowledge of the gospel. Speaker 2 Of Jesus Christ. So we see lots of examples. I'll just give you a few here. Speaker 1 About how the Law and the prophets together point towards Jesus. Speaker 2 Early in the Gospel of John, it says that one of Jesus's earliest, earliest followers, Philip, found Nathaniel and told him we have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of. Speaker 1 Joseph. Speaker 2 In Luke read that Jesus himself said how foolish you are, and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah had to suffer these things and then enter his glory, and beginning with Moses, by which he means the teaching of Moses in the law and all the. Speaker 1 Prophets. He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Speaker 2 And how about this, but now apart? Speaker 1 From the Law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the prophets testify. Speaker 2 In the first part of the verse, it's talking about the Mosaic. Speaker 1 Covenant, you know, apart from this agreement that God had made with his people, right? There is now another law that's being, you know, the Torah, that the whole sort of framework that points towards this righteousness that God wants us to have. Speaker 2 But this sort of leaves us with a question, If the law teaches us about sin and protected us until Jesus comes and reveals to us the good news of Jesus, do we still now need it? If Jesus has come, like if all of these things were helping us to know we were in sin, that we need protection from sin, and that the good news of Jesus has come, what, what Do we still need it? Well, the answer is a resounding yes, but it's really important that we understand that as Christians, we don't. Speaker 1 Relate to the law in the same way as what God's people did in the Old Testament. How Christians Relate: Upholding Law, Living Under Grace OK, so we're going. Speaker 2 To think about what is our relationship. Speaker 1 To the law. I'm going to hit 3 little points here. Speaker 2 Number one, we uphold the law, but we are not. Speaker 1 Under the law, and we have liberty from the law, so how do we uphold? Speaker 2 It what does it mean for us to uphold? Speaker 1 The law, right? Speaker 2 I mean, Jesus said in that reading that we had this little bit of sorry in the one of the first verses that I quoted there, Jesus himself said, do not think I've come to abolish the law of the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them. For truly, I tell you, until heaven has disappeared. Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen. Speaker 1 Will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. And Paul writes in Romans, Do we then nullify? Speaker 2 The law by this faith that we have. Speaker 1 Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. Speaker 2 And here's the reason why we have to uphold the law. Speaker 1 And why we have to continue to recognise how important it is. It's because the cross only makes sense in light of the law of God. Speaker 2 It's only because of what we understand from the law that we understand the significance of what Jesus did for us. So we said before, right? The law is really clear. It's not the one who hears who are righteous in God's sight, but the one who obeys the law who will be declared righteous. Righteousness comes from obeying the law. Fundamental, basic, foundational principle that we need to understand, but at the same time we need to recognise there is no one righteous, not even one. There's no one who understands. There's no one who seeks God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the Law. Rather, through the Law, we become conscious of sin. We already saw about that earlier, right? It makes us aware of our sin. Speaker 1 But The thing is, even when it says here that apart from the Law, sorry, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made, to which the prophets and the law testify. What we're talking about is the one person who did obey the law, the one person who did keep it completely, the one person who did fulfil it. And so it says this righteousness that comes from God that was not by the law is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all of sinned and fall short of the glory of God and all are justified. Speaker 2 Freely, by his grace. Speaker 1 Through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of His blood to be received by faith. Speaker 2 See, we uphold the law because what we say is God's law is serious. God's law is the way that we are meant to live. And in upholding the law, we recognise that each and every single one of us have failed to follow God's law. And it was only through God sending his Son Jesus Christ to perfectly keep the law that meant that he could die in our place, that the penalty to person was death. And the Jesus Christ perfectly kept the law. And so he was the pure Holy One who could actually be an atonement for our sin because he didn't need to pay the penalty for himself. So when we uphold the law, we uphold that Jesus was the righteous one who did keep the law completely, and that's what qualifies him to be a substitute for us. So we don't say the law doesn't matter in the light of the cross. We say the cross matters because of the law. The law is what we do all live under, and it's only through Christ's death on the cross. Speaker 1 That the terms of the law are completely fulfilled. But what this means is in upholding the law and what Christ has done for us, we have to recognise that we are now no longer under the law. So. Speaker 2 It works like this. Before we believe in Jesus. Before we have faith. Speaker 1 In Him and all that he's done through the cross, we are under the law, we are slaves to sin, and we are dead in our transgressions. Speaker 2 But when we believe in. Speaker 1 Jesus through his work on the cross. Well, now we're under grace, we're free from sin, and we're alive. Let me unpack this a little bit. At the start of Romans chapter 6, after Paul has explained the righteousness of Christ and how this all works and how faith in Him through grace, through grace alone is how we receive salvation. Speaker 2 He sort of puts out these questions where he assumes that the the listeners are going to be like, well, how does this work then? Like if grace just keeps abounding with sin and all that sort of stuff. If grace always outruns sin, then, you know, it seems like a weird question to us, but you know, shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Like what there? What does that sin matter now if we're saved by grace? And Paul says by no means should you go on sin, sinning. We are those who have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? He says we were buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. His basic point is, why would you live like your old self when through faith in Jesus you've died and buried yourself with him and now been risen to live a new way? It doesn't make any sense to go back and live the old way, for we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. You were dead, you were a slave to sin, but now, through faith in Jesus Christ, you've been made alive and you've been set free from sin. Why on earth would you go back and live the way that you used to? And so he says, do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. So they we we have to understand that when we come to faith in Christ, we are no longer under the law and the consequences of it. This is the whole point. We were dead in our sin. We deserve death, but when we believe in Jesus through His work on the cross, we're joined to Him. And I'm now no longer under the law. The law has no power of me because Jesus Christ has paid the price for the law. He's fulfilled the terms of the law, and now on this side of the cross, I am under grace. The law has no power over. Speaker 1 Me, because Jesus has done the work for me. And what that means is, is that we now have liberty from the law. So Paul says in Galatians, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. What's he talking about? You were slaves. Speaker 2 To sin. You were bound by the law, right? You were imprisoned under it. Partly it was for your protection to stop you from doing even worse things and that sort of stuff. But you were also condemned by it. It was a yoke of slavery upon you, and you have now been set free from that. So don't go back to it because you have been set free now for freedom. Mark my words. I, Paul, tell you that if you yourselves be circumcised, right, if you go back to the law, if you go back to trying to follow all the Jewish rules, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he's required to obey the. Speaker 1 Whole law. This is the point, OK. Speaker 2 You've been set free now to follow Christ freely without the, the, the yoke of slavery of the law. And if you even start to think, oh, there's probably some things from the law that I should still do to make sure that I'm right with God, OK, Then it's like you're going back to being dead and sin again because you're no longer trusting in Christ for your salvation. You're trusting in your own works. You're reburdening yourself with the yoke of slavery. And so we need to understand that as Christian, and this is just fundamental and it seems extreme, OK? And I'm going to win you over by the end of this if you're freaking out. But at like just, there's no equivocation on this. There is no double mindedness about this. If you are believing in Jesus, you have been set free from the law. You are under grace. You are no longer a slave to sin and the law of sin and death. Speaker 1 But rather now you are free and. Speaker 2 Alive. Speaker 1 But some of you are thinking. Speaker 2 If we're not living by the law, then what are we living by? How do we know what's right and wrong? How do we know what to do? How does this work? This just sounds crazy. Living by the Spirit: Love and Obedience James. Have you met people? You just want to give them freedom? That's insane. Speaker 1 Believe me, I've met people. All right. So how do we do this? If we're not under the law, if we're under grace, then how do we live? Well, now we live by the Spirit, because somebody bleed these together, Liberty from the law, under the Spirit. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead. You know that we might bear fruit for God. So now, by dying to what once bound us, we've been released from the. Speaker 2 Law. Speaker 1 So that we may serve in the new. Speaker 2 Way of the Spirit. Speaker 1 And not in the old way of the written code. So we go from being under the law to under grace, but we also go from being under the written code to living by the Spirit. And so Paul writes. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. So what is it if we if? Speaker 2 We're no longer living by the law, but we're living by the Spirit. Speaker 1 Well, what? What does that look like? Again, I got three things for us here. OK, what is living by the Spirit? The Spirit, not the flesh, Obedience to Christ and the obedience of love. Another contrast that Paul makes again and again is that when we were under the law, you were living by the flesh and not by. Speaker 2 The Spirit, so he says. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the. Speaker 1 Flesh. They're in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you were led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. So there's a sense here in which when you're under the written code, again, you're living by the flesh, the whole point of the written code. Speaker 2 Is to keep you bound by this law because there's a sense in which you're wanting to live for your flesh, and it's only the law that's stopping you from doing worse things, right? Even your obedience to the law is in some ways the work of the flesh, because you're trying to prove yourself righteous, and that was right and good to a certain extent for a certain period of time. There's all sorts of reasons why the law is good, and Paul unpucks it elsewhere. Speaker 1 We're not going to do that now. Speaker 2 But essentially, you were still living by the flesh. You were felt. You wanted to do what your flesh wanted. But the rule, the rules kept you boxed in to reveal to you your sin to reveal. Speaker 1 Your need for Jesus and to protect you from doing worse stuff. But now having been saved by Jesus, have been born again, having been given a new heart and being given a new spirit. Now you're no longer meant to be living for the flesh, but you're living with this new heart that says, I want to obey Jesus. I no longer want to live for myself. I want to live for him. And so he says, the acts of the flesh, they're, they're obvious. Speaker 2 Right. I mean, these ones are really obvious. Sexual morality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the. Speaker 1 Like the early church must have been wild, right? Like seriously. But he says the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace, forbearance or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control against such things. There is no law. OK, this is this is really important when we're going to look at a whole bit in a bunch of verses a little bit later on about, you know, the one another commands that God gives to us. Speaker 2 Being kind is not a new law. Being caring is not a new law. Being good is not a new law. Faithfulness is not a new law. Rather, these are the things that naturally flow forth from a heart that wants to follow Jesus and be like. Speaker 1 Him I'm going to unpack. Speaker 2 This a little. Speaker 1 Bit further, but I just want to but there is a difference when we're no longer living for the flesh and need to be boxed into by the law to now having a new spirit that wants to obey Jesus and then figuring out what that looks like. So James, we do we just vibe it is that what we said? No, no, no, OK, we're not just vibing. There is there is deep principles at the centre of this that I'm going to argue go far beyond what the law is possibly capable of. So living by the Spirit looks like being obedient to Christ. Jesus said this. Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. OK, if you, if you love me, you'll obey my commands. But listen to how he phrases this a little bit later on. If you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you. So Jesus wants us to keep his commands, but not by the power of the law, but rather the power of the Spirit who will remind us of all these things. Well, but it still seems to be focused on the commands, you know, does that mean that again, we just, we have to follow all the the rules? But but Jesus makes a shift here. That's really, really important and again, fundamental for us, understanding how we relate to it, because the obedience that he talks to, the way that he talks about his commands, consistently gets summed up and phrased in terms of what it looks like for us to love God and one another. Speaker 2 So Paul writes to Galatians 4 in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has has any value like law and no law, Jew or Gentile, that's not the issue. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Are you looking for a way to live? Some of you are like, I love this idea about no law. OK, great, awesome, I'm going to run with that. Some of you are like, no, we need the law, OK, we need the rules, otherwise it's going to be chaos and that sort of stuff. But Paul says neither of those things. What is what? What counts is. Speaker 1 Faith expressing itself through love for my brothers and sisters. You're called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Don't go back. Don't. Don't. Speaker 2 Think that your freedom is just so now you can do whatever you want, but rather. Speaker 1 Serve one another humbly in love, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command. Love your neighbour as yourself. Speaker 2 This, this is always Jesus's focus. This is always when he's asked the question of how should we live? He always brings it back to this being the summary statement that covers everything. An expert in the law tested Jesus with the question, What is the greatest commandment? Speaker 1 In the law. Speaker 2 Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands. That's why Paul's saying love your neighbour as yourself. That's why he's saying rather humbly serve one another in love. Living by the Spirit means loving God with everything we have and loving others as ourselves. We had to be obedient to the command of God. But the way that we understand that is not the 613 prescriptions in the Mosaic Law, but Jesus command, love God and love one another. Practical Steps: Following Jesus and Seeking God's Wisdom So OK, anyways, so wait. Speaker 2 It it's just. Speaker 1 You know about being nice and and kind to people. Just be loving, you know that? That's it. No, no, I hate Christian niceness. Speaker 2 I really, really do, right? Some of you need to repent of your niceness. And what I mean by that is niceness is politeness. Niceness is not ruffling, you know, the, the situation, all that sort of stuff. I just feel like I've got to be nice. That is such a reductionistic view of love. Love is so much deeper and fiercer than that. So what does it look like to live by the Spirit? What what does this actually look like for us to do this well? How do we live by the Spirit? Well, first up, really simple, easy step. Just follow the example of Jesus. Speaker 1 Right. It's just, you know, simple, right? John writes. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. I know about you, but I think that goes a little bit beyond niceness. Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly beloved children, and live a life of love just as Christ Jesus loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, Paul writes. For I'm not seeking my own good, but the good of many so that they may be saved. Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. This always just again. It blows my mind when some Christians when we start talking about the freedom that we have in Christ and living by the Spirit and having liberty. Speaker 2 The pull that we have towards getting back to rules and that sort of stuff, it's, it's an incredibly powerful force and look, there's reasons for this. Speaker 1 The law promises us safety. Rules promise you that you know where you stand, you know that you're on the right side of the Ledger. And if you've been hurt, if you've been wounded, rules give you a sense of security because now you can pursue justice. If anybody dare crosses over it, then I can persecute them and go back against them. But The thing is, is that when we really look at following the example of Christ, we see again and again that Jesus is setting us an example that goes beyond these simple questions of black. I'm not going to get into it now, but the number of times when the experts in the law were questioning why Jesus was doing something. Why do you do this on the Sabbath? Why do you break these rules that we've made up? Why do you do what's not proper for you know, why do your disciples do what's not proper for God's holy people? And again and again, he pushes them back to is it right to do good or evil on the Sabbath? Is it right to heal or to to kill? And so if you'll, if you're like. Speaker 2 Freaked out by the idea of, but without rules I'm not going to know what. Speaker 1 To do here's what you do. Keep looking at Jesus. Study how he lived. Look at the example he sets, look at the centre of his life, his obedience to the Lord, but also his sacrifice upon the cross. I promise you, you will be challenged and be given a picture of morality that runs so much deeper than any rules that any of us could come up with. So the first thing that we need to understand is is that as. Speaker 2 Christians, we don't need to get there and start reading the scriptures looking for a bunch of rules and regulations. Speaker 1 Rather, we read the scriptures looking at the person of Jesus and saying I want to be like that guy because if I'm like him, I know I'm going to be living by the Spirit and right with God. But. Speaker 2 There's more to God's word than just the Gospels, right? There's more to it than that. And this is the cool thing, when we really start to realise that we're not under the law now, when I read through the Old Testament, when I read through the wisdom literature, when I read through the histories, when I read through the Psalms and, and all these sorts of different things, what I'm being, what, what's happening? Speaker 1 Is I'm being given all these tools to think more and more deeply about who God is and what he loves in this world. This is what God says at the start of the the second giving of the Lord. It's a fundamental text for the nation of Israel, it says. Speaker 2 Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And then it says these commandments that I give you today are to be on your heart. Now, we've already said we're not under the law, the six. Speaker 1 113 commands that Moses goes on to give. OK, we're not under them, we're not bound by them. We don't have to do all of them, but nonetheless. Speaker 2 They give us a lot to work. Speaker 1 With in trying to figure out about what it looks like to love God and to love others. Some of it was for its time. Some of it was designed to give God a, you know, the God's people, a distinct identity apart from their neighbours. Speaker 2 And all that sort of stuff. But there's all sorts of other things in there that we can start to use to think through what is right and wrong, what does good and evil actually look like. And that becomes our project as Christians. The author of the Hebrews, right? He, he starts getting in to talking about this Old Testament figure called Melchizedek and all this sort of stuff. And in Hebrews, it's like this big sermon where he unpacks a lot of the deep teachings about God. Speaker 1 And good news, we're going to go there in the school holidays and into chapter, into Term 4, right? We're going to go through it. It's going to be great. But notice what he says. Speaker 2 He's got, look, I've got so much to teach you about this stuff, all this rich Old Testament stuff, right? I've got so much to give you, all right? But it's hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though, by this time you want to be teachers. You need to be someone, You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk still being an infant is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. Speaker 1 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. So we need to. Speaker 2 Follow Jesus. We need to keep our eyes firmly stood on him. That's the starting point. But we want to understand the whole council of God. We want to see God's story about his people Israel and, and how he has loved them. We want to see all the individual people that that the gods had interactions with in all the different various ways. We want to see the things that delight God and the things that bring him honour and the things that dishonour him and the things where people have been rebuked and corrected. And we want to pull all this together and we want our knowledge to go deeper and richer. We want to study the Old Testament well because it all points towards Jesus and we're just filling ourselves up with more and more of God's wisdom. And I'd like to say that is the 4th use of the law that we've got here. Wisdom for Living, Community, and Concluding Prayer It gives us the knowledge of sin. It protected us from sin. It gives us the knowledge of the gospel, but now it's wisdom for living out salvation. We don't read the Bible to take a box to say we're good evangelicals. You don't do it to make sure that in your accountability group, when someone says you've read your Bible this week, you're like, Yep, 6 out of seven. And on that 7th day, it's only because I was praying for 24 hours that I didn't do it then. No, it's not performative. It's not a show. It's how we grow in maturity and wisdom by continuing to go deeply into God's word. So Paul writes, Listen to Timothy, but As for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you've known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation. Speaker 1 Through faith in Christ Jesus, that's the goal. That's what we're working towards. I. Speaker 2 Mean, look at this stuff, right when we go through just all these New Testament exhortations, it's not giving you a list of things you can and cannot do on a Sunday. It's not giving you a list of. Speaker 1 You know, things that you have to do to make sure that you're staying right with God. It's giving these general exhortations, all of which are unpacking what it looks like to. Speaker 2 Love one another, love one another gets said the most, but there's all these other ones. Be devoted, honour one another, live in harmony, build one another up, Be like minded towards one another. Accept one another, admonish one another, greet one another, care for one another, Serve one another, bear one another's burdens. Consider others better than yourselves. Look to the interests of one another. Bear with one another. Teach one another. Comfort one another. Encourage one another. Forgive one another. Be patient with one another. Speak the truth in love. Be kind and compassionate. Speak with psalms and hymns. Submit to one another. Exhort one another. Stir up one another in love, in good works. Share hospitality to one another. Use your gifts with one another. Clothe yourselves with humility. Pray for one another. Confess your faults to one another. Do not lie to one another. Stop passing judgement on one another. Do not bite and devour each other. Do not provoke or envy each other. Do do not slander one another. Do not grumble against each other. We are members of one another. Some of you, like I kind of want the rules back. And this is the thing. This is the trick. It's a demonic trick. The rules of what will set you free. The rules of what? It's really all about Trust in the rules, because then you'll know you won't go astray. No, no, trust in Jesus and seek to be like Him and that he has set you free from law for liberty. And now we pursue Christ. Speaker 1 Likeness not under the written code, but living by the spirit. And here's where to finish this is this is where the top tier maturity starts to come through. Can't wait to have you guys chat about it this week in Romans, Paul's work, and we've quoted a lot from Moments today and sort of been working our way gradually through some of the key principles there. Speaker 2 But when he. Speaker 1 Gets to what's the end of the letter. He's got this concern because he knows that as he is preached freedom in Christ and that there is now no condemnation, all that sort of stuff. There is a risk and it's this. It's that as everyone tries to figure out what freedom looks like for themselves, people are going to slip into thinking that my way of doing things is the right way of doing things, and we will be tempted to. Speaker 2 Judge one another. Because here's the thing right? If I say to this. Speaker 1 Room 300 odd people in here. You have freedom in Christ. Read the scriptures. Seek to be like Jesus. Speaker 2 And seek to live that out in the. Speaker 1 World, I'm going to put some of you in the same context, the same situation, the same consequences, and you're going to reach different conclusions about what you think is following Jesus in this moment. Speaker 2 And so there's going to be a temptation to look at that person and say, well, they didn't arrive at the same conclusion as I have and I'm living by the spirit, so I don't know what they're. Speaker 1 Doing and so Paul says, this one person considers one day more sacred than another. Another considers everyday. Speaker 2 Alike each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Speaker 1 Whoever regards one day is special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the. Speaker 2 Lord for they give thanks to God, and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. What's he saying here? He's saying, look, people are going to do different things In his context. People are arguing about do we still have to follow the Jewish calendar? Are we allowed to eat meat sacrificed to other gods? And what he's saying is you guys are going to land in different places on this. Now. He even acknowledges Paul's got his own opinion about some of these are weaker positions, some of these are stronger positions. Paul's not saying it's a free for all. He's not saying everything is equally right. Paul thinks yeah, no, some of. Speaker 1 You have got a stronger. Speaker 2 Position on this than others. But here's the thing, each of you have a responsibility in your own mind to be doing this for God regardless of what you are doing. And so he says you. Then why do you judge your brother or sister, or why do you treat them with contempt, if we will all. Speaker 1 Stand before God's judgement seat for the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking. It's not about which rules and regulations you're following. It's not about you know who's crossing their TS and dotting their eyes when it comes to the law, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval. I think this is one of the reasons why Christians tend to drift back toward the law and rules. It's because, at first glance, freedom to follow the Spirit looks like it's going to be chaos. It looks like it's going to be anarchy. And again, because rules naturally make us feel safe, right? We want to box people in and listen. There are good reasons for rules at different points, time, you know, when you've got kids and all that sort of stuff. Speaker 2 Rules are helpful. They're learning, they're growing. They might not be at a point yet where they really can wrestle, you know, wrestle through this stuff deeply and that sort of stuff when you're a new Christian, some simple rules to sort of keep you in a safe place while you figure some of this stuff out. Not a bad idea, but here's the key. That's going to be a rule that you set for yourself until such time that you can make your own wisdom, not something that we enforce on one another when we talk about the duties of membership. I'm not going around and you know. Speaker 1 Checking. Have you been doing it this week? Did you come to that congregational meeting? How much are you giving? You know, have you been a Christian brother and everything? Have you manifested a Christian spirit? And we're not. Speaker 2 The police of Christian morality. Speaker 1 We are encouraging you back towards Christ. Speaker 2 Again and again. Speaker 1 So that your conscience grows and matures and you seek to be like Jesus. Speaker 2 More and more. Speaker 1 And we will all do this imperfectly at times. If you talk to my staff, they'll tell you I think other people are wrong a lot. I'm right, but a lot of other people. Speaker 2 Like it's, it's a struggle for them, but. Speaker 1 Here's the thing, I know that I'm wrong. Speaker 2 And I know that I don't know where I'm wrong. I know that there are some things that I believe sincerely that are probably going to be wrong because I've been in that situation before. I've. Speaker 1 Changed my mind. Speaker 2 As I've studied the scriptures, as I've grown, as I've experienced more things, I've made moral judgement in my 20s that there is no way I would say the same thing again today. Speaker 1 And that's OK that that's what growth looks like it. This is not something where we don't have strong convictions, but we recognise the distinction between this is me following my conscience and the issue is not do I agree with what the other person is doing, but rather am I encouraging them to make sure that whatever their conscience is, that they are doing it for Jesus sake. Not to make themselves think that, you know, they have to do it my way to be right with God. Not to get them to go against their conscience, because I have the more mature position and that sort of stuff. Speaker 2 So our goal as a community. Speaker 1 Is to live by the Spirit, not the written code, by following Christ, knowing His word and loving one another. I can't wait to hear our conversations go this week. There's lots to play around with, but let's pray now that we would have the spirit of liberty amongst us as we seek to worship God. Well, Father God, thank you so much for the liberty that we've been given in Christ. Thank You that we are no longer under the law of sin and death, that all we believe and trust in your name have been set free, that we are no longer slaves to sin, but rather we are now slaves to Christ, that we have a new master, one who we can trust completely. We pray, Father, we would not go back, go back to living under the law. And even worse, Father, we would not try to push other people under the law because of our own fears, because of our own lack of trust in You. Father, may we be a community that pursues you fiercely. May we be a people to give one another freedom to figure out what our conscience believes in accordance with your Scriptures, as we seek to live for you in all things. And we pray, Father, we would learn to work together with one another, even though we disagree at times. But we pray, Father, that all of us would do so with Jesus Christ as our Master, the one whom we seek to serve. And we just pray, Father, that as we live out this complex, messy idea of all of us having freedom in Christ together, the Lord we do so in a spirit where we do not judge one another, but rather, Lord, we pursue you, we encourage one another, we spur one another unto love and good deeds in all that we do, that we might honour you in all things. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.