The Grove Church

Everyone wants to be the mountain the people they love can stand on, but swimmers make poor mountains. You cannot hold anyone up until something is holding you up. Galatians 5:14-25, from the Christian Freedom series through Galatians. “Stand on the Mountain. Become one.” Galatians 5:14-25 (ESV) WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES Life is chaotic waters, and we all want to be a mountain the people we love can...

You are capable of far more evil and far more good than you know. Galatians 5:14-25, from the Christian Freedom series through Galatians. “Goodness must be planted in you.” Galatians 5:14-25 (ESV) WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We want the little line between our birth and our death to mean something. So we set out to do good by our own effort, and we wake the monster. The flesh can wear the clothing of...

“Patience comes from God’s patience with you.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We live in an instant-gratification world and cannot wait on anything, least of all God. It started in a garden: a snake offered a shortcut, the fruit was taken, and ever since we bite and devour one another. Short-nostriled tempers, fits of anger, families where everyone gets bit. Patience with others now seems impossible for...

“God spoils you. Now spoil others.” Galatians 5:14-25 (ESV) WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We are nice, not kind. Nice gives people what they deserve, and they can pay it back. Kindness spoils people with undeserved favor, and the monster in us will not allow it. The flesh keeps score: a ledger with our spouse, kids made to earn our approval, friends kept behind walls until they prove worthy. We end up l...

“Patience comes from God’s patience with you.” Galatians 5:14-25 (ESV) WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We live in an instant-gratification world and cannot wait on anything, least of all God. It started in a garden: a snake offered a shortcut, the fruit was taken, and ever since we bite and devour one another. Short-nostriled tempers, fits of anger, families where everyone gets bit. Patience with others n...

“Peace is not a project. It’s a person.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES Life is not supposed to be this way, and we all know it. So we blame: the other party, the boss, the spouse, the kids. But Paul says the war is not out there. It is in us. The flesh is a two-faced monster, self-reliance on one side and blame on the other. The best it can build is a Pax Romana: a quiet house, a managed marriage. Not p...

“Joy isn’t found. It finds you.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We were made for Eden: a land of delight, a table of friends, and the face of God. Then we bit the fruit and the gates closed. Now the flesh, the monster within, chases joy on its own terms, squeezing delight out of thorns, and we either despair or bite harder. Joy cannot be found by our own effort. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE Christ is the land, t...

“Self-reliance grows the monster within.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES Carl Jung was right that every one of us carries a monster within. Paul says it is worse: self-reliance feeds it. Ignore the monster and it grows; fight it in your own strength and it grows more. Religious or irreligious, we each keep a law of our own to earn the good life; but the monster in us only grows. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE Chri...

“Freedom is a license to love.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We long for a city on a hill, a people who have our back, yet too often we are known and rejected. When we are not loved as we hoped, the flesh stirs and we bite. Biting becomes a habit, the habit becomes devouring, and a sheep becomes a wolf. There is a war within every one of us. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE God Himself became a slave to us in love...

“Adding to Christ is changing allegiance.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We were running well. Then a break in the road stops us, and a persuasive voice says Christ is good, but you also need this: the moral resume, the voting record, the practices. It never sounds like opposition; it sounds like wisdom. But a little leaven leavens the whole lump, and one small addition grows until a son lives like a sl...

“Yoked to Christ & unmistakably free.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We are all yoked to something. Obedience, the family code, the career, or the law of freedom itself, each one promising the good life if we will only keep it. But the law has no legs. One failure and its weight pins us where we stand, chained to a boulder we cannot drag, slaves again in a prison of our own keeping. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE...

“When life’s hard; Sing His Promises.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES The good life does not arrive on our timeline, so we begin to scheme. Like Sarah, we stop waiting and take matters into our own hands, using rules, effort, and even the quality of our own faith to force God’s hand. It never works. Self-reliance only digs us deeper into the barren void. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE Christ went into the barren w...

“True Spiritual Leaders Labor to form you in Christ.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES A serpent came into the garden clothed in light, claiming to guide us, and we lost the people we were given. Ever since then we feel isolated, wounded, unsure we can trust even our friends. To this day, spiritual leaders still slither into our lives who seem to work hard for us while really working for themselves, seekin...

“The Father is the good life.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES Everyone wants the good life, and we chase it down two paths: rule keeping and rule breaking. They look like opposites, but both are the same bite of the same fruit, the good life without God. Both enslave. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth the true Son, born under the law, to become a slave like us and re...

“Christ the Son made us heirs.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES Believers and skeptics alike know something is not right here. Sin lost us the land, divided the people, and cost us the blessing of God’s presence. And the law, our guardian, cannot carry us home. So we live like heirs locked outside the castle: sons by promise, orphans in practice, trying to earn what can only be inherited. WHAT CHRIST HAS...

BIG IDEA “The law imprisons. The promise frees.” WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES We keep living in a two-party deal we cannot win. The law was never given to save us; it exposes sin and imprisons everything under it. So we hide from the God who comes to bless, or we go on pretending our sin does not matter while it chains the people we love. WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE God made a one-party promise, sealed in blo...

FALLEN CONDITION We live by an invisible ledger, sure that if the good outweighs the bad, God will bless us. But the law does not grade on a curve. It demands perfect keeping. One failure chains us to the cursed mountain. SOLUTION IN CHRIST Christ left the mountain of blessing to come to ours. He wore the crown of thorns, was hung on the tree, and became the curse for us. Now, by faith, He gives u...

BIG IDEA “The good life isn’t earned, only received.” FALLEN CONDITION We trust our works for what only God can give. Like the bewitched Galatians, we know the gospel and yet live as though our performance, our persistence, and our religion will finally earn what was always meant to be received. The harder we climb the tower, the further we get from Home. SOLUTION IN CHRIST Christ kept the covenan...

BIG IDEA “Approval through Christ sets you Free.” FALLEN CONDITION We walk into every room as slaves to the opinions of others. Their praise goes to our head and their disapproval goes to our heart, and we wear ourselves out performing for a verdict we can never finally win. Even our religion can become one more performance that nullifies the grace of God. SOLUTION IN CHRIST By faith we have been...

“Gospel Clarity keeps you free.” FALLEN CONDITION We keep trading the freedom Christ has won for chains of our own making. Gatekeepers from the outside say “Jesus plus ___”. Keep the rules, perform, prove yourself. The voice from the inside whispers we still aren’t enough. Either way, we step back onto the performance treadmill and lose the freedom that was already ours. SOLUTION IN CHRIST On the...

BIG IDEA “Truth revealed produces transformation and worship.” FALLEN CONDITION We are all searching for truth about God, ourselves, and how to live, but every source we turn to (institutions, tradition, the inner voice) proves insufficient and leads us further from the God we seek. SOLUTION IN CHRIST The truth we cannot find finds us, by grace, through a personal revelation of Jesus Christ, not b...

“Live from approval, not for it.” FALLEN CONDITION We are slaves to the fear of rejection and the craving for approval. A few people’s opinions carry enormous weight, and without realizing it we let them rule our lives; shrinking, performing, and comparing to win a verdict we can never secure. SOLUTION IN CHRIST On the cross Jesus bore the rejection we feared most: “My God, why have you forsaken m...

BIG IDEA “Grace plus anything is no longer grace.” FALLEN CONDITION We are restless self-saviors. Even when we believe in Jesus, we keep trying to add our performance, politics, or tribe to His finished work — and in doing so we defect from the very grace that set us free. SOLUTION IN CHRIST On the cross Jesus cried tetelestai — “It is finished.” He paid the debt in full, bore the judgment we owed...

Big Idea: Crown Christ & your house flourishes. Problem: We want the kingdom without the king, therefore we loose both Solution: Jesus comes to dismantle all false kings hidden deep in our homes, so we might crown Him Vision for The Grove: Become a community where the secret rooms of our hearts are thrown open and every false king is burned out, where Christ alone wears the signet over our marriag...

Big Idea: In Christ, holiness becomes contagious. Problem: Obedience without a pure heart keeps the blessings from God’s presence from us Solution: Christ came to be defiled in death so we can be brought into the pure presence of God. Vision: The Grove becomes a pure house. Not a community of joyless performers trying to earn God's nearness, but a people whose hearts have been cleansed by Christ a...