If The Son Sets You Free, You Will Be Free Indeed

If The Son Sets You Free, You Will Be Free Indeed Psalm 63 (NIV84) A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. 1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. 7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. 8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. 9 They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. 10 They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. 11 But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God’s name will praise him, while the mouths of liars will be silenced. Are you living the life God intended for you? Or does it feel like something’s not working the way you hoped it would? How would you like to see God work and know you’re a part of it? I believe God’s Word is given so we can know God and grow in our relationship with Him. Friends, very recently, I had an in-depth conversation with a man struggling with his purpose in living. He has all the knowledge required to be saved, yet, he lives an utterly unfulfilled life. Due to events that occurred in his life, he feels betrayed by the very people he trusted most. The churches that he attended over the years didn’t really help either. Rather than being a support system, they became another burden demanding more of his time and money without really caring about his well-being. He said to me that he feels like his life is in the tank; nothing is going well, and most things are only getting worse. He is trying to turn his life around, but every turn seems to bring more drama and more mess. Surely, God has forsaken him, right? Surely his cause is a hopeless one, isn’t it? Surely God has given up him, right? What do you think was my answer to him? I said: “Friend, God doesn’t give up on people. It’s usually people who give up on God!” And then I started to share David’s story from Psalm 63. Why? Friends, I believe that our Scripture reading can help us to become the helping haven to hurting people that God wants us to be. You see, Psalm 63 helps us with appreciating the journey struggling people experience. Just under the title in your Bible it most likely says “A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.” This probably refers to the time when he was running from his own son, Absalom, for his safety (see 2 Samuel 15:23). Did you catch the context? The wilderness. Running away. However, reading this Psalm it doesn’t seem to me that David looked back in regret at the mistakes he had made as a father, nor did he look around in fear or complaint at the discomforts and dangers of the wilderness. Instead, he looked up to the Lord and reaffirmed God’s faith and love. What a statement! In an hour when David might have been discouraged, he was excited about God, and in a place where there was no sanctuary or priestly ministry, David reached out by faith and received new strength from the Lord. I would like you to take note of the progressive, positive experiences he had as he sought for the Lord’s guidance and help at a difficult time in his life. Friends, David models for us a heart of dependence that by God’s grace we need to have. Using your imagination, you can think of how David must have felt emotionally, physically, and spiritually. What sustained him was his personal relationship with God (verse 1). How can I be dependent on God like David, and how can I help others to become dependent on God too? Start where David does – earnestly seeking God. David thirsted for God like someone who is starving for food or thirsty for water (verses 1 and 8). His enemies pursued David, but he seeks his God. To be able to say “my God” by faith transformed David’s wilderness experience into a worship experience. This is something that we should learn, and it is something that we must teach. When we focus on the negative of the wilderness, the experience is negative. When we realise the positive is that God is with us in the desert, the experience become positive. This was the case with David. This God is his God. He lives in a personal relationship with Him, a relationship that is the priority of his life. There in the desert, David was hungry and thirsty, but his most profound desires were spiritual, not physical. With his whole being, body and soul, he yearned for God’s satisfying presence. Psalm 63:5 (NIV84) 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. Again, how did David develop this incredible spiritual passion? By worshipping his God at the sanctuary (verse 2). He had built the tent on Mount Zion and returned the ark to its rightful place, and he had found great delight in going there and contemplating God. What about us? The same is true for us as well. Friends, it is our regular acts worship that prepares us for the crisis experiences of life. What life does to us depends on what life finds in us, and David had in him a deep love for the Lord and a desire to please Him. Because David had seen God’s power and glory in His house, he was able to see God’s powerful influence in the wilderness as well! When you are in the wilderness, what or who do you look to get through it? David continues: “Earnestly, will I seek You.” Some manuscripts say: “I will seek you early in the morning.” Both translation possibilities convey a beautiful message: when we choose “earnestly”, we acknowledge that David puts his whole self into his spiritual search. The Hebrew verb used here means “to seek with longing” and implies a passionate desire for God. When we choose “early”, it highlights that seeking God is the first thing on David’s mind. Do you long for God as David did? Do you seek Him “early” and pursue Him throughout your day? Or do you feel satisfied with an hour or two on Sunday? Your answer will determine the impact of your life. When God brings a matter to your attention at bedtime, don’t ignore it. Pursue it. Ask Him what He wants. To walk in the Spirit is to obey the initial promptings of the Spirit. David wasn’t passive in his devotion, for he continued to cling to the Lord and rest in the safety of His right hand. Faith without works is dead. Believers are safe in the hands of the Father and the Son. In John 10:27–29 (NIV84) Jesus reminded his disciples: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” In verse 3, David made a profound statement I would like to come back to: “Your love is better than life.” Friends, when is God’s love better than life? Jewish and Christian martyrs had to make this decision when confronted with the choice of revoking their faith in God or facing torturous forms of death. Such choices were known during the exilic period. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego resolved to die in the flames of the fiery furnace set up by Nebuchadnezzar rather than to worship the Babylonian gods (Daniel 3). Daniel himself faced the lions’ den when he chose to continue to pray to God after the worship of non-Babylonian deities had been outlawed. (Daniel 6). The New Testament also speaks of martyrs (including Stephen) who were more willing to hold on to God’s love than their lives. Listen with me to Hebrews 11:35–40 (NIV84) 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40 God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Life wasn’t easy for the first-generation Christians. Friends, the teaching of both Old and New Testaments agrees that knowing God and his love is more satisfying than life itself. Job refuses to end his suffering by cursing God and declares his enduring faith in the traditional profession: “Though he [God] slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). Jesus teaches that only those willing to lose their lives will truly experience the nature of Christian life dependent on God’s power and love (Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24). What or who would we be willing to die for today? Not too many in a prosperous society. Perhaps we would give up our lives for the family—that is, our spouse or children. But our psalm tells us that God’s love is “better than life itself.” Even life pales in the brilliance of love. Is there some way here and now that the love of God—his fierce loyalty to his covenant relationship—makes that kind of difference in your life? Does it make such a difference that it wouldn’t be worth living without it? Is your connection with God so important to you that you would sacrifice all your future hopes and dreams to keep connected with God? That is what Abraham did in Genesis 22. He had finally won his way through a long process of growing to understand that God intended to restore his whole creation through his descendants. God clarified that regardless of Abraham’s advanced age and his wife’s infertility, his descendants were to come through his own physical child, not through an adopted slave or the child of a servant. Having seen the miracle of Isaac’s impossible birth accomplished beyond all hope, we might wonder how Abraham could then take that special son on a three-day journey to Mount Moriah, specifically to sacrifice him there at the command of God (Genesis 22). He did it because his relationship with God was more important than theology, or logic, or human emotion. It was better than life! Jesus didn’t want to die on the cross. He asked God if he could pass—if there weren’t some other way (Matthew 26:39). But he went to the cross willingly because God’s love (for Jesus, and through Jesus for you and me) was better than life. This is no “pie in the sky by and by” Christianity. It is a realistic, hard, true, here-and-now faith that endures faithfully because God lives and loves faithfully and enduringly in our lives now and here. May God’s committed covenant love so fill you that you will come to know the abundant life that does not depend on our ability to stay alive. Friends, the New Testament teaches us this profound truth: “Those who have Jesus have eternal life!” In John 3, the apostle John tells the story of the time when John the Baptist said this about Jesus: “He must become greater; I must become less. 31 “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33 The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. 35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” John 3:30–36 (NIV84) Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 5:39–40 (NIV84) “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” Christianity is not merely a religion based on a book. It is much, much more. It is a relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ, Friends, and this is what we learn from King David too. John 8:30–45 (NIV84) 30 Even as he spoke, many put their faith in him. 31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” 34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth; everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. 41 You are doing the things your own father does.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Friends, don’t you think you and I should share Jesus in season and out of season with of those around us who live in the wilderness, with those who think that nobody cares about them? Don’t you believe that we should build relationships with them like God is building with us? Don’t you think that we could show them that God’s love revealed in Jesus is better than life itself? I not only believe we could but that we must because this is our destiny, our calling: “to enable people to have a real relationship with God through His Son Jesus!” Amen.