The Chains We All Live Under

in 1942 the famous norman rockwell norman rockwell was a illustrator and you could still buy magazines today from the 40s and 50s back into the 30s of illustrations he did and people frame them you know they'll take the magazines and take out the the illustrations he did and he'll frame them uh you'll you know his paintings and so forth are worth a lot of money and he actually did four paintings that became very famous and they were called the four freedoms he said the freedom to worship the freedom of speech the freedom from fear and the freedom from want now it's interesting that these four paintings he did became posters for there were all over the united states for support of the war the world war ii broke out and of course when he he did this the word already started but as the war became more and more terrible and it went on and on people were inspired by his four freedoms and these became very important posters you can you can go online and look them up and look at them today the freedom to worship the freedom of speech the freedom from fear and the freedom from want you and i have lived in a nation that does have a lot of liberty a lot of freedom compared to many places in the world throughout history we do have more freedom we take it for granted and this freedom has also given us a prosperity a prosperity that's been amazing i mean that we live in the most prosperous country in the history of humanity and yet with all this liberty why is it that we live in a country where so many people are in prisons i mean literally in prisons but in prisons in their own home imprisons in the fear that they express how many people are in the chains of of crime the chains of broken relationships the chains of just minds filled with anxiety and fear of hatred i mean we live in a world of broken people and we live in a country of broken people all this liberty and we're still broken people freedom and liberty did not solve the problems that we have we are here today because it's the last day of a season of holy days and which we celebrate among other things freedom we talked about that at the passover we talked about it on the first day of unleavened bread i talked about it at the passover service and even before the passover i gave a sermon talking about how this time pictures christ's victory it is a time of god's victory we went through and showed how in exodus they were told that when they got together with their families to keep the passover they were to celebrate it as a time of victory when they got together with their families to observe the days of unleavened bread they were told to tell their children this is because god brought us out of slavery so it's a time of victory it's a time of coming out of slavery we talk about that we rehearse that every single year it's part of the gospel message you know when jesus brought the gospel the good news of god's kingdom he talked about freedom and liberty let's go to john chapter 8. so here we are we're celebrating how through jesus christ god has set us free from the bondage of sin we've talked about that the freedom of the human mind from the shackles that just all human beings are in chains all human beings are broken people and the freedom that we can learn to experience that liberty and freedom no matter what our external circumstances so that's part of the the gospel message let's go to john 8. we'll start here in verse 31. john chapter 8 and let's start at verse 31 that jesus said to those jews who believed him if you abide in my word you are my disciples indeed so he's talking about the word that he gives the teaching that he gives and as people listen to that and they begin to respond to it they begin to live it they become his disciples and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free now what is that truth now we're going to look at today what he means by this truth there's a freedom that comes from this truth that he's he's talking about the jews of course at the time were a little bit they were offended by this look what they said in verse 33 they answered him we are abraham's descendants that have never been a bondage to anyone how can you say you will make us free you know it's interesting they had been through the babylonian captivity their their ancestors had they were actually under the thumb of rome they didn't have complete freedom that they wanted there was a movement in judea at the time to try to overthrow the roman empire that's what the zealots did so you think about this they said we've never been in bondage to any man what they're saying is we've always been god's people we've always had god we've always had his way we've always kept his laws so we are free of all people on earth we're the most free because we are abraham's children we are part of a covenant god made with abraham and that covenant is with us today so their argument here isn't uh just some kind of you know well what do you mean we're free people their arguments based on we're free because in spite of our circumstances god is with us in spite of our circumstances we are the children of abraham and god made a covenant with him and his descendants so this is what they're basing their freedom on notice what jesus says next verse and jesus answered them most assuredly i say to you whoever commits sin is a slave to sin and a slave does not abide in the house forever but a son abides forever therefore if the son makes you free you shall be free indeed he tells them no you're actually still slaves you don't know you're slaves it's just like you're still in bondage in egypt now for these people who they trace their history through the fact that they were freed from egypt their ancestors were freed from egypt by the power of god that was central to their understanding of who they were and for jesus saying oh no you're still slaves and the son himself jesus christ will set you free they hated him for this this attacked them at the core of their own identity that somehow he was bringing a truth from god and that it came from him and was about him and it would set them free and they hated him for it how come in the church today we still struggle we have the gospel we keep the passover we have god's spirit and we still struggle with our own slavery slavery we still struggle with our lack of feeling of freedom our lack of feeling of liberty you know it's interesting when you look through the early new chest new testament church and you look at the um the four freedoms that norman rockwell uh painted freedom to worship many times throughout the history of the church there was no freedom to worship you know even in some of our lifetimes if you know back if you go back into the sabbatarians who were in the ukraine back under communism they didn't have freedom to worship they had to sort of hide out many times going to someone's house to worship on the sabbath where they could be persecuted freedom to worship is not something god's people have had a lot of throughout history the freedom of speech well many times those who publicly proclaim god's way have been persecuted have been killed you know when you look at the apostles well we could see all of them were killed for proclaiming the gospel except for john who was put in prison as an old man before he seems to spent the last few years of his life in ephesus the freedom from fear you know as christians we still experience fear freedom from want you know when you look at the history of the church you will find there are many times that the church was made up of very poor people people who struggle just to get through every day there are people that are called by god in the church of god today scattered throughout the world who live in a state of absolute want many of them living in fear many of them living in in places where they don't have freedom uh of speech and they don't have freedom to worship and when you look at the early church in the book of acts what you'll find is that many of the people that were non-jews as the as the gospel went out to the gentiles and the church began to expand many of the people came into the church were actual slaves i mean actual slaves they were owned by somebody else the apostle paul especially gives it a number of places instructions on how slaves should react and live with their masters they were literal slaves with no way to get out of that i mean the only way a slave could get out is if he was freed by his master sometimes when they would get older they might free them usually they would not because well if you if you freed them when they were older they'd go up the street and die so they would sort of take care of them and they were good masters and bad masters i say good and bad if you're a slave i don't think there's any good master but there were masters who took care of their slaves there were masters who didn't and slavery was throughout the roman empire but it wasn't just an institution in the roman empire which it was every culture had slaves the roman the germanic tribes had slaves if you go down into the arab world which was part of the roman empire they had slaves the celtic peoples in ireland and scotland who were not part of the empire had slaves people in africa had slaves the persians had slaves the people who lived in what is now india had slaves the people who lived in the far east and what we little bit we know about china at the time they had slaves it was pretty much a universal thing on the earth throughout so many cultures there was slavery people owned other people and yet jesus came and said i've come to bring you liberty it's part of the gospel let's look at luke chapter 4. the jews thought they were free and you know they did at the time by the way have freedom of religion they had a temple there in jerusalem they were allowed to go to that temple they weren't persecuted by the romans as long as they didn't try to break roman laws they had a lot of freedom they have freedom of speech in their own country to preach their their religion now you didn't have freedom of speech to say anything against the roman government but they had a certain amount of freedom of speech uh they had freedom they didn't have total freedom from fear or from want but you can't find any time in history where people didn't have some fear or some want i mean real fear of daily survival you know there's a lot of fear right now because of this crisis that we're going through this crisis compared to what the average christian has lived with throughout the years this is minor i'm not playing it down i'm saying that as we here we are in the days of love and bread we're gonna we talked about god's victory through christ before the days of unleavened bread at the end of the days of bread i want to talk about what that victory means in your life right now what's it mean right now and it means we should not be living in abject fear now there's concern of course there's concern there's nothing wrong with that so let's go to luke 6 or luke i'm sorry chapter 4 and let's start at verse 16. first sermon given by jesus christ so he came to nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day and stood up and read and he was handed the book of the prophet isaiah when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written and this is what he read to them the spirit of the lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and recover of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the lord and when he had closed the book he gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all that were in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing jesus says this is why i've come i am prophesied to do this i have prophesied to bring sight to the blind but he didn't heal all the blind people in the world did he he at the time he didn't heal all the blind people in judea he didn't heal all the blind people in galilee he didn't free all the captives there wasn't some uprising as they overthrew the the roman empire but he came to give true liberty and true freedom well how does he do that in our lives if he's won the victory and he came to do that but you and i still live in it in an oppressive time we're oppressed because we're oppressed by satan and there's going to come a time when christians are oppressed by the world we live in you know mr moss talked about how what daniel had to go through because his value system and obeying god and god's ways were so different than the babylonian system well you know at the end time what is formed is called babylon and there's going to be the same kind of oppression against people who truly worship and follow the true god but right now right now you have been called by the gospel to experience liberty to experience freedom we were talking uh mr puckett mr moss and i hear before the services started about hypnotism and we were talking about i've never seen anybody actually hypnotized mr puckett said he has i like i've seen it on youtube i i years ago i watched a program where they showed some man there was a hypnotist i think he was in vegas or something and he had people up on a stage and he hypnotized them and he had him act like chickens and do all kinds of wacko crazy things and of course when people are hypnotized they tell them you won't remember anything they wake up and they don't remember it but what's amazing is is what they can get people to do and sometimes they have to twist what they say in other words you could get the average person to choke to death the person next to them but if you convince them under hypnotism the neck the person next to them was a lion and the only way you could kill it was to choke it you might get them to actually do it but the interesting thing about hypnotism is you could have a person sitting in a chair just sitting there arms and legs are free they're free they're free to get up and walk around they're free to to do whatever they want and yep under hypnotism they they can be told that they are chained to that chair and they will believe and act as if they're chained to the chair they just can't get out of it that's just so scary about post hypnotic suggestions people can go into a hypnotic state later because of of what they've been through but people can be put into by their mind by their mind they can be put into a prison they can be put in the chains and yet they really aren't satan deceives us into believing that we are in chains satan deceives us into believing we are still in prison christ came to free us from our prison and he wants you to believe you're still in it and he's credited to make us believe that we're still strapped to a chair still chained down still in shackles and still in prison and it's almost like he hypnotizes the world and if we're not careful we can't slide back into that belief and become despondent because maybe a sin we can't overcome or because of some other issue that's happening to us in our lives i mean it could be as uh you know an inferiority complex or a superiority complex i mean all the things that we have in our minds in our hearts and minds that satan plays with to make us believe we're still captives but we're not we have to realize that we have to understand that so i'm going to go through three things today three ways and tied into the you know the days of unleavened bread we have been delivered we have come out of egypt i mean this is all about the fact that we are now free free to follow god we couldn't follow god before because we were we were hypnotized before god calls us we don't even know we're in a prison after god calls us we see the shackles we see the chains we see the prison and he begins to lead us out of it and as i mentioned on the victory of jesus christ in that sermon how many of us are still dragging the chains and shackles across the desert this is what we do we take the prison with us because it's in our minds it's in our own minds so let's look at three ways that we can sometimes not experience reasons why we don't experience true freedom the freedom that god has brought into our lives and we won't totally experience true freedom true freedom until we're changed we're still going to be partly in this prison because satan's still the god of this world and we're oppressed by that other people oppress us and because of our own corrupt human nature but we are to be in the process of becoming free and what does that mean okay the first point is this is counterintuitive for a lot of people there can be no liberty without law now if you stop and think about that it's obvious okay we're all at liberty there's no law so that would mean you could steal kill cheat you know you could do whatever you wanted because everybody has total liberty well of course that's not true let's look at something that david wrote here in psalm 119. i'm going to read this from the jewish publication society translation we're going to start at verse 33. so this is psalm 119 verse 33 i want you to see not only his viewpoint towards god's teachings and god's law but i want you to see the effect it had on him he writes about this he says teach me o lord the way of your laws i will observe them to the utmost now if you're reading in the in the king james it's it's very similar but i it just this is so powerful the way it's it's translated uh more directly from the from the hebrew give me understanding that i may observe your teaching and keep it wholeheartedly lead me in the path of your commandments for that is my concern this is what i'm concerned about this is what i think about this is what i want to do with my life turn my heart now notice how many different ways he says this he's understanding it's an intellectual exercise it's reasoning out god's way it's studying god's way but he wants everything about himself to be changed he wants freedom david was in so many shackles in his life he was in many times in a prison of his own making just like you and i do and when he saw what god actually taught when he understood it when he applied it to his life he experienced some liberty he says turn my heart to your decrees and not to the love of gain avert my eyes from seeing falsehood by your ways preserve me i know a man one time and took that verse and put it on a big poster or a big piece of paper and put it above his television you know avert my eyes from seeing falsehood fulfill your promise to your servant which is for those who worship you verse 41 may your steadfast love it's his mercy in uh the king james but this it it's his love he understood this was god's love towards him may your steadfast love steadfast love reach me o lord your deliverance as you have promised verse 45 this is the result of this this desiring the searching this this trying to to draw close to god to learn his ways and and live by them he says i will walk about at ease for i have turned to your precepts if you're reading this in the king james or new king james it says i will have liberty david saw the laws of god as a way to freedom because he understood something the more we break the laws of god the more we are in a prison of our own doing now you can break certain laws you go out steal you can uh uh you know bear false witness you can you can uh murder somebody and you're going to end up literally without any freedom at all in fact the more of god's laws you break the less freedom you have whether literally you're in a prison a physical prison or in your own mind how many people are addicted to chemicals which is their own prison counseling many people over the years everything from cocaine of course to alcohol and and listening to them describe the prison they're in or or on the phone with them as they cry literally just broken down because of what they're going through a desire to go back to it or the fact that they have gone back to it and they're in a prison we're all in an internal if you will an inner prison and we god has come or sent jesus christ to break us out of that prison we should be experiencing what jesus's first proclamation of the gospel was all about and they're in luke we should be experiencing that somewhat every day now we don't completely yet because we're not completed yet the days of unleavened bread we've been taking in the unleavened bread of truth and remember what jesus said the truth will set you free he doesn't free us from all our circumstances does he he doesn't god never promised to free all of us from the circumstances we're in he does promise us a lot of things and one of them is freedom as we understand the truth let's go to james chapter one james chapter one we'll start at verse 21. james chapter one i i've actually wanted to give a series of either sermons or bible studies just in the book of james the book of james is a remarkable letter that he wrote to the church james 1 verse 21 therefore lay aside all filthiness an overflow of wickedness as i've said before this one the strangest translations uh it just means wickedness that leads the more wickedness that leads to more wickedness overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls okay so the implanted word what jesus christ brought as the interpretation of the scripture is the word that is to be implanted into us this book is implanted into us and his explanation of it is the word of god but the doers of the word and not the hearers only deceiving themselves or be doers not of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror and he observes himself goes away and immediately forgets what kind of man he is or what kind of man he was and of course paul uses this analogy too about looking into the the mirror a spiritual mirror and we're supposed to see the reflection of jesus christ and here what james says is what we look into the spiritual mirror which is the word of god and in the word of god we see who we really are and when we walk away from that oh that was good i did my bible study today and off i go to work or you know i cheat and and i i you know dishonest and i treat people badly and it's like what did you why did you do that go back look in that mirror we like to look in the mirror and see if other people look good now the mirror is ourselves it's supposed to be our reflection that we're looking at now notice the next verse verse 25 but he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful here but a doer of the work this one will be blessed in what he does now notice he calls the word of god this that comes into us the law of liberty he understands that without law there is no liberty there's chaos without law there is people doing whatever they want there's confusion and that's not god's way so we have to realize that law is part of liberty whenever you and i break the law of god a little one a big one it doesn't matter we look at the precepts of god we look at what is taught in the old and new testaments every time we don't do what god wants us to do we suffer a little bit of imprisonment we suffer some chains only through doing what god wants can we ever really have freedom of our mind now having said that also realize that if we just say okay christianity is nothing more than me exerting myself to do the law okay i'm just going to exert myself and do the law and then i'll have freedom that doesn't work either i mean the law is god explaining to us the difference between right and wrong true christianity is about a relationship with god the father and with jesus christ and god's spirit in us so if we simply look at christianity as a set of rules that's all this is about about and i do these rules and somehow i earned some kind of favor with god through that i earned my salvation then you've just exchanged one form of slavery with another form of slavery because you will never find freedom you will never find true freedom the type of freedom that jesus christ brought as the gospel message so we have to have law without law there can be no liberty but law isn't all there is to this so that's going to bring me to my second point remember the prison you and i live in is much of the time it's in our own minds it's in our own hearts think about it think about people who are hypnotized okay they're hypnotized they don't even know what they're doing somebody else is giving them suggestions and they do it but god wakes us up he calls us we we're removed from that but unfortunately there's still a lot of post-ignotic suggestions that are there that satan tries to to resurrect to bring back into us and so our nature has been corrupted so what happens is we live in this prison and we can never be free as long as you and i live in the prison of our own thoughts and emotions we're trapped i read from moment six in romans 8 in the sermon about the victory christ gives us i'm going to go back and read a couple verses i did not read so let's go to romans chapter 6. romans chapter 6 we'll start at verse 12. yeah romans was here this morning romans 6 and let's start at verse 12. therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lust and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin but present yourselves to god as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to god for sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under law but under grace so here he says look we can't give ourselves over to sin we can't use our bodies to sin we can't use our minds to sin because we are under god's grace god has called us god woke us up god said you know you're hypnotized let me tell you what reality is okay god's brought us out of that which is what the passover days of love and bread are all about so let's get this out so he says you can't give your bodies and your minds over to the slavery of sin okay so he is freeing us from that slavery let's look at verse 17. he says but god be thanked the though you were slaves of sin yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered and having been set free from sin you became slaves of righteousness you know remember jesus said that to the to the pharisees i'm telling you the truth and you will become my disciples and then you'll be set free well they didn't want to be his disciples there wasn't just pharisees there was all kinds of jewish leaders they didn't want to be disciples of jesus christ because i'm already free you know god's already in my life why do i need uh your teachings and who are you to say that you could set me free i mean they were just offended by that here paul is saying that we have to become slaves to god we're going to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes too when jesus died for us he paid for us and we have to accept god's ownership i mean god created us we are his all of creation is his the sovereignty of god mr frankie talked about that at sabbath services the sovereignty of god we are his we must accept that sovereignty we also must accept the price paid that god owns us here's the great paradox of christianity the great paradox is to be free from the prisons we live in the prison of our own mind our own hearts we have to become a slave by a moment isn't that what do you mean to be not be a slave i have to become a slave yes to get out of this prison we have to give everything we are to the one who bought us who paid for us and owns us only when we trust that remember we just read a few minutes ago what david said how he loved god's law and he saw this as an expression of god's love to him and because of that he was at liberty he was at ease he wasn't oppressed he wasn't in a prison anymore why wasn't he in a prison anymore because he had become a slave to god now you say well okay i have to be a slave to god we're going to expand that out in just a minute so stick with us here see mainly what the problem we have is that we spend our lives trying to find a physical solution to a spiritual problem if i could just have a better job if people would just like me more if i if i would just have more money if i would just have this or that or the other if i just had a better status in life if my you know other people wouldn't look down on me so much if you know just if all these things could happen if i could get all the pieces of the puzzle together i would finally be free well if that's true when you look at all the things are available in the united states we'd be the most free people there are and we're not oh we claim freedom now freedom to what commit abortion freedom to do all kinds of horrible things that do what create our own prisons we're just a nation of people walking around in our own prison the whole world is just people walking around in their own prison only through accepting god's absolute ownership over us and saying i'm your slave i give everything i have to you what do you want me to do next lord master master what do you want me to do next we don't use the word lord too much in in just our society lord and master really important words in the bible a lord meant he had ownership he had rule over you and this is more than submitting to god it's surrender to god and that means we have to to have developed in us the fruit of the spirit of self-control over our minds and our hearts not just our actions over our minds and our hearts and remember the self-control that is the fruit of the spirit this is something you and i could do with ourselves or by ourselves god has to develop it in us god has to develop in us we have to be submitting to his work in us so that we are not in a prison of our own making a prison of our own hates a prison of our own lust a prison of our own uh lack of forgiveness a prison of our own fears a prison of our own selfishness we live in these prisons miserable why are we miserable because we won't let christ free us from the prison we're in that's why and we'll blame everybody else for it we live in a prison and blame everybody else that's my husband's fault it's my wife's fault it's my neighbor's fault it's my kid's fault it's my parents fault it's society's fault we just boy that's a big one just everybody it's society's fault right as we blame everybody and every around us when the truth is the prison is of our own making it's in our own mind and then a third point that i want to bring out and i want to go to jeremiah 34 to make this point the prophet jeremiah was of course sent to judah to get them to repent because if they didn't god was going to punish them jeremiah 34 and let's start at verse 8 here jeremiah 34 verse 8 this is the word that came to jeremiah from the lord after king zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people of judah who were jerusalem to proclaim liberty to them so he came out and he and the king said look we have to turn back to god and we have to find this freedom that god gives us through his word and through his teachings this liberty to them now here's specifically what he then he said that every man should set free his male and female slave a hebrew man or woman that no one should keep a jewish brother in bondage you see in the law of god if a israelite owed somebody a great deal of money for some reason and couldn't pay it they could become that person's servant and until they'd paid it off or for as much as six years after the seventh year they were free well they obviously hadn't been doing this so the the basically the jews here had made slaves out of each other he says now when all the princes and all the people had entered into the covenant heard that everyone should be set free as male and female slaves and that no one should keep them in bondage anymore they obeyed and let them go it was a time of liberty they were letting their own people go out of bondage but afterward verse 11 they changed their minds and made the male and female slaves returned whom they had set free and brought them into subjection as male and female slaves you know they thought you know life was better when we had all these slaves to make her food for us and fetch her water for us and clean out the stables for us and now now we've got to pay him to do this i want to have my slaves back therefore the word of the lord came to jeremiah saying thus says the lord the god of israel i made a covenant with your fathers in the day that i brought them out of the land of egypt and out of the house of bondage saying at the end of seven years let every man set free his hebrew brother that has been sold to him when he has served you six years you shall let him go free from you he says but you did they did obey that your fathers didn't obey this now recently he says you did what was right you're free to everybody said let's start all over again liberty of the land freedom from slavery verse 17 therefore thus says the lord you have not obeyed me in proclaiming liberty everyone to his brother and everyone to his neighbor behold i proclaim liberty to you says the lord here's the liberty you're going to get because of this to the sword to pestilence and to famine and i will deliver you to trouble among all the kingdoms of the earth wow he says you know you were supposed to let free everybody and you refused to do it because it was more comfortable to keep slaves it was more comfortable and your life was better you know if your middle class or upper class was better but boy it was nice to have these slaves and it must have been a fairly common practice for this to be this big of an issue he said i told you to set them free so everybody could worship god now under the law if someone once again made some really bad decisions and ended up you know owing somebody money you know they didn't put him in debtor's prison he says okay you got to work it off well many times those people would have their own house they would go to and and you know they would still continue to live on their own but they would have to work you know so many hours a day or whatever it was paying off their debts he said you couldn't free everybody you had to you had to bring them back he said okay because of this you're going to lose your liberty and that gives us some a really important lesson here you know we talk about our slavery to sin we talk about the slavery we have to our own emotions and to our our own thoughts we all struggle with that here's an issue in which people of god lose their liberty because they oppress other people this is a really important lesson for the days of unleavened bread yes we have the slavery of sin yes we have the slavery of the prisons of our own minds but we can lose our liberty that god has given to us because we oppress others we treat others poorly we constantly judge them harshly we constantly just you know look down on other people you know it's it's i have actually seen people you know constantly in a congregation judge the other people always judge them you know you didn't do this right you didn't do that right they judge everybody's motives they always feel superior and then they go from sort of organization organization organization until finally you know they have their own little church of 20 people in their house and eventually there's just them in their family because nobody is as good as them and they've oppressed people all along that's dangerous when we oppress people we will begin to lose our liberty that god has given to us through christ interesting lesson isn't it that's one we almost never think about so we know we've been freed for the passover sacrifice of jesus christ we've been freed from the the tyranny of sin we still fight it and sometimes we still lose but we're freed from it we're moving forward in this battle the victory is promised to us as long as we stay on the path to the promised land we've talked about the prisons in our own minds and hearts which are sometimes the worst thing we have to to deal with and then we also have to deal with the fact that we can lose our liberty because we oppress other people we see ourselves as better than other people we have such a vanity and a self-righteousness that we lose the connection that god has with us when we go back to the new testament we they lived in a world of the roman empire that was once again filled with slavery and as i said when you look through the writings especially of paul many slaves were coming into the church and this slavery was different than hebrew slavery this was absolute ownership where you were actually a piece of property this was much worse than what what jewish slavery would have been with each other and you see how god was upset with the fact that they wouldn't let people free every six years like they were supposed to so let's go to first corinthians 7 and let's look at what paul gives us some instructions to slaves because there's an important lesson here for us lest we thus we are like the the jews before jesus who said oh i've never been in bondage to any man well we all have bondage to sin because that's what he said i've come to free you from sin he came to free us from ourselves and from this sort of hypnotic state that satan has put us in he's come to free us from oppressing each other verse 20 first corinthians 7. let each one remain in the same calling which he was called so he's talking about you know people are coming into the church and and they were from different he even talks about here if you look if you're married to someone and they're still a pagan don't divorce him stay in that state so he's trying to tell people look our circumstances can't control everything we have to come in and be christians in spite of our circumstances he says when you were called were you called while a slave do not be concerned about it you say well do not be concerned about it i have a bad master he beats me every once in a while this is bad he says do not be concerned about it but if you can be made free rather use it he says now if you can be made free being made free was tough usually in the roman empire the way you were made free is you worked a second job after you were done with all your slave work which was you know much of the day sometimes much of the night you did a second job and you saved up the little bit of money sometimes for a lifetime so you could pay off the master and be free you know so and sometimes the master would require sort of a a tax for even what you were making it was hard but he said if you can get free that's great but he knew that most of the slaves could not he says verse 22 for he who is called in the lord while a slave is the lord's freeman likewise he who was called while free is christ's slave what a play in words i had paul sometimes had this this way of using language that's amazing he says if you're a slave christ has made you free you are to be free from sin and you are to be free from the shackles of your own minds even though you're in a state of slavery you can't get out of i mean to run away as a slave in the roman empire was a distance so he says okay you can't get out of that but you're free now those of you who think you're free you're really a slave to christ he's telling them they're all in the same boat no matter what situation you're in here you're all the same we all have come into a relationship with god where we are slaves of christ and why are we slaves to christ he says verse 23 you were bought with a price do not become slaves of men he says you know remember you're bought and paid for you are bought and paid for and you're not really a slave to a man you may be forced to act in slavery but you are free in your heart and your mind this is the freedom we have to look for so much of the time we're still looking at for freedom in physical things you know how many people are are okay we said well i don't use drugs and i don't uh misuse alcohol but we're almost addicted to technology we're addicted to entertainment why we're looking for some kind of way to to be released from the prison we're in now some entertainment's not bad but i mean we're you know sometimes it take the ipad away from your 13 year old and see if they have a nervous breakdown they may tell you something okay we have to realize we're being driven all the time our careers the size of our houses the amount of property we have our cars it's not wrong to have a nice car it's not wrong to have nice property it's not it's not wrong to have a nice house but if that's what we use to feel like we're not imprisoned instead of letting god free us from our sins and from the slavery of our own minds that's just temporary it doesn't solve anything you have been bought and paid for that's the passover you have been de-leavened that's the days of unleavened bread you have taken in the unleavened bread of jesus christ the character the mind of god through his holy spirit we are to be free and that sometimes has nothing to do with our circumstances now we talked about being a slave there's one other scripture that i want to conclude with and read here and it's something that jesus told the disciples on the night of the passover so let's go to john 15. john 15. we read parts of john 15 at the passover service but i didn't read this part john chapter 15 and we'll start in verse 13. he says in verse 13 greater love has no one than this that he laid down once then to lay down one's life for his friends you are my friends if you do whatever i command you no longer listen to this no longer do i call you servants he bought for us he bought he bought us he paid a horrible price that you and i should have paid for ourselves which well we would have to suffer eternal death we can't pay for ourselves in accordance with the justice of god in accordance with the justice of jesus christ i mean you know the father and the son are not somehow different in how they look at justice and love they're the same he says no longer do i call you servants we become slaves we become servants when we you know when we become disciples we move on from that as we come out of this prison more and more something changes he says no longer do i call you servants for a servant does not know what his master is doing but i have called you friends for all things that i heard from my father i have made known to you you did not choose me and this is for us today you and i didn't choose god but i chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain that wherever whatever you ask the father in my name he may give you what a privilege i mean that goes way beyond a servant doesn't it we know jesus christ is our our brother and he says no i'm your friend too i'm your friend i i have never quite wrapped my mind entirely around that that christ sees us sees me as a friend you know i understand the slave relationship friend relationship that's amazing absolutely amazing that's what he told them on that passover christ our passover purchased us so that we can have liberty we can be free we still live in this satan's world it's still a prison but you and i are the shackles of sin is being broken off of us but snap out of the hypnotism ask god to awaken your heart and mind so that you can understand that you've created a prison for yourself god didn't do it god will help you out of that now you and i can't get out of it ourselves but he will help us we have to submit we have to follow but he will do it that's the victory i talked about a month ago but now i'm talking about the result of that victory in your life right now liberty and freedom regardless of your circumstances and in this relationship with jesus christ we become his slave we become his disciple and then we become his friend when he told those jews that is the son of god he was telling them the truth that would set them free and they were appalled by him we become god brings us into this relationship so that we become the slave of jesus christ the disciple of jesus christ and the friend of jesus christ this is the truth that sets us free

Channel: UCG Nashville - TN

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Length: 55min 17sec (3317 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021