His Love Sets You Free

His Love Sets You Free!

By Ian Biss 4/7/02

Intro. . .

There was a guy who tried to rid his house of mice. He bought a mouse trap but had no cheese. To remedy the problem, cut out a picture of cheese from a magazine. He loaded the trap with the artificial cheese and went to bed. When he checked the mousetrap that following morning he was quite surprised to find a picture of a mouse in the trap. A counterfeit lifestyle produces artificial results!

* Proclaim, Jack Gulledge

God’s priorities are not always man’s priorities! There are a couple different types of people you will encounter in the circle of God’s people.

1, the tare, this is someone who resembles, and acts like 100 % wheat, but in the end is just a blade of grass.

2, the child, this is someone who has been a part of the church for many years, but their growth has been stunted by laziness in the study of God’s word, or laziness in prayer, or perhaps refusal to listen to what God says. This person bears little fruit in the church.

3, the adult, this is the person who seems to stand out, because there are very few adults in the church today. The adult bears fruit in abundance, people are drawn to this person, they want to be around him because he is just brimming with the Holy Spirit. The adult Christian is filled with the love of God, and he knows it.

There was a movie out when I was little that was about a group of people who go to some sort of therapy seminar, and at this seminar they learned about how they needed to get it. Get what, I don’t know, but they were supposed to get it. And when they got it, boy their lives would change. So these characters spent time doing everything from beating one another with padded bats to rolling around on the ground blaming their parents for everything that was wrong in the world. Well, needless to say, by the end of the seminar only one guy got it, but he couldn’t explain what he got, and the rest of the group got nothing but thinner wallets.

When I was in U.S, Army basic training, a d.i. sat us down early on and told us that he knew we didn’t understand what being a soldier was now, but by the end of basic training we would understand or not make it to the end. He said that something would just click, and he was right.

Friends God wants you to get it, God wants something inside you to click, He wants you to have a deeper knowledge of Him. But before you can do that you must know the root of the truth of God. That root is love.

I. God Loves You. John 3:16-17

Exposition

Yes God loves you, and that would include you as well! God sent His Son not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved. The message Jesus Christ brought into the world is not a message of condemnation, but a message of hope. In spite of who you are, in spite of what you’ve done, God loves you so much that He sent His own Son to take your place, to receive what you deserve. To accept the punishment that you should rightly bear. God gave Jesus, His own Son who was innocent, to die accepting your punishment so that you could live.

Application

Unbelievers and immature believers tend to look at God as one seeking only to punish them. The truth of God ‘s love for them just hasn’t registered, their lives are lived in bondage to their guilt and sins. They haven’t figured out that God, through the blood of Jesus has removed all of that guilt and all of that sin. Know this believer, all of your sin has been covered by the blood of the Lamb, your account has been paid, so let go of that guilt in your life and realize that God loves you then seek to serve Him in light of His love for you.

God does not want to judge you, He wants to love you and He will go to great lengths to prove His love to you

Illustration

One Sunday morning the preacher began addressing his congregation by inviting an old man up to the pulpit to tell his story. The old man walked up to the microphone and began. He said. “One day my son, his best friend and I set out on a fishing trip we had been planning on the outer banks. And boy, were we having a great day, the new boat was a joy to be in, and the fish seemed to be jumping out of the water to get on our hooks.