I.  Freedom!

There is something in the human heart, in every human heart, that yearns to be free, to be born free, to live free, and if necessary, to die free.  Have you seen the movie Brave Heart?  It is one of my favorites. If you have seen that movie, you will never forget William Wallace’s final cry.

Rather than recant leading the peasants of Scotland against the powers of England, Wallace gathers his last bit of strength, as he is literally being torn apart on the racks,  and cries,  Freeedooom! 

That cry has echoed down the ages, reverberating with a special intensity in this country we call the “land of the free.”  It reverberates in the bronze plaque placed inside our statue of Liberty.  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  That cry of freedom reverberates in our Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal & endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty. . . .” 

Almost 200 years later, that cry for freedom reverberated in the speech by Martin Luther King at the foot of the Lincoln memorial.  “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…that all men are created equal.  I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.  I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.  I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.  That will be the day, that will be the day when all God’s children will sing with new meaning,  My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring.  And when we let freedom ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will speed up the day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro Spiritual, Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” 

May I say?  This cry of freedom, reverberating down thru the ages, is a biblical cry.  It was the cry of the people of God, long ago, on the Eve of the Exodus, the event that brought them out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt and founded them as a nation, with their own leaders, their own laws, and their own land.  The LORD appeared to Moses in the midst of the burning bush and said, Exodus 3, “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt.   I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.  (Ex 3:7)  Therefore, say to the Israelites:   I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm….  “(Ex 6:6) 

That Redemption, that deliverance from bondage in Egypt by the power of God, and by the sacrifice of a Lamb, became a defining moment in the history of Israel, remembered and celebrated like our 4^th of July, passed on from generation to generation.  That event has also become a defining picture of our salvation in Jesus Christ.  I Peter 1: 18:  “for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed…but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”  Galatians 4 (4-7):  “But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son!” 

Later in that same letter Paul declares, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.” 

Salvation, for Peter and for Paul (and as we will see in a moment, for Jesus as well) is being set free from slavery through the death and resurrection of Christ.  It is becoming a son or daughter of God, and receiving all the rights and all the freedom of “son-ship.”
           

II.         Free?

But there is a problem, isn’t there?  This language, at least on the surface, doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, not really, not in a deep, emotionally powerful way because we don’t ever remember being enslaved.  We’re not like the children of Israel on the Eve of the Exodus.  We’re not like the Scotts under William Wallace.  We’re not like the African American slaves or their descendants yearning to breathe free.  Or are we?           

Obviously not in the sense that our basic human freedoms have ever been denied.  We have not been forced to work for others without pay; we have not been taken from our loved ones without our say; we have not been beaten, abused or treated like mere animals.  But maybe, just maybe, we know something of human bondage. 

Is there anyone out there still trying to please a parent who cannot be pleased, still trying to perform, to achieve, to be good enough and yet you left home years ago?  Are there any young women here trying to be beautiful enough to find love?  That can be quite a bondage when the standard is set on the movie screen.  Anyone out there in financial bondage?   Burdened by debt; or maybe just burdened by the pace of life required to achieve or maintain the standard of living to which you have learned to aspire?  Anyone in bondage to a job that brings no satisfaction, something you are doing just to pay the bills?  People don’t appreciate you?  There is no real connection between what you do and who you are?  The passions you hold dear?  Anyone experiencing physical disability or decay?  In bondage to chronic pain, to terminal illness, to hormonal changes you can’t do anything about, maybe just fatigue?  How about emotional bondage to depression, to anxiety, to fear?  I haven’t even mentioned bondage to addictions like alcohol, or pornography or the need for constant entertainment or distraction. 

No, we’re not like the Jews on the eve of the exodus.   We’re more like the Jews to whom Jesus spoke in John chapter 8.  Verse 3.  “If you hold to my teaching, Jesus said, you are really my disciples.”

You see, these Jews had just professed faith in Jesus.  But Jesus draws a distinction between mere profession of faith and genuine discipleship.  He says if you are really my disciples, if you really have been born from above, and if you hold to my teaching from your hearts, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. 

But they answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone (not quite true; but that’s the way they saw themselves).  How can you say that we shall be set free?”    Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.  A slave has no permanent place in the family but a son belongs to it forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” 

Apparently, there are other forms of bondage besides slavery.  There is a bondage of the heart; a bondage, Jesus says, that makes you a slave to sin, a bondage he says later in the conversation that puts you under the power of the evil one.  If you are a slave to sin, Jesus argues, then you’re not really a son or daughter.  Or at least, you’re not really acting like the son or daughter you are.

You are not really holding to Jesus’ teaching; not really becoming his disciple.  So let me ask you, Are you free?  Do you know the truth that Jesus says will set you free? 

III.       The Glorious Freedom to Come

Let me say, right up front, there is a kind of freedom, promised by Jesus, that none of us will experience this side of heaven.  It’s the freedom Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8, when he says that all of creation is right now groaning as if in childbirth, waiting for the day when it will be, and I quote, “liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”   Right now, Paul says, we’re groaning.  We have received God’s Spirit and we know the truth that will set us free, the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the World.  The truth that He is risen from the dead and coming again to rule and reign.  But right now, we are groaning in these bodies that are suffering decay.  We are groaning in a world that smells of death everywhere we turn, that smells of war and rumors of war that smells of abuse and oppression and selfish ambition.  We are groaning for the day when we will finally be set free.  Paul calls that day “the day of redemption,” the day of deliverance.  That day has not yet come. 

But Paul and Jesus do not speak only of that day.  Paul declared in Galatians, “You are no longer a slave, but a son!”  Jesus said to the Jews in John, “If you hold to my teaching, and he must have meant today and tomorrow and the next day, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free beginning today.”

IV.       The Genuine Freedom that is here

So what is the truth we can know right now that will set free, maybe not fully and finally free, but still genuinely free? 

I offer three truths…and one illustration.  Truth Number One is this:  If you are a child of God, that is, if the Spirit of God dwells in you today, then you have been set free from the power of sin, at least free enough to obey God right now.  “If anyone is in Christ,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “he is a new creation.  The old is gone; the new has come.”  The old man, to use another word picture of Paul’s, has died, he has been crucified with Christ on the cross.

A new man, a new woman, has come into being.  The old man you once were was not free.

He wasn’t able to live for God or love God, not from the core of his being.  He was, to use the language of Luther, a man curved in upon Himself, living by himself and for himself by his own power and for his own glory.  Both Jesus and Paul insist that this old man was enslaved to sin, to selfish desire and ambition, to sensual pleasure and pursuit, to the tendency to hide from God, even to remake God more to our liking. 

By the way, Jesus said this, in John 8, about religious Jews, about people who looked rather good on the outside.  You see, slavery to sin does not mean that you can’t do anything relatively good.

What it means is that you don’t have the power by yourself apart from the Spirit of God to escape your fundamentally self-centered and God-avoiding ways, but when the Spirit of God comes into your life you are born again from above.  You are given a new heart; the very life of God, the Spirit of Jesus, comes to abide in your being.  Now, you can love and live for God; now you can see and understand the truths of God, and you can obey God, and you want to. 

You have been transformed, spiritually speaking, from a caterpillar to a butterfly.  When you were a caterpillar, a creature bound to the earth and its ways, there was nothing you could do to make yourself fly.  You could try.  You could try to be good.   You could try to be successful.

You could try to make yourself happy by doing everything the world said you should do.    You could even try to be religious but you could not break out of your earthbound ways and rise like a butterfly to experience the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God.  You could not be filled with the love and joy and peace of God.  You could not fly into the light of God’s holy presence without being burned up, and you didn’t really want to. 

But now you can. You can fly, you can fly, you can fly.  If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.  The old has gone; the new has come.  That’s truth number one.   

Now the second truth that can set you free.  Obedience to God is true freedom.  There is a lie out there in the world floating on our radio waves, humming through our TV cables, walking in the halls of power.  The lie is that freedom can be found by stepping off the path of obedience to God.  It can be found by doing your own thing, going your own way, marching to the beat of your own drum, or at least, any drum other than the drum beat of God’s word.           

But it is a lie; a lie like the lie of Satan to Adam and Eve at the beginning of time.  It is a lie, my friends, that freedom of soul can be found by experiencing sexual pleasure outside of the bounds of a committed marriage.  It is a lie that freedom can be found by building a tower of Babel in pursuit of your own selfish ambition.  It is a lie that true, lasting freedom can be found walking in the darkness.   

The truth is that freedom is found in becoming like Jesus, and like Jesus, becoming a servant of God.  At one point Jesus said to his disciples, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened (that is, all you who are suffering under the bondage of human life), and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.”  The yoke of Jesus is a life of humble service to God.  Not the service of a slave for a Master; but the happy, heartfelt obedience of a son for a Father who loves him. 

That obedience is the essence of freedom.  It is learning to fly like a butterfly, to soar like an eagle to the heights of God’s mountain.  It is learning to live by God’s truth and sail by the power of His Spirit. 

Truth number one:  If the Spirit of God dwells in you then you have the power to obey God. 

You can fly, you can fly, you can fly.

Truth number two: Obeying God is true freedom.

It is becoming like Jesus; it is wearing a yoke that is easy and light, a yoke so easy and so light that it will make you fly.

Truth Number Three:   Being able to fly doesn’t mean you won’t feel the gravitational pull of sin. 

The world, the flesh and the devil are still very much with us.  The evil one still holds this world in the grip of darkness; He is still able to blind the eyes of those who have not been born again.

He still has the power to deceive and the power to pull the puppet strings behind the stage of this world.  The world is still a place where sin and death reign.  The world is still shaped by the ungodly pursuit of money, sex and power.  It is still a place where racism, greed, and injustice run rampant.  You can’t live in this world without feeling the pressure to conform.  Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold, Paul warned.  Because it will; it wants to. 

Then there is the flesh.  Ah, the flesh, human nature apart from God.  That human nature pulls every man, woman and child in the direction of sin.  Even after we are born again from above, the flesh remains.  That’s why our bodies must be redeemed.  We must die and then be raised from the dead, in new and glorified bodies, bodies no longer pulled in sin’s direction.  But until that great and glorious day, the day of final redemptions, we feel the pull to sin like we feel the pull of gravity.  It’s always there.  It is above us and below us and all around in this world.  And it is, I am sorry to say, even within us. 

Yes, we can fly like a butterfly in the power of God’s Spirit.  But we fly always against the gravitational pull of inward and outward sin.  Someday, someday that gravitational pull will be gone.  Our freedom will be like the freedom of astronauts flying thru space.  But until that day, flying by the power of God’s indwelling Spirit means overcoming the inward pull of sin.  But you can!  You can know the truth and do the truth and knowing and doing the truth, day by day, will set you free. 

V.        So, Are You Free?

So, how free are you?  To be saved is not just to be set free from the penalty of sin by the blood of Christ; it is not just to be forgiven and to know that someday we will be free.  It is to be set free, more and more each day, from the power of sin in our lives.  It is to rise, by the power of God’s Word and Spirit, above the things that hold us in bondage.  It is to rise above financial bondage, to rise above sexual bondage, to rise above your bondage to the disapproval of parents and friends that do not think the way God thinks.  It is to rise above the destructive pressure of this world to conform.  To wear what the world wears, to think what the world thinks, to do what the world does.  It is to rise above the pressure to be sexually active before it is good for you.

To rise above the pressure to have more and more of what you have enough of already and to do more than God has called you to do.

To be saved is to be set free to become like Jesus.  To be filled with his love, his joy, his peace and patience and kindness, his gentleness and self control.  It is to be free to run and dance and sing and play, with great joy, now and forever in the presence of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is to live like you were dying, because you are.  You are dying to the old self, to the old way of life lived in the world around you and living a new life, alive to God.  A life that begins now by God’s Spirit and lasts forever in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God.