Give Us Free

Well, thanks, Pastor JD, for that reminder that we are part of a broader body of Christ here across all of our campuses.

In fact, this call to come together and to just lock arms with one another communally to fast and believe God together is a great joy of mine. In fact, just over the years, some of the sweetest times we've had as a family is just being a part of these kind of communal corporate fasts. I remember one time when our kids were young. They were real little. And we're just preparing ourselves for one of these fasts and how it should be sacrificial.

And I was just laying it out and what that looks like. And our middle son, Miles, says, I think I want to fast from Lucky Charms, Dad, because I think that's an idol in my life. And we agreed because he had just punched his brother in the nose for eating the last of his Lucky Charms. So it was just a great way for him to lean into the grace of God and for him to sacrifice in that way. And so I'm just glad that we're able to come together and do that for the reminder that the God that we serve is sovereign.

He is in complete control, no matter how chaotic things may look. If you have your Bibles, please meet me in Luke Chapter three as we continue on in our series in step, just kind of jogging through various passages in the book of Luke. I want you to pick me up in verse one of Luke Chapter three. We're going to look at the first six verses of Luke Chapter three. Luke says these words in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being Tetrarch. That means ruler of the fourth part of Galilee and his brother, Philip Tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitis and Lysanias. I tell you, man, this passage will elongate your vocabulary.

Tetrarch of Abilene during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. Make note of this phrase. The word of God came to John, the son of Zachariah in the wilderness, and he went into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism. Make note of this word of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as it is written. Now he's quoting from Isaiah in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.

Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hills shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight and the rough places shall become level ways and all flesh, all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Several years ago there was a movie that came out that was based on a true story. Maybe some of us can recall seeing this movie. It is a story of a group of Africans who are on this ship and they decide to just kind of take over the ship from those who were sailing it and so they wrest control out of their hands. They take it now into their hands and they now think they are sailing east into freedom when in reality they're sailing north into bondage. That ship known as the Amistad washes up on American shores. They're now accosted, taken into custody, and the great question that our nation begins to wrestle with over the next several months is what do we do with these individuals? They've thrown them into captivity.

Do we keep them there or do we release them into freedom? In one poignant moving scene as they're sitting there debating this question and this issue, one of the African who has been in bondage just begins to yell out give us free. Give us free. Give us free. It might be bad English but it is good theology for in that statement give us free. It really puts a finger on the pulse of humanity. There is this longing in all of us for freedom. It is one of the felt needs of our hearts and I don't care where you may be on the spectrum of spirituality. You may have grown up in the church and learned of the truths of Christianity from those wonderful flannel board kind of layouts. I'm given my age here. Or you may be here and say I wouldn't call myself a Christian.

A part of what it means to be made in the Imago Dei, the image of God, is this incredible longing that we have for freedom. Recently, Rolling Stone magazine released a ranking of the top 500 albums of all time. Number one on their list is an album that was released in 1971 by Marvin Gaye, simply entitled What's Going On. Smokey Robinson, one of the greatest songwriters of all time, calls that album Prophecy and holds it is still relevant for today.

I'll let you cast your vote in on whether or not that's true. But here is Marvin Gaye in 1971, three years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been assassinated. It's right on the heels of the aftermath of the civil rights movement. He is serving the sociological scene. He is looking at what's happening over in Vietnam.

He's he's downcast about what's taken place in the urban centers, the ghettos of our nation. And in the middle of all this, he says in the title track to the album, look at these lyrics with me. Mother, mother, mother, there's far too many of you crying.

Brother, brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying. And he would go on to croon and belt out the rhetorical question, what's going on in his own way, it is his way of saying, give us free. It is the longing of freedom. If there's one word I want to unpack with you over the next 29 minutes and 3130 seconds that we have with the Holy Spirit to move, I want to unpack with you that word freedom. Maybe you want to write in your notes app that these three words really summarize our whole text.

Give us free. We are now going to turn our attention to an enslaved people who are laboring under the tyranny of captivity and oppression exacted upon them by the Roman Empire. Our text opens up with Luke pinpointing the exact moment in history we find ourselves in when we come to this text.

Look at it again with me in verse one, Luke writes in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who is the emperor of Rome, so that we can pinpoint with a certain degree of certainty that the events that Luke is alluding to in our text is taking place around A.D. 29 A.D. 29. Here's the nation of Israel. If you read the Old Testament, the story of the nation of Israel is stubborn and is being stubborn and being obstinate over and over and over again. They have chosen to go their own way. And over and over again, God in his grace sends his prophets trying to get them to repent. And yet over and over and over again, Israel refuses. I don't know about you, but that's my story of a God full of grace who keeps coming to me.

And yet so many times I just find myself stubborn, holding on to my own sin. Finally, God sends them away into the Babylonian captivity in exile. And now when we come to our text, they are under the tyranny of Rome.

Next, Luke decides to lay out for us a series of seven leaders. If you read scholars, scholars are bantering back and forth kind of what this list is all about. And one thing they do agree on is that all of these leaders are horrible leaders who have been instruments of oppression and captivity on these Jews. Tiberius was especially cruel, going as far as to begin deporting the Jews.

Pilate took money from the temple treasury. Herod was despised by the Jews for being a friend of Rome and turning his back on his own people. Philip was also seen as being partial to the Gentiles. And while we know a little to nothing about Lysanias, we do know that Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests of the Jews, were not humble, gentle leaders. Instead, they were seen as being harsh as well on their own people.

So why does Luke mention these leaders? Hear me. He is painting a picture of oppression. And don't you see the longing in the Jews' heart? Give us free. We long for freedom. As we survey our own sociological landscape, I think there are pockets of 2020 where, in our own way, we just felt as if our spirits were experiencing a level of claustrophobia. There was just this sense, there were these moments in 2020 where we had that own longing of give us free. We just long for freedom. Maybe it was literally as we were living in quarantine life, as life as we've known it just totally changed. And here we are in the confines of our own home and life as we know it is long gone. And there's something inside of us that just ached for freedom. Others of us, if you're just kind of looking at the racial landscape and the stuff that's going on, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd, I remember sitting there with my family and one of my sons in tears just asked, where is God? In his own way, it was his way of saying, man, I'm sick of this. It's kind of this rinse, wash, repeat cycle that we're in and I long for it to be over.

And no matter what your color, maybe if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, hopefully you felt that as well. The political divisions that I don't need to rehash. There's just this turmoil of 2020 in which we just long for freedom. But friends, that only touches the tip of the iceberg on a much deeper soul level. That is the longing of our hearts. We long for freedom and there's nothing in this world that can satisfy it. In fact, our turning to idols, those good things that have become ultimate things. It is our way of trying to find identity, meaning, value, purpose, freedom in this life negotiated on our own terms. And yet the reality is idols always over promise and always under deliver. We turn to maybe food or money or status or success or family or whatever it may be to try freedom.

But but none of those things are going to satisfy. In fact, C.S. Lewis argues that the reason why we can never find long term satisfaction in things of this world independent of Christ is because those things in their own way are not just designed to disappoint us, but to turn us to the only one who can satisfy us and give us freedom, which is Jesus. And a well used quote. I love that saying amen to a chocolate preacher. Keep it coming in a well used quote. It says, C.S. Lewis says this. Will you look at it with me? If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. So I just want to remind those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ that new car is never going to do it.

That new home is never going to do it. Only Jesus. I'll never forget one of my one of my dear friends in life worked on a show. He was an executive on this show. This show ended up getting syndicated, which is which is the dream. So he goes with the creator of the show to pick up their syndication checks. And I said, How did it go?

My friend is a strong believer. He goes, the creator of the show, who's not a believer, gets a check for one hundred and thirty seven million dollars. And he says, man, I checked in with him some months later and the euphoria was gone. There was no joy there.

Some of you are like, can I just try the one hundred thirty seven million and just kind of report back to you about how I'm doing? But friends, that's the book of Ecclesiastes in real time for Solomon just looks at everything. And he says, vanity, vanity, Hebrew word, Habel, it's emptiness. Nothing in this world can give us freedom. Independent of Christ. Some of you are followers of Jesus Christ and you have freedom.

You're just not walking in it. You long for freedom in your marriage. You long for freedom in your finances. You long for freedom as relates to that besetting sin, the sin that so easily entangles you. You've you've been granted victory through the cross, but you're not walking in victory.

What does it look like? So thank you, Pastor, for talking to us about freedom. But but I need you, as my grandmama used to say, to put some shoe leather on this. What does it really look like for me to walk in the freedom that Christ has secured? Luke helps to show us there's three ways. The first way is found in verse two. So here's Luke. He's painted this bleak picture of oppression and bondage, this this longing to be free. And then a glimmer of hope shines through in verse two.

Look at it with me. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, here it is. The word of God came to John, the son of Zachariah.

Oh, I don't miss this. Here is Luke. He's writing on the tail end of the Old Testament. Again, the story of the Old Testament is this vicious cycle in which the people of God would be in sin. God would show up graciously, give them prophets. The prophets get a bad kind of image because we see them as messages of condemnation and law.

No, they are extensions of the grace of God in which God is giving them and begging them time to repent. Finally, the book of Malachi, the last book laid out in the Old Testament, God stops speaking. Between Malachi and the four authorized gospels, or rather biographies known as the gospels on the life of Jesus, God doesn't speak.

It's the intertestamental period. It's 400 years of silence. 400 years God doesn't speak. And now Luke says this again, the word of God came to John, the son of Zachariah. Now here's a question I just want to ask.

Don't need to spend a day in seminary. So tell me, tell me, Brian, what did Israel do to deserve God speaking? Did they change their ways? Nope. Did they repent of their sins to deserve that? Nope. What did they deserve to get the voice of God through the prophet John the Baptist? Nothing. God opens his mouth and speaks to a people still living the same life.

You know what we call that? Grace. I love what my friend Matt Chandler says about grace. Matt Chandler says grace means you didn't eat your dinner, but you still get dessert. It is God's unmerited favor. It is God giving his people something they did not deserve. How in the world do I walk in this freedom? It doesn't come by my performance or my moral strivings or me saying, you know what, New Year's, I'm gonna make some resolutions.

I'm really going to change. No, it begins on a note called grace. Several years ago, many of you read it. I read the New York Times bestselling book, Just Mercy. It's a true story about an incredible guy by the name of Brian Stevenson. Maybe you actually saw the film. As usual, the film never can live up to the book.

Basically, the arc of the book is story after story after story of individuals who have gotten locked up for things they didn't do. They didn't have the means or the resources to hire a lawyer. Somehow, someway, Brian Stevenson, this Harvard trained law lawyer shows up, hears their story, investigates their story, comes back and says, I'm gonna help you to which they respond. I don't have the resources to pay you to which he responds.

I'm going to do it pro bono. It's grace. I'm going to get you out. Grace. You can't pay me grace. Now here's where my illustration falls short.

My illustration falls short is because these individuals didn't do the crime. They got grace. When the truth of the matter, we all did the crime. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've all sinned.

We've all gone our own way. And our advocate, as John calls him in his epistle, Jesus shows up and says, you've gotten yourself in a mess you can't get yourself out of. I'm going to get you out of it, not by your moral strivings or performance or church attendance or fasting or tithing, but solely by my grace. We never get so sophisticated in our faith that we neglect to be amazed by the grace of God. Freedom begins by swimming deeply in the waters of grace.

But that's not all. How do I walk in this freedom? I walk in it through this thing called grace, this amazing grace. And then look at verse three. Speaking of John the Baptist, this prophet, the mouthpiece of God, it says, and he went into all the region around the Jordan.

So this is a heavily Jewish populated region. These people living in sin. Here it is proclaiming a baptism. Here's the key word of repentance. If you're new to the scriptures or you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, you need to know that the New Testament, which is a section of the Bible that we're in, it is written in a language called Greek.

Originally, it's not written in English. So when I talk about the Greek, I'm talking about the original language, the Greek word for repentance is metanoia, metanoia. The idea of a metanoia, it simply means a change of mind that leads to a change of direction. Hear me, repentance, metanoia is not the same thing as confession. Confession means to say I'm sorry. Metanoia or repentance means to show I'm sorry.

And notice, if you will, a thoroughly biblical truth. Oftentimes when you see repentance in your Bible, lurking closely in context is grace. Grace and repentance are conjoined twins. In fact, friends, grace always stimulates repentance. So if you just say, I got to repent, I got to change, I've been going the wrong way.

I'm going to do this. Friends, that's law. That's condemnation. That's your own works. That's your own striving. What stimulates repentance is always grace. That's why Paul would say, and it's a verse my wife and I have tried to hang our hats on in parenting.

She's done such a better job at it than me. But Romans 2, 4 says, it is God's kindness that leads to repentance. It is not our repentance that leads to God's kindness. So that God's kindness doesn't stimulate license. It's not me saying, okay, God's gracious, God's kind. I can kind of do what I want to do. No, Paul gets to that in Romans 6 when he says, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

No. But when I really get grace, when I really understand that God in his infinite grace and mercy sees me as is, accepts me as is, loves me as is, saves me as is, when I really swim in those waters, it induces in me a desire to want to be like him and live like him. Several years ago, there was a wealthy businessman in a California community who was looking around his community, and there was pockets of his community he didn't like. He says, there's just all this kind of crime and drugs and poverty and mental health issues. And so he says, man, that's got to change. And so he began racking his brain.

How do I do that? He came up with this crazy idea that everybody laughed at him about. What if I just gave a certain group of individuals in this community just kind of $500 a month? No, no, no. I'm not putting them on my payroll and hiring them and giving them a job.

No. I'm just going to give them out of my grace $500. And so he tried that for 18 months, gave a group of these individuals $500 a month.

They didn't have to do anything, just gave it to them. And for 18 months, a study was unleashed. And at the end of that study, here's what they found. Crime and drugs went down. Mental health went up, and they began to see change.

Now, don't hear that as this is a great economic policy that our government should try. That's to miss the point completely. What brought about change was grace. And even more so, friends, this is what God does to you and I. How does God stimulate change in the heart of the believer? It's not by condemnation.

For there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. It's grace, grace, grace. Freedom is here.

He's offered it to us. Freedom begins not with my moral strivings. It begins on a note called grace.

But when I really get grace, that stimulates repentance. It isn't a 360 or I'm right back where I started from. It's a 180-degree turn. I'm going one way, headed in another, not because I'm resolving it, but because I'm motivated by the grace of God. But there's one more point.

Freedom is only possessed in one person. His name is Jesus. Look at how Luke ends our text in time of study around God's word. Luke chapter three, verse four. Luke writes, As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, here it is, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight and the rough places shall become level ways in all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Here is Luke pulling on a Hebrew idiom. Back then in towns, when it was deemed that that town was worthy to have a dignitary like a king come, months in advance, they would send a courier. That courier would go into that town and would say, look, on such and such a date, the king is coming. And immediately they would get to work kind of laying out smooth roads to prepare for the king to come and much pomp, glory and circumstance. Here is Luke quoting from Isaiah, pulling on that imagery and he looks at Jesus and it was announced centuries in advance, the king of kings and Lord of lords is coming.

And now the way is being prepared specifically in this text through his prophet, John the Baptist. I probably shouldn't share this, but, uh, you know, I love duck hunting. I probably shouldn't share this because in general, in general, African Americans, we're not very outdoorsy people. If you want to test my hypothesis, watch the Discovery Channel and count how many quiches and tyrones you see on the Discovery Channel. Some of y'all are like, can I laugh at that?

Yes, you can laugh at that. But I thought I've fallen in love with, with duck hunting and a part of the reason why the place that I go duck hunting, one of my best friends, he owns a duck hunting club in what's called Stuttgart, Arkansas. Never heard of Stuttgart, Arkansas until I went duck hunting there. Come to find out, I guess ducks pretty much, you know, fly the same migration pattern year in and year out. And Stuttgart, Arkansas kind of, it's, it's a major thoroughfare as the story goes. Well, this is a very coveted and desired duck hunting club, so much so that Dick Cheney, when he was vice president, decided to go duck hunting there.

I wasn't there during that time. And it just comes to find out that his office calls my friend and says, the vice president wants to come and go duck hunting. And what's interesting is he didn't just make the phone call and the next day show up. My friend says, no, over the next couple of months, over 80 White House staffers, government employees, secret service agents, and even some people in the Navy, they come to our property and they begin to just prepare for the vice president coming. They run telephone lines.

They actually get into our ponds and, and just see if there's anything dangerous there. Months and months of preparation. Friends, this is exponentially more true when it came to Jesus Christ coming. In fact, Paul would write in Galatians chapter four, verse four, will you look at it with me? But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman born under the law, the Greek word there for fullness.

It was used to speak of a pregnant woman in the final days of her pregnancy. Here, Paul is picturing time as a pregnant woman about to give birth to Jesus. In fact, friends, remember we talked about the intertestamental period between the end of Malachi and the start of Matthew, 400 years of silence, not activity. God was silent, but God was working, setting the stage for the perfect moment for when his son Jesus would come. He raises up Alexander the Great, who's prophesied about in Daniel chapter eight, who conquers the then known world. And Alexander the Great's unique contribution is the unification of language, one language, so that when Jesus shows up, the world is just ready for the advancement of the gospel. Not only that, after Alexander the Great and the Greeks, there come the Romans and the Pax Romana, so that when Jesus comes, he doesn't come at a time of war, but at a time of peace.

Just the right moment for the gospel to be unfurled. Friends, God was working behind the scenes, setting the stage for this kairotic opportune moment. Hear me, and that God is not confined to the History Channel. That same God is working in your life right now, setting up the scene so that there's no wasted experience in your life. And he has brought you here today that you might hear the freedom that is ours, that we might walk in it, for whom the sun sets free. It's free indeed. Who can make us free?

Not our money, not our moral strivings. It's one person, Christ, and Christ alone. In March of 2019, I had the most enriching ministry experience outside of the local church in my life. I was invited to go with a group of people to Angola State Prison just outside of Baton Rouge. I'll never forget it, getting to Angola State Prison, this legendary prison. It used to be a plantation called Angola Plantation, and they called it that because they got most of their slaves from Angola, Africa. Right around the start of the 20th century, they decide to turn it over into a penal farm, a penitentiary, where some of the worst criminals ever were brought there.

It became one of the most violent prisons in the world. Then in the 1990s, the new warden comes in, and he's a strong believer, follower of Jesus Christ. And he says, we've got to make some changes here. And he decides the way that we're going to change it is not by introducing some more rules.

He says, no, no, no. We've got to get the gospel here. So he brings some professors from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The Bible is taught. The gospel is preached.

Revival breaks out. And so many prisoners come to know the Lord. They said, what do we do? And the warden says, I don't know.

Let's plant churches. They've planted over 100 churches inside of Angola prison. These prisoners are being trained. They're learning the Bible, and they're experiencing while incarcerated the freedom of Jesus Christ.

One of my friends there, one of the guys that I met, and I've gotten to know him since then, was an inmate there. We'll call his name Jason. Jason is locked up for murder. He murdered his wife and tried to murder his infant son.

He got locked away for 30 years. Recently, Jason was recommended by the parole board to be set free. And I was asking Jason, how's it going? He goes, man, I'm still sitting here. I said, why are you still sitting here? You've been recommended that you would be free.

He says, yeah, but in the state of Louisiana, and I don't know how it is in other states, they can recommend you all you want. They can declare you free all you want. But until one man signs the paper, you ain't free, and that man is the governor.

Friend, it made me think of Jesus. There's only one man who can make us free. It's Christ and Christ alone. You can't make yourself free. Only Jesus can make us free. What's interesting, friends, is part of the reason he got recommended for freedom is because of a total life transformation that took place while he was in prison. He came to know the Lord as Lord and Savior.

Isn't it interesting? He was in a place that had his body incarcerated, but his spirit was free. Friends, right now, you can know the freedom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I don't care how bad your home life may be.

I don't care how miserable your circumstances are right now. You can know the freedom of Jesus Christ. Will you pray with me? Father, I believe that you have been speaking.

My feeble attempts at articulation will not move the needle. There are people, Lord God, all across the triangle right now who have sat under this word, and they do not know the freedom that you have come to offer. God, it's amazing. It just makes me think of that great moment in American history when the 13th Amendment is ratified and the plantations are flung open and most slaves leave, but there are still some slaves who decided to stay on the plantation. Father, there are still some souls who, even though they've been set free, aren't walking in it. So I pray, Lord God, that they would know your grace, that your grace would stimulate their repentance, and that they would find freedom in the only person who offers it. It's in Jesus and Jesus alone. It's in Christ's name we pray all of these things. Amen and amen.