Caught Into Freedom

Matthew 13, 47 Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. When Adam and Eve first walked in the garden, they were free in every sense.

They were free to eat whatever they wanted. They were free to walk wherever they pleased. They were even free to eat the fruit of the tree that would mean their death.

God did not put barbed wire around this tree to keep them from getting at it. All he gave them was a warning which they were free to disregard. Into this freedom walked Satan with a net made of lies in order to overcome them and bring them out of freedom into bondage.

You're not going to die if you eat that fruit. For God knows that in the day that you eat of that tree, your eyes will open and you will be as God with knowledge of good and evil. So of their own free will, Adam and Eve walked right into the net and were caught.

No wonder the world now has so many nets dipping and dragging for human souls. There's the economic net which makes all kinds of promises and brings you into bondage to the loan shark, the finance company, your favorite department store. There is the ideological net that holds multitudes of people in bondage to dreams that will never ever come true.

Political nets that hold millions and will, if they haven't already, begin doing the same among us here in this land. Into bondage in such a way that they are tyrannized at every turn. But worst of all is the religious net that brings the mind and the spirit into bondage.

In fact, it's true to say that the entire world in which you and I live is wrapped in a net, which is the net of death and the fear of death and everything that is connected with death. And that every one of us lives inside that net and born of the flesh, there is no way out of it. As long as we're born of the flesh, we can run around in circles and think we're having an adventure.

But we know in our own hearts that we are imprisoned, we are bound. It's no accident, therefore, that the one who first captured our first parents in a net and has held their children, including us, in that net ever since should have the captives snatched out of his control by means also of a net. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.

And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. If we had been among those fish that were in Peter's boat that day, it would have been a strange experience, to say the least. Here we are, swimming hungrily through the sea, looking for something to eat, when we are drawn to a particular spot, surrounded by a crowd of fish, and suddenly lifted by a net up into Peter's boat, where we lie there flopping around, gasping for oxygen.

But suppose that instead of the final destination of this journey out of the Sea of Galilee, we end up not on somebody's dinner table dead, but become instead food for others in such a way that we are still very much alive and free. Surely we're all aware of the fact that the divisions of chapters and verses in Scripture were not in the original manuscripts. They came at a much, much later point.

And while many of these chapter and verse divisions are quite helpful, many times they're quite arbitrary. And the fifth chapter of Luke is an example of how it can be arbitrary, because the passage which begins in chapter 5, verse 1 of Luke doesn't actually come to its end until the 11th verse of chapter 6, if you look at it sometimes. And this chapter 5 of Luke, the fishing chapter, begins with fish being caught in Peter's net.

And it ends in Luke 6 with human fish being delivered out of their bondage into the freedom of God's Sabbath rest. On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some of the ears of grain, rubbing them in their hands. Some of the Pharisees said, Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day? And Jesus answered, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the present, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat.

Freedom. And also gave it to those who were with him. He said to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

From the time Adam and Eve were caught in Satan's net in the garden, the human race has been caught in the bondage of labor debt. In Genesis chapter 3 verse 19, the Lord says, In the sweat of your face you're going to eat your bread until you go back into the ground where you came from. You are dust, and to dust you will return.

And that's the way the bondage has gone from that moment on. Labor, weariness, heaviness, overshadowed by debt, with one respite, the Sabbath, gift that God gave to man, one day out of seven where they would have a foretaste of liberty and peace. See, until Jesus comes with this net, and lifts those who will let themselves be lifted by it into a liberty which is Sabbath rest and Sabbath peace seven days a week, all the time.

How come your disciples are doing that which it is not lawful to do in the Sabbath? Because I am their Sabbath. I'm their freedom. I'm their life.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Free in the Sabbath rest of God.

Free from the death labor of this world. This net that Jesus brings into this world lifts us out of labor death into the liberty and freedom of God's Sabbath rest. Again, the kingdom of heaven is as a net thrown into the sea which gathered fish of every kind.

The kingdom net gathers those who let themselves be lifted by it into freedom, first of all, from sin and death. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

The law, the principle of sin and death. See, the authority and power of sin, the control of sin and death over our lives. For the first time in my life, when I come up in this net of Jesus, I find that no longer does sin or death, do they have power over me, but now I in fact have power.

Granted, there are many areas of our lives where we really don't believe that. But we are being lifted, see, to the place where we don't have to be pushed around by that sin anymore. We can push it around.

We don't have to be intimidated by the fear of death in our inmost parts as we have been all our lives. We can be free. We can walk out of here today free from a particular bondage of sin that has intimidated us right down to the moment we walked in.

That's where the gospel is. The gospel is you're free, stop living as slaves. Don't let sin push you around.

You don't have to. Or fear, or Satan himself. Why? The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

So you begin to take authority over sin and death. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea gathering fish of every kind. The net of the kingdom gathers those who let themselves be lifted by it into freedom from the bondage, the idolatry of the written code, legalism, which is very, very prevalent in Christendom.

Such is the covenant confidence that we have through Christ our God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything is coming from us. Our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not a written code, but in the Spirit.

For the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds. But when a man turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is... For multitudes of people, to this day, the Christian faith is a written code.

You know, one has this brand of written code, and that has that brand of written code. But the Christian faith is, in fact, not a written code, but a relationship with a crucified, risen, living, personal Messiah. The written code kills, the Spirit gives life.

You search the Scriptures, for it is in them that you think you have life, and it is they that testify to me, he says. See, whenever you take out of Scripture a principle, a rule, which can be applied independently from a personal relationship with Jesus, you have already entered into legalism. You've got to be in bondage.

The kingdom net comes down and fishes us out, praise God, of the slough of despair, into which we fall every time we wake up again and realize that we just simply don't have in us the power to live any written code. Can't do it. The kingdom net lifts us into that place where with unveiled faith we behold the glory of the Lord, and by seeing him are changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another by his Spirit.

The kingdom net lifts us up into a living, personal, continuous, burning relationship with Jesus so that his words are no longer simply words on a printed page, but those words are now burned into our hearts, they become our life. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which gathers fish of every kind. The kingdom net lifts those who yield to it into freedom from the bondage of religious flesh.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. What's slavery? The slavery of religious flesh, which says, you've got to be circumcised, you have to observe certain days, you have to adhere to these disciplines, see, where commitment to God is measured by certain specific measurable external standards.

And what happens is you can live by all those external standards so that your heart is still totally untouched with the fire of God, unmelted, unbroken, hard as a stone, still you're living by all the principles, you're going through all the things that prove that you are indeed born again, and everything else, you have the right number of goose pimples, you had just the right experience, you know it all, your heart is dead. The kingdom net, praise God, lifts us out of that it came down and took us out into a relationship with Jesus, a walk with Jesus that produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law, no written code, and those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh, especially the religious flesh, with its passions and desires.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was cast into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. Now, the most wonderful thing about this net is that once you have been lifted by it into freedom, you immediately become the means by which God sets others free. See, when you're caught into this net, you immediately become part of it, you are the net by which God now lifts, together see, in harmony with brothers and sisters, in ways that are beyond our comprehension, lifts other people out of bondage to sin and death, bondage to a written code, bondage to religious flesh.

And you don't have to do it with some kind of high-pressure technique. Talk them into it, sell it, ram it down their throats, not at all. All we have to do is be out there in that sea, the multitude of this world, where God has put us, and live as he guides us out there, and speak as and when he gives us utterance.

God, in his own time and way, will draw the fish, and in his own time and way, he will lift the net. For, the spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us, that we should preach good news to the poor, and proclaim relief to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and set at liberty, not more bonded, liberty to those who are oppressed. And surely if God has sent us to do this, it will be.

We're asking again, Heavenly Father, that you would give us a vision, not some flaky vision up on cloud nine, but right down here in this world where we are, of how we fit into the net that you have already created, and make us to know how much we're a part of it, and deliver us from ridiculous religious curiosity that wants to know all the ins and outs that don't need to be known, and set us free into the doing of your will, exactly where we are. Grant, Lord, that we, by your spirit's power, may live in the freedom that is able to gladly and thankfully do your will, mercy, to such an extent that every life we touch may be touched by you. We ask it for your mercy's sake.