Rescue

Well good morning! Good morning to everybody here in the auditorium, good morning to everybody in venue who's joining us on video and also online. My name is René, one of the pastors here, and we're gonna do a little bit of counter programming here. A lot of you are thinking about the Super Bowl now, but I'm not gonna talk about the Super Bowl. I'm going to talk about whales, all right? Who likes whales here? We have a lot of whales around Santa Cruz.

Well, something fascinating happened in the winter of 1988. It came early to a place called Barrow Point, Alaska. It came so early and so suddenly that huge swaths of the ocean near Barrow Point actually froze solid, trapping some marine mammals including three California gray whales. And they were discovered when some ice fishermen from an Eskimo village were out fishing and they chopped a little hole in the ice and suddenly whales began emerging. They couldn't of course get through the hole, but they came up to breathe and they could not all get out at the same time.

So these three whales were taking turns coming up through this hole breathing until the Eskimos enlarged the hole a little bit. They could not hold their breath long enough to swim the five miles under the freshly frozen ice to reach the open ocean. So the Eskimos thought, "What are we gonna do to rescue these whales?" First they used their shovels to try to cut holes in the ice so the whales could breathe a little bit more easily. And then some of the other villagers brought out chainsaws and they cut a much bigger hole in the ice for the whales. It almost looks like a swimming pool there doesn't it?

And then they told a local marine biologist and he told the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard contacted a friend at NBC News and it turns out that Tom Broca loves whale stories. And so he actually featured this on the nightly news and at that point the story went worldwide. The whole planet got passionate about the plight of these whales. The National Guard brought two sky crane helicopters with a massive weight to blast holes in the ice. They blasted one hole right after another so the whales would have a breathing path to get out to the open ocean.

But intriguingly this didn't work. The whales at this point couldn't even figure that out and so they had to take another tactic and so the Soviet Union arrived with a massive icebreaker ship and intriguingly the captain of the Soviet ship for the first and the last time in the history of that country chose to fly two flags from his icebreaker ship the Soviet Union flag and the flag of the United States of America. Intriguing.

The story was even made into a Hollywood movie called Big Miracle. It was just a great story of how when these amazing creatures were trapped the world put aside its differences and did everything it could to set them free and it worked. They swam finally to freedom and then the Russians ate them. No that's not really true but I can say that because I'm part Russian. I'm not really part Russian I was just trying to avoid some angry emails.

But there really was something so noble and so beautiful and so gallant and so right about that whole endeavor. Right? Instinctively we want to fight for freedom when we see a beautiful creature like this trapped we want to help it out. I think that's part of the image of God in us. Right? God, it's part of his nature to be gracious and to want to rescue when he sees something beautiful trapped.

And in fact something very much like that is happening in the book of the Bible where we begin an eight-week study today, the book of Galatians. Something beautiful is trapped. Is freezing to death. Is suffocating and the Apostle Paul writes a letter that is pure dynamite to break the ice to blast the poor creatures free. But the Apostle Paul is so passionate about setting free not just whales but you and me.

Grab your message notes as we start a new study in Galatians called Free. Today's message is entitled Rescue because that's how you could summarize the whole purpose of the book of Galatians and really the whole purpose of the ministry of Jesus Christ. At the very start of Galatians Paul says this in verse 3: grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to what? To rescue us. This is why Jesus came to rescue us because we were just as trapped as those whales and he came to set us free.

In fact, look at those first verses there in your notes in Luke chapter 4. In his very first public sermon where he describes his mission Jesus says, The Lord has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners. In John chapter 8 he says, The truth will set you free; if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. And then the Apostle Paul picks up the theme in 2 Corinthians 3 where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom and here in Galatians chapter 5 it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Did you pick up a common theme in those verses? What is it? It's freedom. Right? Now if that is what Jesus Christ came to do—to set us free, to give us true freedom—freedom from guilt, freedom from shame, freedom from fear about what God thinks of us, freedom from fear about what other people think of us, absolute spiritual freedom. If that's the point of Christ's ministry then why is it that there are so many Christians living enslaved lives, not free, not happy? The ice of cold dead religion has them trapped.

A friend of mine from here at Twin Lakes Church went to Berkeley for school and she was talking with somebody she met in one of her classes and this classmate found out that my young friend was a Christian and he said, "Whoa, you're a Christian?" And she said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Listen, I just want you to know right now I have no interest at all in your Christianity. Please do not ever talk to me about Christianity, not ever." And she said, "Wow, that's pretty intense. Can I ask you why?" And listen to his answer. He said, "Because the most unhappy, guilt-ridden people I know are Christians. No thanks."

And you know what? He really is exactly right. There are a lot of unhappy, guilt-ridden, shame-focused Christians that actually you don't want to be like. And I know because for many years of my life I was one of them. I remember my wife used to tell me, "René, if there was something I could do to just go inside your psyche and operate because you are the most guilt-ridden, shame-driven person that I know." That's why studying Galatians is very personal for me because Galatians had a huge impact on my spiritual life.

I was actually a pastor. I was serving at a church up at South Lake Tahoe and even though I was a pastor, a minister full-time, my spiritual life was very dry, very cold. I really was doing everything out of a sense of guilt and out of a sense of obligation, very legalistic personally. And then it all changed in one night. I mean really it was a miracle. Some of you have heard me talk about it. I was reading the book of Galatians in bed one night preparing for a sermon and Paul's words like leapt off the page and broke right through the ice in my heart.

Verses like this in Galatians 4:15 he says to the Galatians, What has happened to all your joy? And I thought that's a great question because all my joy that I once had in Jesus Christ it's just all gone. And I could not stop reading the book of Galatians. In fact, I read the book all the way through several times that night. It's a short book; you can do it easily.

I remember shaking my wife Lori awake saying, "Listen to this!" And then I'd read more. She'd fall asleep again. I'd go, "Listen to this!" And she said, "I liked you a lot better before your little personal revival. Go to sleep now." She thought it was great too. And over the next few weeks as I kept studying it, I told Lori it's like I've been seeing the world in black and white and now I'm seeing it in color again. I said it's like I've been born again again. It just revitalized my spiritual life in amazing ways.

There were times I'd be driving around or walking around and I would be thinking about God's grace and I would literally just begin just weeping with joy. And ever since then whenever I feel that downward spiral happen again into performance-oriented dry religion, I go back to what led to my personal revival—the book of Galatians when everything changed for me. And it never fails to bring me back to the point of the Christian life when I've lost it, and I know it'll do the same thing for you too.

This was actually the very first book I ever preached from here at Twin Lakes Church 21 years ago and so we thought this year on the 125th anniversary year of Twin Lakes Church that we'd revisit this book again because it's one of the Apostle Paul's seminal works. It establishes what it means to be a Christian. And if you ever feel like, listen, I'm spiritually depressed, Christianity just feels like a dry obligation, a burden, my faith has grown cold, you also need to hear what Paul says in this amazing book.

What I'm gonna do this morning is I'm gonna give you an overview of the book to show you what had me so riveted and my prayer is that you come back every single week in this short eight-week study because with Galatians, even more than with other books of the Bible, there's this cumulative effect of studying this book over time. And the truths in this book they're so radical that if you really understand them it'll give you a freedom that maybe you've never known before in your entire spiritual life.

So let's kind of get oriented here. The letter to the Galatians was written about 50 A.D. and this is very important because this is less than 20 years after the crucifixion of Christ. It may have been the earliest book of the New Testament ever written and again super critical because that means it's a peek into what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus and about what made a Christian a Christian.

And it's so much different than a lot of what people associate with Christianity. All the centuries of kind of religion that accumulated on top of Christianity can just be peeled away when you go back to the powerful book of Galatians which is so revolutionary, just so radical. Here's what the original audience was. On his first missionary journey, Paul went through an area that's now in central Turkey. Then it was called southern Galatia and he started a church here. In fact, on a recent trip to Turkey we visited the ruins of the capital of this whole area and while he was there Paul started this church in this region.

But the problem was after he left a group of people came in and told the Galatians, "If you want to be a really good Christian then what you've got to do is follow all these extra rules. What Paul taught you was like kind of like the ABCs of the Christian life but we are going to give you all the rest of the letters. You've got to follow all these rules." They imposed on them all of the rules that are in the Old Testament like eating kosher, like men have to be circumcised, like you can't trim your beard, like you can't use fabric that's... I mean all those hundreds and hundreds of Levitical laws they said you got to keep all these too to really be a good Christian, to really get God's blessing, to really get to the next tier in your spiritual life.

And the Galatians believed it and very dutifully obeyed. They became very religious and all the life just leached out of them. And Paul was upset. He was furious. That's why the book of Galatians is full of strong emotions. It might surprise you because Paul is so passionate. He sounds astonished and angry almost and intense but that's because Paul is on a rescue mission. He sees these people, their spiritual lives just dying and he sees the Christian faith getting completely distracted from what it's all about.

And he warns the Galatians about three traps that will steal your spiritual freedom. Listen, the book of Galatians breaks very neatly into three sections and they're roughly two chapters each. In the first section Paul warns them about false teachers that will teach a gospel reversal. Excuse me, a gospel reversal. Follow me here. Chapter 1, verses 6 and 7 Paul says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all.

Understand Galatians, you really have to understand this word grace. What is grace? This is a very rich word but you can describe it as unmerited favor. You can't earn it. God just lavishes it on you. Your salvation, the promise of heaven, it's all just given to you as a gift. All you need to do is receive it.

Now most people don't think God operates this way. They just don't. I heard a radio commercial the other day on KGO and here was the script: "You know you need to earn more good karma but you know you're just not doing enough. Today you cut off a guy on the freeway, no karma points there. The Girl Scouts came to your door to sell cookies and you pretended you were not home, no karma points there. Well here's an easy way to rack up karma points: give blood." And it was an ad for the Red Cross.

Now I believe in giving blood but not to rack up good karma points because it's a good thing to do. That's why giving blood is a good idea. But you know most people think the Bible teaches something like that. God works on some kind of a karma point system and if you get more good points than bad points he loves you and you go to heaven when you die. But that's not what the Bible teaches. Actually, the Bible teaches the opposite of that. It teaches grace—that God loves you so much that he unconditionally gave himself to his son Jesus to die on the cross to pay for all of your sin debt so you can be free.

Think of those whales. They got rescued because they needed rescue. It was physically impossible for them to rescue themselves. They couldn't do it. They needed an outside agency to help. Even when the sky crane helicopters punched holes in thinking, "Well, the whales can participate a little bit by swimming under the ice to the next hole," that didn't compute for the whales. What had to be done was that all of the ice had to be broken so the whales could swim free. They got a hundred percent rescue because they needed a hundred percent rescue.

And that's the same with you and I. Our rescue is a hundred percent a gift. This is why Paul is so upset in this next verse. He says, Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. And check this out, the word he chooses to use for pervert literally means reverse. This is huge. This is enlightening. He's saying if you add anything to Christ as a requirement for acceptance with God, any kind of rules or regulations, you completely reverse the gospel.

Look up here for a second. Don't miss this. You reverse the gospel because now you're making it about you paying God instead of God paying your debt. You see the directions reversed? The gospel is not just changed a little bit; it's completely ruined if you add anything to it. Now this can be very subtle. We may not deal with the exact same problem the Galatians have but there are different ways that we reverse the gospel today.

At the top of page two in some churches there's a strong, for example, emphasis on feelings. They say things like, "Do you love Jesus enough? Are you sorrowful enough for your sins? Do you feel convicted enough? Are you hungry enough for the Lord?" And people start to think they have to maintain some high degree of emotion in order to be saved or have a relationship with Jesus. But effectively that's reversing the gospel because it makes it about you having feelings toward God instead of God's love toward you. And if I'm not feeling it then maybe I'm not saved.

And I have to say I've seen this fairly typical in evangelical churches. I lived with this for a while. I used to berate myself saying the reason I am not more consistent in my Christian life is that I don't love Jesus enough. And if I only loved Jesus more than I would be more consistent in my spiritual life. And you've probably thought that at one point in your life too. It's very easy to slip into that.

I would get on myself and try to drum up feelings for Jesus until finally one day somebody told me something that changed my whole life spiritually. They said, "René, the problem is not that you don't love Jesus enough; it's that you're not allowing yourself to just revel in how much he loves you." You see that the difference there? I was reversing the gospel making it about what I was feeling toward God instead of God's unconditional love for me.

Now in other churches they say, "Well it doesn't matter what you believe or feel as long as you're a good person." There's an emphasis on deeds. If you're loving, if you're tolerant, if you're giving, if you're doing good things for the neighborhood, you live a good life, then you'll go to heaven. And at first that sounds very kind of open and tolerant but in fact this is very narrow because it only offers hope to really good people. And somebody who is coming out of a life where they really weren't very good, they hear this message and they go, "Wow, there's no hope for me because I know I'm not a good person."

And how many times have you heard somebody say or maybe even thought yourself before you really understood the gospel, "Well I mean I'm so bad already I'm as well just quit the pretending because I'm going to hell anyway so I may as well just have a good time," right? That's because this is not the gospel.

And then I've noticed lately in some books, especially books for younger people, young adults and college-age people, an emphasis on sacrifice. I hear things like, "Are you sacrificing enough for Jesus? Are you really living a radical life for God? How can you call yourself a follower of Christ, a true follower, if you have not let everything behind to follow him radically?" But you see how again the attention shifts to me and instead of thinking about what the radical thing that Jesus Christ did for me and just following him out of gratitude, now it's all about me and what I'm doing for Jesus Christ and am I radical enough?

And finally, in other churches there's an emphasis on strict obedience. You know you've got to dress right, eat right, talk right, and go to three services every week and have this kind of vocabulary and only read this kind of books and it's a huge burden. Now personally I think this last one is the least dangerous these days because it's the most obvious. The other ones are much more subtle.

Now look at this list for just a second. Is there anything wrong with any of these four things—feelings or sacrifice or obedience or good deeds? No, of course not. They're all, I hope, they're all part of my spiritual life. But when any of those—watch this—when any of these things start to become the measure of your spirituality, that's when they become a false teaching because they're getting you off message. They're changing the direction of the transaction. Now it's not about God to me and just reveling in this amazing grace of God to me; it's about me to God, what I'm doing for God instead of what he has done for me.

So the first two chapters of Galatians Paul focuses on the danger of any kind of false teaching that reverses the direction of the gospel and he's saying that it's very subtle. And then in the second part of Galatians, which we'll see in this series, the next two and a half chapters Paul gets into the specific way the Galatians are being trapped and that is legalism. Legalism. Now you hear this word legalism a lot in churches. What is legalism? You can define it this way: legalism is the more rules I keep, the more mature I am. Right? If I keep a lot of rules that must mean I'm a spiritual giant.

There was a tract that some people were handing out on the street in San Luis Obispo a few years ago and one of our pastors here was a student there at Cal Poly and got the tract and kept it and he showed it to me. It was fascinating. The cover of the tract says, "Jesus says don't." That's the cover of the pamphlet. That's great news, isn't it? Jesus says don't; you come to our church. And then on the inside there's a list of 40 things, start sentences starting with "Jesus says don't," followed by a scripture reference. 40 things. Here's just five: don't have long hair if you're a man; don't wear gold or pearls if you're a man or a woman—I'm assuming; Jesus says don't teach anything not found in the King James Version. I kid you not. Jesus says don't tell jokes or act the clown or use puppetry to explain the word of God. That is in here. Jesus is against puppets. There was one more: Jesus says don't root for the Seahawks. That one I agree with.

No, and it goes on and on. That's legalism. But you know that kind of legalism is easy to spot, isn't it? 99% of us here would go, "Oh brother, check this out." But let me ask you this: do you ever think to yourself God will bless you more if you spend 10 minutes in your quiet time instead of one minute? God will bless you more; all kinds of things will go better for you that day if you read the Bible that day and I didn't have my quiet time, I didn't read the Bible that day and that's why God is not blessing me more. It's so easy to slip into this performance-based Christianity.

Look at what Paul says in Galatians 3 and this is another one of these verses that just jumped right at me and hit me between the eyes that night. You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Now check this out: After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain perfection by human effort? And this verse just did it for me because I thought that's a—that describes my Christian life. I started with the Spirit, I started with grace, I started with receiving the gospel and I went, "Thank you, Jesus," and went on in my own strength, tried to be the best person I could possibly do. And Paul is saying that's absolutely totally foolish. Why?

Well, for one thing, the result of legalism is actually to make you less spiritual, less joyful, less peaceful, less loving, less focused on God because you're always focused on yourself and your own behavior and your own performance instead of God and his grace. And so you're naturally going to get tight and sour because you're focused on yourself and judging yourself all the time, so you're gonna judge everybody else too.

Now maybe you don't have any false teachers in your life telling you this but if you're honest you still struggle with a performance-oriented legalistic view of Christianity. Why? Well maybe it's because you had unpleasable parents. If you got C's they told you you should be getting B's. If you got B's they said you should be getting A's. If you got A's they told you the teachers were too easy. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Or maybe it wasn't your parents. Maybe you're your own worst critic. Your parents were great but you are constantly, every gesture you make, finding fault in yourself.

And what happens is when that kind of person, this kind of person becomes a Christian, you transfer that over to God and you find you're serving an unpleasable God of your imagination because that's how you are to yourself. That's how you talk to yourself. And so you're always imagining God saying, "Why can't you measure up? Shape up! You know, get with the program here." And no matter how much you serve the Lord it's never good enough. You're always thinking, "I should do this, I could do this, I ought to do this, pray more, serve more, do more, give more." You feel guilty when you relax. You always feel like you've got to keep striving to get better and your relationship with God is more of a burden than a blessing. Man, can I relate to that.

But listen, if you've been tormented by these thoughts, by legalism, by performance-oriented Christianity, you need to know the Bible teaches, as we'll see in the study of Galatians, God loves you infinitely, unconditionally. He loves you just as much when you have a quiet time as when you don't have a quiet time. He loves you just as much when you blow it as when you don't blow it because his love is not based on your performance; it's based on his grace.

This is why Paul says in chapter 5, verse 1 of 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. For most of my Christian life I thought this was talking about sin. "Don't yourself let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." But in context that's actually not what he's talking about. He's talking about religion. He's saying get away from those legalistic religious teachers; they are trying to put you back into slavery.

That's why here at Twin Lakes what we're trying to do is build a church based on grace, not guilt. Now that can be risky. Grace is risky. Grace is messy. People take advantage of grace. People abuse grace. And that's one of the reasons that Paul ends his book by pointing out something that he didn't think was the most important problem for the Galatians but he has to point this out too. He says also you got to be aware of the trap of what you could call hedonism because hedonism teaches if it feels good, do it.

And some Christians believe, "Hey, I'm free, I'm saved by grace and so I can just sin all I want." But Paul says, My brothers and sisters, you were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another humbly in love. It's like you're free to eat garbage. There's no law against eating just rancid garbage, right? You can eat all the garbage you wanted to; there's no law against it. So why don't you eat garbage? You're free to eat garbage. You don't eat garbage because you know how to make you sick. It's not good for you.

And Paul's saying that's the reason you want to stay away from sin. He says, A man reaps what he sows; whoever sows to please their flesh from the flesh will reap destruction. It's like a law of nature. So how do you stay away from sin? By a bunch of legalistic rules? No. Paul says live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of our sinful nature. What's that mean? Basically it means you move toward whatever you focus on. It's like in motorcycle driving school they teach you don't look to the rider to the left because you will move toward whatever it is that you focus on.

And that's a rule for life. If you're focused on Jesus Christ, let the grace of God capture your imagination. That will woo you back to God more effectively than rules every time. So look at your notes. Where do you feel trapped? Where have you feeling the ice build up between you and freedom? Maybe you're being trapped by some kind of gospel reversal in your life, very subtle. Maybe it's out and out legalism or maybe it's hedonism. What you need is simple and you'll find it in this series: a return to a simple emphasis on the grace of God. I hope you come to every week in this series. This epistle is so rich about grace your mind will just be blown.

Now you might be thinking, "Yeah, grace is great. It's so great. Why would anybody ever resist grace? Why would anybody not accept a free gift from God?" Well, because it can be very hard to say, "I am NOT the center of the universe." The appeal of all three of these things is they're about me. You know, I get to please myself or I get to look at my own performance. It's all about me and it's tough to let go of that, to let go of the idolatry of self-reliance.

I saw a great feature on Seattle Seahawks left tackle Russell O'Koon this week. Really fascinating story. He actually grew up hating his absentee father and decided if his own dad didn't love him then there was no such thing as unconditional love and he was never gonna rely on love. And he came to the conclusion he had to be a hundred percent self-reliant. If it's gonna be, it's up to me. And it worked for a while.

Watch this clip. Russell became an All-American at Oklahoma State. During his senior year he was considered college football's best offensive tackle. He finally confronted his resentment at a team chapel. There became an issue of a self-reliance that I truly believe that under my power I can make everything happen. And in that belief in myself I lost belief in who was actually really doing it—that was God's hand the whole time molding me and shaping me into the man he knew I would be today. And I came face to face with it and I had a decision to make. I told myself, "In accepting Jesus, I'm gonna let all that go. I'm gonna let that unforgiveness I had for my father go, the hate I had towards him, all that anger, audit self-reliance things I had. I'm gonna let it go because I can't do it anymore. I'm tired."

And once I gave my life to Christ something changed. And it's his love, his unconditional love that tells us that we're more than conquerors, the victor and not the victim. Seattle teammates call the six-foot-five, three hundred ten-pound lineman Big Daddy Russell, for whom life has come full circle. He now supports children of single-parent homes through the Russell O'Koon Foundation.

I love saying this: I don't care where you've come from, I don't care what you've been through, but you're here. You're here right now today. So God thinks something of you to keep you around, keep me around for this long. Then who protects that pro-bowl left tackle? The one and only God, Jehovah, Jesus Christ. He's my protector, gives me strength, gives me courage no matter what injuries, where I've come from, whoever I'm dealing with, he decides and I believe in him.

Isn't that good? I love that. By the way, we're gonna be showing some more faith stories of football players after the 10:45 service. Trent Dilfer, who spent some of his formative years here at Twin Lakes Church, produced an amazing video with some Seahawks players, some Patriots players and some others about 20 minutes long and we'll show it after the 10:45 service if you want to come back for that.

But here's the big idea of the book of Galatians: I need to keep preaching the gospel to myself. It's not just for accepting Christ; it's for living every day. And when I let it capture me, it makes all the difference. If spiritually you felt trapped and cold and suffocated like those whales, the book of Galatians will blast through that ice and lead you to freedom over the next eight weeks.

Let's ask God to bless the study together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this amazing book. And Lord, if there's anybody here who's lost the joy in their Christian life, they've accepted Christ but the joy has been gone, now I just pray that they would pray something like this in their hearts: Lord, I have experienced your freedom but have allowed myself to fall back into one of these traps. So Lord, refresh my joy, set me free, help me focus on grace. And most important, if there's somebody here who's never taken that first step of just receiving his grace, I pray that they do that today and say just in their hearts, "Jesus, come into my life and make me the person you want me to be." Thank you, Lord, for your grace. Thank you for the peace that comes from that. Help us to focus on that together. In Jesus' name, amen.