Kung Fu Panda is the story of a flabby, out-of-shape panda bear named Po who longs to learn the ancient art of Kung Fu. Amazingly, Po is selected by the village leaders to become the Dragon Warrior – the greatest Kung Fu master of all time. But in spite of his new status, Po is still a lumbering klutz. This reality is a source of constant consternation to Master Shifu, who has been charged with transforming a nobody into the greatest Kung Fu warrior that ever lived. The situation gets even more complicated when Shifu and Po learn that Tai Lung – the most fearsome villain in all of China – has escaped his prison and is coming to destroy the new Dragon Warrior. Take a look as Po tries to sneak away from his training after learning that Tai Lung is coming after him. (show video: Kung Fu Panda – Shifu Confronts Po Sneaking Away)
Master Shifu pops out of nowhere to block Po's way. “You cannot leave! A real warrior never quits!”
“Watch me!” says Po, trying to run past his master. Shifu blocks him again.
“Come on,” Po whines. “How am I supposed to beat Tai Lung? I can't even beat you to the stairs!”
“You will beat him because you are the Dragon Warrior,” Shifu answers.
“You don't believe that,” Po counters. “You never believed that! From the first moment I got here, you've been trying to get rid of me.”
“Yes, I was,” Shifu admits. “But now I ask you to trust in your master, as I have come to trust in mine.”
“You're not my master. And I am not the Dragon Warrior.”
“Then why didn't you quit?” Shifu asks. “You knew I was trying to get rid of you, yet you stayed.”
“I stayed because every time you threw a brick at my head or said I smelled, it hurt,” Po says. “But it could never hurt more than it did every day of my life just being me. I stayed because I thought if anyone could change me – if anyone could make me not me – it was you, the greatest Kung Fu teacher in all of China.”
“But I can change you!” Shifu protests. “I can turn you into the Dragon Warrior, and I will!”
“Come on,” Po says. “Tai Lung is on his way here right now. And even if it takes him a hundred years to get here, how are you going to change this” – Po picks up his belly and lets it fall back down with a bounce – “into the Dragon Warrior?”
Shifu is silent.
“Huh?” Po asks. “How?”
“I don't know!” Shifu blurts out. Then, more quietly, “I don't know.”
“That's what I thought,” Po says. Then he walks away. (Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks Animation, 2008, directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, scene 14, 00:48:08 – 00:50:14)
As believers in Christ, God has called us “saints” and “overcomers”, but some of us wonder: can God really change me into what He has called me to be? Can God ever transform me into something useful? I’m stuck; can I ever break free to be all that God wants me to be?
Well the wonderful answer to that question is “Yes! Absolutely Yes!” But there is something YOU must do, in cooperation with God’s Holy Spirit, to break free from the habits and attitudes that keep you grounded. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Galatians 1, Galatians 1, which tells us what to do to break free to be all that God has called us to be.
Galatians 1:1-2 Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia… (ESV)
Paul begins this book by identifying himself as the author, but he is no ordinary author. He is an apostle – one who has been sent by God Himself. No man sent Paul to speak to us today. No man authorized Paul to say what He had to say in this book.
I stand before you today, primarily because in September, 2012, you invited me to candidate as your next pastor, and a week later you graciously extended a call for me to come. Oh, I have no doubt that God Himself called me to preach here, but that call came through human agency. It came through many of YOU. If you would not have called me to be your pastor, I would not be here this morning.
Well, that’s NOT the way it is with the Apostle Paul. He is sent directly by God, the Father, through God, the Son. There is no human agency involved at all. No man authorized Paul to say what He had to say, no! He gets his authority directly from God Himself.
Therefore, you better pay close attention to what Paul has to say. You better listen very carefully to his words, because they are not his words; they are God’s Words. If you want to break free to be all that God has called you to be, then you must…
LISTEN TO WHAT GOD HAS TO SAY.
Stuart Briscoe, author and long-time pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, tells about the time he traveled to Poland during the cold war. He was involved in several weeks of itinerant ministry, and one winter day his sponsors drove him in the dead of night to the middle of nowhere. Briscoe walked into a dilapidated building crammed with one hundred young people.
It was a unique opportunity, and through an interpreter he preached from John 15 on abiding in Christ. Ten minutes into his message, the lights went out. It was pitch black.
His interpreter urged him to keep talking, and so he did. Unable to see his notes or read his Bible, he continued. Then, after he had preached in the dark for twenty minutes, the lights suddenly blinked on, and what he saw startled him: everyone was on their knees, and they remained there for the rest of his message.
The next day Briscoe commented on this to one man, and the man said, “After you left, we stayed on our knees most of the night. Your teaching was new to us. We wanted to make sure we were abiding in Christ.” (Marshall Shelley, Changing Lives Through Preaching and Worship, Random House, 1995, p. 147; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s the kind of attention we must give to God’s Word. That’s the kind of attention we must give to this word here in the book of Galatians. Let’s listen on our knees as if we’ve never heard it before, and let’s listen on our knees, asking God to give us ears to hear what HE has to say to us.
In his book Ghost Soldiers, Hampton Sides tells the story of a dramatic mission during World War II. On January 28th, 1945, 121 hand-selected Army Rangers slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines in an attempt to rescue 513 American and British POW's who had spent three years in a hellish prison camp near the city of Cabanatuan.
Sides describes the first effects of liberation as chaos and fear. The prisoners were too mentally brittle to understand what was taking place. Some even scurried away from their liberators.
One particular prisoner, Bert Bank, refused to budge, even when a Ranger walked right up to him and tugged his arm.
“C'mon, we're here to save you,” he said. “Run for the gate.”
Bank still would not move. The Ranger looked into his eyes and saw they were vacant, registering nothing.
“What's wrong with you?” he asked. “Don't you want to be free?”
A smile formed on Bank's lips as the meaning of the words became clear, and he reached up to the outstretched hand of the Ranger.
The Rangers searched all the barracks for additional prisoners, then shouted, “The Americans are leaving. Is there anybody here?” Hearing no answer, they left.
But there was one more POW – Edwin Rose. Edwin had been on latrine duty and somehow missed all the shooting and explosions. When he wandered back to his barracks, he failed to notice the room was empty and lay down on his straw mat and fell asleep. Edwin had missed the liberation. But there was a reason. Edwin was deaf.
Four Americans died in the rescue; two Rangers in the firefight and two prisoners who perished for reasons of poor health. The freed prisoners marched 25 miles and boarded their ship home. With each step, their stunned disbelief gave way to soaring optimism. Even Edwin Rose made it. He finally woke up and realized liberation had come. (Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers, Doubleday, 2001; www.PreachingToday.com)
If you want to be truly free, then you too must wake up and listen! You must listen to the Lord; and #2, you must...
BELIEVE HIS WORD.
You must believe it when He says, “C’mon, I’m here to save you.” “I’m here to rescue you.” “I am setting you free!”
Oh, dear friend, trust the Lord to do what he says. Depend on Christ to set you free from your sinful habits and desires.
Galatians 1:3-5 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (ESV)
God himself is setting us free. God Himself is rescuing us from this present evil age. God Himself is saving us from bondage to our destructive habits. Notice in vs.4 it is Christ who paid the price for our freedom, not us. HE is the one who “gave Himself for our sins,” verse 4 says.
When I was serving the Lord as a pastor in Ellsworth, Kansas, I had the opportunity on several occasions to visit specific individuals who were in prison at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility. One young man was in disciplinary segregation (or solitary confinement) when I first visited him. It was a place the inmates affectionately called “the hole,” and he was there because he bucked the system. Eventually, he settled down enough to come out of “the hole,” and after several visits, I had the opportunity to lead Him to faith in Christ.
I visited him on a regular basis for about a year before he was paroled and allowed to go home to live with his mother in Kansas City. Now, in the months before his meeting with the parole board, he was very careful to be a model prisoner. He was very careful to be on his best behavior. He didn’t start out well at the prison, but he was going to make sure that he ended well. Why? Because he knew that the parole board would consider his behavior as they decided whether or not to give him parole. Their decision was based on his behavior.
That’s the way parole boards work, but that’s not the way God works. God does not base His decision to release us on our behavior. If He did, none of us would ever be released, for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23 says. God doesn’t base His decision to release us because of something WE did, no.
He bases His decision to release us because of something CHRIST did. Christ “gave Himself for our sins” verse 4 says. That is to say Christ was punished instead of us. Christ served our sentence. Christ died in our place on the cross.
John Stott says, “The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, Intervarsity, 1986)
That’s what Jesus did when He died for us on the cross, and that is the only reason God chose to set us free – not because of something WE did, but because of something CHRIST did for us. Christ paid the price for our freedom.
In fact, our freedom is not even our idea. It is GOD’S idea. Our rescue is “according to the will of our God,” verse 4 says. If it were up to us, we would remain in bondage, because we enjoy our sin too much.
The Bible says, “None is righteous, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:10-11). We aren’t even looking for the freedom God provides. Instead, God has to come looking for us.
New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof chose two Cambodian prostitutes and attempted to buy their freedom from their brothel owners. He selected young women who were there against their will, willing to tell their story, and actually wanted to leave prostitution.
The first woman, Srey Neth, was a simple transaction. For $150, Kristof left with the girl and a receipt. It was more difficult for Kristof to free the second woman, Shrey Mom. That’s because the brothel owner demanded more money. Kristof writes:
After some grumpy negotiation, the owner accepted $203 as the price for Srey Mom's freedom. But then Srey Mom told me that she had pawned her cellphone and needed $55 to get it back.
"Forget about your cellphone," Kristof said. "We've got to get out of here."
Srey Mom started crying. Kristof told her that she had to choose her cellphone or her freedom, and she ran back to her tiny room in the brothel and locked the door.
With Srey Mom sobbing in her room and refusing to be freed without her cellphone, the other prostitutes – her closest friends – began pleading with her to be reasonable.
Even the owner of the brothel begged her to “Grab this chance while you can,” but Srey Mom hysterically refused to leave.
Srey Mom only stopped crying when Kristov agreed to buy back the cellphone too. Then she asked for her pawned jewelry to be part of the deal.
Kristof reflected upon the complex emotions making the decision to leave the brothel so difficult.
I have purchased the freedom of two human beings so I can return them to their villages. But will emancipation help them? Will their families and villages accept them? Or will they, like some other girls rescued from sexual servitude, find freedom so unsettling that they slink back to slavery in the brothels? We'll see. (Nicholas Kristof, Bargaining for Freedom, http://www. nytimes.com/2004/01/21/opinion/21KRIS.html?th, 1-21-04)
Sometimes we’re like that woman. Christ has purchased our freedom, but we want to hang on to the little trinkets of this world; and we prefer the familiarity of our bondage over the unsettling prospects of freedom. That’s why God had to take the initiative to set us free, and that’s why it is “according to the will of our God,” not our will.
Jesus, God’s Son, paid the price for our freedom, not us. It was all God’s Idea, and God, the Father, Himself, does all the work. Verse 5 says, “to whom be the glory for ever and ever.” God gets the credit for our freedom, not us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by Hitler during World War II, writes to his fiancé about one of the many lessons he learned from life in prison:
“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside is not a bad picture of Advent.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Letters and Papers from Prison; in a letter to his fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer from Tegel Prison in Germany, November 21, 1943; www.PreachingToday.com)
When you are in prison, there is nothing you can do to open the door to freedom. Somebody has to open it from the outside. So it is when you are in bondage to your own sin. There is nothing you can do to open the door to freedom. Somebody, and that “somebody” is God, HE has to open the door from the outside.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
God is the one who sets you free, and it is not because of anything you have done. You have nothing to boast about when it comes to your freedom. God does all the work, giving you your freedom as a free gift.
HE sets you free to do all the good things HE designed for us to do. The very next verse says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).
This is more than just a ticket to heaven in the future. This is the way to a life of goodness and holiness today in the present. Look at Galatians 1:4 again. Christ “gave himself for our sins to deliver us (PRESENT tense) from the PRESENT evil age.” God will not only give us heaven in the future when we die. God is in the process, right now, of rescuing us from this present evil age.
GOD is the one who makes it all possible. God, the Son, paid the price for your freedom. God, the Father, had the idea, and God, the Father, is doing all the work!
All that remains for you to do is Believe. All you need to do is trust God to complete His work in us. All you need to do is live in daily dependence upon the Lord.
Stop trying to work your own way to heaven. And dear friends, stop trying to work your own way to holiness, as well. Instead, trust Christ for heaven, AND trust Christ to help you live a holy life. Trust Christ to rescue you from your present struggle with sin.
I’m sure many of you have come to the point in your life where you are trusting Christ to take you to heaven when you die. But there are some of you who are still trying to work your own way to holiness. You are still trying in your own strength to live a good life. You are still trying in your own strength to break free from the evil influences around you.
In fact, there are many believers who read their Bibles like a rule book, rather than a love letter. I remember, years ago, a believer telling me, “I hate to read the Bible anymore, because every time I do, I find something I’m supposed to do, or not supposed to do, and I can’t keep up with all the rules.”
That’s how some believers treat the Bible. Then, as if that’s not enough, they go to seminars and Bible studies, adding more rules to their list. Then they try to do everything on the list and wonder why they fail, and wonder why they’re frustrated and feel guilty all the time. Don’t live your life like that.
If you want to be truly free, then simply listen to God’s Word, and believe it when he tells you, “I am setting you free!” Listen and believe! That’s all there is to it. Listen and believe that God is setting you free! Listen and believe that God is right now in the process of rescuing you from this present evil age.
The silkworm makes an amazing journey to becoming a moth. At one point in the journey, the worm spins about itself a remarkable cocoon. The little sack is composed of 400 to 800 yards of silk fiber which seals it from the inside as it waits for metamorphosis. When that happens, the adult moth will break the cocoon, tearing apart the fine silk cords that bind it, and fly free.
But the silkworm farmer, interested only in harvesting the silk, does not allow most of these worms to become adults. At a key point in the cycle, he steams the cocoons to keep the moths inside from maturing. That way they don’t break the fine threads that bind them and ruin the silk.
That’s not what following Jesus is all about. He does not want to keep you trapped in a cocoon made up of the fine silk threads of man-made rules and regulations, no. Jesus is in the business of teaching people how to break free!
To be sure, that takes a whole lot more time and trouble than just letting people crawl around in their own cocoons. Or as Chuck Swindoll put it, “A room full of moths is certainly a bigger challenge than a box full of worms.” (Swindol, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life, p.242)
Are you up to the challenge? Am I? If we are, then let’s trust God to do what He said. Let’s trust God to set us free so we can soar like we’ve never done before.
