Abe Matos - 4th of July Weekend

What's up, Church By The Glades? How's everybody doing this morning? Hey, for those of you guys who don't know me, my name is Abe, and I used to be a pastor here at Church By The Glades, and man, it is, I don't, I mean it when I say this, like, it is good for me to be home. You may not know who I am. Years and years ago, I'll cut straight to the chase, 14 years ago, in the summer of 2012, I walked through the doors of this place. I was broken, I was aimless, I was 45 days removed from my last deployment to Iraq with the United States Army, and I had no idea where my life was headed, and this place, Church By The Glades, is where God uncovered his purpose in my life, where I heard God's call in my life, and I say all that to say a few things. Number one, Scripture says to give honor to whom honor is due. First and foremost, I give all glory to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, but I would be so mistaken if I didn't get up here and just brag on your pastor, Pastor David Hughes. Many of you already know this. This is just a reminder, but Pastor David is a man of God, and I am one, and I'm sure that there are many of you here today that would classify yourself the way that I would, that you would categorize yourself that I would. I am one of thousands upon thousands

upon thousands of people here in South Florida whose life has been impacted by the ministry of Pastor David, and man, so much to say about this place. I don't wanna make it all about myself, but I just turned 37 yesterday, and yeah, thank you. I just turned 37 yesterday, and I was thinking about it this morning as I was praying and getting ready, and man, I just, this is the last thing I'll say about Church by the Glades. I can't think of a place that has been more formative in who I've become as a man, as a husband, as a father than this place, and I say that to encourage you, and certainly, there's gotta be someone who's here visiting for the very first time today. I say this to encourage you that there is nothing like the local church. You need to understand that the local church, right, whatever church you choose, if it's Church by the Glades, amazing, but the local church is God's plan A for the world. It's God's plan A for the world, that Jesus Christ, before he ascended back to heaven, after he was resurrected, he gave his disciples the great commission to go and therefore make disciples, and that what was birthed from that was the movement that we get to be a part of thousands of years later, and here's where I'll segue into the occasion that we're all celebrating this weekend, which is July 4th.

What a privilege it is to be in a country where we get to worship freely. That's a privilege. That's a privilege. Listen, I am unashamedly, I am unashamedly such a sap. I am a hopeless romantic for the United States of America. Okay, I just am. I was born on the 4th of July. My mom was giving birth on July 3rd, and the doctor asked her, do you wanna hold off so he can be born on July 4th? And she said, yes. This woman held off. So I was born, I mean, I was made for this, okay? I remember being five or six years old and being in Sawgrass Elementary in Sunrise, Florida, and hearing the national anthem for the very first time and just feeling something swell up in my chest back then, and I didn't know what it was today. I know that it was pride. I know what it was like. I remember what it was like to be in seventh grade biology class at 9.30 in the morning, and my biology teacher, she rolled in that TV cart that we used to have in school years ago. She rolled in the TV cart, and I remember witnessing in real time seeing the second plane crash against the second tower on 9.11. I remember watching footage on CNN of American troops

do the first ground invasion, and I remember thinking right then and there, I wanna do what they're doing. I'm so proud to be American that I named my dog, my golden retriever, America. I'm not kidding. And yet with all that being said, I acknowledge that our country has a long way to go. Does it not? We still have so much growing to do, so much maturing to do, 250 years that we celebrate, and there's still so much more to be hoped for and to aspire for. But the tension is to know that we have so much more to go, but to also just be grateful. Grateful, I'm grateful. God bless the United States of America. I'll tell you this about the American experience. My mom, my mom, she immigrated here now almost nearly 40 years ago. And my mom, how she made a living is she cleaned houses in South Florida. And she would bring us along for the ride for the summers. And I cleaned houses all over South Florida, Boca, Weston, Parkland. Heck, I might've cleaned some of y'all's places. It was spotless, I can guarantee you that. That's when I first discovered what rich white people's pantries looked like. It was amazing.

So many snacks, so many gummy bears, Twizzlers, Snickers, it was insane. And here's what I remember. I remember my mom on her knees scrubbing other people's bathtubs. And she did that so that my sister and I could stand up in places she could have only ever dreamed of and that is the American experience. That is what God has done here and it's unique. And God's not American, by the way. God's not American, but there's something special. There's something special. And I just, I choose to be grateful for it. But here's the truth. We cannot make the mistake of believing that freedom was America's idea. Freedom was not, the birthplace of freedom was not in Philadelphia in 1776. The founding fathers did not come up with freedom. Our heavenly father came up with freedom. Freedom is God's intellectual property. Here's how I know that God came up with the idea of freedom because you can live in a free country and still be enslaved and you can live under an empire and still be free. I'm gonna say that again. You can be in a free country, you can live in a free country and still be enslaved and you can be under an empire and still be free. And I'm gonna say that again.

You can live under an empire and still be free. How I know that personally anecdotally is over the last 10 years, I've spent a lot of time in Cuba going there to support Cuban pastors as a missionary. And what I've discovered there, yeah, do we got any Cubans in the house? What I've discovered on my many trips to Cuba there, interacting with Cuban pastors, me being a pastor in the United States of America and having conversations with them, pastors who literally are leading underground churches because of fear of persecution from the Cuban government. What I've learned in all those trips, what has convicted me, what God has used to really, really, really break my heart is to sit there and wonder, who's the free one? I have the iPhone and the passport, but this guy who's leading a secret church seems to be more free than I can ever aspire to be. You wanna know how that is? It's because God's freedom, God's freedom is not dictated by politics or government or laws or amendments or the bill of rights. God's freedom is something that is deeply, deeply spiritual. We know this from the scriptures because God's freedom was written about from under dictatorships. The entire New Testament, all of the authors, all the people who put pen to paper to give us the holy scriptures

which are inspired by the Holy Spirit, all of them wrote what we have today that informs us about a relationship with Christ. They all wrote that under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire. So how is it that what we know to be true about Jesus Christ and the freedom that he came to give us was all authored and inspired under oppressive tyrannical governments? In fact, if we go to Galatians chapter five, verse one, let's read this together. It's one of the most definitive verses we have from the holy scriptures about freedom. And it says this, read the underlying word with me when we get there. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let me tell you a little bit about the man, Paul, who wrote this and contextually speaking, what was happening as he was writing this letter to a group of Christians in Galatia, this baby church, this church in its infancy. He says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. What's so fascinating about that is that Paul did not have the bill of rights. Paul did not live in a day and age where they had the freedom to worship. They did not have the freedom to assemble. They did not have freedom of. speech, there was no freedom of the press. There was no constitution that asserted

within Paul and the group of Christians that he was writing to, their self-agency. No, they lived under the Roman Caesar. And what we know to be true about Paul, many scholars believe that he wrote this on his third missionary journey. And if that's true, that Paul wrote this around his third missionary journey, we know that Paul was just a few years away from being imprisoned and killed. And do you think Paul, do you think Paul was under any impression that his life might have ended any other way but at the hands of the Roman Empire? You think he was under any illusions that he was gonna make it out of his life and die of natural causes? No, Paul knew the risk that he was taking to leave the church, and yet he says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That's how we know that God's freedom and the freedom that we sometimes get it mistaken for is different. We have to establish that there's a difference between our version of freedom, what we've been led to believe is freedom and the freedom that Christ has given us. Let me give you guys a few examples. Number one, when we think of freedom, we typically associate that with this term called autonomy.

Autonomy, that word autonomy comes from the Greek word or the Latin word autonomous, and autonomous means to self-law. In other words, to self-govern. In today's vernacular, I'm the boss. I get to choose what I do in my own life. I make the choices. And you know what? For me, that's really appealing, this idea that I get to do whatever I want. And then oftentimes I am awakened by the brutal reality that actually the person that I need to be set free from the most is me, myself, and I. That whole idea goes out the window when I recognize that the slave master, the most oppressive slave master that I have in my life is the man staring back at me in the mirror. But God's freedom, God's freedom gives me the freedom to not do whatever I want, to not be led by the desires of my flesh, to not be led by the desires of my eyes and my thoughts and whatever comes to mind to say. That's real freedom. Sometimes we mistake freedom for the freedom to be able to curate our own self-image, to be able to curate what it is people believe about us. And I don't know about you, but I am hooked on other people's approval. I love, I love affirmation. I love to be highly regarded.

I love to be highly esteemed by others. But you know what? I'm also at the same time exhausted of carefully crafting and manicuring this image here on a platform, knowing good and well that when I go behind the stage, I've got to deal with the real reality of who I am when no one else is looking. That's exhausting. The freedom that God has given me is the freedom to be fully known and fully loved. Fully known, fully loved, not held back by my shame, not held back by my guilt, not held back by my shortcomings, but rather to be loved and be warmly embraced by my Savior. Single people, you guys have been led to believe that freedom in relationships looks like keeping your options open, looks like sowing your wild oats. Don't settle down too soon. Make sure you get it all out of your system. You're free to leave her on read. You're free to break up with him for no reason other than he doesn't meet your height requirements. You're free to do whatever you want. And for those of you guys who have embraced that lifestyle, no shade to you. That's what's in the water nowadays. That's what we've been led to believe.

I don't say this to shame you, but if we were sitting across from one another over a cup of coffee and you were keeping it, you were keeping it real, you would acknowledge that keeping all your options open has left you feeling nothing more than loneliness at the end of the day. And the freedom that God really wants for you is the freedom for you to be able. to commit, the freedom for you to aspire to love someone unconditionally, the freedom for you to stand by someone despite all their shortcomings and to say, I choose you and to be chosen by them and enter into a God honoring covenant. That is the freedom that God has for you. I'm about to make some boyfriend here today, really upset. Homey, you know, you are free to get down on one knee and to propose the ring's not free, but you are free. God has given you the freedom to commit. That's real freedom. What about the freedom to quote unquote, protect your peace, to protect your peace. In other words, to just cut people off left and right, because they're just not doing it for you anymore. To cut people off because they were honest, to cut people off because the relationship or that friendship is inconvenient, to cut people off parents, family members in some cases, to just cut them off completely. But that's a lie because you know good and well that even though you have quote unquote, cut them off, somehow they are still the main character and the protagonist and every conversation you're having behind their back. That's not freedom. You are renting precious real estate in your soul and you are letting that person live rent free in your head. But you've bought the lie that you've cut them off. That's not true. You know what Christ's freedom is? Christ's freedom is the freedom to forgive. And if it's appropriate, if it's appropriate, cause it's not always appropriate. If it's appropriate, God has also given you the freedom to be reconciled and to be brought together again and to be an embodiment of what it means for God to broke mended things. That's the freedom that God has for us. The biggest difference between the freedom that that we think we have and the freedom that Christ came to give us is that the freedom that the world has sold to us is a freedom that really hinges entirely on

circumstances. And here's what's really bad about it. It's not just circumstances, but circumstances that are far outside of our control. And that's not real freedom. If your freedom depends on circumstances that are out of your control, how many of you know that that's not real freedom? But God's freedom, God's freedom can never be taken from you. God's freedom cannot be stolen from you. It's why Paul's able to write about freedom, even though he's not that far removed from getting locked up for the same Lord and savior that he's proclaiming. God's freedom is never stolen. But my second point is that while it cannot be stolen from you, you need to know that you can surrender it. God's freedom can't be taken. It can't be stolen, but it can be surrendered. I want you to look at the second half of Galatians chapter five, verse one. It says this stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Paul says it is for freedom that Christ has set you free. And therefore he writes, stand firm and do not let yourselves be burdened again. What Paul is inferring here is he's saying, Hey, God has given you freedom that can't be taken from you unless you allow it. There's two groups of people. There are people who abuse God's grace, right? There are people who abuse God's grace. They take the grace that God has given them and they have a mindset of, well, let me see how far this can go. Well, if God is so gracious, if he's so loving, if he's so forgiving, what difference does it make anyways? Let me get the most out of that. There's people who abuse grace. And then there's people who are just obsessed with earning God's grace. And I'm here to be honest enough to say that I'm both all within the same hour. I like to abuse God's grace. And then I like to be self-righteous about how I go about getting back into God's good graces. This group of people that Paul was writing to were a group of people that were obsessed with earning God's grace. They had been set free from the law. They'd been set free from all the religiosity and the rituals that were required to be able to pave a connection back to God. And Jesus came to fulfill the law so that we wouldn't have to. But this group of Galatians They just wanted so badly to earn God's love and earn God's grace, so they again began to submit themselves and to want to submit others to these just regiments that they had no need for. And Paul's warning them. He's saying, don't go back to slavery.

It's for freedom that God has set you free. Why would you again find yourself burdened under the yoke of slavery? Why, why is it that we do this? Why is it that after being set free from our sin, we choose to indulge in it? Why is it that after we have been set free from having to earn God's love, we find ourselves drawn to that idea again? It's because the chains are comfier the second time around. The chains of slavery, the truth is that slavery, spiritual slavery, if we're being honest, it's more familiar, it feels more predictable. We know what to expect, so we end up going back to it. And here's what we need to be reminded of, is that ultimately, if we want to avoid finding ourselves surrendering the freedom that Christ gave us at the cross, whether it be because we enjoy our sin more than we should, or whether it be because we are just obsessed with earning God's approval, that ultimately, the key to enjoying the freedom as God meant it, is to trust, is to trust wholly in Him. And when we don't feel worthy, when we feel that need to strive and to earn God's grace, to say, no, God, I trust that you completed the work on my behalf on the cross. That when you feel drawn to that sin, you trust, no, God, you have given me the power and the authority over my flesh so that I don't have to be ruled by it anymore.

The third point, third and last point, is that freedom from, freedom from, is only half the gospel. See, freedom from, a freedom from mindset obsesses on the past. It obsesses on what we've been freed from. It obsesses from the sin that used to hold us back that we're now freed from. And when we find ourselves drawn back to that sin, we go back, God, no, we've been freed from this. We've been freed from this. But here's the thing, being freed from is only half the gospel, because we have to be reminded that we were freed from so that we could be freed for. Amen. You see, being freed for moves us forward. And what have we been freed for? Let's see what Paul says in Galatians 5, verse 13. He says, you, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather, serve one another humbly in love. And Paul is saying, you have been freed from so that you could be freed for what? It's not a what. So that you could be freed for who? For someone else. To serve one another. You've been freed from so that you could serve one another. And this is right here where we can land back again

with our country in mind. You wanna know what it is our country needs most? It's prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. It's for us to recognize that the true celebration of freedom that began 250 years ago with this experiment called the United States of America is for us to double down again on what it looks like to serve one another. Last night, fireworks here in Coral Springs were amazing, but it's okay to say that they were better in New York City. And the Statue of Liberty. Man, before I met my wife, the Statue of Liberty was my girlfriend. I love the Statue of Liberty. There's just, man, she's beautiful. And she stands proudly out in that bay holding a torch. And yesterday she was bathed in glorious light from fireworks. And we look at that and we look at that as a symbol of our love for one another. as a standard of freedom. And we look at that as a symbol of our love for one another. But thousands of years ago, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, showed us what it really meant And we look at that as a symbol of our love for one another. to be free. It's because real freedom looks like a towel, not a torch. And what I mean by that, Jesus Christ, on the night he was betrayed, he had dinner with his disciples

and he got down on one knee. Bible says that he tied a towel around his waist and what did he do? He washed his disciples' feet. And I wanna tell you a little dirty secret about who was there at the Lord's last supper. You had Matthew the tax collector and you had Simon Peter. And I want you to know that Matthew the tax collector and Simon Peter would have had every reason to hate one another. Every reason to hate one another. If anyone hated Matthew the most, it was the other Simon, Simon the zealot. And Simon the zealot had dedicated his entire life to revolt against the Roman empire. And guess who worked for the Roman empire? Matthew the tax collector. Who else was there? Judas, the one who would eventually betray him. I say that to remind you that Jesus Christ washed the feet of people who voted differently, thought differently, acted differently. The prerequisite for us to serve one another and get down on one knee and proverbially wash each other's feet is not for us to believe all the same things. It's not for us to vote for all the same people. It's for us to serve one another

because that's what real freedom looks like. That's what real freedom looks like. That's what real freedom looks like. Let's pray together. Father, we need you. We desperately need you, Lord. God, we desperately need you to be reminded what it looks like to truly be freed from all the things that hold us back. And Father, we desperately need you to be freed of ego and pride and arrogance and selfishness and things that keep us from recognizing the image of God in other people. And Father, I pray that Church by the Glades would be a city on a hill, that we would be a model, that we would be an example of what it looks like to show the world, to show our country what it looks like to serve one another selflessly and to be set free from ourselves. God, would you bless the United States of America and would you continue to allow us, Lord, to reach a nation full of people who do not yet know you. It's in your precious name we pray, amen.