I love one another. That's the title of the message this morning. If you have your Bibles, will you turn with me? Galatians, chapter five, I'm gonna be in three verses, this morning, 1314, and 15, chapter five of Galatians, 1314, and 15. And although these are three short verses, they are packed full of responsibility that we have as believers and things that we need to remember as believers as well. So stand with me as we honor God by the reading of His Holy Word. Galatians 513, through 15. And Paul writes, he says, for you were called to freedom, brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Father, God, may that be the cry of our heart all the time as believers, as brothers and sisters in Christ, that we will love one another and love the ones that you have loved, which is everyone. Help us to focus on that calling and not our own self righteousness. Speak to our hearts, for it's in Christ's name. I pray Amen. Well, if you have your listening guide there, we're going to get right to the point with our big idea, our big idea this morning. If you don't hear me say anything else, don't leave this place without knowing this living in habitual, unrepentant sin isn't an evidence of knowing Jesus. It's an evidence of being lost. If you are living in habitual, unrepentant sin, that is an evidence of being lost and not of knowing Jesus. As we looked last week, Paul had been urging the Christians of Galatia to stand firm in their faith, to stand firm in the freedom with which Christ has given them and made them free and never again. He says, Do I want you to become entangled by this yoke of legal bondage the law put the yoke of the law on them. But Jesus said, Remember, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And he warned them against that error by which many had fallen to give in to legalism and to forget about Jesus Christ. But you know, that's often our tendency as well, and we tiptoed on that last week. We we talked about how, if often times, we will escape one sinful habit and we'll go to another sinful habit. We like to, you know, try to do work our way out of our sins, and that's not possible. And so although we will rid ourselves of one sinful habit, many times, we end up falling right into another one, if not running right back to the same sinful behavior. So Paul urges these Christians to go against the spirit that teaches us that freedom from the law allows indulgence of sin. Freedom from the law does not allow you, does not give you a license for sin. Freedom from sin isn't a freedom to sin. That's your next line there on the listening guide, and you need to write that down, put it on your mirror. Freedom from sin is not a license to sin. Yes, God will forgive us of our sins when we come to him with a rightful heart but a habitual sin that we may say, Oh, well, I looked at pornography. Let me, Dear God, please forgive me of that 10 hours later. Oh god, I did it again. Me, forgive me of that 10 hours again. Oh god, I did it again. Forgive me of that, that that is not unrepentant sin. So. Freedom from sin isn't a freedom to sin, but we like to give people a pass, right? We're we're Christians, we're Christian we give we'll give people a pass. You know, they were, I remember when they were baptized at eight years old. So he he saved. I remember when she walked the aisle when she was nine years old. I remember they used to go to Sunday school. I remember they went to youth camp, and they came on Wednesday nights, and they were in every single Christmas program and musical that this church ever did. I remember that. We remember when they served on that committee. We remember when they used to go to church, but so and so made them mad, and they just can't get beyond that. Bless their heart. I can't blame them for that. Or they know some things about the Bible. They just don't come their life doesn't reflect it. But they know some things. If someone, over the course of their life has habitual, has habitually, has sin in their life, and has unconfessed, unrepentant sin in their life and and they have abused the grace that they have been given time after time, again and again, and they willfully, willfully reject the holiness of God. The evidence is not friends that they are a Christian who has fallen into habitual sins. The evidence is that they just don't know Jesus. And so when we look and we use our freedom to do what we want to do and and not what the Lord wants us to do. We're we're not ultimately doing. We're ultimately doing is saying to God, God, even though you know what's best, even though you've told me what's best, even though I've invited your Holy Spirit into my life to to lead my life, even though your son gave up his life to save me, I no longer care about that because there are things that I enjoy more, and what I enjoy is more important than all of that that you've done for me, that's what we're saying to God when we could habitually slap him in the face and sin after sin after sin, and return to it time and time again. Does this sound like salvation? Does this sound like surrender? No, to me, it sounds like Satan. You see, if this is you, you're not saved. That's a hard pill to swallow. And you may say, Brian, you're being so judgmental. I look at the evidence of Scripture and say that people who live in habitual sin time after time after time, and they are giving in to that and avoiding the grace of Jesus that he can set them free. There's no salvation in that. You're trying to save yourself, instead of letting the King of kings and the Lord of Lord do what He has already done, pay the price. You see, if there's no life change, there's no salvation, there's no life change, there's no salvation. Many of us have, have, have grown up and we've had outside dogs for the most part. Anybody, anybody have outside dogs, they just kind of roam free. Yeah, sometimes those are the best kind of dogs. But have you ever noticed, especially if you have a dog that has that freedom to roam around on so many acres that they love, they love to find the dirtiest, the stinkiest, the raunchiest thing, and roll around in it, especially this time of year, when we have a big problem out at our house, where my parents live in amek county of people illegally dumping the deer remains after they've shot it, and dogs love to find that stuff, especially four weeks later, when it's been 80 degrees in December, and man, they show up To your house, and you're like, What did you just wait for it to turn that right? But they love to do that. And I remember several times our dogs would always do that, but we we would bring them and we would bathe them or wash them off, and only to have them 10 minutes later return back to that same dirty, stinky, raunchy thing. That's the way we are with God. That's what we do, friends. God has rescued us from our addictions. God rescues us from our sinful, prideful hearts. He rescues us from bad relationships. He he rescues us from bad choices. He lifts you up and gives you salvation. He gives you hope, he gives you joy, peace, and he washes you wider than snow. We know as Christians what it's like to be clean. We know what it's like to be redeemed. We know what it's like to be loved. But after all that, we head right back out and start rolling in the filth again and again, back to the same dirty, stinky garbage sin that defiles us again and again and again and again. It's not like I said that God will not forgive you, it's that if you truly love Him, you would choose cleanliness and holiness over dirt and sin and everything else. And so the question I have for you today, as believers who have been given freedom, the freedom of grace, the freedom that Christ has given us, what do we do with that freedom? Now, obviously, our freedom is not to have a license to sin anytime we want to what is our freedom for? And Paul addresses it boldly in these three verses, and he sums it up by quoting the law, love one another. Love one another. That's that's the one and only point that I'm going to make today. Love one another. In verse 13, he says, You, you. You were called to freedom. And so Paul gives the Galatians, and he urges them to use their freedom from the law, from the requirements of the law, to fulfill the law's essence. And the essence of the law is to serve your neighbor and love, and according to Paul, God frees believers from slavery under the law so that they choose to serve one another. You don't. You're no longer a slave, and you're having to focus on your own self to get all these things right. You're now free, and you can go help others. You don't have that burden on you anymore. You You're you are not to do anything, Paul says, because it pleases. You just don't do things that just please you, because that ultimately could lead to sin. Now God is, is a wonderful God, and He gives us opportunity to have a good, good time and enjoy life, but it has to be honoring to him, but we're not. We're not to do anything because it pleases ourselves, but we're to do everything because it pleases God. And when a Christian is no longer a slave to sin, when you when you ask Jesus to be your Savior, and you give up that sin in your life, and you're no longer a slave to sin. You're no longer a slave to self. You're no longer a slave to Satan. That person must, must. You must begin to serve your brothers and sisters in Christ, through love, serve one another. Oh, Charles Spurgeon said, Oh, with that word love. We're so engraved on the hearts as to influence all our lives. What blessed lives of love to God and love to men we would lead to we're engraved on our hearts, but we have a hard time treating people the way that God entreats. God instructs us to treat people I do. I don't know about you, so this doesn't pertain to you. Just humor me and listen to me. But I have a hard time treating people the way that God instructs us to treat people. Why? Because people are hard to love. You're You're hard to love. I'm hard to love. We're humans. We are hard to love. But I hear people say all the time, and I've heard pastors say this before, and I just kind of want to, you know, chop em in the throat. It's the nicest way I could say it. They, they hear that I don't have a problem with God. I just have a problem with people. Well, Pastor got in the wrong business, dude, I don't problem with God. I have a problem with people. Well, let me tell you, you even you as believers. That's your that's your mentality. Often times too, I know because it's mine. If you have a continual problem with the way you treat people, if you have a continual problem with the way you treat your spouse, your children, your parents, other Christians, you have a problem the way that you treat non Christians. You have a problem with God. It starts in your heart. Yeah, people are hard to love. We want to let you in on a little secret. They're not impossible to love. I had my BSU director southwest Community College. One of the things a you know, he he taught us a lot, I'm sure, but one of the things that stuck was, God, help me love them with your love, because my love won't do them justice. That's the way we look. That's the way we that's the only way we can go forward. And serving people and loving people as God help me to love them with your love, because my love won't do them justice. In verse 14, he says, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. What he's doing here is he's quoting law Leviticus, 1918, by quoting this Paul, showing them that the law itself upholds law love as its main goal of law, keeping Love is the main goal in law keeping so starting next Sunday through through the end of January, we're going to be closing out this study in the book of Galatians and and we're going to be examining how from this point forward, Paul uses this quote from Leviticus to love your neighbor as yourself. He's using this as a springboard to present a series of instructions to the church to promote a healthy a godly community, church that honors God in Galatia. But in order to have a healthy, godly church, we must first have healthy, godly Christians at some point in your life, many times in my life, God has convicted us of something that needed to change. And you probably, you could probably think of it right now. What's something in your life that God has convicted you of something that needed to be changed. But let me tell you, if you keep fighting against that conviction, against that voice of God, you've turned your life over to Satan himself, when the Holy Spirit, when God starts convicting you of something in your life that needs to be changed, and you fight against it time and time again, you will grieve the Holy Spirit, and he, as a gentleman, will back off and say, Okay, that's you know, that's the way you want it. And what you're ultimately doing is when the Holy Spirit removes himself and says, whatever you want, buddy, you're uniting yourself and aligning yourself with the things of Satan. If you keep fighting that conviction, that voice of God, you will quit hearing that conviction altogether. And if you quit hearing the conviction, you've basically turned your life over to Satan yourself. You're you're either doing the work of God or you're doing the work of the flesh period, there's no middle ground. You're either doing the work of God or doing the work of the flesh, but you have to deny yourself and surrender to God. As believers, we deny ourself and we surrender to God. Freedom plus love always equals service and love to others. Freedom plus love equals service to others. Freedom minus love, that's where you get your license to sin. When you remove love from the equation, you begin to focus on the things of Satan himself. And how can I get away with it and manipulate the system? You see, if you love people because you love Christ, you won't steal from them, you won't lie about them or to them, you won't envy them, you won't try in any way to hurt them. If you love people because you love Christ, you won't do these things to other people. You see, love is the heart of God, and love is the heart in which God substitutes law and threats. The gospel has condensed the whole law into one single word, love. Love. Somebody ask you, what's the gospel? You say it's love in the first four. In the first 410, commandments, we're taught to love God. First Four commandments are vertical, love between us and God. The final six commandments are a horizontal relationship of how we love other people. Verse four, love God. Last six, love your neighbor. In Galatians, 515, that we read earlier, it's he says, If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. And Paul uses this vivid imagery at this point, he's saying, you know, he uses the example of like wild animals in a deadly fight. And so what he's doing is he's warning the Galatians that attacking one another ultimately will destroy the community if we are not united in our local church body, we are going to bite and devour one another, and we will cease to exist. We will destroy ourselves. That's what Satan does. Satan. Satan doesn't have people coming in from the outside right now trying to tear us apart. There's people right here in these pews. That do a pretty good job of that for him. We gotta stop that. You see, when, when a when a dog and wolves, when they bite each other, it's it's according to their nature, it's what they do. But when sheep start to bite one another, it's a sad time, but if I must be bitten at all, I'd rather be bitten by a dog rather than a sheep. I'd rather have this world bite me and knock me down than a fellow brother or sister in Christ. That hurts. I can get over that. I can't get over this. That's hard. You know? What do I mean by that? The wounds inflicted by the godly are far more painful to bear. And you, you've all been there. Church, hurt is real. And you, you have battled that. But these wounds that inflicted by the godly, they last much longer, way longer than those caused by the ungodly. But sadly we we sound like David when, when he wrote Psalm, chapter 55, verses 1213, and 14, he says, For it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together within God's house. We walked side by side. You see, it's natural that a snake is going to strike and bite your heel to do us harm, but when the bite comes from a brother or sister from a child of God, then it is particularly painful. And I've lived long enough, even though more 39 years old, I've lived long enough to see churches absolutely destroyed, not by external tax attacks, attacks by internal contention. This man finds fault, the other must have his own way. A third is is for something new. The fourth is for nothing new, but is but what has always been. And so they fall into squabbling and quarreling, and Paul says, Watch out that you are not consumed by one another. And Paul says, You will eat one another up. You will each one attack his neighbor. That's what happens when we're not focused on loving our neighbor and we're focused on ourselves. You see, Jesus was the poor man's friend. Nothing ever came from Jesus's lips that would make a tyrant feel at ease in his dictatorship. Never did Jesus say anything that would make the oppressive master feel that he had any right to look down on his workmen. Never did Jesus utter a line that would make the workman feel that he had the right to be jealous of those who possess more talents or enjoy higher privileges than he had. Jesus's teaching was justice and his life was love. If you ask me, if you ask me for a man in all respects justice and love, I can only recommend one, and that is the person of Jesus Christ, if you were and I are to become imitators of him, then the husband must be the kindest husband and the most loving of fathers. The mother must be the tender and warm of all the mothers and wives, if you have been forgiven by Jesus Christ and and so love him and imitate Him, you will be such men and women that no pastor would ever be ashamed to say, yeah, they belong to my congregation. They belong to my flock. You see, there are things happening in this world. I fear more and more Christians are in alienation, one of another, no passion to come to church, no passion to worship, no passion to study the Word of God with other Christians. You know, live stream has become a crutch for people that are perfectly capable of coming to church, just to not come and and that's no knock on people that are watching live stream. Currently, there are people who that's their only way, and so that is a wonderful ministry that we have there, but there are people who use that as a crutch, and they're the people that just don't come at all, but they'll say that I'm a Christian. You. I was baptized. Yeah, I went to Sunday school a few times growing up, we go on. We're CEO Christians, Christmas, Easter only, and they say these things. And there are things happening in this world that I fear. More and more Christians are being alienated from from one another. But if anyone were resolved to love his neighbor as himself, and to seek the good in his brother and sister in Christ. Hear this, legions of distractions would be averted by many, many churches when we focus on love and reaching the lost. Then all those distractions, all of those things that Satan throws our way, they'll be averted. They'll be cast away, if each one of us will do more and be more generous and kind and loving. You know what? We'll conquer that enemy, and we'll see many souls come to faith in Jesus Christ. The only way this can be done, though, is by believing in Jesus and behaving like Jesus. So be thankful, be loving to him, then imitate him, and then become like Him, then and only then. Hear this then and only then will the victory be won. You.