When we fail to recognize the bondage we are living in, we will never be able to break free in the Spirit and accomplish what we could through and for Jesus Christ. We are living in the times of bound generations. This is something I could talk about in late January after the rush of fulfilling New Years resolutions wear off and those who made such pledges fall back into the patterns to which they have been living life. It is something to which I could address following the season of Lent, where people give up something for a month, struggling, marking the day when Lent ends so they can resume with that one thing which has control over them. I can talk about it today because in this room there are people who have been struggling in bondage, not enjoying the freedom the Holy Spirit of God brings when they relinquish control and allow God to be God and Lord of their life.
I’m talking to Christians, people who believe Jesus is the Son of God, who have at one point in their life repented and asked Christ to be Lord, yet like New Years resolutions, like Lent pledges, they find themselves once again bound in sin and desire. It is time to break free!
I want you to focus on that one thing you know you do which is unpleasing to God, that one thing that has control of your life because we are going to seek a breaking of the bondage which has held you captive far too long, and a release of the Holy Spirit in your life so you can know the freedom, true freedom Christ brings. What I want you to do is to begin right now to face the enemy of your soul so you can be delivered from the darkness and set free in the marvelous Light of Jesus Christ. Are you ready to do something about your bondage; are you ready to be set free?
Lets look at Matthew 12:43. When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Why does the evil spirit leave. Certainly not because it has nothing else to do, an evil spirit will work hard to possess a person, to keep a person tied in the bondage of sin, unable to find relief. The evil spirit has left because the person has found relief from the torment, through prayer, through repentance, through genuine deliverance. The person has found faith to believe and has been delivered from sin and bondage. Can you remember the freedom you experienced when you let go of sin in your life, when you no longer were held captive to whatever vice it was which seemed to squeeze you daily into conformance with its plans, you than experienced the freedom of deliverance and the world took on a new, brighter look. Remember?
Now let me read verse 44, Then it says, `I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and clean.
The evil spirit, the vice, the sin, the destruction comes knocking and you open the door and inside, a home empty, swept and clean. The operative word is empty. There has been nothing to fill the house, no change made, just empty space. You might have temporarily gotten rid of that hurt, habit or hang-up, but you have not replaced it with anything else, and the evil spirit comes back and say I am looking to rent that unoccupied space and instead of closing the door, you have a welcome back party. You cannot break free if you do not choose to live free.
That one main thing I asked you to think about, you have tried before to jettison it but it came back, right? Can you see how when it left you left the door open for its return? God wants to bring a permanent deliverance into your life, and He wants to do it today, do you have faith to believe in His Word?
Before we get to genuine deliverance from God, we need to note the next verse, it is not getting better. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation."
You life becomes an open house and you are no longer picking the tenants, someone else is orchestrating that selection. And unless you take control, that control starting with your mind because in the mind you have sown a seed which has been watered and allowed to germinate and then moved into seeing temptation, responding to temptation and falling into sin, unless you take control you will have a life overgrown with weeds and the life you could have had will be choked out by the bondage of sin which leads to death, a separation from God. You need to exercise the spiritual authority God has given you to take a stand, even if it is not the politically correct thing to do.
John 10:10 says the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy. That’s his plan, and he uses evil spirits around the world, fallen angels from heaven who have no place other than this earth now to roam, to do his disruptive deeds.
Right now, your mind is telling you that you can handle the temptation. If that is the case, why then, when I asked you to think of something did something come to mind you have been struggling against? Why did your New Years resolution fizzle within the first month, why did you return to that problem you are trying to get rid of? And why, each time you have tried to escape, did the escape route seem harder to find? Because it becomes open house and the devil is not going to give up on you.
Mark 3:27 says, You can’t enter a strong man’s house and rob him without first tying him up. Only then can his house be robbed![3:27 Or [One cannot rob Satan’s kingdom without first tying him up. Only then can his demons be cast out.] ]
You want to be free from bondage, you need to exercise your spiritual authority and tie up the strongman, you have to face your enemy, the enemy of fear, anger, lust, or whatever that sin may be and tie it up in the power of Christ. You need to be renewed in your mind.
Last week I spoke of how we are called to battle, there is the sound of distant thunder on the horizon and now is the time to do battle for the enemy is not sleeping and the church should not be found asleep in these critical days. Now only is there a call to battle, but the Lord God has provided us with the power of victory, His Holy Spirit. In Luke 10:19, Jesus informs us of this: And I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you.
Some cult groups have taken this to extreme by holding deadly snakes and if they are bit and die saying they had sin against them. Christ did not give us this authority so we could use it to test the genuine faith of believers. He gave authority so we could have victory as we go through life against those things, which would seek to kill us, the lust, fear, anger and other dangers to a person’s life and faith.
Knowing we have this authority in Christ, why do we have so many bound up believers today? Why is the divorce rate among Christ higher today than that of those who do not follow Christ?
A Barna Survey of Christians states only 16% are involved in some form of discipleship, 16%. Is it any wonder so many believers are trapped in bondage, unable to be free to move in the Spirit, because they don’t understand the authority they have in Christ Jesus, they have never taken the time to discover, they have never had the interest to learn.
Psalm 97:10 tell us to hate evil, you who love the Lord. I think today people don’t hate evil as much as they try to dance with it but like someone who plays with fire, eventually they get burned. We don’t call sin, sin. We have renamed the enemy of God to something more socially acceptable and in the process have become bound to the things of this world. Does anyone want to be set free?
John said in 1 John 3:8 when people keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the Devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy these works of the Devil.
We are to be Christlike, that means we are to be a mirror of Christ. The longer we are Christians the more mature we should become, the more we should embrace the teachings of Christ and respond with Christlike proficiency. Why is this not happening? 1 John 3:8 said Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and 2,000 years later, when the church should be about the continued task of destroying those works that still remain, has found itself bound in so much tradition and misinterpretation we are not binding the devil but the devil has been binding us. It is time to break free!!! You cannot destroy the works of the devil until you pursue the devil and his evil spirits, which have been allowed too long to run amuck. You cannot bind the devil until you hate evil, hating it so much so it sickens you to see it being practiced and your heart breaks until you set in and set the captives free. Are there any freedom fighters in the house?
Jesus knew of the human experience, he knew we fall down and he provided a way for us to be lifted back up through His Spirit, but when Jesus saw evil, when He saw the works of the devil in action, it so angered him that he moved with an aggressive manner to cast down those strongholds that held people in its grip. That’s right, God got angry at sin and continues to be angered at its progression. It is time to break free.
We are called to disciple nations in Matthew 28:19. We cannot sit back and say, “Well, I am praying.” Prayer is good, prayer is the first line of our action, but we need also to step out and battle the enemy of our soul, we must bind the strongman, we must speak words of deliverance not just for our own lives but the lives of the nations, our very existence depends on our action, depends on our breaking free in the Spirit.
God wants to bring deliverance, He is waiting in the wings for men and women who are so tired of what they see they are willing to rise up and fight the good fight of faith, who will stand for Godliness when everything around them seems to be headed in the opposite direction. And Jesus said in the midst of the battle he would send His Spirit so we would not be left to ourselves but have the power to bring deliverance. We have all the weapons necessary to win, we have all the weapons in our arsenal to bring victory, to set the devil on the run, we just need to be bathed in prayer, wearing the armor of God, empowered by His Spirit and living a set free life that He brings. It is time to break free in the Spirit.
ALTAR
