A Long Walk to Freedom Part 1 "Freedom & The Lie"

Welcome to the River City Church Podcast and a message by our

lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow him today.

Good morning, man, I am glad. I'm so glad to be here.

I missed you all. I'll tell you, I have something

to tell you. So if you're here for the first

time in the past six weeks or so, you don't know who I am.

I'm Jason. I'm the pastor here.

Every summer I take a little bit of time to get away and just and

and kind of pray and let our teaching team teach.

I want to acknowledge our teaching team.

Holy cow. Right?

Like. So it was Aaron, and then it was

Rebecca, and then it was RJ, and then it was Jennifer, and then

it was Johnny. And I'm forgetting somebody.

And it's terrible. It would have been great.

Jason Casey. Thank you.

Yeah. Jason Casey.

Sorry, Casey. But you know, I'm grateful for

them because listen, they all have full time jobs.

This is not their thing that that they do.

And so they took time to listen and to pray and to ask God, hey,

like, what do you want to say and how do you want to say it?

And I, they talked about tough stuff.

And that leads me to you. Like, I want to thank you for

coming. And I want you to know, right?

Like a series on idolatry heavy lifting.

Tough stuff, right? Most, a lot of churches during

the summer they're like we'll talk about self esteem and you

know and what kind of tell story like not you.

No way. You're like we want to talk

about and I'm so I'm so grateful for you.

And so last week during this service we had an opportunity to

sneak in now and I we we snuck in and we kind of sat back there

and and the deal was I just wanted to go to church at my

church right. And not be the pastor and not

have to fix things or figure things out.

And so, as I was sitting there, I was almost.

Immediately, just kind of overcome.

Right. And they were just emotion.

And I want to say, so very careful case.

So I'm not one who hears audible voices from the Lord.

Right. Like, I just like, you know,

some people do whatever, but but they're every once in a while,

you just get an impression, right?

Like a sense of feeling, whatever, that's so strong that

you know that it's something it's unusual for you.

And that was sitting back there, right back in this kind of

little area last week. And I'm watching, you know,

little Gabby sing and, you know, this is a House of miracles,

what I want to tell you. And I hope you'll hear this.

And you'll receive this for you because, like you were here, the

Lord is so pleased. And this isn't a sense of that

He doesn't know, right? Like, this isn't a sense.

Like you've hidden that ugly thing really good, so He doesn't

know what's come and gone. No, the Lord sees, and He knows

what your life is about, and He knows all the struggles that

you're facing, and He knows the ugly stuff.

And you're here, listening. And so I just want to say thank

you for being a kind of place that in the summer will continue

to show up, will continue to listen to, to difficult hard

teaching. And I believe that you go home

and you think about it and you and you kind of wonder.

And so a lot of you right now, today are just like finally, we

don't want to talk about idols anymore.

And that's not really the case at all.

See that first service didn't laugh at that either.

They're like, well, because it's not funny.

It's not funny at all. Here's the thing.

Here's how we have to talk about it.

It's serious business. It's a big, it's a big deal,

right, Because we've, as we've seen right, we saw kind of

throughout the whole six week series of the deal, right.

These idols, they get in us and they are sneaky and they are

subtle and they get their tentacles in us and they get

their hooks in us and then they begin to drive and control our

lives and they begin to make life difficult and unmanageable

and hard and and we just get down that road, right.

And So what I would say is, as a believer, as a Christian, this

business of. Idols we don't ever graduate

from. We don't ever get to get away

from looking at our hearts and going, Lord, is there anything

in my heart that is taking your place?

Is there anything that's calling the shots in my life?

But you right? And that can be dangerous.

That can feel hard. We don't.

We don't want to do that. I don't.

I don't want to talk about that. It's easier to just assume and

it's easier just to pretend. What I would just say is it's

really not. Because idols are cruel

taskmasters, right? They are absolutely unpleasable.

We have a God who is pleased, and we have these idols and

these taskmasters who are radically unpleased.

Not only that, this whole process of of dethroning idols

in our life, that's what following Jesus is.

Jesus came as king. Jesus came as Lord, right?

The Lord, the the. The word literally means like

boss, like master. And so Jesus comes as king and

he comes as boss. And so he's going to, he's going

to take aim at all the idols. And so as we follow Jesus,

listen, you should expect regularly to find areas in your

life where you just go. I'm trusting that instead of

Jesus. It doesn't mean that you're

doing it wrong. It means that you're doing it

right. It means that you now have an

opportunity to make those decisions and to and to follow

him. Right.

And it's not just Jesus. It's not just in the New

Testament. If you go to the Old Testament

right, all the way back to the very beginning as God, you know,

Adam and Eve, right? What it said, they, he told him,

don't eat that. And what reason would they have

to eat that? Except they said they saw that

the fruit was pleasing to the eye and it was good for food and

and it was good for making one wise.

And so they chose those things. Over the reality that God is

king. And since then all of human

history has been plagued by idolatry.

And so the message of God to his people in Israel as they were

taking their promised land, as they were wandering in the

wilderness, the message always was go get rid of the idols.

And when we get to the Book of Kings and Chronicles, it tells

kind of the the story and the history of of God's people.

We talk about these kings and they would say he was a good

king, but. He didn't go after the high

places. He didn't go get the idols down.

He did a lot of good things and it was great, but he let the

idols remain. And so it's an invitation and

it's a challenge to us to not let those idols to remain, to

not let those things. So let me paint really a picture

for the rest of the year. Okay, you don't have to remember

this. Like, we're just going to do it.

But I want to give you. So, you know, kind of we know

where we're going, right, for the next six or seven weeks.

We're starting a new series today called A Long Walk to

Freedom, right. And.

What we're going to talk about this week is we're going to talk

about, let me back up too many times, I think in church, even

as pastors, because it's easier for me to just stand here and

Thunder forth on things that you should do.

Stop being idolaters, Stop worshiping at stop.

You're just right. And some people, like, if we

grew up in church, we'd love that.

Like, kill them sinners. Gee, right.

Tell them right. Yeah, right.

And we think. And so it's easy to Thunder

forth. Here's the problem.

When that becomes the reality of what this is about, we walk out

of here and we may have a vague or a general sense of the fact

that we've messed it up somehow, but we don't know how to do it

different. And so if we've just spent six

weeks talking about the fact that we have idols and big idols

of money and idols of of distraction and idols, you know,

and all these things. If we have all these idols in

us, if we don't believe, if we just don't start to get a sense

that God can actually lead us out of those and away from

those, what happens in is what settles in is hopelessness or

anger or bitterness. And so you may experience that.

That may be your kind of. Experience right now, but what

we're going to do for the next several weeks is we're going to

look at the process for removing idols for our lives.

And the reality is like and you get like this is a little bit

self-serving maybe or may seem that way, right.

But you need kind of the whole process, right.

Which means that you have to come back next week, right.

We're not going to get the whole thing this week, right.

So for the next six weeks we're going to talk about the process

of idolatry movement removal. After that, we're going to spend

about four weeks and we're going to look at some very crystal

clear practices that Jesus use. The practices that Jesus.

To make sure that he stayed free from idols.

That will help us stay free from idols.

And then after that, here's the danger if we just stop there,

right? We talk about the process and we

talk about the practice process that the problem there is we

just leave from here and go, great, I'll do it.

I've got the strength and the willpower and I'll just, it's

all up to me. And there is nothing about that.

That's good news, is there? There's nothing about that that

that should give us hope. So we're going to talk about the

process and we're going to talk about the practices.

And finally we're going to talk about the power to do that.

We're talking about the Holy Spirit and the role of the Holy

Spirit in our life. And so this is an ongoing

conversation that impacts and affects all of us, right?

But my hope is that as we continue to walk together, we

begin to really have an idea of how to answer that question.

How can we get rid of these things that control us?

And that destroy us, that ruin our lives.

The first question that we have to ask is, and that you may be

asking and and listen, I hope at some point over the last six

weeks as you as you heard, as you listen, you just started to

say, man, yeah, I struggle with that.

I think that's that's an idol in my life.

The question then becomes that we have to ask is, is freedom

from that thing? Is it really even possible?

Does God really want me to be free in an understandable sense,

where people would be able to look at it and just be able to

go? That person does not have

evidence of of that brand, that unique brand of idolatry in

their life. Is it possible?

And so that's kind of the question that we're going to

camp on. And let me just kind of maybe if

I need to tip my hand, the answer is an emphatic yes, You

can live free. From the things that if God

reveals it, if the reason that he reveals it is because he

wants to take it away from you. So we're going to spend most of

our time in John chapter 8 today.

John 8 · chapter mention

If you want to turn there. I want to set some context.

The 1st 11 verses of John chapter 8 is this crazy account

John 8 · chapter mention

and not crazy like in a bad way like eye opening and humbling

and beautiful account of Jesus with a woman caught in adultery.

And we're not going to kind of talk about that today.

But before that, John Chapter 7, John sets the context for that

John 7 · chapter mention

and what we find is Jesus and his disciples and John.

John 7 · chapter mention

Chapter 7 and continuing to John, Chapter 8 are celebrating.

John 8 · chapter mention

It's the time in Jerusalem called the Feast of the

Tabernacles. OK.

And so the Feast of the Tabernacles was a big weeklong

feast ordained and instituted by God.

And the point and the purpose of the Feast of the Tabernacles was

to celebrate God's deliverance of the Jewish people out of

slavery in Egypt. So it was all about freedom.

It was all about deliverance. It was all about God taking his

people who he loves and leading them.

Now, when he led them out of Egypt, and we've heard right, a

part of the Red Sea and the Egyptians came, it was this

great miraculous thing. He didn't immediately say great.

You go from Egypt and now you live in Israel.

For 40 years. They wandered around in the

desert. And it doesn't say that they,

you know, pitched the tent and they stayed there for 40 years.

It says that they wandered around.

And the way that they moved was interesting.

We're told that there was by day there was a pillar of cloud and

at evening there was a pillar of fire and so.

There was this unusually great bright light in the sky, and it

would camp out. For sometimes when the the

pillar of fire would camp out, the people would stop and they

would pitch their tents and they would have their lives and they

would do their thing. But when the light, when the

pillar of fire moved, began to move, the people of Israel would

pack up their stuff and they would follow this fire.

And so one of the ways that the Jewish people would celebrate

the Feast of Tabernacles in the Temple right now is thousands of

years before. In Jesus's time, in the 1st

century, the way that they would celebrate the feast of tyranny

was in the temple. They would have these great

giant chandeliers right with lots of with big candles and oil

and the and the idea was in the temple, which was where the

presence of God was dwelt right. The chandeliers in that temple

and the kind of one of the outer courts of the temple, the

chandeliers that were lit up would give light to the whole

city. From anywhere in Jerusalem you

could see the light and again there's deep and rich and fixed

symbolism all over this. The idea is the light would draw

our attention, that light would draw us and invite us and lead

us up into God's presence in the Tabernacle.

So this idea of God leading with light and God's light being a

guide it absolutely. Saturates Jewish history, Jewish

theology, the whole entire ethos would have understood God's

light as being their guide. We see it in the Psalm Psalm

Psalms 43 · chapter mention

chapter 43, verse three. Send out your light and your

truth. Let them lead me.

Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

This could have been read at the Feast of the Tabernacles.

Let your light shine, and let it draw me and guide me.

Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy,

and I will praise you with the Lear.

Oh God, my God, If you go to Psalm 119105.

Which is this? Extended.

And I say extended, I mean, it's long.

Like hundreds of verses. This extended meditation on the

role of God's word in worship. And Psalm 119105 says your word

is a lamp onto my feet and a light onto my path.

And so the entire kind of Jewish idea of who they were was

saturated with this idea that God leads his people.

That God has a plan for them, that he will lead them from

slavery and exile into life and in the goodness and in freedom.

And in a sense, the word was just follow the light.

And so this deeply entrenched idea in the lives of the Jewish

people as they, as they said, right, we look for the light.

The light is in the temple. The light is in God's word,

which is the Torah. The light is, is there and it's

ready to go, and we just follow the light.

So now you can imagine at the Feast of Tabernacles when Jesus,

this Jewish rabbi stands. And in verse 12, Jesus spoke to

them saying, I am the light of the world.

Bro, you are cracked. We know what light is about.

Light is about illumination. Light reveals, light shines,

light shows up. But he doesn't just stop there.

He says Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but we'll

have the light. Of life.

And So what we what we've gone from is Jesus's word, which is

which? To the 1st century Jewish mind

was the Torah, the first five books, Genesis, Exodus,

Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

They'd enshrine the message of the prophets and all that to

leave them. But the problem was, in the 1st

century, the Jewish people in Israel weren't very free.

They were under Roman oppression.

They didn't have the kind of life that that they thought they

would be. And so they were looking for

freedom and for exile. And so the way that they dealt

with that was by rigid and meticulous adherence and

obedience to the Torah. It's about the rules.

This is where the Pharisees came from.

They just said if you mess up a little bit, God won't come back.

And then we'll just be stuck and we'll be slaves forever.

And into that Jesus stands up and says, guys, I'm the light of

the world. I'm the 1.

So it's not just the books of the law, it's just not the

Torah. It's Jesus's life, it's his

teachings, it's the ministry. It's in Matthew chapter 5 when

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Jesus said blessed are the poor and spirit for they'll receive

the Kingdom of God. He said blessed are those who

mourn, for they'll be comforted. Jesus is giving a picture and an

illustration of what his teachers when he says forgive

and you'll be forgiven, but if you don't forgive, you won't be

forgiven. And he says turn the other

cheek, go the extra mile. Forgive 70 * 7.

When Jesus stood in his teaching in his life and he says a lot of

people are going to come to me and Matthew chapter seven, he

says a lot of people are going to come to me on that last day

and they're going to say, Lord, we we built a big church and we

preached for you and we did all these amazing things, Jesus, and

we're ready to to kind of come be with you.

And Jesus's response will be I never knew you.

He's not going to say he didn't spend enough time in the book.

He's not going to say he didn't memorize.

He's going to say you didn't I didn't know you.

Now some of your fields starting to feel a little scandalized

right now you're just like a bad pastors getting like dangerous.

We're going to get there That's that's that's good, right.

I'm saying Jesus said I didn't know you.

And at the end of Matthew, chapter seven, he says, If

you'll build your life on my teaching.

On me, then you'll be like this house that's built on a rock and

its foundation is strong and it's good.

And if you build your foundation on that, then your life will be

stable and it will be steady and it will be good.

But if you don't, if you build it on something else, you'll be

stuck. And so Jesus makes this

scandalous statement. I am the light, and he says

follow me. So what do we do with the book

then? What do we do with the Torah?

Now, right? We're supposed to, we're

supposed to do that. What about Leviticus, man,

there's got a bunch of rules in there and we just discard those.

We just throw those away. We'll go down to verse 30 in

that, right? Verse 30 says as he was talking

about Jesus, Jesus was saying these things.

Many believed in him. So now the context for this is

they were everybody that would have hurt Jesus in this, in

this, what he's saying would have been a Jewish person.

They would have had their their hopes in that and so.

What happened says when it says they believe him, These are what

we in the kind of the 21st century, W would call new

believers. OK, And listen.

You may be a new believer and listen real quick.

This is so good. If you're here and you're a new

believer and you're a little bit concerned and you're a little

worried about me, I don't know enough.

I'm not doing this. Like, listen, Jesus knows.

And Jesus welcomed them. And I want you to hear this.

We welcome you too. You don't have an expectation

that you live up to anything because because I want you to

know, we also understand that being a new believer and having

new new ideas and learn follows means there's a lot of stuff

that we're going to get wrong, right.

Like I new believers get, specially these Jewish believers

that could have been like I believe Jesus, kind of like what

you're saying. You're the light that I'm

supposed to follow you, but I'm not ready for all that Leviticus

stuff. I'm not I I just, there's so

much that I don't know. Like can I just have Jesus and

not kind of have the rules and can I have Jesus and can you

just love me? Can I can I not do that?

Right. And so new believers can be

messy. And I just want you to say it is

a beautiful and a blessed messiness that we don't just

welcome, we seek it here. We want to be honest with where

we are and who we are and and what we're doing.

And So what we're told is Jesus was surrounded by these new

believers who were trying to figure out.

What? What's it about?

What are we doing? You may be here, too.

Now listen, you may actually have been a follower of Jesus

for a long time and not know what it's about.

I want you to know that's Okay too.

Okay. What's not Okay is to stay.

Where we are. And to build a fence around it

and to lay down a foundation and idolize it.

It's not okay to stay. Well, here I am, and I cannot

and will not go anywhere else. So Jesus is.

We're told in verse 30 that many of them had believed him.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you abide

in my word, you are truly my disciples, right?

So this is a conditional statement.

If you do, then you are. And the converse of that is, if

you don't, then you're not. And so now we have to ask what

we're doing. And in the 21st century year, I

think a lot of us when we read this, we the first thing that

comes to remind is Bible study, right.

The word of Biden is to like, remain to camp out.

It's a picture like of the Tabernacles, right?

Like I'm going to sit, I'm going to build a house here and I'm

going to remain. And so some of us maybe read

this and we look at maybe we were taught in, in our, in our

churches or our Sunday school growing up that you need to

spend 37 hours a day in Bible study.

And if if you don't, you're not, it's not OK, right.

And Jesus is probably mad at you, but.

But you're sure not going. But we've already kind of seen,

right, how Jesus expands, right? And Jesus takes.

And he's talking about his life, the message of his life, the

things that he said for sure, but the things that he did, the

way that he walked, the life that he led, how he treated

people, how he treated religion, how he treated the church, how

he treated the temple. And he says, so if you abide in

my word and he says you're truly my disciples, that still holds

true today. We don't notify that.

We don't take that away. We don't, we don't know that you

have to abide in His word. And so one of the things that I

kind of sense and recognize and realize while I was away for six

weeks, right, and and things popping in your head or

whatever, one of the things that came back to us is for River

City to to continue to see God's pleasure and places.

We have to be a place that is radically saturated in God's

word. It's not enough for you to come

and get a little dose from me every week.

It's not enough for for you. But it's also not enough for us

to have 75 Beth Moore Bible studies lined up, right?

I mean, just go. I've done them all right.

It's not that's not okay, right. What we have to do is moment by

moment, day by day, instant by instant.

We have to acknowledge and stay and be in this message of

Jesus's life, right? So he goes on and you will know

the truth and the truth will set you free.

That's good news isn't it? Now truth.

Truth is a heady and a dangerous thing.

See, This is why Jesus is so clear throughout his teachings.

The word of God is expressed in in the written word points to

Jesus. Jesus is the word of God and

that's why he says if you abide in me.

He didn't say if you go to Bible study every week.

He said the the idea that God has created you to be free, but

the way that God works his freedom into your life is

through truth. And truth doesn't change in

every generation. Truth isn't new today and false

yesterday and it's not true today and it won't be true

tomorrow, right. And so it forced us to to kind

of contend and to step back and go, OK, what's real and what's

big and what lasts and and and what indoors, right.

And so he's talking to these recent hang ups who would have

been thoroughly saturated and entrenched and drenched in in

all of the Torah and all that. And he said, follow me and that

idea. Follow me is the same idea as

abide in my word. Jesus didn't say for us to walk

around 24 hours a day with our head in the book.

Because if we walk around like this, do you know what we miss?

You. You miss creation.

Romans 120 says that what's been known about God can be seen, but

even his invisible qualities by what's been made.

So if we walk around here and what Jesus is saying us is if we

as a people, if you as a person will intentionally and

deliberately and consistently grow in the way and in the

lifestyle of Jesus, then you will have the life that he

created for then you will be free.

He did not say if you are always at Bible study.

Underlying here thing here is that academics, an academic

pursuit of Jesus or religion or faith does not lead to the kind

of freedom that God wants for you.

And as scandalous again as that may sound to some of you are so

twitchy right now, you're just like you say the Bible doesn't

matter, right? Listen, what I'm saying is you

probably know somebody who knows more Bible than you that you

would never want to be around. You maybe know somebody who

knows so much scripture and your thought.

Maybe if Jesus is like them, I'll take my chances at the

other place in eternity. If Jesus is stuffy and cranky, I

don't want to be any part of that.

You don't get the life that Jesus has for us exclusively by

having a data set, by knowing that.

And here's how we know. We live in a time where there

are more Bible study resources and tools available to us, to

the common person and the common man than ever before in history.

And I would venture a guess, and I don't think it's some great

kind of challenge and stretch of belief to say we are no more

free than we ever have been. We have more opportunities to

open the word and to understand what it means.

We have ordinary common people, unschooled, unlettered people

have the ability to get into the original languages and and

dabble and get in and understand the Hebrew and the Greek.

And yet we don't experience the freedom that the very book seems

to imply and promise to us. And So what that tells me how

this brings us all back around is maybe we've made an idol out

of the Bible or Bible study. Maybe we have begun to worship

the scripture is kind of like the 4th member of the Trinity,

right? Which makes it not the Trinity

anymore because try is 3 and all kinds of mental gymnastics to

get around that right. And so let me real quick though,

put some things to rest, rightfully so.

You may be concerned that I'm diminishing the the the

scriptures, but I'm saying man, you don't need the scripts.

You don't need that. So just to make sure that I'm

very clear, going to put it up, you can take a picture and

remind yourself I'm going to read it so that I don't make any

mistakes and I don't fumble my way past.

Are you ready? The Bible.

This. Whatever you know the English

standard version of the new International version of the New

Living translation. The Bible is a trustworthy,

indispensable. That's a word that you have to

know. You have to hear my heart on

this. The Bible is an indispensable

tool because because here is why it is indispensable, because it

accurately and faithfully. That means when you read it, you

can trust it. You can believe it and it will,

and you can trust it to be repetitive, to understand, to

get over it, it accurately and faithfully portrays the full

expression of God's heart. You want to know what God's

heart is? You can see it.

It's in the Word, the full expressions of God's heart and

his will for humanity, which is the life and teaching of Jesus

and the Gospels, and by his Holy Spirit through the Church.

K So the Bible is an indispensable tool because it

points us to Jesus so. And I talk about the Gospels and

the Holy Spirit and the book of Acts and the church and all

that. So does that mean that the Old

Testament is no. Listen, what I'm telling you is

every page in the Scripture, every passage, every idea points

us to Jesus. For instance, the feast of the

Tabernacle. They thought it celebrated

ultimately their escape from slavery in Egypt.

And it did. But what we see in John Chapter

John 8 · chapter mention

8 is it pointed to Jesus see the pillar of fire in the sky.

That's not the light of the world.

Jesus is the light of the world. But what God had been preparing

his people to do since forever, He had prepared them to look for

his guidance. He had prepared them to look for

his leadership. He had prepared them to expect

an illumination of their life, to have light in the sky and

light in the darkness. So when Jesus stands and says I

am the light of the world and John chapter 14, he says I am

John 14 · chapter mention

the way and the truth and the like.

What Jesus says is I am what God has been saying since the

beginning. So we need the Old Testament

because it points us to what Jesus is.

It points us to who Jesus is. But what I mean, but I mean is

you don't get to trump Jesus. With Leviticus we don't get to

say, We don't get to say right. When Jesus says love your

enemies, we don't get to talk about Babylon and

Nebuchadnezzar, right? Like when when we don't get to

trump Jesus with Paul. What we do is when we read

something like Paul and Paul says something and we look at

Jesus and Jesus seems to be doing the exact opposite, what

we do is we reconcile it. And this is where we need

community, this is where we need all of those tools.

But what it does is are you listening?

It removes from us a flat reading of scripture.

It removes from us every opportunity for us to use the

scripture as a hammer to destroy or fix or win.

Because what we look at the word of God is Jesus, who found his

enemies and redeemed them and loved them and restored them.

And so when we read in the scripture something that Paul

says what we've asked is our prayers.

Jesus, help me find you in this. Help me know and understand you.

And so my hope when I say that I want River City to be a church

radically saturated in the scripture, what I mean is I want

us as His church to have a radical awareness of the

presence of Jesus in our lives. I want us to be growing in the

things that Jesus grew in. And we know in Galatians chapter

522 and 23 Love if we're getting the doctrine right, but we're

not more loving. We've made an idol of something.

Joy. If the church isn't the most

joyful gathering of people in the world.

We've made an idol of something. And it's keeping us from what

God has. Because remember, what an idol

does, right? It lies to you.

It seduces you. It it tells you that it's all

up, it's all according to you, right?

So Galatians 5. Love and joy and peace and

patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and

gentleness and self-control. And we may have the most

biblically educated church in history, and we may not actually

live be living the kind of life that Jesus wants to call us into

now. It feels like, feels like I'm

like, mad or angry, whatever. It's not it.

I think that's what we've been talking about with the idols,

right? Like you got to see him to know

him. And the question then becomes,

what? What is it that Jesus wants from

us? Like, why?

What will following lead to? Listen at the end of that

Matthew 8 passage. Matthew 8, John 836 says if the

sun sets you free, you will be free, indeed freedom.

Galatians 51 says that it is for freedom that Christ has set you

free. So don't be burdened again by a

yoke of slavery. You were created to be free

Christian, so don't give in to bondage.

Don't give in to don't give in to slavery again.

Here's this kind of the big idea.

Following Jesus will lead you into the freedom that you were

created for. And I humbly submit to you if

you're night, if you're, and I'm not talking necessarily day by

day, minute by minute, but I'm talking about over.

When you look at the broad movements of your life, if you

are not increasingly free, there is a better than likely chance

that you are not actually following Jesus.

You may be doing lots of Bible study.

You may be here every time. You may be doing all those

things. But Jesus wants to lead you from

lead you to freedom from bondage, from slavery into

freedom. And again, Now this question

comes back. Do we believe that?

Because you may have been following Jesus for 20 years and

there may be this thing that you don't have.

And listen, what I don't want to do is I I don't want this to

become some heavy kind of hammer thing.

Jesus comes with grace. What I want us to do is take an

honest and authentic look at our lives and just say I'm not as

free as as I should be. And Jesus doesn't do that to to

yell at us or to punish us. He does that.

He reveals that he's the light to show it to us so that we can

go, oh, I want to be free in that area.

I want all the freedom that Jesus can muster.

We started the year by looking at the Garden of Eden, right?

And you know, the thing about the Garden of Eden is there were

no boundaries to it. There are four rivers that

flowed out of it but there was number end to it.

It was boundary less well. He told him not to eat that

fruit. 1000 seeds trying to crush their right.

It's like you just want to apple, right?

What if the whole idea behind the apple was there had to be

some way for humanity to tangibly acknowledge and

recognize that they are there is a God, and they're not it.

And the only way to make that happen is to obey.

And the temptation in the garden was you provide for yourself.

You provide what you need, what's good for you, you be God

without God. And I just say to you lovingly,

my hope is this invites you into freedom.

You are not created or capable of being God.

Your frame was not designed for it.

And let me just say this. If you're tired, if you're

exhausted, if you're anxious, if you're angry, if you are

frustrated, that's what trying to be God feels like.

The awareness that there are things that you just can't.

For all of your trying and wishing and hoping, you just

can't fight and you just can't figure out and you just can't

make it happen. So let's talk about a truth,

right. There's a truth that will set

you for just that you know. You'll know the truth and truth.

Let me show you a truth that will set you free to this.

You thought we forgot? Maybe.

There it is. This is our confession.

We say this every week. We are badly broken.

Let me just tell you, Church, that statement right there has

the ability and the capacity to deliver a measure of freedom in

your life that you have never experienced and understood.

We love this statement. We have it on our shirts.

We have it on our hats. Listen, people come to me all

the time and they wonder, like I believe that Badly broken is

deep and deeply loved, is embedded into the culture of who

we are. But the question isn't do we

know it. The question isn't do we love

it? The question isn't even do we

believe it. The question is, is it setting

us free? Is this reality that we are

broken but loved? Is it setting us free?

So the question is, are we less anxious then?

I'm not just talking about River City, I'm talking about the

church at large. Are we as a church less anxious

than the culture at large? Are we less afraid than the

culture at large? Are we less angry within the

church than those who are without the church?

Are we less divided within the church than we are without of

the church? Are we less likely to be

offended and get our feelings hurt inside the church than

outside the church? My experience is the answer to

all of those is no, we're not. Not universally.

Not that there aren't some pockets of it.

But listen, church, I'm not trying to yell at you here.

I'm not trying to. I'm hoping that you will embrace

this idea that there can and there is supposed to be more for

you. How do you respond when you get

into the Scripture or you hear a preacher preaching and he

preaches a text, a verse, a teaching that confronts some

kind of sacred belief of yours? I'm allowed to do that.

I'm allowed to be that. I'm allowed to.

God would never. And we read in the scripture and

it says that and we go find. It says how do we deal when

Jesus confronts our idols, when there's a teaching that we just,

I can't imagine how a God would do that.

And we look in here and just go, I've either got to make this go

away or I have to change or I have to be God in my own life,

in my own world. There's a passage that I often

read at Easter Luke chapter 19. It's on Palm Sunday and Jesus is

Luke 19 · chapter mention

ridden in to Jerusalem where he's standing outside the city

and everybody's just celebrating Jesus, Jesus, right.

And they're so happy. And Jesus gets off his donkey

and he walks over to the edge of of the mountain and he looks

over Jerusalem and the crowds are behind him and like

Jerusalem right where the where the chandelier was, where the

temple was, where the very presence of God dwelt, right.

And and Jesus stands over there and listen to his words and look

19 verse 41. And when he drew near, and he

saw the city, he wept over it. And what did he say?

Or that you even you had known on this day the things that make

for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes.

See, the problem wasn't that the Israelites.

The problem wasn't that the Jewish people in the 1st century

didn't know what the goal was. They knew the goal was peace.

They had looked for peace. They just thought it went

through a different source. They thought the secret to their

peace was getting rid of Rome. If we can just get political

freedom from Rome, then we'll be fine.

If we can just kick them out of Jerusalem and finally get Temple

worship back to what it was supposed to be, then we'll be

OK. And Jesus stands up and he says,

if it was that easy, you would already be free.

But he says, but you can't. You haven't, right?

That's not it. And so my question for us is, we

read these fruits and spirits. We come to church, we do all the

Bible studies and we do all the stuff right in the fruits.

We talk about love and joy and peace and patience, kindness,

goodness, faithful and genitals, self-control.

And what I would ask about your way of life, about the way that

you live, the way that you approach your finances and your

marriage and your relationships and sex and money and

rock'n'roll. How's it working?

Are those who attend this meeting and meetings just like

it all across the country? Are we more free than the

average citizen? And again, lovingly, I would say

that's not always the case. So this series is loosely based

on the 12 steps of recovery and the 12 steps of recovery have a

word they say for kind of the life that we lead, where we look

and we just go. That's where I want to get.

But I'm not getting there doing the things that I do.

They're not leading me to where I am.

But I'm going to keep doing the things that I'm doing and hoping

that tomorrow I will get there. I'm hoping that by turning left

I will go right. I'm hoping that by pursuing

peace with bullets and guns and knives, I'm hoping that by

pursuing happiness and wellbeing, by by money and power

and prestige, that those will leave me, even though that they

never have before. Do you know what the word that

recovery people use? I think it's a valid and a good

word, insanity. What they say is our lives have

become unmanageable without anxiety.

Our lives have become unmanageable without addictions.

Do you know how we have addictions to control that

feeling of being out of control? And so we drink, or we spend, or

we have sex, or we do whatever The thing is for us.

And we hope that tomorrow I can have enough of a drink to be

over it. Tomorrow I can earn enough money

to be over it. Tomorrow I can have enough likes

on my Facebook that I will feel powerful and important.

And what happens is we're stuck. And the word that we have for

that stuckness is denial. And denial is the mortal enemy

of your freedom. As long as we continue to deny

that Jesus wants to lead us somewhere and we're not getting

there, or that he hasn't let us there yet, that this isn't it,

this isn't the full and the total thing.

As long as we do that, we won't be free analyst and we talk

about it like we love America. Jack, what about freedom?

Not going to happen. Freedom.

America rightly exists. Good.

We do have sociological freedom. We have political freedom.

It's a wonderful place we can have this conversation, and we

should have conversation. But I found a helpful idea and a

helpful definition of freedom in Martin Luther King's book Where

Do We Go From Here? And he uses kind of three big

posts to identify what freedom is.

The first thing that freedom is we're going to have, if we're

going to be free, is we have to have the capacity to consider or

weigh our options. OK.

We have the ability to imagine a life that's different from where

we have now. So here's what that looks like.

Now in the life of the alcoholic, of course you can say

I'm free to have a drink. I can do whatever.

Great. Can you imagine a life without

it? It's not.

The question isn't are you free to drink?

The question is, are you free not to drink in a real and

practical sense? In a way where not drinking

wouldn't cause your entire world to unravel, do we have the

ability to make a choice? That's the second one.

Do we have the the capacity to weigh our options?

Then do we have the ability for those options?

So those decisions to express themselves in decision.

Like you can just say I'm free, whatever.

Can you take a month off of Facebook?

You just say, man, my anxiety is so high right now.

Can I take a month off of Facebook?

And of course, intellectually you're free.

Like, you're free to go. Like, like, of course I can.

I've just never actually done it, despite the fact that it

causes me anxiety and fear. And it makes me, and it turns me

against people that I shouldn't be against and it makes me

resent people that I shouldn't resent.

And the third one, I think this is really great.

This is the one that kind of, like, impacted me.

The third component of real and actual freedom is

responsibility. Do we?

Do you have the capacity to acknowledge my life is what it

is because of the decisions that I have made?

And listen, There's a lot of stuff outside of your life that

you can't control. You can't control the person who

abused you. You can't control the abuse that

you suffered, but you can control what you do with that

pain. You can't control what kind of

person your boss is, but you can control how you respond at work

and how you respond to your boss.

You can't control your how your spouse treats you.

And let me be very clear. If your spouse is abusing you,

if they are, if they are physically hitting you, if they

are day after day assaulting your personhood and your

humanity, I want you to know there's a breaking covenant

there. That's not, that's not what God

created and designed marriage to be.

But I'm just saying, I'm just talking about like your your

husband's a little annoying and we're all a little annoying.

There's no iteration of marriage where that's not the reality.

But what I would say in the normal flux and warp and wolf of

life, are you prepared to own your part in the dysfunction of

your marriage? Are you willing to own your part

and the dysfunction of your relationships?

And this all comes back to idols.

So you can stand on my desk and tell me that you that sex is not

an idol for you. But the question I would ask is,

has have your relationships ever been affected or destroyed by

pornography or by infidelity? If you've chosen sex over a

relationship, over a person, a person, a relationship, that

means everything to you. Sex may be an idol.

It may be something that you have to root out of your life.

But it begins by acknowledging it.

It begins by recognizing that's the thing that I have to deal

with. You can just say politics isn't

an idol for me. I'm not an.

I'm not a slave to politics. But if knowing a person's

position or stand on a political issue has ever made you question

their salvation or cause you to fear them, it very well may be

an idol. I love the way Johnny said if

you if for political reasons, you have ever expressed vitriol

to a person created in the image of God, you may have an idolatry

problem. You can say that social media

isn't an idol, Isn't an idol. And while I was on my break, I

had a moment, I was sitting on the couch and I was very anxious

and my chest was tight, right? And you know what, like, And I

was watching a baseball game. I was watching the Astros.

It'd be terrible. And so all this anxiety in my

heart and right. And So what?

My, you know, my response was right.

The first thing my mindset was I got to get distracted, right?

I got to distract myself from the anxiety rather than backing

up and evaluating it and looking at it and saying whatever.

So what I did is I got on Twitter.

Anybody's anxiety ever been made better on Twitter, right?

So the question thought in my head, I do not get to complain

about what I'm willing to tolerate and as long as I turn

to Twitter, I am tolerating anxiety in my life.

Delete. Set it down.

And so then what I was doing, I was like this.

I don't know what to do, but you know what I'm not doing.

I'm not going to that idol that promises if you just scroll for

if you just doom scroll for 10 minutes, then you'll be free.

Then you'll feel better and it never does.

This is the time where Facebook is going to be rich and full and

positive. This is the time where I'm going

to find life on Instagram, right?

It's never friend. And So what if we just say

anxiety is so intolerable to me that I will not log into Twitter

and all the things I will not get on Facebook.

I will not because I like I know if I get on Facebook I'm going

to gossip about somebody, right? And so all the lies you'll be

left out you won't know what's going on.

You won't do that, right? All the lies at the I'll tell

and what have you said. I would rather be non anxious

for my family and present in this moment than out there

somewhere worrying about the end of the world because you can't

make Putin back down or whatever.

You can't do it. And friend, I'm just not sure

that you were created to bear the entire weight of sin and

struggle for the whole human race.

I'm not sure you were created to understand every dark and evil

thing that's going on in this world.

There's enough in here to worry about.

And so we can deny our idols, But the fruit is there standing

at us. We can deny that money is an

idol. But have you ever fought with

your spouse? Do you get anxious and tense and

nervous at an unexpected expense?

Money may be an idol. You can deny that religion is an

idol. But if you continue to show up

year after year and do the same thing day after day and week

after week and month after month, and it never bears any

fruit, and it never grows in you, and you're not becoming

more loving and you're not becoming more kind and you're

not becoming more joyful, what you may have is a religious

idol, which is no better than any religious idol.

They're all religious idols. And So what I say is we have an

idolatry problem and what I want you to grasp like like this is

its six week process, right? Like this is the thing that

we're going to, we're going to be going like self-serving as

heck. I know, right?

Come back next week and I'll tell you right a little bit

more. Not going to tell you the answer

next week either because it's a long walk for the rest of our

lives. But here's where it begins

today. Can you admit that your life has

become unmanageable? Can you admit that the way that

you deal with stress and tension and problems does not produce

the freedom that you desire? And listen, if it does, if you

sit here and just go, I have no problems with the way my habits

are. Like, good, you should teach.

Next week we'll add you to the teaching team.

Good, I say that. But here's the thing, I say that

with all seriousness. If we won't face and confront

the pain and the hurt and the emptiness in our lives and the

things that lead us there, we will never be free.

We will live lives of desperate insanity, doing the same thing

day after day, getting no different results, and wondering

and lamenting why not. So what do we do today?

First thing you have to just come back.

I'm just going to read a passage real quick, real quick.

Hebrews chapter 12, first one. Since we're surrounded by so

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

great a cloud of witness, let us lay aside every week, every

weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with

endurance the race that is set before us.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith for

the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising his

shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Three things real quick. The first thing you have to do

is accept that there is a race chosen for you, and you know

what that means. That means it's not your race to

run. It means you don't get to decide

who you are, how you go, where you're going, the path by which

you get there, or all the rules that take you there.

It means that Jesus has the right to change your mind at any

time. It means that there may be

things that you have closely held for years as beliefs and as

you get in the Word and as you pray and as you talk to levers

and you get wisdom, wise counsel and wisdom, and may mean that

you have to set aside some things that are very close and

very near and very dear to your heart.

And the reason we do that is because the race that He has set

before us is a race to freedom. And it is a marathon, not a

Sprint. And you won't get there

tomorrow. You'll get there on the day that

you die and you open your eyes in eternity and you'll go, This

is what it was for. But here's the hope.

The hope is that if we begin practicing and doing that right

now, heaven won't be that much different than this.

And I don't mean that heaven is going to be like this.

I mean that this will begin to take on the very nature of

transcendence of people. I've known people who have since

that now he's turning is going to be infinitely more

spectacular than anything that we can imagine.

But you can begin to have a real and liberating sense of God's

presence right here and right now.

But you have to give up your race.

And he may say you've been worried about winning your whole

life, and I don't want you to care about winning anymore.

I want you to care about your child at home.

And when you say I will do whatever it takes to do that,

you will begin to experience life.

That's the second thing we ought to accept.

There are behaviors in us that are keeping us from freedom.

It's not externally imposed on us.

That means it can externally be taken away.

I don't care what legislation they pass.

Jesus wants me to be free, whether I live in wherever I

live, whatever the case is, our freedom is not exposed, is not

given to us externally. It comes inside.

You are free to be as loving, and it's joyful and it's

peaceful and it's patient and it's kind and as good and as

gentle and as self-control as you can possibly imagine.

But what keeps us from that is sin.

And you have to acknowledge that you have chosen the path, you

have chosen the way. And the last thing that we have

to do once we've done that is you have to begin to look at

Jesus. Well, how do we do that?

He's not here. I don't see him.

Right. We look at Jesus in the Word

because we believe that the Bible is a faithful and

indispensable reflection of the life and teaching and purpose of

Jesus in this world. So what do you do is you start

reading John this week, and I'm not going to tell you to read a

chapter of John because you may get 3 verses in and you may just

have to stop and you may have to pause and look at it and go and

go. So what is this telling me?

How do I do? What is this?

Keep doing? Do that.

The purpose isn't to get through it.

The purpose is to go, to make it to the end.

And what we do is the problem is we read, we go to the Bible and

we start reading. What are the people doing?

What are the Pharisees doing? What do they listen?

You know what they do? They do what you do.

They're just like you. And every single way, what I

want you to do is look at Jesus. What is Jesus teaching?

What is Jesus saying? What is he correct?

Acting? What behaviors does he correct?

How does he encourage his people?

What are the teachers, the things that he's teaching and

saying? What are they getting at?

And you begin to make the life and the ministry and the

teaching of Jesus the very center point and the very hub of

your life. And what will happen is truth

will begin working itself out in your life and you'll begin to

experience it. Now we're going to practice that

today through the taking of communion.

And communion is a tangible symbol of what Jesus came to

give us. It was the Passover meal,

another one of those celebrations that got it

ordained for his people. And the Apostle pile, the

Apostle Paul rights I received from the Lord what I passed on

to you, the Lord Jesus. On the night he was betrayed, he

took his took bread, and when he had given thanks, he said,

listen, are you listening? Said, This is my body which is

broken for you. Do you know why that's

important? Listen, Jesus was the eternally

existing Son of God. In him there was no brokenness.

He did not ever have. He did not ever in his in his

eternity. His character was perfectly

holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly good.

He was never touched and strained by sin.

He was never actually broken. But when Jesus said what did he

say? He says, this is my body, which

is broken for you. Do you know why he had to be

broken for us? Because we are broken.

Not just in a general sense, in very specific, deliberate,

practical ways. We are broken, and what this

cracker means for us is that Jesus is perfectly willing to

identify with you in the most heinous moments that you can

imagine. See, we don't want to confess,

because what if that makes God angry?

The body tells us that he is not angry.

So as much as this is a reflection of Jesus's love for

us and his willingness to identify with us, Church, we are

now the remaining body of Christ and we continue his ministry.

Not of being highly polished and well put together, of being

broken for a world that is broken, hurting with a world

that is hurting not because we don't know that there's God, but

because they don't. So, Jesus, we thank you that you

met us where we are. You gave us this tangible

reminder that you are not afraid of our sin.

We don't have to deny the things in us that are broken, even

though we want to. And so as we take this bread

today, we confess our brokenness and your provision.

Let's take the bread in the same way after suffer.

He took the cup and he said this cup is the new covenant in my

blood. Do this as often as you drink it

in remembrance of me. So the idea behind covenant,

when Jesus was talking about at the past over Passover would

have been out forgiveness. The question is what does Jesus

do with all of those things that we confess to him?

What does Jesus do with all those things that we announce?

The old covenant said that there had to be a death, a spotless

lamb. And so for thousands of years,

good Jewish people would March their lambs all the way up to

the temple and they would drop them and they would leave them.

And then one time of year, one guy had to go through all these

rituals to be righteous enough to stand before God and after

and offer sacrifice and and praise.

But it was always just a lamb. And all those people always knew

that they had to turn around and go back to their house and be

just as enslaved as they were. They looked around and Rome was

still in the house. Lambs are still marching, the

sacrifices are still going. And it didn't really change

anything, did it? Jesus instead comes and says

there's a new covenant, and it's not in lambs that don't have a

will. The new covenant is in that God

who is willing to identify with our brokenness and then lead us

out of it. And the way that he leads us out

is with life and gives his spirit to us.

When we take this cup, we participate in the new covenant.

It doesn't mean that we never sin.

It doesn't mean that we have to hide from our sin.

It means that no matter how heinous your sin is, you're

forgiven. You have access to the God who

will give you freedom in your life.

It means you don't have to keep going to the drink, to the

dollar to work to that website. It means you can be free because

freedom has been made. So Jesus, thank you that you

gave your life for our freedom. We take this cup in remembrance

of you. Let's take the cup.

As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim

the Lord's death until he comes. So now I want to do as we close

up this week. I want to give you an

opportunity to just meditate a little bit on what we've talked

about. Maybe there's an idol that's

popped up in your head and you try to think about something

else, but you can't and it's just right there.

What I want to do is Sonia's going to lead us and short a

verse on a chorus. Maybe 2 choruses Verse on a

chorus. I want you to come before the

Lord and go Lord. Here I am.

It's an open invitation. And then listen.

If you've never been a believer for being a Christian, what

being a follower of Jesus is is about saying yes.

It's saying yes. I confess that I'm not God and

you are, and I want you to be boss.

The word Lord just means boss. I want you to be boss.

I want you to be Lord in my life, not me.

And the symbol of that, the expression of that, is baptism.

And so maybe you're in here and you've never followed Jesus

before or maybe you've kind of believed in Jesus.

But you know, I've never done that.

Right after this, I want you to go out and be baptized like, oh,

but I'm in my nice guy. Listen, your church clothes will

dry. You'll be okay.

Don't miss this opportunity to say yes, to walk out of the

shadow of death. That is denial and into the life

freedom Father has for you. Will you stand and let's worship

together? All who are thirsty know who are

we? Come to the fountain, your heart

and stream of a life that the pain and the sorrow me washed

away, and the waves of his mercy his Steve cries out too.

Deep we sing. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus,

listen when we sing. Come, Lord Jesus.

We're not inviting him into this room.

This isn't the temple, where the presence of God dwells in four

walls. We are the temple of the Holy

Spirit. He wants to come into your

heart. So when you sing come, Lord

Jesus, you're inviting him into your life, into your context,

into your situation. You're inviting him into your

marriage. You're inviting him into your

finances. You're inviting him into your

singleness. You're inviting him into your

job and into your work. And I have to tell you, as noble

as that is, I would be pastoral malpractice if I didn't tell

you. He only comes as king.

And he will ruthlessly root out every idol that challenges his

authority. So I want saw you to sing one

more time. That chorus and I I listen.

I can't let you sing and have heart of me.

I want you to know. And it's okay to just go.

Lord, this is scaring me to death.

I don't know what you're going to take.

I don't know. I don't know.

Lord, by faith we said I trust that you love me.

I trust that you are good and you desire good.

For me. So let's sing.

Come, Lord Jesus, come. Lord Jesus.

Here come, Lord Jesus.

We invite you into our space. You created us.

You desire freedom for us, and we have rebelled.

We have rejected your guidance and your leadership.

We have made idols of everything that moves.

And yet your great love for us chases us through history and

invites us to believe, and not just to believe intellectually

or academically, to believe in the fiber of our moments, that

you will lead us to freedom. So I pray for those who are

struggling today. I pray for those who feel a

weight of condemnation. I pray that they would be freed

by your forgiveness and they would trust you.

I pray for those who today have realized that they've picked up

an idol and father. I pray that their willingness to

simply turn their heart to you would be enough and they would

know for today and you'll lead us.

There will be things that we have to do.

But today we come to you with our hearts set.

We have the opportunity to make a decision to follow you, and we

make a decision to follow you. And we take responsibility for

our lives as they are, and we ask you to make them different.

Jesus, we ask these things for your glory, alone and in your

name. Amen.

Listen, I'm going to walk right out there, and I'll baptize

whoever will, if that's you. Come on.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he make his face shine upon you.

Be gracious to you. May he let this countenance and

give you peace. Have a great week.

We'll see you next. Time Thank you for joining us

today. River City Church is all about

experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and

community, and we hope that you've been able to experience

that today. As grateful as I am that you

spent this time listening in this morning.

This podcast is no substitute for full participation in a

local church. I love it when River City people

listen to other pastors, but it is those who show up week after

week faithfully giving their support and time and resources

that make all of this possible. If we can help you get connected

to a local church, pray for you, or support you in any way, click

the link in the description and let us know.

If you'd like to financially support the ministry of River

City. Click the give link on our

website in the description. Don't forget to subscribe and

don't forget to share this with your friends.

Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you

in all grace and peace.