Lesson 24

Free Indeed

John 8:32-36

While making a visit to an elderly church-member in a nursing home, Carla and I passed through the day room where residents of the home sat scattered all over the room in their wheelchairs. Some of them had their wrists tied to the armrests so they wouldn't hurt themselves. One lady kept calling out with a loud voice, "Freedom, freedom, freedom." She said it over and over. We were thinking how sad this was, how pathetic. I was also struck by how symbolic her words were. "Freedom, freedom, freedom." This was definitely going to become a sermon illustration for me! My ideas of this being so symbolic as an illustration disappeared when a nurse stuck her head out of a room and said to the lady, "Freda's off today, she'll be back tomorrow. What do you want?" We had been on the verge of tears but instantly we were cracking up with laugher.

This is a message about freedom. The text for this message are the words of our Lord recorded in John 8:32-36. Jesus has spoken about light and darkness (v. 12), about life and death (vs. 21-29) and now He turns to the subject of liberty and domination.

Freedom. It is a subject which stirs the heart with patriotic pride. When I read the words on the Statue Of Liberty - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." and I am filled with emotion for indeed, I know what it is to have a yearning to breathe free. When I was a child, I memorized Patrick Henry's famous words, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Those words still cause my heart to swell with nationalistic pride. America is a "sweet land of liberty" for which we sing, "from every mountain side let freedom ring."

Within man there is a yearning to breathe free. On a grave in ancient Greece were these words, "Zosime, a slave in body alone, has now found freedom." All of us want to find freedom. Families will forsake their homelands, endure incredible hardships, take tremendous risks for the chance to have freedom. Military men and women will and have laid down their lives, spilling their blood on foreign soil to defend freedom.

Those who have freedom, love liberty. Those who don't have it, long for liberty.

What is freedom? Do we really understand it? Do we know when we have it and when we don't? Can we be fooled? Can we somehow think that we are free when, in fact, we are in bondage? When Jesus spoke of freedom, His audience, those proud Jews, those Pharisees said, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" The Jews never in bondage? Are you kidding? Or to quote the immortal words of Irvin Vinson, "Gimme a break mama!" The Jews never in bondage? Had they forgotten their own history? What about those years as slaves in Egypt? What about the Babylonian captivity? What about the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks who had overrun their precious promised land? And even as they spoke these words they were under the heel of the Roman Empire. Foreign soldiers occupied their nation; foreigners controlled their government, a Roman Caesar levied oppressive taxes against their citizenry. "We've never been in bondage to any man?" They were slaves without even knowing it! Is it possible to be a slave without knowing it? The answer is, "Yes." It happened back then to the Jews. It happens today. You can be a slave without knowing it.

What is freedom? Freedom is not the ability to anything or everything. There are those whom Peter referred to as "false teacher among you" who, in his words, "while they promise liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for a man is a slave to whatever controls him" (II Peter 2:1, 19). There is a false freedom which says, "You can have freedom without responsibility, freedom without reckoning, freedom without repercussions." But this is false freedom. There is no freedom without responsibilities - just ask the prodigal son. There is not freedom without reckoning - we will have to answer for what we have done for "everyone of us shall give an account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12). There is no such thing as freedom without repercussions - there are natural consequences for all of our actions. According to Peter, false freedom actually leads to the worse kind of bondage.

Freedom is more than just not being in prison or under an authoritative government. My generation became cynical about freedom as is expressed in the words of Janis Joplin "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" or the Eagles "Freedom - that's just some people talking." What is freedom? Real freedom is the liberty to do what is right. Did you hear that? Freedom is the liberty to do what is right! Not everyone has the liberty to do what is right.

Some are not free to do what is right because they are slaves to SIN. Born of Adam's race, we are born under the curse of sin and with an inherent propensity toward sin. We don't have to learn to sin. We are born sinning. We have to be taught not to sin! A child need not be taught to lie; he must be taught not to lie. We have a depraved sinful nature. We do not become sinners by sinning. We are born sinners. We are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners from the womb. Sinning is natural for us. Just as it is a hog's nature to wallow in mud, just as it is a dog's nature to turns to his own vomit, it is our nature to sin. Though my metaphors about hogs and dogs sound base they are taken directly from scripture, Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 3:22. We are born in bondage to sin. Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34). Paul reminded us in his letter to the Romans that our need was to be emancipated from slavery to sin. He wrote, "...we should not serve sin. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. For sin shall not have dominion over you: Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." (Romans 6:6,12,14a,18,22). Some people are not free, they do not have the liberty to do what is right because they are slaves to sin.

I once read the story of an Italian heiress, a millionaire, who became so infatuated with a man that she invited him and his wife to live in her apartment. In a matter of a few weeks, her "friends" managed to take over her house and the control of her money through intimidation and infatuation. This went on for ten years. Soon she was confined to a servant's room without even a light bulb while her "guests" ruled her estate. That's the way sin works. We may invite sin into our lives as a guest. We are intrigued and infatuated by the sin. That guest soon becomes our friend and we like the sin, we enjoy his company. For a while that sin may be our servant. But soon sin becomes our master, a tyrant, and eventually a destroyer. Many are chained to sin. We don't use the word bondage today to refer to sin, we use another word ... "addiction" or perhaps the word "habit". An addiction, a habit, is our slavery to some sin - alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, homosexuality, over-eating, you name the sin and you can see that it always seems to follow this same pattern - guest, friend, servant, master, tyrant, destroyer. What we need is to be free from sin. We need to be unshackled. We need an emancipator, a freedom fighter.

Some are not free to do what is right because they are slaves to FEAR. Proverbs says that "the fear of man brings a snare." The Bible speaks of "a spirit of bondage that (leads to) fear" (Romans 8:15). It is indeed true that free enslaves. Fear captures men and women and keeps them in a prison. These days everyone seems to have his or her own "phobia." For some, perhaps particularly the aging, it is the fear of death. A lady said to me recently, "My friends are all scared to death to die. They claim to be Christians, but they are so afraid of dying. That's not faith." The Bible tells us of those who "through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:15). "The idea of death," wrote Dr. Ernest Becker in his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial Of Death, "the fear of death haunts the human like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying it." Someone who is afraid to die, afraid of entering eternity lives in a constant state of slavery. For others, particularly young people, it is the fear of men, the fear of rejection by men. Their desire to be accepted by others causes them to be what I Corinthians 7:23 refers to as "the servants of men." Such a fear leads straight to slavery, when we allow other people to become our dictators, when we get our sense of self-worth from others, when the desire to be part of the group captures and controls us. For others, especially those in the middle, beyond the peer pressure years but not old enough to think about death, it is the fear of failure, being so driven by the need to succeed, to be somebody, to possess something, that we are enslaved. Jesus spoke of "mammon" (money) being a potential master, Matthew 6:24. Though it is not wrong for us to have money, it is dangerous, even deadly, for money to have us. It isn't wrong for your to own a lovely home, but it is wrong for a home to own you. It isn't wrong for you to own a stylish wardrobe, but it is wrong for clothes to own you. But fear of failing, of not being successful, of not measuring up, of not keeping up with my friends can enslave one's life. A novelist put it this way, "Money's the big score-card in life. I can live without everything that marginal dollars can buy, except self-esteem." What we need is to be free from fear. We need someone who will unchain us from the dread of dying, from the terror of rejection, from the fear of failure.

Enslaved by sin. Enslaved by fear. There is a third force that keeps us from freedom.

Some are not free to do what is right because they are slaves to the PAST. Do you know what it is to be chained to your past? That little evil whisperer who reminds you of what you have done back yonder in your past. He sounds something like this, "You - a Christian? Ha! How can you claim to be anything like that? I can't believe that you think you can be a Christian, or go to church, or sing a special, or teach a class, or hold an office, or preach to others. I know things about your past. Remember when you ... And now, you think you're so good!" Sometimes that voice is from within. Sometimes it's someone from our unsaved, sinful past who lays that guilt on us. We are immobilized in the present because of shameful things in our past. We need someone to forgive us of our past, so that we can forgive ourselves and even find it within ourselves to forgive others of their evil and offensive deeds toward us. Failure to forgive yourself will indeed enslave you. Remember, Joseph's brothers? They had mistreated him so badly when he was young. Even after he forgave them, they couldn't forgive themselves, and lived enslaved by the idea that after their father died, Joseph would seek retribution. We need someone to free us from our past, someone who can remove stains so that when Satan reminds us of our past, we can remind him of his future! We need someone who will grant to us an emancipation proclamation from our past so that we can say with confidence and joy, "I was indeed a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, I was probably the worst, the chief of all sinners, but I obtained mercy and I have been forgiven, and I am no longer chained to my past. I can forgive myself because I have myself been forgiven. And I can forgive you because I have myself been forgiven."

Oh, how we need to be set free! But how? How can we be free from sin and free from fear of death and of the rejection of men, and free from the fear of failure and free from our wretched past? How can I be free, I want to know? There are ideas out there.

Someone has said that when war is over, we will be free. But he was wrong. Someone else said that a balanced budget would set us free. But he is wrong. Someone else said, "All men are born free, but some get married." Others are searching for deliverance at the bottom of a bottle in a bar. But they won't find it there. Some young person thinks that freedom is when school is over and they can play, but they so are wrong.

How can we be free? The answer is in the words of Jesus. "You shall know

the truth and the truth shall make you free. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." True freedom is truth freedom. Freedom, real freedom comes from knowing the truth about ourselves, our nature, our destiny, our world. Lies will hide the liberty from our eyes, but the truth will set us free. Have you come to the knowledge of the truth? "What is truth?" the cynic asks as Pilate asked. In this age of relativism, where there are no absolutes, truth is trite and trivial. The world says, "There is no absolute truth. What's truth for you may not be for me. We must all find our own truth." Jesus stands in stark contrast to such philosophy proclaiming boldly, "God's word is truth" (John 17:17) and "I am the way, he truth, the life" (John 14:6). To know Christ is to know the truth and to know the truth is to be made free. You see, it is Christ who sets us free.

In Christ's first sermon he quoted Isaiah 61 and said (Luke 4:18-21) "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Luke 4:20 And he closed the book, ... And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

It is Christ who sets us free. In knowing Christ, we experience true deliverance and liberty. In Christ, we are freed from sin, freed from fear of death, freed from fear of being rejected by people, freed from fear of failure, freed from the past. "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed!" Satan wants you to believe that Christianity will enslave you with lots of rules - can'ts and should's and oughts and musts and musn't's and thou shalt not's. But Satan is a liar. The truth is that Christianity does not enslave us, rather Christ sets us free!

Unfortunately, some who have been set free want to slide back into slavery. Like the children of Israel, they remember the leeks and the onions and the fish and the garlic of Egypt and they return to a life of bondage. Some sin dominates their life; some fear becomes their dictator. They put themselves in a prison of their past or of other people or of possessions. They lose the liberty that Christ has given them. To every Christian the Bible says, "Stand firm therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath had us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1).

"If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed."

If you have never known genuine freedom, I have a message of liberty for you. Your ransom has already been paid, your redemption, your freedom, has already been purchased. Christ Jesus paid the price for your freedom when he died on the cross and rose from the grave. He offers you freedom today- freedom from sin, freedom from fear, freedom from the past.

If you are somehow allowing liberty slip away from you; if Satan is tempting you to return to Egypt, or threatening you with fear, or defeating you by reminding you of your past - Stand firm in Christ, and the liberty with which he has set you free!