True Freedom

Yesterday we celebrated July 4th – the day that the US declared independence from Great Britain. As a high school English teacher, I taught 11th grade American literature and one of the pieces of literature that we studied was the Declaration of Independence. I would have the students work in groups to translate the language of 1776 to modern terms. I enjoyed watching the students respond in shock to the things the English were doing to the colonies:

- Playing a shell game with local government meetings

- Forcing families to provide food and lodging for an occupying army

- Forcing colonists to have to stand trial overseas on trumped up charges

- Paying mercenaries to come and fight against us

- Capturing our citizens and forcing them to fight for England in her navy.

The list goes on and on. Until my students understood the Declaration of Independence in their own terms did they really know the value of the freedom that we enjoy. July 4th was truly about freedom from tyranny.

Steve’s sermon last week was a great introduction to this week. We have a sin problem and it is completely our problem. Steve pointed out that there are many who have worldviews that place man at the center of the universe. There are moral relativists (there is no single true morality), determinists (we are just marching to our DNA), secularists (religion is only an emotional crutch), and humanists (WE are the world and then a feast for worms). BUT there is something that continues to convince us that there is something more. There is a problem, and there needs to be a solution. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, convicting us of our pride and drawing us to a Savior – Jesus Christ.

Our Freedom Demands a Savior

One of the arguments that people will use against the Gospel message centers on salvation. They may make a statement similar to this, “What do I need to be saved from?” I suppose that there were many prior to the American Revolution who would argue the same point. Like frogs in a warming pot of water they didn’t notice their rights being slowly ripped away. They had lost an understanding of what it meant to be free. Robert Ova offers this analogy

Why do we need Salvation? What do you need to be saved from? I have often wondered this question and what goes through minds of people when they hear this. In order to understand salvation, we first need to understand the need for a savior. Nobody would ever desire to be saved from something that they do not believe they need saving from. Let’s say I knocked on your door, and I said, “I sold my house, emptied my children’s savings accounts and life savings and I am now practically homeless because I needed the money to buy you this yellow pill.” You would probably become confused, and maybe agitated that I knocked on your door with such foolishness and instead of looking at me as a hero, you probably see me as some crazy person. This is the reaction we often get from people when we are trying to explain Salvation to them. But what if I knocked on your door and said this: “Hi. My name is John and I am the assistant to the doctor that you saw last week. The results came back and you have a rare disease that only gives you 24 hours to live. The only chance of survival is by getting this yellow pill that cost $1 million dollars. But don’t worry, I sold my house, emptied my life savings and children’s savings and was able to obtain you the yellow pill. Here you go” Your reaction would no longer be one of confusion, anger, agitation etc…but probably be one of gratitude and thankfulness. The difference is that now you understand the need for the yellow pill. Without understanding the need for it, there would be no desire or appreciation of it.[1]

This is why I think Steve’s message about sin was so important last week. We have a sin problem and it is terminal. It is not Adam and Eve’s fault alone but each of us are guilty of sin and need the salvation offered in Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:23 NIV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 6:23 NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 10:13 NIV

for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

We call this the “Romans Road” because it points out the need and the solution for True Freedom by being saved by Christ.

Putting Faces to Freedom

You and I know that when we talk to people about our convictions that Jesus Christ is our Savior, people get a bit uncomfortable. I find that stories are great ways to create vivid pictures of our needs. In the NT, there are several stories about people having known physical or emotional needs AND a greater need for salvation from their sins.

The Paralytic

Mark 2:1–5 NIV

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

There is a whole message to be preached about the friends and the efforts that they went through to get their friend to Jesus. But, let’s consider the man without the use of his hands and/or feet. What a hopeless feeling he must have been facing. We get no background on this man. Was his paralysis from birth, or the result of diving into the Jordan River and hitting a rock? Maybe it was childhood foolishness or the result of mischief. We don’t know but we can be pretty certain of the isolation and hopelessness he must have felt. Maybe he was angry with God…

Jesus has this amazing way of bridging the gap between an offended God and helpless, sinful humanity. Job expressed this longing for a mediator while lamenting his perceived distance from God.

Job 9:32–33 NIV

“He is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together,

The GOOD NEWS is…there is someone to bring us together! In the NT, Paul expressed it this way to his student, Timothy…

1 Timothy 2:5–6 NIV

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.

The book of Mark tells us that Jesus offers this man freedom in the areas of physical and spiritual health.

Mark 2:11–12 NIV

“I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

The Prostitute

There is another face of freedom in the Gospel of Luke. This one occurs when Jesus is at the house of some big names in among the Pharisees. At this feast a woman comes into the home and begins to weep at his feet. With her tears she washes his feet. She kisses his feet and puts perfume on them.

Simon and the other Pharisees are looking down their noses at Jesus. They assume that he doesn’t know what kind of woman she was – probably a prostitute. They conclude he has no discernment. He gives them a lesson about the value of forgiveness and a rebuke about their hospitality but imagine the way she was feeling. She, of course, knew she was the center of the conversation – and in hostile territory. She was a woman who society wanted in the dark but despised in the light. Let’s watch his response to her…

Luke 7:44–48 NIV

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

I wonder if she was on the mind of Jesus as he went through his arrest, trial, torture, and crucifixion. I wonder if the paralytic was on his mind. Maybe Jesus thought of each of disciples as He gave his life as our Hero and Savior. I wonder if he looked into the future and saw my name and your name. I wonder if He reviewed the Lambs Book of Life.

Some might say that God is an angry God demanding that we get it right and behave ourselves. The person of Jesus points to a loving God who provides the sacrifice and the means for the sacrifice. George Herbert Morrison expressed the concept beautifully:

“Let me say that the cross is not needed and included because of God’s unwillingness to pardon. Nowhere in the New Testament is the cross conceived as turning an unwilling God into a willing one, as a compulsion on a reluctant God. It is not the cause of love, it is its consequence; it is the spring of love, it is its outflow, and that is what is so often forgotten. We read in the New Testament of Christ being offered as a propitiation for our sins, and our thoughts go back to pagan faiths, where men tried to appease their angry gods; but the tremendous difference is that in all these faiths man had to provide the propitiation; in the Christian faith God provides it. He does not ask men for an atoning sacrifice; He gives the atoning sacrifice, and He gives it because He loves the world and willeth not that any man should perish … It is because He is so passionately eager to forgive that God sent His Son to die.”[3]

Embracing Freedom

When the United States of America won its freedom, it didn’t recreate England. True Freedom (salvation) is not just ‘turning from’ but ‘turning to’. The United States embraced the ideals that would be written in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There was no going back. The ideals of the nation were new. It was a new experiment for the world. Salvation is similar:

1. There is no “turning from” but “turning to”. The hymn writer, Charles Wesley says it powerfully in his hymn, When We Survey the Wondrous Cross

When we survey the wondrous cross

On which the Lord of glory died,

Our richest gain we count but loss,

And pour contempt on all our pride.

Our God forbid that we should boast,

Save in the death of Christ, our Lord;

All the vain things that charm us most,

We’d sacrifice them to His blood.

There from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flowed mingled down;

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, from His head

Spreads o’er His body on the tree;

To all the world then am I dead,

And all the world is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature ours,

That were an offering far too small;

Love that transcends our highest pow’rs,

Demands our heart, our life, our all.

2. “Believing” is NOT Pretending. In the Bible, there is no such thing as “faith in faith”; it is always faith in God, a commitment in totality to Him (John 1:12; 5:24; 6:53-54).

Christ does not offer a salvation that is only emotional. I gave my heart to the Lord as I child. I really don’t remember my salvation. For almost 10 years I grew up in church and was discipled. I remember having a crisis of faith in junior high, but I considered all that I had been taught and what the world offered me, and I chose to serve the Lord. To be a Christian doesn’t mean that we have to check our intellects at the door. As Ravi Zacharias often said, there is no other religion that so completely answers the questions of origin, purpose, meaning, and destiny. Believing is not pretending!

True Freedom Releases the Dead Things of the Past

The rich man. What must I do to be saved? – sell all you have. This is not an all-encompassing solution. Jesus simply touched on this man’s idol. Do you have an issue that is keeping you from true freedom?

Steve touched on this last week. Sin acts like a boa constrictor and it tries to suffocate us. All the arguments that the world offers have one thing in common – they don’t want to recognize the authority of God. The rich man wanted eternal life but refused to give up his idol – his riches.

That may not be your idol, or mine. We may struggle with selfishness, pride, lust, sexual immorality, anger, envy, and so on. But those things will continue to prevent you from enjoying True Freedom that is found only in Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your story became, “on July 4th weekend of 2020, I experienced True Freedom when I gave my life to Jesus Christ?”

[1] Ova, Robert. “What do I need to be saved from? What is salvation?” https://www.soh.church/what-do-i-need-to-be-saved-from-what-is-salvation/. Accessed June 30, 2020.

[2] Duffield, G. P., & Van Cleave, N. M. (2016). Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Revised & Updated, Vol. 1, p. 170). Los Angeles, CA: Foursquare Media.

[3] Duffield, G. P., & Van Cleave, N. M. (2016). Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Revised & Updated, Vol. 1, pp. 174–175). Los Angeles, CA: Foursquare Media.

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