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  FREEDOM FROM A LIFE OF SIN
  by Emanuel Esh
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of confessing and
repenting of sins to experience true freedom and walk closely with
Jesus. It highlights the power of a clean heart in living a life that
honors God, contrasting the bondage of hidden sin with the freedom of a
clear conscience. The message stresses the need to bring all sins to
light, whether major or minor, to avoid the consequences of hidden sin
and to walk in the fullness of God's forgiveness and mercy.

Duration: 37:55 Topics: "Confession", "Freedom in Christ"
Scripture References: Psalm 139:23, Proverbs 28:13, 1 Timothy 5:24, Isaiah 43:25, James 5:16

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of confessing and repenting of
sins to experience true freedom and walk closely with Jesus. It
highlights the power of a clean heart in living a life that honors God,
contrasting the bondage of hidden sin with the freedom of a clear
conscience. The message stresses the need to bring all sins to light,
whether major or minor, to avoid the consequences of hidden sin and to
walk in the fullness of God's forgiveness and mercy.

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CONTENT
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Amen. You may be seated. Just to have Jesus in our hearts, just to have
Jesus to be a friend, is life.

That means a lot. I was impressed with the song, Be Thou My Vision, this
week. I could just begin with a couple of those verses there.

May this be the heart. This is my heart. I want this to be my life.

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Not be all else to me, save that
thou art. Thou my best thought by day and by night.

Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. Waking or sleeping, whether
I'm awake or whether I'm sleeping, thy presence is my light. Be thou my
wisdom, thou my true word.

I ever with thee, and thou with me, Lord. Thou my great father, I thy
true son. Thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one.

This speaks of a relationship that we can have with Jesus. Jesus is my
life. High King of heaven, my victory won.

May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's sun. Heart of my heart,
whatever befall, still be my vision, O ruler of all. No matter what
happens, no matter where I am, I want Jesus to be my vision.

My life in every situation. I was meditating a bit about just the
Christian life, how that it's when Jesus comes into our hearts that our
hearts are changed and our life is transformed. He takes away our sins.

Because God put our sins upon Jesus Christ on the cross for all the sins
of the whole world, but not everyone takes advantage of that. But by
God's grace, I found that salvation and I gave my sins to Jesus, and he
gave me eternal life. I'd like to just share a little, a short message
here this morning.

Contrasting a life of freedom from sin and what it's like to live under
the bondages of sin. Sin came into the world in the beginning through
Adam and Eve, disobeying God, and so sin is disobedience to God. And I
remember the freedom that we experienced when we came to Jesus.

It's now 33 years ago, and how our lives were transformed because of
that life that Jesus gives us. We got converted in the beginning of a
really spirit-filled revival meetings. And then there was some, we had
meetings like each evening for like three weeks, except for like Monday,
Tuesday night.

And we went to those meetings and the preaching of God's word came in
such a way that we would repent and repent again. And we found such
freedom as we opened those deep recesses of our heart and allowed God to
shine his light in there. Then those things which are done in darkness,
light is shed upon them and it comes out.

And we found such freedom. And the preacher would preach on bitterness
one evening and we'd realize we're bitter. We would repent, we would hit
the altar, we would confess our bitterness.

And then another night he would preach on immorality and fornication and
adultery and we would recognize, oh my, I've done so many immoral
things. And we would respond to that call and we would get right with
God. We'd confess those sins and it was such freedom and such joy.

And I look back to that today and I still believe that that is one of
the most important things that is a very major part of my life as to why
I have been able to follow Jesus continually without stumbling and
without falling, without doubt and without fear. It's because my heart
was clean. Our hearts were clean and we delighted in that.

And that gave us the freedom and the power to live out the life of Jesus
in our lives. And I look back to that today and I'm still saying that is
one of the reasons that I'm able to walk in freedom today. And sometimes
we hear of, you know, people who fall into sin and a lot of difficulties
come their way and I just, you know, it's because they have and for many
people they have never had that beautiful advantage of having themselves
cleansed thoroughly, you know, in the beginning of their Christian life.

But they continue to hold things in darkness and they continue to walk
their life while there's still hidden sin there. Jesus said in Luke
chapter 12, For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed,
nothing hidden that shall not be known. So Jesus says there is nothing
that's going to stay covered.

There's nothing that's covered that's not going to be revealed.
Everything that is covered in our lives is someday going to be revealed.
I wonder how King David made it.

I wonder what happened in his life as he committed adultery with another
man's wife, the king, the leader of Israel. And then he wanted to hide
that of course. And that's what sin does.

Sin wants us... Satan beguiles us to sin and then when we sin, he
beguiles us to hide it because we're ashamed of our sin, right? And King
David was... committed adultery there with a woman and she had a
husband. He was out in the war. And then she sends a message to him and
says, I'm pregnant.

And David's like, whoops, this could get found out. So he sends a
message to the captain of the army and says, send Uriah the Hittite back
home here. And so Uriah comes back into Jerusalem there and he meets
David and David tells him, you're doing a good job, you know, and why
don't you go home to your wife? And David dismisses him and that soldier
goes out and sleeps on the door of David's... of the temple or
somewhere.

He did not go down to see his wife. He was so committed to serving in
the war that he didn't even go home to see his wife. And David found out
about that.

David's like, well, I'll try something else. So the next evening David
gets him drunk, sends him lots of food and lots of drink and gets him
drunk and he's thinking then he'll kind of loosen up and he'll go down
and see his wife. But he didn't.

So David had... David took another step and he wrote a letter to the
captain of the army and said, have this man killed. Set up a strategy
somehow that he would be killed. And so Uriah was a very... He was one
of David's 30 mighty men and purposely they set him in the front of the
battle and then retreated and he was killed.

And afterward, after his wife mourned for a while and the mourning was
over, then David went and took her to be his wife. Now how do you think
David was feeling? He was faced with guilt. He was facing his sin.

Or he was in sin and guilt, but he was trying to cover all that. He
worked so hard to cover his sin. In Proverbs it says, he that covers his
sin shall not prosper.

But whoso forsakes and confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.
Sometimes you wonder why some people's life just never prospers. He that
covers his sin shall not prosper.

You want to have victory over sin in your life. You want to have victory
in your walk with God. Clean up your life.

If there's covered sin, it just doesn't work out. Think of the sons of
Jacob sold their brother Joseph to the Ishmaelites. He was taken away to
Egypt as a slave.

And many, many years later, they were still under conviction. When they
went down to Egypt to buy food and this king treated them so harshly,
which was actually Joseph their brother, they said to each other, oh,
this is because of what we've done to Joseph. This is what's happening
to us.

This is because of what we did to Joseph. And Reuben said, did I tell
you not to hurt the child? Now his blood has been poured onto us. You
could tell those men were still guilty.

And your sin will find you out. Be sure your sin will find you out. I
think of the story.

I don't know when I heard this story. It was a long time ago. But I'll
put it in more of a personal way.

I grew up Amish in a very religious setting. I had an older brother,
Levi. So it didn't actually happen to us, but I'll put it in that
perspective.

So I'm Manny and my older brother Levi, he's two years older than I am.
These two boys playing one day, practicing with their slingshots. They
were getting pretty good at like 10 or 12 years old.

Levi dares Manny to try to shoot one of the chickens. Manny takes it up
and he fires that shot over at that chicken and hits the thing on the
head and it plops over and dies. And this was Dad's favorite banty
chicken that he was going to take to the fair to show that fall.

And they kind of ran and hid. Dad comes along. He finds that banty
chicken laying there and he approaches the boys and says, you know,
boys, what happened? Levi says, I didn't do it.

Manny says, I don't know what happened. That evening, you know, Levi and
Manny were after supper. They were there and Mom says, Levi, I want you
to wash the dishes.

Levi doesn't like washing dishes so he goes over to Manny and says,
Manny, I want you to wash the dishes. He says, Mom told you to do it. He
says, remember the chicken? And Manny like, oh.

And Manny goes and washes the dishes. The next day, Dad tells the boys
to manure out the hog pen and afterward they can go swimming. So they go
down there and Levi gets the idea and he says, Manny, you're going to do
the work.

He says, I'm going to go swimming a while. Manny says, no, you're not.
Dad said we're going to do it together.

Levi says, remember that chicken? Manny kind of wilts down, yeah. And so
he cleans out the hog pen and Levi goes swimming. In this way, Manny
became a slave to Levi.

Whenever Levi didn't want to do something, he would like, you know, roll
his eyes and nod at him like, chicken. And Manny would do what he was
told to do. They went to town one day and they were getting an ice cream
cone.

Levi says, Manny, you're paying for mine too. Manny says, no, I'm not.
Remember the chicken? And he ends up paying for his ice cream cone.

This is, this went on months and it turned into years. And Manny was
such a slave to that sin. All that his brother Levi had to do was just
roll his eyes and kind of nod his head and he knew what he had to do.

And he would do whatever he was told to do. Remember the chicken? And
this thing followed him. This chicken thing followed Manny continually.

Well, the boys were getting stronger and growing up three years later
and so Levi was 14 now and he was, you know, had some muscle there. So
they were playing baseball one Sunday afternoon and he whacked that ball
really hard. A line dragged it over towards the neighbor's house, went
through the neighbor's front window in the kitchen.

Neighbor came out, comes out angry and upset and he's saying, who did
that? And the boys all kind of shuddered, you know, and Levi kind of
looks at Manny and rolls his eyes and like... And all the other boys
say, I didn't do it. Manny kind of feels pressured. He says, and the
neighbor's really angry and saying, that window's gonna cost $50 to fix.

Manny just, you know, under pressure, he says, well, I'll pay for it. So
all Levi had to do was just say, chicken. And he would do it.

That evening, Manny went to bed and he was thinking about this. He's
like, $50. And finally it dawned on him, I could just go and confess to
my dad about the chicken and then Levi would have no more power over me.

So he goes downstairs to his dad and his mom. They're still up. His
daddy says, do you remember the chicken? Dad's like, I have no idea.

I don't remember any chicken. What's up? Manny couldn't forget about the
chicken for three years. So he confessed.

Dad, he said, I'm the one that killed that chicken, you know, three
years ago. Your special dandy chicken. And he's crying.

Dad, please forgive me. He said, I'll pay for the chicken. Dad says,
well, the chicken was just worth $5, he said, but it's already been
paid.

You don't need to pay for that. It's already paid. I forgive you, son.

Manny goes back to bed. Next day they're out doing something and Levi
kind of rolls his eyes and says, chicken? Manny's like, I ain't doing
it. Levi's like, well, I'll tell dad about the chicken.

He says, go ahead, don't matter. Dad already knows. I confessed it.

From that day going, Levi had no more power over his brother. Remember
the chicken. You know, the Spirit of God puts a little ding in our
hearts and our minds.

Remember what happened back there. Because He wants us to be clean. He
wants us to get everything out.

He wants us to bring everything out of our hearts so we can be clean and
free and live a life that is honoring to God. The freedom of a clear
conscience. Freedom from guilt.

Freedom from condemnation. Now I know that when we come to Jesus, when
we simply believe in Jesus, we are covered by the blood. His blood
cleanses and the spiritual scent takes away all of our sins.

And we're forgiven. But there are some sins in our life that maybe they
need to be confessed. Maybe they need to be confessed to specific
people.

Maybe we've hurt somebody. Maybe we've, you know, And are there some big
sins that matter more than others? There are. I was thinking of one of
the refugees there in Greece.

A man that came to Oasis there had been a soldier in the Syrian war and
had killed many people. He found Jesus. And Jesus' blood covers all
those sins that he's done.

And the man walked in forgiveness even though he's done a lot of
wickedness. But he did say, he said, whenever I see somebody that's
missing a leg or a hand or something here in the refugee camp, he says,
I have to wonder maybe I'm the one that did it to them. And while he's
forgiven, yet those things, you know, still are there.

There's not condemnation. There's not necessarily guilt. But there's
still a consequence for the sins that we've done in the past.

God has put our sins on Jesus. And when we believe in Jesus, our sins
are forgiven. Saul, in the New Testament, after Jesus was raised from
the dead and went back to heaven, and the church began to grow, Saul was
a Jewish leader and he was against the Christians and against that way.

And anyone who believed in Jesus, he was out to persecute them. He was
out to kill them. He put many people in prison and he killed many
people.

Yet when he met Jesus because on the road to Damascus when Jesus
appeared to him in a bright light, his life was changed. And his sins
were forgiven. This man had killed people.

God is able to forgive us when we kill people. But yes, there are some
consequences. Paul talks about that later on.

There's also a verse in 1 Timothy 5, 24 that says, some men's sins are
open beforehand. Some men, they open their sin. They open it up their
heart and they reveal the sins of their lives.

And those sins, it says, some men's sins are open beforehand, going
before to judgment. And we have the opportunity to open our heart, open
our sins and take them to judgment before the judgment day. And then it
says, some men, they follow after.

And people who have hidden sin, people who are hiding something in their
lives, that that sin just follows them everywhere they go and everything
they do, that sin follows them. And when they die, that sin will follow
them. When they go to judgment, that sin will follow them and it will
condemn them on judgment day.

And so we want to keep ourselves completely clean and clear. When I look
at this congregation, I see a lot of younger generations and most of
you, including all the children, have had opportunity to be raised in a
Christian home. Your parents have probably done the best they knew how
to save you from a lot of evil and wickedness.

And that's a great blessing. But you know, even in that situation, even
though you've been very protected, you may still have things which
you've done that you are ashamed of and are hiding and are covering up.
What would it be like to live your whole life with a big sin hidden
somewhere? I'll tell you another story.

I don't have all the details. It doesn't really matter that much. But
the lesson we can learn.

Four young men went on a hunting trip many years ago. Maybe 80 years ago
or so. They were kind of living it up but in that on that hunting trip
they got in trouble.

And a game warden or a sheriff caught them for what they were doing. I
don't know what they did but they injured the man and left. A little
while later they decided to go back and see how the man was doing and he
was dead.

And then they went home. I don't know how far away it was. Might have
been several states.

But they never got caught by the law. They never got caught by the law.
And those men young men got married raised families never opening that
thing up.

One of the men in his older years couldn't live with himself anymore so
he took his life. Two of them were brothers. One of those brothers
couldn't live with himself anymore.

And his older age took his life. The other brother was a bishop. Older
man.

His son found him hanging in the barn one day. Three of those four men
took their lives. And the fourth one on his deathbed confessed what
they'd done.

Some men their sins follow after them. Some men's sins are open before
him. If I want to live for Jesus if Jesus is my life my everything how
can I live for him? How can I focus like John said here this morning?
What if there's something I'm hiding in my life? And I really want to
follow Jesus.

But what if there's something so big something I'm just thinking I can't
ever confess it. I would be too ashamed. Where do you think the focus of
that person's life will be? His focus will be on his sin.

He cannot get away from that. But all the joy and the blessing of
opening up and confessing Now I'm not talking about if you you know I'm
thinking of major sins. There are smaller sins.

There are sins of ignorance according to what the Bible says. You didn't
know it was a sin or you didn't realize it happened. And when it comes
to your memory then you go and make a sacrifice.

But there were sins in the Old Testament that there was no sacrifice
for. If you committed that sin you were worthy of death. And really we
are worthy of death.

Every sin has to be punished. But Jesus took our punishment away. He
took that upon himself.

And we can be free. And so I just want to encourage our hearts here
today. In the days we live how will I stand? How will I be free? Turn
with me to Psalm 64 for a few closing thoughts.

I know I've probably mentioned this chapter before these Psalms but Do
you believe that all the things all your sins get written down in God's
book? Is that right? There's a record being kept of everything that you
do everything you've done all the records are there. And this goes back
to every day every moment of your life. All the records are there.

God knows they're there. You've probably forgotten a lot of them. But
Satan also has access to some of your records.

If your records are not if your sin is not covered by the blood then
Satan has access to see those things. And if he finds those things in
your life that have never been confessed never been repented of he has
an open door into your life to bring devastation to you your family your
business your children your grandchildren and so forth. Let's just read
Psalm 64 our first couple of verses.

This is again David praying for deliverance from his enemies. And
David's enemies were human beings. Our enemies today are not human
beings our enemies today are Satan and all his evil spirits.

Listen what they do. Hear my voice O God in my prayer preserve my life
from fear of the enemy. Fear of the enemy hide me from the secret
counsel of the wicked.

So we see that the wicked the enemies they are having counsel they talk
together from the insurrection the workers of iniquity again the evil
ones. And what do they do verse 3 they sharpen their tongue like a sword
they bend their bows to shoot their arrows even bitter words. Where do
bitter words come from? Bitter words come through people whom Satan is
using and Satan uses those bitter words and he shoots those into the
heart of the upright that they may shoot in secret at the perfect.

Suddenly do they shoot at him and fear not. We know how Satan comes and
he attacks he accuses us and you're this and you're that but if our sins
are covered then Satan has no right and has no ground has no power and
we say Satan go away I'm not listening to you because I already
confessed those things and my father has forgiven me and my father has
already paid for them through the blood of Jesus Christ his son but if
we have sin hiding sin Satan can come and use that to attack us in our
mind in our heart they encourage themselves verse 5 in evil matter they
commune of laying snares privately and they say who shall see that if
you could just picture Satan and his evil spirits planning together to
set snares and traps for you to fall this is what they do they want you
to fall and what else do they do they search out iniquities they
accomplish a diligent search both the inbred follow every one of them
and the heart is deep and so Satan takes the record that seems like he
has access to the record of your life and he searches through diligently
and he searches to find out is there anything in this person's life that
is unconfessed sin and if he finds that unconfessed sin in your life
then he has access to you and say remember the chicken type of thing
remember what you did back there and you like hang your head I want to
encourage all of us to consider the freedom that comes when we confess
and we open up we say I'm guilty I did wrong I have sinned against God I
have sinned against this person maybe it's my brother in the church
maybe it's my dad maybe it's my mom maybe it's my wife or my husband or
my children this is where it's a this is where we can walk in the
freedom that Jesus gives and when my heart is clean then he becomes the
vision of my life and my life is him my life is Jesus and that's what I
want for each of you I want each one of us to be able to have that kind
of life in Jesus and this is the one of the first steps is to be clean
and to give yourself to walk with him to know him and to follow him
let's pray our father in heaven I thank you that you've sent your son
Jesus and you put all the sins of the world upon him he willingly took
our sins to the cross where he suffered and where he died to pay with
blood the sins of the whole world and I believe that and I receive it
lord but then father you raised him from the dead to prove him to be
victory the victor over sin death and hell over satan and today father I
can walk in freedom and I can walk with Jesus because of a clean heart
father pray for clean hearts today truly lord oh I pray father you would
not if there's anyone listening to this message I pray that they would
allow the spirit of God to bring to the surface any unconfessed sin any
darkness anything that's covered bring them to light I thank you father
in Jesus name amen and no you don't need a priest to go confess your
sins to first of all you confess them to God but it does say confess
your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be
healed there's real power and so if some people they go to God and they
just want to pray to God because they're ashamed to open their sins up
to anyone else they just beg God to forgive them but they never but
oftentimes they don't have a real sense of forgiveness and peace because
it's still covered my brother my sister my dad my mom they still don't
know I'm still hiding it if I'm still hiding it then I'm not clear and
free but I would say each one of us needs to go to whatever length it
takes to make sure that I'm not covering it if I want to get married I
want to have a clean and pure relationship if I hide anything from my
spouse it's it will divide and bring darkness so may God bless each one
of you be thou my vision oh Lord my life thank you

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/FZ4Egs811_Q.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/emanuel-esh/freedom-from-a-life-of-sin/
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