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Amen. Let's turn in our
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Bibles, please, to John 8. Folks, if you want to return to your families, that would be fine. But at the end of the service,
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I would hope you'd go back to the narthex with me and Mary and greet the folks, okay? Let's turn in our
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Bibles, please, to John 8. I know there's no way in the world we're going to get to our 12 pages of notes this morning.
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I knew that ahead of time. But I wanted to include the information you have in your notes for your benefit.
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And I hope you'll take some time to read through them completely maybe later today or in the week.
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Last Lord's Day, we were not able to complete all our notes. And so I was actually urged by a number of people to pick up where I left off.
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And I thought we would do that. And so some of the information in these notes today may also be in last week's notes.
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I don't know. But if there is a little bit of repetition, I don't think that will do us any harm.
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And I certainly expanded these matters in order to give clarity of what is set before us.
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And so last week in considering John 8, 30 through 41, we considered the first, the importance of being a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
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Those who abide in Jesus' words, they are the disciples indeed, true disciples.
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Secondly, our Lord's promise that God's truth would make free his true disciples. We have that actually stated twice, a little different emphasis.
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The first time that Jesus promised this was in verse 32. And then third, we spoke about the power of sin to enslave those who indulge in sin in verses 33 through 35.
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But we only began to address the matter that's set forth in verse 36. And again, it's a repetition of 32, but with a little more information.
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And in this verse, the Lord Jesus declared his ability and willingness to set his people free from sin.
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So let's read the larger context now. This is John 8, 30 through 41.
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As he, Jesus, spoke these words, many believed in him. And then Jesus said to those
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Jews who believed in him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.
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And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, we are
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Abraham's descendants and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free?
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Jesus answered them, most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.
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And here it is, therefore, if the son makes you free, you should be free indeed. I know that you are
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Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak what
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I have seen with my father and you do what you have seen with your father. They answered and said to him,
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Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which
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I heard from God. Abraham did not do this, you do the deeds of your father.
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Of course, a few verses later, he declares your father's the devil. It really becomes quite a hostile situation.
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Now, last week we described the setting within the temple in which Jesus spoke these words. He was before a rather large gathering.
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And although all of them listened to him with interest, they certainly were not in agreement as to how they perceived who he was and what he would say to them.
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There were some that were receptive, responsive, but there were others, of course, who were quite opposed to him.
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This promise that he would set people free was not given to the entire crowd indiscriminately, but rather he promised the setting of free of his true disciples.
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Verse 32 and also verse 36. But those who heard him, those who opposed him, took offense by that.
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When you say you're gonna set your disciples free, you're implying that we're in bondage and we've never been in bondage to anyone, which itself is historically inaccurate, but also certainly spiritually flawed as well because they were in bondage to sin.
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We read that many among them believed in him, verse 30, many with whom he was talking. However, as we said last week, we shouldn't read into that description, many believed in him more than what is suggested here.
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Although many believe, we should not think they necessarily came to saving faith in Jesus as their
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Messiah. Yes, they believed, but Jesus made it clear that true disciples would be only those who continue in his word, abide in his word.
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And there are many professing believers who don't do that. Sadly, they think they're
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Christians, but they're not. They're not true disciples of Jesus because they have not or they don't abide in his word.
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And so by abiding in his word, they would show themselves to be as true disciples, verse 31.
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And we affirmed last week, we emphasize a great deal that only true disciples of Jesus Christ are promised salvation from their sins.
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Only they receive the gift of everlasting life. And we proposed a definition last week of a true disciple of Christ.
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A disciple of Jesus Christ is a professing Christian, one who has purposed to devote himself, herself, to obey the teachings of Christ.
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A disciple of Christ is one who has purposed to learn and obey all that Christ has commanded of his followers.
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And he continues to live under the Lord in faith and obedience throughout his life. That's what a true disciple is.
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And we wanna be very clear about this. A true disciple of Jesus Christ shows forth his faith in the manner that he lives, not just what he claims to believe.
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A true disciple seeks to learn and do all that Jesus Christ has commanded him in the Holy Scriptures, as the
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Scriptures declare in many places. And it's through the things that he does that he proves he's a man or woman of true faith, saving faith.
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A true Christian may be known not by what he claims to believe. It doesn't matter what your lips say.
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It's what your life validates you saying you believe. A true
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Christian is known by how he or she lives and thinks and attitudes and actions and reactions.
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A true disciple demonstrates the reality of that true life in Christ in the way he or she lives.
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Now, in order to encourage his disciples, as well as to refute and repudiate all others, our
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Lord, again, reasserted this promise in verse 36. Therefore, if the
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Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. But what does it mean to be set free?
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And there may be some wrong understandings or conceptions about this. Matthew Henry, the classic
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Puritan commentator, wrote these words. First, the truth which Christ teaches tends to make men free, the truth itself.
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Isaiah 61, one is a prophecy of Christ declaring truth that sets people free.
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Justification makes us free from the guilt of sin. That's when you first believe on Jesus and you're forgiven of sin.
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By which we were bound over to the judgment of God and bound under amazing fears. Sanctification, this is the work of God throughout the
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Christian's life, makes us free from the bondage of corruption by which we were restrained from that service which is perfect freedom and constrained to that which is perfect slavery.
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In other words, God delivers his people, sets them free throughout their life, free from the bondage of sin.
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Gospel truth frees us also from the yoke of the ceremonial law and more grievous burdens of the traditions of the elders.
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It makes us free from our spiritual enemies, free in or for or unto the services of God, free to or unto the privileges of sons of God, free for the
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Jerusalem, spiritual Jerusalem, which is from above, which is free. And then secondly, the knowing, entertaining and believing of this truth does not actually make us free, does actually make us free, free from prejudices, mistakes, false notions in which nothing more enslaves and entangles the soul, free from the dominion of lust and passion and restores the soul to the government of itself by reducing it into obedience to its creator.
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The mind by admitting the truth of Christ and the light and power is vastly enlarged and has scope and compass given to it, is greatly elevated and raised above things of sense and never acts with so true a liberty as when it acts under divine command.
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And so that's Matthew Henry describing the kind of liberty that Christians enjoy in Christ.
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And John Gill, who was born a little after Matthew Henry, wrote of the freedom
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Christ grants his true disciples. This suggests that the true freedom is by Jesus Christ, the son of God.
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He it is that makes the saints free from sin. And then he qualifies or clarifies himself, not from the being of it in his life.
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In other words, sin is not removed, but from the bondage and servitude of sin, from his power, dominion, and from his guilt and liableness to punishment for it by procuring the pardon of their sins through his blood and justifying their persons by his righteousness.
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He also makes them free or delivers them from the captivity of Satan by ransoming them out of his hands, taking the prey from the mighty, binding the strong man armed and delivering them from him and from the power of darkness, putting them into his own kingdom.
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He does not indeed free them altogether from his, that is Satan's temptations, but he preserves them by his power from being hurt and destroyed by him, that is the devil.
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He likewise makes his people free from the law, not only the ceremonial law, which is abolished by him, but from the moral law, not from obedience to it, he doesn't deliver you from obedience to the moral law, which we'll see more fully here shortly, as it is in his hands and a rule of walk and conversation to them, but as in the hands of Moses as a covenant of works and from the rigorous exaction of it, from seeking justification life by it, he delivered us from the law in that sense.
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And from its curse and condemnation, he gives them freedom of access to God as their father through his blood and by his spirit, admits them to all the privileges and immunities of the church below and gives them a right to faith in and expectation of the glorious liberty of the children of God hereafter and such are truly
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Christ's freemen. John Gill tended to write in these long sentences, run on sentences.
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They were more verbal than I am, the older Puritans. Now, although our
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Lord's promise of John 8, should be 36, is a very blessed one in which a true disciple may receive great encouragement.
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Not all disciples are necessarily encouraged by it. In fact, verse 36 is sometimes troubling to a true
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Christian. He said, you shall know the truth that sets you free. If the Son sets you free, you should be free indeed.
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There are true Christians when thinking of their great struggles and what seems to them to be continual defeat and committing sin, question their relationship with the
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Lord. The Lord's promise to set his disciples free. I don't seem to be free. Am I really one of his disciples?
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And numbers of true Christians struggle with that kind of thinking because they perceive in themselves to be in perpetual relentless enslavement to sin.
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So again, they ask, Lord, why don't I experience and enjoy the freedom from sin that you promised me as your disciple?
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Perhaps I'm not a true disciple at all. For it would appear that I'm anything but free as you promised your people.
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If the Son shall set you free, you should be free indeed. Lord, I don't seem to be free. Maybe I'm not one of your disciples.
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And so true Christians struggle with this sometimes.
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And so it would serve us well to understand what our Lord was promising and what our Lord was not promising in verse 36.
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I mentioned last week, I came across this sermon by John Flyville back in the 17th century and titled
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The Liberty of Believers Opened and Stated. And it was addressing this verse,
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John 8, 36. And so he wrote of the liberty true disciples possess and enjoy.
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The devil persuades you that the ways of obedience and strict godliness are a perfect bondage. But if ever
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God regenerate you, if he ever causes you to be born again, you'll find his ways, ways of pleasantness and all his paths peace.
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You will rejoice in the way of his commandments as much as in all riches. These are biblical statements.
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You'll find the worst work Christ puts you about even suffering work sweeter than all the pleasures that have ever you found in sin.
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Oh, therefore open your hearts at the call of the gospel, come unto Christ, and then you will be free indeed.
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And then Flyville wrote of the liberty into which Christ delivers his people based on verse 36, in which words have two parts.
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We have a supposition and we have a concession. First a supposition, the womb of nature, in other words being born naturally into this world by our natural birth.
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The womb of nature is cast you forth into the world in a state of bondage. In that state you've lived all your days, servants to sin, slaves to your lust.
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Yet freedom is to be obtained and this freedom is the prerogative belonging to the son of God to bestow.
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Yet the son make you free. See the son has to do it. And second a concession.
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Christ's concession upon this supposition, then shall you be free indeed. In other words, you shall have a real freedom, excellent and everlasting freedom.
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No conceit only is that which he now boasts of is, he's referring to the
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Jewish leaders, we've never been enslaved to anyone. Now not that idle pride, boast of pride.
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If ever therefore you will be free men indeed, believe in me is what Jesus said, hence note.
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And then he sets forth the doctrine and this is the way the puritans would preach. They'd set forth a doctrine that they would draw from the text and then they would explain it and then apply it.
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And here's the doctrine. That interest in Christ sets the soul at liberty from all the bondage where unto it was subjected in its natural state.
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In other words, people are born into this world, slaves of Satan, slaves of sin and Jesus Christ sets them free.
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Now as we attempt to understand more clearly just what Jesus was promising and what he wasn't promising, it's important that we address the following.
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First, what true disciples are not freed from by Jesus Christ in this world.
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Sometimes people are troubled because they think they're supposed to be set free from some things but in this world, in this life, if God never promised them, they would be set free.
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And then secondly, what that bondage from which every true disciple is freed by Christ.
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In other words, what things are we delivered from in the promise of Christ? Third, what kind of freedom that is which begins upon our first believing and commencing to follow him.
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He clarifies what that freedom is. And then lastly, we'll briefly explain the great blessing we enjoy in our present spiritual liberty.
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So let's work through these and I think you'll find these things to be clarifying. First, what true disciples are not freed from by Jesus Christ in the world.
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We should not think that the liberty we have in Christ frees us absolutely from everything in this world and with respect to our duty to our
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God. He doesn't set us free in order that we can live as libertines.
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And so first, the Lord Jesus does not free believers from their obligation to obey his moral law.
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As disciples, we have an obligation to order our lives according to the law of God set forth in the scriptures.
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Paul, the Christian could say, so with my mind, I serve the law of God. And so God's not set us free from this obligation.
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Christians are to serve God by ordering their lives according to the law of God as their moral code.
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Flavel wrote about this. It is true we are no more under it as a covenant for our justification.
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In other words, you do not earn a righteousness that's going to prove you before God by keeping the law.
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But we are and must still be under it as a rule for our direction. The law still directs us.
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This is a sure truth that they are freed from its penalties are still under its precepts.
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The law cannot condemn you, but the law can still guide you and direct you. Though believers are no longer under its curse, yet they are still under its conduct.
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The law sends us to Christ to be justified and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated.
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It is excellent when Christians begin to obey the law from life, in other words, a new life you have, which others obey for life.
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In other words, they're trying to keep the law in order to earn their favor with God. Because they are justified, not that they may be justified.
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And if you're trying to keep the law of God in order to be right with God, you're in a world of hurt. God has freed his people from the condemnation of his law, but not from the obligation to live according to his law.
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The moral law of God continues to be the law code of the kingdom of heaven. Paul, as a
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Christian, wrote, I delight in the law of God in my inner being. And if we're thinking rightly as Christians, that would be our attitude and our declaration as well.
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I think that the most difficult doctrine in the entire Bible to understand rightly is the relationship of law to grace.
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And our confession of faith, drafted way back in 1689, sets forth the law of God.
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We understand and believe in a very biblical way. And so, even though it's a little longer,
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I thought it would be good for us to just see this. Some of you are familiar with this.
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Some of you have maybe never seen this before. We understand this to teach what the
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Bible teaches about the law of God and its role in the life of the believer. First, it talks about how
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God gave his law to all humanity. God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, by which, in other words, this law, he,
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God, bound him in all his posterity, in other words, the whole human race, to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him, that would be
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Adam, with the power and ability to keep it. Two, the same law that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall.
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See, the fall of Adam did not in any way cancel the law. It continued in force and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in 10 commandments and written in two tablets, the first four, containing our duty towards God, and the other six, our duty to man.
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Third, besides this law, commonly called moral law, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel ceremonial laws containing several typical ordinances, in other words, they were types pointing to Jesus Christ, partly of worship prefiguring
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Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits, and partly holding forth diverse or different instructions of moral duties, all with ceremonial laws being appointed only to the time of reformation, that is until the coming of Christ, by Jesus Christ, the true
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Messiah and only lawgiver who was furnished with power from the Father for that end, abrogated and taken away.
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In other words, not the moral law, but the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were fulfilled in Christ, and therefore no longer binding on us.
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We're not required to keep the Passover as people of the Old Testament. Four, to them also he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obloging any now by virtue of that institution, their general equity only being of moral use.
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In other words, God gave specific civil laws by which the nation of Israel was to govern itself as a nation in the world.
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Israel is no longer a constituted nation as God's people, and therefore those civil laws that were demanded of Israel are no longer binding upon Christians, except to the way or degree they point to us moral precepts, give us moral instructions.
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It still abides in that sense. Five, the moral law doth forever bind all as well justified persons, those are true
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Christians, as others, non -Christians, to the obedience thereof, and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect to the authority of God the creator who gave it, and neither doth
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Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.
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Now there are many Christians who say we're not under the law, and the Bible states that, we're not under the law of grace, but what it's saying is we're not under the law as a covenant of works, but they argue we're not under the law whatsoever, we don't have to give it any regard, and Jesus Christ himself declared in the
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Sermon on the Mount, that's error, as we'll see. And so the law has authority over non -Christians and Christians.
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It cannot condemn the Christian, but it continues to instruct and guide the Christian. And in fact, if you read the
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Sermon on the Mount, you see the law is much strengthened by Jesus. You've heard it said, you shouldn't commit adultery.
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I say to you, if you even lust after a woman, you've committed adultery in your heart. Jesus Christ strengthened the power of that law through his disciples.
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And then six, although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, in other words, you don't earn your salvation by keeping the law, to be thereby justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others, and that as a right rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty.
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It directs and binds them to walk accordingly, discovering also the sinful pollutions of their natures, the law of God reveals sin, hearts and lives, who as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin.
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Together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience, it, that is the law, is likewise of use to the regenerate, in other words, the
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Christian, to restrain their corruptions and that it forbids sin, and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse and the alloyed rigor thereof.
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It's no longer contrary for the Christian, keeping the law of God to go out and gather firewood on the
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Sabbath day. For example, it was under the Old Testament, the rigor of the law is no longer enforced for the
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Christian. The promises of the law likewise show them God's affirmation or approval of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, though not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works.
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In other words, you obey the law of God and God's gonna bless you, not because you earn it, not because you obligate him to do so, it's just he's pleased to bless obedience.
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So as man's doing good and refraining from evil, because the law encourages to the one and deters from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace.
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And then seventh and last, neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel.
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And yet there are many people who teach that. The law is contrary to the grace of the gospel, and therefore they are in no way compatible.
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And this statement says, no, they're not incompatible, but do sweetly comply with it. The spirit of Christ of doing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God revealed in the law requires to be done.
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And so there's verses, of course, that substantiate all of these statements that are made. And if I could just be very candid about this, there's relatively few evangelicals,
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Bible believers who go to churches who understand the importance and the role of God and the life of the
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Christian as what we have just rehearsed. Because there are many out there who claim, hey, we're under grace, we're in no obligation whatsoever to the law of God.
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I can do whatever I want as long as I believe the right things about Jesus. And that is not what the
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Bible teaches. And so top of page three or five of your notes, but even as we set forth these truths of the
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Holy Scripture, we acknowledge there is great error that's commonly asserted by well -intentioned people, yes, and even true
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Christians. They deny any role of God's law to direct the Christian and how he's to live.
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They believe that all that God requires of them is faith. And that faith is to be understood as faith wholly upon who
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Christ is and what he did. And in a sense, there's a great deal of truth in that statement.
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Certainly we're justified by God through faith in Christ alone. However, the faith that trust
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Jesus Christ to forgive one's sins, also trust Jesus Christ to govern his life.
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Jesus is Lord, and the Lord Jesus governs his people through the law of God that he's given by which all people are to order their lives.
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It's the law of the kingdom. True Christian, the true disciple of Jesus Christ because of his faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, carries on this effort to conform himself to the life of righteousness set forth in God's moral law.
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We're to follow the Lord Jesus in the same way that he ordered his life. Some may piously say, hey,
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I wanna conform my life to Jesus Christ, not the law of God. The life of Jesus Christ was perfect conformity to the law of God.
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If you conform your life to Christ, you're gonna conform your life to the law of God. He was the embodiment of the law of God lived out in life.
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Jesus taught these words to those who heard him. Enter by the narrow gate. I would understand is that is entering into discipleship.
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For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and there are many who go in by it.
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But narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life. It leads to life and there are few that find it.
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Living the Christian life is one of difficulty because it is a narrow way, a way prescribed by the word of God, by the law of God.
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And we can only do so as directed by the Lord Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so.
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And so this narrow way is a way of life prescribed by God's law. It's the same path our
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Lord Jesus traveled when he passed through this world and we are to follow him who has led the way in which we are to live.
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Nevertheless, there are those Christians who've been taught that this is not what the Holy Scriptures teach.
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They say that faith alone is all that's required of them and that they are free to order their lives according to the course they choose for themselves.
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Even in ways that are contrary to the will of God set forth in the word of God. As long as they believe, they think it matters not how they live.
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That is terrible, terrible error. It matters how you live. Again, Jesus said, you know, if the one who's a true disciple abides in my word, they are disciples indeed.
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To order your life in faith and obedience to the will of God, to the word of God, you prove yourself to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ and only disciples of Jesus Christ are promised salvation.
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The Lord Jesus himself declared that way of thinking, it doesn't matter how I live as long as I believe the right things is terrible error.
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And he declared it in the Sermon on the Mount. Do not think I came to destroy the law of the prophets.
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I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And they sit back and say, yeah, but Jesus fulfilled those.
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We don't have to, because he did it on our behalf. We don't have to follow the law, but that's not what he said. For assuredly,
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I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, hadn't passed away yet, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
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Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so. Doesn't matter how you live as long as you believe the right things, that's what people teach.
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Shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, that is the
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Lord's commandments, his law. Whoever does and teaches them, he should be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
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When you think to yourself, how can my righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees? Very easily, their righteousness was only outward.
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Jesus is talking that you need to have a righteousness lived out of your soul, out of your life.
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And of course, that's true of every true Christian who has repented of sin, believed on the Lord Jesus, he received the
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Holy Spirit, and he has an inward righteousness, a humility, a tenderness of heart toward the
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Lord, a desire and willingness to obey the will of God, the law of God that the
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Pharisee never had. And so the true Christian has a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the
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Pharisees. And so we conclude that when the Lord Jesus declared in John 8, 36, therefore, if the
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Son makes you free, you shall be free. Indeed, he was not promising to free believers from their obligation to obey his moral law.
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That is still in effect. Secondly, my word, look at the time, my word.
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We've got to continue just a little while longer and then we'll stop, okay? Secondly, the
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Lord Jesus has not freed his disciples from the temptations and assaults of Satan. This is important because again,
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Christians think, I can't be a true disciple because I'm not free.
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I'm continually assaulted by temptation to sin. And the devil, you know, is constantly assaulting me.
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And Flavel wrote this, even those that are freed from Satan's dominion are not free from his molestation.
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It is said indeed, Romans 16, 20, God shall shortly bruise Satan under your feet.
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That's writing to Christians. But meantime, he, Satan, has power to bruise and buffet us by injections.
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He can inject something into your life to really trouble you. He now bruises
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Christ's heel. In other words, bruises him in his tempted and afflicted members, that's you and me.
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Though he cannot kill them, yet he can and doth afflict and frighten them by shooting fiery darts of temptation among them.
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It is true when the saints are got safe into heaven, they're out of gunshot. There is perfect freedom from all temptation.
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A believer may then say, oh, thou enemy temptations are come to a perpetual end.
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I am now arrived there where none of thy fiery darts can reach me. But this freedom is not yet.
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Our entire life is beset with difficulties. And so some Christians wrongly assume that coming to Christ is gonna bring an end to all the trouble of their soul.
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That the Christian life will be characterized as all pleasantness and peacefulness. And they'll not be accosted by the enemy of their souls.
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But in actuality, by becoming a Christian, it may actually compound the trials and troubles that are experienced from the devil.
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There will be problems other people seem to have that we never experience until you become a
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Christian. There will be temptations that entice and trouble the Christian. The same temptations you encountered before you became a
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Christian, but they were not a trouble to you then because you succumb to them, you welcome them. But now they're a trouble to you.
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The Christian is tormented by the temptations that the devil lays before him day after day. And then also it's often the case that when one becomes a
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Christian, only then does he begin to experience some kinds of problems that were quite strange to his experience or expectations.
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The devil may assault more directly the Christian, the one who is escaping his realm rather than trouble the one who's firmly entrenched in his kingdom.
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Devil's not gonna bother you if you're one of his. In fact, he'll probably pad your bed, make it softer and more easy so that you don't desire to escape his realm.
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As to the Christian, the word of God says, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil.
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Your adversary, the devil, that's the Christian's adversary, not Christian. The devil is seeking to devour who?
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His own people? No, he's seeking to devour Christians. He is your adversary. And some people think, hey, if I've been set free from Christ, why am
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I suffering such onslaughts of temptation and false accusation and so many troubles that clearly are born from the devil in his ways?
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God has not promised you liberty in this lifetime from the devil. He can't destroy you, but he can certainly make you have a difficult time of it.
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He's your adversary. Jesus said, don't think I came to send peace on the earth, but rather,
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I've come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother.
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From now on, a man's enemies will be those of his own household. Troubles come to the
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Christian, troubles that maybe he or she never experienced before becoming a Christian.
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Paul wrote of his own struggles. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed, perplexed, not in despair, persecuted, not forsaken, struck down, not destroyed.
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He had a lifetime of difficulty because he was a Christian. Before he was a
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Christian, he was the cause of difficulty for others. He became a Christian and now he was a recipient of difficulties.
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And so it is with every Christian. We're told in Ephesians six, we're to put on the whole armor of God.
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Why are we to put on the whole armor of God? That we will be able to withstand the wiles of the devil. If you haven't put on the armor of God, we don't have time to go into what the detail of that, you are not going to be able to resist the wiles of the devil.
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I put in an extended description of Apollyon fighting Christian, the allegory taken from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to set forth the kind of spiritual battle that the
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Christian wages against the devil. You read that at your own leisure, if you wouldn't please.
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And what it shows is that Christian encountered
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Apollyon, another name for the devil, who assaulted him. He didn't assault non -Christians.
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In fact, he promised Christian, you come back into my realm and it's going to go quite well for you. But Christian, of course, refused.
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And so Apollyon said, I'm against your king and I'm against you and I'm going to slay you. And then the battle ensued.
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One of the most graphic pictures of spiritual warfare set forth,
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I think, in the English language. And I hope you would read that. The fact is, Christ has not set us free from the assaults of the devil.
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He has not set us free from the motions of indwelling sin in this world. Sin dwells within us,
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Paul could say. Paul the apostle, sin dwells within me. Christ has not set free believers in this world from inward troubles and exorcise us all because of sin.
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We have troubles and trials because we struggle against sin. And certainly
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Christ has not set his disciples free from affliction and even the rods of affliction.
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The Lord has not even set us free from death. We'll encounter death just like all others who are non -Christians, except death will not conquer us, of course, we'll be delivered from death on the day of the resurrection.
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And so there's a lot of misunderstanding on the part of Christians. Jesus said, you should know the truth, it'll set you free.
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If the Son indeed set you free, you should be free indeed. And yes, there are blessed promises that we are set free from certain things.
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But there are certain things from which we are not promised in this life to be set free.
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Next Lord's day, Lord willing, we'll be talking about those things from which we are set free in Christ.
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May the Lord help us understand these things and apply these, let's pray. Thank you,
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Father, for your word. Thank you for the liberty that we have in Jesus Christ. We pray,
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Lord, that we would understand these things more clearly and fully, that we would not feel alienated from you,
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Lord, when we sense these hardships and difficulties. But we pray, Lord, that they would cause us to be humble before you and draw even closer to Jesus Christ, our
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Lord and Savior. Thank you, our God, that you've promised us that we will be set free from all that oppress us afflict us, trouble us.
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And we look forward to that day when Jesus returns. We also thank you, our God, for the liberty that you give us now, the liberty and freedom that we have to love you and to walk with you as you enable us by the
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Holy Spirit. And we pray that you would help us, Lord, to go forth from this place today, walking in that liberty.