What great words as an introduction
to our message today. Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea a great high priest whose name
is love whoever lives and pleads for me. I know that while in
heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart. Because the sinless Saviour died,
my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied
to look on him and pardon me. Glorious words of truth. You turn in your scriptures to
Galatians chapter 5 again. We're having Galatians 5, the
most remarkable and stark contrast that the Lord makes in the lives
of His people. The essence of the book of Galatians
is in verse 1 of chapter 5. It says, Stand fast therefore
in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Down to verse 13. For brethren, you have been called
unto liberty. Use not this liberty for an occasion
to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law
is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. But if you devour one another,
take heed that you be not consumed one of another." He is talking
of course about the difference between walking in the Spirit,
walking by simple, simple and exclusive trust in the Lord
Jesus. And the biting and devouring
here, the biting and devouring is what happens when people go
back to the law and go back to works. It's an extraordinary
thing, isn't it? That the very thing that they
think is going to give them freedom from sin, actually works in the
hearts of God's people to make them like animals. That's actually
not fair to the animals at all. According to Isaiah chapter 1,
the animals know that they are fed of God and they respect their
master. We do ourselves no credit when
we actually behave worse than animals. If you bite and devour
one another. So the biting and devouring that
Paul is talking about is the biting and devouring that has
come upon the Galatian believers because sincere and zealous and
well-studied people had gone there and they are acknowledging
that Christ is wonderful in salvation, but he is not born. You must, they say, go back to
the law of Moses. You must go back and be circumcised.
You must go back and live your life under the law of Moses,
and then the result, rather than morality, rather than godly Christian
living, is actually people biting and devouring each other. Paul
in Galatians 3 speaks of people being bewitched and when he's
talking about bewitching there he's using a word which is used
just one other time in all of the scriptures and it's used
in Deuteronomy 29 in relation to people, mothers and fathers
eating their children. The biting and devouring literally
happened in Jerusalem twice in history. It happened in 586 BC,
you can read about it in Jeremiah and Lamentations, and it happened
in 70 AD. They thought that because of
their works, they thought that because of their relation to
the temple, their place in history as Abraham's children, the children
of promise as it were, they thought the safest place in all the world
was in Jerusalem. They did it twice. And both times
they ended up biting and devouring each other. It's shocking to
read Josephus' account of what happened at the siege of Jerusalem. What was happening is that all
the various Jews that could get to Jerusalem thought that the
safest place in all the world was in Jerusalem. And so you
have the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Zealots and all the Herodians,
all of them jammed in next to each other. And there they were,
when the Romans came and attacked, they would all join hands and
fight against the Romans, and when the Romans weren't attacking
them, they were in there biting and devouring each other. They
have been left in history. These events have been left in
history for us to be reminded yet again that the most dangerous
person on planet earth is not some ISIS terrorist, not some
Nazi warmonger, Not the most evil people you can think of.
The most dangerous person on earth is someone who will put
the children of God and any others they can attract back under the
law. It's remarkable, isn't it? The
most dangerous people on planet earth are legalists. It was legalists
that killed the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what legalism does when
it meets God. They used every conniving trick
that they possibly could to manufacture a way of murdering God and justifying
their own righteousness. They would plot and scheme ways
of murdering him and then go and preach sermons and sing songs
in church. May God work in our hearts to
open our eyes for us to see And in this section of Galatians
it's very easy to think that now we have left all of the sort
of critically important things and now we've come on to this
section about how to live the Christian life. But Paul begins
this verse with a remarkable word, a remarkable little word
that's kept me awake for hours and hours over the last little
while, and it's 4. Have a look at it there. He says
4. The word is a conjunction, it
means because, and if you go back up in verse 3, you'll see
Paul uses it. He says, if you go back to be
circumcised, if you go back to the law in any way at all, you
go back to any works of your own whatsoever, Christ shall
profit you nothing, for I testify, you see, because. I testify again
to every man that is circumcised, he is a debtor to do the whole
law. You do one little thing, you
are obligated to do all of it, and you're obligated to do all
of it perfectly, and you're obligated to have done all of it perfectly
forever. So Christ has become no effect
unto you whosoever are justified by the law. You have fallen from
grace. Then again this word for, for
we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by
faith. God's children are made to be
patient, but patiently expecting God to do something. There's
this word again, for, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth
anything, nor uncircumcision. Those things, those activities
of the flesh, they have no power. They avail nothing. but faith
which worketh by love." And so our four there at the beginning
of our verse, that pretty cool little conjunction word, links
this section that he's talking about back to those sections
there. They did run well. Who should
hinder you? These people that hinder them.
They aren't. This persuasion doesn't come
from the one who called you. But there is a calling of God's
people. For brethren, you have been called
unto liberty. What a great word. You've been
called unto freedom. You've been called to freedom.
That word unto there means you've been called on the basis of freedom. You've been called for the purpose
of liberty. The calling of God to His children
is a calling to the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We just read about it in the
Psalm 27 and Isaiah. He carries us. I love the idea
of being carried, carried in the arms of God, carried close
to his heart, carried all the days of my life. the fact that
it just reveals utter dependence upon Him, that He lifts me up
above this world, lifts me up into His arms, and He carries
me. Because I can tell you right
now, brothers and sisters, I'm hopeless at carrying myself.
The older I get, the worse it seems to be. Not only the infirmities
of the flesh, but all the other infirmities that come along in
life seem in some sense to get magnified in older age. You think, I've been waiting
for a long, long time for this thing of maturity to come along.
I've been looking forward and I remember thinking when I was
16 or 17, one day I'll mature and I won't act like a child
anymore. One day I won't be silly anymore. One day I won't make
these silly mistakes anymore. And here I am, 40 or 50 years
later, and no closer at all. But I'm carried. I'm carried
by Him. Freedom. So what does freedom
mean to you? Freedom implies two things, doesn't
it? You imagine a prisoner being
let free from a prison house, which is the picture that's in
the scripture so often. It's to be redeemed, to be ransomed,
is to be bought out. To be bought out of a place of
captivity with the payment of a price. Freedom means that I
can do what I want to do. And freedom means that I don't
owe anything anymore. That's what that open prison
door implies, doesn't it? There is this calling, this calling
unto liberty. And it is a calling, as you see
there, a calling of the brethren. Paul sincerely believes, because
of the promises of God, because of the providence of God that
took him to Galatia, because of the response of these people
to the Gospel, that amongst the Galatian church he has his brethren. He has members of his family,
members of the family of God. And they, like all of Adam's
children, are now called to freedom. And freedom, of course, implies
that there was a time of bondage. And the scriptures make it abundantly
clear, don't they? You know, we are all, all who
sin are slaves to sin. The Lord Jesus is gloriously
pictured before us in the scriptures as one who sets people free. He gave himself for our sins,
chapter 1 verse 4, that he might deliver us, he might set us free
from this present evil world according to the will of God
and our Father. The false brethren, in chapter
2 verse 4, they came to spy out our liberty. It's the liberty
which we have. It's the liberty which is the
possession of the children of God. that liberty wherewith Christ
has made us free. 3 verse 13 says that Christ has
redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for
us. We are in captivity to sin. We are in captivity to Satan. We are those who are under the
law, are under the curse of the law. for the Scriptures, 3 verse
22, has concluded, all under sin. And before faith came, 2
verse, chapter 3 verse 23, before faith came we were kept, we were
kept in prison under the law, shut up under the faith which
should be later, afterwards be revealed. We were kept under
the law, we were kept under tutors and guardians. The Lord Jesus
came to redeem, chapter 4 verse 5, to redeem them that were under
the law. And all of us, all of us did
service, chapter 4 verse 8, did service unto them which are by
nature are no gods. We were in their enthrall, we
were under their dominion. We did service to them. We're
in bondage, the next verse says, in bondage to the weak and beggarly
elements. And these lawmongers are wanting
to take people back into that bondage. There is in the hearts of God's
people a softening and a sensitivity regarding sin and a desire for
holiness and a zeal for the Lord. And these things were the very
means of inlet into the lives of these Galatian believers for
these bondage makers. There is, in the Gospel, there
is a glorious freedom, isn't there? We have a freedom from
things and we have a freedom to things. We have a freedom
from sin, a freedom from the penalty, the guilt and the power
We are freed from it. We are freed from the law. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. He's as far as the law can go. We are freed from condemnation. There is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are freed from the pains and
the agonies of death. We have passed from this life
into the next. We are free from judgement. The people of God in the scriptures
go boldly to the judgement hall of God. They are not frightened. In the scriptures you cannot
find one of them. that is frightened of the judgment. We have boldness, says John,
in the day of judgment. We have confidence in the day
of judgment because all of our judgment has been meted out on
the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a freedom from the entanglements
of this world. We have a glorious freedom from
Satan. And we have a freedom. There's
a glorious freedom in the Gospel that we knew nothing of. One
of the extraordinary things about the bondage is that people don't
think they're in bondage. One of the entangling things
about bondage is they think that it's freedom. We live in a world
where people say we have a freedom to do whatever we like. They're
not free at all. They're in shocking bondage.
And it's only when the Gospel comes that you have any sense
of how deep and dark that bondage was. We have a freedom to love
God. We have a freedom to know that
we are loved by God. We have a freedom the glorious
liberty. We have a freedom to live by
faith. We have a freedom to put on Christ. As Paul questions these Galatians,
we have a freedom to receive right now, brothers and sisters,
to enter into the very presence of God. We have a freedom to
go right now to the throne of God. We have a freedom to go to the
throne of God knowing that God's children go there with the warmest
welcome you could ever imagine. We have the freedom as priests
to offer praise and thanksgiving and worship. And all of this
freedom is won for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a
freedom to live upon Him. We have a freedom to delight
in His Word, a freedom to go and look upon His character as
it's revealed in the scriptures and revealed in the Lord Jesus.
We have a freedom to find it delightful. The very things about
the character of God which stir up the enmity of the natural
man are the things that the children of God love. That's our freedom,
isn't it? We love the fact that He's sovereign,
and I'm not. We love the fact that He's electing
love. We love the fact that He's redeeming
love. We love His promises. We love His character as it's
revealed to us. And I give a glorious freedom
can cause us to see something of the depths of his blessings
for us. Continue, continue. blessing for his children. He
rules this universe. Every little tiny bit of it.
I love what Spurgeon said, he says, the hinges of history are
microscopic. Little tiny things that happen
in our lives. We see big things occasionally. If we saw with great clarity,
we'd see little things all the time. And we'd see his hand,
we'd see his hand above. And the reality of the Scriptures
and the promises of the Scriptures is that God intends for His children
to find His liberty a delight. And God intends by the words
of Scripture for His children to know something of the dangers
of looking away from Christ ever. I listened to the messages from
Play's conference just during this week. They're fantastic
messages, you get a chance to listen to them. Frank Tate was
read as a young man in Henry Mahan's church, and he said,
I would be a multimillionaire if I got a dollar for every time
Henry Mahan said, look to Christ. Look to Christ, and don't look
to yourself. Look to Christ, and don't look
to your works. Look away. Look away from this
world. Look away from what you naturally
think, and look to him. What a glorious gospel. God accepts us in the Beloved. We are accepted in the Beloved. God will never accept you because
of what you do or what you don't do. You're accepted in the Beloved. You're graced. You're favoured
in the Beloved. So you're not complete or incomplete
because of what you do. We are complete in Christ. That's what he says in Colossians
2. Complete in him. Nothing missing. Nothing out
of order from his perspective. You and I make no contribution
whatsoever to our redemption, our righteousness and our sanctification. Our righteousness before God,
our holiness, the ground on which God accepts us. And how does
He accept His people? Holy and unblameable and unapprovable
in His sight. That's how He sees them. That's
how He sees us, brothers and sisters. And it's neither improved
nor diminished in any way by your obedience or disobedience. We're accepted in the Beloved. God accepts perfect things. God accepts holy things. In Romans 5, it's a glorious
description of our Lord Jesus' work, isn't it? By the obedience
of one, many shall be made righteous. not made to work for their righteousness,
made righteous by God, by the obedience of one, by His obedience,
not your obedience. There is a glorious freedom,
isn't there, in the Lord Jesus, a freedom from the law, freedom
from the law as a covenant of works, a freedom from the curse
of the law, a freedom from the law as a rule of life. Christ
is our rule of life. You don't go back to the law
for anything. God is pleased with his darling
son. He's very, very, very pleased
with His Son. He's eternally and infinitely
pleased with His Son. And He's very and equivalently
pleased with all those who are in Him. See, religion is people
doing the things they don't want to do. And so often it's people
not doing the things that they want to do. I remember being
on a trip with a bunch of very religious people once upon a
time. And we were travelling away from our normal abodes,
and one of these incredibly moral and incredibly righteous and
incredibly legalistic and zealous people, at the duty-free bottle
shop in one of the airports, he couldn't resist it. He got
a great big bottle of port and wrapped it up in a brown paper
bag so no one would see it. And then he and the others, I
might get sick on ports, the only reason I didn't have any,
but anyway, the thought of drinking port during the day time was
enough to, ugh, anyway. But there he was, and I was thinking,
finally, he's actually doing something that he really wants
to do. How many bottle shops has he walked by in the past?
Now he had the freedom to do what he wanted to do. And then they'd go off. and be
religious and moral and do all these things. It was an extraordinary
scene. That's what religion is, isn't
it? It's people being miserable because they're not able to do
the things they really want to do. But there is a glorious liberty,
isn't it? There's a liberty in the Gospel
to love, and there's a liberty in the Gospel to look to Him
to perform, and not to me for anything. If the Son shall make
you free, you're free indeed. Not the Son shall make you free
if you work. If you add your little bit, the
Son makes you free, as He makes you righteous, as He makes you
holy. There is... I'll just turn briefly
back to Romans 8. It's very hard to talk about
liberty without going to Romans 8 and finding glorious things,
isn't it? In Romans 8.21, speaks of this creation subject
to bondage, which talks about in verse 21, the creature itself
shall also be delivered, the same word here, be set free from
the bondage of corruption, and look at the next word, into What
sort of liberty do God's children have? It's the glorious liberty
of the children of God. It's a glorious liberty. A glorious
liberty. A glorious liberty. Verse 28, it's a glorious liberty
to know We know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are, look at the word there, who are
thee called. That's the name of God's people,
thee called. He speaks in our verse in Galatians,
you're called unto liberty. The name of God's children is
Thee called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow,
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His
Son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover,
whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Whom he called,
them he also justified. Whom he justified, them he also
glorified." It's lovely the way it's written, isn't it? It's
all finished. It was finished before the foundation
of the world. It was finished on Calvary's
cross. Look at this liberty, look at
this glory. What shall we say then? What's your response to
these things? If God be for us, if God be for
us, who can be against us? Verse 32, there's no one can
be against us. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also,
look at that lovely word there, freely give us all things. Brothers and sisters in Christ,
you are lacking absolutely nothing. And they're given freely. They're not given as a reward
to works. They're given as a grace gift. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Who shall lay anything? Our consciences
will lay things to us, the people of this world will lay things
against us, the religious people of this world will lay things
against us. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God the justifier. It is God that declares that
these people have no sin. Have no sin. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
God, who also maketh intercession for us." He intercedes with those
wounded hands and those wounded feet and that wounded side. He
intercedes on behalf of his people because of what he has done.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation
or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril
or sword? As it is written, for thy sake
we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. That's how the world might account
us. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded,
are you persuaded? I am persuaded that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature
shall be able to separate us. from the love of God which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord. As I said earlier, I mess up
and make so many mistakes in my life. Isn't it wonderful to
know that salvation is entirely on God's account and for God's
glory. What a glorious freedom the Gospel
brings. That's the liberty, isn't it?
That's part of the liberty. I'm sure you have many other
things to think about. A litany of remarkable promises
laid out before us. A feast, a table for us to feast
on in the presence of our enemies. For brethren, you have been called
unto liberty." This is the basis of God's calling of His children. Wherever the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. There's a liberty to serve God
out of fear of punishment or hope of reward. When you see
your sins, brothers and sisters in Christ, Every sin that you
are aware of is a forgiven sin, if you are in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Finally, our verse goes on, use not liberty for an occasion
to the flesh. Use not liberty for an occasion
to the flesh. If you go down to verse 17 you'll
see what the flesh does. There is the flesh that lusts
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are
contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things
that you would. There is a divine constraint
upon the children of God. There is revealed in the children
of God these two natures And two natures is in all of God's
children. and people will argue about it
until they realise that there is one nature in all the children
of this world, there are two natures in the children of God.
We are not to use this liberty that we've been speaking of as
an occasion for the flesh. That word occasion means as a
favourable opportunity, as a base of operations in effect. We are
not to use the freedom in Christ as a basis for sin. And sin, in Romans 7 verse
8, sin looks for an opportunity. It looks for an occasion. And
where does sin find its occasion? But sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence,
all manner of lustful desires. For without the law, sin is dead. It's remarkable, isn't it, how
God speaks of His law. The commandment brings an occasion
for sin to be expressed. We are, as free children, Peter
says, not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness,
but as servants of God. We don't use the frailties and
the weakness of our flesh. to go back to law keeping of
any sort whatsoever, to go back to works of any sort. And we
don't use our liberty in Christ to justify sin. See, the liberty
is not a liberty to sin. John writes to those people in
this similar region, he says, these things are right unto you
that you sin not. We always have excuses for our
sin, and they're always shameful. The children of God rejoice to
know the honesty of the scriptures about our lives. First John goes
on to say, he says, My little children, these things are right
unto you that you sin not, And then it is so realistic, isn't
it? And when you do, and when you
do, and if any man sin, I love what the next word says, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Sin takes opportunity through
the commandment. Sin activates and exercises the
flesh and brings out its wickedness in ways that would never be seen. Also, our flesh wants to excuse
sin. We always have an excuse, isn't
it? We want to say, well that's just
how I am. Or, it's only a little sin. or everyone else is doing it. The world is going that way and
God must approve of it because He doesn't seem to be doing anything
to it. But we can have those sins where
we can say, no one else has seen it. We must be careful and mindful
of the excuses. And the worst one is, isn't it,
is that somehow I can make up for it by doing something myself. Somehow I can repair the damage
by my activities. And there are reparations that
are right and just. We've got to remember what happened
in the garden, what fruit we ate, What dominion we put ourselves
under. What happened in the garden as
soon as Adam and Eve were caught sinning? They were caught. The first thing they do is they
start weaving a robe of righteousness for themselves out of fig leaves.
And as soon as God confronts them, what does Eve say? It's
not my fault. It's not my fault. The serpent did it. What's Adam
say? It's your fault, God. The woman, the woman you gave
me is the cause of this. If you hadn't given me the woman,
I wouldn't have done that." Brothers and sisters, that's what Adam's
nature does all the time. We are not to use our liberty
as a base of operations for sin. As I keep reminding you, that
word for there in the whole context of Galatians is to remind us
again that the works of the flesh,
the works of the flesh in so much of the New Testament are
law activities done to seek some approval with God. They're law
activities, works activities done to stop men speaking harshly
of us. What was the story with Peter
in Galatians Chapter 2? What happened in Antioch? Peter
was there enjoying pork ribs, enjoying a glass of port in the
noonday sun. He was enjoying the smell of
that beautiful barbecued pork. He was probably having surf and
turf, had shrimps on the side, prawns on the side, and it would
have just been lovely, and he'd been enjoying it for ages. So
nice. Freedom. And then, here comes
along It's happened in our lives so often, doesn't it, brothers
and sisters? Some legalist comes along and you go, I've got to
start looking holy now. I've got to start behaving myself. He ate with the Gentiles and
when they would come he withdrew and separated himself. What was
he doing? He was fearing them which were
of the circumcision. If they can do it to an apostle,
brothers and sisters, they can do it to us. And the other Jews
behaved hypocritically with him, insomuch that Barnabas was carried
away by their hypocrisy. for Peter to stumble and go back
to work, somehow thinking that if he avoided enjoying his pork
ribs and his prawns, somehow he would ease the disapproval
of others and gain some approval. And Peter was wonderfully rebuked
by the Lord. Law works. Law works will always
bring that sort of thing. There's a separation, there's
a biting and devouring. There is always, there is always
in works hypocrisy. And what people do is that they
just exchange sins, don't they? They exchange fig leaves. In so much of this world they
exchange the fig leaves of outward immoral activities and they exchange
them for ones that are far, far worse. Legalistic self-righteousness
with a cloak of religion. All the time. That's the problem, but look
at what Paul, the Holy Spirit encourages us. You don't use
your liberty for an occasion to the flesh as some basis of
fleshly activities, but by love serve one another. Up in verse
4 it says, but faith which worketh by love. In Christ Jesus' activities,
of legal activities and non-legal activities, they mean nothing.
Circumcision and uncircumcision, they have no power, but faith
works by love. By love serve one another. That's the glorious freedom,
isn't it? That's part of the glorious freedom. Self-love wants to be served.
Self-love says me, me, me, me, me all the time. Self-love says
what can you do for me? Christian love wants to serve. Christian love finds delight
in serving. What can I do for you? What can I do for you? Now freedom
is a freedom to love, a freedom to love The scriptures say it's
unfeigned and sincere and it's from the heart and it's for the
Lord's glory. And all the law, if you look
at the next verse, all the law is fulfilled in one word, even
in this, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And I love how it's structured,
brothers and sisters. You see, thou shalt love thy
neighbour. It's a promise from God. Isn't
that a remarkable promise? I know how hard in my own heart
it is. That's where the Gospel, the
freedom of the Gospel is so glorious. The law commands and the Gospel
promises, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. So Christians live by the law
of love to Christ. It's the love of Christ that
constrains us. It's the love of Christ that
compels us. It's this love of Christ which
is in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, it is that more excellent way. See, love fulfills the law. Legalism never fulfills the law. Love prevents bitter strife. Legalism produces biting and
devouring. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Faith works by love. Faith worketh by love, that word
worketh, is energised. It's actually to put forth power,
to be at work. The joy of heaven is love. Peace
on earth is love. And God is love. Wherever God
is, there is love. Wherever there is love, there
is freedom, there is liberty. The legalists are terrified,
aren't they, when we quote the scriptures and say Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe, and that
we are not under the law but under grace, and we are dead
to the law. The legalists are terrified that
the declarations of these will lead to licentiousness, and they
reveal that they are motivated by threats and reward, and they
believe that the same is true of others. So their religion
is a duty, isn't it? A mercenary duty. But love is
the bond of the Christian church. The Christian church are living
stones, living stones being built together, put together with joints
and sinews by God himself. And in Colossians 3 verse 12,
all these stones being put together, he says, put on therefore as
the elect of God, holy and beloved bowels of mercy, hearts of mercy,
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness and long-suffering,
forbearing one another, forgiving one another, If any man have a quarrel against
any, even as Christ forgave you, you also do. And above all these,
put on charity, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. It's the bond. If I love you,
I want to honour and respect you. I love you, I don't want
to harm you, and I don't want to see you harmed. I want to give to you, and I
don't want to take from you. If you love, you don't want to
murder, nor do you want to murder someone's character. And if you
love someone, you're not going to lie to them. You're not going to covet what
they have. You're going to be pleased that
they do have. So that's how the law is fulfilled
by love. If you love someone, you want
to tell them the Gospel. If you love someone, you want
to love their eternal souls. If you love someone, you don't
want them to be put into bondage. You want them to come into the
glorious liberty. Love is the fulfilment of the
law. What a remarkable statement. The Lord Jesus said something
similar in that verse that's famous, isn't it, in Matthew
7. Matthew 7, verse 12, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord
Jesus said, Therefore all things whatsoever you would that men
should do to Do ye even so to them, for this is the law and
the prophets. You treat others as you would
want to be treated. I want to be treated in my frailties
and infirmities. I want to be treated with kindness,
with patience. I don't want to feel as if I
am judged. I'd like for people to give me
the benefit of the doubt. I'd like the people to put the
best construction on my motives and my action. I would like for
other people not to talk about me in unkind and critical ways. I would most of all love the
people to love me for Christ's sake. to see me as I am in Christ,
to see me as God sees me, to pray for me, to not put me back
under the law. And therefore, according to these
words, that's how I'm to treat you. I'm to treat you that way. I'm to stay your friend, to see
you as Christ sees you. I'm to take the opportunity that
the most trying circumstances and events bring and see them
as an opportunity to love, to be gracious, and to forgive. So the Bible remarkably never
tells us how we are to be treated by other people. It has a lot
to say about how we are to treat them. Wouldn't it be wonderful to continue
to see what I think we have witnessed in this church family for many
years now, where the Gospel is preached and the Spirit of God
is at work in the hearts of people. That instead of the biting and
devouring of legalism, we see care and compassion. desire for
the truth. I don't want to be lied to. I
don't want to tell lies about God to you. I want just to be
honest. My one prayer for myself is that
the Lord would make me faithful. If He makes me faithful, The remarkable thing that we
see in the scriptures and in the lives of the Pharisees and
in the lives of God's people throughout history when they
have been leading to legalism, it produces licentiousness. It
is remarkable. The things in the Kingdom of
God are upside down. always to human thinking. Legalism is the mother of malice
and strife and heresy and slander. You think of the Pharisees. They
prayed three times a day, they fasted twice a week, they gave
tithes of all they had, they kept the Sabbath religiously,
they wouldn't touch or eat an unclean thing. And when they
met the Lord Jesus, they slandered Him, they tried to trick Him
into speaking against the law and against Jesus. They took
a woman caught in adultery and left the man behind in a way
to trap Him. They took up stones to slay Him. They crucified the Lord of glory
to satisfy their lust for power and privilege. Going back to
the law, going back to works, taking your eyes off the Lord
Jesus, taking your eyes off what He says and what He promises
and who He is and what He is to us. Going back to the law
is going back to being a biter and a devourer. and they are
the worst kind because they do it in so many ways with a smile
on their face and a look of piety. We are, brothers and sisters,
called to the freedom And the glorious part of the freedom
of grace in the family of God is we have the glorious liberty
to in love serve one another. May God protect us. Protect the freedom which has
been brought for us by our Saviour. May we find it, as Romans says,
the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Let's pray. Heavenly
Father, we thank you.