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March 15, 2009AM
Colossians 2:8-15
Colossal Freedom
Who wouldn’t love a little more freedom in life?
Remember the Freedom 55 commercials?
There’s dark humour for you.
Funny how the banks don’t promote that brand of freedom any more!
They were offering freedom but it was conditional freedom.
That freedom was dependent on conditions like a solid stock market.
High interest rates and disposable income were other conditions.
I’ve always had disposable income.
Everything I make is disposed of.
In fact most of it is disposed of long before I have it.
I remember the freedom of my youth.
Rules, rules and more rules.
Eat your vegetables, come straight home, save your money, turn off the TV.
Clean up your room and don’t listen to that radio station while you’re doing it!
Little did I know how free life was in those years.
It seems like the conditions clouded my perception.
I wanted more freedom.
And I finally got it when I left home.
Let me describe my freedom since then.
Get to work or you won’t eat.
Put gas in the car because nobody else will do it for you.
I’d love to go out but I can’t leave the kids.
Save for the kids’ education.
Punch the time clock.
Keep the other 90% of the house clean that you never worried about
growing up.
Remember your birthday so you can renew your license and tags.
Now there’s freedom.
Can we truly know freedom?
Yes we can!
But we need to know the truth about freedom.
Any freedom this world promotes is a figment of their imitation.
To buy into it is to voluntarily walk into a cage.
Then while in the cage turn around.
Then after turning around, pull the door shut.
Then lock that door and throw the key between the bars as far as possible.
That’s the freedom the world offers.
One person rightly said, “Freedom is not the right to do as a person pleases, but the liberty to do as he ought.”
Freedom to do as we please is just a license to live in a cage.
Richard John Neuhaus said, “Freedom standing by itself inevitably degenerates into license. License, which is unbridled freedom, quickly becomes the enemy of freedom.”
Paul wanted the Colossians to know Colossal Freedom.
To live with that freedom meant they would live as Jesus lived.
Jesus said, no one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own will.
“The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” (John 10:17-18)
Jesus lived a life completely unfettered.
No one lorded over Jesus.
No one mandated His actions and schedule.
Jesus had Colossal Freedom.
And He can make that life a reality for each one of us.
But first we need to recognize where we are in bondage.
I Notice what Paul wrote in verse 8 about MENTAL BONDAGE.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
Paul says don’t let others play with your mind.
Don’t let anyone kidnap your mind or plunder your thoughts.
There is no shortage of people who will plunder your mind.
Hollywood would plunder you with their worldly philosophy.
They will say sex outside of marriage is OK.
They promote homosexuality as a natural way to live.
Violence is portrayed as the way to deal with disagreements.
They glamorize alcohol as the way to influence people and make deals.
They dangle unearned riches.
They deny the reality of God.
Our minds are clouded with lies and deception.
They entice you into bondage.
They will take your mind and body captive.
We are surrounded by deception and human tradition.
We are so exposed to it we do not see its bondage.
Our minds are carried off as plunder.
The world wants to make your mind its captive.
The only alternative is Christ.
Jesus is the only option to the basic principles of this world.
He stands in contrast to the limited things that our senses detect and desire.
Jesus is beyond the limitations of this world.
In verses 9 and 10 Paul writes, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.”
In the Message it says, “Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.”
We can experience Colossal Freedom through Jesus.
II We also need to see how our actions can be taken captive.
In verse 14 Paul shows us LEGAL BONDAGE
In verse 14 Paul wrote about, “the bond which stood against us with its legal demands.”
The law is a bond, it creates bondage in our lives.
We can be so wrapped up in rules and regulations that we have no freedom.
God challenged Israel to break free from legalism.
That was the message of Isaiah 58.
Fasting is good but not if we do it for ourselves.
Israel was to fast in order to offer God to the world.
Israel was to fast to loose the bonds of wickedness and break yokes.
It was to enable them to reduce the weight of life.
Being directed by laws is not legalism.
The law is good Paul said.
But legalism is putting the law ahead of God’s love.
Legalism is the belief that keeping the law will change your heart.
The law can direct our actions, but it will never change a heart.
Legal bondage is the enemy of Colossal Freedom.
I grew up with a keen appreciation of the law.
Even now I value what the law taught me.
Obedience to the law protected me from many dangers and poor choices.
But today I am not in love with the law.
I respect the law but I am not a bond slave to the law.
To love the law is as dangerous as ignoring the law.
The law works against us and opposes us.
How does it do that?
By blinding us to the cross of Jesus.
Jesus died on the cross to set us free from legal bondage.
The last half of verse 14 says, “he took it away, nailing it to the
cross.”
Jesus died on the cross, voluntarily to free us from legal bondage.
Legalism, the sin of loving the law, went to the cross with Jesus.
III But Paul refers to one more bondage.
Notice what he wrote in verse 13 about another bondage!
“And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh.”
Paul is talking about SPIRITUAL BONDAGE.
We are all dead in sin.
That is the most intense form of bondage.
It would look like there is no coming back from that.
How can there ever be freedom from the bondage of death?
Dead is dead.
There are not degrees of deadness.
A person is never buried because they are a little dead.
Paul says that sin leaves us really dead.
Dead in this life and dead for eternity.
We are powerless to free ourselves from sin.
I can do nothing about my sinful life and its deadly fruit.
But Jesus shows us Colossal Freedom over sin.
“God raised Jesus from the dead.” (v. 12)
And “God made [us] alive together with Him.” (v. 13)
How is that possible?
“having forgiven us all our trespasses.” (v. 13)
Jesus offers us spiritual freedom.
The freedom from the life of sin is Colossal Freedom.
We all are in bondage in this life when separated from Jesus.
Mental Bondage, Legal Bondage, Spiritual Bondage – the MLS of bondage.
We can be set free through the gift God offers.
We can know Colossal Freedom through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Giuseppe Garibaldi, the great Italian leader of the nineteenth century, in a fiery speech urged some thousands of Italy’s young men to fight for the freedom of their homeland. One timid young fellow asked him, “If I fight, Sir, what will be my reward?” Swift as a lightning flash came the uncompromising answer: “Wounds, scars, bruises, and perhaps death. But remember that through your bruises Italy will be free.”
Through Jesus’ stripes, His scars, His death, we are healed.
Jesus paid it all.