Are You Free In Christ？ — Randy Krahn

There's a verse that comes to mind that says how good and how pleasant it is when brothers can dwell together in unity. It's like the precious oil that comes on the head and flows down to the beard, even Aaron's beard and to the cloak, and then falls to the ground.

The interesting point of that is that it never touches flesh. If we want unity, it has to be in the spirit. A lot of the things going on out there is unity, but it's in the flesh. People call it love, they call it camaraderie, they call it coming together, but it's not in the spirit, because where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty, there's freedom.

And as much as flesh would like to have freedom, we need freedom in the spirit. You know, there's crazy times that we're living in, and people are rising up because the flesh is hostile against oppression, and we need to understand that in the end times, these things are going to get worse, not better.

And if our hope is in that the government is going to give us freedom, then we are, of God's people, most pitiable, because freedom only comes from Jesus Christ. The scripture says, stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don't allow yourself to be entangled again in a yoke of bondage.

The Lord's freed man is one who is free from sin, the one who's been born again, the one who's died and whose life is hidden with Christ in God. It says we should not become entangled in bondage to fear, nor should we become entangled in bondage to rules and regulations, in legalism, in religion, but freedom is in Jesus.

And so we want to encourage our people to continue to look to Jesus, because that's where our help comes from, to begin to realize where our hope lies when our natural freedoms are taken away. I think of the Apostle Paul, some of the brothers who were in prison, and they were singing hymns while they had chains, and they were the Lord's freed men.

They were free on the inside with chains on the outside. And so as much as we don't want to come into bondage to government systems and oppression and communism and world domination and control, we want to make sure that we're the Lord's freed men on the inside, because whom the Son sets free is free indeed.

And the question I have for you this morning is, are you free in Christ, or are you still in bondage to something? You know, I think back in my past, and I think of being in bondage to alcohol, being in bondage to covetousness, being in bondage to anger, being in bondage to bitterness.

We can be in bondage to anything that overcomes us, where we're powerless to control it. But Jesus said, come to me to be free. We can tell ourselves that we're free, and we've never been in bondage to anything, but we can never truly be free unless we're honest about where we're at spiritually.

And Jesus has a desire that we would be free in Christ. So I want to encourage everyone to look to him and be radiant, so our faces won't be ashamed when we're found in him, not having our own righteousness by the works of the law or our own idea of what righteousness looks like, but a righteousness that comes from the Holy Spirit indwelling us, a life of freedom, of living in Jesus.

I want to read something from Romans in chapter 8, in verse 18, it says,. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs even until now. And not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

For we were saved in this hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. And likewise, the Holy Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses.

We do not know what we should pray as, for we ought, but the Holy Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered with words. Now he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

So we know that the present sufferings that we're experiencing because of the oppression that's come upon the whole world, is not worthy to be compared with the glory that's going to be revealed in us if we cling to Jesus.

And sometimes we don't know what's happening, though outwardly we're perishing, the Scripture says inwardly we can be renewed day by day. And we who have been born again and have received the Holy Spirit, we groan within ourselves, longing to be further clothed with the righteousness that's in Jesus.

Not that we would be unclothed in 2 Corinthians 5, but in this tent we groan, longing to be further clothed with Christ. We want to be liberated from the bondage of this body. We want to see the salvation of God manifested, not just in our spirits, but in our souls and our whole being.

We want to see Jesus glorified in this church. We want to see His people rise up in victory without fear. The last enemy to be defeated is death. Oh death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory?

The strength of sin is the law. We're not under law, we're under grace, and so we want to walk in that liberty by which Christ has made us free. Stand fast in that freedom in Jesus' name. And when we don't know where to turn, and we get perplexed, but we're not in despair, we get struck down, but we're not destroyed, it says always caring about in this body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're always bearing His cross, we're dying to things that we're held by, that the life of Jesus might be manifested, where? In our mortal flesh. And so, when we don't know what's going on, and we don't know how we ought to pray, inwardly we groan.

The spirit within us cries out, Abba Father, how long, O Lord, how long, until you seek justice for us from our adversaries, to deliver us from this carnal flesh and the weakness and the frailty of our sinful state, and cause us to be conformed into the glorious image of Jesus.

The Scripture says if we want to desire to come after Him, we're called to walk just as Jesus walked. And Jesus in the days of His flesh, it says when He was tempted, as a man as we are, yet without sin, cried out to His Father.

He cried out, Abba, to His Father, with loud cries and tears to Him who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His godly fear. We need to have a godly fear of the Lord. That is what's going to get us through in this hour.

It says of Jesus Christ that His delight is in the fear of the Lord. And that's why He was heard by His Father, because of His godly fear. We need to choose the fear of the Lord. When we have decisions to make, we have to understand what the will of the Lord is for our life, and we make good choices.

There's a lot of choices to make in a day. We want to make choices that are from the Spirit, because it's the Spirit that's going to bring life to us. If we make choices from the flesh, then we're going to reap destruction.

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So how many of us are going to choose the fear of the Lord? It says that in Adam all died. Why did they die in Adam?

God created Adam in the image of God. He breathed in him, and he became a living being. And He gave Adam a helpmate, and Adam called her Eve, the mother of all living. Adam was formed of dust, made from the dust.

And God breathed in him, and he became alive. And He gave him a place where there was paradise to dwell. And He gave him of all the trees in the garden to tend, and of all the animals to tend, and of everything it was good and it was beautiful.

And gave him one law. He gave him one choice to fear God. It was so easy for Adam to choose to follow after God. There was only one requirement, not to eat of the tree in the midst of the garden that he put right in the middle of the paradise of God.

And the serpent got to deceive the woman Eve, and he come to her, and he deceived her by twisting the word of God. We need the word of God in this hour, so that we understand what truth is, having our ways girded with truth.

There's a lot of voices out there, and we can get confused listening to the voices. We can be deceived listening to the voices. Eve was deceived by listening to the voice of the serpent. The serpent spoke to Eve, and he said to Eve, did God say that you can't eat from any of the trees in the garden?

Getting the focus, the fact that God does not want anything good for you at all. God doesn't love you, He doesn't care about you, He's not interested in you, He just wants to make your life miserable.

Eve says, no, no, no, God says we can eat of all the trees in the garden, we just can't eat of this one tree. Oh, why did God say you can't eat of that tree? Because He knows the day that you eat of that tree, you're going to know both good and evil.

You're going to be like God. And when Eve got her focus off of God, she got her focus on what the serpent was saying, and she got her eyes on the tree that she was not to eat or to touch according to the word that she spoke.

She saw that the tree was good for food. It's the lust of the eyes. She was able to see that it was able to make one wise. It's the boastful pride of life. And she came to that point where she took of the fruit and she ate.

And she went and gave to her husband and he ate. And as the moment that they ate, they knew that they were naked. They knew that they had sinned. And the first thing that they did is they hid from God, the very one who created them, the very one who gave them life.

Now they were at enmity against because they did not choose the fear of the Lord. The woman became deceived and Adam never chose the fear of the Lord. He chose to listen to the voice of his wife. The scripture says, Adam, why did you eat from the tree?

This woman whom you gave me, gave me of the fruit and I ate. He said, why did you listen to the voice of your wife? He did not listen to what God said. He listened to what others said. And many times we can become deceived by listening to people close to us who are not speaking from the Holy Spirit, but they're speaking from the flesh.

And we have to have a fear of God and be able to discern truth in the hour in which we live. Because the truth is what's going to make us free. If we listen to lies, we're going to come into bondage and we're going to come into fear.

We're going to panic. We're going to make rash decisions and we're going to find ourselves sinning. And that's what separates us from God. Sin separates us from God. Let's read in this passage here in Romans in chapter 8.

We'll go skip a little bit further into verse 31. And it says, what shall we say of these things which we have read? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered Jesus up for us all.

How shall Jesus not with us defies? Who is he who condemns? You know that Adam was condemned in that garden. When he knew he was naked, he felt the condemnation. The condemnation of sin and death was on him.

Because God had said, the day you eat of it, you will surely die. But what did the serpent say? You surely shall not die. He lied to Eve. And Adam believed the lie himself. We need to take the more earnest heed to the things that we have heard, lest we drift away.

Because it's very important what God says. The Word of God is very important. And it's sharp as a two-edged sword. And it can pierce us. And we need to take heed to the things that we've heard. Because God's Word, in it is life.

In it is healing and restoration for our families and for our nation. And we need a voice of preachers to rise up and to speak the truth in love, so that it might impart grace into the hearers. And here we see that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

But yet we see in the case of sin in the garden, sin separated Adam and Eve from God. Who is he who condemns? The one who rebels against what God's Word says, receives the condemnation. First, we get conviction.

And we have an opportunity to repent, if we're born again and we have the precious blood of Jesus now. But if we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and we hide from God. We don't practice the truth.

Conviction can become condemnation. This is the falling away from the faith that it says in 1 Timothy 4, that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of devils.

And we don't want to believe lies. If Adam took earnest heed and chose the fear of the Lord, he would have chosen not to take the fruit from his wife. He should have trusted God. But instead he said, well, I can't live without this woman perhaps.

I have to take from this fruit because God can't kill both of us. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Well, God said, Adam, where are you? And he said, I heard your voice and I was afraid. We don't want to be afraid when we hear the Word of God.

We want to have confidence. We want to have assurance. We want to have hope. But if we're not walking in the light as Jesus is in the light, then we will hide from the Word of God. We don't want the preachers of the Word of God to tell us that we are sinful and we need to repent.

But this is the only way which we can be reconciled back to God. We need to repent of our sin and turn to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only way for a fallen world to be reconciled back to God. He is God's lamb.

He is the bridge. You know, we've heard a lot about the Ambassador Bridge this last week and how the bridge was cut off and how this was an absolute necessity to open up this bridge because commerce was affecting both nations.

I'm going to tell you there's a bridge greater than the Ambassador Bridge. It's Jesus Christ. That bridge has been broken because of sin, but Jesus went and paid the penalty and He suffered a criminal's death so that we could be reconciled back to God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

This is the bridge that needs to be opened up in your life. And when you call on the name of Jesus in sincerity with all your heart, you will find that connection and a reconciliation back to God and you will feel the condemnation leave your life.

You don't need preachers telling you there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ if you have secret sin and unconfessed sin in your life. You need to come to the light that your deeds be exposed, that you humble yourself under the heavy hand of God, that He can lift you up.

Jesus is the bridge to God. The shed blood of Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins. Who is He who condemns? It's Christ who died. He paid the penalty for sin and furthermore has risen and seated at the right hand of the power.

And He, Jesus, makes intercession for us. And that is why the Holy Spirit within us, when we don't know how to pray, makes intercession for us. And I ask you this question, do you have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit in your life?

Because if you have never groaned, if you have never groaned in desperation in seeking to get a hold of Jesus, to lay hold of God, then you don't understand the way of the Spirit. Because the Spirit within us groans.

This is not tongues. This is different than the gift of tongues. It is a heart cry that comes from within. When words cannot express your desperation for an answer from God. Have you ever been in a place in your life where you don't know where to turn, to the left or to the right, and you come to God and you cry out and inwardly you groan?

A heart cry to God. It's like incense going before the throne of God. This is the way of the Spirit. This is the way of life. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? If we go through hard times and they come and they take away our liberties and our freedoms, and we can't go to restaurants, we're not allowed to go to our children's events, we're not allowed to participate in church activity and different things, who's going to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ?

Can anyone separate you from the love of God which is in Christ? If you're in right relationship with Jesus, whom shall we fear? Shall tribulation? Shall distress in which we live? Or persecution of the Christians which is coming upon the whole world?

Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or sort? For as it is written, verse 36 of Romans 8, for your name's sake, we are killed all day long. And we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things, we who are in Christ are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us.

And I am persuaded, Paul says in verse 38, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing by man is able to separate us from the love of God, from this intercessory connection in prayer which we have through the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the indwelling presence of his spirit which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

No created thing. And for that, I am grateful. And for that, Jesus has given us something that the world does not possess, hope, peace, and joy in righteousness in Jesus' name. This is what we have that the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, but we know him because he dwells in us.

Now, what separated Adam and Eve from the love of God? Unbelief separated them because they didn't believe and the result of their unbelief was sin. It says that sin separates us from God. Isaiah 59, is the Lord's arm too short that he can't reach down and save anyone who calls on his name?

No. Is his ear too heavy that he can't hear people who are crying out for him to help them? No. But the problem is that sin has separated them from God so that he can't hear them. Until they humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their evil ways and cry out for help from Jesus.

It says he will hear from heaven, he will pardon their iniquity, he will forgive their sins, and he will heal their land. He'll give them a new heart and a new spirit. He says that he'll take our heart of stone, our rebellious, proud hearts, and he'll remove them and give us a heart of flesh, one that feels, that has compassion, that understands mercy, that understands the love of God.

And we want to extend this love and compassion to hurting people, especially in this hour where we see that people are without hope. And now they're setting their hope in something that is passing away.

But the hope of the nations is Jesus Christ. We sing that song, Jesus, hope of the nations. And we want to extend an olive branch of hope to people who have no hope. Let your hands and your feet and your mouth and your life be an expression of Jesus Christ to whoever meets you.

Have a smile on your face. Let the joy of the Lord be your strength. Rise up with wings as eagles. Run and not grow weary. Continue to walk with the Lord and don't faint. Continue to persevere and press on because Jesus is risen, he's alive, and he is seated at the right hand of the power.

And he indwells us in the high and the lofty place and with him and her who is humble and who is contrite, who is meek and who trembles at the word of God. We need to choose the fear of the Lord and to love the word of God.

Children, little children, hide the word of God in your heart so that you won't sin against God. How shall a young man keep his way pure by taking heed according to God's word? Jesus' word is a lamp unto our feet and it's a light unto our path.

Let's walk as children of light, no longer in darkness, in the works of darkness, in the works of the flesh. But put off the old man with his lusts and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's be clothed with humility.

Let's be clothed with meekness and tenderheartedness. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and let's love one another. For love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who doesn't love doesn't know God.

There's different types of love out there. There's a love that comes from camaraderie but we need a love that comes from knowing Jesus. Jesus is the love of God manifested in the flesh and we now are his hands and his feet.

Let the love of God flow through you. Be an expression of kindness to hurting people. Extend your hand to the hurting. Extend your heart to the needy. Be a blessing. Be a blessing in Jesus' name. Let's pray.

Lord, we're thankful for the opportunity to be together again, Lord, as we're overcoming sickness in this little fellowship. We thank you that you've kept us and you've preserved us and you've given us such a great hope in Jesus.

I pray, Father, that inwardly you would cause us, Lord, to be sustained by your power, that you would fill us with your spirit, that you would empower us to live according to your word. Lord, that you would comfort us with a comfort for the afflictions that are coming upon the whole earth.

Lord, that we would not be in fear. Lord, that you would strengthen us with all power in the inner man, that we would be able to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called as ambassadors of Jesus Christ.

And we thank you for the mystery of the gospel, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. I pray, Father, that everyone who's not born again, who's listening to this word, would cry out to you from the bottom of their heart, that you would hear them and that you would visit them in their time of crisis, in their time of need.

And we thank you that you always hear us when we pray in Jesus' name, amen.