Freedom

I'd like to read a verse, or part of a verse, from 2 Corinthians 3, 17. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. When Jesus stood up in the synagogue in Galilee and read from Isaiah 61, 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, recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

This description of what Jesus came to bring could be summed up with a single word, and that word is freedom. He came to set people free from the chains with which Satan had bound them through their own sin. He didn't just come to talk about freedom, or promise freedom for some distant future time, but to give them freedom now.

When people drew near to Jesus, always, somehow, some kind of chain would snap. They would be set free from their demons, or from the bondage of darkness for their blind eyes, or the bondage of a crippled limb, or a tongue that is not loosed, or an ear that can't hear. Women bowed down with guilt and despair are lifted up.

Weak, spineless men are made strong. All with the mark that these people have been touched by the finger of God in some way, is that something which before was bound is now free. And this taste of freedom, and that's all it was in the beginning for these people, was a sign to them of the complete and total freedom which they could have if they would continue to follow Jesus.

If they would go on with him. 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.

And this is the mark of a disciple of Jesus has always been and is now. One who is truly a disciple is one who has been set free. And you can't intimidate him.

You can't threaten her. You can't make her scared. You can't mislead.

You can't bribe. These people who have really begun to follow Jesus and have gone on beyond the first miracle, and have learned to be faithful to him in his word, are always people who know the truth, they can see the truth and they can recognize a lie, and they are not misled. But always, wherever the word of God is going forth with any kind of clarity at all, the father of lies immediately sends his agents right in behind.

And the agents of Satan are there to collect into their web of deceit. Those people who started out by following Jesus but did not continue in his word. And so in the very shadow of the temple of God, very quickly you have a whole multitude of people, religious people, church people, who think of themselves as Christians, but they're not, they're slaves.

Maybe they were free five years ago or six months ago, but they're not anymore. See, for a while they began to really have that liberty and joy as they walked with Jesus, as they began to experience this expansion of the mind and spirit that comes when you obey his word. But then they began to drop off, and immediately they are picked up by these agents of the devil, whose one weapon is the lie.

And some of them fall into the bondage of legalism, very popular. So that now they have their Christianity down to a whole set of rules. And they're busy running around, ramming their do's and don'ts on everybody else.

And they have a rule for everything from how many meetings you have to attend, to whether you can hold hands with your fiancé. And this is not life, this is death. Jesus is not in this.

Even Jesus himself has now become for them no longer their Lord and their friend, but he's their doctrine machine. And it spreads death. The Lord is not in this, he can't be in it.

For where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And then there are those who fall away from walking with Jesus into the bondage of self-righteousness. And this is a very subtle thing.

You know, it's easy for us to recognize self-righteousness in other people. See, but very often the most dangerous kind of self-righteousness is the kind where you have people who are very open, humble, teachable, marvelous to be around, inside their own circle. But they stand inside their own circle and despise those who are on the other side of the line.

People outside their own circle simply don't measure up. And actually, while inside their circle they seem so open and teachable, they're extremely hard. And that circle, which for them is so good and so holy and so right, is actually their prison.

And we really have to ask ourselves if we haven't been drawing circles like this. Then there's the bondage into which many fall, of the lukewarm mind. Don't ever let Satan try to tell you that the lukewarm mind is a free mind.

The lukewarm mind is always an enslaved mind. It's a paralyzed mind. It's a mind that has all kinds of wonderful intentions, but it never does anything.

The lukewarm mind can see that man who's been beaten and stripped and left to die by the side of the road, but it can never pull itself out. The lukewarm mind will sit there and listen to a flat-out lie about a brother and sister that needs to be challenged and do nothing about it. Often it will just nod its head, you know, and even agree.

Now the sad thing about this bondage of legalism and self-righteousness and lukewarmness is that when you're in it, you don't think of it as a prison. You think of yourself as living the normal Christian life. You look upon yourself as mature.

And you really look back and even make jokes about the days when you really had some... And you look down your nose at those people who are a hundred times more free than you. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And if there is no freedom to do the will of God in your daily actions, in your mind, in your heart, this is a sure sign that the Spirit of God is there.

And the best thing that you can do is admit that. And go back to Jesus and start over again. He came to set us free.

And He will do this. There's no such thing as going to the cross and throwing yourself on Jesus' mercy, you know, crying out to Him for deliverance, and not coming out of that bondage. You know, everyone who comes to Him receives more than he can ask or think.

If you continue in His Word, you are His disciples indeed, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. And to have some idea of the kind of freedom or how this happens, how this works, all you have to do is go into the book of Acts and see what happens to the people there. And here are just some examples.

Certainly it's not exhaustive. But first of all, Jesus will set you free from the fear of man. So they called Him and charged Him not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John answered, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. Now this is the same Peter who not long before was afraid even to admit that he knew Jesus.

See, but now Peter's delivered from the fear of man. And he's able to stand before these men of great power in the land who are able to, you know, have him killed if necessary, and speak flat out the plain truth about Jesus no matter what happens, no matter what the consequences are. Because he's no longer afraid.

And the same deliverance from fear of man, the same liberty, is what God would have us receive. And we'll have this if we continue in our Lord's Word. If we will do the things which right now the Spirit of God has impressed on our minds.

In many of our minds right now there are things we know very well God has told us. Jesus will also set you free from bondage to man, money and things. Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul.

And no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own. But they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

And great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet and distribution was made to each as any had need. They didn't have social security.

They didn't have pension plans. They didn't have general assistance. So their security was an extra piece of land or a house over here.

And now they begin to relax their grip even on these things. They begin to share. Because they've been delivered from this bondage to mammon which we know all too well.

This bondage to money and things which had plagued them all their lives. And many of us are still so busy trying to ensure that we will go right up to our dying moment with plenty of money that we're dead already. You might as well be broke and alive than comfortable and dead.

And we need to admit this. This is a curse that's on the human race. And from this curse our Lord will set us free if we'll let Him.

There's no such thing as being a disciple of Jesus Christ and being constantly chained to mammon. You can't serve God. We've driven God right out of our lives by making mammon our God instead of God.

You can't serve God and mammon said Jesus. And that's exactly the way it is. And the only one who can set us free from our bondage to money and things, Jesus will also set us free from our prejudices.

And don't say, oh, but I don't have any prejudices. The Jewish people didn't look upon it as prejudices. They've been taught this from the time they were so high.

Samaritans are no good. But now, Philip went down to a city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip.

And when they heard him and when they saw the signs which he did, for unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. And the Samaritans too had their prejudices.

But now here comes this Jew down to our town, and he brings us the word of God and all these marvelous things happen. The Jews were taught to have nothing to do with Gentiles, not even to go into their house. But now look what happens.

While Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to them, Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them. And these three men are Gentiles, and they lead Peter and his Jewish brothers to the house of a Gentile.

And they go into that house, and they preach the word in that house, and into that house falls the Spirit of the living God. And again, a prejudice is broken. And it's not as if they were unique in their narrow-mindedness and their prejudice.

That's just not solved. You and I are living in one of the most prejudiced places in the whole world, the Detroit area. One of the worst.

There's not one of us without it. We have prejudice about groups, about races, about churches, about fellowships, about doctrinal positions. If you're Pentecostal, you hate the non-Pentecostals.

If you're non-Pentecostal, you hate the Pentecostals. And on this goes. And so we don't really see people as they are.

We don't see a man. We see a black man or a white man. And all kinds of ugly things come up in our minds.

We're all tainted with this until Jesus sets us free. And surely if he could break down those rigid Jews from their prejudice, he'll do the same with us. So we get to the place where we will no longer form these judgments about these people that we don't even know, or hardly know, and already despise them before they open their mouths, and we'll begin to take them as they are.

And we won't just somehow subtly always move only in our own circle. The Lord never led me to go there. The Lord never led me to go here.

I always managed to go to those places where I'm comfortable, where I have people of my own kind, or my own view. And some of us blame it on our shyness. We're so shy.

I was born shy. But it's not shyness. For many of us, what we call shyness is simply a bunch of preconceived ideas about these people so that we're afraid to go over and talk to them because we already know they're going to jump down our throats.

So we hang to our own little shell. But when we allow our Lord to set us free from this garbage, and we move across those barriers which man has raised up, and we begin to deal with people as God sees them, and as God loves them, and you'll be dealing with people who may be prejudiced against you. That's their problem.

But you just make sure under the Lord that you're not prejudiced against them, and that you're open. God helps us from being so quick to say, well, I don't have that problem. There's not a person in this place who doesn't have that problem.

We all have it. And we'd better do something with it. Because the same spirit who dealt with this problem there is dealing with this problem here.

And finally, Jesus will set us free from the intimidation of our approaching death. Then Paul answered, What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be in prison, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Paul knew that if he goes up to Jerusalem, and he was just some miles away from it now, I think this was in Caesarea, if he goes up there, he's going to be probably arrested, likely killed.

But he's free now, at last, from this fear of death which lurks in the back of the mind of every unregenerate man. You know, this thing in us that only begins to crop up when we find ourselves in danger, but it's there all the time. You know, that keeps trying to get another day out of life, to push death away one inch further.

What is it, you know, in our hearts that causes us to have this dread of the unknown, and have us constantly try so hard to ensure that tomorrow we'll be safe? What is it in us that causes us to get quite squeamish about looking straight on at our loved one's death, or our friend's death? You know, because every time we look at someone, we're reminded of the fact that the sense of death is on the other end. Even if Jesus comes back tonight, this body of flesh and blood is gone. Now, Jesus took upon himself our nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.

And this deliverance from the fear of death is not something that comes after you die. What good is it? May God help us to be really honest with ourselves. As we come to the table of the Lord today, you know, are we truly coming here as men and women who are free? Or are we coming to this table as people who are still slaves? What good is it going to do me if I come up here claiming that I'm free, pretending that I'm free when I'm really bound? How can Jesus set me free when I won't admit that I'm bound? But if I come to his table admitting and confessing to him that there are chains around my life that should long ago have been dissolved by his blood, if I come to his table claiming deliverance and asking, I'm going to use the word claiming, and asking that he will set me free, you know, this thing that he promised, then he's able to do something for me.

And he'll do it for me. And that's why he's here right now. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, sent me to proclaim deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there has the Lord God to start with the bondage that we ourselves are in. We've been, many of us, so busy trying to set everybody else free when we ourselves are in slavery. And we ask that this day there may be this evidence of the presence of Jesus in our midst, that every one of us who comes asking to be set free from whatever the chain may be may experience just that and go on his or her way really rejoicing and spreading an atmosphere of freedom and gladness and joy everywhere we go today.

We thank you, Lord, for your mercy's sake.