Freedom - Access to the promised land
Holy spirit brings • Sermon • Submitted
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We continue our series on what the spirit brings.
It says in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 3. Verse 17
2 Cor. 3:17
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Christ came to set us free in every way that a person needs to be and can be set free. That means physically freed from sickness and disease, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, relationally in every possible area. Every possible sphere and area of our life.
Jesus came so that we could experience freedom. He sent the Holy spirit to continue this work..
2 Tim. 1:7
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
Jesus came to set us free from fear. It is fear that blocks us from stepping into all of the promises of God. It is fear that maybe God won't come through for us, that he won’t deliver on his promised. It is fear that we cannot cope in this world, with this situation.
But we know from scripture that Jesus came to bind and break that bondage of fear, to allow us to step into our promised land of freedom.
That is the theme today as we work through the series of what the Holy Spirit give. Today we look at how the Holy Spirit lets us live in today’s promised land.
One of the most impactful stories of the bible is the story of the children of Israel being set free and being moved into their promised land from being slaves in Egypt to free people in the promised land.
This whole story is packed full of lessons for us as believers in Almighty God in the 21st century.
We were all slaves. We have all been slaves to sin, to fear to any number of things, but Christ came as our deliverer to set us free so that we could live in that promised land that was promised to the children of Israel all those years ago.
Christ has called us to, freedom in every area of life (our promised land) his death and resurrection has made this possible. But we need to be willing journey participants on that pilgrimage. If we want to live in this promised land, we need to do what God commands and the Holy Spirit is sent to help us.
You will know from the story of the children of Israel being set free into the promised land that Moses was appointed as the leader.
As the person who would approach Pharaoh and demand that he set the children of Israel free, we know that Pharaoh refused. And so, the Lord sent plagues and pestilence and all manner of things into Egypt, into Pharaoh's land and plagued him. Until eventually Pharaoh said, fine, I'll let them go, just get out and take the plagues with you. We know the children of Israel left, and they were, they were delivered out of slavery.
Holy Spirit as blessing
Holy Spirit as blessing
But they were not just delivered, but they were blessed. Thy not only left but they took the Egyptians silver and their gold and their riches. God set them free and set them off with a fortune as well. And I just I love that, because that is the promise for us as believers will be set free and will be blessed as well.
Eph. 1:3
3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.
Holy spirit as corrector.
Holy spirit as corrector.
But the journey from Egypt to the promised land was not what it could have been for the Israelites. If we look at the geography of the area we know that that journey from where they were in slavery to the promised land was an 11 day journey. yet we know that it took them a whole lot longer than that to get from Egypt to the promised land. We know it was a 40-year journey for the children of Israel. It was supposed to be 11 days.
Anyone familiar with that feeling in life that it should be easier than this?
Why was it so long? Well, there's a few reasons, but one of the big ones is disobedience on the part of the children of Israel. Now none of us like to think of ourselves as disobedient. So let me say it a different way: One of the main reasons the journey to the promised land was so long a lack of obedience.
I say this because it is easy to sit and think I don’t do what the Holy Spirit tells me not to do.
But the real question is do you do what He prompts you to do?
The Israelites had been set free and they knew that it was Almighty God who had set them free.
It was God that parted the sea so that they could go through on dry land
It was God that crashed those waters down on Pharaoh's army, on Pharaoh's Chariots when Pharoah pursued God’s people.
Thad seen God move in mighty ways, not just obviously in Egypt and all of the things that the Lord sent in order to secure their deliverance.
They had seen the Red Sea parting.
They had seen water gushing from the rock when they were thirsty
They had been hungry and had seen manna sent from heaven.
They had followed a cloud by day to give them direction and to cover them.
God sent a fire by night to give them warmth and protection.
The children of Israel could tangibly see how the Lord was at work, looking after them, and yet there was still a whole lot of sin happening in that camp of Israelites.
We know that there were grumbling, that were complaining they were complaining to God about God. They were complaining to God about Moses, the we complaining to Moses about God, They complained about, the food, and even their freedom
They thought they were better off in slavery than on their way to freedom just because they had a few hardships to face along the way. Places where they had to believe God to continue to provide for them.
Pretty soon their grumbling and complaining caused them to stop worshipping, God and turn to worshipping idols. We know that when Moses went to receive the 10 Commandments, by the time he came back down the children of Israel had had turned the riches that God had provided into idols to worship. - An idol is anything you put before God.
It can be so easy to stop relying on God either when life gets tough and sometimes more so when God has blessed you. You can become more focused on the trappings that surround you than on the one who provides the blessing.
On of the roles of the Holy Spirit is in this whole area of obedience
2 Tim. 1:7
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
The Holy spirit has a corrective ministry – encouraging us to not do the wrong thing, but more importantly to keep doing the right thing.
Notice though in 2 Timothy – it is self disciple. The Holy Spirit never forces his will on us.
Holy spirit as courage bringer and encourager
Holy spirit as courage bringer and encourager
The book of Numbers, tells us a story about when the Israelites came near the promised land. Moses appointed 12 spies to go into the promised land to scout it out. A bit of a Recon mission for the Children of Israel.
Numbers 13:26-29
26 The men went back to Moses, Aaron, and the entire Israelite community in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They brought back a report for them and the whole community, and they showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They reported to Moses, “We went into the land where you sent us. Indeed it is flowing with milk and honey, and here is some of its fruit. 28 However, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites are living in the land of the Negev; the Hethites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.”
Numbers 13:31-32
31 But the men who had gone up with him responded, “We can’t attack the people because they are stronger than we are!” 32 So they gave a negative report to the Israelites about the land they had scouted: “The land we passed through to explore is one that devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it are men of great size.
Their report was basically look, “It does flow with milk and honey. This promised land is all that that God promised, BUT there's giants in the land, there are enemies. There are fearful things we're afraid of. We should not go there. – we should not take up the promises of God because we do not know what will happen to us.”
That was the report of most of the spies.
But in verse 30 we meet Caleb
Verse 30 says, Numbers 13:30
30 Then Caleb quieted the people in the presence of Moses and said, “Let’s go up now and take possession of the land because we can certainly conquer it!”
Basically, the report of the 10 spies, the ten of the twelve, was a negative report. Now, even though God said will be able to possess it, it's too hard. There's too many enemies. Too many mountains we can’t live there.
But we know that Caleb and Joshua they had a positive report. And do you know that out of their entire generation, they were the only two men who actually ended up possessing the promised land?
All the other negative naysayers, all the other spies and all the other people of the congregation who focused on the size of the problem rather than on the promise of God died in the wilderness. They died in the wilderness of fear when the promised land was just a few days walk away.
They didn't believe God’s promise that could possess what he had promised.
This is a great story for us as believers as are so often like the children of Israel. We have all been slaves to sin. Slaves that Jesus came to set us free, but we need to cooperate with that deliverance to move into complete freedom. We need to do what God says we need to do. If he says go, we need to go.
We need not to look at the Amorites in our situation, those problems we see or to the Hittites of the Jebusites or any other brand of ‘ite’ that might be blocking our way.
We need to take the next step. We need to go forth like Caleb and possess that promised land. The life that that Jesus died for me to live in.
The Holy Spirit has two roles here.
As the bringer of Freedom and the bringer of courage.
Now I don't know what your captivity is today, but I know that every human that has ever walked this earth has been in captivity to something. Usually a great many things, whether that be all manner of sin, whether that be fear, whether that be sickness and disease, whether you've been living with the sickness and disease for the 12 years or 15 years. Whatever your captivity is, Jesus came to set us free from that.
2 because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
I know that in this day and age with the coronavirus we know that Jesus has come to set us free from any sort of fear associated with the virus I know that anxiety and depression is rife and made worse in times of turbulence like this the Holy Spirit is available to set you free from that.
The Holy Spirit came to not only set you free into your promised land, but to give you the grace and the courage to live it with boldness
We know that the children of Israel didn’t defeat the Amorites or the Hittites in the Jebusites in their own strength.
Eph. 6:18-20
18 Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. 20 For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I might be bold enough to speak about it as I should.
63 The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
The Holy Spirit is life and strength and courage and correction and feedom.
We need to know that if we are going to live in the promised land and the only way we will live in the promised land is to rely on the spirit strength to defeat our enemies, the Holy Spirit of God will give us a courage and a boldness that surpasses all human understanding.
When the children of Israel faced their enemies in their promised land, they succumb to fear. They said, no, I can't do that.
But we can, with the spirit of God.
When God says we can do something, we can do something and we need to obey every command that God sets us.
If we want to live in that land of milk and honey, which is truly the only land we want to be living in
You do not want to live another day in the wilderness. We want to live in the freedom of the promised land, in spiritual prosperity, blessing of every kind that Jesus died to give us.
So I want to pray and declare over your life today over my life whatever you are facing whatever any areas of slavery that might be existing in your life. Whatever Giants or Mountains you think stand in your way.
Today I want to stand with you praying and believing that the Holy Spirit that came to the Earth to set us free from all of that would come through and breakthrough in your life in a new way today.
That He will guide you to obedience,
That he will give you courage and Wisdom
and I pray that Spirt of God that set the children of Israel free from slavery in Egypt all those years ago will do the same in your life today.
That areas of being in bondage to anxiety or depression, or to insecurity or inferiority or that those chains would be broken today in Jesus name and that you as God's children would be set free once and for all so that they would possess that land that Jesus died for us to have. We pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus.