Freedom (From Sin) - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Steve Holmes, the senior pastor of the Reddit of Chapel Hills.

This is the Reddit Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Here now is our guest Peter.

Let's grab a Bible, whether it's digital or analog.

Acts chapter 12 is the story of Peter sitting in prison.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

Why was he in prison?

Because the king wanted him to be.

An evil, ungodly king with far too much power, total overreach, does whatever he wants, reaches out and says, put that guy in prison.

And the point here is that if we let him, the enemy will have far too much power in our world and do whatever he wants with us.

Our country made a great leap in the right direction last week in taking back ground, but both in our country and in our personal lives, there is still great work to be done.

Let's read verse 1.

It says, Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church.

Guys, make no mistake about it.

The enemy has stretched out his hand to harass you.

Scripture says that he has come to steal, kill, and destroy.

Says that he prowls about like a roaring lion seeking those whom he can destroy.

Seeking those whom he can devour.

But God.

You see, I love that Scripture says, it says that the enemy prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he can devour.

But it also says that the eyes of the Lord go to and fro, seeking those whose hearts are committed to him and whom he can strengthen.

So what's that mean?

That means that in every situation, every circumstance you face, every moment of the day, they're both watching you.

They're both watching you, waiting to see how you will respond to everything that you encounter, right?

The enemy is looking for you to pout, to give up, to give in to adversity, so that he can devour you.

The Lord is watching, waiting for you to turn to him, to lean on the faithfulness that he has shown you, to lean on the truth that you know in his word, that he may strengthen you.

To be strengthened in the faithfulness that he has shown and conquer this trial.

You guys believe that?

They're both constantly watching you.

They're both constantly waiting for you.

The enemy's waiting to devour, the Lord is waiting to strengthen.

Which will you choose?

You see, life is not a pinball game with fate where you just bounce off of whatever comes at you and see where it leads.

No, it's actually quite the opposite.

Life is a series of tests, and you choose how you respond to each test.

Speaks to the saying that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond.

Do you glorify the Lord or do you glorify the enemy?

Your choice will very much so determine your future.

And I know it because we see people face impossible circumstances, right?

They face the loss of a child, God forbid, or adultery leading to divorce, or cancer, or sickness, and they stand up with great faith and glorify the Lord.

Similarly, though, we see people face pretty minor circumstances and they go home and pout and they give up and they accept defeat.

Or they let every ounce of adversity determine their fate.

Like if they're on their way to do something and absolutely anything goes wrong, it's like, well, I guess it wasn't God's will for me to do that.

Coffee pot broke this morning.

I guess it wasn't God's will for me to go to church.

Car broke down this week, gotta pay for that.

I guess it wasn't God's will for me to tithe.

And the enemy tallies another victory.

You see, the problem with that mentality is that if adversity makes your decisions for you, then adversity is your God.

Now, I've got to confess to having been a whiner in the past myself and letting adversity steer my decisions.

But by the grace of God and the choice to walk in faith, we grow and we move from being whiners to being conquerors.

Amen.

Because there's no time for pouting, there's no time for self-pity or asking why.

Let's be conquerors, not whiners.

Let's continue reading.

This guy's just having fun here.

No big deal.

Just kill one guy, imprison another.

Just playing puppets with the people, doing whatever he wants.

And what are you gonna do about it?

I'll do whatever I want.

I'm king.

And if we let him, Satan will do the exact same thing.

He'll make a mockery of our lives and parade it for all the world to see.

We've seen that plenty of times, haven't we?

Even among Christians.

Scripture goes on, it says, Now it was during the days of unleavened bread, so when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him.

Now a squad was comprised of four soldiers.

So four squads of four soldiers equals how many?

Ah, very good.

Simple math in church.

Easy answers.

And the thing is, is they would do a shift change every three hours in order to provide for maximum alertness.

Why so many soldiers, Herod?

Chicken.

What's he scared of?

He's scared of exactly what's about to happen, and he's likely heard from the Jews that he's trying to please the story from back in Acts chapter 5, where the Sadducees put the apostles in prison, and the next day, guess what?

Acts 5 · chapter mention

There they are, back in the temple preaching the word.

You see, the good news, guys, is that even if there are multiple guards, multiple things in your life keeping you imprisoned, that is nothing to the Lord.

Is there anything too hard for our God?

No.

Do you really believe that?

Yeah.

I don't care how long your list is, I don't care how long you've been in prison or how many guards there are around you.

This probably won't be the first time he sets you free, and it definitely won't be the last.

Let's keep reading.

It says, thus Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was fervently being made to God by the church for him.

Notice this: you need the church.

You need a group of blood-stained allies around you to be praying on your behalf.

So many of us have fought our captors on our own for years to no avail.

And you will likely find no victory, no freedom until you get some soldiers on your side praying for you, lifting you up.

I have my go-to people for when I'm struggling with something.

Do you have yours?

I got people in my life, they're the type that'll they'll hear me out, they'll let me vent for a few minutes, and then they'll say, all right, Kyle, time to stop whining.

Time to stand up in faith and wait in faith as the Lord delivers you again.

Just as he always has, just as he always does.

I want to read you some of the text that one of my friends from Chicago sent me while I was wrestling through my most recent money worry.

He said, He said, Kyle, God has always been faithful.

He was always going to be faithful and he always will be.

He said, He's proven that.

He goes, so there's no need to try and measure his faithfulness.

He said, instead, the kind of stuff that we measure is how did you do in faithfulness?

And yes to the Lord when the odds were stacked against you?

When it seemed like there was no way this is gonna work out.

There's no way this is gonna come together.

When everything's stacked against you, how do you do in faithfulness?

Remember, they're both watching.

Do you go home and pout?

Do you get defeated?

Give up?

Or do you stand in faith?

Do you stand on what God has shown to be true of Himself?

That He loves you, that He's going to deliver you, that He's causing all things to work together for your good?

Was your yes still yes to the Lord when it included your lack?

If you're a tither, and I hope everybody here is, when things go wrong financially, do you consider canceling your tithe?

Or is your yes still yes to the Lord even when it includes your lack?

Was your gratefulness still aimed toward the Lord in moments of frustration?

Guys, God can handle our frustration.

It's okay to bring that to him.

I like bringing it to him because he doesn't respond the way my wife does.

He can handle it.

But don't let the frustration turn to bitterness and doubt and fear.

Stay in a place of gratefulness.

Even though this is going this way, Lord, I still trust you.

I'm still grateful for what I do have.

I'm still grateful for how you have provided and how you have shown yourself faithful.

And did you conquer fear of lack with a consistent yes to the Lord?

Scripture says, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Guys, this is the stuff we measure.

And when we have come to the other side of the trial, and the Lord has delivered us once again, just as he always does, we look back at it, don't we?

We look back and we examine ourselves and we say, How did I do through that?

How did that go?

And I can tell you, all too many times I've looked back and said, You big sissy, you doubted God again.

And he delivered again.

The Lord is faithful and good.

And that's not exactly the voice of the Lord, by the way, that's my voice.

But if we look back and we see that the Lord carried us through that, and we can answer these types of questions with confidence and faith, we see that the Lord is growing us in our faith.

I always think like if they were still writing scripture today and my life was being scribed and written in these pages, right, and somebody else were reading it, what would they think?

Would they think, man, Kyle, why did you doubt God again?

Don't we look at the Israelites that way?

We're like, man, you guys are hard-headed.

You're just circling the mountain again.

Get it through your thick skull, right?

Or would they look at it and say, man, Kyle stood up in faith in the most impossible circumstances?

We need friends like this in our lives to help us stand in faith to walk this walk.

One of the guys here at the church is a plumber, and he and I were working on a basement build-out.

I'm doing, and we were breaking up concrete together and moving pipes, and somehow, in the most unlikely situation, God brings us into a conversation about money and about the freedom that he had experienced from worrying about finances.

And so he gives me a book that he had read, and my wife and I are reading it together, and God is using it to set us free.

Guys, you need the church, you need these type of people around you to surround you and hold you up.

You need bloodstained allies if you ever want to get free.

Here's the truth: if nobody around you knows your greatest struggle, you're pretty much dead in the water.

Get some close friends around you, let them in on your journey, and let them help you walk it out.

Let's keep reading.

This guy's about to be brought out and executed the next day, and here he is just snoozing away.

Now, as I looked at this, I'm like, hmm, that could mean a couple things.

Now, first of all, it could mean, well, we all know Peter was a quirky dude, right?

I kind of imagine him like the adult version of that kid that you see at the playground that's got enough personality for four kids.

And he's kind of strange, but he's also the fun one, right?

Anybody here that was that kid on the playground?

I wasn't.

I was the slick hairdo kid checking out all the girls, but Peter was definitely the quirky kid.

And with that quirkiness, I have to imagine that he's probably also one of those guys that can just fall asleep anywhere.

Anyone know any anyone like that?

All the ladies are like, yeah, I'm married to one.

I'm talking like can fall asleep mid-sentence or mid-cigar.

I've even seen guys stopped at a red light asleep at the wheel.

So maybe that was the case for Peter.

But I think it was something more.

Two more possibilities.

The first, I think, is our end goal.

And the second, I think, is more familiar to a lot of us.

See, I think the most likely answer is that Peter had been truly set free in Christ.

And so it didn't matter if he was in a prison or on a mountaintop.

If he was sleeping in his own bed or if he was sleeping in a prison between two guards chained up and waiting to be executed the next day.

It didn't matter if he was in a physical prison, he was spiritually free.

This is the goal for each of us.

That our circumstances would have no bearing upon our freedom and victory.

Paul said to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And what he meant is it doesn't matter what you do to me, I win.

I pray that that would become our true perspective.

You see, Peter walked with the Lord and was on mission for him, and so he he probably didn't view the prison as an adversary that was going to stop him.

He probably viewed it as yet another opportunity to glorify Christ and a free place to sleep.

And may we all be so on mission for Christ, so disinterested in our own comfort, that it doesn't matter if you lock us up.

We walk in eternal freedom.

Now, unfortunately for many of us, I think the third possible explanation is true, and that's that perhaps Peter had gotten comfortable in his prison.

I don't think that's true of Peter, but I think many of us get comfortable in our prison.

Again, because of a false sense of security.

We've lived with our imprisonment for most of our lives, and so at this point it's just safer to stay here.

For me, worrying about money, though, yes, uncomfortable, it became safer than letting go and fully entrusting my finances to the Lord.

And so I remained in that prison, so much so, in fact, that I began to reason with it and say, well, maybe this is just who I am.

Maybe this is just how God's designed me.

Like this is just my personality, so maybe I should just learn to live with it and figure out how to work around it.

Guys, let me tell you, that's a lie from hell.

It's not who you are.

It's not who God designed you to be.

Think about it.

Do you really think that the Lord designed you to be addicted to the sin that he sent Christ to die for?

Uh-uh.

Let me ask you that one more time.

Do you really think that the Lord designed you to be addicted to or imprisoned by the sin that he sent Christ to die for?

Of course not.

It's not who you've always been.

It's not who you'll always be.

It's what the enemy led you into and what the Lord is going to free you from.

Whether your prison is one of money, shame, fear, worry, porn, drugs.

You name it.

That's not what God has for you.

It's not how he designed you.

It's an excuse and he wants to set you free.

Do you believe it?

And then this the Lord wants freedom for you, but he cannot break you out of a prison that you want to be in.

Let's keep reading.

It says, Now, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly.

And his chains fell off of his hands.

Then the angel said to him, Gird yourself and tie on your sandals.

Guys, if you want free from your prison, you need to get up, put on your shoes, and start walking.

You know what I mean, don't you?

God will do the supernatural part of it, but you need to do the natural part.

This is a journey with the Lord, and He's not going to drag us against our will to freedom.

Scripture says, as you have received Him, so walk in Him.

God does His part, but it is our job to walk with Him, to put in the work, to resist temptation, to take thoughts captive.

God can't do those for you.

Let's keep reading.

Verse 9 here.

It says, so he went out and followed Him and did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

He thought he was dreaming.

Like, there's no way this can be possible.

There's no way this could be happening.

There's no way I can be set free from this prison.

I don't know about you, but for me at times it seemed absolutely impossible for the Lord to set me free.

Like I must be dreaming.

This is so ingrained in me, there's no way he can change me.

But even in those moments, guys, we follow the Lord, we walk in him, and we watch him make the impossible possible.

Let's jump to verse 11 here.

It says, And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from the expectation of all the Jewish people.

What was the hand of Herod and the expectation of the Jewish people?

Well, the hand of Herod was the power of evil to do whatever it wanted to him.

And the expectation of the Jewish people was for him to be executed.

Now let's think about this for a moment.

Peter was just set free from prison, right?

But not by his captors, by the Lord.

So what's going to happen when Herod and the soldiers and the Jews find out that this guy just broke out of prison?

They're going to come looking for him, aren't they?

So what's the reasonable thing to do here?

Run.

Run for your life and get out of town as quickly as possible and keep looking over your shoulder to see.

Make sure nobody's coming for you.

But what does Peter do?

He goes to a local prayer gathering.

Totally normal.

It says when he considered this, he came to the house of Mary where many were gathered together praying.

You see, guys, the real miracle here is not that the Lord set Peter free from a prison.

Yes, that's great, but that's nothing to the Lord.

The real miracle here is that Peter was spiritually free, eternally free.

You see, the thing is, is if he breaks out of this prison and then he takes off running and is constantly watching over his shoulder to see who is trying to capture him, and he's not free at all, is he?

He's physically free, but he's still imprisoned very much so to fear.

You see, Peter is truly free.

Why?

Because whom the sun sets free is free indeed.

Is truly free.

Whom the sun sets free is free no matter what's happening in the physical realm.

And until we turn to Christ for the freedom that we desire, we will only find more captivity.

Only Christ can give us that type of freedom.

Your pastor can't give you that type of freedom.

If you're living your relationship with the Lord vicariously through your pastor, you will never find true freedom.

Your parents can't give you that kind of freedom.

If you think you're free because you were dunked in a bowl at two years old and prayed over, you haven't experienced true freedom yet.

And I needed another P word, so we'll say paraphernalia can't set you free.

That being the things that we turn to for temporary or immediate relief.

Be it money, coffee.

Ah, he didn't.

Porn, drugs, success, more stuff.

They can't set you free.

Only the high priests can bring you true freedom.

We have only one Savior.

The only one who is worthy of universal power over our lives is the one who is perfect and blameless and holy and can never get it wrong.

He can never misuse his power because there is no wrong in him.

His very nature is holy.

And not just that, but holy, holy.

And even that's not enough to describe him.

He is yet holy, holy, holy.

Ever thought about the question, is there anything that God can't do?

My daughter asks me that question all the time.

The answer is yes.

He can't make a rock so big he can't lift it.

But more importantly, he can't do wrong.

There exists no capacity within him to screw it up.

Simply not possible.

We've been singing the song here, There's nothing that our God can't do.

And within the context of the song, that's very true.

But the whole truth is that there's nothing that our God can't do except mess up.

Our God can't do wrong, and so he is the only one worthy and capable of handling such power over our lives.

In fact, true freedom in your own life actually means a total surrender of all power to God.

That he would have complete overreach in your life, that anything he says goes.

No questions, no hesitation, simply immediate obedience.

Ah, the contrast of becoming, of being set free from being a slave to sin and instead becoming a slave of righteousness.

To be totally surrendered to the Lord and therefore truly free.

The Lord has that for you and wants to lead you there.

That is true freedom.

Imagine having the one that designed the entire universe calling the shots in your life.

No guesswork, no skewed vision due to sin, simply walking with the Lord, hearing Him, and following Him.

That's true freedom if I've ever heard of it.

Many of us came to Christ a long time ago, but sin and temptation have crept in to re-imprison us.

And the Lord wants to free you from that bondage today.

Do you believe it?

Some of you have never even had a taste of fruit of true freedom.

The scripture says that today is the day of salvation.

It says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

And I would encourage you today, if you've not yet come to the Lord, if you've not surrendered and found true freedom, if you hear the Holy Spirit whispering in your ear right now, do not harden your heart.

Surrender your life.

Come find true, everlasting freedom, a freedom that surpasses all physical circumstances and outlasts even time.

Give God complete control in your life, and then no thing and no person will ever be able to imprison you.

He died for your freedom.

It is for freedom that you have been set free.

As you have received him, so walk in him.

Don't trade freedom in Christ for something less.

Any king less than Christ is a captain.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do, and having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipment in different areas of your life, go to thero.org.

God bless you.