The Grave of the Slave
How To Be Truly Free
9/29/04
I. Introduction
One episode of the old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV show was about a pretty woman serving a life sentence in prison. Angry and resentful about her situation, she had decided that she would rather die than to live another year in prison.
Over the years she had become good friends with one of the prison caretakers. His job, among others, was to bury those prisoners who died in a graveyard just outside the prison walls. When a prisoner died, the caretaker rang a bell, which was heard by everyone. The caretaker then got the body and put it in a casket. Next, he entered his office to fill out the death certificate before returning to the casket to nail the lid shut. Finally, he put the casket on a wagon to take it to the graveyard and bury it.
Knowing this routine, the woman devised an escape plan and shared it with the caretaker. The next time the bell rang, the woman would leave her cell and sneak into the dark room where the coffins were kept. She would slip into the coffin with the dead body while the caretaker was filling out the death certificate. When the caretaker returned, he would nail the lid shut and take the coffin outside the prison with the woman in the coffin along with the dead body. He would then bury the coffin. The woman knew that there would be enough air for her to breathe until later in the evening when the caretaker would return to the graveyard under the cover of darkness, dig up the coffin, open it, and set her free.
The caretaker was reluctant to go along with this plan, but since he and the woman had become good friends over the years, he agreed to do it.
The woman waited several weeks before someone in the prison died. She was asleep in her cell when she heard the death bell ring. She got up, picked the lock of her cell, and slowly walked down the hallway. She was nearly caught a couple of times. Her heart was beating fast. She opened the door to the darkened room where the coffins were kept. Quietly in the dark, she found the coffin that contained the dead body, carefully climbed into the coffin, and pulled the lid shut to wait for the caretaker to come and nail the lid shut.
Soon she heard footsteps and the pounding of the hammer and nails. Even though she was very uncomfortable in the coffin with the dead body, she knew that with each nail she was one step closer to freedom. The coffin was lifted onto the wagon and taken outside to the graveyard. She could feel the coffin being lowered into the ground. She didn’t make a sound as the coffin hit the bottom of the grave with a thud. Finally she heard the dirt dropping onto the top of the wooden coffin, and she knew that it was only a matter of time until she would be free at last.
After several minutes of absolute silence, she began to laugh. She was free! She was free!
Feeling curious, she decided to light a match to find out the identity of the dead prisoner beside her. To her horror, she discovered that she was lying next to the dead caretaker.
The final scene faded to black as you heard the woman screaming.
Tonight’s message is called “The Grave of the Slave: How to be Truly Free.”
So, what is a slave? How do we define a slave? What test do we use to tell if someone is a slave? What makes them different from free people?
Free people have control of their own lives and choices. Slaves are controlled by someone or something else. And you can be a slave to any number of things. You can be a slave to your parents. You can be a slave to your teachers. You can be a slave to video games. You can be a slave to fast food. You can be a slave to sin. And what I mean is that you do the things that you know in your heart you shouldn’t do. But you do them without thinking, almost impulsively, or you do them after careful thought and you just choose to do the wrong thing because you like how it feels. Either way, the action is controlling you and you are a slave.
II. The Power of Bad Habits
1 Corinthians 6:12 (NLT) “You may say, ‘I am allowed to do anything.’ But I reply, ‘Not everything is good for you.’ And even though ‘I am allowed to do anything,’ I must not become a slave to anything.”
Call up a muscular/athletic volunteer.
Wrap an ordinary piece of sewing thread once around his torso and arms and tie it. Ask him to break free from the thread.
Wrap a piece of thread around him three times. Ask him to break free.
Wrap another piece of thread around him 12 times. Ask him to break free.
This illustration can serve as a good warning to us about the power of bad habits. Bad habits are formed by repetition. Like a body wrapped in a single thread, negative or destructive behaviors are not that difficult to stop. Yet, just as multiple threads are increasingly more difficult to break free of, as behaviors are repeated, bad habits become more and more difficult to stop – and have more and more power over our desires and choices.
Don’t be misled that a negative or destructive behavior isn’t a big deal. If you aren’t careful, that bad habit just may wrap you up in such a way that makes it very difficult to break free.
What are some bad habits that can be destructive?
Now, I’m not talking about habits like picking your nose or biting your fingernails. While they may be embarrassing, they’re not necessarily destructive.
What about talking back to your parents, smoking cigarettes or other addictive material, drinking alcohol, sexual addictions like pornography or others, telling lies, or losing your temper. There are certainly other habits that can destroy your life, but those are just a few examples of habits you don’t want to form and if you’ve taken steps in that direction, it’s extremely important that you do a 180 and walk away. If it’s a habit that’s already been formed, we’ll talk about the power of God that’s available to set you free in just a moment.
III. Killing the Slave
Ephesians 4:22 MSG “22Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything--and I do mean everything--connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life--a God-fashioned life,”
Colossians 3:5 “5And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God.”
The first step in becoming truly free is killing the slave, killing off everything connected with the old man or the flesh. Life is a battle between your flesh and your spirit man. Once you kill off the flesh man, only the part of you that does right, the spirit man, will be in control. You gotta show your flesh who is boss. That part of you that does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, is a slave to its actions. It has no control over what it does. But once you realize that this is what’s happening, you can’t put an end to it.
Romans 8:37 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
If we’re more than conquerors, then the slave stands no chance against us. So, how do we kill the slave?
First, we decide. It’s a determination that once you’re born again, the slave’s gotta go.
Second, we declare. That declaration is the thing that’s going to put you over. It’s you saying, “Flesh, you’re not my master. The real me is in charge and you have no say over what I do or don’t do.” And it’s not just a one-time thing. You have to continually make a declaration every time the flesh rears its ugly head.
Third, we deny. Anytime the flesh wants something it’s not supposed to have, we deny it. We simply act on what we said.
IV. Know That You’re Free
Romans 6:14 NKJV “14For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
You see, the reality is that we’ve already been set free. When Christ paid the price for our redemption, we were set free from sin. Well, why do I have to do the 3 D’s? Because your flesh doesn’t know that you’re free. You know that you’re free, but your flesh doesn’t. So you remind him.
Romans 6:17-22 MSG “17But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, 18one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
19I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing--not caring about others, not caring about God--the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
20As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. 21But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
22But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way!”
You know you’re free at last, and with freedom comes life. The Word says you’re free, so you’re free.
Galatians 5:1 “1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
You see, if we’re not carefully watching our lives, we can slip right back into that wrong mindset and becomes slaves again. Have you ever experienced that? I have.
You’re going along living life to the fullest and then one day, you slip up. Well, you realize that you slipped up and you make a correction. You say, “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to do that. God forgive me.” Then, the next week you slip up and do the same thing you did last week. And before long, you’re back into that habit. How did it happen? Well, you didn’t stand firm. You didn’t set yourself up to succeed.
I remember going through times where I would habitually make the same mistakes and I would think, why can’t I beat this? Why do I do the things I don’t want to do? And then I saw that Paul made the same statement in Romans 7. Check it out and realize you’re not alone.
Romans 7:14-25 “14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I 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. 19For 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. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
Romans 8:1-2 “1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
Paul goes through this whole spiel about doing the wrong things to the point where he’s almost beating himself up because of bad choices. “What a wretched man I am!” I’ve been there, doing the wrong thing and so desperately wanting to do right. So, what’s the answer? Paul concluded that Jesus had set him free, that this internal battle had already been won through the work Christ did on Calvary. But how do you continue to walk in this freedom?
A friend of mine once told me when I was going through this rough time, “Don’t put yourself in that situation where there’s an opportunity to do wrong.” And basically what he was saying was that sheer willpower doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make the right decision every time, but when you’re not in the situation to make the wrong decision, you will make the right decision every time with 100 % certainty.
Think about it. If you go to that party where there’s going to be alcohol, drugs, and sex, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have the willpower to say “no” when the pressure kicks in. But if you don’t go to that party, you won’t even have the opportunity to do wrong. Now, I’m not saying that you should live a sheltered life and never go where sin is happening. I’m saying that if you’re particularly susceptible to a certain thing, stay away from it. Otherwise, you’ll be depending on your willpower, a power that we’ve all seen fail at times.
So, in closing, what are the keys to being truly free?
1. Kill the slave- Decide, Declare, Deny
2. Know that You’re Free
3. Avoid situations in which there’s an opportunity to do wrong
Let’s pray.
