There’s an old saying that … when we’re too close to something, we can’t see the wood for the trees. Indeed, the closer we are to a problem, the harder it is to see the solution. So, when you’re too close, when you’re blinded by the complexity, how do you get that sense of perspective you so desperately need?

It’s funny how you and I can be blind to something which is patently obvious to someone else. A lot of that has to do with proximity. I was sitting with a young man the other day who has a great business. He’s a well-known speaker and author and travels all over the world and he’s an absolutely delightful human being, not full of himself in his own sense of self-importance which is pretty rare among media personalities.

Anyhow, he and I catch up every once in a little while to chat and before our last meeting I was thinking a bit about his business and something glaring jumped out at me – an opportunity that he was missing to really take his enterprise, which he works very hard at, to the next level.

So we chatted over lunch and he became more and more excited and then I could see it in his eyes, he had one of those, ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ moments. It’s so obvious, how come I didn’t come up with that? Can I tell you I’ve had many of those moments in my life from my early days in IT consulting when our managing director would fly in and review a project that I was working on and he would see this and see that and this and the other thing that I’d missed, why didn’t I think of that? I remember thinking that to myself, it’s so obvious.

And these days in this ministry of Christianityworks of which I’m the CEO. The ministry that’s responsible for this radio program that you’re listening to and lots of other things to boot. Even though I’m many years older and hopefully just a bit wiser than I was as a young consultant I know that there are still things that I miss.

And so what I’ve done is to surround myself with some smart, insightful, external advisors as well as some great board members who see things differently because they’re not involved in the day-to-day running of the ministry. It’s through their input that so many of the amazing things that God’s done through Christianityworks have in fact happened. And it’s also through their input and advice that we’ve managed to avoid a few mistakes along the way.

You get the point right? The closer you are to something the harder it is to see the wood for the trees. And one of the things that you and I are really close to, far too close to, unavoidably close to is our sin, our weaknesses and our failings. Now that’s a dangerous thing because as we saw last week on the program – sin always, always, always has painful consequences.

And if our weaknesses and failings, our sin are tucked away in the blind spots where we can’t see them they’re going to continue to ruin our lives. What we need is that external perspective and wisdom and insight to help us see what’s wrong so that we can do something about it.

If you’ve been able to join me over the last few episodes on the program, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about the powerful transformation that God wants to bring into our lives, to make our lives better by setting us free from sin which robs us of the amazing life that he always intended we should have.

God is a God of new beginnings and He is also a God of powerful lifelong transformation and growth. That seems a little far-fetched when you’re down there in the mire of the consequences of your own sin but it’s true. And we saw together how God spoke and brought transformation over the nation of Israel precisely at such a time as that, when it seemed impossible.

When as a result of their sin they’d been in exile in Babylon as slaves for seventy years, when because Babylon was the dominant super power of the day freedom and transformation and redemption and restoration all seemed completely impossible.

Right in the middle of that God stepped in and said this:

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you.’

‘For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.’ (Isaiah 43: 1-4)

So God steps in to redeem them but the problem for Israel is that they still probably don’t completely see their sin, they still probably don’t have a good handle on what got them there in the first place and how to avoid it in the future.

So just a few verses later God acknowledges that and this is what He says, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 8 to 10:

Bring forth the people who are blind yet have eyes, who are deaf yet have ears. Let all the nations gather together and let the people’s assemble. Who among them declared this and foretold to us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to justify them and let them hear and say it is true. You are my witnesses, says the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

In other words, the blind will see and become God’s witnesses. The deaf will hear the truth and will be able to tell others, ‘hey guys, it’s true’. God is going to remove the blind spots and clear out the deaf ears so that they can really see things as they are, so that they can see God as He is, so that they can see themselves and their sin for what they are.

When you think about it that’s exactly what you and I need in our lives, isn’t it? That external perspective and where better the get that than from God Himself? Who could be wiser? Who could care more? Who could love us more? Who could give us better advice than God Himself?

So God goes on and sets Israel free and restores them back to the Promised Land, back to Jerusalem, great. But if He doesn’t bring sight to the blind and hearing of truth to the deaf then they’re just going to make the same mistakes all over again just like you and me.

Do you imagine that a sculptor would begin and sculpture and then leave it incomplete? Do you imagine that a potter would toss a lump of clay on his wheel and leave it to go rock hard as a half-formed lump of dirt? No. They want to complete what they started and so it is with God.

He didn’t redeem you from your sin. He didn’t reveal Jesus to you to save you just to let you rot in your sin for the rest of your life.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians 1:6. He says:

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

God wants to finish what He started in you. He wants to keep shaping you and transforming you and one of the main ways that He does that, just as He did with Israel, is through His Word.

One of the great tragedies of the Church is that there are so many so-called Christians. People hungering to be set free from the consequences of their sin, who trifle with the Word of God, who pick and choose what suits them and worse still who ignore it all together.

I wonder how many people today have a Bible or two or three or five, sitting on a shelf or in a cupboard at home, somewhere gathering dust. A Bible that they haven’t opened for months or even years. I wonder. And those self-same people are invariably the ones whose lives are in turmoil. They are the same people who are wallowing in the consequences of their sin.

Wake up! God wants to bring sight to the blind. He wants to bring truth to the deaf. He wants to transform your life so that you can be all that He ever planned you to be, so you can do all the things He ever planned for you to do.

God has an amazing plan for your life, God wants to transform your life, are you ready?

One of the reasons that we get things out of perspective, is that we use the wrong reference points in our lives. And when we lose perspective, life can very quickly go down the gurgler. I wonder how much the whole issue of perspective is distorting your view of reality. I wonder how much that’s impacting your life. 

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this but back when I was young there was a game that came out called Twister. Here’s how it worked. There was a plastic mat with coloured circles on it and you put it down on the floor. There might be two or three or four players and for each player the dial would be spun on a wheel and it would land on a certain colour.

What you had to do is put one of your hands or your feet on a circle of that colour on the mat. Now it’s easy for spin number one or perhaps two but with multiple players on the mat, by spin number three or four you had to do contortions to get around the other players on this relatively small mat to be able to place either a hand or a foot on the colour required.

Eventually the three or four of you playing would end up collapsing in a heap from all the contortions. I mean I really can’t remember how you won the game but I do remember it was a lot of fun.

Well I have to say the contortions could get pretty uncomfortable particularly when someone else fell on top of you and knocked the stuffing out of you.

Now when you stand back and you think about that game objectively you come to realise that the reason people were doing these contortions there on that mat, is that their reference point was the dial that was spun around to select a colour. And to tell you the truth I see a lot of people living their lives like that because of the reference points that they choose.

If you choose wealth as your reference point then you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. If you choose career you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. Let me give you an example. The other day I caught up with a man for breakfast, now he’s just a few years younger than me and he works in the finance sector.

He had taken a new job in the bank that he works for to advance his career. So instead of working close to where he lives, he now has to travel a long way each day to and from work. And he’s having problems in this new job. It’s a high pressure, high target work environment with an unreasonable boss. So much so that in this large bank they simply can’t get people to apply for jobs in this particular office.

The more I listened, the more I heard this man basically asking me for advice as to how he could contort himself to fit into this environment. But what I saw from what he’d told me was that it was a toxic work environment where no matter how good he became at his job, no matter how much he twisted himself to fit he was never going to succeed.

When I pointed that out to him in an instant he looked at me with eyes wide open and said, ‘You know what, you’re right, you’re absolutely right’. His reference point was trying to please an unpleasable boss. And because I wasn’t close to it I was able to stand back and basically point out to him that he had the wrong reference point.

Do you see how easily we can do that when we’re close to a problem? It’s something that happens to each one of us and it’s something, as we saw last week on the program, happened to Israel. God brought them out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, where He blessed them immeasurably and yet off they went and they worshipped idols and foreign gods and behaved badly and turned their backs on God so after many warnings He punishes them.

The Babylonians invade, they destroy Jerusalem and they take God’s people into captivity for seventy years. But after that time God decides, look enough is enough, so He comes to set them free as we saw, if you were able to join me, in Isaiah chapter 43.

Now even though they were being set free one problem still remained. He needed to reset their reference point from the things of this world back to Him. Have a listen to what He says to them in verses 11 to 17 of that same chapter, chapter 43 in the Book of Isaiah.

I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour. I declared and saved and proclaimed when there was no strange god among you and you are my witnesses, says the Lord, I am God and also henceforth I am He. There is no one who can deliver from my hand, I work and who can hear it? Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.

I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick. (Isaiah 43: 11-17)

So what God is basically talking about here in this passage is that He is going to defeat the Babylonians also called the Chaldeans.

Now that’s amazing because they were the dominant super power of the day. But in doing this amazing thing before the eyes of His people these Israelites, who indeed had been in captivity for seventy years as slaves, He’s making a point to them.

He’s saying, ‘Look, the only one who has the power to do this is me’, God Himself. All those other gods that you were worshipping, which is what got you here in the first place, do they have the power to do this? Do the Babylonians have the power to stand against me? No, of course they don’t.

So why chase after those other gods? Why have your reference point for your life out there somewhere. Because if you do that you’ll end up doing contortions to fit with the demands of those other things which you call gods, whether it’s wealth or career or reputation or maybe a physical idol, whatever it happens to be for you, all those things are false gods.

I know there are some people who need to reset their reference point today, who need to stop spinning the dial in their lifelong game of twister and focus on the one reference point, God Himself, who has the power to set them free.

Can I ask you quietly but directly, are you one of those? Because if you are today, here, right now is the time to make Jesus the number one reference point of your life.

In the days of old before satellite navigation, ships always didn’t know exactly where they were. Of course these days using simple Sat Nav technology they can pinpoint their location on the globe within just a few metres. But back then they couldn’t. So when it was dark or stormy or foggy if they were close to the land they ran a very real risk of crashing into the rocks.

That’s why lighthouses were built, as a reference point, a light that shone out into the darkness, to help them head in the right direction rather than the wrong one which would lead to death and destruction.

Jesus said this, He said:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

The question however is for each one of us, who or what am I following? Who or what is my reference point? Is it that unreasonable boss who somehow tricked me into thinking that I had to conform to his plans and contort my life? Is it that extra money I’m chasing which is causing me to do that long commute and to miss out on time with my family? Is it …? Well, what is it?

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. God’s plan is to transform your life completely and radically, to set you free to be who He made you to be and He’s done that by grace.

And when we let the light of Jesus shine in our hearts, when we let the light of Jesus guide our steps, when we make Him our reference point in place of all those other imposters out there, then the grace transformation that God has always wanted to bring you starts to happen in your life.

Listen to Him again: I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour.

The past, your past, is history. It’s been, it’s gone, and nothing can ever buy it back. And whilst, to a great degree, it’s shaped and defined who you are today, it can’t hurt you. It doesn’t have to hurt you … unless of course, you let it.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been chatting together about the amazing transformation that the grace of God brings into our lives, I like to think of it as a grace transformation. If you’ve been able to join me you’ll know that we’ve been spending some time in just one chapter of the Old Testament, in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 43 because that one chapter happens to be crammed packed full of the transformation that God’s grace brings into the lives of His people.

It’s amazing to me how much God’s managed to pack into just one chapter of His Word the Bible, His living Word. And if you and I can just drink that in, the amazing power of God’s grace, then we’re going to experience a transformation in our lives that words simply can’t describe.

Now to some that might sound to be a bit over the top, a bit much if you will. Transformation? ‘Hey I’ve believed in God for years’, some people are saying, ‘I’ve never experienced any transformation’.

Well that may be you, that may ring a little true for you and if it does stick with me because we’re going to dig deep today into what God has to say into your life about His grace transformation for you.

Have you ever wondered what grace is? Grace is when you receive something good but you don’t deserve, it’s the flip side of mercy. Mercy is when you are spared a punishment that you deserve. Grace is when in its place, you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve. Two sides of the one coin – mercy and grace. And one of the greatest acts of grace that God could ever pour out on anybody is a freedom from their past.

Let’s dive into God’s Word now, Isaiah chapter 43, a pivotal time in the history of Israel, they were in Babylon of all places, having been captured and exiled as slaves by the Babylonians.

Now for them that was an outrageous thing because they knew that they were God’s chosen people. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt some centuries before and brought them to the Promised Land, the Land He had promised to Abraham many, many centuries before.

And yet here they were again, not living in freedom in that Promised Land but living in captivity as slaves in another land. Why? Well because they had turned their backs on God. Now God was patient with them but eventually His patience ran out and He allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and take His own people into captivity.

The Israelites were living out the consequences of their own sin. Does that sound vaguely familiar? It happens to all of us when we turn our backs on God and go our own way in sin, in rebellion against Him. We all end up living out those consequences and as far as the Israelites could see there was no hope for the future, they were stuck there in slavery, great, just, let me say, like it is for you and me when we’re wallowing in the slavery of our own sin.

But then God decides to speak through the great Prophet Isaiah. He speaks of bringing the power to change things. He speaks of breaking into their dismal reality. He speaks of the fact that He has redeemed them, that they are precious to Him, that they needn’t be afraid, that He’s going to open their eyes to the great reality, the great unseen reality which is Him.

He is bringing transformation, release for the captives, a new life, the very same thing He wants to bring into your life, the very same thing that Jesus came to this earth to bring for us.

But before that transformation, before that release can happen something else needs to happen in the hearts and the minds of His people. Have a listen to what God says through Isaiah chapter 43, verses 14 to 21.

Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, ‘For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned into lamentation. I am the Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King’. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise as they are extinguished and quenched like a wick.

‘Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself so that they may declare my praise.’ (Isaiah 43: 14-21)

What is it that needs to happen? God needs to shift their focus off their circumstances onto the great and mighty redeemer that He is. And God needs to get them to forget their past and place their hope in Him for the future because if all they can focus on is their past failures and their present predicament then they won’t be ready to receive the freedom that He’s about to bring. And the very same is true for you and me.

There are some people tuned in today who are gripped by their past. They can’t get over their failures, they can’t get over their hurts, perhaps the abuse, whatever it is in their past that’s holding them back. And the thing about the past is that it’s so powerful it seems that nothing, NOTHING, can set you free.

That’s precisely how it would have seemed to the Israelites. Seventy years in captivity, seventy years of the punishment that by now they knew they so richly deserved and no hope for the future until all of a sudden, without warning the grace of God breaks into their bleak reality and God calls on them to forget their past and replace it with a vision of a bright future – a way in the wilderness, waters and rivers in the desert to give drink and to bless His chosen people, the people whom He formed for Himself to declare His praise.

I believe that God is saying the very same thing to us today, to you and me. Forget the past, He’s wiped your slate clean through Jesus, through the death and the sacrifice of Jesus on that cross for you, the past is irrelevant when you consider the future in the light of the grace transformation that God wants to bring into your life.

Do you hear Him through His Word today? Because the moment anyone believes in Jesus the past becomes completely irrelevant. All those hang ups from the past that hang you up are wiped away. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17 says:

If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. Everything old is passed away. See, everything has become new.

How much of the past has passed away? Everything, all of it, every last little bit is gone the moment you believe in Jesus because in God’s sight and in reality you have become a completely new creation, you have literally been born again and everything about you has become new, everything.

And God wants us to see that today. That’s why in that verse that I just read He says, “See, see everything has become new”. Do you see? Because that’s the great reality that God wants you to see today – the reality of your complete transformation. You, your life, your slate wiped clean and your future, whatever it may hold in God’s plan for you is bright because your God, the same one who sent Jesus for you, is pouring His grace out into your life today through His Word and His Spirit.

Back there in the Old Testament, Israel was punished for their sins but you and I, we have a new contract, a new arrangement with God written in the blood of Jesus who bore the punishment that you and I so richly deserve. Back then, the Israelites didn’t receive mercy but eventually they received grace.

Today you and I, if we believe in Jesus, we receive both mercy and grace, both freedom from punishment that we deserve and the unmerited, undeserved favour and blessing of God through Jesus, through Him alone and nobody else.

What a grace transformation, the power of the past over you is broken, your future lies in God’s hands.

What a blessing! what a grace transformation!

There are so many good things in this world that can end up ruining our lives. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I find that one of the most dangerous times in life, is when everything’s going well, because that’s the time we turn our hearts away from God, and we start worshipping His blessings instead.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of life, that the good things in our lives can actually distract us from the best thing in life. It’s actually far more common than you may think.

Consider a marriage, the most important of all human relationships on this planet, always has been, always will be. How easy is it for a young couple to get married and then they buy a home and the mortgage cuts in and so they work longer and harder and in any case they both enjoy what they do.

Then children come along and they focus on those as they rightly should. And as the months and years slip by they become so focused on all those other good things that they forget to focus on their marriage. And then one day they wake up and they wonder, ‘where did all the love go?’

Is it a bad thing to buy a home? No. Is it a bad thing to enjoy work? Of course it isn’t. It’s great to have a job that really invigorates you. Is it a bad thing for a husband and wife to bring children into the world and to love them and to nurture them and to sacrifice for them? No, that’s a great thing! In fact it’s hard to imagine a greater blessing than children.

None of those things in and of themselves are bad things, they rarely are. But when it comes to the health of that marriage, if those good things become more important then the best thing – the marriage that brought them to pass in the first place then that, that’s a bad thing, a very bad thing.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been looking at the nation of Israel through the eyes of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah at a time in their lives where they’d been in exile as slaves because they turned their backs on God to follow after a whole bunch of other things that seemed good in their eyes.

We’ve picked up the story in Isaiah chapter 43 where God speaks of the amazing grace that is about to befall them, the grace transformation as I call it.

But to bring about change sometimes we have to let go of some apparently good things, things that are drawing us away from the best thing.

Let’s pick up their story now in the next chapter, Isaiah chapter 44 beginning at verse 9. God says this:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong-arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches out a line and marks it out with a stylus and fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass.

He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it, then it can be used for fuel, part of it he takes and he warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire, over this half he roasts meat and he eats and he’s satisfied, he also warms himself and says, ‘I’m warm, I can feel the fire’. And with the rest of it he makes it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘save me for you are my God.

They do not know nor do they comprehend for their eyes are shut so they cannot see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on the coals, I’ve roasted meat and have eaten, now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood’? He feeds on ashes and a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud’. (Isaiah 44: 9-20)

It’s a pretty simple and powerful piece of logic, isn’t it?

Okay back then, people made idols and worshipped them. Of course in some parts of the world that still holds true for the rest of us though we make idols out of other things, good things it would seem – jobs and careers and relationships and reputations and possessions.

Mostly none of those are bad, I mean the wood that the idol makers used wasn’t bad of itself but they become bad and they become dangerous and they become destructive when we elevate them to a level in our lives where we start believing that they have the power to save us and to make us happy. Because when we do that, in our hearts we have no need of God and He becomes less important in the scheme of things.

That’s exactly what Israel had done in the first place seventy years before which had landed them in this mess of slavery and exile that they found themselves in, a mess that God allowed to befall them to bring them back to their senses. They built these idols in their lives and in effect they worshipped them instead of God and it’s in the same way that we make idols of things in our lives and worship them in place of God.

Can an object make you happy on your deathbed? Can it? Or some prized possession that you’ll soon be parted from? No of course not, they’re powerless. It doesn’t make any more sense than taking a bit of wood and using half of it to cook your dinner and the other half to make an idol that you worship.

God’s grace is completely and utterly amazing but for God’s grace to have its full effect in radically, powerfully transforming our lives then you and I need to worship just the one God. The God whose poured His grace out on us through Jesus Christ. The God who has the power to transform our lives.

So you and I need to renounce some of the things that we’ve put above God in our scheme of things, some of the things that are just good things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level, that will be most of them and a handful of them will be the things that we know are wrong. Whichever they are we need to put them back into their rightful place so that God can be in His rightful place in our lives and our Lord of all. That’s where transformation begins.

A few centuries later the Apostle Paul was writing to his friend Titus and in part this is what he said, Titus 2: 11 to 14:

For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and Godly while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all inequity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

In other words the way we respond to God’s grace is to let go of all that stuff – the bad stuff that’s crowding Him out of the picture and instead to live our lives as a great big thank you to God for what He’s done for us. Isn’t that a powerful idea? Simple but powerful. Live your life as a big thank you to God for His grace. Wow!

Now there’s a transformed life right there, right? Of course you’re going to make mistakes along the way but when we just say thank you to God the best we can, with every thought and hope and deed, just imagine how powerfully God will work in us and through us. That’s where it is at.

Those idols, those other things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level in our lives, they can’t deliver that (in fact quite the opposite). They end up being burdens that weigh us down because they’re imposters.

The only thing that lifts us up, the only thing that sets us free, the only thing that brings the change that we need in our lives is the grace of God through Jesus Christ. It’s the only thing.

If I were to ask you – do you want to be free? – I’m sure that without a shadow of a doubt, your answer would be a resounding, unequivocal “Yes!!” That’s no surprise. But have you ever asked yourself, exactly what freedom is? I mean … really? What is it?

Freedom is a big deal. I grew up during the Cold War at a time when the threat of communist dictatorship loomed large as a threat across the globe or at least that’s how it appeared to most of us. And still today, there are totalitarian regimes where people aren’t free to say what they think or do what they please within the reasonable bounds of a just law.

I remember some years ago I was in a place, a country in Asia that on the surface of things seemed to be a peaceable lovely place to live. I was doing some IT consulting work for a large, well-known organisation. Late one Saturday evening when a few of us were still at the office getting some work done that had to go out as quickly as possible, we sat down to have a bite of dinner.

I was chatting with one of the young men whom I’d come to know reasonably well over the preceding few weeks and I was telling him what a lovely country I thought this was. As I did, a dark look came over his face. His eyes darted around to make sure that no one else was within earshot. He lowered his voice and said, ‘Well yeah it is on the surface but understand we’re not free to say what we think. If I criticised the government in any way I would probably go to prison. It’s a terrible thing’, he said, ‘when you can’t say what you think.’

Up until that point in my life I’d never even thought about it because I have, all my life, lived in a country where we have complete freedom of speech and action and religion within, as I said, the reasonable bounds of a just law.

And yet the more I thought about it the more I realised how terrible it must be simply to not be able to have one of those basic freedoms, the tension and the oppression that a person must feel when they simply aren’t allowed to speak their mind.

My dictionary tells me that freedom is the power or the right to act, speak or think as you want, the freedom of choice, the absence of subjection to a foreign domination or a despotic government. The power of self-determination or that sort of thing.

To a degree that definition hits the mark and yet to a greater degree I think it completely misses the mark. Why do I say that? Because the dictionary definition of freedom, the common definition assumes that freedom means to be free from something out there somewhere whereas the most common slavery that we all experience is the slavery to the evil that lies within.

Don’t believe me? Ask anybody who has ever been addicted to something. Ask anybody who has ever suffered because of their selfishness or their anger or their dishonesty. Ask anybody whose marriage has ever failed because they were unfaithful. Yeah surely the greatest tyrant of all lies within and God calls it sin.

Now conventional wisdom has it that we are masters of ourselves, that we can determine how we think and act and feel and react and behave. The Bible on the other hand, God’s Word, maintains that we are all slaves to sin until God sets us free. It’s a view that’s one hundred and eighty degrees diametrically opposed to conventional wisdom in this world.

In the course of the story of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Babylon that we’ve been looking at and exploring together over these past few weeks through the Book of Isaiah chapter 43 and 44. It’s really interesting that God isn’t about just setting them free from their captors, the Babylonians who had enslaved them in a physical sense. God’s also is in the business of setting them free from their sin which led to their physical enslavement and which has enslaved them in a spiritual and emotional sense as they live out its consequences.

Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 44: 21 and 22:

Remember these things O Jacob and Israel for you are my servant. I formed you, you are my servant. O Israel you will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.

I love that. I absolutely love that because you and I know that the most powerful slavery of all is our slavery to sin, our addiction to some behaviour based on a destructive attitude or thought pattern that try as we might we cannot, simply cannot rid ourselves of. It is every bit as powerful as a heroin addiction, this slavery that each one of us has to our sin.

And God comes along and says, just look at the powerful picture language here. He says that He swept away our transgressions like a cloud and your sins are like a mist for He has redeemed you. Past tense, done deal, end of story. Again centuries later the Apostle Paul puts it this way writing to his friends in Galatia, Galatians 5:1

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

It seems a strange saying, ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’, it’s a tautology in grammatical terms and yet it’s a powerful statement of the whole purpose of Jesus coming to this earth. The whole purpose of His sacrifice on the cross, the whole purpose of His being raised up from the dead, the whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free.

Did you hear that? The whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free. For freedom Christ has set you free so that you can be free indeed. How ridiculous is it for us to go looking for freedom in the idols of this world, which only lead to slavery and destruction? How ridiculous is it to look for freedom in the works of our hands, which only lead to enslavement to our own dead works.

The only place where we find true freedom, freedom that exists even amidst the most oppressive regime – is in Jesus Christ, an inner freedom that is so free that there is no condemnation, no guilt, no limit, no boundary. A place where we can soar like an eagle though a storm may rage around us. The whole point of grace is to set you free. That’s the grace transformation, its freedom.

Just a few verses on in chapter 5 of the Book of Galatians, Paul writes that we have all been called to freedom, so don’t use your freedom for an opportunity for gratifying your desires but use it to serve one another in love. That’s verse 13 of Galatians chapter 5.

Imagine a Church, imagine a world even where people instead of always being out to get what they want, turn their whole lives around to help others to get what they need. Just imagine such a Church. Just imagine such a world. How different would things be if people truly were free to live that way?

Well my friend that freedom isn’t something that you and I can conjure up in our lives. It’s not something that we can make happen in us. It’s not something that we can work harder to make happen. It’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very power of God that dwells in each one of us who believe in Jesus Christ that it will ever happen and that freedom is available to each one of us here and now.

Father God, we know that we’re sinners saved only by grace, by your grace, your free unmerited favour through Jesus Christ and we believe each one of us that you mean to bring an amazing grace transformation about in our lives.

Lord God, we confess to you today how desperately we need that. And we pray that you will bring this grace transformation to pass in our lives for every day that we have left on this earth so that when we come to you on that day we’ll be ready, ready to live eternity in the presence of your glory. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

And may the amazing grace of God lift you out of the pit of your sin and raise you up to be all He meant you to be.