Psalm 119 VIII: Six pictures of real liberty

Welcome back to the Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snyder, and we are finishing up our look at just a handful of verses from Psalm 119. That extraordinary chapter in the Bible, longest chapter in the Bible, but also the most complete description of the Word of God.

And the believer, as this book is opened before their face, their feet are set on a very specific path of obedience, but the heart is toward God. And there's that constant interaction between God speaking to the believer through His Word, God dealing with us, God giving us the benefits and the impact of His Word, and the believer responding, pleading, determining, yearning for, trusting, following, studying, memorizing, meditating on the things that God has said.

And verse 45 is one of those wonderful verses that at first might seem a bit mysterious to us, and I often find that verses that I don't quickly understand at first hold some of the sweetest treasures that Christ gives.

And verse 45 says this, I will walk at liberty in a wide open place, for I seek your precepts. And that is an amazing thing in a chapter that describes the law of God, the commands of God, the precepts of God, the statutes of God, you know, the path of God.

Christ saves us by grace. He washes us. He brings us out of the tyranny of sin and its empty lies, and He frees us to live for Him under His rule. And yet there is something unique about the rule of Jesus Christ.

Though it touches every aspect as the absolute rule of Christ, every aspect of my thoughts and desires and choices, attitudes and responses, and yet it is so wonderful that it is perfect freedom. It is a wide open place.

How can that be? Last week we talked about the fact that this is not a freedom that we tend to think of if we look up the dictionary meaning of freedom, where we are a people who are not under any government that would inhibit our choices.

We are a people that are self-sustaining, self-determining, never coerced, able to do everything we want to do as we want to do it, how we want to do it, when we want to do it. No creature actually has that kind of spiritual freedom.

We are dependent upon God. We are created for a purpose. God has that freedom, but no angel or man does. So what freedom is the psalmist talking about in verse 45? What is the open place that he gets to walk?

We are going to look at that this week and I want to give you six pictures, I think that is probably the best way I can do it. Six clear, simple pictures which give us kind of a full and well-rounded view of what the Bible describes as real spiritual freedom, real liberty.

What is this wonderfully wide open place? Well, the first is that in the rule of Christ and in His Word, we are given a liberty that must include safety. If we are not safe spiritually, then we are not free.

Just like if we are not safe physically, we are not really free. Let me give you a couple of illustrations. Imagine a child playing in a park, a public park. Parents arrive and the kids are in the car.

Are we there yet? Are we there? So you let them loose. And they just run wild through the park, young ones. And they are, in a sense, they are a wonderful picture of freedom. They just run to their heart's content until a dog comes into the scene.

And it is a big dog and it is snarling and growling and barking and the hair is bristling. And the little kids see the dog and suddenly they are paralyzed. Without safety, the kids do not feel free. There are no fences.

There are no paths. Nobody came up to them and said, hey, you are not allowed to run here. They still have all the freedom physically that they had before. But because things are not safe, they cannot move.

They feel very restricted. Where do we go next? There is this terrible dog. Well, imagine an adult. Imagine an adult visiting Europe and visiting some of the famous battlefields from World War I or II.

And so you are walking with the tour guide and you start to walk off the path. And there is this big wide open field where a great battle occurred. And as you start to walk there, the tour guide yells out, stop!

What have I done? That field still has landmines. We have swept it, but not all have been gotten. And so suddenly, you are 20 or 30 meters out into the field and you realize you are in a field that is dangerous.

You ignored the signs or you jumped the fence. You ignored the voice. And now, even though there are no barbed wire places, there is no specific path, even though it looks as if you are just as free to walk all over that field as you were before, because of the threat of the landmine, you really do not feel free.

You are not safe. Spiritually, it is the same way. It may look like we are free to go and do whatever we want. But if we are not safe, then we are not really free. We are paralyzed. Let me read you a passage in Luke 1, verse 74 and 75.

And it speaks of the coming of the Christ before His birth and what He would do. It says, He is coming to grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

One of the reasons that Christ makes us free and His Word is perfect freedom is that His Word leads us to the safest places, to the safest choices. And it is in that safety that part of our freedom exists.

Let me give you a second element of biblical freedom, and that is provision. That we have all that we really need. Imagine a man who does not have this. Imagine a man perhaps who has been in prison and he has been in there for a couple of decades for a very serious crime.

But now the time has come when he is set free. And so he is given a little bit of money, he is given his possessions that he entered with. You know he has clothes, he has money, but just a little and he is set free out of the prison.

Nobody is there to meet him. He is free. He has all these things that for 20 years he has thought, if I ever get out of here, I am going to go here. I am going to do this. I am going to eat this. I am going to go see so and so.

I am going to live free. But he does not have enough money to get a bus ticket from where he is to where he wants to be. He has enough money for one meal but not two. Is he really free? Well yeah, he is not behind the bars any longer.

He is not behind the fence. But he is not genuinely free. He cannot live free because he does not have what he needs. He is in a sense imprisoned by poverty, paralyzed by lack. God's Word brings perfect freedom as God works in our heart because God's Word provides all that we need.

It is like a channel through which Christ, the great treasurer of the new covenant, just gives and gives and gives through His Word. Think about what Psalm 119 says. The Word of God is my guide. It is my treasure.

It is my gold. It is silver. It is food. It is honey. It is everything I need. And God provides it to me through His Word. One great reason that the psalmist can say, I will seek your precepts. I will set my heart on your Word.

Therefore, I will walk at liberty. It is because I am safe and I am well provided for. Let me give you a third aspect. A third aspect that God brings to the life of a man or a woman or a young person through His Word that is essential for true spiritual liberty.

And that is peace. So again, let's imagine a man who has everything the world offers. He has devoted himself to his business. He is very successful. I mean really successful. But in doing so, he has had to cut a lot of moral corners.

And as his money and power and influence grew, so did his pride and his selfishness. And he has lost his family in the pursuit of this ego and this money and power. He has lost his marriage. He has lost the love of his children.

He has not met his grandchildren. He has lost his friends. And so while he has what it takes to travel the world in the most luxuriant ways, to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, he is not really free because every moment that he stops, every moment that there is a pause, every time he lays his head down at night to sleep, he is plagued terribly by the awareness of the shame and the guilt of what he's done.

So while he looks free to everyone who looks at him and says, Wow, if I were that rich, if I were free to do and have and be everything I wanted, they mistake it because he is not free. He is imprisoned in shame.

Every leisure event, every possession he buys, every person he meets, every weekend he gets away is in some measure poisoned by the awareness, the haunting awareness of shame and guilt. And he is not really at liberty.

He is still dominated by this. The Word of God does give true spiritual liberty because it leads every one of us to the one person who can wash us, who can forgive us. I don't just mean that he says to us, well, we won't talk about it.

All right, we'll just act like it didn't happen. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness is so much sweeter. It's when we come to a person and we have come to love that person and then we look at the way we've treated them and it's unbearable.

And we think, what could put this right? I mean, nothing I do can put it right. And we cry out and God turns to us and says, I can put it right. And the Word of God leads us to that God. It explains the cross.

It explains the resurrection. It explains faith and repentance, regeneration, the new birth. It explains faith, the path after I'm a Christian. It explains justification and adoption and sanctification.

It brings me to Him and He forgives me. And the haunting, bitter regrets are washed away. But also, it is a path that leads us to decisions. The Word of God, the commands of God lead us from this point forward into a lifestyle that isn't full of those bitter regrets that come when I live for myself.

Romans 6 talks about the slavery we used to have towards sin. And Paul says this, when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. That is, you felt that you didn't have to obey anything.

You didn't desire to obey the Word of God. You never chose to obey the Word of God. It's as if, well, since I belong to sin, I feel free toward the expectations of God. And then he goes on to say this, Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?

Their outcome is death. Paul takes every Christian without exception and says, Think back on the life you used to have. It looked very free at times. But was it? Well, no, actually it wasn't. And what paycheck did that slavery give you?

Shame.

You're ashamed.

It brought death.

If you're going to be really spiritually free, you're going to have to be safe and provided for. But you're going to also have to have inner peace. Somebody has to deal with the internal problem of shame and guilt.

Fourth, we need real clarity. We are often so spiritually confused that we don't know what decision to make next. And it can be very paralyzing. And while we may claim to be free, if we don't know where to take the next step, we're not very free.

So we can call this spiritual clarity. Now, I want you to think of it. Imagine a child who's going with his parents, hiking through a state park. Not many years ago, when my daughter was graduating, we said to her, Well, we'll take you somewhere really fun for your graduation.

You can bring a friend and we'll go do something together. And so she wanted to go to the Smoky Mountains. So we went there. And every day we hiked these great trails. But, you know, along the trails, you'd see these signs warning you about bears and things.

And you think, Well, come on. It's daytime and we're all together. We'll be okay. But now imagine a child, not a girl that's 18, but imagine a little child who, walking on that trail, ignores the parents' warning and gets off the trail and goes into the woods.

And before the parents realize it, the child has gone so far that he or she can no longer hear the parents' voice. They cry out. They yell his name. They threaten.

They beg.

They bribe. But the kid can't hear. So he feels he's so free. You know, he's off the path. His parents aren't telling him, Don't do this. Don't do this. You know, don't run ahead.

Don't lag behind.

And he's free to do whatever he wants. And he walks out and he walks and walks through the woods. But he reaches a point where it's starting to get dark and he gets a little afraid. And he cries out his parents' name and they can't hear him.

And he doesn't know where he's at. And he realizes that things are getting scary and I'm confused. I don't know which way to turn. If you've ever been lost in a situation like that, you might do what I tend to do.

I tend to run in one direction. I think, Well, if I'm heading this direction, I have a terrible sense of direction. If I'm pointed this way, I just have to do a 180 and go back that way. And because I'm scared, I think I want to get back fast.

So I just run like crazy in the opposite direction. But I've twisted and turned so many times, I'm heading further away. You do that a few times and you realize the truth. You're not getting any closer.

And you get to where you just stand still and yell and call out for help. And you're afraid to go anywhere. You're afraid to take the next step. It's so confusing. Spiritually, same way. But the Scripture brings freedom.

Ruled by Christ means there's clarity. I know what the best choice is. I know where to go next. I know how to head toward safety, toward happiness. In my marriage with my kids at work or at church, when I look in the mirror and there are perplexing problems, and there certainly are, especially as our children age and their problems go from little kid problems to adult problems.

As parents, we break our hearts. God, how can I point them to the very best way? And you don't know what to do as a parent. And you go back to the Word and there's a path laid for your feet. And the clarity there frees us.

I know where to go now. The path is so clear. I'm happy to be on it. And I walk free. Well, let me give you another. It's not just clarity, but there's also the freedom to do what you're designed to do.

If you take a bird, and we know that some birds dive in the water. You know, ducks, geese, eagles will dive. Birds of prey will dive and get a fish. But if you say, well, this bird's a bird that dives in the water.

So I think this bird would feel so free. If I would just take it down in the water, down 25, 30, 40 feet, and just let it go and just say to it, you can go anywhere. There's no nets or fences. Just go anywhere you want in the water.

But because that bird is not designed for water, it's not really free. You're asking it to do something it's not created for. And it doesn't really work. Think of a fish, the fish we call a flying fish, comes up above the water, skips along, goes back in.

What if you took that fish up in an airplane and said, I know that you've only been able to fly 5, 6, 7 feet above the water for a while, and then you drop back down. But I'm going to give you a chance to be really free.

So you take him in your airplane, and you throw the fish out the door, and you say, be free. But it's not really created for that. It's not its nature. It's not its purpose. And so it's not free. It just falls.

One of the great aspects of freedom that the Word of God brings to the Christian is that it frees me, it sets me on the course that I was created for. And now all the extraordinary gifts that humanity possesses from God, the height of physical creation, man, women, children, we are free and enabled to live in a way that we were created to live, to live for Him, to live with Him, to live by Him and for Him.

And it's as if we have been finally set free. We're not a bird underwater or a fish dropped from the plane. We are where we ought to be. And we are free to do all that we were created to do. All these abilities, all these natural gifts are now open.

We have the free exercise of them.

Let me give you one more.

Real spiritual freedom must include one other thing, and that is that we are free to do what we really want to do. Most commentators, when they come to verse 45, they'll say, now be careful when it says that I will walk in freedom or I will walk at liberty.

Christ has set you free, but Christ does not set you free to live for yourself. You are now free to live for Him, and that is a wonderful truth. But they stop there, and I personally think that they have stopped short.

I think they have left out something that's very precious. I think it is the pinnacle of spiritual freedom, and it is what every Christian is offered in Christ, and that is this. When a person is doing what they really love to do most, and they're told just do what you want to do, and they do what they love most, that is the pinnacle, in a sense, of freedom that we have here.

So imagine doing something for someone you love. So for a wife or a child or a husband, a parent. It's a special day, birthday, anniversary, and you're working really hard on a project that you know that will be so important to them.

They really will appreciate it. And so you work, you plan, you implement, you sacrifice, you stay up late at night, you sneak around, you get all that you need, and finally it comes together. And you have spent a lot of labor on this.

But if someone were to say to you, man, why are you slaving away at that? You would say, it's not slavery. I'm doing what I want to do, and I love it.

I'm glad.

It would be hard on me for someone to say you're not allowed to do that for the person you love. That would be imprisonment. But this is not imprisonment. This is freedom. How hard it is to do one little thing for someone that you really dislike.

There's no love there, and it's not something you want to do. Taking out the trash, doing something at work that someone else should have done, and they're taking advantage of you, and it just kind of goes against the grain.

It's hard for you to do anything. But when there is love, when the heart delights to do something because of love, it's the most free thing. In the Scriptures, the Bible goes far beyond saying, Christ has freed you.

You don't have to serve an old master. You serve a really good master. It's beyond that. You serve the greatest master, but you love him now because he first loved you. And this love, it makes service to him.

That precise obedience to his commands, it makes it a joy. It is what you really want to do deep down. Now, not perfectly because we're still very mixed creatures here. The work of sanctification isn't complete.

There's still something of the old attitude of me, me, what's in it for me that clings to us. But when we are doing what our heart as a believer most wants to do, from love to God, it is obedience, and we are free.

Freedom from Christ through his Word is the freedom to do what we love most. Augustine is paraphrased as saying to a person who was asking all these questions, well, what's right in this situation? What's right in this situation?

And the early church father said, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then do what you want to do. He wasn't saying it doesn't matter how we live, and obedience is important. What he was saying is this, if the heart is in love with the king, then what you want to do, you want to love the king by obedience.

You want to do what pleases the king, and that is perfect freedom. Charles Bridges in his commentary on this verse says this, to have the whole stream of our thoughts, actions, motives, desires, affections, carried in one undivided current towards God is the complete and unrestrained influence of his love upon our heart.

It is perfect freedom, the desire to do what he wants me to do, and love is the fuel. Now, as I mentioned, we are still imperfect here, and so even the most mature and godly Christian, these six aspects of freedom are in Christ provided through his word, but we experience them imperfectly.

And when we go against our king, it feels like they all just evaporate, but they are real, even if you don't experience them perfectly yet. One day we will. But the word of God from the king, lived upon by a subject of that king, born again, that is perfect freedom.

And when the psalmist says, I will walk in a wide open place, I will walk at liberty, I will be as free as a man can be because I seek God's precepts, he wasn't exaggerating. If you find that this is not your experience, is it because you don't love the king, because he's never conquered you, and so religion for you is still like a straitjacket, or a barbed wire fence that keeps you from the things you really wish you could do.

But if you are his, and you know this in some measure, you've experienced this, and yet you know there's so much more to be had. These six elements of freedom, you've tasted them, but you long for more.

You may have more. Ask him, teach me, king, take me by the hand like a child. Put my feet on the path of obedience. As I open your word every day, let me delight in what you say. Let Psalm 119 be a guide for how I can respond to you, to your word.

And see if God is not as good as he promises to be. See if, as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer says, see if his service is not perfect freedom.