Will you open your Bibles again to Acts
chapter 16?
The Apostle Paul, probably more than any other
man of his generation, or possibly any since,
knew the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the
fullness of Christ, was manifest in and through
his life in a measure that all of
us should long for.
But I think it's entirely right that we
should understand that our Lord Jesus said, I
did not come to send peace, I came
to send the earth.
And the world, still no friend of grace,
can only make friends with religion when religion
has lost its friendship with God and its
measure of blessing from God.
It's imperative that we recognize this.
The closer you walk with the Lord and
the nearer you come to him, and the
nearer you approach to the place of union
with Christ that's the norm held forth in
the Word, the more out of step you're
going to be with the world principles and
the world system.
As you know, Paul and those with him
were being disturbed by the woman possessing an
evil spirit of divination following them everywhere they
went and commending them.
It's usually a very strange thing when the
demons commend the servants of God.
There's always an ulterior motive in it.
And finally, after enduring it and trusting that
it would go away and undoubtedly praying about
the matter, there was no other means of
dealing with it but the means that Paul
employed.
He simply turned and addressed the spirit possessing
the young woman, commanding that evil spirit to
leave her body and come out of her.
And in so doing, she lost her value
to those that had been profiting from her
possession.
And as soon as this happened, then when
they realized their hope of gain was gone,
they caught Paul and began to persecute him
and make trouble for him.
As long as religion contributes to profit, it's
generally acceptable even to the world.
But when it comes to the place that
obedience to Christ and submission to Christ is
going to cost money, then that's where the
world sort of parts company with the church.
And this is the responsibility of the church
to point up always the complete otherness of
the gospel, the altogether opposed spirit of Christianity
and the world.
It's your responsibility not to oppose the world
as such by fighting it, for this gains
little for you or for God, but it's
your responsibility to so live in Christ and
so to allow Christ to live in you,
that you become that bright and shining light
that he's intended you to be, that witness
and testimony he's wanted you to be.
But remember that this is costly, just as
a candle can only give light by consuming
itself, so you can only be a rebuke
and a testimony to your generation at cost,
great personal cost to yourself.
This is the first thing that you must
understand about the text before us.
Paul had a ministry.
You want a ministry.
Paul had a testimony.
You desire a testimony.
I'm saying that it's costly.
It's extremely costly.
Now, Paul got into trouble, great trouble, with
the businessmen of his day and generation, not
that all of them were affected, but they
recognized that if what he was preaching continued
and spread, they all would be affected, and
so they thought they'd better deal with this
while it was small enough to stomp out
without too great a problem.
And thus, Paul found himself before the magistrates,
the zeal of the magistrates was on the
side of the taxpayers and the supporters, political
supporters, and he found himself beaten with Silas,
and not only imprisoned, but imprisoned in the
deepest part of it, the deepest dungeon, and
not only in the dungeon but in stocks.
They were going to take great care of
this man.
So with a bleeding back, bruised body, he
and his partner were there with their hands,
their neck, and their feet through stocks.
They were fastened in such a way that
they couldn't get out, door after door after
door, and finally in the stocks in the
innermost part of the prison.
And yet, Paul was the freest man there.
He was probably the only man in the
prison that was free, because you see, bondage
does not consist of chains, nor bars, nor
stocks, nor locks.
He was freed from many things that had
been the source of bondage in the past.
For instance, in the many years of his
life, this man, Saul of Tarsus, had lived
in complete subservience to teachers who had tradition
without truth.
And so, he was twisted according to their
patterns, bound according to their concepts and their
prejudices, and though living in a religious context,
he was quite unprepared to recognize the Messiah
when he came.
And this put great bondage around his mind
and his spirit.
Perhaps we are failed to recognize that this
was far more real than the stocks and
the bars that surrounded him, the stone that
surrounded him at present.
I am sure as Paul would sit there
with his back aching, his bones just so
sore, his flesh still bleeding, that he would
look back and say, this isn't anything in
comparison to what I had when I thought
I was free.
For the traditions of the elders had woven
around him a web through which he could
not break.
The prejudices, the attitudes that had been the
products of his teachers working without truth, had
probably put him in prison.
Then of course, the other thing that was
so, made such a prison for him in
other days, was the fact that he had
ritual without reality.
He was going through the motions of religion
without knowing the God whom he was desirous
of worshiping.
And whenever a person has religious ritual without
reality, he's in prison, whether he has bricks
and stones and bars and chains or stocks
or not, because he's in prison to the
repetition of activity without reality.
And so, he could sit there and know
Christ in his heart, and he could look
back and say, oh, these stones, these bars,
these chains, this wood is nothing in comparison
to what once I had to endure.
For then I had ritual without the reality
of God's presence.
Then of course, the other thing was that
Paul had been freed from a very terrifying
type of slavery, service without satisfaction.
He'd gone through innumerable pursuits of righteousness.
He had fasted two days every week.
He had tithed all he possessed.
He had prayed five times a day.
He had been indefatigable in labors in behalf
of the Sanhedrin, which he was one of
the most youthful members.
He had submitted himself to the investigating committee
that was to try and exterminate the church.
No effort too great for this man, and
yet all of it was a prison, because
he had to compete with himself, and this
year's task had to be greater than last
year's, and this year's reputation had to be
greater than last year's reputation.
So he had service without any satisfaction, and
it became a prison to him.
And then of course, the other thing was
he served lords who ruled his life without
love.
For it wasn't God who ruled him, it
was the opinions of his elders.
It was those that could promote him.
It was these that had the power to
send him off into some place of exile
and religious activity.
It were these that had the ability to
deprive him of the things he'd come to
count upon for his satisfaction.
And so he had to serve lords who
ruled without love.
And oh, what a terrible thing it is
to be in that kind of bondage and
that kind of servitude, where you're serving opinions
of men who are capricious and whimsical.
Today you're the fine fellow, fair-haired fellow
with the great prospects, and tomorrow because of
some little whim or turn, you're just nobody.
And so here was the bondage into which
he'd come.
He was in a religious hierarchy, a structure,
where he had not so much as to
say, does this please God, but what will
Rabbi Ben Israel think of it?
And is this going to please the committee
that has the appointments at the end of
the year?
And so here he had been in a
terrifying kind of bondage.
Now, he's set free.
He's set free.
Oh yes, you say, free?
Doesn't look like he's free to me.
Look at those boulders there that make up
the walls of that dungeon.
Look at those chains that have been forged
by an honest craftsman.
Look at those stops that have been made
of the hardest oak and sealed with bolts
that only a wrench can loosen.
You say, he's free?
Yes, he's free.
Because you see, all they could do with
him was to take a little twisted by
this time, because it's been badly beaten and
left under the hail of stones, and emaciated
and warped body that's like a suit is
getting threadbare as the years pass, and Paul
counts to be of relatively little importance anyway.
And so they take that body that they've
beaten and bruised and twisted and hammered on,
and they put it inside of some chains.
He soars, just leaves the place, lets his
body sit there, and nature take its course.
The healing life of Christ begin to restore
where there'd been nothing but aches and bruises,
and they think they've imprisoned Paul.
No, he's not in prison.
He's the freest man there.
Because you see, while he's sitting in a
dungeon, he's actually seated in the heavenlies.
Because he's been told elsewhere that he's blessed
with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.
So they take his body and fasten it
in some wood and chain it to the
ground, and they say, we'll hold him.
No, you can't hold him.
Because one day he saw that when Jesus
Christ died on a cross, he died.
And ever since then, he's not been in
bondage to his body any longer.
He's not been under the tyranny of his
flesh any longer.
He's not been under the demands of his
appetites any longer.
He's able to use it, but he can't
be controlled by it.
And so when they bruise it, it's bruised,
that's all right, they bruise my body.
But I'm not my body, said he.
I am a person that Jesus Christ loved
from before the foundation of the world, loved
so much that he took me with him
to the cross.
And the day he died, I was died,
and longer I need not be in tyranny
to people, and to positions, and to places,
and traditions, and to rituals.
I've been set free, for he that is
dead is freed.
And this man has already gone down with
Christ through the cross into the grave, and
he knows union with Christ.
Now, the jailer didn't know that, said, oh,
we're going to hold him.
They couldn't hold him.
He'd already been through death.
Actually, I think he'd been through death, spiritual
and physical, but that's a personal opinion.
I think when they left him outside the
city there, under a hail of stones, that
he was dead.
And if he went in that to the
third heaven, and God saw him, let him
see things too wonderful to honor, then brought
him back and healed him instantly, and sent
him back on his way, so he'd have
a little foretaste, for no man had suffered
as had Paul.
But that's my opinion, you needn't share it.
But at any rate, he'd been certainly crucified
with Christ.
He knows what it is to be freed
from the tyranny of the things of time
and sense, and so now they've bruised him,
they've whipped him, the flesh is torn from
his back, and they've put him in a
dungeon, and they've locked him in stocks, and
they said, oh, we've certainly fixed him.
They haven't fixed him at all.
Because if right then they'd known what happened,
what was happening, they'd see that he was
seated in the heavenlies in Christ, enjoying all
the victory of Calvary.
He was being blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenlies.
He was enjoying a foretaste of heaven.
Angels were ministering to him in psalms and
songs and spiritual songs, and he was seeing
them as in the presence of the Lord
he loved, cover their faces and their feet
and cry, holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts.
You can't imprison a man like that.
You can't imprison a man who doesn't want
a position.
If he had wanted a position, then you
could have imprisoned him.
If he'd have wanted a possession, you could
have imprisoned him.
If he'd have wanted something, you could have
imprisoned him.
But this man doesn't want anything.
He said, for me to die is gain.
You can't hurt me.
And for me to live is Christ.
And so I'm going to live every day
in the presence of Christ, and you can
bruise me and put me here, but you
can't keep me here.
He's the freest man there.
Now I'd like to have you see the
man who's the most bound.
You know who he is?
He's the jailer.
Not the other prisoners, the jailer.
I'll tell you why.
The jailer is the one that is in
the deepest kind of bondage because, first off,
he's been reared all his life in racial
pride and prejudice.
He was a Roman.
He was a centurion.
And he'd been reared from the very earliest
days of his youth from the idea that
we're the people.
And so he had, from his very, very
earliest youth, been indoctrinated with the attitude that
there's none quite like us, no one quite
like me.
By virtue of the accident of my birth,
I am now a this.
And so in his racial pride, he had
had bars forged by his parents, and his
tradition, his environment, all of these things had
become bars that were in front of him.
That was one side of him.
The prejudices that had been built into his
life, that had been systematically built into his
life, for Rome ruled the world, and the
only reason that they could rationalize for ruling
the world was that they were better than
everybody else, and therefore they had a right
to rule the world.
And thus, if he was to be an
adequate member of this ruling race, it was
necessary for him to be early prepared for
it, and thus he was imprisoned from his
earliest youth by the idea that he is
flesh, he was better than others.
And anyone that has this illusion, anyone who
feels that he is a better stuff than
the rest of the human race and human
family, is in a prison.
Certainly the accident of birth can in no
sense in any situation ever give one the
right to feel that he's better.
It was a proud, haughty, arrogant spirit that
had characterized him.
Secondly, he was imprisoned to gods who had
no power.
For Rome had, with characteristic thoroughness, ransacked all
of the countries that they had conquered, taking
their art, and taking their culture, and in
the case of Greek, taking their language, and
their gods.
And so Romans grew up with the idea
that all the gods were good if you
could just get the control of them and
get the use of them.
And so this man had grown up in
bondage to gods that had no life and
no power.
To convictions which had been built into his
mind and heart, but which had left him
devoid of any kind of life, he was
in subservience to gods that were nothing but
traditions, and even then the traditions were being
undermined, for skeptics were turning him and his
younger generation away from the devotion of the
fathers.
So much so that about this time and
a little later, Pliny writes and says that
the temples to our gods are left deserted.
Without for want of war, worshippers of fires
have gone out on our altars.
And so this man is living in the
day when he's in bondage to gods of
wood and stone, of tradition and fable, and
they have no power, they have no life.
Furthermore, he's in bondage to a system.
He's in bondage to a system that has
the power, as it were, of life and
death in his own career.
He is a centurion.
He is the leader of a group of
a hundred soldiers.
He's there by someone's appointment.
The next emperor, should the one that's on
the throne die, would appoint another group of
men loyal to him, and in so doing,
this man would probably have some change in
his career.
And therefore, it's necessary for him to curry
favor with the ones that are above him
in the structure.
So he's in bondage to them.
Just as Pilate was afraid of what they
might say to Caesar and what Caesar might
do to him, and so his own conscience
and his own convictions were taken from him,
so this man is living under the constant
threat of what can happen to him.
No man can be free when this is
the case.
He can't know the meaning of freedom.
He can't know the dignity of freedom when
he has to depend upon the whim of
someone for his position.
But it isn't only the structure of which
he's a part, but it's worse than that.
He has to curry favor with the magistrates,
for there was a deal between the leaders
of the town and the Roman officials elsewhere,
the political officials.
And if this centurion were to have stood
up on anything approximating convictions, and had grieved
the rulers of the village who had succeeded
in bringing the businessmen, succeeded in bringing Paul
and Silas before the magistrates and getting them
thus dealt with, he had no power to
face down the authorities above him, nor the
community around him.
So his bondage is even worse.
Now notice, he has succeeded in following the
whole stream of antagonism.
When something is introduced into the community that
A, threatens your money, B, threatens your smugness,
and C, threatens your place, deal with it
by trying to destroy it.
This is what they'd done with Christ.
Christ came in and said, give what you
have to the poor, I don't need your
money, sell it, give to the poor, come
follow me, while he was going to destroy
the whole economic system.
They listened to him.
Furthermore, he said, what you have isn't enough,
you must be born again.
Being religious, following the Jehovah, if you're a
Jew or the gods of the land, if
you're not a Jew, isn't enough, you have
to have a personal experience through me, said
Christ, I've got to come into your heart
and life, you must be born again.
And so he challenged their religious security and
their smugness, and then he proceeded to show
them that the whole structure of which they
are part was doomed and would be destroyed,
and so they said, away with him.
He can't live, the world isn't big enough
for us.
This is what they did to Paul.
And they had the man now that was
a worse slave, a worse prisoner in every
sense of bondage, than Paul could ever been.
The only thing they could do to Paul
was be put some bracelets of metal around
his wrist to which chains were attached.
That wasn't so bad.
The only thing they could do was take
a whip and hit his bag.
Now they could only hit him so long
and he would die.
So they'd have to be careful he didn't
go that far, or else, if they did,
they couldn't hurt him any longer.
And then all they could do would be
to put him in the deepest dungeon.
It wasn't any deeper than that, and so
he couldn't be any worse off than the
deepest.
And then they could put him in stocks,
and there wasn't anything worse than the stocks.
So they'd done their worst to Paul, and
they hadn't hurt him at all.
But something terrible had happened inside of the
magistrates.
Something awful had happened inside of the business
people.
Something dreadful had happened in the heart of
the centurion.
For they had had light come, and they
had refused to walk in light.
And there is no bondage so intolerable, there's
no bondage quite so unbearable as the bondage
that comes from knowing you've had light and
haven't walked in it.
That person who has refused to walk in
light, well, he's pathetic.
Bondage.
This is what's happened.
This is exactly what's happened to these men.
They've had someone come in their midst who's
other, different.
There's some quality about him that's completely other.
And so what do we find?
He acts in accord with his bondage, and
Paul acts in accord with his freedom.
This man, knowing that he has nothing but
locks and bars and stone and chain and
wood, has to sit up all night.
Now customarily the centurion didn't sit in the
prison.
Customarily this wasn't his place.
So he has to act in accord with
his fear and the nature of his bondage.
And so he's there.
Has someone bring him in a couch, and
he's there in the prison to personally see
to it that this horrible criminal doesn't escape
during the night.
So he's acting in accord with his bondage.
And what's the apostle doing?
He's acting in accordance with his freedom.
In the midst of all of his difficulty,
he's acting as a free man he is.
Someone says to him, why are you here?
Now I'm having to put this in because
it isn't there in the text, but it
does say that the people, the prisoners heard
him.
Why are you here?
What did you do?
What are you so bad?
Well we were preaching Jesus.
We delivered a demon-possessed girl.
What's the matter with that?
Who's Jesus?
Well Jesus is God come in the flesh.
What did he do?
Well he died on the cross, and he
was raised three days later, and he's alive.
Is that so?
What did he do that for?
Well so that he could save sinners.
Once I was a sinner, once I had
no hope, I was enslaved and in bondage.
What do you think those change?
Oh these are nothing.
These are nothing.
I don't worry about these.
When my Lord gets ready to take me
out, you watch, these things will just fall
off.
My Lord is able to make these locks
on the door just like that, and all
the doors will open.
Yes, that's nothing to that.
Oh yes, you see, he's alive, and there's
no problem with my Lord.
Nothing can hold him.
He has me here for a purpose, and
since he has me here for a purpose,
I delight in his purpose.
And since part of his purpose is for
me to be here, Silas, let's sing a
little.
He's been talking quite a while, lost his
voice, so he says, Silas, I used to
too.
And so Silas begins to sing, the Lord
is my light and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life.
Of whom shall I be afraid?
And so Paul joins them on the chorus,
and they sing psalms, and they sing praises.
And then when it comes in, when thou
saidst unto me, seek ye my face, my
heart said thy face, Lord, will I seek?
Wait on the Lord.
Can I say, wait on the Lord?
Be of good courage.
I say another one.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all his benefits, who forgive us all
our iniquities, and heal us all our diseases.
And then he begins to testify, and they
sing.
About midnight, the angel of the Lord gets
done with some important meetings he had to
take care of.
You see, he didn't want to break up
a good prayer meeting.
And he waited till they were a little
hoarse, and he says, now is the time.
And the angel of the Lord steps in,
and one word, and the locks begin to
fall all over the floor.
Doors open, tumblers fall out, keys rattle on
the floor, the earth quake, the place shakes,
every door swings back.
Paul says, well, praise the Lord, you got
here, didn't you, in time?
That's fine.
Well, all right, Lord, that's, that's wonderful.
Praise the Lord.
He doesn't have to change anything.
He's been free all the time.
Shackles are off.
All that's happening now, when the angel of
the Lord comes, is to show everybody what
Paul knew all the time, that there can't
be any bondage in the will of God.
There can be no bondage in the will
of God, for the will of God is
its own perfect freedom.
There can only be freedom in the will
of God.
There can't be bondage.
There can only be bondage within.
The bondage of fear, the bondage of vanity,
the bondage of ambition.
There is the only bondage that can hold
a human heart.
There can't be bondage to that one that's
released in Christ.
Oh, there can be bars and stones and
wood and iron, but he is freed, and
Christ said, whom the Son makes free is
free indeed.
You're in bondage today.
It's not because he hasn't broken the chains,
he hasn't broken the locks.
There's not a thing that Satan can do
to you, there's not a thing the world
can do to you.
The only one that can put you in
bondage is yourself.
Because the Son has died and conquered every
enemy and every foe, that he might let
his people go free.
He came to preach liberty to the captives.
Oh, what a tragic thing it is.
In the sight of such great salvation and
glorious redemption to see people laboriously set in
place the bars of prejudice, the bars of
ambition, the bars of vanity, the bars of
resentment, and imprison themselves.
But all heaven and all hell, all earth
can't imprison the child of God.
Only he can do it as a man
himself, woman himself.
Grows my flesh, but you can't imprison me,
only I can imprison me, by my resentment
and by my bitterness and by my ambition,
by my anger.
Nothing else can imprison the child of God,
for whom the Son makes free is free.
Satan thought in the book of Revelation that
he could exterminate the church.
Oh, why?
All hell gloated.
Christians are finally off the earth.
We're done with them.
The Lord says, now it's finished.
And the first thing you know, heaven opens,
and down from heaven comes a church.
And there they are, resplendent in beauty, glorious
in dress, like a bride had borne for
her husband, a temple of God, a habitation
of God through the Spirit.
The new Jerusalem, the place of his dwelling.
And Satan from the pit looks up and
says, I beheaded him, I killed her, I
destroyed him, but what did I do?
I just beat them up to be built
into that glorious thing that's there as a
testimony to my failure.
Nothing can hurt the church of God, and
nothing can imprison the child of God, for
whom the Son makes free is free indeed.
Now let's go back to the jailer.
Here's this poor man.
In addition to being imprisoned by his traditions,
and imprisoned by his ambitions, and imprisoned by
his employers, and imprisoned by gods of stone
that have no power, he's now imprisoned by
the horrible fear that if his prisoners escape,
his life will be taken.
Why wait for this?
Everything else has failed.
And he's living in the utter holocaust of
a destroyed life.
And so he draws his short sword from
the scabbard, holds it against his chest, perseveres
to fall upon it and end his miserable
life.
He's the jailer.
They put Paul in prison.
And now he begins to recognize the nature
of his intolerable bondage.
And Paul cries out, though perhaps he couldn't
even see to where he was, but he
knew by the Spirit of God, do thyself
no harm.
We're here.
We're not running away.
If we were to run away, we would
testify that you can hurt us, and you
can't hurt us.
We're here.
We're not going.
And he called for a light, and he
went to the innermost prison, and there was
Paul with the shackles that had been so
carefully forged and the stocked bursts and the
dungeon open, still sitting where he was.
Why should he go anywhere?
He hasn't been in prison.
It was the prison that was in bondage.
And the man now has lost his racial
pride, he's lost confidence in his God's esteem,
he's lost his heartiness and his arrogance, and
he falls on his knees and he looks
into the face of a Jew that had
been bruised and beaten, and he said, what
must I do to be saved?
My friend, there's only one place in all
the universe for a sinner to ever be
saved, and that's where that jailer was.
Utterly bankrupt and totally broken, and willing to
learn from anybody that knows.
And that's the right time to expect someone
to be saved.
You go up to a staggering drunk on
the street, and you say, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,
and you're not telling him the truth.
There will be a time when it's truth,
but it's not true now.
Right now you've got to show him the
revelation of the holiness of God until, like
the Philippian jailer, he realizes that he's in
prison, and he has to be delivered from
prison.
And when he cries out from the midst
of his bondage, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I've
no answer, I don't know the way, I'm
filled with confusion and perplexity, there is nothing
I can do, and cries from the depths
of his heart, what must I do to
be saved?
I'm at the end of myself.
Then you whisper, commit yourself entirely and wholly
to the person of the Son of God,
Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin,
lived a sinless life, died on the cross
for you, and raised triumphantly from the dead,
waits to save you.
This is what happened.
And when he'd come to the place of
a little child, sir, what must I do?
When he'd come to the place of brokenness,
when he'd come to the place when he
realized that he was the prisoner and Paul
was the free man, then he could, he
could ask for help.
No one is ever going to go free
until he realizes he's in bondage.
And until you as a thinking that you've
led life and ruled your life discovers that
you've been in bondage to the God of
this world, walking according to the course and
plans he's made for you, dear sinner friend,
there's no hope.
But when you realize that where you thought
you were free, doing what you wanted to
do, you were actually in bondage doing what
he wanted you to do.
And you realize the weight of the chains
and the cutting edge of the shackles, and
cry out, what must I do to be
saved?
Then God, for the sake of his Son,
Jesus Christ, will let the erstwhile jailer go
free, but that one that's in Christ.
You see, he can't ever be put in
jail again.
He can't ever be put in bondage.
Oh, you can put his body there.
Yes, you can take him out of circulation.
You can even give him an express ride
to heaven.
But you can't imprison him because whom the
Son makes free is free indeed and isn't
subject to bondage anymore.
Listen, let me ask you.
First, do I speak to someone without Christ?
You say, well, I've been doing what I
wanted and I thought I was free, but
I realize I'm the victim of my attitudes
and my prejudices and my ambitions and my
vanity, my lusts.
I'm a bond slave.
What must I do to be saved?
I have good news for you, good news
for hopeless people.
The Lord Jesus Christ came to seek and
to save that which was helpless.
If you're there, he's the one for you.
But perhaps I speak to some that say,
oh, no, I've been saved from hell and
the fear of dying, but I'm still in
prison.
I'm in prison to my fears.
I'm in prison to my ambitions.
I'm in prison to my traditions.
I'm in prison to my resentments and my
prejudices.
I'm in prison to my attitudes.
I'm a bond slave.
My friend, you are a bond slave only
because you've allowed yourself to be.
Satan couldn't do it.
Men couldn't do it.
God wouldn't let angels do it, nor would
he do it himself.
You've done it to yourself.
That's the only prison a Christian can make,
the prison of his fears, the prison of
his resentments, the prison of his bitterness, the
prison of his ambitions, the prison of his
vanity, the prison of his pride.
And if you're a Christian, then it is
that you have the key on the inside.
You say, well, how will I get out?
Well, you get out by realizing that whom
the Son makes free is free indeed.
And if you will confess your vanity and
your pride and your ambition and your bitterness
and your resentment as the sin it is
and ask for forgiveness, God will forgive you
and he'll save you from the prison of
your own making.
For he wants his children to be free
and he's preached deliverance to the captive.
For whom the Son makes free is free
indeed.
Oh, what a glad day it is for
the jailer's family when the jailer goes free.
For the good news came to his house,
his servants, his children.
What a glad day it might be for
you, Christian friend, if today be the day
when you'd go free from the prison of
your own making for those that work for
you and live with you.
If you just realize that the day Jesus
Christ died, you died and were buried and
quickened and raised with him.
Then you too could know the deliverance that
comes to the children of God for whom
the Son makes free is free indeed.
For he that is dead is freed from
sin.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified
with Christ, the body of sin might be
destroyed that henceforth we should not be the
slaves of sin.
Shall we bow in prayer?
Do I speak this morning to a burdened
heart, sinful heart, one that you know you're
under the sentence of death?
If you died as you were, you'd go
immediately to hell.
Then I have good news for you if
you're at the end of yourself.
Jesus Christ died to save lost people.
He'll save you.
Do I speak for a Christian that's not
known the freedom, can't be imprisoned by circumstances,
by conditions, by persecution and opposition?
The only thing that can imprison you are
the bars of your own forging.
Oh, don't you want to be free?
Free from fear, men's faces and free from
ambition and free from resentment and free from
bitterness.
Don't you want to be free?
The Lord Jesus died that we could be
free.
He came to preach liberty to the captives
in the setting of liberty then that are
bound.
Our heavenly Father before thee this morning are
a company of men and women that would
learn from thy word that whom the Son
makes free is free indeed.
And there's no prison made that can hold
the child of God.
Grant our Father that sinners shall realize they're
in constant captivity to the God of this
world and that Christians can become into captivity
to themselves.
Lord, we would be free.
Free from everything.
Free in that sense of freedom that the
Lord Jesus intended us to know.
And we ask that there might even now
in insight and recognition of need come an
appropriation of thy grace.
And that there should be much rejoicing in
many hearts because they've seen the sufficiency of
the sacrifice of Christ.
That the death and burial and the resurrection
of Christ, yea, his precious blood testifies to
the emancipation proclamation that he purchased for us
and made to us.
Grant to us therefore Father that we shall
appropriate everything that's ours in him.
Bless us now as we go into the
service of communion.
Grant that our heart shall rest in the
fullness of thy grace and love and that
there shall be a new sense of appreciation
for what our Lord Jesus died to make
ours.
In his name and for his sake.
Amen.