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NOTE: Someone (namely, Cole) forgot to turn the mp3 recorder on during this sermon.  So this particular sermon is not available for download or audio streaming.  However, the text is included below.

Introduction - Estranged and Enslaved

Are you familiar with the television show, LOST?  Dozens of people were aboard a plane traveling from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles when their plane crashed on the beach of what appeared to be a deserted island.  The crash in itself was dramatic enough but the real drama of the show is not found in the crash, but in what happens after the crash.  While many of the passengers died a number of the passengers survived.  The surviving passengers now find themselves residents of a spectacularly beautiful island.  Visually speaking, it is the type of place that people save money up for years in order to vacation there.  But as beautiful as this island is it is anything but a hot vacation spot.

What the new residents of this island soon discover is that they are estranged and they are enslaved.  They are estranged from life as they know it, estranged from everyone and everything that they love.  And they are enslaved by the island itself.  They have no means of escape.  They cannot swim off the island, they cannot boat off the island, they cannot contact anyone off the island.  They can try anything, and they have tried everything, but they do not have the ability to break free.  In fact, the more they try to break free the more binding their slavery becomes.  And as long as they remain enslaved by the island they will remain estranged from the love and life they know.  And that’s where the drama of the show begins.  

That’s where the human drama begins, too.  We, too, are enslaved.  And because of that slavery we, too, are estranged.  We are born enslaved by sin and estranged from God.  That is what the Scriptures say.  But we don’t even need the Scriptures to know this.  We are innately aware of it.  Pagans know it.  That is why they turn to ritual, hoping to bridge the gap between humanity and the gods.  People of the world’s religions know it.  That is why they turn to written codes and commandments hoping to earn God’s favor.  Agnostics know it.  That is why they try desperately to be good people and do good things hoping to gain a clean conscience and make themselves acceptable to God.  Atheists know it.  That is why they are so vocal about their hatred of God just as a son is vocal about his hatred for his estranged father.  We are all very much aware that we are estranged from God.  Some of us want to deal with it, some of us want to deny it.  But we are all very much aware that there is a schism, a breach, a divorce between us and God.  And whether we deny this breach or try to deal with this breach the methods employed are usually similar.  The religious solution and the irreligious solution are basically the same: they both rely on human effort.  That is how it is with us today, that is how it has always been.    

Enslaved By Human Effort

Even Abraham, the man known as the Father of Faith, relied on human effort.  When God initially called Abraham he promised him that he would give him a child and that all of the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham and his descendants.  Abraham believed God and left all that he knew in order to follow him.  But   many years after his initial call, many years after hearing God’s promise, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were still without child.  And they were both getting very, very old.  Abraham was in his 80’s.  Though it was still possible for him to have a child it was very unlikely.  But it was even less likely that his wife, Sarah, would be able to become pregnant.  She was in her late 70’s.  

So Abraham and Sarah began to lose faith in the promises of God.  It appeared that he was not going to give them the child he promised.     For many years Abraham had trusted God to provide the child of promise.  But now he chose to take matters into his own hands.  He chose to rely on human power and human effort to provide the child he and Sarah were hoping for.  Sarah had a servant who was much younger and much more likely to get pregnant.  So, at Sarah’s urging, Abraham had sex with her slave-girl, Hagar.  Just as Abraham and Sarah had hoped, Hagar did become pregnant and gave birth to a son, Ishmael.    

Abraham thought that he could fulfill God’s will by his own human effort.  He slept with a slave woman and gave birth to a son born into slavery.  And years later the slave-woman and her child would become estranged from Abraham and Sarah because of hostility between the slave woman and the free woman.  Instead of trusting in God he chose to trust in himself.  And the results were enslavement and estrangement.  

LIke Abraham, we try to fulfill God’s will by trusting in ourselves and relying on our own efforts.  We try to earn his favor by being good people.  We try to earn his acceptance by doing good things.  If we think we are already in his good graces we try to maintain our position by devoting ourselves to the teaching of our religion.   

These things are not bad things.  But if we trust in these things or in our own ability to do them we will find ourselves disappointed.  We will find ourselves enslaved.  We will find ourselves estranged from God.  If we are familiar with the Gospel of Jesus Christ then we know this theoretically.  Just as Abraham knew that God had promised him a son through Sarah, not Hagar.  But whether we know the Gospel of Christ or not we all know this experientially.  We know experientially that when we trust in ourselves we find ourselves estranged from God and enslaved by sin.  

The Apostle Paul wrote about this experience in a letter to the Christians at Rome.  This is what he writes in Romans 7:18-23.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.  What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?  

Sound familiar?  It should.  He’s describing my experience.  He’s describing your experience.  You want to tell the truth, but you lie; you want to be humble, but you are filled with pride; you want to be patient, but you are impatient; you want to be trustworthy, but you are a gossip; you want to be loving and giving, but you are selfish; you want to be sexually pure, but you are perverted; you want to be forgiving, but you are bitter; you want to value people, but you value things and status; you want to be disciplined, but you are lazy; you want to make wise decisions, but you make foolish decisions; you want to do what pleases God, but you do what pleases you.  

When Abraham trusted in himself slavery and estrangement  were the results.  When we trust in ourselves and rely on human effort our results are the same.  We know this.  But we deny this and try to deal with it by trying harder.  But the results remain the same. We are like the characters on LOST who have tried everything in their power to break free, but have only made the situation worse.  Yet they keep trying.  What they need is for someone not bound by the island to rescue them.  What we need is for someone not bound by sin to rescue us.  So we cry out with Paul the same words that he wrote in Romans 7:24, “Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?”   

Freed By Divine Promise

Fourteen years after Abraham chose to take matters into his own hands, God spoke to him again.  God again promised that he would give Abraham and Sarah a son, and that this son would be born to Sarah.  Through this son of promise all of the nations of the earth would be blessed.  Abraham literally fell to the floor and laughed in disbelief.  “Shall a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman give birth to a son?,” he said to himself.  It seemed impossible.  Even more unlikely than it was 14 years ago when Abraham and Sarah tried to fulfill God’s promise by their own human effort.  So Abraham asked God, “Can’t Ishmael be the son through whom the promise is comes?”  “I will bless Ishmael,” God replied.  “But I will  give you a son by your wife Sarah, and I will make my covenant with him.”  The following year the 100 year-old Abraham and 90 year-old Sarah did give birth to a son, just as God promised.  They named him Isaac, which means “laughter.”  But this laughter was not like the previous laughter.  It was not laughter of disbelief.  This laughter was laughter of joy.  The joy of seeing God do what only God can do.  

Ishmael was born due to human effort and human power.  Isaac was born because of a divine promise and divine power.  And it was Isaac, the child that could only come by God’s intervention, that was to be the child through whom all of the world would be blessed.  It was through Isaac, the child of promise, that the savior of the world would come.  From this experience Abraham learned to trust in God and his power and his promises rather than in himself.  And in these ancient historical events the Apostle Paul sees an allegory.  He sees a lesson that is instructive for the churches in Galatia and instructive for us.  Turn with me to Galatians 4 and let’s read what Paul wrote beginning in verse 21.  

Casting Out the Slave Woman

In the experience of Abraham Paul finds an allegory that is relevant to us today.  It is an allegory heavy on contrasts.  On the one hand you have the son born by the slave woman, this is Ishmael.  You see in the left hand column what else Paul says about Ishmael: he is the product of human effort, he represents Mt Sinai and the present Jerusalem, he produces slaves, and he is a persecutor.  On the other hand you have the son born by the free woman, this is Sarah.  You see in the right hand column what else Paul says about Isaac: he is the product of divine promise, he represents the perfect heavenly city of Jerusalem, he produces free people, and he is persecuted.  

The question Paul is asking the Galatians is this -- do you want to be like Ishmael or like Isaac?  If you rely on human effort, if you rely on religious law, you will remain enslaved by sin and estranged from God.  But if you rely on the promise and power of God, instead of your own ability, you will be liberated and inherit eternal freedom in the New Jerusalem.  “You,” Paul says in verse 28, “are children of promise.”  Because they embraced Jesus Christ and the message of his cross the Galatians had become truly free people.  They were no longer estranged from God, they were children of God.  But they were beginning to listen to another gospel.  They were beginning to listen to a group of Jewish Christians known as the Judaizers.  And the Judaizers told the Galatians that divine promise was not enough.  They also needed to put forth human effort in order to earn God’s favor and become part of God’s people.  If the Galatians chose to exchange the Gospel of Christ for the gospel of the Judaizers they would be exchanging freedom and sonship for estrangement and enslavement.  So Paul tells them in verse 30 to do the same thing with the Judaizers that Sarah did with Hagar and Ishmael -- “get rid of the slave woman and her son.”  Cast them out.  Don’t listen to them.

We don’t have to worry about the Judaizers.  I think it is safe to say none of us have ever met a Judaizer.  But we do have to worry about their message of enslavement and estrangement.  The message of the Judaizers is still alive and well.  The message that we can free ourselves from sin and earn favor with God through our own effort.  It’s the message that you hear everywhere you go.  It’s in our music, it’s in our film, it’s in our literature, it’s in our conversations, it’s in our religions, it’s in our politics, it’s even in many of our pulpits.  But worst of all -- it’s in us.  The message of the Judaizers is still alive and well in us.  And it is difficult to cast out what lives in you.  It is difficult to cast out this almost instinctive thinking that wields so much influence over us.  Like Abraham, we casually take matters into our own hands and trust more in our power than in God’s power.  But as we saw before, our efforts always lead to the same result.  As Paul said in Romans 7, “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing.  What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?”  

The Rescue

Paul answers his own question in the following verse.  He writes, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  Though we try and try and try, we cannot rescue ourselves.  We cannot repair the breach between ourselves and God by our own goodness.  We cannot break free from the enslaving power of sin by our own power.  But thanks be to God that we are delivered, we are rescued, through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Abraham and Sarah wanted a child but they could not do it through their own power.  You and I want freedom.  You and I want unity with God.  But we cannot find it in ourselves.  Deliverance, rescue, salvation, comes through the promise and power of God.  It comes through Jesus Christ.  

Through Jesus Christ the great divorce between you and God becomes the great marriage.  Through Jesus Christ your slavery to evil becomes freedom to righteousness.  “Therefore,” Paul says, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”  

Conclusion

Here we are, just four days before Thanksgiving.  And I’m sure that there are dozens if not hundreds of things each of us is thankful for.  Some of us are thankful for our families, our jobs, our health, our right mind.  And these are all great things that we should be thankful for.  But these things are temporal.  These things will fade away as we age.  But there is a gift that is eternal.  A gift that will never fade away.  It is the gift of freedom -- the freedom to know God, love God, and live life unto God through Jesus Christ.  There is truly no greater gift in the universe.  

So if you are here today and you are not a follower of Jesus I invite you to respond to the freedom which he graciously offers you.  You have tried to be good but you have failed.  He has perfectly pleased God in every way on your behalf.  You have tried to heal the breach between you and God but you have failed.  Jesus has provided for your reconciliation to God by dying the death you should have died and accepting the wrath that should have been poured out on you.  Put your hope, your faith, and your trust in this Jesus rather than yourself and be restored to a proper relationship with God, humanity, and all of creation.

If you are a follower of Jesus the issue is just as important.  It is not enough to trust Jesus to reconcile you to God.  You must also trust Jesus to keep you acceptable to God forever.  As followers of Jesus we must actually live in the freedom we have been given.  We cannot return to the way we lived before Christ.  We cannot return to trusting in our power or our effort.  We have been liberated by grace so that we can live in the Spirit.  So we must keep our eyes on Jesus and his righteousness and his power.  

So we have to ask ourselves questions like these.  As I pursue personal fulfillment is my focus on knowing Jesus and becoming like him, or is it on something else?  As I try to mature in Christ and become more like him am I looking to his power and his grace or am I looking to myself or another human?  Though I know I am no longer bound by Old Testament Law am I allowing the Spirit of Christ to lead me in my decisions or am I creating new laws and allowing those laws to guide my decisions rather than the Spirit of God?  As I seek to glorify God with my life am I looking to the example of Jesus or am I allowing others to define what that means for me?  As I preach the gospel to people I know am I preaching Jesus or am I preaching Jesus plus something else?  As we try to make this church a light in this community are we trusting for Jesus to lead us and Jesus to build us or are we looking for the latest fads, programs, personalities and practices to get us there?  

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only about being reconciled to God, though that is at its center.  It is also about glorifying God by living in the freedom Christ provides.  The Christian life is not about us before conversion, during conversion, nor after conversion.  All of the Christian life is about Jesus.  It is Jesus who rescues us, delivers us, saves us, matures us, sanctifies us, and makes us like him.

So this Thanksgiving let us say with Paul, “thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  And let us express our gratitude by living in the freedom we have been given.  No longer relying on ourselves, but trusting all of ourselves to him.  Walking in the freedom to know God, love God, and live life unto God through Jesus Christ.  This is possible because of Jesus.  Estrangement is no more.  Enslavement is no more. Thanks be to God who delivers us through Jesus Christ our Lord.