A Former Life

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. So we're in our second week of this series and we're going to be choosing freedom every day and our theme verse this week is the theme verse for all of it, Galatians 5 verse 1, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. That's the theme verse I think of this whole letter to the Galatians. You are set free for the sake of being free, not for the sake of following now a new set of religious rules on the one hand and not for following a new set of what I ever want to do in life, my own selfishness on the other. In fact that's how Paul will say throughout this letter, you can fall off away from grace in one of two equal and opposite errors, just running into doing more religion rules or falling into I'm going to do whatever I want. Okay we're going to avoid those two and understand what true freedom is and Paul will stake his whole life on this. In fact in the first part of this book is so blunt and so boom on point he stakes his whole life on what this freedom means. He says it's everything, the gospel is everything and if you get away from the gospel you don't got anything. You might as well throw out all of Christianity. In fact you are forsaking him as we said last week, Jesus. Okay now when some people hear the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, they go great but wait a minute I mean I got to do something don't I? I mean it's I got to at least show that I'm sincere. I got to at least do at least something to show that you know I in some way I mean I deserve I mean I mean it can't just be free and so it starts out with well at least I have to do and then and then and then and what happens is just if you just add a little just a little it's like oh if I just but I have to do this and then I have to do and then all of a sudden after a while it's just like more and more and more and more and more rules are added and all of a sudden there's a billion little things that we're trying to do to earn the right to be called God's children to earn the right to to have his favor and all of a sudden Paul will say that's not the gospel at all. You try to add to it you actually subtract from it. It's unusual math. Now on the other hand some people will hear the good news and think great fantastic that means I can do whatever I want and God's going to forgive me and so then they start following their own desires and living as they please in any way they want not realizing that too becomes a bondage to self. Self-rule is actually tyranny of the self and the appetites and that's not freedom at all Paul will say in this letter. That's not freedom. Neither of these are the gospel. The gospel is totally different than license or legalism and so today we're going to look at how in this book he uses his own story of how he encountered the living Jesus Christ and how that story is more or less a paradigm or a pattern for our stories as well. It's the gospel story for each of us in one form or another. Now in most stories it goes you've seen all the commercials especially the dieting commercials and all that before and then after. You know those pictures? We're going to see it's a little different and as we read through this I want you to see that this story goes a little differently than before and after. So you can follow along in chapter 1 of the book of Galatians starting at verse 11. For I would have you know brothers that the gospel that was preached to me is not man's gospel for I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ for we've heard of my former life in Judaism how I persecuted the Church of God violently and tried to destroy it and how it was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my father's but when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles I did not immediately consult with anyone nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days but I saw none other of the Apostles except James the Lord's brother and what I am telling writing to you before God I do not lie then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ they only were hearing it said he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy and they glorified God because of me so this is a gospel story this is how the gospel impacts your life in mind and it isn't a before and then after story even though those things are there this is the way it go...