Release From Bondage

Pentecost, I know to all of you who look annually at the Holy Days, Pentecost is an interesting day in the sense that this day has more names than any other Holy Day in the calendar, and it also has more meanings than any other Holy Day in the calendar. You know, we can refer to this as Pentecost. We can refer to it as the Feast of First Fruits. We can refer to it. We go on down the line. Super. Thank you. Am I not transmitting from up here? Okay. Felt like when I walked away from the mic, I lost it. As I said, it has more names, more ways of describing this day than any other Holy Day. And it has, in a sense, more meanings. Pentecost marks, both by fact and tradition, three great events. According to tradition, it is the day on which the law was given to ancient Israel from Mount Sinai. This is a part of Jewish tradition. They say this is the day on which God spoke to Israel from Sinai. It is a matter of fact, not tradition in this case, that the Church of God was founded on the day of Pentecost. That all of us are well aware of from the first two chapters of the book of Acts. And concurrent with that, it is also the day on which the Holy Spirit was first given to people as a body. You know, we know there were individuals like David and others, since David was mentioned earlier, to whom God gave the Spirit. But making it available to people collectively, i.e. the Church, that began on the day of Pentecost. These three events share something in common that is not necessarily apparent on the surface. If I were to put it in the question form, what commonality is shared by these three things, I would expect you to be able to answer it. Because it's not something that sits right up there on the surface as, oh yeah, well all three of these share in common such and such. They share in common the following quality. They share in common the release from bondage.

Now you may say, well, okay, you said it wasn't apparent, but it's worse than not apparent. I don't even see the connection. How is it? How do you relate these three things, the giving of the law from Sinai, the founding of the New Testament Church, and the giving of the Holy Spirit? How do you relate these three things to a release from bondage?

Well, by the time the sermon is over, you won't have any difficulty understanding where we're coming from. Let's look at the law first. We'll simply take them in order, in their chronological order. We're a part today, modern America, we're the current product of the historical development of religion in the Western world. We are fundamentally, by description, we are fundamentally a Protestant nation. That would be our, in the world of religion, as they catalog different nations, they would say the United States is fundamentally a Christian Protestant nation.

From the 1400s, when the Reformation began in Germany, in Switzerland, Holland, and in England, a mindset developed, and it was an interesting mindset. Martin Luther was probably the spearhead of the philosophy that the law was done away. We are saved by grace alone and without law, and the law, therefore, was painted as bondage. You have a choice between being under the bondage of the law or under the liberty of grace, the free gift of God. And the painting of the picture was done so well in the 1400s that it is fundamentally still the way of viewing things to this very day in areas of the world that have Protestant roots.

The unfortunate part about it is it has nothing to do with reality. Turn with me to James chapter 1. Now, I have you turn to James because in creating this particular view of the Word of God and of the Bible, Martin Luther found one book, a true thorn in his side. In fact, it is said that Luther said that James is a book of straw that should be ripped from the Bible and burned. Now, the reason for taking such a radical view is that James is so absolutely, totally clear that you couldn't misunderstand it.

And it was so totally, completely clear in the opposite direction from which Luther was going that it was a source of great frustration. Hence, if I can't deal with it, rip it out of the book, burn it. That solves the problem. James chapter 1 makes the following statement beginning in verse 22. He says to those who are reading the book of James, you are to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. He said, if you simply listen to what God says and you don't act upon it, and you think you're religious, you're self-deceiving.

He says, if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. He says, you know, if your religion is based upon simply looking and observing and thinking and studying, you're like an individual that looks in the mirror. If you're, you know, the average married person, there are times where your mate will do the favor for you to say after something like eating at Golden Corral, you've got a little bit of whatever you had for dessert on the side of your face.

You can say thank you very much and walk into church with a big chocolate mole right here. Or you can take it off. He's saying, if you're the kind of person that simply looks in the mirror, you see what is there and you say, well, that's okay. And you continue on right down the line. What have you gained? He says, but, one of the biggest transitional words in our language, verse 25, but he who looks into, and isn't it interesting how James describes the law of God.

He who looks into the perfect law of liberty. Ironically, James saw the law 180 degrees differently than Martin Luther. Luther saw it as bondage. James saw it as the source of liberty. He who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work. This one will be blessed in what he does. This is a fantastic phrase. James saw the law of God as the law of liberty.

Continue on, James. This wasn't just simply a one-off statement. There are times where somebody in the course of talking makes a comment, and it's the only time they make the comment. So it may have simply been something that came to mind as they were talking. There's a difference between somebody using a phrase as a one-off and somebody who believes something and sprinkled in their conversation is the same repetitive phrase. When it's repeated, you begin to say, you know what, this means something to you. Let's talk about it. James 2.

I'll do a lead-in in verse 11. He was talking about the law. He says, for he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. Now, you don't have to ask yourself what law is he talking about, because there's only one set of laws that contains the statements, thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not murder. And that's the 10 commandments. So, it isn't rocket science to know what, quote-unquote, law he's talking about, because he's actually doing quotations from it. So, he said, he who said, which was God on Mount Sinai, according to tradition on the day of Pentecost, it was God who said, do not commit adultery and do not murder. And he said, now, if you don't commit adultery, but you do murder, you've still broken the law. You know, the person says, well, I've never committed adultery in my life. I killed so and so and so and so and so and so, but I never committed adultery. Well, there's no bragging rights on that one. He then said in verse 12, so speak and so do, in other words, let your words and your deeds be consistent with one another. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. Now, he didn't say that the law was lat, that it had no backbone, that it had no meaning or no power in our lives, because he did say, you will be judged by it. But interestingly enough, he still refers to it as the law of liberty. What is the greatest single place in all the Bible for extolling the virtues of the law? If you know, start turning there. And if you don't, I'll turn there. And when I get there, I'll give you a little more kibitzing. In Hebrew times, poetry was a way, as it is today, poetry and musical lyrics are a way of adding emotional impact to a message. The least emotion is from the spoken word. There's more emotion to poetry, and there's more emotion even yet to musical lyrics. The greatest poem ever written in the Old Testament was written about the law. It is the longest poem in the Old Testament. It is structurally the most perfect. It takes the form of what is called an acrostic. It is the 119th Psalm.

Those of you that have looked at the 119th Psalm over the years, and you've seen the little squigglies every so often, and the words that don't seem to make sense, Aleph, Beth, Daleth, no, Aleph Beth Gimel, Daleth He, and then on down. All you're seeing are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in alphabetical order. An acrostic poem was designed so that all of one section would begin with the first letter of the alphabet. The next would all begin with the second letter of the alphabet, the third with the third letter of the alphabet, and this was a mathematical way of creating a perfect poem. The 119th Psalm is all about the law. Every single solitary verse in the 119th Psalm, with the possible exception of one or two, has some synonym related to the law in the verse. This was David's grand statement about the law. Look at verses 44 through 48. So shall I keep your law continually for ever and ever, and I will walk at liberty. For I seek your precepts. I will speak of your testimonies also before kings, and I will not be ashamed, and I will delight myself in your commandments, which I love. My hand also I will lift up to your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. The Apostle Paul saw this the same way as did James. He said, I will walk at liberty. Why? Well, you know, it isn't rocket science when you're on the 44th verse of a poem that in 176 verses long, in every single verse is about the law, you don't have any problem understanding context. Okay? Context is not an issue in the 119th Psalm. When he says, I will walk at liberty, it is for the same reason that James said, I loaned my hymnal out between the sermonette, what I thought was going to be the sermonette, and the sermon, and then I said I needed it back. I got a puzzled look, and I said, I need it back for the sermon. Page 127, excuse me, page 126 in our supplemental hymnal, I'll read you a little bit of lyrics. A little bit of lyrics that go back to an earlier day in American history. When America was younger, and the Bible was still a significant part of the fabric of the nation, still spoken about freely and openly, and understood much more in terms of relevance than it is today. There is a hymn on page 126 that was written at this time when America was more God-centered, and it's a patriotic hymn. It is entitled, as all of you are familiar, America the Beautiful. In this particular hymn, as I said, which is a patriotic hymn, the chorus to the second stanza goes as follows, America, America, God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.

There was a day when in this nation we understood that liberty and self-control were related to one another, and that in reality the core of liberty was its connection to law. Law for people who are anarchists at mind is a great impediment to their life. For people who are sound and sane-minded, law is nothing more than the guideline that gives us freedom from consequence. You know, you can look at law from two different directions, and mankind, as long as man has been alive, has done one or the other. He has looked at law and said, what a pain in the neck. It stops me from doing what I want to do. And there's the other half of society that says, thank God for laws, because they give order to life, and they give directions that help us to avoid things we really don't want to suffer. When God says, thou shalt not kill, He simply is trying to save you from all of the miseries, the harms, and the after-effects that come from taking somebody else's life.

The same is true with thou shalt not commit adultery. The same is true with thou shalt not steal. The Old World Tomorrow program used to make the point, ironically, that there isn't a person alive who doesn't want all of his neighbors to obey the Ten Commandments. I don't want somebody killing me. I don't want somebody stealing what I own while I'm away from home. I really don't want somebody coveting what I have, because covetousness is just the first step to killing me or stealing from me. You know, that's just simply step one toward the other two. I want everybody to obey the law.

It doesn't matter how lawless you are at heart or mind, you don't want the people around you to be lawless, because your liberty, your peace of mind, is in their willingness to obey. I've lived in the city most of my adult life. I resent an element of our society that I have to look at every time I leave home, because I grew up part of my life in rural and remote areas where, in some cases, there weren't any locks on doors. And we drove away from the farm. Nothing was locked. Today, I locked my house. I locked my car. There are alarms on this and alarms on that that are built in. You know, now you get your car. You not only have locks in it. You have embedded chips in your keys. You have alarm systems that are already installed. You don't have to go install them. You have all these ways of thwarting people who simply would take from you, create an injury. And you're only asking for the freedom from all of that, which comes by their willingness to obey the law. God said, through one of His writers, "'Thy law is a lamp unto my feet, and a guide to my path.' I really, you know, I am not one that likes to suffer just for the fun of suffering. I'm not into, I'm not into pain for recreation. As a result, I appreciate it when somebody says, I want you to see clearly the path. If you want to hurt, then at least you know that's what's going to happen. But I want you to know what the path, where the path goes, and I want you to know where the pain is along the way. And if you choose pain, then you've made a choice. But I don't want you to hurt because you couldn't see the way to go. So when the statement was said, thy law is a lamp unto my feet and a guide to my path, it was his way of saying, you preserve me from all sorts of misery that I shouldn't have to suffer, and I'm grateful for it." The law, which James and David both call the law of liberty, not only protects us from harm and injury that we could not see, but it fulfills the old adage of do unto your neighbor as you would have him do unto you. It helps us see how to protect our neighbor from harm that we would do them. Everybody wins. Your neighbor not only sees how not to injure you, you see how not to injure your neighbor.

The next set of festivals that we keep after Pentecost, we will start looking into Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and we will hit those places where it talks about knowing the Lord. And we will read that tremendous scripture that says, no longer will people say, know the Lord, for the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters fill the sea. And it will talk about peace generating from Zion and going out to where the whole world is at peace. Even the nature of animals will be changed, and there will be no hurting or destroying in all my holy mountain. I'm simply paraphrasing scriptures that you're all familiar with from Isaiah and the minor prophets. Today, you and I have in our possession what the Bible readers, Old and New Testament, saw as a law of liberty. It was a preserver from injury and harm both to you on the incoming and to people who were outside of you so that they wouldn't suffer at your hands. The antithesis? The total 180-degree turnaround opposite side of the coin can be found in Paul's exposure of the consequences of rejection of God, which he laid out to the Church of God in Rome in chapter 1 of Romans. He said, you want to see where things naturally go when people abandon the law, where they simply say, I don't need that. That really is not relevant to my life. I don't need somebody telling me what to do and how to do it. Paul says, I can tell you what the consequences of that are. Romans 1, and of course, this is material you covered with the youth last night, did you not? You covered the first eight chapters of Romans. They'll get round two today. Peacemeal. Romans 1 is this place where Paul says to the Romans, let me tell you where the non-Israelites part of the world is by nature. In other words, we don't see a God, the true God. We don't recognize the true God. And so, in the absence of seeing and recognizing the true God, there are natural consequences, and here they are. Romans 1 and verse 28, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, in other words, I don't want God interfering in my life, then God gave them over to a debased mind. In other words, if God is not in your mind, something else is. And when God is not in your mind, here is what happens.

You will find very naturally in a world where God is not relevant, these qualities, they range from very general, such as unrighteousness, to a whole lot more specific, sexual immorality, to general wickedness, to covetousness, to maliciousness, to envy, to murder, to strife, to chronic lying, which is deceit, evil-mindedness, gossiping, backbiting, haters of God, violent people, proud people, boasters, inventors of evil things, people who do not respect their parents, people who are stupid. You know, undiscerning means without understanding. Not really very bright, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, and unmerciful. Boy, that's a list, isn't it? Have any trouble seeing that around you? I didn't find anything here I can't see every day of the week. I can pick up my daily newspaper, and before I'm 10 pages into it, I can find every single solitary thing that I have just read in verses 29, 30, and 31. It is daily life in the newspaper. Okay? Where did it start? So that we didn't get so involved in the list, we forgot where it started. It started with, even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. In other words, God butt out of my life. I don't need you. I don't want you. It says, okay, when me, in my ways, in my directions, vacate your life, there's no such thing as a vacuum. When I and my laws vacate your life, this is what fills the void. And if you want a testimony, look around you. There isn't a community small enough in this nation where you can't find it. If your community has got a population of 900, and somebody else is in one with 900,000, the only difference is scale.

You can't say, I live in a community of 500, we don't have any of these things. Well, that's nonsense. Well, I live in a city of 5 million, and it's all over the place. Now, it's all over the place, every place, when God vacates the place.

Now you begin to understand what I mean by freedom from bondage.

If you sitting here cannot see a difference between the quality of your life prior to your calling and after your calling, there is something grossly wrong with your life. Every truly converted person can look in the mirror and say, thank God for His calling. I don't know where I would have been. I look at my life, I look at my siblings, I look at my peers, I look at my family circle, and I shudder at times to think of where I would be in life today at this age had I not been called. I don't even want to go there. I look at where some of my cousins take my peer group are, and I don't want to be there. And I can't look at it and see any difference between where I am and where they are except a respect for the fact that the laws of God teach a way that preserves people from all the pain and harm that they unnecessarily can suffer if they ignore it. Point number one. Point number two is the church. As I said, the church began on the day of Pentecost. And we say, okay, what does the church have to do with a release from bondage?

Now, some of you may say, well, I can develop that one. And I would say, well, you probably can. Let me help you develop it fully. If you've been walking the streets of Judea or Galilee in the days of Jesus Christ, what would have been the visible church? When Diane and I moved to the state of Alabama in 1965, we were on the front edge of the Civil Rights Movement. And we were on the front edge of the Civil Rights Movement. And as we crossed the border of Tennessee into Alabama to take up our assignment, there was a billboard with George Wallace's face on it, as big as all get out, saying, Governor Wallace welcomes you to Alabama. There was an even bigger billboard, dimensionally, next to it, that said 750,000 Baptists welcome you to Alabama. There was no mystery as we crossed the border into Alabama what the religion of the state was. Okay? It was very obvious. We want you to know who the religious powerhouse of this state is. So next to Governor Wallace and his state seal and official billboard is ours. It says, we want you to know we're here, too, and we want you to understand the message. Okay. If you'd been living in Christ's day, who would have had this billboard like theirs that said, we welcome you to Judea? Well, there would have been who knows which rabbis face there, if they had had the technologies, and how they would have labeled it. But the driving force of that day and time were the Pharisees. They weren't a single denomination any more than Southern Baptist was the only denomination in Alabama. There were all sorts of denominations. There were Catholics and Episcopalians, and there were all sorts of different Church of God or holiness congregations. But the powerhouse in the state was the Southern Baptist Convention. And I use that as an illustration because there were Essenes, and there were Herodians, and there were Sadducees, and there were others. But the powerhouse in Christ's day were the Pharisees. They were the most influential people of the day. Anyone who has studied religious history understands that modern Judaism claims as its antecedent. The Pharisaical movement of the first and second century. When Titus destroyed the temple, and then the Jews had another uprising, another 50-60 years later, and the Romans finally said, if you are Jewish and you so much as set your feet on the real estate that once was Jerusalem, you're dead, then everything moved up to the Sea of Galilee. And the Pharisaical schools on the shores of the Sea of Galilee became the fountainhead and the source of what today is modern Judaism.

Turn with me to Matthew 23. You want to know what Jesus Christ thought of the church, for lack of a better name, of his day and time?

I'll read you what he thought about the church in his day and time. And then Jesus spoke, verse 1 of chapter 23, to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works. For they say, and they do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders. But they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. He defined this particular church of this day and time as a church that would bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, upon their followers. You have any trouble seeing a connection between the term bondage and heavy burdens, hard to bear?

Not a lot of difference, is it? Matthew 23, verse 13. He said, Woe to your scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Well, you talk about laying a drag on someone, tying an anchor around them to where they can't go forward. He says, you're not going toward the kingdom of God, and you don't allow the people, you proselyte and teach and convert to head toward the kingdom of God. There's some great commentary comments about this particular verse. It's worthwhile to find a good commentary. I have one that's extremely difficult to find, but if you ever run across Elikot's commentary, Elikot's comments on verse 13 and Matthew 23 are absolutely excellent about this proposition of shutting up the kingdom against those who are coming in. He said in verse 15, Woe to your scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. What a horrible thought! You're out there doing everything you can to, quote unquote, do your work, and when you bring somebody into your faith, you make him twice the son of hell as you are. Well, that's a lose-lose proposition if you ever saw one. Before he'd ended this particular chapter, he had these comments to say in verse 27, Woe to your scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you are like white washed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Now, you have to appreciate that in that day and time, you were ceremonially unclean and you were quarantined for a period of time by touching dead men or things that pertain to dead men. He said, in essence, you white wash a tomb to make it look real nice. You don't know what you're getting into. You make contact with it and you end up in quarantine. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full. Interesting what they are full of. They were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. You know, the Pharisees are looked at as those people who were just absolutely phenomenal keepers of the law. Not in Christ's book they weren't. He said, you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. That was the church of Christ's day. This was his assessment of the most influential religious leadership of his day and time. You know what's interesting? Jesse Hurlbut, in his book entitled A History of the Christian Church, makes a comment in church history where he says, at the end of the first century, and that's the place where first, second, and third John are written. In other words, the last books of the New Testament are written at the end of the first century A.D. He said, at the end of the first century A.D., a curtain drops on the church through which we attempt vainly to peer through. And when it rises again, fundamentally another hundred years later, the church that is visible is highly different than what appeared as the New Testament books were finished. What appeared when that curtain rose and dominated history for the next 1400 years was a system that was penance-based.

You know what, brethren? If you turn from your sins and walk a new way of life, you have a cleanness, a cleanness, a freshness that is absolutely invigorating. When you're constantly looking over your shoulder at having to give account for what you're doing but you never decide to stop doing what you're doing, what is your life like? Your life is an endless string of confessing what you've done wrong, followed by actions to atone for what you've done wrong, and a lifelong umbrella that hangs over you that when that life is over, you will then spend an indeterminate amount of time in a state being purged of what couldn't be cleaned up from you through these actions. And how long you will stay in this purging state is a big question mark. When Martin Luther attached his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg, among the greatest contentions he had was the selling of indulgences which said, if you give enough money to the church, you can shorten the amount of time your loved ones spend being purified by fire in a spirit state before they're allowed to go to heaven. When the curtain rose, that was what was visible, and that was, according to most world historians, the only player for the next 1,300 years. Now, I don't care if we're reading Matthew and Christ's statements about the bondage of heavy burdens hard to bear, or whether we look at the history that followed, these things are bondage. They are a heavy burden. What did Christ say about his church? It's one of the most beautiful statements he made, and for those of you who live it and have lived it for many years, what he says here resonates very easily and very quickly. Matthew 11. Let's read verses 25 and 26 first of all. It says, At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. Now he continued on in verses 29 and 30 to say, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

I look at my life. You sitting here can do exactly the same thing. I look at the things that I have had to commit myself to in order to live according to the teachings of this church, which some outside look at and say, well, that is bondage. When the sun goes down on Friday night till the sun goes down on Saturday night, I do not work. I remember when my older son was in high school and he had a principal who had come from the coal mining areas of Pennsylvania, where they played knockdown drag out high school football. My older son had the perfect build of a linebacker in a school that had a pathetic football team. The coach said, Philip, why aren't you playing football? He said, I can't, coach. The games are played on the Sabbath. He said, well, why don't you get a dispensation from your Pope? That evening at dinner, we were sitting at the table talking and Philip related this to us. I looked at him and I said, Philip, you go back to school and tell Mr. Breitinger, that was his principal, you go back to school and tell Mr. Breitinger, I am your Pope. There are no dispensations. When Philip graduated from high school, I was asked to give the commencement exercise. I remember standing across the auditorium and the principal's voice was loud enough. I was talking from here and it was literally all the way to where the exit would be over there. He was saying to my son, I would like to kick a certain piece of your father's anatomy. I turned from where I was and I went over and I shook his hand and talked to Mr. Breitinger. He was a rough individual, but I understood exactly what he was saying. He could not understand why my son could not play football on Friday nights. He just did not compute. In his way, you could issue a dispensation and the school needed you. In our way, we didn't go there. Now, that would have been seen from the outside as a burden. I will simply go back to where I was earlier. I look at all of the things that God's way has preserved us from. That burden was really very light. When God said, take my yoke upon you because my yoke is easy and my burden is light, you know what? I wouldn't trade the few things that I have had to miss for all the consequences of my peer group's life that they are suffering because they didn't know how to live a life. That yoke is a real easy one.

When God simply says, this is how I want you to act before marriage, this is how I want you to act within marriage, and I want you to live your entire life with the bride of your youth, I wouldn't trade loving one woman for a lifetime with people who have gone through two and three and all the misery connected with it for all the tea in China. I figure that's a pretty light burden to bear. And you can spill it over into your children and their lives. You can spill it over into illnesses and sicknesses. How many people, you know, every time they've gone away now, but I remember the first... I have forgotten who the first one was. I could remember if I sat here long enough, but I'm not going to do that. I remember the first You Shouldn't Smoke commercial that appeared on television. It was posthumous. The person who was aired was dead, and he died of smoking. A well-known Hollywood personality. And as I said, I forget, but it was just a creepy, eerie feeling of watching this commercial and knowing that the man who was looking at you was dead from lung cancer, saying, please don't end up where I ended up. How many people's lives have been absolutely ruined in health areas, in areas where God has said to us, don't do these things, and subsequently, whole layers of physical problems don't have to rest on your shoulders? If you stop and meditate on what God has given you, and then you read the statement that says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because my yoke is easy and my burden is light. When I see people say, it's a burden to keep the Sabbath, it's a burden to take off for the Holy Days, I think, you don't know what burden is. The world is carrying burdens all over the place that you don't have to carry. 1 Thessalonians 5. 1 Thessalonians 5. As Paul is talking to the church at Thessalonica, he says to them in verse 5 of 1 Thessalonians 5, You are all sons of light and sons of the day. You are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. What a beautiful statement. He says God hasn't appointed us to wrath. God has no interest in kicking you around. He has no business in slapping you up alongside the head. He has no desire to see you unnecessarily hurt or injured. He didn't appoint you to wrath, but to salvation. Bondage. The Pharisees were the epitome of bondage. Much of what the Pharisees had as fundamentals were carried forward into the world of Christianity following the days of the Pharisees, and the bondage continued.

The church that Christ built was not a church based on bondage. He said you do have obligations. But understand something. If you compare the obligations that I have placed upon you with the consequences on the other hand, and you have any intelligence at all, you will come up with a conclusion that I'll give you in advance. This is a whole lot lighter than this. This is nothing to carry compared to carrying this. Those who have truly learned that in the church have had the joy of saying, I thank God that He has given me the chance to be here, and through His calling has allowed me to understand what I understand because it has preserved me from all sorts of harm that I probably would have gotten myself into on my own, with no help from anyone else in pure ignorance. Number three. As I said to you, there are three component parts. The third is the giving of the Holy Spirit. While you're turning to Acts 2, I'll have to ask my wife if she'll give me the last page of my sermon notes, which are sitting right next to her. It really helps.

Most sermons go better with notes.

Acts 2, the day on which the Holy Spirit was given.

A miracle occurred. I won't go that particular direction. Suffice it to say that God uses miracles as announcements of landmark events in history. It is God's way of telling a carnal world that something very special has just happened. It was true when Israel left Egypt. It was true at the birth of Christ, at the death of Christ, at the beginning of the church, in preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ back to this earth. In most of the rest of the times in history, there are relatively few miraculous things that happen. Here is one of those times marked by the miraculous. Upon each of those assembled, the 120 faithful followers of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, fell in a visible fashion that could be seen. In addition to that, there was a miracle that you can look at as either in the speaking or in the hearing. By the nature of things, the hearing was as relevant as the speaking. If any of you have ever been to the United Nations and you wanted to view one of the General Assembly meetings, you sat in the gallery with a headset on, and no matter what nationality was speaking and what language they were speaking in, you were going to hear it in English because somebody was translating. Here they said, we have come from all over the known Roman world and speak languages from a dozen different parts of the world, and yet when these men stand up to speak, every one of us hears them in our own language. These were miraculous events. The great event of that day was the end of the sermon that Peter gave when he told all of these people who had assembled for the annual Holy Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem that during the last 50 days, the world has been turned on its ear that God has been killed and they did it. And he had a receptive audience. He had an audience that actually could grasp personally their responsibility for what was done. I'll guarantee you one thing, brethren. I'll guarantee you there were thousands of people present on the day that that speech was given who had also been present 50 days earlier when Christ was crucified. If you remember when Christ was resurrected, he was walking down the road to Emmaus with some of his disciples, and they were not allowed to know that that was who he was. And he said, why you look so glum? And they were sarcastic with him. They, in essence, were asking him, what rock did you crawl out from under? Don't you listen to the news? Don't you read the newspaper? There isn't anybody in this whole area that doesn't know what happened. Where did you come from? Well, if those men on the way to Emmaus could say that to Christ, that means that the next holy day, as they assembled, tens of thousands of people were there who had heard that news firsthand.

And when the speaker got up and said, you know what happened 50 days ago? You killed the Son of God. You murdered Him, just like the prophets said you would do. You did all the evil things that the prophets had been prophesying that you would do, and you are the ones that did it. That's why 3,000 people were converted on the day of Pentecost, because relevancy was at its pinnacle. When they said, men and brethren, what must we do? They were saying, you know what? You're right. I was there. I heard the news. I said, good riddance. He got what He deserved. I don't know who this troublemaker is, but if he got himself crucified, well, so much the better. Or, yeah, I walked down the street and I saw him hanging up there with the other two thieves, and the three of the thieves got their crucifixion. He died. Good riddance. Peter said, and that was a thief, and that was a thief, and that was the Son of God.

Now, good riddance to who? And he said, you know what? We got a lot of damage to repair. Verse 37 of Acts 2, it says, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Peter said to them, repent. Let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And not only you, he goes on in verse 39 to say, this same promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off as many as the Lord will call. The doorway opened right there. He says, it's good for you, it's good for your kids, and it's good for every other single human being alive on the face of this earth that God chooses to call.

You can look at the pre-Penecost apostles, and you can look at the post-Penecost apostles, and you see two different kinds of men. There is the most powerful living example in all the Bible. Pre-Penecost, post-Penecost.

To come down to our lives, I think each of us has a better testimony even than that. Now, Mr. Corbett, Mr. Dinegar, I'm sure, because I know the range of chapters they covered, covered these things last night with a pretty good chunk of you. This is about 45, went up to the head count, so that was a gang that went up. This would be a different context, I'm sure. But here's the reality that every one of us, every one of you who is a baptized member of this church, who is a converted person with God's Spirit in them, this is how you got there. Romans chapter 7.

Paul said in verse 14, he said, we know, Romans chapter 7 and verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. The verses that follow from 15 to 25 are one of the biggest verbal zoos that you can walk into in the Bible. I mean, in terms of writing it, it is a bizarre piece of writing. But the funny part, and I don't mean a humorous ha-ha funny, but a curious funny, the funny part is, it doesn't matter how garbled and how strange the writing is in these verses, every single converted person understands it perfectly. He says, for what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice. For what I hate, that I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. Isn't that strange, bizarre? You sit there and you feel just as dirty as dirty can be when you do something you know you shouldn't be doing. And what are you admitting? You're admitting that the law is good and I stink.

Verse 17, but now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. Among the teenagers, and probably even earlier in this room, and for those of you who's calling came from, I'm talking now to one group who grew up in the church. So even as early as pre-teen, if you grew up in this church, what I'm going to say applies to you. And if you didn't grow up in this church, it's amazing how far back in time this may have applied to you. There is a point in time where God begins to work with you through His Spirit. It is tantamount to the Spirit of God walking along beside you as a mentor, as a teacher, as a guide, as an instructor, and you can tell it buzz off or you can say, tell me more. It is only after baptism and the laying on of hands that that Spirit dwells within you. But while it is walking beside you, teaching you, this goes on. As you reach a certain level of commitment to what God is teaching, you arrive at verse 17, and that is, now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. Meaning there comes a place in time where through God's Spirit teaching you, you say, you know what, you're right. You're absolutely, totally right. I'm not even, I'm past the place where I even want to argue with you over right. I agree with you, you're right. I not only agree with you, you're right. I wish I were as right as you are. Now you enter verse 17 because you're saying, I want to be right like the Holy Spirit and I'm not. So up here, I'm not happy with what's going on in my life, but my life is still going where it's going. He said in verse 18, I know that in me that is in my flesh. In other words, what is naturally, natively, resident within me, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me. Oh, I can want to do good things. My father had a cousin who smoked like a chimney and every time we were at his house, he told us, don't make the mistake that I made. You kids don't smoke. Then he'd light up another one, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, and they thought, well, that's a waste of time. If you really believed what you were saying, you wouldn't be telling us not to do it. You would be modeling not doing it. And so we simply laughed at him as a bad joke.

I know that in me that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me. I don't believe he was insincere when he said, you don't want to go where I go. I believe he meant that. But how to perform what is good, I do not find. He couldn't live what he was telling us to live. How many times have you been there? I've been there more times than I can count. We're up here. I know exactly where I need to be, where I want to be, and where I wish up here I was completely resident. And the rest of me is saying, let's go this way. Verse 19, for the good that I will to do, I do not do. But the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

I'm going to skip a couple of verses because, as I said, this is Paul wrestling. He's going over and over and over and over. He's churning the same turmoil of the war and the fight, the battle that goes on. He said in verse 22, I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Philosophically, I can sit back and say, boy, that is a beautiful way of life. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind. So up here, I'm in agreement. Down here, I'm saying, let's party hardy. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity. How many days in your life have you awakened with a guilt complex about the day before and said, boy, it wasn't that the pits? How many times have I told myself I was not going to go that way, and here I am waking up another day and I've been the same place I was before? Would you call that captivity?

Would you say when up here you say, go away, leave me alone. I don't want to be that way. I want to be something different. I want to be something else. And time after time after time, you're right back to square one. Is that not captivity? I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who's going to bail me out? Who's going to get me out of this mess?

That is a rhetorical question in verse 24 because as he ends chapter 7, he begins for those who do Bible memorization. He begins what is commonly referred to as the Holy Spirit chapter. So the question is rhetorical.

You want to see a 180-degree turn? He ends the discussion about where he is naturally by saying, I am a mess and I don't... and who's going to get me out of it? He does a 180-degree turn and in the first verse of chapter 8 he says, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 180 degrees. He says, if you are willing to walk with the Spirit of God and you are willing to let the Spirit of God guide you, there is no condemnation. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned the sin in the flesh. The law, as a law of liberty, it says here's what the law could not do. You know what? If I'm driving down brook and the light turns red, the law says stop. My foot determines whether I stop or not. Not the law. I can leave my foot on the accelerator and the red light can sit there and I can look at as it goes by and as it disappears under the windshield line and I'm tooling down the road. The law didn't stop my car. It only told me I should and that I should because when the other one turned green somebody came into the intersection and it didn't want me to get killed and it didn't want me to kill somebody else. What the law could not do in that it was weak. There isn't a traffic law around that can preserve you. It can only tell you what to do so that you have a chance to be preserved. If you don't obey it, it can't protect you. Same with the laws of God. This is what verse 3 was saying. The law can't do anything for you. It only tells you what you should do in order not to be hurt or hurt someone else. By way of analogy, the spirit of God, so we make a connection, the spirit of God is that pang up here. This is, you know, it's a weak but it's keeping with the analogy. The spirit of God in this particular case would be like that pang up here that when it sees the light turn yellow and knows it's going to turn red before I can get through, makes the foot instantly come off the accelerator and hit the brake. Because it says, I don't want to hurt somebody else and I don't want to be hurt myself. In life, it is the spirit of God working with us. It says up here, don't go there, take action. You don't want to be under the bondage that comes from sin and death. So why Paul said in verse 2, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from these particular things. Now we could continue on, brethren, and we don't need to do so. I could take you all the way through chapter 8. He continues to make that point over and over and over again. One of the landmark verses that we would come to is verse 15, where he says, You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. Actually, Abba and Father are the same word. One is in Aramaic and the other is in English. To this very day, if you went into Jordan or any of the Middle Eastern countries as a way of respecting a patriarchal man, they refer to him as Abu. So maybe Abu Jacob, which means Father Jacob. You see, the father of that particular group. The Aramaic of today has simply taken the A off and replaced it with, I believe, a U. But he says you can call him Dad. And it's a term of familiarity and... well, it's a term of familiarity and endearment. It isn't that formal, detached father. It is, this is my dad. He said you've not received the spirit of bondage. That simply keeps you constantly looking over your shoulder and fear that something's going to happen to you. But you've received the spirit of adoption so that you can go to God the Father and call him Dad. Dad, I need help. The next verse says, the spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him that we also may be glorified together.

Paul goes on from there to continue to talk about the Holy Spirit. And when he says what he's had to say, he says, you know what, this is so great that there's absolutely nothing on the face of this earth that can get between us and God and his guidance. He says there are no problems, there's no difficulties, there's no tribulation, there's no distress, there's no famine, there are no perils, there's no persecution, there's nothing that can get between us. And he ends this chapter in verse 38 by saying, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angel nor principality nor powers nor things present nor things to come, not height, not depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I started the sermon, brethren, by saying this day has multiple faces and one thing unites all of those faces and yet is not necessarily visible on the surface, and that is that all of these faces depict in one way or another a release from bondage. We can go back to the giving of the law on the Day of Pentecost in the wilderness, and we can see how when understood, as did both Old and New Testament writers, the illumination of right and wrong, if we will respect it, preserves us from all sorts of harms that we really don't need to suffer. We see how through the church that the church that Christ built when he said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, was not a church of bondage. It was not a church of great heavy burdens. He said, yes, there are obligations, but if you will look at those obligations, you will understand that the burden you carry on my behalf is a light one and the yoke is an easy one to carry because I truly care about you and the things that you do do that may be different than what society asks of you are in the long run for your good and for your well-being. And then, as I said, the last and the pinnacle of it all today pictures the day when the Holy Spirit was originally given, and nobody has said it the way that Paul said it in Romans 7. That just simply is no parallel. I've asked every young person that I've counseled for baptism to go back and read Romans 7 because this is us. It reminds me when I was a teenager and one of our cult things as teenagers was to read the comic strip Pogo, and we wouldn't read it. We'd have fun with it. I remember one time where Albert, the alligator, with his wooden sword in his paper hat and all the dust in the background, and he was leading the charge of the swamp creatures, and he made the famous saying, We have met the enemy and he are us. Well, that's Romans 7. We entered the battle, all ready to fight, and found out that we have met the enemy and he are us. And God comes along and brings in the reinforcements through the Holy Spirit and says, We can defeat us. I can walk beside you. In the half of you that wars against my way, we can defeat, and we can win. This day, brethren, in all of its manifestations and in all of its various ways of being seen, pictures our day of release from bondage.