WALKING IN TRUE FREEDOM

John 11:38-44

There are great lessons in the story of the Exodus; it reveals a lot about human nature.  “The people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.  And God hears their groaning and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exodus 2:23, 24).  God used Moses to free these people from the control of the Egyptians and to lead them into a promised land of their own. After gathering these people and releasing them from slavery, parting the Red Sea and destroying those who chased after them, the people began their walk into the wilderness on their way to their own land of freedom.  It didn’t take very long for them to begin their grumbling once again; this time it was because they were thirsty and hungry.  God met those needs and then while He was talking with Moses up on the mountain the people started once again to grumble because Moses was gone for too long.  They gave up and had Aaron build a golden cow that they could worship, turning their backs on God and on Moses.

The Israelites grumbled while they were in slavery; they grumbled when God freed them as well.  Externally they were free; internally they were still in bondage to themselves.  Their external condition had changed but their internal condition remained the same.  They were enslaved and ruled by their fleshly wants, needs, and desires, so slave or free they were no better off.  So what was the point of their freedom?

The United States was built on freedom.  It threw off the tyranny of British rule and developed their own land of freedom; for individuals, groups, and corporations.  Freedom of speech gives people the liberty to say anything they want, helpful or harmful; freedom to own guns and to use them to help or harm others; freedom to govern our own affairs, including our bodies, in ways that help or harm.  Like the people of Israel, America’s early settlers were free externally in a new land but still in bondage to a soul in bondage.

A soul in bondage to the flesh is not free in any circumstance.  The soul must be freed in order for a person to be truly free.  That is why God sent His Son; to release the internal soul from the bondage of the fleshly self so that whatever the external circumstances, the person is indeed free.  With the soul no longer under the governance of the self, it now lives under the governance of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus does the work to free me but I need to learn to walk in that freedom.  Lazarus was freed from death but he needed to remove the grave clothes and put on new clothes.  This is what practicing the Spiritual Disciplines do for me; they don’t give me the freedom; they dress me in new clothes so I can externally walk in with consistency in my state of internal freedom.