Free to Serve

All right, good morning, Sacred Mission Church.

How's it going?

We are so excited to have you with us as we're diving back into the book of 1 Peter.

We've been navigating this book for quite some weeks.

We're in going to be in chapter 2 this morning, looking at verses 9 through 17.

So if you have a Bible, if you have an app, go ahead and get those things out.

We're going to be diving into the Word and really trying to understand what this text means.

And one of the things that I've been loving about 1 Peter is that it just seems so timely to what we're going through.

Now, I'm going to be honest, it's not a direct one-for-one.

What they were facing during their times, persecutions of the religious faith, plus economic uh trials, uh different uh relational trials that they were facing.

It's not a one-for-one, but there's themes, there's anthems that can very much apply to what we're going through in this day and time.

And the beauty of the gospel, the beauty of the Bible and the scriptures is that they never uh run out of time.

They never become unrelevant to what we are going through in our modern context.

In fact, we constantly have to try to work to get our lives and hearts back in line in submission to what the word declares, because the word of the Lord will last forever.

It will never end, it will never fade, it will never be unrelevant.

And so what we have to do is we try to, in pride, in forgetfulness and different postures of our heart, we try to go beyond what the word says.

We think we're beyond that.

Either socially we're beyond that, intellectually, we're beyond that, philosophically, we're beyond that, whatever it might be.

And what we have to strive to do as Christians, as believers, is anchor our heart to that word, that unmoving, unwavering, unchanging word of God.

And so we're going to be looking at uh chapter 2, verses 9 through 17 in 1 Peter, and we're looking at what it means to be free.

We're looking at what it means to be servants, we're looking at what it means to be identified in Christ and how we would live our lives under that new identity.

You see, uh, what Peter's been doing through this whole first part of the book is he's been laying out this very robust theology about the centrality of God in terms of our salvation, in terms of our personhood and our identity.

He has just been laboring through the whole first ver uh chapter, even into the beginning of chapter two, he is trying to lay out for us the centrality of God in our salvation and how that affects and impacts the lives that we live.

And it's very heady, it's very theological, it's very identity driven.

But now in chapter two, he's gonna begin to say, now that you are this way, now that you realize how you have been saved, now that you realize who you are in Christ, now that you realize how that's impacted your life, we're gonna tell you now how it should change the way that you live.

And so we're gonna start getting very practical because that's what our life is, right?

The way that we live, the decisions that we make, the words that we speak have to be practical in subject and shaped and formed by the theology that we hold.

Our theology shapes the very fabric of how we live our lives.

Our worldview does the same thing, and they have to be submitted to the scriptures.

So we're gonna dive in, we're gonna look at what Peter's still trying to uh show and demonstrate to the people of whom he's writing to, and uh, we're going to see how that impacts our everyday life.

So let's look at 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 9 through 17.

1 Peter 2:9–17

It says this But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution, whether it be to the Emperor as Supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

Honor everyone.

Love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

Now, as we read through that passage of scripture, you can imagine how this can be a challenging thing to navigate, right?

It's really going to press in to who we are, how we uh really kind of shape and form our identity, some of our core values and beliefs, even our worldview.

It's really going to begin pushing on some of those hot buttons.

But that's what the word is supposed to do.

It's supposed to cut like a two-edged sword, piercing through our flesh.

And so we want to be able to be open about what God's word is trying to say to us.

We want to be able to submit to that word by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can be more conformed into the image of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

And so we're going to dive right in.

And what I like to do is as I'm trying to study Scripture and I'm trying to really understand what it is trying to communicate to us here in this passage, it's really easy to break it into chunks for me and just try to dissect it a bit at a time.

And so if I was going to do that here, I'd look first at verses 9 through 10.

And the way that I would summarize verses 9 through 10 is that the fullness of our identity is found in being his.

The fullness of our identity is found in being his, in being God's.

Now, there's no other place.

There's no other place in this life, in this world, where we should be looking for our identity.

And Peter gives us four different ways to understand our true and eternal identities as a child of God.

And so he starts off this, but you.

So he's contrasting us to the rest of the people in our culture, in our world that do not be uh belong to God, whom he has not chosen and purchased by the blood of his son.

That's what uh the first chapter was working through how God has saved us, how God has purchased us.

And he says, But you, you have been chosen, you who have been purchased by the blood of Christ, you are, and he gives four qualifying factors to the identity of which we should embody.

Number one is that we're a chosen race.

Us who are in Christ, we are the true Israel.

You see, our identity is not shaped in human bloodline, but our identity is shaped in the blood that flowed from Calvary.

It is through Jesus and in him alone that the chosen race, the Israel of whom God had placed his affections, of whom God had purposed his loving kindness to never depart from, we are the true Israel because we are in Christ.

And so Peter's laying that out very quickly.

You are a chosen race, those of whom God had chosen from before the foundations of the earth.

You are Israel.

You are the chosen race.

Again, not made by human bloodline, but made through the blood which flowed from Calvary.

Second, he says that you're a royal priesthood.

And so what Peter's trying to really focus in on here is our access to God.

You see, in the Old Testament, it was only the priests who had access to God, and only them were able to participate in certain acts of worship on behalf of the people.

And Peter's here saying, no, you, you now in Christ are a royal priesthood.

And Christ uh accomplishes for us a direct access to God the Father.

We see throughout the scriptures where we can now, because of Christ's finished work in us, come boldly before the throne of God.

We can come to Him as a child to a Father.

We now in Christ as priests have direct access to God the Father.

Then he says, We're a holy nation.

We've been consecrated and set apart from this world.

We are holy.

We're holy because God is holy.

And that's what we saw again in chapter one of Peter.

He says that we are called to be holy, mimicking the holiness of our God and Lord.

And so we're a holy nation, meaning that we're consecrated, we're set apart.

We're not of this world.

We're distinct from the world of which we reside in.

And then he says, You're a people of his own possession.

We belong to him, and we should serve him as such.

We are not our own possession, we are not ours, our lives are not ours, our bodies are not ours.

You can constantly work through the framework of Scripture and see where there is nothing that is yours.

Right?

If you're married, your body belongs to your spouse.

That's what the scriptures say.

If we're saved, then our whole lives belong to God.

All every aspect of our being belongs to someone else because our lives should work for the good of others in the glory of Him.

You see, we should live lives in service and honor to God, primarily because we are His possession.

So Peter makes it clear to us, and he's outlining these four ways of which we should work to view our identity that we now have in God through Christ.

He makes it clear to us that our former identities only landed us as not a people.

Now, listen to what I'm trying to communicate here.

He says in verse 10, once you were not a people.

And he's speaking to a broad range here.

He's not writing this letter to one specific church, he's writing to a very large region of all different types of believers coming from all different uh citizenships, coming from different socioeconomic statuses, different relations races and religions.

And what he's saying to each and every single one of them is that once, before Christ came and intervened in your life, before God ransomed you through the blood of his son, before your heart was taking out of your chest that stone cold heart, and the new one of flesh was now placed in that cavity inside of you, you were not a people.

Roman citizens who resided under the greatest, most powerful empire known in history at that time, Peter's saying you were not a people.

The wealthy who had uh uh all all the uh tangible realities of wealth, who had all the possessions that they could imagine, who owned properties and people and resources and whatever you want to label under their wealth and possession, he's saying, You were not a people.

Philosophers, political leaders, slaves, poor, you were not a people.

And what Peter's really trying to labor to help us understand is that it's only in Christ do we have identity.

There's nothing else.

There's nothing about our former identities that build into the value of who we are now in Christ Jesus.

Because everything else, our citizenship, our social status, our socioeconomic position, our race, our intellect, everything that you and I as human beings would try to attach identity to, only landed us in a position of not a people, but Christ.

Christ makes us a people, Christ gives us true identity because his mercy has been extended to us who are now his.

But see, we're wired to find identity in something.

That's just how we are, that's our human nature, and we hunt relentlessly to do so.

We constantly are trying to find who we are and place the thrust and the majority of our identity in these differing things.

Think of the ways that we label ourselves and the people around us.

And right now we're constantly seeing this barrage of different identities that are so goofy, that are so, if I'm honest, just pathetic.

Because we're sacrificing and forsaking the identity that we have in Christ and trying because we're wired to do this, placing our identity in something else.

Am I a masker or an anti-masker?

That doesn't matter.

That absolutely will land you in a place of not a people.

Am I a vaccinator or an anti-vaccinator?

It's gonna land you in a place of not a people.

Am I a Republican or am a Democratic?

It's gonna land you in a place of not a people.

Everything that we try to hunt to put our identity into is gonna land us in a place of not a people.

And we work so tirelessly to try and do that because we're wired to have identity.

We're wired to search for that purpose, that meaning that builds into the people of who we are.

But what would it look like if we were simply and solely gods?

That was the only place we ever put our identity into.

You see, I think the first Christians, the New Testament church of which we read, were really equipped to do that.

Now, did they do it perfectly?

By no means.

Because identity is one of the things that the writers of the New Testament constantly tackle.

I don't care if you were Jew or you were Greek.

I don't care if you were a Roman citizen or you were not, I don't care if you were rich or poor.

I don't care about anything of what you used to be, because everything of which you tried to identify yourself as landed you as not a people.

Get it through your thick skull.

You are Christ in Christ alone.

Live that way.

That's what God calls us to do.

See, they were able to get this better than us in a lot of ways, I believe.

And we see it in the writings, we see it in the ways that they live their lives.

Take everything from me.

This thing that I thought I called freedom, take it from me.

This thing that I thought I called uh prominence, take it from me.

This thing that I thought I held on to to give me meaning, take it from me.

I will gladly rejoice in bondage and chains, I will praise even to the point of my death, because I know of who I am in Christ and Christ alone.

So they could have everything taken from them because they were gaining everything in return.

They held everything with an open hand, even their very lives.

Why?

Because they understand they were Christ.

Here in the midst of this opening section, we're illuminated then to why God has made us his people.

It says that we might proclaim his excellencies.

So you're a chosen race.

You, you're a royal priesthood, you, you're a holy nation, you, you are a people of his own possession.

Why?

That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who brought you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

Why has God done this?

Why has God placed this identity upon us?

That we might proclaim, verbically declare his excellencies.

That's why.

That we may proclaim his excellencies.

If I look then, coming down to verses 11 through 12, I've summarized them this way that in this life we are aliens who live our lives for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.

In this life, we are aliens who live our lives for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.

Peter starts this passage off with reminding us of this reality that we are sojourners, exiles, aliens.

He used this in the beginning of his letter, and he continues to weave it in, reminding us you are not of this world.

You are aliens residing in a foreign nation.

You are sojourners, you are exiles.

We have to let this really grip our minds and our hearts.

There's no people group, there's no religion, there's no uh race, there's no uh anything about this world that we can try to place our identity as because the truth is if we are in Christ, then we are his and we are aliens, sojourners, and exiles in the midst of our residency.

We are not any other mark of any other identity.

The framework and worldview we should be living is fully and relentlessly from a position that seeks to glorify God and bring good to our neighbor.

And so we should cast off these former passions of the lives of which we once lived, because they wage war against this identity of who we are now in Christ, and we should submit ourselves to the calling to be holy as the God of whom purchased us, of whom possession we are, is holy also.

And we should live honorable among all people so that they might be confounded in the way that we live our lives, only resulting in glorifying God, only resulting in their salvation.

You see, God by his power and might has brought us out of the darkness we once dwelled and into his marvelous light.

And so now, in response to that and in honor to that, we must contend against the passions of the flesh which seek to destroy us.

There's no part of the Christian life that exists for self-gain.

If we look at the scriptures and we wrestle with what they say, that there's really no part of our Christian life that exists for self-gain.

We have everything that we could ever want or desire because we've been purchased by the blood of Christ.

And so we empty ourselves for the good of others.

Everything about our lives should be for the benefit of others and the glory of God.

There is nothing about our lives, if you can search and search and search, that's about self-gain.

We live as holy and obedient people before God and before our neighbors so that he will receive glory and through our lives they might be saved.

This command that Peter's giving, so that on the day of visitation, right?

It says that they may see your good deeds and then glorify God on the day of visitation.

This is a this life circumstance for our neighbors.

Peter's not speaking about when Christ returns.

He's not speaking about this reality, which is true, that every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord in his return.

Peter's speaking to a this life circumstance.

And this thought of day of visitation might be more clearly thought of as them being saved, that they actually see the life of which we live, so countercultural to the one that they are, being exiles inside of this foreign nation, but living honorably among them, they might be so confounded that in this life they glorify God.

That in this life their hearts are transformed to be saved and to live obediently to the God of which we serve.

And so we have to live in such a way that benefits our neighbor.

We have to live in such a way that glorifies God.

We must live in such a way that we're distinguishable from the world around us.

And we often wrestle with this concept of in the world but not of the world.

And we've gotten this wrong for so many times because the Bible calls us to live this way as exiles, as sojourners, belonging to a different nation, belonging to a different citizenship, we should live in the world, but not be of the world.

And here's how we typically get this wrong in history past.

In history past, we got this wrong because we actually retreated from culture.

We didn't live in the world.

We actually thought that the best thing for us to do is to retreat from culture and not be in the world at all.

And so we often tried to distinguish ourselves through retreat, not through obedience in the way that we lived our lives in the midst of culture, but we tried to live obedient lives separated from culture itself.

And it made very little impact on the people around us.

It made very little impact on the world around us.

Some of us then also recklessly embrace culture.

And so we run into culture and we embrace the aspects of our culture around us, causing more of a reality of in the world and of the world, where we have lives that are not distinguishable in the culture that we live in.

We recklessly embrace culture, we recklessly embrace its values, its systems, uh, and it causes us to not be distinguishable any longer.

What we must do to live in the world, but not of the world, is to live counter-cultural lives.

And so us as Christians, we should take on all legitimate forms of employment.

We should be uh living inside of uh subdivisions and uh different neighborhoods.

We should be engaging with the culture of sports and other things that are happening all around us.

We should be in the world, but as we're in, as we're engaging, as we're being a part of the culture, we should live counter-cultural lives where our values are not their values, our standards are not their standards.

The decisions that we make in the worldview that we function through should not mimic or parallel theirs.

It should be in such a way that it confounds them when they try to speak evil against us.

It confounds them when they try to put language around the different lives that we live, and ultimately, through God's grace and his mercy, it'll cause them to glorify him in the way that we live.

Too often, in both perceivably good and perceivably bad ways, we live as people in and of the world.

We need to live in such a counterculture way that it confounds those around us to the point of them only being able to glorify God in response.

The last section of this passage of scripture, 13 through 17, I would try to summarize it this way.

We are more free in Christ than any earthly power can give or take away.

We are more free in Christ than any earthly power can give or take away.

You see, the reality is for us in Jesus, we can be subject to any earthly institution because we know that in Christ we are free.

We can, we can be subject to any earthly institution because that we know in Christ alone we're free.

There is nothing in this world that we could face that could take away our true freedom.

It is because we are truly free in Christ that we can subject ourselves and serve human institutions, whether good ones or wicked ones.

It doesn't matter if they are good and they serve our agendas and they serve our benefit, or if they're wicked and they're trying to persecute us and they're trying to destroy us.

It doesn't matter the earthly institution.

We can serve them, we can subject ourselves to them because that we know that ultimately in Christ we are free.

Our freedom is never dictated by earthly circumstance.

And the reality is, as we start to really poke into this section of the passage, this is the will of God.

The will of God is to subject ourselves to all any earthly institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme or to governors who are sent by God.

This is the will of God.

To subject yourself.

Now there's a reality where we should never subject ourselves to sin.

And we're gonna navigate that.

We're gonna walk through the life of Peter and how he didn't subject himself to sin, but man, he subjected himself to earthly institutions, whether they were good or wicked.

And I want to make a case that it's because he knew that there was no earthly circumstance that could ever jeopardize his freedom.

And he realized that this was the will of God.

It was the will of God for him to live this life in such a way.

You see, we so often live with the Bible in one hand and some other identity in the other.

Let me tell you something.

Those two things, they cannot coexist.

They cannot be reconciled to one another.

We cannot try to live our identity as Christians and on the other side try to live our identity as anything else.

Nothing.

Nothing else.

Because every other thing only equates to us as not a people.

Whatever resides in the other hand as part of your identity, it is at enmity with your identity in Christ.

It's at enmity with your identity in Christ, it's at war, it is against, it is not for, it cannot coexist, it cannot be reconciled into one.

Whatever it is.

You see, Peter got this.

Peter, as he's writing this letter, he's writing, residing under the rule of the Emperor Nero.

And Nero was a wicked ruler.

Nero led one of the most powerful civilizations ever to known be known to man.

And he was a wicked ruler.

If we go back through the history of how he persecuted Christians, of how he tortured them, killed them, sought to squash them out through his powerful hand.

He would light them as torches in his garden, feed them to wild animals, Peter himself being one who was hung upside down on a cross.

But Peter, while writing this letter, residing under such a wicked ruler, with confidence, with strength, with boldness, he stood and said, Subject yourself to every earthly institution, because this is the will of God.

You see, that was not weakness in Peter writing this.

This was not fear in Peter writing this.

This was strength.

This was boldness.

Because that same Peter was able to stand up and look the most terrifying power in the eye and say, Take my life.

Take it.

Because you can never take the freedom that I have in Christ Jesus.

You can take everything else from me.

You see, too often we want to white knuckle and contend for the fleeting and pathetic freedoms of this world.

We want to, we want to get all roused up.

We want to fight.

We want to get angry.

And what we're trying to get all roused up for, what we're trying to white knuckle and contend for, are fleeting and pathetic freedoms of this world.

You see, we have true freedom only in Jesus.

And that's it.

Freedom from having to earn love and acceptance.

Freedom from having to pay the price for our sin.

Freedom from having to work to make things right between us and God.

Freedom from performance.

Freedom from the enslavement of the bondage of sin.

Freedom from the wicked slave master that we call Satan.

Freedom from the lies that wage war within us.

Freedom from the eternal captor of death.

Freedom.

It is in Christ, in Christ alone, we have freedom.

Any earthly promise of freedom is so eternally pathetic and so gravely pales in comparison that it's a divine offense to contend for it over your freedom in Christ.

Lay it down.

Whatever you want to cling to for your identity that is not rooted in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross, lay it down before it makes you not a people once again.

You see, in America, we fail to subject ourselves to human institution.

And this posture continues in failing to subject ourselves to a heavenly God.

Let me break this down.

I think that one of our primary issues as Christians in America is that we've come to have a worldview and a belief posture that the government is here to serve us.

The Bible doesn't say that.

The Bible says we're here to serve any government that we reside under.

But we believe that the government's here to serve us, and so when it stops serving us in the ways that we demand, when it stops serving us in the ways that we think it should, when it stops serving us for our own gain and benefit, we buck back.

And my greatest fear is that we've labeled and tried to push that same concept into the God we serve.

God, when you don't serve me the way that I think you should, I'm gonna buck back.

When you don't give me what I think I should have, I'm gonna think you're not good.

When you don't serve me and my gain and my benefit, when you don't uh uh lavish the blessing that I think I should have in my life, you're not a good God.

Don't we see the issue there?

Don't we see that the possibility that we've resided under such a worldview, we've resided under such a government system for so long that we're now projecting that same thing onto the God we serve?

We wonder why we have issues with obedience.

We wonder why we have issues of putting to death our flesh.

We wonder why we have identity issues.

We wonder why when we don't get what we want, we blame God.

We're so pumped full of belief that this institution is made to serve us that we often convolute it for a God who should do the same.

And that's nowhere in the Bible.

Literally nowhere.

We are His.

We are called to serve Him.

And in the same fashion that we are called to serve Him, He calls us to serve the institutions of which we reside under.

Living honorably among all people.

You see, if we truly understood our freedom in Jesus, there'd be no fear in ever losing our earthly semblance of it.

Because if we have Christ, they can take everything else.

If we have Jesus, they can take away our restaurants.

If we have Jesus, they can take away our jobs.

If we have Jesus, they can take away our families.

If we have Jesus, they can take away our lives.

If we have Jesus, they can take away everything.

That's never going to jeopardize my identity, that's never going to jeopardize my freedom.

And this may hurt, this may be hard to hear, but if you're really honest with yourself, if you're really honest with the scriptures, I don't know how we can live in a different way.

I'm not saying that those trials wouldn't be hard.

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be difficulty.

I'm not saying that the church wouldn't need to step in and extend mercy.

I'm not saying that we wouldn't have to try and combat injustice with love and kindness and mercy.

I'm not saying that we wouldn't have to take action to help and bring relief to people who are in pain, but I'm saying you could never jeopardize who we are.

No matter what you took from us.

You see, I can subject myself to every human institution, whether good or wicked, because nothing in this world can jeopardize my freedom.

And we must live as a people who are free.

And he clarifies this too.

Not using our freedom for more sin, but demonstrate the reality that we are ultimately servants to God.

You see, that's the thing.

What freedom there is.

When we say, I can subject myself to any earthly institution, whether it's good or whether it's wicked, because I am simply trying to parallel the way in which I am subjecting myself to God.

As a servant of God, I will joyfully serve you.

As a servant of God, I can subject myself to any earthly institution.

That's freedom.

Right?

When you can do whatever you want to me and you're not going to shake me.

You're not going to shake my faith.

You're not going to shake my identity.

You're not going to shake my peace or my joy.

That's freedom.

When no matter what earthly circumstance I go through, you can't shake me because my core is so solid and so stably founded on the foundation of the rock of Christ, who has ransomed us and purchased us eternally beyond anything that could ever jeopardize the love of which He has lavished upon us.

That's freedom.

And so in strength and in boldness, I can lay my life down.

Not in weakness, not in apathy, not in giving up, but in freedom.

I can serve you because I understand I'm first and foremost a servant of God.

And this isn't this is the posture of Jesus.

What strength, what boldness Jesus had as he stood before Pontius Pilate.

And he tried to, he, he tried to muscle him, right?

Pontius Pilate, he tried to tried to sway him, tried to shake him.

Don't you know that I can take your life, that I have the power to make the next decision of whether this kills you or not?

Jesus looked at him and said, You can't do anything that my father doesn't allow you to do.

I lay my life down.

No one takes it.

That was boldness.

That wasn't weakness.

That was strength.

That wasn't apathy.

That wasn't giving up.

Jesus was demonstrating freedom by subjecting himself to earthly, even wicked institutions.

You see, the main idea for this morning is this that we are free people in Jesus.

We are free people in Jesus who live in praise-filled proclamation and honorable demonstration.

Free people in Jesus who live in praise-filled proclamation and honorable demonstration.

If we unpack this passage, this is what we see of how we should live our lives.

A call to proclaim his excellencies and a call to live in honorable obedience.

You see, these two factors, this proclaim his excellencies and honorable obedience, equip us to live in the world, but not be of the world.

How we speak and how we live equips us to be in the world, but not of the world.

These two factors are how Peter lived his life.

He was an alien, sojourning through a foreign land.

Even he who was a Jew, who was known or thought to be one of the chosen people of God.

Even Peter, who was a disciple of the Lord Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, even Peter, who had all these other things, he realized that he was an alien sojourning through a foreign land.

He proclaimed the excellencies of God.

One of his most famous sermons is right in Acts 2, as the Spirit had descended and filled those who were in the upper room.

It was Peter who stood up and preached the gospel.

And thousands were added to the church through his praise-filled proclamation.

That didn't cease in Peter's life.

He continued to live subjected to earthly institutions, but they couldn't silence his message.

And his message wasn't about some earthly freedom.

His message wasn't about some earthly institution.

His message wasn't about some earthly circumstance.

His message was about the cross.

He could not stop proclaiming the praises of the one who saved him.

And he lived an honorable counterculture life.

He subjected himself to a wicked, earthly ruler.

And Peter died a free man in Jesus.

What should cause us to be distinguished from culture?

What should cause us to be counter-cultural leaving, causing us to be distinguished?

It's our proclamation and our demonstration, the words we speak, the praises that we declare, and the way that we live our lives, counterculturally, wholly obedient to the God who has saved us.

What a beautiful reality.

What a call to live our lives this day.

That our praise should be faithfully proclaiming his excellencies, and our lives should be faithfully in obedience to his will.

That's freedom.

And that's what's going to enable us to live lives distinguished from the culture we reside in.

But our story is this we struggle, we wrestle with this constantly.

Some of us is this that we enslave ourselves to lesser freedoms.

We enslave ourselves to lesser freedoms.

We often fail to live out the will of God because we're searching for freedom in something other than Him.

And we all do this.

This isn't just about America.

This isn't just about a political party.

This is about our life.

Some of us look for freedom in finances, some of us look for freedom in substances, some of us look for freedom at the bottom of a gallon of tub of ice cream at 10 o'clock at night.

We look for freedom in all these different places because we're searching for it in something other than Him.

And look, when that, when we do that, when we try to find our freedom in something other than God, it causes three things.

Number one, it causes us to fight back when it's jeopardized.

When that freedom is jeopardized, when it's at risk of being taken from you.

Nothing.

So we have no reason to fight back because it can't be taken from us because it was never ours to begin with.

He freely gave.

Number two, it causes us to live more self-serving lives.

We try to find our freedom in something else other than Christ.

We live more self-serving lives.

We don't live lives for the gain and good of others.

We want it to serve us because our freedom and our identity is found in it.

And so it should make us feel good.

It should make us uh live better lives.

It should uh give us everything we've wanted and desired.

And so it causes within us, when we're searching for our freedom in something other than Christ, to live more self-serving.

And lastly, it causes us to be unequipped to subject ourselves to the Lord.

It causes us to be unequipped to subject ourselves to the Lord.

That's the life that we should be living, a life subjected to God.

Ultimately, as servants of God, we are then equipped to serve others.

But when we find our freedom in something else other than Him, then we're even unwilling to subject ourselves to the God who saved us because ultimately we fear that He jeopardizes us.

That freedom being taken from us.

And we fear that he won't ultimately give us what we want.

And so we're unable and unwilling to subject ourselves to a God like that.

We don't realize that we need that God because it is only in him true freedom and identity is found.

We don't have to fight back anymore because it can never be jeopardized.

And we're free to live servant lives because we realize that we have already gained everything we could ever imagine in having Jesus.

But some of us, we also use our freedom for sin.

Too often we operate in a posture of cheap grace.

We use our freedom for sin.

We sin while waving the banner of the blood of Jesus as a right to do so.

We have to realize the cost of our sin, the cost to bring us such freedom.

And we've been talking about this, about this cheap grace versus costly grace.

And there's too much inside the Christian culture that views grace as a means to sin.

And there's, again, nowhere in the scriptures are you going to find that.

Nowhere in the scriptures are you going to find that now you are free.

Go live how you wanted to.

Now you have been saved by grace.

Go do as you please.

Now that you have been found in Christ, you get to go back to the old passions of your flesh.

That's not anywhere in the scriptures.

There is a demand, a standard, an expectation that you have been made free, so therefore live in such a way, demonstrated specifically in subjection and obedience to the will of God.

That's where freedom is.

That's where life is.

That's where joy and peace and pleasure reside.

Not in going back to what we used to do.

So do not use your freedom.

Do not use God's grace as a license for sin any longer.

Because let me tell you what we are consistently doing in this Christian world.

When we live a life of hyper grace, of cheap grace, that just because God has been kind to us and saved us, we can now do whatever we want.

It doesn't have to impact or change the way that we live.

Let me tell you what we're constantly doing.

We are constantly putting to death the faith in other people.

It's killing them.

As they're watching us live like fools, as they're watching us live counter to the things that we proclaim, as they are watching us live as hypocrites, and all this time we're touting freedom, we're touting grace.

Why?

So that faith might be made alive in them, so they may glorify the God our Father.

So they may be brought out of darkness and into his marvelous light as you and I have.

What we can't give up these few things, these minuscule things in the scope of eternity.

We want to fight for them, we want to contend for them.

We're not demonstrating the gospel.

And praise God that Jesus was able to do it for us because in our weakness, he is our strength.

In our failure, he is our conquering king.

And he knew that we would never be able to do this fully, and so he had to do it perfectly.

And as he subjected himself to this earthly institutions, as he subjected himself to the sin and wickedness of men, we were able to gain his freedom.

So, church, let us remember at what cost it took to buy us our freedom.

Let us remember at what cost it took to allow us to become a people and allow us to forsake and place down and abandon everything that wages war against that.

So, how should we then live?

If this is true for us, how should we live?

I have three things.

One, we would live as people who are truly free.

Look, this is about abandonment.

As we live as people who are truly free, then we are able to serve others.

We're able to subject ourselves.

We're able to live lives for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor if we are truly free.

Because in boldness and in strength and in confidence, we can live in that freedom.

Not in weakness, not in apathy, not in abandonment.

When we live as people who are truly free, we know who we are in Christ.

We know what He has given to us, we know what He has secured for us for all of eternity.

And so every aspect of our lives can be about the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.

It doesn't have to be about us anymore.

So we don't have to contend, we don't have to fight, we don't have to buck back.

We don't have to fear that it's going to be taken from us or jeopardized.

We don't have to.

As long as we live in ways that is truly free, we can proclaim with confidence, take everything, because I already have him.

Number two is we can live in praise-filled proclamation.

This is one of those distinguishing factors.

As we seek to live in the world but not be of the world, we should be marked by praise-filled proclamation.

Everything about our speech and the way that we proclaim truth should be fueled by praising God.

It should be proclaiming his excellencies.

And think about our conduct and language.

Think about the things that we've spoken through over the last several weeks.

Think about the conversations you've had.

How many times has it pointed to the excellencies of Christ?

How many times has it proclaimed the praises of his glorious name?

How many times has it brought the conversation back to the reality of who God is and what he's done for us?

Or has it resolved in fear?

Has it resolved in frustration?

Has it resolved in anger?

Has it resolved in conspiracy?

Has it resolved in whatever other thing other than God?

We need to adjust our language.

We need to adjust the way that we speak.

And we need to be a people of praise-filled proclamation.

Lastly, we should live lives of honorable demonstration.

Using our freedom, not as a right to sin, not as a means to sin, but to serve and subject ourselves to those around us.

How are our lives demonstrating honor?

How are our lives demonstrating the fact that we are free in Christ?

That we are a people whose identity is found in Him, in Him alone.

Serve and subject.

Some of the two primary ways that we can live in honorable demonstration is not living lives that are self-seeking, not living lives where we're trying to have our own gain, but lives that serve one another because we ultimately serve God and are subjected to whatever earthly circumstance we find ourselves in because we are subjected to Him.

And so, church, my prayer is that we would know that we are free.

That we are free in Christ in Christ alone.

And as free people, we would live lives of praise filled proclamation and honorable demonstration.

Let's pray.