Freedom!

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning and welcome. Now you might be saying that to me, welcome back. My family, we've been on a three-week vacation in California. Some of you might say, why would you go to the land of fruits and nuts, okay, but Flake's fruits and nuts. Well, because we used to live there, we used to be one of them. I had a pastorate out there, a church for seven years in the Central Valley of California, so we were able to get to visit them and visit some of the wonderful people that were in that church and to see that state of the ministry there, to see my brother as well who lives in Redondo Beach, and to just experience the beauty of this wonderful world God has made. And California has some of the most beautiful spots. If you ever get a chance, get to Yosemite, let me tell you, okay, get there. It is amazing what an amazing place God has created, you know, and boy, that was exciting as well. We had a great time, but it's good to be back, good to be in warmth. You know how cold San Francisco can be in the summer? Like 50 degrees with a 20-mile-an-hour wind all the time and foggy and woo, yeah, it's worse than our January, but okay, I've said enough. It's good to have you here, and it's really good to be gathered together today. I know it's the summer when everybody's like this, our students are wherever, Brooke, it's good to have you here. But we're getting ready for the fall, but we're also in the middle of, I think, a great study on freedom that Paul says is central, and he said this in Galatians 5, for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. That's been our theme verse. Paul says it finally, we're actually having it in our text today, but it's been the theme from the beginning of the letter to the end. He's astonished at how the Galatians forsook that or left that or left that away, and he's been amazed, he's been celebrating it all the way through the book, and he will to the end. Let's pray, though, first, shall we? Lord God, this day, we want you to inhabit these words, to really bring them to life. This letter that you inspired through the pen of Paul is just so amazing and so filled with wisdom, but more than that, with conviction, with the reality of your kingdom and how you have wanted our freedom all along, that you chose us to be free. And we pray today that we can see it more clearly in a world that's not free, not even close, Lord. In so many things that we see, the bondage of this world and the laws and the rules and the regulations, but beyond that, Lord, just how people are so bound up in so many things and are so enslaved in so many ways. We want to experience your freedom, the bonds that you break, Lord. The fact that you, Lord Jesus, are the great abolitionist who sets us free for the sake of freedom. So bless us this day, Lord. Fill this hour. Fill it with your hope, your peace, your joy, your love, your mercy, your truth, yourself. Be present here now. We thank you not only for this church and this fellowship, Lord, and even in the midst of summer, Lord, with all these things going on in our lives, we came together to just be in your presence. And so we thank you for that, but we also thank you for the fact that people are gathering together countless places across this world today to celebrate your goodness and truth and the freedom that you bring. And we pray that that would ring true through your gospel today everywhere. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So the theme verse, and we finally get to the passage. So if you've got your Bibles with you today, you can open your Bible to Galatians chapter five or you can look up like, you're so good, on your iPhone, your smartphone, your tablet. If you got the U version of the Bible app, which is a great thing, you can get to where it says events and in the event section, you'll find Thrive Community Church today. It's the seventh week in our series and it will have all the notes, the Bible verses, the notes, the different points, and you can even type in your own notes to the message while the message is going on. And I don't mind you looking at your phone during the message. Yeah, okay. And a reminder where this series is. So freedom is its central focus and Paul will not get off of that. And the Christians that he is talking to in Galatia, it's an area of Turkey or Asia minor. And he preached to a number of churches there. And when he, they heard about Jesus and how he lived a perfect life for them. And when they heard about how Jesus was crucified on a cross and through that cross, the sins of the whole world placed upon him, that they were freed and forgiven for their sins. And through his resurrection, they entered into this eternal life of a relationship, a living, loving relationship with God. The Galatians were like, wow, yes. They were excit...