From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Everyone who puts his or her faith and trust in Jesus is placed, taken from the broad road and put onto the narrow road that leads to life. But here is what you'll find on the narrow road that leads to life. There are ditches on either side of the narrow road. Ditches that we have to watch out for in the Christian life.

Guest (Male): Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve and happy 4th of July celebration for you. You know, there are similarities between freedom that we have in this country and the freedom there is to be had within the Christian life. From bondage to freedom is the title of today's message about the biblical theme concerning God's delivering His people from slavery and oppression and sin into liberty and life in Him. It fits us specially well with our nation's freedom from bondage beginning in 1776 and continuing for 250 years now. But in one regard, there's a distinct difference. We don't declare our independence from God. We declare our dependence on God. But the moment that a person is convicted of sins and turns from sin and self and puts his or her faith and trust in Christ alone, that person goes from bondage to sin and death to life and freedom.

Guest (Male): The message today is entitled From Bondage to Freedom. As we celebrate our nation's independence, keep that in mind. For information about how to get a copy of today's lesson, go to fromhisheart.org, click the Listen link. You can download a free MP3 of this message and get the sermon outlines from Pastor Jeff. Now though, open your Bible to Galatians chapter 5. Here again is Pastor Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Paul says in Galatians 5 verse 1, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5, Paul talks about the ditches, and he talks about how to live in the freedom that was purchased with Christ's blood.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Three discoveries I want us to look at as we answer this question, are you standing firm in the freedom that you have in Jesus Christ? Discovery number one, many people lose their freedom to the ditch of legalism. Legalism. That's what the Judaizers were. They were legalists. And they took the gospel of the grace of God and they added to it works. They added to it law. And they said, "This is how a person gets saved. It's by grace through faith plus your works that equals salvation. And you guys in Iconium, Lystra, and Derby, uh, you haven't done the works of the law so you can't be a Christian."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Paul said in chapter 1 of Galatians, he said, "I, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by His grace and you're embracing a different gospel. That's not the gospel we preached to you that said it's grace plus faith plus works. The gospel we preached to you was by grace, through faith and in nothing else, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast." Now, lots of people in our world today are like the Judaizers. They say, "Wait a minute. I believe that it's a little bit of grace and a little bit of works, and you put those together and that's how a person is right with God. That's how a person is saved. It's, 'Yeah, of course it's what Jesus did on the cross. Yeah, of course it's grace. But you have to do something too.' It's just not all God, it's got to be you in there, and so you have to do your good works. And you put your good works in with what Jesus did and that's how a person is saved."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Well, what does the Bible say about that? Romans 11 verse 6 says, "For if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace." Grace is the way God accepts you. And grace is the way God loves you, and grace is the way God works in your life.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Now, one thing about a legalist, and if you fall into the ditch of legalism, it's very easy to do, very easy to do. How do you know that has happened? Because you'll never find love, you'll never find joy, you'll never find peace when your relationship with God is all based on rule keeping. Your relationship with God is not like that. It's a love relationship.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: So the Bible, Ephesians chapter 5, likens your relationship with Jesus like a a relationship between a husband and a wife. So my relationship with Debbie is not about me making sure I have a list of rules that I have to keep in order for Debbie to keep me. You know, I, boy, I better, I better start the coffee when she gets up in the morning. You know, I got to, I got to get the dogs up, you know, and I got to do this and I got to make sure I get to the oil change and I got to make sure I, I wash the car and I got to make sure, um, you know, all these lists of things that you have to do. And if I do all that, Debbie's going to love me. No. It's not about that. It's about me loving her, and when I love her, I want to do the things that please her. And when she loves me, she wants to do the things that please me. And it's not about a list of rules, it's about love.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: So you find the person in church and the legalists, where do they hang out? They don't hang out at Fat Jack's. The legalists hang out at church. The Pharisees were all legalists. And Jesus said, "You guys are so ridiculous. You strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel." Can you imagine that? I mean, that's a big gulp to swallow a camel. But strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They majored on the minors. And they tied mint and dill and cumin, and they forgot the weightier provisions of the law, justice and mercy and things like that. And they were miserable people and miserable to be around.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: There's no joy in legalism. There's no love, there's no peace in legalism. And when you get in that mode where you think I have to do all these things in order for God to love me. I have to do all these things in order for God to accept me. I have to do all these things in order for God to bless me, then you get on the performance treadmill. It's miserable being on the performance treadmill because you'll always think, "Well, I didn't do enough. I didn't pray enough. I didn't, I didn't, I missed a quiet time." "Oh, I missed a quiet time." "I missed two quiet times. Can you imagine missing two quiet times?" "That's two days in a row. I didn't read the Bible. I didn't pray. That's two days in a row. I know something bad's going to happen to me because I, I missed a quiet time."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And everything is based on just you, you got to perform, you got to do. And God is saying, "More and more and harder and harder and faster and faster." And you get worn out. It's about loving Him. That's what a relationship with God is. I heard about a guy in Chuck Swindoll's church some years ago. He wrote about it in one of his books. And he said this this guy was in his church, and he said, uh, he was a youth worker in an ethnic community, and he attended a church that had a that had Scandinavian roots. And he was a young guy and he was kind of, "Hey, let's do some new things, some out of box things." And so he worked with the student ministry, and he showed them a movie about a missionary, the life of a missionary. It was a black and white movie. I mean, this was many, many years ago.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And about an hour after he had this meeting with the students, he got called by the elders of the church. They wanted to know. They said, "What is this that you're doing showing movies?" And he said, "Well, I, I didn't know that was wrong. We don't show movies here. Movies are of the devil." He said, "Well, I saw you guys, you had a missionary emphasis just a couple of weeks ago and you showed slides." They said, "Slides are fine." They said, "If it's still, it's fine. If it moves, it's sin. You can show slides, but when the slides start moving, you're getting into sin." This isn't made up. That's what they said. They had this idea that, okay, you can do this, but you can't do that.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And so the Pharisees would do that. You know, they'd say, "Well, you can walk this many steps on the Sabbath. You can just do the these few things on the Sabbath." They had all these rules and rules on top of rules on top of rules. It's awful to live like that. Hey, many people fall into the ditch of legalism. Second discovery, many people lose their freedom to license. It's the opposite end of the spectrum. So to the right, we'll say to the right is legalism. You fall into the ditch of legalism. To the left is the ditch of license. That's the the the ditch that says, "Well, now that I've been bought by with a price and, and I am under grace and I'm not under the law, then I can live any way I want. It doesn't matter what I do. It's just, it's all under grace. Jesus paid it all so I can live any way I want to." No.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Look what he says in verse 13, "For you were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." Your freedom in Christ is a freedom to not have to live under the law, under the heavy yoke, under of the rules of the law, because the law was given to show us that we couldn't live it. The law was given us as a tutor to lead us to Christ. So you're free from that, but you're not free to live in sin. That's not what the Lord is talking about. No Christian is free to sin. Jesus died for sin. Jesus hates sin. He didn't free us so that we could sin.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Peter says, "Act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God." Hey, I, what, what is my freedom for? So that I can serve the Lord. That's what it's for. Freedom is not the ability to do the things that you want. It's the ability to be the person that you ought. The person that God wants you to be. So no Christian is free to sin, and every Christian is set free from sin. Set free from sin. Not free to sin, you're free, you're set free from sin.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Now, the question they had in the book of Romans, it said, "Where sin abounds, Romans 5:20, grace does much more abound." And so where does grace come? It comes from sin. Because there's sin, that shows God's grace, and, and if there's lots of sin, God has even more grace. You can never, uh, sin past God's grace. Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. And so the people said, "Hey, well, if, if sin brings grace, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Paul said, "God forbid!" I mean, what a ghastly thought. How shall we who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Do you not understand that the Lord died to set you free from sin. Not free to sin, you're free from sin.

Guest (Male): We'll continue to explore this truth when Pastor Jeff returns in just a moment. The message today, as we celebrate July 4th, is called From Bondage to Freedom. Freedom comes when we present ourselves to a life under God's grace, rather than under the enslaving power of sin. Simply put, when you give yourself to Jesus Christ, God is leading you out of bondage and into true freedom through deliverance, truth, and obedience. That is a real liberty, real rescue. Now able to fulfill your purpose in life, to live for God and bring Him and Him alone the glory He deserves. What once kept us captive doesn't have the final word. God does.

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff shares messages like this each and every day around the world on radio, television, and online, thanks to your financial support of these broadcast. Pastor Jeff's a volunteer for From His Heart, receives no money from the ministry. If you'd consider a gift today to help us this month, we'll say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new eight-message series we're airing this month called Leaving the Legacy, Lessons from the Life of Samuel, and you can get it in the format of your choice. Just call 866-40Bible. 866-40-Bible, or go to fromhisheart.org. God bless you for helping us to free people from the bondage of the devil's trap. Together, we're helping people move from bondage to freedom. Now, back to today's message From Bondage to Freedom.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: When we talk about salvation. You've heard me say this before, but salvation comes in three parts, and salvation comes in three tenses. So when the Lord sets you free from sin, and Jesus said, "When the son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed." There's past, there's present and there's future salvation. Past salvation, we have a term in theology, we call that justification. The moment that I gave my life to Christ in January of 1980, on a Monday night, I was saved. And the Lord wrapped his gavel as the judge of all the earth and said, "Not guilty." All my guilt, all my shame was put on Jesus, and the sin that was on me went to him, and I am not guilty. Justification is just as if you've never sinned before the Lord. So I can look back at my life and say, "I was saved, January of 1980."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: But then there's the present tense of salvation. I am being saved. What does that mean? Well, the word for that is sanctification. That's when God does a work in you to make you more like Christ. That happens progressively over time. The little song says, "He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be. Took him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be, he's still working on me." We're all in the process of sanctification as believers. That's an ongoing thing.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: But then there's a future salvation that's called glorification. And that is when the Lord changes our earthly body into conformity with His body, and that's when I shall be released from a body that wants to sin. As Paul said in Romans chapter 7, "The good that I want to do, I don't do. The evil that I don't want to do, I end up doing. Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?" Hey, you carry around in your body the sin that works in your members. This thing that the Bible calls the flesh. The flesh wants to do what the flesh wants to do. What is the flesh? Take the H off and spell it backwards, the flesh is self, S E L F. It's self on the throne, it's self saying, "I want what I want, when I want it."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: That's in you, that's in me, that was in Paul. And that is there. And so what do we do in this sanctification process? We wrestle with sin. Now, we've been set free from the penalty of sin. We've been set free from the power of sin. One day we'll be set free from the presence of sin. And even though I'm set free from the power of sin, I still struggle with sin. I still have to fight against sin. I still have to war against sin. So every Christian still struggles with the pull of sin. And so you're on the narrow road that leads to life and there's a pull into the ditch of legalism. There's a pull into the ditch of license. We feel that pull.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And just the way you're wired, you're going to be feeling the temptation to one or the other of those ditches, maybe to both. Maybe you're like a lot of people who get tempted in the area of the flesh, and then you fall in the ditch of the flesh, and then you beat yourself to death, uh, because of legalism that says, "Sinner, you're terrible, you're horrible. Don't go back to church because nobody likes you. And you don't belong, look what you did, look how terrible and horrible you are." And maybe you've had that experience. I think that's a very common one for Christians.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Well, listen, as we struggle with sin, we need to remember something, Romans chapter 6. "Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with." Notice that phrase, might be done away with. "That we should no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin." I've been crucified with Christ. And my old man was crucified with Him, and that old man is done away with. It is not annihilated. It is rendered powerless. It is powerless over me. The greatest illustration I've ever heard about this, I heard it in college, and it said this. Suppose, uh, you're a a man on a ship and you have a cruel, cruel, horrible captain who is just terrible to you, and you're under his, uh, authority, and you're a slave to this captain on this slave ship and he is just awful.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And one day there's a mutiny on the ship, and that terrible, horrible captain is, uh, he is rendered inoperative. He is taken out of the way. And now you have a new captain, a captain who loves you, a captain who wants what's best for you, a captain who changes everything on the ship. And they took the old, terrible, horrible captain and they tied him up and they put him on the top of the mast. But they didn't gag him. He has no more power over you. You're under the authority of the new captain who is the Lord Jesus. The old captain who's a picture of the devil, well, he still is barking out orders, but he doesn't have any power over you. But you hear his voice, and you're conditioned to do what he wants you to do. And you hear the devil as he tempts you to do this and tempts you to do that. And it speaks to the to that old flesh, that self part of you. And the self part of you wages war against the spiritual part of you, and the Holy Spirit inside you, and that's where you feel the struggle.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: So what's the answer? Discovery number three. All Christians can stand firm and enjoy freedom in Christ. That's what he says. "It was for freedom that Christ set us free, free from the law, from having to fulfill the law in order to gain God's favor, free from that, free from sin, and free from the power of sin, the penalty of sin." It was for freedom that Christ set us free. "Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." We can stand firm, because the Lord says we can, and we can enjoy freedom in Christ. We can enjoy life on the narrow road. We don't have to fall into the ditch of license. We don't have to fall into the ditch of legalism. We can walk in the light as He Himself is in the light on the narrow road with Jesus and experience love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: And in order to do that, you and I have to make two choices. Number one, you can choose to live under grace. You choose to live under grace. Scripture says this, Hebrews chapter 4, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. But one who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin." Jesus understands what it feels like to be tempted. And He has taken temptation to the Nth degree. You and I haven't taken temptation to the Nth degree because when temptation gets really hot, we tend to succumb to temptation. So if you think about, "Man, I can take temptation up to 120 degrees." Well, Jesus took it up to boiling, 220. You and I don't take it that far. He's been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: I can come before him. Even when I mess up royally, when I'm in deep in the ditch of license, and I messed up royally, I can come before him because I have a high priest who can sympathize with me. He says, "Jeff, I know what it's like to be tempted in that area. I was tempted in that area too." "Let us draw near with confidence," it goes on to say, "to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." "Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace." Not the throne of condemnation, not the throne of judgment for the believer. It's the throne of grace. God's unmerited favor. God's desire and power to live for him. He has all that for us. We can choose to walk that way. So that when we fall, we don't just beat ourselves into a bloody pulp saying, "I'm terrible, I'm horrible. I just need to quit. I can't do this anymore."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Hey, a righteous man falls seven times and he rises again. How does he do it? By the grace of God. And you can choose, and I can choose to walk by the Spirit. Paul says in verse 16, "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." Inside, there's a war. The Holy Spirit of God, and your flesh, my flesh, and they fight. Who's going to take control? Are we going to yield to the flesh? Are we going to listen to the voice of the enemy who has been rendered powerless, but is up in the mast there barking out orders, "This is what we're going to do and that's what we're going to do." We're going to listen to him or are we going to obey the Lord? We're going to yield ourselves to him. "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." You'll walk on the narrow road and you won't fall in either ditch. Which one do you struggle with more? Legalism or license? Remember this. Truth is not what you think. It's not what you feel. It's what God says.

Guest (Male): If that legalism describes you, then you need to come to Christ right now in repentance and faith. Turn from your sin and put your faith in Christ alone. Surrender to Him complete and total access to your heart today and abandon your own efforts to achieve salvation any other way. If you want help in determining exactly where you are with Christ and what to do about it, we hope you'll go to our website at fromhisheart.org and click the Why Jesus link. Thank you for being with us today. Time is gone. I'm Larry Nobles and we trust that you'll be here next time when Pastor Jeff Schreve will again open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from his heart.