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Now relate to God based on this new covenant. Hebrews 9 goes into more detail, the nature of this new covenant and some of the covenant blessings that we enjoy through Jesus Christ. Hebrews chapter 9.
Hebrews 9, now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence.
It is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron's staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant.
Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section performing their ritual duties.
But into the second, only the high priest goes and he but once a year and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy place is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age.
According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands that is, not of creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Therefore, he is a mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.
And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
Thus, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.
Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priests enter the holy places every year with blood not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Let's pray.
Lord God, this is such a magnificent passage. We thank you that we can approach you because Jesus Christ is our high priest, that he is the mediator of a new covenant. We're thankful Lord for his sacrifice that he secured eternal redemption once for all.
And Lord, because of Christ we have new life. Because of Christ we have a new family. We have new priorities. We have a new vision. And that vision is to praise and glorify you,.
Our father God.
And Lord, we pray that we would do that this morning. And Lord, as we open up your word and read the text of John, we pray that we would be mindful of what it has to say. Help us Lord to be undistracted by other worldly thoughts, but help us to be focused Lord on what Pastor Lars is teaching us.
And we pray Lord that the spirit of God would help us understand it and help us apply these truths to our lives so that we might live for the praise of your glory as we anxiously await your return. Thank you Lord, in Jesus name, amen.
Well, I know probably nobody's counting except for me, but today is sermon number 1 ,000. 1 ,000 Sunday morning sermons since arriving here back in 1998. So it took us 21 years. That's just Sunday morning sermons.
In addition, we've got 795 radio programs that are currently being aired. And then when we first arrived in 98, we went on the radio station locally. So we have 1 ,000 half hour programs there. And then we had, we went for four years, 15 years.
And then we had a 15 minute program, radio program. So another 1 ,000 programs there. So they're adding up over time. And one of the motivations we had for originally coming here is we wanted to get in some place where we could stay and see the fruit of the labor.
The church in Germany was a very wonderful evangelistic opportunity, but there was such a turnover every year, maybe 50 because of the influx of people coming in and out of Europe. It's really rewarding to see the fruit bearing of the word of God over the course of a number of years.
And so this is somewhat of a milestone, at least in my thinking. So let's turn our attention to, again, to John 8, 36. And we wanna get past this verse today, I hope.
Lord willing.
We've been addressing this for a bit. And however, we wanna explain the meaning and implication of our Lord's words more fully so we better understand the liberty that we have in Christ Jesus, that he has established for us.
And so in verse 36, of course, our Lord Jesus was speaking of the freedom that he grants his true disciples, spiritual freedom. And so John 8, 36 records these words of promise of our Lord, therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.
And last Lord's Day, we were attempting to explain what these words mean as well as what they do not mean. Because there are many people who read more into this than what our Lord intended. And so oftentimes there's confusion and maybe a troubled heart when the true Christian reads this verse and begins to wonder, you know,.
Where am I?
I don't seem to be set free when I consider everything which binds me and assaults me. And so last week, we sought to explain our Lord's words first by stating what true disciples are not freed from by Jesus Christ in the world.
And we emphasized two points last week. First, the Lord Jesus certainly does not free believers from their obligation to obey his moral law. We are under the law of God, but under that law to Christ. Not like under the law of the covenant of Moses in the Old Testament, but under the law to Christ.
And then secondly, the Lord Jesus has not freed his disciples from the temptations and assaults of Satan. And we emphasize that, we're gonna speak a little more about that this morning. And so thirdly, we desire next to state the fact that Christ has not freed believers in this world from the motions of indwelling sin.
We have a problem with sin. We are to identify ourselves as Christians. We who are believers have new life in Christ, but each of us has a bad sin problem that we deal with in this life. But again, Christians can become troubled when they read the promise of our Lord, therefore if the Son makes you free, you should be free indeed.
And they're troubled because they're troubled by sin. They either believe that they're not doing something right, or they may have doubts about their very salvation. They think to themselves, how can I be a Christian when I'm plagued with sin in my life?
It doesn't seem like I'm set free. I must not be experiencing the freedom that the Lord has promised his people. But the Lord has not promised his people freedom from sinning in this life. Sin is a problem that plagues us all.
And I've been relying on John Flavel's sermon that he gave back in the 17th century on this verse, John 8, 36. And he wrote of these struggles with sin on the part of true believers. These are continually acting and infesting the holiest of men.
Corruptions like the Canaanites are still left in the land to be thorns in your eyes and goads in your sides. Talking about Israel coming into the promised land and who nevertheless had all these problems to deal with.
Those that boast most of freedom from the motions of sin. In other words, the struggles of sin within your life. Those who boast that they're most free from this have most cause to suspect themselves still under the dominion of sin.
In other words, this may be an indication you're unsaved. If you think that somehow you don't struggle with sin, there's something wrong with you. Because we all have sin with which we struggle. Some more than others.
Some more greatly different times than others. Now, Roman Sabin, the apostle Paul. This is Paul the apostle who wrote of the sin that dwells in me. If he could write that, and it was true of him, it certainly is true of you.
Sin dwells in you. And so as a Christian he wrote, for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will, to desire is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
And this is Paul the Christian struggling. He wrote, for the good that I will to do, that is I want to do, I do not do. And the evil I will not to do, that I practice. He had a problem with sin. And every Christian who reads that passage of Roman Sabin, it resonates quite readily, doesn't it?
That sounds like me. And then he wrote, now if I do what I will not to do, it's no longer I who do it, but sin dwells in me. Paul the apostle, Paul the stellar Christian had a problem with sin. And if he did, you can certainly be assured that you will too.
The writer to the Hebrew Christians addressed the sin that easily besets us. And of course, the metaphor there is of the Christian running a race. And he's got sin that's basically entangling his feet, preventing him from running in the way that he should run.
And therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and he's not talking about people looking down over the portals of heaven and watching you. He's talking about all the people of faith in Hebrews 11 through history.
Since we've got all these examples, all these witnesses of what faith is, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely. And so we see the true Christian may have sin, even a particular sin cling closely to him, even while he's trying to run and win this race.
Toward glory.
It's a sin that's described as easily ensnaring us. And the apostle John, of course, wrote of the prevalency of sin that plagues the true believer the true disciple of Jesus Christ. He wrote, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.
And I've met a few over the years. I can remember one fellow, and this was a good Christian couple in many respects. They were a little young in the Lord. But this man who tended to have somewhat of a legal spirit, he thought he arrived.
And I remember sitting in his living room, he and his wife sitting on the couch, and he says, I've arrived, basically. He says, I don't sin. And I said, is that right, Ron? And I turned to his wife, Kathy, can you validate that for me, please?
She just shook her head, you know, and all of a sudden he was smitten in his conscience that maybe he wasn't as holy as he might have thought he was holy. Christians are troubled by their sin, or at least they should be.
And sin doesn't reign over Christians, thankfully, for Jesus Christ is their Lord. Sin isn't, but sin is always present, and it's always troubling the souls of Christians. And only when we pass from this world into the presence of our Lord will we be fully delivered from the presence of sin.
But that day has not arrived. Christ has not yet freed believers in this world from the motions of indwelling sin. And so don't use that as a test as to whether or not you're a Christian. And fourthly, Jesus Christ does not free believers in this world from inward troubles and exercises of soul on account of sin.
This is a little different. John Flavel wrote of these inward trials and troubles. God may let loose Satan and conscience too in the way of terrible accusations which may greatly distress the soul of a believer and woefully eclipse the light of God's countenance.
In other words, it seems like his presence is no longer with us, and break the peace of their souls. He's talking about Christians here. Sin committed by the true Christian is a troubling matter. And sometimes the Christian that's walking in close fellowship with the Lord is actually troubled more greatly by sin than maybe some others.
For his holy nature has become more aware of its presence and more sensitive and troubled by its extent in his life. Well, I've been in the Lord for 45 plus years. You'd think I'd be farther along than I am.
How can I be plagued as I am today? And it's unsettling. Whereas before he was a Christian, he may have become desensitized to his sin through the hardening of his conscience and his lack of concern and desire of holiness in his life.
That was not his concern, his interest. But the Christian is quite a different animal, isn't he? He may become quite sensitive to the presence and the evil of sin. And so the believer may come to see his sin as exceedingly sinful.
And the old adage goes, everyone can make an argument with the apostle Paul when he said, I'm the chief of sinners. No, Paul, I've got your beat. This is how we think. J .C. Philpott, 19th century, once wrote of this sensitivity of sin that may be experienced by a maturing Christian.
He first spoke of the difficulty that the Christian encounters from non-Christians. But then he speaks of the much worse affliction, the sin that resided in his own soul. Just a word about Philpott. He was actually a minister, a pastor in the Church of England.
I forget how many years he had been that pastor. And it was a dead formal denomination. And lo and behold, he gets converted. And so he came out of the Church of England and he became a Reformed Baptist pastor.
And he caught all kinds of conflict and attack from everybody in the established clergy, the established churches as he was trying to live for Christ and pastor his little congregation there in England.
And so he had all kinds of difficulty from outside, but he says the thing that really troubles me is the sin inside. And so he writes about that here. He had quite a way with words. However, various sects differ among themselves.
They all unite in condemning him. He's talking about the true Christian. All other religion is right, his alone wrong. Everyone else's faith is genuine and his only is spurious. Of him alone, the charitable augur uncharitably.
Universal salvationists cut off him alone from salvation. Those that pity the heathen have no pity for him. And those who compass sea and land to make one proselyte pronounce his case alone as past recovery.
And what is his trespass? What is his sin that they so hotly pursue after him? Does he live in sin?
No.
Is he buried in the world, head over ears in politics, heaping together dishonest gains or eaten up with covetousness? None dare say so. Does he neglect prayer, reading the word, hearing the truth, contributing to the necessities of saints and living peaceably with all men?
Why then this universal bane at him from every dog of the pack? For the same reason that Joseph's brethren hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him. The Father loves him and has clothed him in a garment of many colors and given him revelations which he has denied to them.
But he has sorrow too, the opposition within, far more trying to his spirit than the evil names which malicious ignorance heaps upon him or the unjust suspicions which Pharisaic pride harbors against him.
Paul, after being caught up into the third heaven, had given to him a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure. Go where he would, Paul. This thorn still accompanied him, rankling continually in his flesh, hampering every movement, inflicting unceasing pain, piercing him deeper and deeper the more that he struggled against it.
Ten thousand thorns in the heads do not pain like the one in the flesh. And thus ten thousand unjust suspicions of the sons of Belial, though they be all of them that thorns thrust away because they cannot be taken with hands, but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear.
He throws in these quotes from Scripture in amazing places. Ten thousand suspicions, I say, from vulture-eyed professors, that is, professing Christians, are but as thorns in the hedge which only wound us when we go near them and which a wise man will keep a due distance from.
But a thorn in the flesh, driven and fastened by the hand of God, we can neither ease or extract, and I embolden this, and thus any one constant harassing temptation which strikes into the soul of a child of God will grieve and wound him a thousand times more deeply than a thick hedge of fir-bush professors standing by the roadside.
But by these painful exercises, he's kept from settling down on the leaves of a dead assurance or resting at his ease on the ground of a past experience. This rankling thorn preserves him from that vain, wretched, delusive establishment, and he is always hitting on the establishment, falsely so-called, which as a spreading gangrene has infected well-nigh whole churches with the dry rot, an establishment built upon length of profession, upon belief in the doctrines of grace.
He was a Calvinist, but he's hitting the hypers, or he was hitting the Calvinists here that were dead in their sin. Upon membership of a particular Baptist church, upon consistency of conduct, upon a general currency as a believer, upon freedom from doubts and fears, upon an experience 20 years ago, his thorn in the flesh will not let him stand at ease or ground or fold his arms as though the battle were won and the enemy vanquished and the articles of peace sighed.
He cannot rest on doctrines of which the power is not now felt, nor in his past experience, which is not continually renewed, nor in a savior in the Bible whose presence is not from time to time manifested, nor in promises of which the sweetness is not occasionally enjoyed.
He cannot thus anchor in the dead sea. He cannot lie stretched at ease on his downy bed, for his thorn will not let him rest, but makes him full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day, Job 7, 4.
And so he's talking about being troubled in his soul because of his sin that he struggled with daily. And so Jesus Christ does not free believers in this world from inward troubles and exercises of soul on account of sin.
Troubles within his soul may and probably will plague him throughout life. Christ did not set us free from these in this life, for affliction does not come from the dust nor does trouble spring from the ground, yet man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
And that's true of Christians as well as non-Christians in a fallen world. But it's the self-inflicted wounds that seem to hurt worse. We bring them on ourselves when we fail or refuse to order our lives and our thinking in accordance with his word.
And so Jeremiah, who called out to the Lord, look, oh Lord, for I am in distress, my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me because I have been very rebellious. And that's a man of God, writing Lamentations 1 .20.
And so the Christian can encounter these things and they can be repeated and they just always come up because this is the nature of a righteous person living in a fallen world with sin still abiding in his flesh.
And then fifth, Christ has not freed his disciples in this world from the rods of affliction. Some people foolishly try and make a judgment about their relationship with God based on what happens in their life.
That's not wise. Hebrews 12 .8 reads, if you are without chastening of which all become partakers, that is all true children of God, then you are illegitimate, you're not sons. You're not true children of God.
One of the greatest testimonies I hear of a young Christian when he says, pastor, I can't get away with anything anymore. And amen, that's an evidence that you're a child of God. We're not immune from these things, as Flavel wrote.
All the children of God are made free, yet what son is there whom the father chastens not? Exemption from affliction is so far from being the mark of a free man that the apostle there makes it the mark of a slave.
That's Hebrews. To be free from affliction would be no benefit to believers who receive so many benefits from it. And we receive a lot of spiritual benefits from affliction. And if you happen not to be encountering it right now, experiencing, well, God bless you, but just be prepared, it's on its way.
Some Christians feel themselves as forsaken by God because of the nature and degree of the troubles they face in life. It seems that they are assaulted with every form of pain and difficulty. One after another, it seems that the arrows of the enemy come at him and he feels to himself, this cannot be freedom by anyone's definition.
How can I be set free when the Lord declares that he will set his people free? But you may be assured that though your afflictions are many and frequent, the Lord will indeed set you free even from these one day, but not in this world.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all, and that will be the case one day, maybe not in this life. And the fact is Christians encounter the same afflictions as non-Christians.
They have different purposes. You can have a Christian here, a non-Christian, they go through the same thing, same difficulties, side by side as it were, but God has good designs on the Christian, not upon the non-Christian who's under his wrath.
And so you can't make assessments, value judgments about how right you are with God based upon circumstances that come into your life. And we are to guard our hearts and reaffix our minds on the Lord and be confident in his purposes in our lives, regardless of what we are experiencing.
And certainly we're not to envy those who may not be suffering to the same degree. Certainly we're not to envy the unrighteous when it appears, and sometimes that happens. Why, life is going much easier and better for them than for me.
I used to think life was pretty good till I became a Christian, one might say, but it's in this life that we experience judgment. And it's been commonly said, the only hell Christian will ever experience is in this life, that heaven will give way to it.
On the other hand, the only heaven that non-Christians will experience is this life, whatever that, you know, whatever degree that is. But what awaits them? The psalmist struggled spiritually as he was envious of those who were not suffering like he was.
He acknowledged, yes, truly God is good to Israel, but this was after some struggle in his thinking to such as pure heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had almost slipped, nearly slipped, for I was envious, he was envious of the unrighteous.
I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no pangs in their death. In other words, they die quick death without suffering. Their strength is firm, they don't grow weak.
They're not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like other men. He became envious of the unrighteous. We didn't have time, but later in the psalm, he says what fixed him corrected him. I went into the temple and then I saw their ladder and surely God, you have set them in slippery places.
God was just setting them up for the big fall when judgment came. And six, no believer is freed by Christ from the stroke of death, though they're freed from the sting of death. And so the bodies of believers are under the same law of mortality with other men.
It's appointed for men once to die, but after this, the judgment. And that's all people, not just some. And so having stated what Christ has not set his people free from in this life, in this fallen world, let us now consider the bondage from which every true disciple is freed by Christ.
Jesus said, if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. First, all true disciples are freed from the rigor and the curse of the law. We don't live under the law as a covenant. As in the Old Testament, but rather we live under the law with Christ mediating it to us, which makes it sweet and easy.
Instead of the yoke on the beast of burden pulling the plow, he's pulling it alone and it's heavy. Rather, Jesus says, take my yoke upon you. He shares his yoke with you and so makes the burden light as he's with you and helps you and strengthens you in your labor.
And so all true disciples are freed from the rigor and curse of law. John Flavel wrote of this, the rigorous yoke of the law is broken off from their necks and the sweet and easy yoke of Jesus Christ is put on.
The law required perfect working under pain of a curse, accepted of no short endeavors. In other words, you couldn't come short of fulfillment, admitted no repentance, gave no strength. The law didn't enable people to live according to the law, but then Flavel said it's not so now, proportional strength is given.
In other words, the Lord Jesus gives you the strength proportional to whatever need you have before you. The fact is there was no provision under the law of God as a covenant of works to empower or enable people to live according to the precepts of God's law.
The law of God imposed the responsibility to obey God and the penalty for failure to do so, but the law of God gave no power to the people to enable them to keep it, to obey it. But under the new covenant, the New Testament in Christ, the true disciple of Christ, in other words, the true Christian, has available the blessed Holy Spirit to give strength to enable him to do the things that the Lord has commanded in the law.
And it's important for us to understand that the Lord has given every true believer the desire, and we emphasize this all the time, he's given every true believer the desire to live according to his moral commands, in other words, his law, but the believer only gains the power or the ability to do so as he enabled, as he enabled by the Holy Spirit on each occasion he's called upon to obey the will of God.
And we emphasize this commonly. It's a basic spiritual lesson that so few seem to get. And even after you get it, you don't remember it. And so some things have to be repeated frequently. Paul had written to Christians, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
You can only do it by the Spirit. Now, by way of explaining very simply and plainly, and forgive me if I'm too simplistic in this, how the spiritual dynamic works, when a Christian learns or recalls what the will of God in the Holy Scriptures is, or what God would have him do, he's then to recognize and acknowledge immediately in prayer before the Lord, his inability to comply with his will.
I know what you want me to do, Lord, but I don't have the ability, I don't even have the desire to do so. At that moment, he is to pray and trust the Lord Jesus to empower him by grace, to enable him to desire and to conform to that preset.
In other words, God gives grace, Jesus gives grace, the desire and the ability to do what he's commanded you to do. And then trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit who resides in you as a Christian, you are enabled supernaturally to obey the word of God.
I learned this lesson back in 1973, when I quit smoking. I tried so many times in tears because I wanted to, as a Christian, crumble up a pack after yielding to it, throwing it against the wall, frustration.
And finally, I remember it was a Sunday night, Lord, unless you take this from me, I'm a goner. I finally came to aware that regardless how much I love the Lord and wanted to live a holy life, I had no capability of doing so.
And the Lord immediately took the desire away. I mean, immediately, that nicotine craving was gone. And it was a wonderful setting forth of liberty, it was a wonderful thing. And I did it until my break the next morning at 10 a .m. at the store.
And man, I had a nicotine fit. It was killing me. And I remember thinking to myself, if I fall back into that old way of thinking, you know, I'm gonna do this, Lord, because I love you, I'm a goner. And so again, I asked the Lord, and trust it, unless you do this, Lord, it's not gonna happen.
He took it away for another couple hours to lunchtime, you know, and this is what we continually do. And then over the course of days and weeks, the power of that sin lessens. And the Lord gives you a deliverance.
But it's an ongoing thing. And yes, although sometimes the Lord can take something immediately away, fine, you're never troubled by it again, that's a wonderful thing when it happens. But for the most part, getting free from sin takes great grace, and it sometimes takes a period of time.
But you have to acknowledge your inability to do what he commands you to do, and your need for grace, the power of the Holy Spirit. And so again, forgive me if I seem too simplistic in illustrating how this is done, but it's important.
Many Christians fail to experience the liberty Christ gives them because they fail to put into practice this simple principle. So for example, suppose the Lord brought to your mind his command that you forgive someone his offense to you.
You know you should, but you don't want to. Bitterness is one of the most devastating sins that a Christian can fall into. He so deeply hurt me, and I can't forgive, I won't forgive him. Yeah, Lord, I know you command me to.
Perhaps you think, I'm not able to do so. You don't know, Pastor, what this guy did. Well, at that moment, you're to pray to the Lord, being honest with the Lord about your soul, your heart. Lord, I know in your word you command me to forgive that one who has so deeply harmed me.
I know also that if I fail or refuse to forgive him in his trespass, you tell me that you will not forgive me my trespasses. So Lord, please give me both the desire and the ability to forgive him from my heart by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in me so that I might do your will, for that is my heart's true desire.
And then you trust the Lord to do that, and he will. I'm getting off here, I know, but what a wonderful accounts that happened. This was in the 19, probably 1978 or so. A dear friend of mine, Bob Van Curen, retired Navy chief, 25 years in the Navy, retired, he came back, he was converted, and he and his wife were in our church with their three daughters.
He'd been away from the family for like 25 years, coming back and forth, and after about two years, he came to me, you know, Lawrence, I'm leaving Vennie. I just don't love her. And we see that now that I come back from the Navy, and it's like brother and sister, I just don't have any affection for her, and I'm leaving.
And so I spoke to Bob, he knew what he was to do, and I asked him and told him about this principle, and I said, Bob, you know, I want you to pray and trust the Lord to infuse in your heart a new love for Vennie.
And he called me about a half an hour later, and he said in the 20 minutes leaving church and getting to his home, he had a love for his wife infused in his soul that he never had. The Holy Spirit shed abroad the love of God in his heart.
It was something that didn't come forth from him, but it was grace. When he acknowledged he didn't have it, didn't even have the desire, we're to live by grace. You and I don't have the ability to become holy.
The Holy Spirit has to produce holiness in our lives. We have to become humble, and then the grace of God is manifest to us. Humble yourself unto the hand of God, and the grace of God will be bestowed upon you, because God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.
Here's another example. Suppose the Lord has burdened you about the spiritual well-being of someone you know. You would like to witness to him, but you do not know what to say. You do not have the courage to do so.
Well, the believer in Jesus Christ, you're to pray, Lord, I pray and trust you to give me both the opportunity and courage to speak on your behalf to this one for whom I'm concerned. Give me wisdom to know what to say.
Give me the words to speak to him on your behalf. I know that you will do this for you have promised you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses. Forgive me for another personal example.
I was hired on as an associate pastor when I was 21 years of age in charge of soul winning. I won't go get into that. But I remember I was invited by the youth pastor to go with about 40 of the youth in our church down to a youth center to witness to all these non-Christian kids, there were hundreds of them.
And these teenage Christians were fearless, man. They started going into the crowd witnessing. I was terrified. I had to drop out of two speech classes. I did drop out of two speech classes in college because I didn't have the courage to stand up and introduce myself by name.
I'd stutter and stammer. And yet these kids were going out and here I'm an associate pastor. So I asked the Lord to help me. And I remember a girl came up and asked me a question. I began to answer her.
And as soon as I began to answer, I sensed the power of God coming upon me. It was a wonderful thing. A clarity of thought. The speech coming out of my mouth that addressed her every question, concern.
And before long, I had 30 of these kids standing there and I was proclaiming the word to them. And it's like you're taken above yourself, outside of yourself. It's a wonderful thing where the Lord empowers you to do what he commands you to do and gives you the ability that you do not inherently possess.
And that's what it is to live the Christian life. And so we're set free from these things that limit us and bind us to doing the will of God. Jesus said, you know, you wait in Jerusalem and you'll receive power from on high and the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be empowered to be my witnesses throughout Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the innermost parts of the earth.
And we are to go forth with that same confidence in the Lord, not confidence in ourselves, not falling back on our experience or our intellect or memory, trusting in the Lord. And the Lord himself said, when you're brought before your persecutors, do not think ahead of time what you're gonna say.
He's not talking about preachers preparing a sermon, but he's talking about people being persecuted because the Lord himself will give you the words to speak on that occasion. And we ought to always be ready to speak forth in that way.
And so every aspect of life, when we sense it's the will of God, the command of God, the law of God would have us act in a certain way. We are to humble ourselves, acknowledging our inability and ask the Lord Jesus to give us the Holy Spirit in fresh power to enable us to do that, which he commands us.
And he's promised that he will do so. We've got a few more minutes. Bottom of page five, your note. Similarly, all true disciples are freed from the guilt of sin, obviously. But some people perhaps struggle with this.
All true Christians are delivered from the actual guilt of sin before God. Now here, we're not talking about your guilty feelings. We're talking about actual guilt before God. And this is where the gospel enters in.
The gospel is not the good news telling people out there in the world, this is how you can be relieved of your guilty feelings. That's not even the gospel. The gospel has to do with how you may be forgiven of your actual guilt before a holy God.
And that's the message that we give to sinners. And every Christian is set free from the guilt of sin. And so there is no difficulty, no sin that should cause us to sense guilt before God. Now, yes, we feel guilty, but there's no actual guilt by God toward us, because that has been satisfied through Jesus Christ who died on our behalf.
And so Flavel wrote, sin may trouble us, but it cannot condemn us, them. The Lord Jesus in his death rendered the law unable to condemn the true believer. If you're a true believer in Christ, there is no law in heaven or on earth that can condemn your soul, because Christ satisfied that guilt, that debt, when he died upon the cross for your sin.
Paul wrote, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it's written, cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree. Before we were Christians, we were under the law of God and the curse of God was upon us.
But when we came to faith in Jesus Christ, that curse was removed entirely. We are no longer under any measure, any degree of guilt before God, although we may and probably should feel guilty for when we sin against God.
And yet oftentimes when we fall short, we may fail to understand this or remember this, that the law cannot condemn me as a Christian, for Christ intercedes for me. His life and death has satisfied the demands of the law that once condemned me, but now I'm free from all condemnation.
There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus is what Paul announced in Romans 8, verse one. And then thirdly, Jesus Christ frees us from the dominion or the reign of sin, Romans 6, 14. We are delivered not from the residence of sin, but from the reign of sin, wrote Flavel.
Before we came to Christ, we lived on the sin. That was our desire. That was our delight. Woe to anyone or even God who would keep us from doing so. It mattered not if God's law forbid it. If a commandment ran counter to our sinful desire, we set aside the commandment in order to live in our sin.
But we came to an end of that way of living with our conversion. And now we live to serve Christ rather than sin. That's our desire. Sin troubles us because it would hinder us from doing that which we truly desire to do.
We desire to love God and serve God. True disciples are fully justified before God through faith alone. They're without condemnation before God. They're rejoicing in the state of peace between God and themselves.
And therefore, they stand in this state of peace. As the book of Romans tells us, since we've been justified by faith, that's what happened when we first believed the gospel, we have peace with God. This is not talking about a sense of peace in our soul.
It's talking about actual peace between us and God. We are at peace. God is no longer at war with us. We're no longer at war with God. We are at peace. And so the dominion and reign of sin and its damnation has come to an end.
I've had a book in my library for decades and I pulled it off the shelf the other day. Happened to call to mind, written by a Reformed Baptist back in the 18th century, Abraham Booth, quite a well-known writer.
He wrote several very good, widely circulated books. And one of these is entitled The Reign of Grace. And he's contrasting the way we were before we were Christians. That was the reign of sin. And now the reign of grace is what characterizes the Christian.
And I even identified the chapter headings in the footnote, which we won't deal with that. But here he spoke about grace and the wonder of it as reigning in our lives. Grace in our text is compared to a sovereign.
In other words, a sovereign ruler. Grace is enthroned. Grace is king. Now a sovereign considered as such is invested with regal or kingly power and the highest authority. Grace, therefore, in her beneficent government must exert and manifest sovereign power, must supersede the reign and counteract the mighty and destructive operations of sin, or she cannot bring the sinner to eternal life.
For the Holy Spirit has compared sin to a sovereign whose reign terminates in death. So you have the reign of sin. And now as a Christian, you have the reign of grace. As sin appears, clothed in horrid deformity and armed with destructive power, inflicting temporal death, menacing eternal flames, so grace appears on the throne, arrayed in the beauties of holiness and smiling with divine benevolence, touched with feelings of the tenderness compassion, armed with all the magnificence of invincible power, fully determined to exert her authority and gratify her compassion under the conduct of infinite wisdom, to the everlasting honor of inflexible justice and viable veracity and every divine perfection by rescuing the condemned offender from the jaws of destruction, by speaking peace to the alarmed consciences of damnable delinquents, by restoring to apostate creatures and vile miscreants a supreme love to God and delight in the ways of holiness.
And finally, by bringing them safe to everlasting honor and joy. In a word, the heart of this mighty sovereign is compassion itself. Her looks are love. Her language is balm to the bleeding soul and her aria, salvation.
I had to look up that word. Aria is a musical term, like a song sung by a soloist, say in an opera. In other words, the sole song of grace is salvation, which grace sings. Such a sovereign is grace. Those who are delivered by her must enjoy a complete salvation.
Those who live under her most benign government must be happy indeed.
Grace reigns.
Sin doesn't. And then fourth, Jesus Christ, of course, sets free all of his true disciples from the power of Satan, in whose right they were by nature. We were born into this world subject to Satan. Adam and Eve surrendered to the devil and basically became subjects of his kingdom.
And so unbelievers, non-Christians, serve Satan. That doesn't mean they're Satan worshipers. But rather they are in Satan's kingdom and he rules over them. And the way the devil rules over his people is that he entices them to order their lives according to their own will, rather than God's will.
And so they don't intentionally seek out what's the devil's will, I'll do that. But rather the devil wants them to be in a position where they act and live independent of God and his will. And so the devil controls those who think they're most free to do and live any way they please, subject to no one.
The devil is their Lord and they are held captive by him. But when we become Christians, the Lord sets us free from Satan's dominion. Satan had possession of us, as Flavel wrote, as a man his own goods, but Christ dispossesses that strong man, armed, alters their property and recovers them out of his hand.
The Lord Jesus has snatched us out of the devil's hand and out of his kingdom. And he did so by redeeming us from our sin, but also putting within your heart a great and true desire to live for God rather than live for yourself.
And that's why the Lord Jesus spoke about how a true disciple is one who denies himself, takes up his cross and follows Jesus. Jesus Christ is his Lord rather than the devil is his Lord. He no longer lives only to satisfy himself and to do his own will, but rather he's willing to suffer if need be in order to do the will of God.
And every true Christian must live in this way. Although at times it's really a struggle to do so. And then lastly, Christ frees his disciples from the poisonous sting and hurt of death. Kill as it can, hurt us it cannot, wrote Flavel.
And so the Lord has destroyed, if we're thinking rightly, believing rightly, the Lord has destroyed the devil and the fear of death that the devil imposes upon those outside of Christ. And so we enjoy this freedom, wonderful freedom.
Much of it needs to be appropriated by our understanding of what the Word says, and then our faith in what the Word says, and then we live accordingly. We should not read into that expression, if the Son sets you free, you should be free indeed, and wrongly think that there's some things we should be free from when the Bible says we shouldn't, or we're not going to be free from in this life.
But on the other hand, what God has promised in his Word that we can be free from, let's step forward and enjoy these blessed promises, and enjoy the victory and the freedom and the liberty that God has given us in Christ Jesus.
Amen? We'll stop here, let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your Word. Thank you, Father, for the wonderful grace that we have available to us in this new covenant age through Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father, for the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to rise and go forth and follow Jesus in the way that you've prescribed in your Word.
We pray, our God, that your grace would be greatly manifested in us and through us as we seek to live for Christ day by day. We pray, our God, that you would enable us to put away any self-confidence, any self-righteousness, any foolish thinking that somehow we can do these things.
Apart from you.
The Lord Jesus declared to us, without me, you can do nothing. And our Father, we believe this and acknowledge this. And so as we go forth from this place as your people, Lord Jesus, we pray that you would help us, help us to rely upon you, look to you, and trust you to give us the grace to live before you.
And then again, Father, we pray for that soul that may be outside of Christ, who knows nothing of the liberty with which we've spoken this day. We pray that you place within his or her soul a desire for it, a longing for it.
For we know his or her responsibility is to first come to Christ, holy and fully without reservation, and believe on him as Lord and as Savior. And we thank you, our God, for the promise of the gospel that you'll receive the greatest sinner that does so.
Bless us now, Father, as we part from one another. In Jesus' name, amen.