OPEN: How many of you have ever heard of a movie/play entitled “The King and I”?
The movie version starred Yul Brynner and Debra Kerr, and has been popular for decades. But many people don’t realize the movie and play were based on a true story of a widowed Englishwoman named Anna who accepted the position of governess for the King of Siam (Thailand) in the late 1800s.
I just read the book last month, and was intrigued by one of stories it told.
It seems that one day, while on an errand, Anna got lost. “She found herself in a dark alley, from which the only exit appeared to be a door of polished brass in a high brick wall. Half-afraid that she was trespassing in some forbidden place; she pushed open the door, then stepped over the sill into a paved courtyard. In the middle of the garden near a small pond of water a woman was sitting on the ground, chained to a post. She was nursing a naked child about 4 years old.”
In a conversation with this woman, Anna discovered that her son’s name was Thūk - meaning “Sorrow”. She explained that she had been born a slave, but her freedom had been purchased by an Indian merchant who had fallen in love with her and desired to marry her. The transaction was approved under Siamese law, and the woman began a life of happy freedom.
Her mistress, however, had never been reconciled to the idea of letting her go, so one day, about 3 months after her marriage, she was seized and brought back to this courtyard and chained to the post. She had been chained there now for 4 years.
Anna returned to the palace and informed the King… who rescued this poor woman from her chains.
The woman’s husband was so grateful he contacted Anna to thank her and told her that their son’s name had been changed: to “Freedom”
(from the book “Anna and the King of Siam” by Margaret Landon)
Jesus said “… if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36
But freed from what?
Freed from chains… the chains of sin.
Peter wrote that Jesus “… bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24
That’s why Jesus came.
He came to seek and save the lost, and to loose them from their chains of sin.
That’s why He came. That’s why He died. That’s why He rose from the grave.
It was the single most important thing Jesus could do for us.
And yet… some folks don’t act like they sense the importance of being freed from their chains. They don’t sense the NEED to be FREED from their sin.
They seem to be much more concerned about being freed from bad government.
Or from financial bondage.
Or from a boring and unsatisfying life.
But free from sin?
Not so much.
There doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency or importance for some folks.
And as I was working on this sermon it puzzled me why this would be.
And the longer I puzzled on it, the more I realized there were 3 reasons I could think of as to why people wouldn’t want to be freed from their chains.
The first reason that occurred to me was this:
They think they’re ok just the way they are.
Yes, they suffer guilt and shame.
Yes, they experience self-loathing and self-hatred.
But, after a while, they get used to it.
It eventually becomes NORMAL for them.
It’s just how life is!
ILLUS: Now… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m near-sighted.
I have to wear glasses in order to see anything clearly more than a 1 ½ from my face.
(I took off my glasses and held my hand out as far as I could see it clearly, to illustrate)
Without my glasses, all you folks are just blurry images to me.
The state of Indiana says I need to have glasses to drive.
Now I could drive without them… but it’s really not a good idea.
I’ve worn glasses for so long that I sometimes forget that I even have them on.
But there are times when glasses can be a real nuisance
Times when I can’t find them. They weren’t where I left them.
There are times when they fog up
Or they get dirty
Or they get scratched
And then, every 5 years or so… I have to buy NEW glasses.
Now if I could get a free surgery to correct my vision … do you think I’d that?
Oh yeah, in a heartbeat.
But that costs a lot of money and I don’t want spend the money.
So I have learned over the years or so – that I NEED glasses.
I’ve grown accustomed to them.
They are NORMAL now for me.
And that’s the way it is with sin in people’s lives.
After a while they’ve grown accustomed to it.
After a while their chains of sin are NORMAL.
ILLUS: Some years back MTV had a special on the “Theology of Sin”.
Remember – this is MTV. And they asked various celebrities their opinion of various sins.
Actress Kirstie Alley said, “I don’t think PRIDE is a sin…I think some idiot made that up.”
A rock singer from the group Aerosmith “LUST is what I live for. It’s what I got into the band for…”
Rapper “Ice-T” opined that ANGER is necessary. “You have to release this tension, because life brings tension.”
And Michael Douglas played a character in the movie “Wall Street” who said, “Greed is good.”
The MTV narrator, Kurt Loader asserted, “The Seven Deadly Sins are not evil acts, but rather universal human compulsions that can be troubling and highly enjoyable.”
(Illustration by Ken Weliever)
That’s how lots of people have dealt with their sin.
They’ve just grown accustomed to their chains.
The chains are now part of their lives.
They are NORMAL.
Now, on the other hand, there are people who KNOW they’ve sinned.
They’re uncomfortable with their sins.
They’re ashamed of their sins.
They know they have chains.
It’s just that their chains don’t seem as bad as the chains of others.
They tend to think of the chains others wear as being WORSE than their own.
And WE ALL fall prey to this fallacy.
ILLUS: My sister Barbranne passed away a few years ago.
She was raised a Christian, but then she just drifted off into the party scene.
She drank, maybe did drugs,… and a lot of other things we're not going to talk about here.
She was in her 50s when her lifestyle finally caught up with her.
She called the folks and asked if she could come home.
I went down to Dallas Texas, packed here meager possessions in the car and brought her back to my house and she lived with me for a while.
Even before she came back home she tried to make changes.
She started going to church. Bought a children’s Bible so she could reacquaint herself with the Bible stories, and stopped doing the stuff that got her trouble to begin with.
One day we were talking about the life she’d lived.
She was troubled and distressed about all she had done and I tried to comfort her.
And I told her something she never let me forget.
And these were my words:
“Sis, you don’t realize it, but you have a testimony others don’t have. In fact, you’ve got a stronger testimony than I have because you’ve REALLY sinned.”
(LONG PAUSE)
Now that’s about one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said.
But you know what I meant.
We who’ve been raised in the church, who haven’t gotten down in the gutters of life tend to view OUR sins as NOT all that bad as what others have done.
And so we can tend look at others who have failed terribly in their lives and say:
You’ve really sinned.
Your chains are heavier and uglier than mine.
In fact, my chains are prettier than yours.
When people think stuff like that, it’s almost as if they expect – when they come before the judgment seat – to have God to say to them:
“My, my, my. Your chains are really pretty.
In fact your chains are SO pretty you deserve to come on in because those are the prettiest chains I’ve ever seen.”
It doesn’t work that way does it?
Our chains might not be as ugly to us as the next person’s are.
But all sin is ugly to God.
One of the Old Testament prophets declared of God:
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” Habakkuk 1:13
And the Psalmist writes:
“You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell.” Psalm 5:4
You cannot enter into God’s presence still attached to your chains… no matter how pretty they are.
And that brings me to the last group of people:
People who don’t sense the need to be freed by Jesus.
These are people who know they have sin in their lives but they believe they can take care of the sin all by themselves. They believe if they just do enough “good things” they can balance out the “bad things”.
They believe that at the day of judgment God that – if they do enough good deeds – God won’t pay attention to the bad things they thought, said and done. Instead He’ll be overwhelmed enough by their good deeds that He’ll ignore their bad stuff.
The problem is – the SINS are still there.
The past hasn’t been removed - it’s still connected.
Their chains tie them to the bad stuff they've done in the past in their lives.
And as long as that BAD STUFF is still attached to them... God cannot allow them into heaven.
So, if I can’t get into heaven with my sins still attached…
How CAN I get those sins removed?
How can I remove the chains that have bound them to me?
Well, first, we need to realize we have chains.
We need to accept the fact that, not only are the chains there, BUT that we cannot remove those chains on our own.
We're welcome to try, but we’re not going to get it done.
Romans 7:15-19 describes the problem this way:
“I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate - I do.
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
For what I do is not the good I want to do;
no, the evil I do not want to do— this I keep on doing.”
Paul is telling Christians about the frustrating struggle of sin in the lives of all people.
The good I want to do – I DON’T do… but what I hate – I DO.
Alcoholics Anonymous has a famous 12 point program for overcoming alcoholism.
Do you know what the first principle is?
You have to admit you have a problem!
And when it comes to sin, if you don’t admit you have a problem, you’ll end up trying to ignore your sin… hoping it will go away.
You’ll always make excuses for the sin.
You’ll always pretend you can solve the problem on your own.
But as long as you REFUSE to admit you have a problem…
it will always have control of you.
And that’s why Paul cries out:
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24
And what was his answer to that question?
That’s right – Jesus was the answer.
“… there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:1-2
And when does that take place?
When do our chains fall off?
Why, the chains fall off when we die.
That’s right, you have to die to get rid of your sins.
And what do you do with dead folks?
Why, you bury them don’t you?
Romans 6:4-7 tells us “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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin —because ANYONE WHO HAS DIED has been SET FREE from sin.”
When we died to our sins, and were buried with Christ... our chains were released.
And now, as we walk closer and closer with Jesus as Christians, our temptation towards sins diminishes.
John writes: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” 1 John 2:1
Our objective as Christians is to get to the point where sin has no hold on us.
That’s why we study God’s Word, and go to church, and go to Bible studies and pray – everything we do works at releasing sin’s hold on us.We study God’s Word so that we can be empowered not to sin.
But IF WE DO SIN, Jesus intercedes for us.
You see, every time we sin, we put the chains back on.
But we have an advocate with the Father.
We have a lawyer to stand on our behalf before the judgment seat.
And you know what that advocate promises us?
Every time we sin “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
You see, our advantage as Christians is not that we are “holier than the next guy”.
Rather, our advantage is that Jesus died to remove our chains.
ILLUS: Tonight I’m going to dress up like an old time parson and I’m going to be at a music festival. They’ve told me I could preach a little, as a parson of that day might have preached. And I’m told that there will be a number of other people dressed up in period pieces (it’s Indiana’s bi-centennial) – one of which will be a prostitute (Logansport once had a red-light district).
So, if I get to preach tonight, I’m going to point out the prostitute and say “You may think that you are a better person than this woman here. But don’t deceive yourself. When either of stand before the throne of God and intend on relying on your good words to save you, you’ll both be lost. When Jesus came to earth He spent most of His time talking to prostitutes and tax-collectors and sinners… because these were the ones who realized they had no hope based on their personal righteousness. These were the ones who realized they needed mercy and forgiveness. These were the ones who be willing to let God take their sins away rather than relying on good deeds.”
The only way to have hope of heaven is to have your chains removed.
And the only way those chains can be removed is by the command of the King.
ILLUS: I want to read to you from that book “Anna and the King of Siam”
As she entered the courtyard and saw this woman in chains “For a moment Anna was unable to command her voice.
At last she asked the woman her name.
The woman savagely replied “Pai sia!” (“Go away”)
Undisturbed, Anna sat down on the blistering pavement beside the chained woman and child.
Very gently she asked the child’s name.
“His name is Thūk (“Sorrow”), the woman answered reluctantly, turning away.
But the defiant look in her face had already softened.
Gradually, under Anna’s sympathetic prompting, her story came out.”
Notice, Anna had no power to release this woman from chains.
But she knew the King.
And when the King interceded… the chains were removed and the woman was freed.
ILLUS: In my files, I have the story of Rose Crawford.
She’d been blind for 50 years.
But then she had an operation in an Ontario hospital.
She said, "I just can’t believe it," as the doctor lifted the bandages from her eyes. She wept—when for the first time in her life she saw a dazzling and beautiful world of form and color greeted her eyes and she could now see.
The amazing thing about her story, however, was that 20 years of her blindness was unnecessary. She didn’t know that surgical techniques had been developed, and that an operation could have restored her vision at the age of 30.
Twenty years of blindness was unnecessary.
If someone had only told her, she could have been freed from blindness 20 years before.
If someone had only told her.
There are people around you who are in chains.
It’s true, they may not welcome your trying to tell them about Jesus.
They may “pai sia” (go away).
But if you speak to them just right. If you gently point out what Jesus has done for you, you could free them from the chains of sin and give them the hope of heaven.
INVITATION
