Set Free: from Slavery...to Slavery?!

Title: "Set Free: From Slavery to...Slavery?! | Pastor Brian Doell (Sunday Service)" URL: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfMthVzjduA" Transcript: "(00:01) All right. Well, good morning to you all. It's It's great to be here. Thanks for having me back even after hearing me last week. >> Yeah. [laughter] Joel wanted me to mention some of you are apparently not here because you're watching the Blazer game. And he wanted me to just say in in love, of course, that you're wasting your time. (00:27) But it was really great to be able to be here last week and share some thoughts with you and and maybe even better for me to hang out with you guys. It's been a while since I've seen you. Some of you I don't know, but I have a long history with this place. And it was a really great thing to just be able to be back here and be in community with every one of you. (00:46) And it just reminded me what a beautiful thing community is. This thing that God has designed us for. Just to be able to share in the journey with each other, learn from each other, encourage each other. That is an awesome thing. So, and this is a cool place. So, thanks for having me be a part of this. And my prayer is that the things that we talked about last week were helpful to you in going back to square one in a way and talking about maybe maybe even rediscovering one of God's most fundamental promises, which is that he's here for us. (01:18) Every one of us always, if we reach out for him, this is a promise of God. And that can and that should have some really huge implications for our lives in really practical ways. How we make the decisions we make and what we think about what we decide to do with our days and our lives. (01:39) And this morning we're going to be getting into another promise with very real, very tangible consequences. And that is this. That God through Jesus promises to set us free. He promises us freedom. Now, maybe you're already familiar with this promise, but I suspect if you're like most people, freedom is not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think of God's promises. (02:09) Or maybe more accurately, it's not the first thing that we as people think of when it comes to Christianity. Overall, for for a lot of us, the appeal of Christianity in the first place has to do with the concept of salvation, which is awesome. It has to do with getting to know the God who created us, which is awesome. Developing a relationship with him, which is a great thing. (02:35) Through that relationship with God, we find meaning. We find more purpose in life. And knowing him gives us a hope that's not dependent on what's happening around me, what's going on in the world. Hopefully, then it changes my world view overall. And in pursuing God, I have a new sense of what's right and wrong and why it's right and wrong. (02:56) And I increasingly, hopefully, again, make more of my decisions based on what honors God and not for ego-based reasons or just in the interest of self-preservation. And these are all really great reasons to be here. These are things that make pursuing God, being in church, the concept of following God attractive. We could go on and on. (03:19) Maybe there are reasons specific to you that I didn't even touch on, and that's all great. Yet, this concept of freedom is not necessarily usually that high on the list. And when it is, it's usually more of a very specific kind of freedom, like an addict finding freedom from addiction, which is a very real, very beautiful thing. (03:46) or not to get too dark, but victims of abuse, finding freedom from that past, from the pain and from the guilt. Or if you've ever wronged somebody else, finding forgiveness and then finding freedom in that forgiveness. These are all powerful things and they're all real ways that Jesus works in people. (04:09) But when we think about the concept of freedom in general, it's a bit of a different story. In fact, there's a long-standing view of Christianity in the church that really views things in a different way. There's a perception that God demands certain behaviors from us and that in demanding those things, we aren't able to do other things that the rest of the world enjoys. (04:33) That's a pretty long-standing perception of Christianity, right? Rather than viewing the journey with Christ the way he intends, we often re or view it as kind of a restrictive paradigm through which we see our behavior in the world. Maybe in an eternal sense, he sets us free from the power of death. (04:56) But here in the land of the living, freedom and life isn't necessarily the part of this whole thing that jumps off the page for us. the church and unfortunately the way of God is often inextricably tied into a system of dogmatic ideology of rigid thinking and absolute dos and don'ts and it can even become a way of life and a way of thinking that we can be fooled into thinking lags behind our culture that our culture understands things so much better than previous generations including the writers of the Bible Bible. And so, while the Bible might (05:38) have some really great things to say, it's hardly freeing in an everyday sense. Maybe we think that the Bible itself contains outdated or archaic ways of thinking. That we actually need freedom from that. I mean, these are real things, right? You've heard these things before. Maybe you've thought these things before. (06:00) It's very normal, by the way. This is a normal thing. If you've ever struggled with any of this way of looking at things, you are not unusual. It does illustrate something that this whole series has the potential to help us with though, which is to start to see everything in the context of everything that God is. (06:20) to start to see things by the light of a God whose character that we can actually know his whole character and not just isolated to certain things that might seem applicable in the moment in that context. This this holistic context of who God is is so important. It shapes the way we everything. And right off the bat, it frees us from this isolationist tendency to just view the Bible as just a reference book. (06:52) That if I struggle with X, I flip to the back of the book and I find where X is and then I go find the page that deals with X and then it becomes kind of a a reference book, maybe a self-help book, and I read that verse in isolation and I don't really read anything before after. And even though that's good, better to read the Bible than a lot of other things, it ends up not being very helpful in any lasting practical way. (07:18) It can end up feeling just like a collection of stuff that I should know rather than as a god I'm getting to know. So last week we referenced Romans 12, which urges us to let God transform us by changing the way we think. So with that in mind, with that a with that as a foundation for this that we need to let God transform the way we think, let's start with a passage from the book of John. (07:47) And since we're starting or since we're talking about the importance of context, the context here is that in this passage, Jesus is spending the day teaching. He's in the temple and he's talking to people. And as often happened when he did this, he draws a crowd and the crowd starts gathering around and he start they start interacting with him and it's not just like we normally think of one person speaking and everybody's sitting there silent. They're interacting. (08:13) They're asking questions and some of them are well-intentioned and some of them are absolutely not. Some of them are very antagonistic and they're trying to trap him. But he deals with all of them anyway. He talks to both the people who are sincerely wanting to learn and he talks to the people who have an agenda. And it's here by the way if you remember this famous passage about the woman being caught in adultery where he ends up writing in the dirt and he says those famous let he who's without sin cast the first stone and of course since none of (08:45) them are without sin they turn around and slink off with their tails between their legs knowing that they were caught in being idiots. It's an amazing story and it's an important part of us getting a more complete picture of who God is. And it's in this context that he says these words to them. John 8:31-32. (09:08) Jesus said to the people who believed in him, "You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Which is a remarkable passage right off the bat because right off the bat he's not just claiming to have a better way. He's claiming what's really on a human level a pretty audacious claim that he's not just somebody worth listening to, but somebody worth committing yourself to as a disciple of. (09:47) This commitment to him, he says, will lead to actually knowing the truth. Not knowing good and bad things, but the truth itself, the foundation of all of that. and that knowing this truth will make them free. Now, it's an incredible passage and so being an incredible and life-changing concept, they promptly totally misunderstand it just like we do. (10:16) They misunderstand it in a way that very likely most of us, if we were there, we would have done as well. Here's how they answer him in verse 33. But we are descendants of Abraham, they said. We've never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean you will be set free? So, it's a good question really, if an obvious one. (10:37) On a human level, it's true. They're very familiar with the concept of slavery. They've seen it firsthand. They know the evils of it. They know how blessed they are to be who they are, which is that people who no matter what else they might be dealing with, they don't have this this horrible past of slavery, enslavement, bondage to other people. (11:04) According to every definition of the day, they feel like, well, they are free. So, what are you talking about? I think this is one of those passages that we should see ourselves in very clearly because most of us would also say we've never been enslaved in any formal sense of the word. In fact, most of us here have grown up with and experienced a level of freedom that these people wouldn't have been familiar with. (11:37) the freedom to do and to say and to go where we want and decide what we want and what we want to pursue and how we want to pursue it. This is a freedom that we have for the most part enjoyed in our lives really matter where we've grown up and it gets to the heart of how our free our definition of freedom needs in some cases our recalibration in some cases needs to be completely blown up. (12:02) And for the people that Jesus is talking to, it's upending the definition of slavery as being an obvious physical state of being in bondage or a societal condition that dictates what your life can and can't look like. And for us, even though we can understand the realities of that kind of slavery, it has more to do with our definitions of freedom. (12:29) Because for most of us, if we really dialed down into what's at the core level of how we define freedom, it gets to something like it's a pursuit of happiness that nobody else can get in the way of. The greatest sin really according to most of us outside of this world of the church and of God, the greatest sin is standing in the way of people finding happiness in whatever way they want. (13:00) And even in the church, this can sometimes become the driving force. I've heard people term this church becoming rather than a pursuit of God, it becomes a moralistic therapeutic deism, which is essentially the belief that God exists, but he wants nothing more from us than to be happy and nice. really he's the great therapist in this guy. (13:30) He's assuring us that we're all right and assuring us that there's no greater pursuit than standing up for our right to make bad decisions. And it's interesting you see this in the corporate world all the time by the way when trying to recruit people. Companies more and more rather than all the other things that they try used to try to sell people on try to sell people on the freedom card. (13:52) how much autonomy you'll have, how much flexibility you have, how much room in your schedule you're going to have, your location, how much freedom the salary and the benefits are going to buy you to be able to do what you want. And different studies have pointed this out over the past few years, too. One of the most important dimensions of the human psyche is freedom. (14:10) And when we're pressed on it, it usually ends up reduced to nothing more than me being able to get what I want when I want it. And of course, Jesus knows this. He knew how they defined it, and he knows how we define it. And even if we're not explicitly defining it this way, he knows what our minds default to. So, here's how he answers their question. (14:37) Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the son sets you free, you are truly free. Now he makes two fundamentally huge points here. And first he redefineses in one sentence who the slaves are. (15:06) No matter what you might think, the slaves are everyone. all humans because he says everyone who sins and we know that everyone sins and has sinned. This applies to everyone no matter what their earthly situation is or was. And it's critically important to know also critical to know that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. (15:38) Because in this idea, he's capturing this idea that we're not just people who mostly get it right and then we just dabble in bad behavior now and then. We're enslaved by sin. We're held captive by it. And why is that? Because sin encompasses everything that sets itself up as a competitor to God. It encompasses absolutely everything that sets us up itself up as an alternative to God. (16:15) Everything that's not of God, not just the obviously evil stuff. So slavery he he redefes for us is not just slavery to people specifically. And it's not just all these things that specifically come to mind like the physical shackles and and everything awful. Being in bondage even to those things that seem good is slavery generally because those things that seem good are things that put me and not God in the driver's seat. (16:51) Now, I'm not saying there's nothing good in life and that everything that you're pursuing is clearly not of God and terrible. But the reality is that most of these things that we pursue, we pursue with a deep core motivation that says, "My end goal here is to put myself in the driver's seat and not God. (17:17) " Even if that's not something that you'd ever say out loud, even when we don't really believe we're saying that, anything that says, "I don't really need you here, God. I've got this. I know better. I'll take what I want from you when I want it. But I don't really need you, the one who created life, to tell me how that life is best lived. (17:41) I'm fine with my definition of freedom. which is nobody can tell me what to do. In other words, my comfort zone, my freedom, I think, is my comfort zone. We're far more prone to stay in bondage to our comfort zone, which is really just a pale limitation of life. And it's a pale limitation of life because it's what we know rather than letting God do the hard, uncomfortable work of changing the whole way I think. and see the world. (18:17) And this is a whole new way of looking at sin and freedom and slavery. This is the internal driving force that's common to absolutely everybody. This default mode of thinking, it shapes our world view to nothing more than a constant struggle to find the things that'll make us happier. And so it's not just obviously terrible things that we know cause us and other people pain. (18:51) It's all of the stuff in our lives that prioritize our way over God's way. It's not what God intended. And everyone deals with that. And Jesus here makes the claim that that is true of everyone. but that he can and will set us free from that. And when he does that, [snorts] we're actually free. Actually free. (19:20) Not in like hyperbole or a marketing slogan. It's not just well here's freedom and now there's extra strength freedom, right? It's not I really mean it this time freedom or you got this. There's just a couple of small things to tweak and then you're really free. It's him making a really hard distinction then that there is what we know as freedom and what freedom actually is. (19:42) What freedom actually is is no longer being tethered to whatever my ego says I need. Stuff that seems worth it but is actually destructive. Whatever other people say is good but actually isn't. whatever is a temporary high but not permanently good. It's literally being in bondage to whatever seems good in our limited understanding but actually isn't. (20:12) I heard somebody put it this way the other day. I'll paraphrase here a bit but he said this I have we have to get away from the idea that freedom is always or only one human step away. That's a trap and that leads to believing that the answer is always inside you. It's always one more habit, one more hack, one more optimization. (20:34) That's not liberation at all. That's just a nicer looking cage. And the book of Acts reinforces this idea in chapter 13. Acts 13:38-39. It says this, "Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him, everyone who believes is set free from every sin. (21:00) A justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses. This is something he says that is not available by any other means. Not even the law of Moses, which wasn't a bad thing initially. It's not possible by yourself, but it is possible through Jesus. And through Jesus, according to this passage, you can be set free from some sins as long as they're not too terrible. (21:31) Oh, no, wait. Every sin. You can be set free from every sin, no matter how horrifying it seems. You might remember last week we talked a little bit about the religion stuff that we put in motion as people to try to again I'll try to say this kindly but it kind of boils down to trying to perform our way to God. (21:55) That's often what religion stuff can can play out as the writer of Acts alludes to this with the law of Moses. And the other writers in the New Testament do this as well. Paul in the book of Galatians says this in Galatians 5:1. So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure you stay free and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. (22:18) And you might think he would say, "Well, don't get tied up again in slavery to your sin." He kind of goes the other way and says, "Don't get tied up in slavery to the law." In other words, don't get tied up to the things that you thought set you free from the sin that are not actually as powerful as God is. So there's a next step to this and it's set up by what we know. (22:40) What we know is we've sinned and that sin has a very powerful hold on us and our thought process. And that even many things that seem good, even the law, even the law of Moses, even other laws can serve a purpose, we can find ourselves in bondage to those things. And these writers in a rare unified way refer to these things as slavery. (23:06) These same writers also say that Jesus can break those bonds. And that's what real freedom is. Paul reiterates this promise in the book of Ephesians. Ephesians 3:12. In him and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. Now, it's an amazing news because it's an amazing promise and it's a promise in which we can have confidence. (23:38) You notice it goes handinand with the promise that we talked about last week. We can go before God with confidence. We can reach out to him with confidence, not because of anything we've done, but because he's promised us we can. He opens the door for us to do that. And we can do those things as free people. So now apart from approaching God, what does it actually mean then to be free? What does it actually look like to be free? How does life actually change now that I'm no longer a slave to sin? Okay. (24:27) So, since we started with Romans, let's look at a passage from Romans 6. But now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. Right? That can't be right. Slaves to God. That can't be right. So, let's go to First Peter. 1 Peter 2:16. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover up for evil. (24:57) Live as God's slaves. That can't be right either. Hang on. Maybe James has a different take on this. James 1:1 says, "This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." Huh. Now, all of these writers cannot really mean this, can they? They're not seriously suggesting that we become slaves of God. (25:26) You don't set somebody free just to enslave them in a different way. And as much as God's way is better than any other way, why would they word it like this? This certainly wouldn't have been any more appealing in terminology then than it is now. And it might be worth pointing out, by the way, that some translators have struggled with this over the years. (25:52) There are translations where you'll see that they use the word servant here instead of slave. And in a bunch of different instances that I just read, they use the word servant. And I don't have the benefit of knowing what their thought process was, but it does seem like they might have been trying to soften the blow here and make it a little bit more palatable because the Greek word that they use there is literally translated as slave and those translators translate it as slave in every other s instance except for those. (26:25) So in that case, I don't really want to turn you off by using too harsh a word. Now I'm not imputing their motives here. Maybe their motives were different than I think, but it does make sense because whatever their motivation is, this is not an easy concept to swallow. I set you free to become a slave. That makes no sense. (26:50) We have the most beautiful and liberating promise that God sets us free from the power that sin and death and the human condition have over us only to tell us that freedom means slavery to God. It can feel like I'm trading one kind of captivity for another one. It can really end up playing into that whole perception of Christianity that says that I'm now a slave to some sort of rigid dogma. (27:18) Until we understand a really key concept, a concept that's foundational to understanding this promise, this whole idea of real freedom. James starts his book with identifying himself as a slave to God and to Jesus. And then a few verses later, he says this, and you're not going to see this on the screen here. (27:39) I want you to just listen to these words. So don't be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. (28:05) And we out of all creation became his prized possession. We became his prized possession. Now, you see what he's getting at here? If you're as dense as I am, it takes it takes a while. Freedom is not about being in captivity or not. It's not belonging to someone versus being my own person. It's not about being rid of influence and then on the other side having the freedom to go where I want and do what I want and say and think what I want. (28:43) We are none of us ever fully free in this way. The comparison here or the decision is actually to whom or what will I enslave myself? We are James says God's prized possession. The prized possession of the one who never changes or shifts. The one from whom all good things come. Freedom then comes in understanding who's I am. Who do I belong to? and then committing myself wholeheartedly to letting God change in me how I process things, the decisions I make, the way I see people, and what I consider to be good and worthwhile. (29:38) In other words, my default mode as a prized possession of God, lovingly crafted and created by him, the God who knows how life is best lived, choosing to follow him in that way that he says is best. A big part of our changed thinking is understanding that how we've always defined freedom as humans is actually still slavery. (30:04) Even if we were to accomplish this impossible task of truly being free from any outside influence and from from the control of others, what we might see as complete freedom to do and say whatever I want is still servitude. It just shifts its allegiance. If I'm free to serve only myself and my desires, I become indentured to myself and my desires. (30:33) And God, the same God who calls us his prized possession, says he wants better for us than that. And if we go a little further in James 1, he says, "Get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls." And then a little bit later in that same chapter, it says, "But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it." (31:15) And at the end, it says, "Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. You see how this redefined keeps showing up? This is freedom. This is the context for the promise of freedom. This is a new life where we are set free to do and be what God designed us to do and be. (31:50) What is a slave really but somebody who's completely committed to doing what somebody else wants them to do? What greater concept could you could I ever embrace with our lives than the mission of God who made us, created us, and loves us. freed from the corruption of the world that's constantly trying to sell us on letting someone or something or ourselves become our master. (32:23) Dedication to God himself as our master changes everything. Go back to Romans 6:22. Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. The benefit you reap leads to holiness. The result is eternal life. This freedom comes from saying yes to God. (32:54) saying, "I accept." When it comes to acknowledging that we belong to him and that we long for our thinking to mirror his and not to our own default, not to our own misguided desires, not to our own corrupting influence of a world that doesn't acknowledge where the good stuff comes from. And this becomes one of the most counterintuitive things that we really have ever have to struggle with or encounter as believers. (33:24) If we will, if you will roll up your sleeves and struggle with this, if we will, if we will grab onto this promise and really endeavor to figure out what this looks like in our lives, it can be absolutely one of the most life-changing things we ever embrace. Last week, we talked about a guy named Nehemiah who was a normal guy who embraced the promises of God. (33:50) Well, let's talk about another normalish guy. You remember David from the Old Testament. Pretty remarkable guy, actually. Not really all that normal now that I think about it, but it's a really remarkable story. And it's one of those stories, and he's one of those people that even people who have never been in church before usually know because they're usually familiar with the whole David and Goliath story. (34:17) And maybe David actually is kind of normal and that he started off that way. He was a shepherd boy when he starts off. He's got no power. He's got no influence. Nobody knows who he is. He's got no glory, no money. But then the shepherd boy hits the big time. He becomes a musician in the court of the king. It's kind of the classic bluecollar kid makes good. (34:42) He faces the giant Goliath when no one else will. He slays the giant. Ultimately, he becomes king and he ends up ruling for 40 years. He's kind of the ultimate nobody to somebody story. And it's all set in motion and it's all made possible by God and God's plan. And now sometimes we tell the story in that context to make the point that nothing's impossible with God, right? You too, even if you're smaller than the people around you, you too can slay the giant. (35:13) Whether that's literally or figuratively, if God can do it with David, what else? Who else can he use? What else can he do? And yet, David's story takes a pretty dark turn partway through. He ends up doing a couple of the more despicable things that we see anyone in the Bible do. And why does he do them? because he's normal. (35:41) He also is a slave to sin. One of the most notable examples of this, and I won't belabor it, and I won't give you a lot of the details here, but while he's on the rooftop of the palace, he sees a woman named Bath Sheba, and he has this she's pretty hot, I need her moment, and he pursues making that happen. And because he's driven by what he wants in the moment and not by actually anything puts in his heart, he he conveniently ignores the fact that she's married to somebody else. (36:18) And presumably he leans on his power as king and they end up getting together and she ends up getting pregnant. And then it gets worse because he comes up with just a absolutely ridiculous scheme where he tries to cover up what he did by tracking down her husband Uriah who's a soldier and bringing him back home thinking hoping that maybe Uriah will just think he's the father and I'm off the hook. (36:42) And when that doesn't work, which of course it doesn't, genius, he decides, well, I got to do something with Uriah. So, why don't I send him back out to the fighting? And why don't I specifically put him where the fighting is most intense because I know he's not going to come back from there. (37:00) And that happens exactly how he intends, which is that Uriah goes off to the worst part of the fighting and he gets killed. And then David has Ba Sheba all to himself. Problem solved. And it's a pretty horrifying story of what happens when a guy fully buys into what he thinks is his human freedom to do whatever he wants. (37:23) And in this case, he just happens to have the power and the influence to make it happen. And then in a story with a lot of remarkable moments, he has a remarkable moment where he repents for what he's done and he confesses his sin and he turns to God and he ends up concluding a very very important point, a fundamental point to what we're talking about that we see in all sorts of other places in the Bible. (37:55) That point is that no one can be a slave to two masters. You cannot stay enslaved to your earthly desires and still be the person that God wants you to be. And so he ends up choosing God despite this horrifying chapter in his life. He chooses God. And we know that he chooses God because he ends up becoming one of the most prolific writers in the Bible. (38:20) He authors a whole bunch of the psalms, at least 70s some that we know of. And usually we know that because under the heading it says a psalm of David. There's a whole bunch of others that don't say that as well, but are kind of clearly by style and syntax and grammar and all those things. We know it's probably David who wrote that. (38:39) And one of those psalms that doesn't directly have his name on it, but seems really evident that that David did write it was Psalm 119. It's the longest chapter in the Bible. Has 176 verses in it. And so we're just going to take the time this morning to go painstakingly through each one of them. So cancel your plans. (39:02) But it's interesting. It seems like being the longest chapter in the Bible, it would contain something significant. And it does a bunch of times. In fact, this idea of promises, it keeps bringing the reader back to the promises of God. It brings this idea up no less than like 15 or 16 times throughout the chapter. (39:23) And partway through this amazing chapter, David really tells us what he's learned throughout his life of having nothing and then having everything, of doing great things and of doing terrible things, of making decisions that are driven by his own selfishness just like we do. Fooling himself into thinking that that's what freedom looks like. (39:43) And he ends up giving us one of the very best descriptions in all of scripture of what it looks like to be free from that sin and that corrupt desire. Psalm 119:37. Turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through your word. Reassure me of your promise made to those who fear you. Help me abandon my shameful ways, for your regulations are good. (40:13) I long to obey your commandments. Renew my life with your goodness. Lord, give me your unfailing love, the salvation that you promised me that I can answer those who taunt me for I trust in your word, word of truth from me. For your regulations are my only hope. I will keep on obeying your instructions forever and ever. (40:36) I will walk in freedom for I have devoted myself to your commandments. Notice his level of understanding here. It's not God has set me free. Now I'm free to do what I want. It's God has set me free. Now I've got a love for and a desire to do the things that God put in my heart. To be the man that God created me to be. (41:00) To follow the things that God set before me. to learn to love those things that God put before me. Everything good comes from God. And all of those things have a selfish and corrupt and misguided counterpart. And he's asking God, set me free from those things. Give me a love for your things. And it might have taken him a while to get there, but he got there. (41:26) And he got there to the point where he's later referred to in the book of Acts as a man who reflects God's own heart. Now, it might be taken you a while. It certainly has for me to understand how deep this concept of freedom in Christ runs. But just like David, we can learn to love and see the beauty in the life that God himself dreamed up for us. (41:55) Just like David, you are not a slave to your past. Some of you need to hear that. You are not a slave to your past. There's a great Scottish theologian, Sinclair Ferguson, that says, "It's not your life in your past that determine your life. It's Christ's life and his past that determines your life." You are not a slave to your past. (42:20) You are not a slave to your desires. You are not a slave to whatever your situation currently is. You are not a slave to a future that has no hope in it. You are not a slave to this world. You can be a slave to God himself. Uh living, breathing, thinking, working, and being fulfilled by all of the incredible things that he's created you to do and to be. (42:50) That's what he means by this is freedom. This is a promise to everyone and anyone who wants it. Let God shape your process, your thought process. That'll change your motivations, what you spend your time pursuing. That'll set you free from every kind of fool's gold and dead end that the world sets up. That's a promise. What a promise. (43:14)