High Price of Bondage 5/5/2019
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 30:56
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· 186 viewsBondage has a high price. The price for our bondage of sin was paid for once at Calvary by Jesus Christ.
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Guest welcome: We are very happy you are here today to worship with us at Branches Church. If you have not, connect with us by filling out a connect card. In exchange we have a gift bag for you. At the end of my sermon it is our practice to have an altar invitation. Our church family gathers at the front and gives the Spirit of the Lord an opportunity to minister to needs. We invite you to join us, but also are aware that for some this can be uncomfortable. We want you to respond how you feel comfortable to the presence of God that is here.
Then Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh Gilead; and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a covenant with us, and we will serve you.”
And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, “On this condition I will make a covenant with you, that I may put out all your right eyes, and bring reproach on all Israel.”
Then the elders of Jabesh said to him, “Hold off for seven days, that we may send messengers to all the territory of Israel. And then, if there is no one to save us, we will come out to you.”
Last week was a week filled with some highs and lows. Shelley’s Nana passed away, a low. Thank you for prayers and support.
Jonathan was released from the hospital. A high. Thank you to those of you who helped by providing meals. God has done a miracle for Jonathan and is continuing to do a miracle.
When I was at the hospital visiting him after his surgery. I could hear a man calling out “help”. At first I was concerned for the man who’s call went unanswered. Until I learned that he was calling for help and when a nurse responded to the call he would ask “can you bring me a beer?”
Sad really. The man was in there for liver disease. He was calling for the very thing that put him into that hospital room.
“help, help, help.” Jonathan said he yelled it close to eighteen hours a day.
That is what you call being in bondage. Bondage has a high price associated with it.
We live in a culture of “if it feels good, do it!” Live your life on your terms. The message is everywhere. You do what you want, don’t let any one tell you to do otherwise. Never a mention of the cost associated with choices.
Condoms are passed out to teenagers in health units.
Binge drinking on college campuses has increased.
In parts of California addicts can be enabled thru the supply of free needles.
No one stops to consider the high cost.
Drug abuse costs the US economy $442 Billion a year in crime, medical treatment, care, and loss of work hours.
Tobacco addiction costs around $289 Billion a year.
Alcohol addiction costs around $246 Billion annually.
Our sexual choices have a high cost.
41% of babies born in the US are born outside of marriage.
Last year Planned Parenthood aborted/murdered 332,757 babies.
1/4 women are expected to have an abortion before the age of 45
36% of married people admit to having an affair
22% of divorces are because of an affair
56% of divorces involve pornographic addiction
Who can calculate the real cost of what our world offers up as “fun”?
The alcoholic quietly succumbs to cirrhosis of the liver. Lives are taken by drunk drivers every year. Cancer from tobacco cuts short lives. Women carry with them the effects and questions of an aborted pregnancy. Marriages are destroyed by infidelity, or addiction. Families are ruined on the altar of pleasing self.
Bondage has a high price.
Nahash the Ammonite comes to Jabesh Gilead to defeat them. The men of Jabesh offer to make a covenant with Nahash. To become Nahash and the Ammonite’s servants.
Condition: I can put out all of your right eyes.
No one, including the men of Jabesh Gilead would consider that a good bargained price.
The reality: the condition of bondage is rarely negotiated on the front end.
Nahash could have taken them as servants, put out their eyes after having them bound. No one could have said or done anything. They were bound. Often how bondage works.
No one starts a drug addiction thinking one day I will steal from loved ones in order to support my habit.
No one agrees to buy tobacco for the rest of their life with the intent of having cancer take their life.
The man in the hospital had not intention of fighting liver disease.
A woman does not enjoy the benefits of a sexual relationship thinking I will probably become part of the 25% of women who have aborted a baby.
No spouse started down the path toward destroying their family thinking I will pay the price of these sins.
Bondage has a high price.
Nahash offer was for them to become servants, have their right eyes put out. The men of Jabesh asked for seven days to see if there were anyone to save them from their fate.
Saul answered the call of freeing Jabesh Gilead from a future of bondage.
Then the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard this news, and his anger was greatly aroused.
And they said to the messengers who came, “Thus you shall say to the men of Jabesh Gilead: ‘Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have help.’ ” Then the messengers came and reported it to the men of Jabesh, and they were glad.
Saul promised the men of Jabesh Gilead help by the next day.
Saul has just been chosen by God and anointed by Samuel to become King. What is interesting is that many people rejected Saul.
But some rebels said, “How can this man save us?” So they despised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his peace.
Saul was chosen and anointed by God to be King. The chosen, anointed one is who God uses to deliver.
God gave Jabesh Gilead victory over Nahash thru Saul.
So it was, on the next day, that Saul put the people in three companies; and they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch, and killed Ammonites until the heat of the day. And it happened that those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together.
The answer for bondage - God uses the chosen and anointed to deliver. Jesus Christ was chosen and anointed for our victory.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The answer for the bondage in your life is in Jesus Christ.
He was anointed King of Kings.
He was chosen as a perfect lamb.
He was anointed our high priest.
Rejected by men, but chosen by God.
Bondage may have a high price. But in one offering Jesus Christ became the payment.
Altar Music
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
The high price of bondage has already been payed. We don’t have to surrender anything else in our life to the bondage of sin.
Admit you are in bondage.
Believe - Jesus said to the father of a demon possessed son in Mark 9
Mark 9:23
Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Mark 9:24
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
Seek help from your pastor.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.