The Gospel of Freedom

Thank you.

The ushers will be coming by to provide outlines and Bibles to anyone who needs them.

Good morning, I'm hoping that the papers don't all blow away here.

It's rather windy up here today.

Well, I hope you had a good Fourth of July.

And today we're going to be talking about the gospel of freedom, and I want you to think for a moment.

Have you thought about the gospel as freedom?

And I want you to think for a moment.

Have you thought about the gospel as freedom?

The gospel means good news, but it's more than that.

It's also freedom for us and it brings freedom to everyone who hears it and believes it.

Before we get started, make a little mental note, or maybe write down on the paper what's your idea of freedom?

Think about that.

What is your idea of freedom?

What's the first thought that pops in your mind?

I heard something, but couldn't quite make it out Religious freedom, religious freedom, okay.

Well, sadly, I have to say, probably the first thing that popped into my mind was freedom of choice.

Baskin-robbins 31 flavors, one for every day.

Now, that's not really and that is freedom, but that's not really the freedom that we think about in this country.

That's made this country great.

That's been part of our heritage that's led people to give their lives, their wealth, their very being to secure freedom.

We do think about freedom of our thoughts.

We do think about freedom of our thoughts.

That's one freedom we have that no one can take away, regardless of the regime that you're under.

There's also freedom of speech and fortunately, in the United States we're blessed with freedom of speech.

We can express our ideas, our thoughts freely, without risk of arrest or persecution.

We also have freedom of choices, and choices are physical.

You can do things, you can go places, you might move across the country, you might open a business.

Those are choices that we have in this country that are wonderful.

And lastly, and probably most importantly, today we want to talk about moral freedom.

That's the ability to choose to do what is right and good, and that freedom cuts both ways.

You can choose to do what's right, you can choose to do what is wrong.

So moral freedom is something that we have in this country, but I want to share with you the most important freedom, the gospel of freedom.

We're reminded that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

That's the great news of the gospel, and we're going to be developing that and looking at that a little bit here today.

So the first question is and you'll see there's fireworks for every topic what is the gospel?

Let's take a look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.

I'll read that to you, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel.

That's the good news that I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.

For what I received, I pass it on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared.

In a nutshell, that's the gospel, the good news that Christ has come and taken our place.

Now I heard a sermon one time from I don't remember exactly who it was, but it was a gentleman who was a pastor and he said that in training he was in England I think it was Aberdeen doing theology, and someone came up to him and said a woman came up to him and said all right, you've got your Bible.

What do you theology students really believe?

And he looked ahead and saw that the bus was coming to pick him up and he knew how that bus stopped.

He knew he had one minute to tell her the gospel, because she was not getting on the bus, she was just someone from the neighborhood.

So that challenged me to think okay, can you present, can I present the gospel in a minute?

And I have to say I've struggled with that.

I really have not been able to come up with a one-minute gospel until I was working on the sermon, so I want to share the one-minute gospel that I have.

This is something that you can pick up and use.

It's on your outline, but it is essentially the four-legged.

Well, we don't have a stool, but we have a chair with four legs.

The four legs of the gospel are and let me time it here and see if I can do that in a minute so the gospel is that sin entered the world.

We made a mistake, we moved away from what God told us.

We became sinners and, because of that, death entered into the world.

However, christ came as a sacrifice for our sins.

He paid the price with his death and he offers that to us freely, to those who would accept it.

But we have to accept that gift that he offers us.

There is an acceptance on our part.

We need to move into not just knowing but believing and having faith, and when we do that he gives us new life.

The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts.

Jim's been talking about that.

We become new people, we have a new allegiance and essentially that's the gospel in one minute and okay, I did it in 50 seconds.

Now that's only a bare bones outline and you can use that.

You can use the Roman's Road, you can use the four spiritual laws, whatever it is.

I would encourage you to think about and put that in your memory bank.

What if you had one minute to share the gospel?

How would you do that?

The value of that is we don't know when that situation will arise.

Maybe we'll have a minute to talk to somebody.

But the other value is it helps us to organize our thoughts and to work from that as we talk to other people about the good news of the gospel and what that really means.

In today's world we probably have to spend a lot more time with sin.

People don't know that they're sinners.

But you can still approach that from other angles.

You can say well, death is a reality.

Everybody knows about death.

Everybody knows about how they have been hurt, how sin, how evil has affected them.

So, people, when you present it in a little different way, they can comprehend and understand the gospel.

So that's my encouragement to you is try to develop a one-minute gospel.

It's a good foundation to have.

But now we need to move into the question.

Well, the gospel brings freedom.

How does it do that?

Do we think about the gospel, the good news of Jesus, as freedom?

We should.

We should think about that and I want to read you what Jesus said.

Now, imagine if he said this to Americans.

This would be also highly offensive.

This was highly offensive to the Jews at the time.

To the Jews who had believed him, jesus said If you hold my teaching Sorry, if you hold my teaching, you really are my disciples.

Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

They answered him.

We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.

How can you say that we shall be set free?

Jesus replied Very truly.

I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

How would that strike you today?

How would that go in evangelism if you said you're a slave to sin.

It's pretty hard to swallow that kind of offensive, but the reality is that we are slaves to sin, and slaves to death because of sin.

Now it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Again.

Here we enter into the issue of talking with people and helping them to understand what we mean when we say such audacious statements, the words of Jesus, such audacious statements, the words of Jesus.

Most people who've had experience with addiction know that alcoholism destroys your life.

It becomes all-consuming, the very thing that originally gave you pleasure, relief, peace, sleep.

It eats you up, and most people know from their families or their friends or their associates many examples of people who've been consumed by alcoholism, by drug addiction, and here's an example of slavery.

That's an example we can bring to people, we can show them.

Well, that's how sin works.

It's this insidious little thing.

It seems small, but it becomes all-consuming.

Not only that, it ultimately leads in death.

When we go back to Genesis, which is the verse that I'm going to read in just a minute, we see really what the end result of sin is it's death.

God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and care for it, and the Lord commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will certainly die, and ever since the time of Adam we've been dying.

So we're slaves to death because of our slavery to sin.

There is, however, some good news, and that is this and this is how the gospel brings freedom from sin, slavery, death.

First of all, our freedom was purchased through the blood of Jesus.

I'm going to read this verse to you.

All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement or replacement.

That's what that word means.

Through the shedding of blood to be received by faith, jesus purchased our freedom.

He paid the price for us.

That's really going back to the gospel Substitution.

Remember those four words sin, substitution, acceptance and then new life.

This is developing the issue of substitution.

Christ was our substitute.

So that is also great news, great news that we can share with people.

But it doesn't stop there.

The scripture also tells us something wonderful we're adopted.

Now I don't know if anyone wants to raise their hand if they're adopted.

Are there any adoptees out there.

Okay, not seeing any.

I was not adopted, so I can't really identify with this.

But, you know, I think I can kind of understand what this means to some extent.

Back when I was a kid, I was the youngest of all the boys in the neighborhood and, being the youngest and the smallest, I was also the last one to be picked for Red Rover Football.

Inevitably, you know, as much as I tried, I was the last one to be picked.

Inevitably, as much as I tried, I was the last one to be picked.

But to be adopted is to be chosen.

Despite that, to be brought into the family, it would be as if someone said oh, first round draft pick, we're picking you.

That's the joy that comes from adoption.

I'll read this verse for you the spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again.

Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption as sonship, and by him we cry Abba, father.

The spirit himself testifies, with our spirit that we are God's children, and if we're children, then we're heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ.

How great is that.

To be adopted, that's what we are adopted as God's children.

So that's the good news of the gospel.

Because of that, we can approach God with freedom.

You might remember from the Old Testament stories of how there was regulation of the worship practice.

There were the Levites, there were the veils.

The high priest could only go in once a year into Holy of Holies to offer atonement, but no more.

Jesus tore the curtain, opened the presence of God to us Hebrews tells us, brothers and sisters, we have confidence to enter the most holy place, that's God's presence, by the blood of Jesus.

So not only are we adopted, but we have the unique privilege of being able to come right up to God, enter the throne room of grace and not be obliterated.

The gospel satisfies the question of how does God, who is holy, live with people who are unclean, unholy?

And the answer to that is we receive the righteousness of Jesus by faith and therefore we can go right into God's presence.

Tried to think of a little example for this, and the closest I could come up with is my daughter.

She's got my cell phone.

She can call me anytime.

But if you try to call me, especially if you call me at the office, you're going to get a whole list of barriers, people answering the phone saying you should use the portal online and turn in your questions that way.

Oh, no, we don't answer questions.

Sometimes I feel more protected than the president because of barriers, but there's no barriers when we come in.

You know, my daughter can just call me.

Oh goes direct to me.

That's our relationship with Jesus and with the Father is that we can come into his presence anytime freely.

So that is part of the freedom the gospel brings us.

But it doesn't stop there.

We're also free to serve.

Now you might be thinking, oh, what's so great about that?

Well, let me read the verse first.

Brothers and sisters, we were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh.

Rather serve one another humbly in love.

Okay, so serving it brings joy.

The example I'll give you on that is Thanksgiving.

We have a little tradition at our house.

I make the turkey, all the dressing, we invite our kids to come home if they're not home, and also we invite Esther's sister and her family to come join us.

And you know that tradition brings joy.

There's great joy in being able to put together that Thanksgiving meal and see people enjoy it, and that's kind of analogous to the joy that comes from serving.

Life is not about receiving.

As you'll learn, as you get older, hopefully, you'll learn joy comes from serving, from giving, not from receiving.

So the gospel brings freedom by releasing us from slavery.

We're no longer sent as a slave in death.

We're adopted, we're free to approach God and we're free to serve him.

Before we go on, I'm going to step back to the gospel again.

How do we enter the freedom?

How do you get that kind of freedom?

Well, this righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ.

To who, all, who, what Believe?

That's the message from the scripture.

Believing and receiving, that's the third.

The receiving is the other leg of the stool there.

So now we move on to responsibilities.

What responsibilities does freedom create?

And you probably thought oh yes, this was not getting off scot-free, there had to be a catch, right.

Well, not exactly.

The responsibilities that come number one are to conquer sin and live by the Spirit.

I want to read you this verse here before we move on.

Brothers and sisters, we have an obligation I think I read this already, but it's not to the flesh to live according to it.

If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if, by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

So the challenge here is to conquer sin, to walk by the Spirit.

And why do we do that?

How do we do that?

The way we do that is to love God and to serve him.

And Jesus said which is the next verse up there If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

So we have an obligation to do that.

Why would we do that?

Why conquer sin?

Well, because we know sin brings death.

It brings slavery.

We want to get away from slavery, don't we?

We want to be free.

This verse has always struck me, from the time I read it till now.

It's the last sentence I'm going to read it.

The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

Why did Jesus come?

He came to save us, but he also came to what Destroy the devil's work, to do away with evil.

That's part of God's plan, that's part of his mission.

His mission is to create a holy people, to restore what was right in the garden before the fall.

And so the good news is that we can do that by walking by the Spirit, following Him.

And then, lastly, the other thing that we've already talked about was the other responsibility is to serve others serve one another.

Due to time, I'm not going to read this one again but we have a responsibility to conquer sin.

We do that by walking with the Spirit.

We also have a responsibility to serve other people.

Now the question arises all right, how do we move from the responsibility to really applying freedoms?

There are a couple examples from the scripture I want to go through quickly and then we'll talk about how it applies to us.

One is the law of Moses, or the Torah, and it's hard for us to understand.

It's hard for me to understand this, is hard for me to understand that for 1,500 years the Jewish nation in the Old Testament, from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus, lived 1,500 years.

Imagine that Our nation is what?

250 years old, something like that.

We had a bicentennial in our lifetime, so we're only 200 years old, plus some in America, but the whole Jewish nation for 1,500 years lived under the law of Moses roughly.

And then Christ came.

Christ was the fulfillment of the law.

So here's what the scripture says Before the coming of this faith that's talking about the gospel we were held in custody under the law, locked up by the faith that was to come, that would be revealed.

So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.

And now that the faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Paul continues in Romans brothers and sisters, you died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

So the law of Moses, the old system, was canceled.

It was fulfilled by Jesus.

That is an earth-shaking moment.

Hard for us to really appreciate that because we're so used to the gospel, but this had to be revolutionary in their time.

But this had to be revolutionary in their time.

So if the law of Moses doesn't apply to us and there's great differences of opinion in theology on how that exactly relates, how it's canceled, but basically it was the words are there.

This was a guardian to lead us to Christ.

We're not under that guardian.

I'm reminded that in the Law of Moses, according to the rabbis, there's in the first five books of the Bible, which is the Pentateuch.

There are 612 laws that they have identified.

248 are positive.

Do this?

365 are negative.

Well, imagine keeping track of all that.

It's quite difficult, and yet Jesus has fulfilled all that law for us.

He has taken that away so that we can walk by the Spirit.

So the first way that the first application of the freedom that comes from the gospel is the law is fulfilled.

The second is everyday life.

Now this is one I want to read to you, this passage from Paul.

He's talking about how the freedom of the gospel affects him and he says I am free and belong to no one, but I have made myself a slave to everyone that I might win as many as possible.

To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews.

To those under the law, I became like one under the law, even though myself I am not under the law, so as to win those under the law.

To those not having the law, I became like those not having the law, although I am not free from God's law, but I'm under Christ's law.

So, to win those who are not having the law.

To the weak, I became weak To win the weak, I became all things to all people so that, by all possible means, I might save some.

I do this all for the sake of the gospel.

Okay, so what's Paul really saying?

He's saying I'm serving Christ.

I'm not under the law, I'm under Christ's law.

And what is Christ's law?

That's serving God.

The vertical dimension, loving your neighbors and serving those around you.

The horizontal dimension If you do those things, you are fulfilling the law.

There's no law that those go against serving God and serving other people.

So now here's the challenge.

Well, how do we apply that freedom in our own lives?

And this is something you have to think about and apply for your own life.

How do we bring that freedom into our lives?

I'm going to give you a trivial example.

Today, even though it's hot and I'd much prefer to be here in shorts and sandals I'm wearing long pants and shoes.

Now, why am I doing that?

Is there a law that says if you're in the pulpit you have to wear long pants?

Well, not in our bylaws.

But I do that not to be a distraction.

If this was a beach church, oh, it'd be perfect.

Sandals and a swimming suit, and okay.

But if this were the cathedral, I'd probably wear a gown, some kind of cape.

Paul made use of his freedom to serve other people.

He didn't insist on his rights, and so that's the application that we make for ourselves.

We want to follow Christ's law, serving God, serving people, and we want to use that freedom to live in a way that serves and glorifies God.

So that's a great challenge to each of us, but I do want to move on to what's the ultimate freedom.

This is so important.

You know there's coming a day when Christ will return and we'll receive our resurrection bodies and we'll live in the new heaven and the new earth with him, forever Redeemed, free from sin, free from pain, free from suffering incredible joy.

The scripture tells us I'm going to skip to the last verse here for time we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

Now, remember I said we were adopted.

But the full manifestation of that, when we receive our resurrection bodies, comes when Christ returns again.

And in Revelation we see this there is a city that does not need the sun or moon to shine on, for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its very lamp.

The nations will walk by its light.

The kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

On no day will the gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.

Nothing impure will ever enter it, no one who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

That's a message of good news that you can tell people as you share the gospel with them.

Yes, heaven is an abstract concept.

It's hard to understand that.

It's easy to trivialize it.

But what if you imagine a place where there is no worry about locking your car, locking your house, walking down the street at night, having to worry about your bank account being taken over by some rogue computer program and being ransomware.

All of that goes away.

A life that is actually free of sin is a life that is truly free, and that's the hope we look forward to Now.

Lastly, we're going to close on this.

How do we respond Now?

Lastly, we're going to close on this.

How do we respond?

So the first step of freedom for freedom fighters is accept the gospel.

I want to read this to you.

The spirit and the bride say come, and the one who hears says come.

Let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who wishes to take the free gift of the water of life.

Jesus is calling to you.

If you haven't already done that, come to him, accept him, believe him, and if you do that, he'll bring tremendous freedom to you.

That's the message of the gospel, the good news, how it brings freedom.

And then, for those of us that have done that already, the second step of freedom is to live according to the Spirit.

We could spend a lot of time on that, but I want to read to you the last sentence of this verse those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

And again we come back to the fact that as children, we have freedom, and we should use that freedom not to serve our own self, but to serve other people, to achieve the real purpose of our life.

And in that, may God give us wisdom to ask him how can you serve him?

How can you serve him?

How can you follow him?

If anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask God and he'll provide it.

So if you're wondering, how do I walk by the Spirit, talk to the pastors.

Talk to the elders.

We can help you with that.

Come to Bible studies, learn more about God and his ways and ask God himself to show himself and to lead you and to teach you.

You're his son and daughter.

We have a special place.

So, in summary, we should think of the gospel as bringing freedom.

Freedom to those who hear it and believe it and receive it.

Freedom to us who live as children of God.

We're not bound by keeping track of all these laws and things.

The law can tell us what's good.

It's a good teacher.

It helps us, it shows us what's right and wrong, but it's not our master.

The Holy Spirit is our master.

He's the one who leads us and guides us.

Perhaps you've heard or talked to people who have said stories about how they were guided by the Holy Spirit, stories about how they were guided by the Holy Spirit, and I would tell you one the $100 bill story.

But I'm out of time.

You'll have to ask me that one later.

But there is a life where God speaks to us and leads us and guides us, and we want to follow that.

We want to serve him.

Let's close in prayer.

Lord, god, we thank you that you bring freedom through Jesus to our lives and you offer freedom to all who would believe.

Help us as a nation to be people who love you, who experience real, true freedom in this life and freedom from sin and death.

We look forward to the day of your return, amen.