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Dec 29, 2024

Free Christmas

Free Christmas

Passage: Galatians 4:4-7

Speaker: Andrew Kerhoulas

Series: 2024 Advent - Peace On Earth: The First and Lasting Promise of Christmas

Keywords: freedom, law, adoption, heir, abba, redeem

Commercially, Christmas is known for debt not freedom. But we have it backwards. Paul tells us that God sent his Son to grant us freedom from a certain kind of debt. And God sent his Spirit into our hearts with a freedom for rights and privileges money can’t buy.

 

CENTRAL TEXT:  Galatians 4:4-7

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

 

PREPARATION FOR WORSHIP: 

LEADER: Lift up your hearts in prayer, lift up your voices in praise. Let your eyes rise in expectation and your hands in exultation, for the Lord has drawn near and dwells among us. 

ALL: We lift them up. Amen.

 

CORPORATE PRAYER: 


ALL: O God, our loving Father,
help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the songs of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the Magi.
May this morning make us happy to be your children,
and may the evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

 

PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH:  The Lord’s Prayer

LEADER:   Let’s pray in the way Jesus taught us to pray. 

ALL:   Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name;
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 
For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

 

CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER: 

 

CONFESSION OF SIN:  

LEADER:  Let us confess our sin to God.

ALL:  Father in heaven, we confess that we have neglected your gospel by what we have done and by 
what we have left undone. For our self-righteousness, forgive us. For our selfishness, forgive us.  We 
have ignored our adoption as your children. Have mercy on us for the the sake of your Son
Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. By your Spirit restore the joy of our salvation.
For your glory and our good we pray, amen.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON:   Romans 8:1-4

LEADER: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…”

LEADER: In Christ, you are forgiven and free, adopted into God’s family, and an heir to his kingdom! Friends, believe the good news of the gospel.

ALL: In Jesus Christ we are free and forgiven as his children! Hallelujah!

 

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Deuteronomy 21:22-23
  • Ezekiel 36:25-27
  • John 4:7
  • Romans 5:2; 8:3-4
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21
  • Galatians 2:16; 3:12-14; 5:1, 4, 13
  • Ephesians 2:1, 8

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

  1. After reading Galatians 4:4-7, how would you fill in the following blanks? In the gospel, I am freed from ____ and freed for ____. 
  2. Paul’s harshest words were for those who were distorting the gospel (see Galatians 1:7). What was the distortion (see 3:10-11)?
  3. Christians can distort the gospel today by adding anything to God’s grace. Can you name some of the negative effects? 
  4. In the gospel Jesus took away our sin and gave us his righteousness. Consequently, what sort of people ought we be? How should that shape the way we treat unbelievers? What about fellow believers?
  5. According to 4:6-7, what interplay does the Spirit have with what Jesus did for us 2000 years ago? Do you see any parallels between 4:4 and 4:6? Why is that important for daily life in Christ?

 

 

QUOTES:  

  • In the ancient world, a slave might catch the attention of a wealthy free person…The free person would then go to the temple or shrine and deposit with the priest the sum of money required for redemption of the slave. The priests would then deliver an oracle: the god Apollo has purchased this slave so and so from owners such and such and is now free. The priest then passed the redemption price on to the recent owner. The ex-slave who all his life had been treated as an inferior, useful only for purposes of running someone else’s errands, doing someone else’s work, was no longer subject to such evaluation. The person was free. No price could be put on his head again. The person was valuable not to do something but to be someone.
    - Eugene Peterson

 

  • Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee;
    let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed,
    be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure. 

    Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands; 
    could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, 
    all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone. 

    Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; 
    naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; 
    foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die. 

    - Augustus Toplady, “Rock of Ages”

  • A heavenly way of life has been implanted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels. “Why is this? Because God is now on earth, and man in heaven; on every side all things commingle. He has come on earth, while being whole in heaven; and while complete in heaven, he is without diminution on earth. Though he was God, he became man; not denying himself to be God. Though being the impassable Word, he became flesh; that he might dwell amongst us. He became flesh. He did not become God. He was God. Wherefore he became flesh, so that he whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger, so that he, by whom all things are nourished, may receive an infant’s food from his virgin mother. So, the father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms,  that the magi may more easily see him.
    - John Chrysostom

  • We religious people talk about virtue so much you’d think we’d behave better than nonreligious people. But that’s not been my experience. Over the past decade, especially in the American church, I’ve seen religious people behaving more viciously, more dishonestly, and, in some ways, being more tolerant of sexual abuse. I sometimes joke that entering the church in 2013 was like investing in the stock market in 1929. My timing could have been better. Still, I’ve been grateful to live in an enchanted world, to live toward someone I can seek and serve. I’ve been grateful to have to learn and relearn yet another startling truth, that faith is about yearning but it’s not about striving. You can’t earn God’s love with good behavior and lofty thoughts, because he’s already given it to you as the lavish gift that you don’t deserve. ‘I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, Lord,” Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “and you gave them to me.’
    - David Brooks,  “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be”

     

     

     

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