TOPIC:‌"A Freedom Worth Shouting About"

                  by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌John 8:30-36

 

"Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36, NKJV)

 

‌When President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his State of the Union Address to the United States Congress on January 6, 1941, he mentioned four fundamental freedoms that people the world over should enjoy. They were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. But there is yet another freedom that modern man desperately needs to experience. It is freedom from the tyranny of sin.

 

‌Now this is what Jesus was speaking about here in our text: "If the Son makes you free you shall be free indeed." This liberation from self and emancipation from sin is the kind of life Christ wants every one of us to experience. It is the enjoyment of victory over besetting sin. And yet, modern man today is everywhere in chains and needs to be set free from the clutches of his own sinful nature. We are enslaved to all kinds of terrible sin. Today Jesus wants to set us free.

 

‌Let us now consider the teaching of Jesus on a freedom worth shouting about.

 

I.

 

‌Consider, to begin with, those who are CONFUSED regarding this freedom of which Christ speaks. Give ear again to the words of Jesus: "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." What is this freedom? Let me answer that question by telling you what it isn't.

 

‌The freedom of which Christ speaks is not FREEDOM TO DO AS WE PLEASE. It does not release us from respecting and obeying the laws of the universe. Even Jesus Himself declared: "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17). Jesus fulfilled the Law in that He gave it its full meaning and He was totally committed to obeying it.

 

‌If on the other hand we break these laws we must pay the consequences. This is true both in the realm of the physical as well as the moral. These laws are binding upon us and they cannot be lightly dismissed or ignored. If a man foolishly goes against the law of gravitation by jumping off the edge of the Empire State Building, the outcome will be death. And if a man stupidly goes out to break any of the moral commandments of God, he will end up destroying himself. And yet, how many people today are throwing to the wind all moral restraints and social responsibilities to go out and do as they selfishly please. Such is not freedom but insanity. That view of freedom is a long sea mile from what Jesus is talking about here in the text. This certainly is not . . .