8-1-2016

 Good Morning All!! 

      1 Corinthians 6: 19b-20: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

     “It’s a free country!”  “I have my rights and I will exercise them as I choose!”  We hear phrases like this often, especially in the United States.  It is all about my freedom to do as I please.  The interesting thing is that we are now seeing what happens when my freedom meets your freedom.  So how do we as Christians supposed to act?  We have freedom; Christ freed us from sin and the devil.  We are free, right?

    We need to see this carefully.  Christ has freed us.  He has freed us from the tyranny of the devil.  We are freed from the guilt of sin.  We are freed the fear of being separate from God.  We are freed.  Yet this freedom has never meant that we can choose whatever we want.  We are no longer under the reign of the devil; now we are under the reign of God.  We are God’s children.  We were bought with a great price; we were bought with the blood of Jesus.

    So now we belong to God, we are free of the devil but our allegiance is now to God.  Our allegiance is not to our own personal freedom, our allegiance is not to our own selfish desires; that places us back in the reign of the devil.  Being in God’s kingdom means to desire the “higher things”; we desire those qualities which Jesus displayed.  We desire to serve God and fulfill his will.  We seek to live as God desires us to live.

    This can be a challenge.  There are many times when the world will do everything it can to convince us that we are wrong.  Just remember that even the devil quoted Scriptures when he tempted Jesus in the desert; it can be the same with us.  Yet the world always twists Scriptures just enough to make them wrong.  We know that God loves us and loves all people but God hates sin because it separates us from God’s grace.

    God hates sin because it removes us from his love and from his grace.  God hates sin because it harms us; it harms our relationship with Him.  God’s hatred of sin is probably easiest understood if we think how you and I hate cancer.  We see what cancer does to the body and we see what cancer does to our relationship with the person who has it.  Cancer can destroy the body and kill the person who has it.  We lose that loved one to a disease so we hate cancer.

    Sin is a cancer and because it is, God hates sin.  God does not hate you or anyone else but sin will separate us from Him.  So in order to redeem you, God had Jesus come into the world to pay your debt, to buy you back from the devil.  So we should live our lives for Him.  We should thank and praise, serve and obey Him with complete joy. 

    Father of grace, you sent Jesus to buy us back from the devil.  Let us never forget that we are yours.  Let us never forget that by your grace, we are forever in your mercy.  Help us to live in your holy kingdom.  Keep us from seeing freedom as the desire to follow our selfish desires.  Help us to see that freedom gives us the power to live in your will.  Be with those who struggle with freedom.   In the precious name of Jesus, our risen Savior we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret