When we encounter oppression our soul’s desire should be to fight for deliverance. If someone is being dominated by something or someone that is causing them despair we should want them to be delivered. When we encounter oppression and truly want deliverance to take place all of our energy and effort should be united as we seek freedom. If we are to obtain freedom we must remain focused, fervent and faithful.
On tomorrow we celebrate the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. one of the greatest freedom fighters our country has ever known. Dr. King fought tirelessly against oppression. In a letter he wrote from the Birmingham City Jail to fellow clergymen to encourage them to join him in the struggle against racial and economic injustice, Dr. King said: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Dr. King devoted his life and ultimately gave his life, as he demanded that the least and left out of our society be treated with dignity and respect by the mainstream. Dr. King didn’t tolerate people being oppressed and neither should we!
There are a lot of different types of oppression. We can be oppressed economically, socially, physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. I need you to understand that all forms of oppression are a sin. It is a sin for the top 1% of Americans to hoard more and more wealth while there are millions of children who are being deprived of basic necessities because they are living in poverty. It is a sin to shun and ostracize anyone just because they don’t look like you or embrace what you consider to be culturally normative. It is a sin to intentionally make someone feel unworthy so that you can feel worthy.
Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we would be set free from the bondage of sin. His blood covers over all our sins; past, present and future. But, Jesus did not die so we would have a license to sin. Quite the contrary, Jesus was crucified to atone for our sins but He was Resurrected so that we would be empowered to overcome our sin nature!
Before the coming of Christ we were hopeless oppressed by our sin nature. There was no way we could make things right with God and with one another without sin getting in the way. But with Christ we have hope because we have an Advocate who intercedes for us and strengthens us to overcome any sin that would try to dominate our lives and oppress us.
We have been set free from sin but that freedom came at a heavy price. God loves us so much that Jesus was sent to save the world through the cross. We are free but we have been bought by the blood of Christ.
So my assignment this morning is to encourage everyone under the sound of my voice to glorify God with your body because you were bought with a price!
In our text this morning, Apostle Paul is addressing an errant belief by members of the Church at Corinth that they could do what ever they wanted to do because they were covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. We should never confuse our privilege to be counted amongst the righteous with permission to engage in conduct unbecoming a Christian.
To instruct the Corinthians Paul quotes one of their favorite slogans. They loved to say, “All things are lawful for me.” We have this same saying today but it sounds a little different. When there is a sin we condone that we don’t want to give up we say, “Well you know nobody is perfect.” Or, if we don’t want to change sometimes we even get super spiritual and quote scripture and say, “We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.”
But, the Bible also says, “We should be perfect even as our father in Heaven is perfect.” The Bible also says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
To challenge the Corinthians abuse of God’s grace, Paul does not disregard their claim that “All things are lawful” instead he qualifies their self-serving slogan by saying, “Yes! All things are lawful for me but not all things are beneficial. Yes! All things are lawful for me but I will not be dominated by anything.”
And so today, we would be wise to be mindful that yes God gives us the freedom to do right or to do wrong. And yes God will even forgive us if we do wrong. But we should never deceive or delude ourselves into believing that there is ever any real benefit if we do decide to do wrong. Everything that feels good to you is not good for you. When we choose to sin we harm ourselves and we harm the Body of Christ because we are one!
To drive this point home Apostle Paul reminds us that if anyone of us commits an act of sexual immorality we all are affected because we all belong to the same family and we are all a part of the same body. Our bodies are not our own they are God’s property! When we participate in fornication or prostitution, we engage in bodily sin that corrupts not only our human flesh but also our body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
It is sort of like group insurance coverage. If your insurer experiences a lot of claims due to storm damage in a certain geographical area, every one in that region is negatively affected. The next year the insurer is likely to raise their rates on everyone whether they made a claim or not.
Apostle Paul also reminds us that we should not be dominated by sin. Even if most of the members of {Ager Road / Grace Church} are good Christians. If we have members who abuse alcohol, engage in pre-marital or extra-marital sex, over eat or under give then we do damage to the body of Christ and instead drawing the unsaved into the Kingdom of God we push them away.
Whether it is sex, food, money or anything else only God should have preeminence in our lives. Who is your God? Do you spend more time working or worshipping? You do know you can worship God on your job without ever opening you mouth. All day long you can be in prayer thanking God for being your provider, healer, protector, for making a way out of no way! All day long you can sing songs of adoration as you worship the true and living King!
Who is your God? Do you live to eat or eat to live? Ouch! We have to stop killing ourselves prematurely by living a lifestyle in which we engage in poor dietary choices. When one of us gets sick or dies too soon because of our diet we all loose. The body of Christ suffers when we loose a saint too soon.
We should glorify God not only by the things we reframe from doing but also by the things that we do! We are saved, set apart as the righteousness of Christ so we can Advance the Kingdom of God. We are not saved so that we can be saturated with comfort and convenience and wait for God to beam us up into Heaven when we die.
God paid a steep price for our freedom and the LORD expects a return on the investment that has been made in our lives. Dr. King was appalled by people in the Church, the body of Christ who encouraged people in the civil rights movement to be more patient and just wait until the racist mantle of segregation was somehow magically lifted. Dr. King said, “For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing Thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
The love of God is composed of grace and justice. We are to eager to abuse God’s grace and deny God’s justice. By the grace of God we have been grafted into the body of Christ. It is a sin for us to try to keep God all to ourselves. There are hundreds if not thousands of people who live within a one-mile radius of our church who do not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Christ moves through the Holy Spirit that resides within us. We should always have a sense of urgency when faced with oppression whether it is our own oppression or someone else being held in bondage. We have waited long enough! 2012 will be the year we embrace our community and deliver the oppressed. However our community has been bound by the vestiges of sin we are going to be the arms, legs, feet and hands to bring forth their deliverance.
Yes we can sin over and over again and be forgiven but we shouldn’t want to be dominated by sin. We should want to be delivered of all our sins and we should want to be willing instruments that God can use to deliver others.
Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for you and there is a cross for me.
So let us hold up the blood stained banner of Christ, not just to protect ourselves but to challenge ourselves to go into our community and make other disciples of Jesus Christ by living and if necessary dying so that the oppressed will have freedom. Knowing and trusting that just has God has raised the Lord, he will also raise us with his power.
Freedom ain’t free! We have been bought with a price; therefore let us glorify God with our bodies! Let us …
Resources
1) Dr. King Letter from Birmingham City Jail. Website: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=100
2) Gaventa, Beverly E. and Petersen, David eds. The New Interpreter's Bible one-volume commentary. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010.
