The Challenges of Freedom
Jesus in Isaiah, part 2
Wildwind Community Church
12/17/06
David Flowers
With the threat of global terrorism, we are focused on freedom in ways we never were before. There’s constant bantering in the media and among politicians about the issue of freedom vs. the issue of national security. President Bush has defended his wiretaps in those terms, and also until recently the idea of holding people at Guantanamo indefinitely without trial. We’ll just have to give up a little freedom if we want to live securely. I won’t go on to make political commentary, but will simply point out that this issue concerning basic freedom is huge in our society right now.
All the focus on personal rights in our society really concerns the question, “What is the limit to freedom?” Our most cherished constitutional amendment concerns the right to free speech – to not have someone looking over our shoulder telling us what to think, what to say, and how to say it. We value that freedom. The issues over whether we should have Christmas decorations in public places are really issues of freedom. Some people believe they should be free to enjoy Christmas decorations in public places. Others believe they should be free FROM those decorations and what they symbolize. What does it mean to live in a country of 300 million people, each wanting to be free, but each defining and understanding freedom in different ways?
Can I just drop something kind of heavy on you right now and then we’ll spend the rest of our time here today looking more closely at it? Human beings will never find freedom until they find freedom in God. There is no freedom apart from God. Although many people believe the key to freedom is shaking off God, and organized religion, and spiritual authority of every kind whether embodied by a church or a pastor or priest, the fact is that human beings will never find freedom until they find freedom in God.
We’re doing a series this month on prophecies about Jesus that were written by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah lived 700 years before Jesus was born, yet described in striking detail the circumstances of his birth, his life purpose, and his death. Today I want to look at the 61st chapter of the book of Isaiah, the first three verses. Here is the prophet Isaiah, writing 700 years before Jesus.
Isaiah 61:1-3 (NIV)
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.
This passage speaks of freedom. When you are crushed by poverty and you get some good news, that’s freedom. When you are brokenhearted and someone comes along and helps you deal with your pain, binds up your wounds, that is freedom. When you are a captive and someone sets you free, obviously that is freedom. When you are in a dank dungeon and someone releases you into the open air and warm sunshine, that is freedom. When you are mourning and someone brings you comfort, that is freedom. When your life is on the ash-heap and someone brings beauty into it, that is freedom. When you are mourning and someone is able to make you glad – even for a second – that is freedom. When you are in despair and someone is able to help you give thanks and praise God, that is freedom.
Isaiah predicted that Jesus would be a bringer of freedom, that his mission on earth would be a freedom-bringing mission. I hope you return next week because I want to talk to you about the specific ways that Christ brings freedom. Isaiah wrote about that in chapter 42, and you’ll be astonished at how Christ does this in the human heart. But today I want to focus on the freedom itself, because we live in a society where freedom is a central topic because it is threatened. Anyway, the prophecy was that Jesus would bring freedom to people and I want to point something out. We would not do this passage justice if we simply read it as being about physical freedom. Someone in jail has those bars slide open and walks out physically free. Yes, that’s a kind of freedom, but there’s a reason why it matters whether we spend our lives behind bars in a smelly cell or out in the open air. It matters because something in our soul, something in our spirit longs for freedom. Captivity goes against the grain of the human spirit. We were not made to live caged up. Oswald Chambers said “God who made the birds never made birdcages; it is men who make birdcages, and after a while we become cramped and can do nothing but chirp and stand on one leg. When we get out into God’s great free life, we discover that that is the way God meant us to live…”
You were not meant to live as a slave. Not to a country, a king, a president, a credit card, an addiction, or to any of your own wishes, whims, and desires. You were not meant to live as a slave. You were created to be free. Why does physical freedom even matter? Because the person who cages a body also cages a soul. We think little about getting a hamster and keeping it in a cage, why? Because it’s a hamster. Precious though it may be to us, it does not dream and desire and hope and wish and pray and sing and despair and dread and dance. It does not smell a certain smell and find itself carried away by powerful memories of childhood, whether positive or negative. It does not hear a certain song and declare, “Honey, that’s OUR song.” It does not pin so many of its hopes for life on the success of its offspring like we do with our children. Those are all activities of the soul. That’s what is so awful about the lack of freedom. Your soul was made to be free. But it just so happens that for right now, your body and your soul are inseparable. You can’t be in one place and send your soul over to be somewhere else. So if your body is captive, your soul is captive as well. Your body is in chains, but so are your hopes and wishes and desires for your life and family, as every day in captivity gives way to the next. That’s why captivity in any form spells tragedy for a human being. That’s why when we think of all the evils that have ever been perpetrated on the earth, the institution of slavery is among the worst. We react to it with appropriate disgust and shock and horror.
Now this prophecy we read about Jesus is that he would come to bring freedom. 700 years later when Jesus stood in a synagogue to preach his first sermon, he had someone hand him the scroll, and he read those exact words from Isaiah. You can find that recorded in Luke 4. He knew they spoke about him, about his mission on earth, and he claimed them for himself. Jesus was a freedom-bringer. But there were and are two challenges confronting him as a freedom-bringer, and they are still challenges today. I want to talk to you about those challenges by telling you a true story.
There was a Glasgow professor named MacDonald who, along with a Scottish chaplain, had bailed out of an airplane behind German lines. They were put in a prison camp. A high wire fence separated the Americans from the British, and the Germans made it next to impossible for the two sides to communicate. MacDonald was put in the American barracks and the chaplain was housed with the Brits.
Every day the two men would meet at the fence and exchange a greeting. Unknown to the guards, the Americans had a little homemade radio and were able to get news from the outside, something more precious than food in a prison camp. Every day, MacDonald would take a headline or two to the fence and share it with the chaplain in the ancient Gaelic language, indecipherable to the Germans.
One day, news came over the little radio that the German High Command had surrendered and the war was over. MacDonald took the news to his friend, then stood and watched him disappear into the British barracks. A moment later, a roar of celebration came from the barracks.
Life in that camp was transformed. Men walked around singing and shouting, waving at the guards, even laughing at the dogs. When the German guards finally heard the news three nights later, they fled into the dark, leaving the gates unlocked. The next morning, Brits and Americans walked out as free men. Yet they had truly been set free three days earlier by the news that the war was over.
These men had received information that they were free, and even as they continued to live under oppression, their spirits and souls had been set free by this news as soon as they heard it. They were free, only their captors didn’t know it. All the same, the news brought great joy to men who no longer had to think of themselves as captives.
As long as the guards didn’t know the prisoners were free, they continued acting like guards, didn’t they? When they found out the men were actually free, they slunk out into the dark, no longer acting like guards, but like cowards. See, our actions are informed by our attitudes. Guards acted like guards even when their prisoners were free men. Prisoners acted like free men even while they were technically still in prison. Isn’t that interesting? Do you suppose it would be possible that we could have a similar situation, only instead that someone could be a captive and not know it? I mean, would it be possible for men and women who are free to nonetheless act like captives? It all depends on your attitude, doesn’t it, and the information you have access to.
A few years ago a movie was made about this very thing – about a society of people who thought they were free but were actually slaves. It was called The Matrix. If you saw that movie, you’ll recall that the human race was kept alive in little plastic tubes, with cords running into their brains feeding them experiences, memories, and sensations to make them think they were free and living in the world when in fact they were always in those little tubes. It’s slavery of the worst kind, because it keeps people from knowing they are slaves. If a slave knows he’s a slave, he will attempt to escape and you’ll have all kinds of trouble trying to contain him. But if you can invent a way for him to never know he is a slave, then it will save you all the trouble in the world. A slave who does not know he’s a slave will never seek any other alternative.
Some of you have seen Westerns where a cowboy will get off his horse and drape the reigns over a post but not tie them in any way, yet somehow this keeps the horse from getting away. Why? Because attitude determines action. All it takes is tying a horse to the post several times so they can’t get away. They pull on those reigns and that in turn pulls the bridle in their mouth, causing pain. They learn it’s futile to do this so they stop trying. Once they get to this point, they no longer need to be tied to the post – they’ll never even try to get away. They are free, but they don’t know it. This means they are slaves.
And this brings us to the first challenge that constantly confronts God when it comes to bringing freedom to you and me. Somehow we have to be made to understand that we are captives, even though we don’t always feel like it. Yes, Jesus came to bring freedom, but what good is freedom when it is given to people who think they are already free? What good is the freedom Christ offers in a society that says freedom is about the right to sleep with any consenting adult, or to plow your own way through life, or to shake off the church and spiritual authority of every kind, or to marry whatever sex you want to marry, etc., etc.? We have defined freedom so that we cannot see our captivity. We put freedom in terms of what I can and cannot do in public. We think of it in terms of what I will go to jail for and what I will not go to jail for. We see freedom as being something that can be compromised or taken away by terrorists and that the government has to protect. But all of these things, all these ways we see freedom – they are just shadows of real freedom. We only have these ideas of freedom because God created us to be free. Yet often we seek freedom not in God, not in living life the way God created us to live, but in government, in politics, in the expression of individual rights. And I’m not saying that these things are necessarily bad things, but we miss something so essential about freedom when we reduce it to those terms. We are like the child who asks his father what sex is like. Dad says, “Son, sex is the most incredible thing in the world. It blows your mind physically, and creates a bond spiritually and emotionally that you can’t begin to imagine. Now’s not the time for you, but one day you’re gonna love it.” The son replies, “Well, is it as good as a candy bar?” Dad says, “It’s so far beyond a candy bar that I don’t even have words for it.” The son says, “Nahh. I’ll just take my candy bar.”
Isaiah predicted a freedom-bringer, someone who would offer us freedom we could never have even imagined because we didn’t even realize how badly we needed it. Jesus came and said, “That’s me. I’m the freedom-bringer. I will teach you to live life on a new level – a level that surpasses the old one in ways you have to experience in order to understand.” And we hear this in church, about giving our lives to Christ, and what do we say? “Well, can I be a Christian and still cuss? Can I be a Christian and still drink? Can I be a Christian and still party? In other words, is it as good as this candy bar I’ve got here? And how could we respond differently? We simply have no idea of the life that is ahead of us.
And that’s the challenge that confronts God. God offers us freedom, but we do not see our need for it. God offers us life on a new level, but despite the emptiness and frustration we often feel, we cling to what’s familiar and decide we’re perfectly fine with the life we already have.
I want to move toward close with the other challenge that confronts God. A point may come where you say, “Okay God – I’ll take this new life you have for me. I’m willing to take your beauty for my ashes, your gladness for my mourning, your hope for my despair.” But soon the situation becomes exactly opposite of what it was. Once upon a time we were slaves who did not realize we were slaves. But then we often turn around and become free people who do not realize we are free. How does this happen? It happens because we have grown accustomed to living life in certain ways and having certain attitudes. Our old attitudes bog us down and make us think that what happened to us spiritually when we gave our lives completely to God was just an illusion. This has always been a problem. The Apostle Paul say this tendency in his church in 60 or 70 A.D.
Galatians 5:13 (NCV)
13 My brothers and sisters, God called you to be free, but do not use your freedom as an excuse to do what pleases your sinful self. Serve each other with love.
In other words, live a truly free life. Don’t get sucked back into your pre-freedom ideas about what freedom is.
Romans 8:12-15 (NLT)
12 So, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature urges you to do.
13 For if you keep on following it, you will perish. But if through the power of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live.
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
15 So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God’s very own children, adopted into his family—calling him "Father, dear Father."
As soon as we turn our lives over to God and become part of his family, we face the temptation to continue living our old life of slavery to sin. So it is then that we need the support and help of Christian brothers and sisters more than ever before – to remind us of the life we have subscribed to, of the very real change that has actually taken place inside of us, and of the need for us to continue to choose beauty for ashes, hope for despair, to not give in and return to a way of life that it may have taken God months or years to convince us was enslaving us in the first place!
Isaiah predicted that a freedom-bringer would come. 700 years later, he did. At Christmastime we celebrate the birth of one who came to bring freedom. But how do you bring freedom to someone who doesn’t realize they need it?
John 9:39-41 (MSG)
39 Jesus then said, "I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind."
40 Some Pharisees overheard him and said, "Does that mean you’re calling us blind?"
41 Jesus said, "If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.
If we hope to ever receive the freedom Christ came to bring, we must start with an attempt to see our need for it. If we want to learn to see clearly, we must acknowledge our current blindness. If we will ever be able to step into light, it will only be after the sometimes long struggle to step out of the dark.
