The Liberated Life - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Are you ready to embrace the freedom given to every follower of Christ? Stay with us and hear about living the liberated life.

They're in a bondage of which they're not even aware of. Just like these Pharisees, they said to Jesus, we be Abraham's seed and we're never in bondage, not recognizing that they were in a terrible type of legalistic bondage. When Jesus Christ came, he came as the savior, most of us aware of that, but he likewise came as life's great liberator. If you'll turn to Luke chapter four for a moment and you recall in this chapter beginning in verse 17 when Jesus went to the temple and they handed him the book to read, he read from the prophet Isaiah. And in the 18th verse, here's what he read. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. There are two words in that passage that both speak of liberty and freedom. He said he came to set men free, set men free of their sins, set men free of their emotional, mental bondage, set men's bodies free of their physical diseases. He came as a liberator of mankind.

And this is why so many Christians are not happy. Have you ever asked, Lord, I know that I've been forgiven, I know that I've been saved, but why is it that I still feel the way I do? Why is it I'm not free? Why is my spirit not free? Why am I not liberated? There seems to be something in my life that keeps waiting me down in gut. I want to be free from all of this. I want to be the total person you want me to be. Well, I want to show you why that can be true in a Christian's life.

And I want to give you just a little brief idea of some of those things, two of them especially that are very subtle, right beneath the surface of a daily life we're not even aware of, these two aspects of bondage that oftentimes imprison Christians. And they go through their lives trying to figure out why am I not happy? Why have I lost my joy? In fact, I never had any joy. Why is it that I don't have this free spirit and look at life with a positive attitude, looking at life with a sense of enthusiasm and excitement? If Almighty God is who He says He is, Christ is living within me, the Spirit of God is within me, the supernatural power of God is available to me, why in the world am I not happy? Ever asked that question?

More than likely you not only have asked it, but more than likely you've asked the Lord and have gone to Him many, many times saying, Lord, what is it in my life that's not right? So here's what I'd like for you to do. You get a pencil and piece of paper right quick. I want you to jot down these things that I believe may be possibilities of areas of bondage in your life. The first one is this. The life that wins is a life that is liberated from the bondage of sinful habits.

Now that's the very evident one. If there is something in your life today, an act of disobedience, a habit of disobedience that you know is there and you either refuse to deal with it or you want to deal with it and don't know how, that thing has you in its grip. Now I've never heard anybody yet in my whole life say I'm going to start sinning and I know that I'm going to end up in sinful bondage and sin's going to get the best of me. I know that before I ever start. I've never heard anybody say that. People say, well, now listen, I believe I can handle that.

A little bit of anything won't hurt you as long as you're in moderation. Friend, there are a lot of things that start off in moderation, but the, listen, the very nature of sin is that it places a person in bondage. It always begins that way. And you see, Satan has never told a person who begins to move in a particular area.

Now, if you do that, I'm going to have you in total imprisonment in six weeks. Satan says, listen, don't let anybody fool you. Don't listen to that. That's just puritanical stuff.

Just a little bit, never heard anybody. It is God who says, avoid sin at any cost. You recall what he says in Romans, he says, if to whom we give ourselves to obey to that person or that thing, we become the slave. He says, don't yield yourselves as instruments of sin, but as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Nobody living in bondage to sin ever intended to get there. So one of the things we have to ask is this, is there anything in my life that I can put my finger on any habit, any action or attitude that keeps cropping up in my life, as he says here, whose service committing sin is the servant of sin. Now we've gotten off balance in our idea of servant and son. And I want you to watch that because when he says we become servants of sin, that means we just, we just do what sin says do. I've never met a lost man yet says, yes, I do whatever sin says do. The lost man says, I do what I please. And you see, listen, bondage blinds the truth.

Jesus said, you want to know the truth? The only thing that sets a man free in order to live a life of freedom and liberty and a life that wins is to be free. And the only way to be free is to find out what the truth is.

It is the truth that sets men free. If you are in bondage to any habit, bondage to any sin in your life that you know about this morning, that thing, listen, that bondage is growing in your life, it is not lessening. The nature of sin is not only to grip you here, but it's to grip you here and here and here and here and here and here until finally, it is gripping you at your very life.

That is the nature of sin. Therefore, to know the truth is the only way to be broken from that bondage. What is the truth about the bondage of sinful habits? That only by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and his power alone, through confession and repentance and dependence upon him, can that sinful habit be broken in your life? The second thing I want you to notice here, when you think in terms of the things that put people in bondage, the life that wins is a life that is liberated from the bondage of guilt. There are many, many people who've been saved and who've been forgiven of their sins, but they've never been able to get guilt over past sin off their life.

They just can't get it off. Just about the time they think they've got that taken care of and they're doing something else, there it is. They've confessed it, they've repented of it, they've told God they were sorry, they've done all kinds of penance, and somehow it looks like just about when they think that it's still there, they just can't quite get rid of it. Because the nature of guilt is, it will track you down, it will harass you, it will entangle you and make your life miserable. Now the question is, how in the world is a believer freed from the bondage of guilt? I've talked to young and old alike, people who look back in their life 20 and 30 years and say, you know, back then I gave my life to the Lord, but there's something back there that's still bothering me.

Well, what is that? They'll go back 20 and 30 years and bring up something about which they will say, I've confessed, in fact, I've confessed, I've asked God to forgive me, I've tried to get saved three or four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times, I've never had any freedom about my salvation, I've always questioned my salvation, and the real truth is they've never been able to deal with past guilt. Now listen, what is the truth about guilt over sin that has been committed in the past and you have confessed before God? Here is the truth, and it is only the truth that frees you. You say, well, I'm just not going to think about that. So you don't think about it for a week or 10 days or two hours.

In the intellect, you cannot, listen, by intellect alone, you'll never be able to survive and break out of bondage because it is more than an intellectual response. It is a spiritual response. Not only must it be confessed and repented of, but once you do that, the Bible says that God said about our past sin, I will remember your sins against you no more. Now, if we don't know the truth about Jesus Christ, that thing will keep on harassing us. You say, well, let me tell you what I've done, and many, many people serve the Lord motivated by the harassment of guilt in the past.

They do more and work hard and give more and do this and do that and do the other, trying to deaden an old conscience back here. Once you've confessed it, once you've given it to God, once you've repented of it, the truth is God doesn't hold it against you. If you keep bringing it back and holding it over you, that's what you're doing, that's not what God's doing. Now here's the truth.

The truth is that you have the privilege of choosing whether to allow that to harass you or not. You have the indwelling spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. He empowers you to choose every time that guilt comes back. You can choose, I do not have to accept that because God has wiped it out in the blood and I don't have to accept that as a part of my life anymore. But until you understand the truth of what Jesus Christ did at the cross, that he took your past sins, your guilt, he wiped them out, he washed them away in the blood, you cannot bring back and accuse yourself of being guilty of something he has declared you not guilty of without violating his very principle.

So you see, to be harassed and intimidated and every time you look behind you, you see the evidence of the past. If you have asked him to forgive you, he's wiped the past clean and what you must understand is this, the truth is that the cross of Jesus Christ is more powerful than all the sin of all mankind for all ages and he says, listen, he nailed your sin on the tree. How much of your sin? Every single bit of your sin, every single thing you've ever done, he says he nailed it to the tree. That's the truth. Now let me ask you a question. If he nailed your sin to the tree, what in the world are you doing taking it off and rubbing it around in your own heart?

It is no longer yours once you give it to him. The third thing I want you to notice here, the life that wins is a life that is liberated from the spirit of legalism. Now what do I mean by legalism? I simply mean a legalistic person is a person who has a very stern view of the Christian life. In fact, their in fact, their life is better described in the following way.

Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, watch out for that, avoid this. Absolutely a life of negatives and they judge their spirituality by all the things they don't do. That is the legalistic approach.

Here's what I want you to notice about that. You see, you have to ask yourself this question, if this by any chance is a part of your bondage. Do you evaluate and gauge another person's spiritual life by the things they don't do, the sins they don't commit or is it what they do? A person who is legalistic is far more interested, listen, is far more interested and puts far more the emphasis on doing rather than being and Jesus says it is being and not doing. If I am what ought to be, I will do what's right. But listen, I can do the right thing and not be right. There are many people who are doing the right thing and not being right. In your own strength, you can do some right things, but your heart not be right.

But my friend, if we are right, we will do the right thing. Now, a person who's legalistic is very critical of other people. Did you see that?

Did you hear that? Have you seen, you see, they're always trying to find out what's wrong with someone else. On the other hand, there's another facet to that. A person who's legalistic, their whole attitude towards serving the Lord is warped.

Now, let me show you something. Here's the difference in knowing the truth and not knowing the truth and the result of not knowing the truth being in bondage. Let me ask you this and be honest now, have you ever felt like, oh, one of your real spiritual binges when you say, oh God, I want you to have all of my life and I'm really going to turn it on for God. Get up everyone, I'm going to read my Bible for 30 minutes, going to pray 30 minutes before I talk to anybody else. And you may got all these promises of all these religious acts you were going to do and that lasted about three days. The fourth day you got up and the alarm clock didn't go off and you got up and you dressed right quick, you didn't even have breakfast and you got in the car and rushed to work and you thought, oh my goodness, I didn't pray. I didn't read the Bible. Oh God, you're going to wake me up today for sure because I didn't read the Bible and pray. You laugh at that, but some of you who are laughing are guilty.

Right? Anybody say, amen. That's right. But you see what that is? That isn't grace. That's legalism. And you see the idea that if I don't do a certain thing just right, oh, God's going to wipe me out.

Now watch this. We serve the Lord from one of two perspectives. A person in bondage serves the Lord out of fear of the consequences of not doing it just right to suit him and secondly for wages. That is, I'm going to get blessed if I do a certain thing. If I don't do it, I won't get blessed. If I do it just right, I'm going to get blessed.

I sure hope I did it right, that I pray long enough, that I read the Bible enough. You see, we put ourselves in bondage. God has never put one of his children in any kind of bondage. Now I believe in tithing and I don't have to tell you that, but if somebody says, oh my goodness, I wasn't at church last Sunday and I'm coming next Sunday, I'm going to give my time, but I wonder if God's really going to punish me financially because I didn't mail it in because I wasn't there Sunday.

Oh, I want to tell you, no, he won't. That's not the kind of God we have. He's not a God who puts us in bondage. Listen, what a tremendous contrast between this kind of physical, mental, spiritual bondage we put ourselves in and this statement.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, goodness, gentleness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control. And here we are saying, if I don't do this and if I don't do that, and you see the person who usually is legalistic is very critical. For example, let's say that one of you dear, sweet, lovable gals decided that you felt your occupation life was to be a housekeeper for some family. So you got a job with a very wealthy family and you were the housekeeper. You cooked all the meals, you scrubbed the floors, you waxed them when they need to be waxed, you made up the beds, you cleaned the children when they need to be cleaned, you gave them baths, you did everything. And you were doing it because it was your job, it was your duty, and you got paid for it. Now you enjoyed it, but that was your primary reasons.

It was your duty, your responsibility, you got paid for it. So this man's wife passes away for some reason. And so after a while he falls in love with you, you fall in love with him. You grow up on the honeymoon for 30 days, you come back home. Now it's a different story. Same woman, same house, same dirty diapers, same dishes, same floors, same beds, same everything.

But here's the difference. Before you were the homemaker because it was your duty, your responsibility, and you got paid for it. Now you're doing the same thing, but you're doing it not to get paid, but because you're in love.

You love this guy who's provided all this. You love these children, and now that is your home. You are a wife and a bride.

You're not a housekeeper. The difference is in position, not work. Now watch this. When you and I serve the Lord in order to get blessed, if we do certain things, or because we're afraid if we don't do it, that God's going to punish us, it's the same attitude. That's bondage.

Well to serve God out of fear and being careful that we jot every little t and little i, we want to be sure that everything is just right because if we don't, you know the judgment of God may be coming. And after all, you know when things are just right, a person who lives in legalistic bondage is always looking over their shoulder to see if God's thought up anything that they've forgotten they did 10 years ago. Now friend, that's not that's not freedom. That is bondage. What he forgave you for, you are forgiven for. He doesn't want us living in bondage.

He wants us living in liberty and freedom. Now here's the whole idea. Listen. When you and I were saved, we became what? Sons and daughters of God, right? Now watch this.

Here's where this thing gets out of balance. Paul speaks a lot about being a bond servant, a bond slave of Jesus Christ, but now watch this. When he says you and I were saved, we were what? We were adopted into the kingdom. That is we were brought into the family. We were born again into the family. He says you are the children of God.

Now let me ask you something. Does not a son and daughter's relationship to a father, is that not different than a maid or a servant's relationship to the master? All the difference in the world. One works for wages. One works out of duty. The other relates to their father at a relationship of love and devotion so that a person who is liberated in Christ looks back over their shoulder and sees the tremendous blessings that God has given and they want to serve the Lord and they want to do because of God's love for them.

Not because they're afraid or because of any duty. Now let me ask you a question. Are you trying to live the Christian life by doing this and doing that and doing the other to please God so he won't chastise you? Or do you recognize that you've been adopted into the kingdom of God on no merit of your own? He reached down and convicted you, saved you, forgave you, wrote your name in the Lamb's Book of Life, and he says he's deposited everything that you'll ever need to your account. All the blessings are there.

All he wants you to do is just let him live his beautiful life through you. That is a life of freedom and liberty that no amount of bondage will ever be able to compare to. Thank you for listening to The Liberated Life. We would like to invite you to join us in celebrating 45 years of God's faithfulness. Stop by InTouch.org slash 45 years to learn more. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.