Well, last Sunday, if you were here, you know that we had a a 90 plus women's choir, the Texas singing women of Texas were here, and the the stage was filled all the way out to almost where I'm standing, even. And it was such a blessing to have them here and to hear the way the Lord's gifted them and used them to bless us through so many wonderful songs that they shared with us during that time. And it was a privilege to be able to worship with you and to teach from God's word. It was a blessing to go into the second service, and we had baptisms. We got to celebrate new life in Christ through baptisms last week, and so I when I left last Sunday, my heart was full. It had been a good morning. I had experienced the joy of worship and the things that God was doing among us and in us and and through us and and the things that our church. But when I got home, I started to scroll through social media, and as I scrolled through social media, I came across a post of that another pastor had posted from another church. And I don't remember exactly, but it was something to the effect of man, we baptized like 15 to 20 people today. And I'd like to say that my thought was, that's amazing. We have 15 to 20 more people in the kingdom of God through what he was doing at their church the same day he was doing some amazing things in our church today.But that's not what I said.My mind went to this place of saying, Jason, you are nowhere near as good of a pastor as that guy is not even close. You think you had a good morning here you only baptized two people, three people. That was 20 in one day, God's doing some big things at their church, and so you just do not measure up. And so instead of celebrating the rest of the afternoon what God had done at our church and in His Kingdom work through another church here in our community, I left discouraged. The rest of the afternoon, I was depressed. I was feeling inferior the rest of the day. It's been said that comparison is the thief of joy, and it certainly stole my joy the rest of the afternoon.My guess is that you've been there too,that you've been stuck at the road block of comparison in your life, feeling like you don't measure up, feeling like you don't measure up as a wife or a mom, feeling like you don't measure up as a husband or a dad, feeling like you don't measure up to others in the workplace or in your career field, you just aren't as good at your Sport or in the band or the classroom as others at your school. Maybe for you, it's comparison to other people's looks. They just seem like they're in so much more shape than you are. They're so much more fit, so much more attractive. You'll never be as beautiful and attractive as they are. For you, maybe you don't feel like you're as good of a Christian as other people. You see people and their gifts, and you go, wow. Look at the gifts that they have compared to the gifts I have. I'm not even sure if I have any gifts. Look at listen to the way they talk about the Bible. Look at the ministry that they're leading man. I just don't measure up to them. They're such a better Christian than me. I bet God is so proudof them.Maybe for you, it's not even comparison to other people and yourself. But your roadblock is comparing other people to other people. You're comparing your spouse to someone else's spouse, you're comparing your kids to someone else's kids. If my spouse was like their spouse, then I would have what I need in life. If my kids acted like their kids,then that's where I needed to bein life. Whatever it is for you, it leaves you stuck. You're stuck at the road block of comparison, and it is robbing you of your joy in life. You sit at that road block feeling insecure,inadequate,inferior,potentially even angry, angry that they have morethan you have in your life.Now, there's another side of comparison that can also leave us stuck at this road block, and it doesn't leave us feeling inferior to others, though, but superior to them. Because, let's be honest, we can always look around and find others. Others who are not measuring up to us, even as bad as we may think that we are, at times as a spouse or a parent or at our jobs or as a Christian, we can always find someone else that's making way more of a mess in their life than we are, certainly a better mom than that person is, or a better worker than them, or a better Christian, and all the above. And so it's possible to kind of experience this, this comparison pendulum, if you will. Sometimes we're comparing ourselves to other people, and we find ourselves feeling inadequate and inferior. And other times, we find ourselves comparing ourselves to other people, and we can stick our chest out a little bit more and go way better than those people. And we find ourselves filled with pride and arrogance and likewe're superior to them,and we're stuck in that pendulum and moving side to side. What we're doing is we're constantly measuring ourvalue and our worthand how we measure up and compare to other people, and that's the problem with comparison, this road block. Listen. Comparison, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. God can use comparison in a good way. He can use other people in our lives to show us how things can work and look in our own lives, and it may not always look exactly like theirs, but an expression of that in our own lives, and when God uses it in that way, it can certainly be a good thing. But when we use comparison, when we find other people and compare ourselves to them, to find our value and our worth, that's when it leaves us stuck with this roadblock of comparison. So this morning, we're going to look at this from a biblical perspective. We're going to start with the question of, why, why do we compare ourselves to others so often? And then we'll try to answer the question, is there a way around this comparison trap, beyond out of this comparison trap, this comparison roadblock? To help us answer these questions. We're going to look at Galatians chapter four, beginning in verse three. The apostle Paul writes this to the church at Galatia. He says, so when you were under age, when you were in slavery, under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. And so we need to pause here, because we're jumping into the middle of an analogy that Paul is using that needs some explanation. When Paul uses this term under age, it actually has nothing to do with our age. It doesn't have anything to do with how old you are. We don't have time to go into way depth. But basically, what he's talking about is a time before Christ, when you were before Christ, before you put your faith and trust in Him for salvation. This is the reality of the situation that you were in, that we were in, we were in slavery, in under the elemental, spiritual forces of the world. This is the place that we find ourselves in, and really this takes us all the way back to the creation story. This takes us all the way back to the garden, when sin entered the world, when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, sin entered the world. The world was broken. Humanity experienced a spiritual death and separation from God and and so do we, each and every single day afterwards, those of us who are born into this world are born spiritually dead, separated from God because of sin in our lives, and we're left under the control of the elemental spiritual forces of this world. There is more going on in our world than you can visually see. There are elemental spiritual forces at work in this world. And because of sin and because of being separated from God, we are slaves to those things in this sin cursed world. And so here's the thing, being separated from God and being in this situation, if we can't find our value and our worth from a relationship with our Creator, then the only other option is to look out into the world and what or who do we have access to out in the world to help us get those needs met? Other people? Right? There's other people out in the world, and so one of the principles that Satan uses in this world is that of comparison, comparing us to other people to kind of trick us into finding our value and worth by how we measure up to other people. I mean, we're talking about going all the way back to the creation story of sin entering the world. And that happens in Genesis three. Do you know what happened in Genesis four? Genesis four, we begin to see, uh. Adam and Eve's sons, Cain and Abel and how they both brought an offering to the Lord. And what happened was that the Lord found Abels offering more acceptable. In other words, God was using comparison to help maybe even show Cain what an acceptable offering was. But Satan grabbed a hold of it, and he takes that and convinces Cain that he himself is not as valuable as his brother. He's inferior to his brother, and Cain is filled with jealousy and anger. He feels inferior, and so what does he do? And kills him. I mean right after sin enters the world. In Genesis three, we look in the next chapter in Genesis chapter four, and we see the road block of comparison, and we see the evil and the ugly effects that it can have in our lives, because we live in this sin cursed world, and we're slaves to the elemental, spiritual forces of it. But as Paul goes on, he shows us that there is a solution, a way beyond this roadblock and this slavery to comparison that we find ourselves in. Paul says, but when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman under the law to redeem those under the law, redeem means to purchase to buy back. The Lord had to buy us back. He had to purchase us out up from underneath the law. We were all in a curse to sin and to the law, because what Paul said just before this we're in slavery to the elemental, spiritual forces of this world, this sin, cursed world, sin in our lives, and so we have this inability to carry out the law God gives it, and we can't carry it out. We can't fulfill it. And God knew that would happen. He knew that would happen even when he was giving it. As a matter of fact, it's one of the reasons that he even gave the law in the first place to show people that we don't measure up to him. And so when we think about this in the terms of what we're talking about today. It's like God was saying, Okay, if you want to spend your life comparing how you're doing to other people to find your value and worth, you're making other people the standard of your life. Let me show you why that doesn't work, because other people are not the standard for your life. I am the standard for your life. God is saying, through introducing the law, he says, I'm your creator. I'm the one you would have to measure up to. And you would have to fulfill all of these obligations and these things that's a reflection of my holiness and my goodness and moral uprightness. And in order for you to be right and okay, you would have to measure up to me. In other words, God just took one side of the comparison pendulum away when he introduced the law, the superior side, right? Because there's no way that any of us can measure up to the full perfection of God. And so we can't compare. We cannot compare ourselves to other people in order to justify ourselves, in order to find value and worth in our life, once again, because they are not the standard. And if God is the standard, then he is the only one we should be comparing ourselves to. And when we do compare ourselves to God, what we will always find is that we are in the same boat with sin in our lives and that we don't measure up to him. But listen, it's when we get to that point in our lives. It's when we get to that point that that's when the gospel of Jesus Christ becomes really good news to us. And so again, as we continue to look at what he says here, let's just this is the gospel, right, that when the set time had fully come, this was God's plan to redeem us from that curse that we were in, that we found in the garden, or that was introduced in the garden. What did God do? He sent His son, who was born of a woman. He was born into this world, fully human, just like you and I are, but he was also born fully God. And he was born under the law. He was born under the same law that you and I are under. We're experiencing the curse of it because we sinned against the law. He's born underneath the law with no sin to pay for he lives it out perfectly, fulfills the law for us, and because he did so, then he could pay the purchase price necessary to redeem us from the curse under the law. Law, and he did so. He took all of my sins and all of your sins, and He laid them upon himself, and he took them to the cross to pay the penalty for them there, and he defeated the power of sin and death forever when he said, My work here is finished, and God raised Him from the dead three days later. And because that happened, because he redeemed us from the curse of the law that puts us in a completely different situation that we were in when we were under the slavery of the elemental spiritual forces of this world. So let me show you the rest of the verse. So again. But when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem us under the law. Why? So that we might receive adoption tosonship,when you and I put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ to have redeemed us from underneath the law. Something radical happens to us. The sin barrier gets removed, and we enter into this union with Jesus Christ, and in that moment, we're born again into his family. And we're not just any member of the family. We're not like some distant cousin over here somewhere. God says that you are a sonand sonship, especiallyin the time that we're writing, thiswas a big deal. Is a big deal. Look what he goes on to say about that. So he introduces this to us and says, This is what happened, that we might receive adoption to sonship, and then he goes on and because you are signs so because this is what's happened to you, because this is who you are, this is the situation that you're in, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. So remember what Paul had written and we read in verse three, before Christ, you were a slave to the elemental spiritual forces of this world. You are a slave to having to use other people to justify yourself in this world. You are a slave to comparing yourself, to finding people who were worse than you, to lift yourself up to somehow try to make yourself superior to them. And most of the time, or a lot of the times, you'd find yourself feeling inferior to them because you don't even measure up there. But now Paul saying that with Christ in your heart, you are no longer a slave. You're no longer a slave under the curse of sin, and you're no longer a slave to comparing yourself to other people, to find your worth in value. This is the gospel. It frees you from your slavery of having to find ways to justify yourself in this world or before God Himself. And let me show you even more about why and how this is so this is Luke chapter three. Up until this point, Luke had been just telling us about Jesus before His earthly ministry, and this is as he's getting ready to begin His earthly ministry. Luke chapter three, starting in verse 21 he says, when all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too, and he was as he was praying. Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove and a voice came from heaven. You are my son, whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. Now we've talked about this before, if you've been here, but what was God so pleased about this is before Jesus's earthly ministry had ever even started, Jesus hasn't healed anyone yet. He hasn't helped anyone yet. He hasn't taught anything yet. He hasn't performed any miracles yet. And yet, the words of God were, I am well pleased in him. So what was he so pleased with? Just the factthat he was his son,just the fact that he was his son. So let's go back now and look at again what Paul said in Galatians four. So he said, You are no longer a slave, but a What a son? God looks down on his one and only son. He. Not based on performance, not based on anything that he's doing. It says, I am well pleased with you, because you're my son. And then here we read about how God's made you a son. So how does he feel about you? He's pleased. He's pleased with you. He's pleased with you simply in that you are his son, that you are His child, not in your performance, not in how you measure up and compare to others, simply that you are His child, you're justified in Christ. You're made right in Christ, and God is pleased with who you are in Christ. And so guys, listen, this is what frees us from the road block of comparison. When you begin to see this and understand it, there's no need to look around to try to find somebody else to compare yourself to, to find your value and worth, because God is already pleased with you, no matter how much you measure up to other people. And you just being hischild, you being his son. Andso now, with being freed from the slavery of comparison in your life and me feeling like you need to justify yourself, you and I are simply free to step into the role that God created you, that he created for me in his kingdom work Here on this earth, Paul's writing about certain things here in another letter that he wrote in First Corinthians, he writes about this fact that we can enter into who we are and who God's created us to be in the role he has for us in His Kingdom. Work in First Corinthians 12, we read about this image of a body, and Jesus is the head, and we're all parts of the body, and we each have a different body part, and we're each given a different role and a function within the body. And we won't go into a lot of details, but look at what he just simply says in verse 18 there. So First Corinthians, 1218, but in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them just as he wanted them to be. In other words, God created you to be you. He didn't create you to be someone else, not the someone that you think you need to be in order to find more value and worth and measure up and look like the other people that you're comparing yourself to. Often, he's pleased with you and just being his son, and he's pleased with the personality and your looks and the skills and the talents that he's given you, the spiritual gifts that he's blessed you with. He's given those to you to be used in his kingdom, work in this world in a specific way, and only you can live that out, because only you are you?It doesn't have to look like everyone else.We don't have to perform like other people to measure up and to find value and worth in this world. Now, even though we've been freed, you see the gospel. You see his words. It's happened, we have been freed from that. We are no longer in slavery. To comparison, through our union with Christ, even though that's true,that's not going to stop Satan.It's not going to stop Satan from doing everything he can to convince you otherwise, to rob you of your joy. He is going to try to catch your attention with other people in this world through social media, at school, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, anywhere in this world, even in our church. And he's going to try to fixate your attention on them and what they have and what their life is like, and what their accomplishments are, and what their looks are like and their personality is like, what their spouse is like, what their kids are like, and he's going to make you feel like you don't measure up and you never will, and he's going to try to get you back into the slavery of performing in your life, to look Like and be like them. But as I've referenced before in this series, this is about recognizing Satan's lies and replacing them withGod's truths.It's about Turning our focus from those things out in the world and back onto Christ, back onto who we are in Him and all that we have in Him. When I mentioned earlier how Satan began to attack me last Sunday afternoon with this comparison, this. Road block of comparison I was sitting at again, I'm down, I'm discouraged, I'm depleted. I don't rarely get off the couch the rest of the day. There was a fog that I just felt like I was in for the next day or two around these kinds of things. But what happened eventually is that after a day or two, embarrassed to say it, but I finally woke up earlier than I had been getting up, I was much more intentional about just sitting still with Jesus, focusing my attention on him, I read certain passages of Scripture that reminded me of how big Jesus really is and the fullness that I have in him. I sat with those truths for a while. I dwelt on those truths. I personalized those truths. I said them out loud, I prayed, I slowed down, I asked Jesus to move me beyond this roadblock of comparison. And after I left that time, I had this fresh awareness, this fresh awareness of who I was in Christ, and all that I had in him, and I felt such peace, such assurance about all that I had in Christ, about the place that I have in the body of Christ, compared to the place other people have in the body of Christ, regardless of whatever it is that he wants to do in and through them, and however differently it looks than them. And after spending that time, I was able to go out into the day, go out into the world now and begin to participate with him in what he was doing, rather than being paralyzed in my mind by the feelings of insecurity and inferiority that Satan had sowed in my life in those moments. Now, I know that Satan's not going to stop. Just because I spent that time that morning, I know that he's not going to stop in your life, if you were to do the exact same thing in your life and refocus your attention on who he is and all that you have in him, which is why, again, the recognition of when Satan attacks, recognizing his lies and then looking for when he attacks is so important, because I think that there are these triggers that we would begin to recognize if we really sat still and asked Jesus and said, Hey, are there certain times in my life that trigger more comparison than other times. Would you reveal those to me? If there are certain things and when that happens and when he reveals those to us, then maybe it's time to change our habits in how we interact with those particular things, and we'll actually be talking about this much more next week. But again, if you find that social media is the place that you tend to fall into the comparison trap and sit at this roadblock of comparison over and over and over again, then maybe Jesus is identifying that as a trigger in your life and saying maybe you need to change your habits around your social media use, if you find Satan at work in it and through it. I mean, at what point do we realize that it's not worth it and change our habits away from those things, to quit allowing Satan of robbing us of the joy thatwe have in Christ.Quite honestly, that's one of the things that I felt like he said to me and revealed to me in the time I was spending with him, as it would be wise to limit my time on social media, because even though I know my identity in Christ, and I'm aware of those things, and even though I know through the gospel that I'm not a slave to comparison to find my value and worth, I teach on these things each and every single week, but what I've found is that Satan is still so good at working through social media in My life to stop me at this roadblock of comparison that I know I'm not a slave to, but he still uses it to trap me in what feels like slavery and rob me of my joy in Christ. And so most of the week, I have scaled back on social media I would jump into. To do something and kind of jump out all week long, I've just been more intentional, not just with that,but sitting with Jesus,slowing down, spending time with him, reading His word, renewing my mind to His truths, and I've got to tell you, I have experienced so much more joy, as I have done so and so for you, can you identify the triggers that Satan is using in your own life to stop you at this roadblock of comparison? Is it social media? Is it a relationship, another environment that you find yourself in, something else, whatever it is, if Jesus is telling you to change your habits, to limit Satan's attacks of comparison in your life, then trust him with that. Trust him with it. Remove those triggers that Satan uses to stop you at this road block and instead spend more time with him, be more intentional about sitting still with Jesus and soaking soaking in His truths, because this world, Satan has a way of capturing our attention with so many things in it. It's so important for us to pause and refocus inward in who Christ is, in us and who we are, and just soak in it. Ask him, ask him to allow you to experience His peace, his assurance, a renewed excitement for who you are compared to who other people are. And ask him to allow you to experience the joy of celebrating with other people when he does things in their life, instead of allowing your flesh to grab a hold of those things and move you into this comparison trap. And if you do, I think you'll begin to see that he'll move you beyond, he'll move you beyond the road block of comparison, and that you'll begin to experience His joy again. Let's pray