FOR FREEDOM THE LORD MESSIAH JESUS HAS SET YOU FREE

2 Corinthians 3:17 says: “Where the Spirit of the Lord- Yehovah is, there is freedom.”

The freedom we have through the indwelling Spirit of God- Yehovah is not political or external freedom; rather, it is the reality of freedom in your inner being that remains unaffected by anything.

A well-known saying in English is, “Four walls don’t make a prison.” You can put a person in prison, but you cannot break him if he has freedom through the indwelling of the Spirit of God within his inner being.

The reality of God- Yehovah and the experience of freedom in your inner being ensure joy and peace.

BY GOD’S SPIRIT TRUE FREEDOM IS WITHIN YOUR INNER BEING

God set his people free from slavery by the enabling power of His Spirit working in their inner being. The Old Testament and the New Testament are all about freedom. The Bible is a handbook on freedom.

Many Christians have the reputation of being so legalistic, so bound by regulations that they give people the impression that the Christian life is all about laws and prohibitions. The Bible is not about that at all; the whole Bible is about freedom!

What is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, about? It’s about God setting free a people who were slaves, taking them out of Egypt. After 400 years of slavery, God took these Israelite slaves out of Egypt. How dramatic it was when they passed through the sea with the waters standing up like walls on both sides! God- Yehovah took the Israelites out of Egypt and set them free. Moses said to Pharaoh on behalf of God- Yehovah, “Let my people go. Set my people free that they may serve me.” The Bible is about freedom!

Notice: The entire New Testament is about freedom. In John 8:32, 36, the lord Messiah Jesus said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. So, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

If the truth doesn’t set you free, it isn’t the truth. How do I know something is true? See if it sets you free; then you will know. If you experience it, you will know that the truth found in the Bible is a reality that you can experience.

FREEDOM FROM DESIRES AND ANXIETIES

Are you free? Or are you governed by problems within that you hardly even know how to describe? Are you constantly pulled in different directions by various desires that enslave you? Do you experience freedom? And to what extent? The lord Messiah Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). What is truth? Remember, the lord Messiah Jesus said truth is what sets you free (cf. John 8:32).

Anything that brings you into bondage is not the truth, as far as Scripture is concerned. The lord Messiah Jesus is the truth because he taught and lived out the truth of God’s righteousness when he was on the earth, so that we must measure our spiritual condition against him. If we are willing to confess the truth of our sins and submit to God’s Kingdom in our lives, God- Yehovah will set us free from the guilt and the power of sin. Have you experienced God’s liberating power through the lord Messiah Jesus?

A PERSON WHO IS NO LONGER AFRAID OF DEATH BEGINS TO EXPERIENCE TRUE FREEDOM

What is the resurrection? Resurrection is freedom. Freedom from what? From what binds most powerfully, namely death. Do you know that human life is governed by one thing: the reality of death? Fear of death controls us.

Why do we work? Because we need to earn money. Why do we need money? Because we need food. Why do you need food? Because I will die if I don’t eat. I don’t want to die. Exactly! We need food, so we must work to have income. The fear of death controls us. If we were unafraid of death, we would not be anxious about going hungry.

The majority of people live in a condition where they experience neither freedom nor the absence of freedom; they exist in a state of ambiguity. Human beings engage in work primarily because they are driven by the need to survive, specifically the need for food.

Diseases threaten us with death, and the fear of death overshadows us all the time. With disease, the possibility of death, and anxiety that threatens us all the time. A vast amount of money is poured into medical research to overcome disease and death.

What has housing to do with death? If you slept outside every day, and the weather got cold, you might freeze to death. Housing is necessary to protect our lives and health from harm by other people. It’s all about surviving death. Everything has to do with death.

Why do we need transportation? We mainly need it to travel to the place of work which helps us earn the money we need for survival.

The shadow of death casts its control over mankind long before he ever gets to the grave. That is why we read in Hebrews 2:14-15 that the lord Messiah Jesus died to “destroy the one who has the power of death (that is, the devil), and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” A person who is no longer afraid of death begins to experience true freedom.

AM I BEING CONTROLLED BY THE FEAR OF DEATH OR BY GOD?

Romans 8:14 says: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God.” What leads us? What are we controlled by? What determines our lives? Our fears, anxieties, or God? Does death still exercise control over me? If I can be free from the fear of death because of God’s power of resurrection, I will begin to know true freedom.

FOR FREEDOM THE LORD MESSIAH JESUS HAS SET YOU FREE – DO NOT LET ANYTHING CONTROL YOU

Galatians 5:1: For freedom the Messiah has set you free.

Think on these words, “For freedom the Messiah has set you free.” Paul was saying to the Galatians: “The Messiah set you free not so that you can go back into some other form of slavery. The Messiah set you free so that you can stay free, so that you can really enjoy the reality of freedom – freedom from the fear of death, and freedom from every other compelling factor.” Remember: This is what the life of the followers of the lord Messiah Jesus is all about.

Any person who has not experienced this kind of freedom doesn’t know what it is to be a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus. Here is a categorical statement: You don’t know what it is to be a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus if you have not experienced the reality of that freedom as ‘new creations’ in him.

Look at Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:12: All things are permitted for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be controlled by anything.

Here is a passage of the greatest importance but seldom appreciated. A follower of the lord Messiah Jesus is free, so that “all things are lawful to them, but not all things are beneficial.” These are the words of a true follower of the lord Messiah Jesus. What are you dominated by? What controls your life? Paul says: “I will not be controlled by anything.

I would like you to look into your life, whether you enjoy the totality of freedom, or whether you are controlled by certain things which you think are good. They may be good, but do they control you? If you don’t make sure that a thing, whether good or bad, does not control you, you will eventually come under ever deeper levels of bondage.

BONDAGE TO THE LOVE OF MONEY

1 Timothy 6:7-12: “For we have brought nothing into the world, so that neither can we bring anything out. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge those people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all evil, by which some, because they desire it, have gone astray from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.11 But you, O man of God, flee from these things, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patient endurance, gentleness 12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…”

2 Timothy 3:1-5: “But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come, 2 for people will be lovers of themselves, ‘lovers of money’, boasters, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 hardhearted, irreconcilable, slanderous, without self-control, savage, with no interest for what is good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God, 5 maintaining a form of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid these people.

Strive to experience God’s power of freedom that the lord Messiah Jesus gave himself up to his God and Father Yehovah as a sin-offering sacrifice to give us God’s power of freedom. Strive to experience God’s-Yehovah’s liberating power of freedom brought to reality by the lord Messiah Jesus. Let us actively pursue and engage in the experience of being free.

Try to experience one thing: What is freedom in the lord Messiah Jesus? That is most worthwhile. A follower of the lord Messiah Jesus who does not experience freedom in the lord Messiah Jesus is a Christian only in his head. He has not experienced it in the reality of the mind and heart. He doesn’t know whether God is real or not. Freedom is something that can be attained only by unspeakable power, the power of the Spirit of God- Yehovah because we are in bondage to sin, by the tremendous powers of sin and death.

What kind of power can overcome these? Only the power of God through the lord Messiah Jesus. But those are only words until you experience it. Romans 8:2 says: For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in the Messiah Jesus from the law of sin and death.

CONCLUSION

Experience freedom by constant discipline and practice. Everything worth achieving can only be achieved in a methodical, systematic, disciplined way. Paul loves to use the picture of an athlete. In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27: 24 Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 25 And everyone who competes exercises self-control in all things. Thus, those do so that they may receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. 26 Therefore I run in this way, not as running aimlessly; I box in this way, not as beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and subjugate it, lest somehow after preaching to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Paul is speaking about disciplining himself and uses the picture of an  “athlete,” derived from Greek origins, to describe the life of a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus as a process of self-discipline that ultimately leads to winning the crown as the prize.

In what way should you live so as to attain freedom by the power of the Spirit? Where the Spirit is, there is freedom (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:17: Now the Lord - Yehovah is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord- Yehovah is, there is freedom).

This does not mean that you sit back and do nothing. We must co-work with God’s- Yehovah’s Spirit to win the crown. We have to do our part to discipline ourselves, realizing that God has the power to help us accomplish it. God- Yehovah never asks us to do anything that He will not provide the enabling power of His Spirit in our inner being to accomplish it!

In everything, there must be a program, a plan of action, to accomplish God’s will and gain the victory.

Do you know what one of the gifts of the Spirit is? The last element mentioned in the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Self-control sums up the whole fruit- the gifts of the Spirit. It’s the dynamic reality of a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus that implements the freedom that the lord Messiah Jesus has won for us, when he gave himself up to his God and his Father, Yehovah, as a sin-offering sacrifice on the cross, enabling God to reconcile [bring us back] to Himself!

We have the ability and power to change. In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Paul says: for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God- Yehovah and take every thought captive to obey the Messiah. We have God’s power to pull down everything that resists God in our lives when we imitate the lord Messiah Jesus.

Even though it is God who gives us the victory, we must learn to engage in combat, fighting, enabled by the Spirit of God to fight for liberation - freedom. Advance in this combat from day to day, and you will experience the reality of freedom within your inner being; and much more, you will experience the reality of God's powerful Spirit in your heart and mind.