OPEN: I’m not sure who wrote the following words, but this story says a lot about mankind:
When my oldest son was about three years old, I was outside doing some yard work one afternoon. I took Kevin outside to play while I trimmed the hedges. Holding his hand, I knelt down beside him so that we could look at each other face to face. Slowly and carefully I said,
· "Now, Kevin, you can play here in our front yard.
· You can go next door and play in your friend’s front yard.
· You can ride your Big Wheel up and down the driveway.
· You can go in the back yard and play with the dog or play on your swing.
· You can go back inside and watch television.
· You can stay here and watch me trim the hedges.
· These are all the things you have my permission to do.
But you can NOT go out into the street. It is very dangerous there. You cannot play in the street. Do you understand what I’m saying?"
And 3 year old Kevin nodded his head and said "Yes, Daddy".
I let go of his hand and he ran straight to the curb, put one foot in the street, and then turned his head toward me and smiled, as if to say, "Foolish mortal!"
APPLY: Now – why would that little boy do that?
Why – after understanding all the freedoms his father had allowed him would he deliberately go out to the one place his dad had told him not to go?
He did it because that little boy is like so many people.
· They want to be FREE to do things “their way”
· They want to be FREE to live by their own rules
· They want to be FREE to be the ones who make the final decisions of what is right or wrong for them
This reality – that man often rejects the authority of his Father - lies at the very heart of the conflict between man and God. God created us and loves us. He wants to supply us with all kinds of blessings. As He told Israel in Jeremiah 29:11 - “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
But man - too often - looks at the Heavenly Father and knows what He’s promising but all they see are the restrictions God would place on their lives. Restrictions that are meant to be for their good, to keep them from harm - and they look BEYOND the freedom and the promises God wants to offer them - and all they see are the restrictions and in those restrictions they see nothing but prison walls to be broken down.
To get God’s best, they realize they have to let God have authority over their lives… and many people don’t want that. They want to be free from any authority so they can be FREE to do what they want.
ILLUS: Before I went to Bible College I spent a couple of years at a secular college and studied under philosophy professors who went out of their way to undermine the Bible and Christian morality.
They would make fun of students who stood up for their faith.
They would belittle Biblical morality and declare that there were no moral absolutes.
There was no such thing as absolute right and wrong
As I grew older I began to realize that their teaching was absurd.
When they declared there were no absolutes in life they were stating it as an ABSOLUTE fact. In other words – they were absolutely certain there were no absolutes.
Can you sense the absurdity in that?
But I also came to realize that these professors really didn’t believe what they were teaching anyway. The reason they worked so hard at undermining the religious upbringing of their students was because they needed to remove God’s standards from our lives and replace those standards with standards of their own.
These professors wanted to be God. But they couldn’t be God as long as God was in control of those students’ lives. These professors wanted to be FREE us of God’s authority so THEY themselves could be the authority.
In John 8 Jesus tells the crowd "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32)
That irritated the crowd, and they responded:
“We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone…” (John 8:33)
The Jews were saying: “We don’t want your freedom! No one has authority over us. We’re already free, we are slaves of no one.”
But Jesus replies: "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34)
Jesus said in John 8 exactly what Paul says here in Romans 6:16-22
“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.
Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.”
This is one of upside down teachings of Scripture. It doesn’t seem to make any sense, but the Bible declares in no uncertain terms: Everyone is a slave to something…
1. You’re either a slave to sin and free from God
2. Or you’re a slave to God and free from sin.
3. There is no other option open to you.
Despite what those philosophy professors believed at that secular college I attended – the OPPOSITE of being a slave to God is NOT freedom to live as you wish.
God’s Word tells us: If you FREE yourself from obeying God, you will be a SLAVE to sin. You can deny it, fight it, reject it – do whatever you wish - it’s still going to be true.
If you are not a servant of God’s, you will be a servant to sin.
Now the question I have is: Why? Why would rejecting God – and His authority in my life - enslave me?
Well… it’s like saying if there is no light in a room you’ll be standing around in darkness
OR if you have no heat in your house in winter you’re going to get cold
If you don’t have God’s kind of freedom in your life… you will be in slavery.
And I can think of at least 3 reasons while you’ll be in slavery if you rejected God
1st–if you reject God in your life, Ephesians 2:12 says we would be “…without hope and without God in the world.”
Thus without God, we are enslaved because we have no God.
Now that sounds a bit redundant, but what that means is this - when you have no God in your life, what happens in your life depends solely on you.
Which is ok as long as life is going smoothly.
And even when life doesn’t go the way you want it to – even when life bumps you and bruises you and robs you of your dreams – it can still be OK if you’re smart enough, or strong enough, or influential enough, or rich enough.
BUT if you’re not strong enough, smart enough, etc - you’re in trouble… because there’s no one to watch your back. For folks who reject God, the words “The Lord is my shepherd” have no meaning. And because there is no shepherd in their lives, in those times of darkness in their lives they become uneasy and prone to worry and anxiety.
ILLUS: Someone once commented to a preacher: “God’s a crutch” (meaning anyone who believed in God him was not strong enough to stand on their own).
The preacher startled the skeptic by replying, “Yes God is a crutch… but who isn’t limping.”
ILLUS: Bertrand Russell was a famous skeptic who had no faith in the Bible or God. In one of his writings he is very candid about what a life without God is like. He wrote:
“The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach and where none can tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death. Brief and powerless is man’s life. On his - and all his race - the slow sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way. For man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness.
It remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day.”
Now, isn’t that a cheerful thought?
BUT that’s what life without a God looks like.
There is no good shepherd to guide us through the valley of the shadows of darkness and death, and without that shepherd, there is no hope.
2ndly - people who reject God are enslaved because they have no reason to live.
The Bible tells me that you and I were created in the image of God. We are unique above all of creation because we have the breath of God dwelling within us.
But if God DIDN’T create you and I, then we are merely a random collection of molecules.
If God didn’t create us than we are a murky mix of mud and clay that has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of an amoeba or a blade of grass.
Without God we have no true value.
We live, we suffer, we die, and face nothing but oblivion.
Essentially, that’s what Romans 6 is tells us.
I preached on this text years ago, and I remember being puzzled by Paul’s statements that:
“When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.”
“But now… you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God.”
And I wondered how I could explain what it meant for us to be slaves and free all at the same time. But then I happened upon an illustration that made such an impression on me that I wanted to repeat it for you this morning.
ILLUS: I want you to know that this morning I have spared no expense to bring you this illustration. In fact it actually cost me nothing (dramatically pull a blanket off an old car door that’s onstage). What you see here is a car door I got from “Willie Mote’s Used Car Parts.”
I’ve brought this car door here to point out what Paul means by being free of God.
This car door is absolutely free.
It is no longer attached to a car.
It no longer has to go where the car goes or stop when the car stops.
No one will ever slam it shut ever again.
No one will ever catch their seat belt in it when they close it.
No one will ever roll its window up and down again (in fact you probably couldn’t even if you wanted to).
It absolutely, positively FREE
AND it is absolutely, positively worthless – even Willie Mote doesn’t want it back again!
No one will ever use it ever again… because no one wants it.
Because it is free, it is now worthless and it no longer has any earthly value to anyone.
It’s this feeling of worthlessness and emptiness that enslaves those who have rejected God. The nagging feeling that their life will amount to nothing that will endure after they’ve past on.
So those who demand to be free from God are enslaved
1. They’re enslaved because they have no God and no hope
2. They’re enslaved because they have no purpose or value
3. AND 3rd, they are enslaved because without God – they are held captive by their sin
Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34)
Not only does sin control the lives of people who have no God… sin condemns them.
There’s no way to get away from their sins.
Without God, there is no forgiveness - no way to remove their past deeds, tho’ts or words.
People are reduced to trying to balance out the sins of their past with whatever good deeds and actions they can accomplish. But they’re often not sure they’ve done enough to undo the past.
At odd moments, their sins crowd into their minds and remind them of their shame.
And the worst of it is – if they’ve sinned “too much” for them to reasonably think they can “work it off” - the chains of the slavery to sin drag them down into a dungeon of their own private Hades. A place of remorse, self-loathing, and despair.
ILLUS: In ancient Rome, the Romans had developed a particularly horrible way to deal with murderers. They would take the murderer and tie him face to face with his victim, and he would live bound to the rotting corpse of his victim until he himself had died.
Without forgiveness of sin, there is no way for mortal man to escape being face to face with the torment of their past… unless they allow God to free them from that horrible curse.
The Bible tells me that Jesus came to die for us so that our sins could be removed, and Romans 6 tells us how God intended to do that:
“We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”
CLOSE: Several years ago, Brian Welch was leader of a popular heavy-metal band named Korn.
During his career with Korn, the group sold over 25 million records worldwide.
Welch said: “I was able to test-drive this world. I got the fame and money. I tried all the drugs, the women and all that stuff.”
But there was something missing.
He found that he’d become enslaved.
He though for awhile that it was the drugs that enslaved him, but he said that he had tried to get off drugs for years but found only temporary relief.
But eventually he did find the cure for the emptiness and frustration of his life. In his book “Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs And Lived To Tell About It”, Welch stated that after having all the fame and money and attention “when Christ touched me, none of that stuff compared.”
Once he’d been enslaved - now he was free.
And now he wanted to change his life and make God His master.
If you’re here this morning and you don’t belong to Jesus you have no God and no hope
If you don’t belong to Jesus this morning you have no purpose, no value, no meaning that will last beyond the day of your death.
If you don’t belong to Jesus this morning, you have no forgiveness and no way of removing your past sins. BUT, God doesn’t want you to live like that – that’s why Jesus came to die on the cross and that’s why we offer an invitation at the end of every service..
