Coming Free 1983

I'd like to start by reading from John chapter 8, verse 31 and following. Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. They answered him, We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to anyone.

How is it that you say you will be made free? Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not continue in the house forever. The son continues forever.

So, if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed. The stirring of the Spirit, which has been going on among us, and among believers in many, many places in recent weeks and months, has been making us conscious of two basic needs in our lives. First, is the need for us to see the face of God.

To pass through the veil and get into the presence of God and dwell there. To have vision and find that inner Sabbath, that inner rest, so that everything we do is quickened. All the strength we need comes from that inner Sabbath dwelling before God.

The second need is for power. To be able to do something for the people who come to us looking for divine help. Power to set the captives free, to break those chains.

We see in our own Lord, the one who sets us free, the example of His own life shows us that it was these two things that characterized Him. First, He lived before His Father all the time. He looked beyond and saw the Father.

And whenever He finished having a time of healing or a time of feeding, He would withdraw to get alone, get back into that inner Sabbath and find that rest, that center in His Father. And the second thing that characterized our Lord's ministry was that He was always filled with the power that was needed to break the chains of the captives who came to Him. And so He brought good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, deliverance to the oppressed.

In recent weeks, we've been concentrating on that first need. The need to be with God, to see Him, to live in His presence, to get inside the veil. But even while we pursue that need, it's necessary for us to at the same time pursue the power of the Lord to set the people free who come to us.

A man is sitting at your kitchen table who's been chained to alcohol for 15 years. And in spite of all the deception he may use to get enough money for that next drink, you can hear coming from his inmost spirit as he talks there, a cry to be free from this. I don't want to go on living like this anymore.

I want to come out of this. Can't you help me? A woman down the block from where you live has been suffering from severe depression for the last three years. So one day she comes to you and says, you know how many doctors I've been to see.

You know all the medication I've been taking. Nothing seems to do me any good. Can't your God help me? And this is happening to us all the time.

And we know that the kingdom of God is not talk, words, just being able to quote scriptures to people, but it's power, being able to confirm that scripture by breaking the chains of the captives who come to us. And so we turn to God and we cry out, Lord, God, why don't we have what we need to be able to truly help these people who come to us? And the answer comes back, just as surely as the blind can't lead the blind, there is no way that you will be able to truly set the captives free until you come out of your own prisons. Now we may not be chained to alcohol.

We may not at the moment be suffering from some severe depression, but you could say without exception, all of us here are still living in a prison. If we're honest, there are aspects of our lives. There are areas of our behavior and our thought life that are absolutely chained.

For instance, some of us are living in a prison called fear of failure. We're not conscious of it all the time, but much of what we do and fail to do is determined by our fear of failure. We're afraid to say what we know we need to say.

We're afraid to do certain things because it might not work out. I might fail. And so we back away more and more from any kind of risk, and we withdraw into a world that's safe and dead.

And we're in prison. And some of us are in a prison called fear of rejection. It's hard to anybody.

You know, we'll talk, we'll pass the time of day, we'll talk about the weather, but we never open our heart because we say, too many times the door has been slammed in my face. Too many people have stepped on my heart in the past. I can't take the risk of suffering one more rejection.

And so we withdraw into a world all of our own, a world that we feel is safe, but it's a world which is death. It's a prison. Many of us are living in a prison called anger.

Eighty-five percent of our time is spent being angry. We get up in the morning, we're mad. We go to bed at night, we're mad.

We're angry at our wife or our husband or at the president or at the government or at God or at the boss at work or whoever it is, our children, our parents. We're not conscious of it all the time, but every time somebody jars us, out comes anger. And now one day we wake up and discover that it's not as if we choose to be angry, but it's now come to the point where anger absolutely has taken possession of us and we can't get rid of it.

Some of us are living in a prison, excuse me, which is called obsession with material security. We spend oh so much time trying to make tomorrow safe. And as we're so busy making tomorrow safe, today slips through our fingers, unlived.

Day after day we go on like this, planning for tomorrow, making tomorrow safe, and today goes by unlived. And that's a prison. Now the word of the Lord to us is that if we're going to truly set the captives free, we have to stand at some place of freedom.

We have to have enough experience of that freedom ourselves that we can speak with authority. Speak as ones who have come out of that prison, whose chains are breaking. How can we talk to people who are in chains when chains have bound our own minds and hands and feet and mouths and hearts? So what's our problem? John chapter 8 verse 34 again.

Jesus answered them, Truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house forever. The son continues forever.

So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed. So how do we come free? Remember the time Jesus had dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. At this dinner, of course, were more than just Simon and Jesus.

There were all kinds of Pharisee friends. And all these men who are sitting at table with Jesus and Simon are good, substantial, upstanding men. They know their Bibles.

They're living right, at least on the surface. And every single one of these men, except Jesus, is in bondage. He's in some kind of prison.

They're having dinner with the one person in all the world who is able to set them free. But they're so blinded by the leaven of the Pharisees that they can neither see Jesus for who he is, nor their own condition for what it is. And they go on having their meal and looking at each other with critical, judging eyes looking at Jesus this way.

And while they're doing this, in comes this woman. Everybody knows to be a sinner. And she goes straight to Jesus and gets down to business.

She stands at the foot of this platform at Jesus' feet, you remember, washes his feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, starts to kiss those feet, then takes this alabaster jar of ointment and pours it on those feet. And when she walks out of that house, she alone is free. Just to look at that passage for a moment, it's in Luke chapter 7, verse 36.

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisees' house and sat at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was sitting at table in the Pharisees' house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, wipe them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, I have something to say to you. And he answered, say on, teacher.

A certain predator had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, the other 50. When they could not pay, he forgave them both.

Now which of them will love him more? Simon answered, the one I suppose whom he forgave more. And he said to him, you have judged rightly. Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.

But he who is forgiven little, loves little. And he said to her, then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

So how does she come free while everybody else remains in prison? She brings to Jesus five things that are very easy to remember. She comes to Jesus with hope, with repentance, with trust, with love, and with surrender. Hope.

Who knows how many times this woman had made up her mind, my life is going to change, I'm not going to be like this anymore, I'm not going to do this anymore for a living, I'm going to change my ways, but it never works out. All of a sudden she slips right back into the old rut. But this time, she fixes her hope on Jesus.

And she comes to him and says to herself, standing at his feet, she begins to wet them with her tears. And her tears are not tears of self-pity, but tears of repentance. I'm so sorry for this life I've lived.

Sorry before you for what I've done to you, how I've let you down against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, oh God. She weeps for what she's done and been as a disappointment to God. And she begins to see this.

And she's turning her life around. Now, she takes her hair and begins to wipe those feet with her hair. And as she wipes the feet of Jesus with her hair, she's wrapping her heart around him in trust.

This is a sign of trust. These feet, these feet are going to take my sins through the dusty streets of Jerusalem to Calvary. These feet are going to receive the nails and from them will come the blood that will wash away my sins.

These feet are going to go down in the grave for me. She trusts him. Trusts him.

And now this woman, with his terrible reputation, begins to kiss his feet. And he lets her do it. Everybody's watching.

People are criticizing. Those feet as an expression of love. Oh, how she loves him.

She's made love many times, but this is love such as she's never experienced before. And she just keeps on loving him and loving him. And now she reaches back and takes this alabaster flask of ointment worth piles of money.

That's one thing she has. Money. This was her treasure before.

But now he's her treasure. So she takes this expensive ointment and pours it on his feet as a surrender of everything she has. Her body, her mind, her spirit and her material possessions all on Jesus.

At last he speaks to her. Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace. And she walks out of that house free from her chains. A free woman, never bound like she was before.

And what the Lord wants for us is to be able to experience that kind of freedom so that we can set free the captives who come to us. In order for us to have that kind of power to set the captives free to come into that kind of freedom, we have to change our position. All of us Christians have been sitting at table with Simon the Pharisee.

And we've been blinded We look at Jesus and we still don't see. We see and see and fail to perceive. We hear and hear and fail to understand.

We know all about Jesus. We listen to him and we feel free to even pass judgment on him and on this woman and on each other. And we're still in prison.

We want to be free. We have to leave our place and we've got to do this. So now we bring our hope.

We know how many times we've determined that we're going to make a change. We're going to not be like that anymore. We're going to break that chain.

It never happened. But now we bring our hope to Jesus. Lord, you're going to have to do this.

And I know you will. And we begin to weep. Male and female, we shed tears over those feet.

And now it's not tears but tears of repentance. Oh, Lord, I'm so sorry for what I've done to you. How I've offended against your love.

I used to be so angry that I let myself down. I didn't come up to my idealized image of myself. Garbage! Lord, I've failed you.

I'm so sorry. Will you forgive me? And now we begin to wipe his feet with our hair. Maybe those of us who are male don't have enough hair to do that.

Long enough or quantity enough, whatever. So we take our shirt, our handkerchief, a towel, it doesn't matter. We grab those feet and we trust them.

These are the feet that take our sins to Calvary. These are the feet that take our guilt down into the grave and we put our trust there and only there. Now comes the hard part for us Americans.

We begin to kiss those feet to show that kind of emotion, to love Jesus to that extent. Especially the males among us. How can we do that? But when we appreciate who this is and what he's done, we begin to love him and we are no longer ashamed to express that love to him no matter who's looking, how many Pharisees may be passing judgment.

That's their problem. We love him. We kiss the feet of the Lamb of God.

And now we reach back and take the alabaster jar of ointment, our possessions, our wealth, we pour it on his feet. This was my treasure before, Lord, but now you're my treasure. I surrender it all to you.

And as we do this and do it with our hearts, he says to us, your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

As the Spirit stirs among us more and more, more and more people find their way to us with needs and cries for help. And we're desperate for the power to give them the help they need. If we're ever going to have that help, we're going to have to leave the table and get down there and wash Jesus' feet.

Our hope. Our repentance. Our trust.

Our love. And our surrender. And the time to begin to do that is right now.