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[0:00] Please pray with me again before we get going. Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, just glorified tonight in every single person that is here.

[0:38] And Father, for those that are here that do not know you, that are not following you, whose life is not reflecting yours, and who are spurning the grace of God, who are cheapening the salvation they have received, God, I pray that you would just convict us, and you would give us grace, Lord Jesus, to be free from these things, and to glorify you as you are worthy to be glorified, and to worship you as you are worthy to be worshipped, and to just enjoy you as you are worthy to be enjoyed.

[1:17] God, you are the greatest thing that anyone can have, and I just pray that you would help me to communicate that tonight, for your glory, Lord.

[1:29] Amen. About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine was really going through some difficult things, and some things that happened in his life that led to depression for him, and just a lot of discouragement.

[1:46] Some serious affliction had taken place, and just a series of events that really kind of subverted his joy. And this person, while he was very much affected by it, was a lover of Christ, and he was a Christian, and he would often, I would often find him praying and appealing to God, and he was groaning, he was mourning, he was sorrowful, he was in pain, but he was loving Christ, he was going to Christ, because that's what he knew was going to be the answer for him.

[2:20] During that time, he would say things like, I only have a friend in Jesus, he's the only one that I can go to, he's the only one that I can find peace from, he's the only one that can content my heart, and if I'm not praying to him, if I'm not with him, then I'm just depressed.

[2:35] I once asked him as well, what do you pray for? What is it that you pray for? And he said to me, I pray this, Lord, may my circumstances not affect my relationship with Christ, but may my relationship with Christ affect my circumstances.

[2:54] I thought that was a really, really good word, it was a good prayer. It meant a lot to him, and it meant a lot to me. But essentially, what he was saying was he wanted the joy of his Lord to overcome the joy, or to overcome the sorrow of his flesh.

[3:09] Right? The joy that he had in Christ to overcome the sorrow that he felt in his flesh. And during this time, he had a keen sense of awareness for the salvation that he had received in Christ. He was very much aware of it.

[3:23] He would often quote this verse in John 16, These things I have spoken to you, this is Jesus speaking, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation.

[3:34] But take courage, I have overcome the world. It was a long time before my friend's situation improved. But as time passed, his heart did grow stronger as God unveiled more and more of the glory of that salvation that he had received.

[3:54] That salvation, that ransoming work of Christ in which he took on flesh, he took on all the devil's temptations, he took on the cross, and he took on finally death.

[4:06] That work that God did, our salvation, was the means by which God redeemed us for himself and for his glory forever.

[4:20] When a man or woman gains a real interest in the real gospel, the real gospel, the tangible, felt, real gospel, with true faith and tastes of those delectable truths and experiences that effective power to heal a broken heart, to soothe an inflamed conscience, to bring rest to a wearied soul, to cleanse the filthy sinner, to quench the thirst of the sojourner, to strengthen the sick, to enrich the poor, to find the lost, to free the slave.

[4:56] When you taste of this gospel, there's nothing less that you can do but totally surrender to God who is that gospel. Who is that good news in loving obedience and worship?

[5:12] Some of you are characterized by what I just said. Some of you, all of you, if you're a Christian, are sojourners who are thirsting, sojourners who need food, who need sustenance for the journey.

[5:25] Some of you are sick because of sin. Some of you are poor because of a lack of faith. This gospel can change you.

[5:35] It can renew you. It can restore you. And I pray that it does that tonight. Let me say this statement. The freest man in the whole world is the one who's enslaved to the greatest master.

[5:48] The freest man is the one who's enslaved to the greatest master. Everyone is enslaved to someone or something. Everyone. I don't care what they say. I don't care if they're an atheist or what.

[6:00] They're enslaved to something, to an idea, to their flesh, to whatever they may be following after and serving. Philippians says that your God is your appetite. Many people are like that.

[6:13] The freest man is the one who's enslaved to the greatest master. I want to tell you about my master and what he's done tonight. Number one, he redeemed me.

[6:26] He redeemed me. You cannot rightly understand the word ransomed until you have an understanding of the word redeemed. For Jesus is our redeemer, but he is also our ransom.

[6:40] He redeemed us, but he also paid the price with himself for that redemption. It's kind of a paradox, but it's not. Jerry Bridges said this. Listen to this. This is a good definition.

[6:52] To redeem is to buy back or secure the release of someone from slavery or from captivity by the payment of a ransom. Redemption, then, is the action to secure release and the ransom is the price paid to effect that action.

[7:09] Does that make sense? So you've got a redemption, which is the buying back of something or someone, and then a ransom is the price you pay to actually do that. Bound up in the person of Jesus Christ is the unique ability to be both redeemer and yet to pay for the redemption with his own body and with his own blood.

[7:31] We were enslaved as sinners to sin and as humans to Satan. Okay? This is a way that I'm going to try to describe to you what exactly you were enslaved to before you were ransomed or redeemed from Christ if you have been.

[7:46] Again, I'm going to say this. We were enslaved as sinners to sin but as humans to Satan. It's kind of a tricky thought but because it's kind of like splitting hairs.

[7:58] It's almost one and the same but there's some differences. Sin Okay? This is the difference. Sin ruled over our interior. Our insides.

[8:11] Our desires. Our personality. Was all infected completely by sin. Totally and completely affected by sin. On the other hand Satan ruled our exterior.

[8:23] Or rules your exterior. Your flesh. Your outer man. By provoking you to bad deeds. Kind of like poking you. Kind of like a doctor who may take one of those tomahawk looking things and hit you in the kneecap and make you kick forward.

[8:39] That's kind of in a sense what Satan does. He pokes. He pricks. He doesn't exactly possess you especially if you're a believer he doesn't possess you but he provokes you.

[8:50] So he works on the external side of things. For evidence of this biblically you can look at Matthew 4. That's when Jesus was tempted himself.

[9:01] And you see a lot of those kind of examples. To use another analogy envision a prison a prison cell and you in that prison cell. Okay.

[9:12] So you got the walls you got the concrete you got everything in the prison cell. The actual thing that you are incarcerated by is the cell. Okay. It's the again the walls the iron bars this is representative of sin.

[9:24] You are incarcerated by sin. You are enslaved to sin but at the same time every once in a while you are attended to by a jail keeper. Okay.

[9:35] Who brings you food and brings you water and sustains you in your poor position. And that is representative of Satan. So you're incarcerated by sin but you're attended to by Satan.

[9:46] He keeps you in that position. He keeps you alive. He keeps you doing his bidding. You are also his prisoner but he is not your captor.

[9:59] And therefore the price of your release from that prison cell or the blood of our beloved Jesus Christ was not paid to Satan. Okay. When you were ransomed when God made himself a ransom for you it wasn't to pay off Satan to free you.

[10:17] He wasn't your captor. He was just the simple jail keeper. But that price was paid to God who could be seen as the warden in this scenario. Does that make sense?

[10:28] The cell and the jail keeper and the warden. That make sense? Now that's not to say that God has made you a sinner or that God has enslaved you into sin but that he is the ruler he is the judge he is the warden over all matters in the spiritual realm.

[10:45] Okay. And you must directly consult with him if you wish to be free. So God being holy and just cannot excuse a single transgression he won't do it.

[10:56] It's against his nature. It's against the idea of being just. All sins have to be accounted for. All debts have to be paid. Therefore we learn from Galatians 3.13 precisely what it is that we've been ransomed from or redeemed from.

[11:11] It says this. Turn there if you want to. Galatians 3.13 This is a good passage to go back to as you're envisioning or thinking about this. Everything's got to be paid for.

[11:28] Every sin. Every infraction of the law. So Galatians 3.13 says this. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

[11:42] Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. So what is the curse of the law? Because that's what obviously we've been redeemed from.

[11:54] Simply put the curse of the law is that perfect zero sin standard that God has for all people. Perfect standard that cannot be broken.

[12:07] If you wish to appease a perfectly holy and just God you have to keep that standard completely without any infraction. And have you fallen short of this? Have I fallen short of this? A trillion times over you have.

[12:19] Ten times a thousand times a day. We all do. And yet some of us are still trusting in our goodness and in our faithfulness to God and in our good deeds as a means of entering into heaven.

[12:35] Somehow we think and people have been deceived that maybe you're around think that by being good enough or earning God's favor through the things that I do that are good that God is going to accept us on the last day of judgment.

[12:47] When he looks at our life and he says although you've made all of these sins against me although you've hated me in this way yet I'm going to forgive you because you did this. Serial killers have done good things in their life.

[13:03] We don't let them off the hook though. You're dead wrong if you think that. God so not one human being can ever do enough to achieve the righteousness that God requires.

[13:14] If somehow we could combine Mother Teresa Gandhi and the Apostle Paul into one person one super human good person and then give them a thousand lives to live to do all the good deeds they want to do they would still fall short of that standard.

[13:30] One thing one thing made them fall short of that standard and they would still go to hell. That super human good person would go to hell. So it's an impossible thing for us to achieve it on our own.

[13:44] Impossible. Jesus said himself in Matthew 5 48 you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Paul said in Galatians 3 just three verses before this one.

[13:58] All who rely on observing the law are under a curse. So the people that put their trust in observing the law and doing the things of law, they're under the curse. For as it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.

[14:15] James also says this in the New Testament. Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at one point has become guilty of all. So you can't trust in that.

[14:27] I talked to a guy today, I just met him sitting on a bench near the drill field and I said, hey man, how did you become a Christian? Or when did you become a Christian? He said, I've always been a Christian. I grew up in a Christian home.

[14:39] And I just, you know, it was baffled. I mean, again, so many people are like that. They don't understand that you aren't a Christian because you grew up in a Christian home. You're a Christian because you submit to the lordship of Christ.

[14:50] Christ. Because you love Jesus. Because you hate sin. Because his spirit's inside of you. You're not a Christian because you grew up in it. Because you were indoctrinated with it.

[15:01] Because you have been baptized. None of those things save. Our redemption then, so this truth that we're speaking of right now, this redemption truth, is the rock upon which we stand as Christians.

[15:19] It is the deed that we hold when we die and we go to heaven and we say, look here, angels, this is my deed to the property that I have in heaven. This is my right to it. I have ownership of property in heaven.

[15:34] Redemption is that deed. It's an engagement ring we wear to signify our union with Christ. It's the wedding clothes we dress ourselves with for acceptance into the wedding feast.

[15:47] There is not a greater truth in the world than this. How are you redeemed? Go back to your verse. Galatians 3.13 It says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.

[16:00] How? By becoming a curse for us. This is the whole essence of redemption and the whole essence of being ransomed. Christ became a curse for you in your place.

[16:13] He was treated as if the curse applied to Him so that the curse might not any longer apply to you. He died in your place.

[16:29] That scripture that Melissa read earlier just a second ago, turn to 2 Corinthians again. Read this slowly. Read this in faith. God made Him, who's that?

[16:44] Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

[16:59] He made Jesus Christ incarnate to become sin for you. think about that. To become sin for you.

[17:12] To become sin for you. To take your sin on Himself. And I'm the same way as you are right now looking at me with no tears in your eyes.

[17:24] And no fear. And no love. We're so weakened to it. We're so dead to it. We've heard it so many times. And we don't think about it.

[17:34] We don't meditate on it. We don't read the scriptures to gain more of it, to get a grasp of it. We should all be crying right now. With joy for thankfulness for what Christ has done.

[17:46] But we sit here and we're just same story, same story, same thing. Give me something new. Guys, we have to pray to Christ.

[17:59] We have to pray to Christ to get this. When you start seeing Him, when you start drawing near to Him in prayer, when you start looking at His Word and reading it and cherishing it as your food for your day, I promise you, this will become real and felt.

[18:20] And it won't feel like a dead faith anymore. It won't feel like dead works anymore. And the songs you sing will feel enlivened and real.

[18:30] will. This is convicting. It should be. That holy God who sits above, whose name we should never even be able to say, because we're sinners, has seen fit to send His only begotten Son to earth, to become like us in all things, to die a wretched and a horrible and a nasty death, to experience that indescribable thing that we call separation from the Father.

[19:06] We don't know what that is. We can't fathom that. He experienced that in our stead, so that, so that, we might become the righteousness of God in Him, so that you could be seen as holy on the day of judgment.

[19:26] When you come before God, He looks at you, He won't see you, He won't see your deadness to His redemption. He will see Christ in that union that He has with the Father.

[19:45] It's called imputation. That's the name for it. And that means that we get Christ, and all that that means, all that Christ is, all of Him, and our beloved Savior gets us.

[19:58] all our sin, all our shame, all our guilt, all our pain, misery, punishment, He got all of it. Why, you say? Why? Why did Jesus get this? Why did He want this?

[20:10] I guess the answer to that question is love, which is simply a word that doesn't describe it accurately. That's the best our English language can do. God did this because He loves us, because He cares for us, because it gives Him more glory to do so, and that's the most loving thing that He can do.

[20:27] He loves us so much, and if He loves us that much, He must hate sin that much. I was reading something today, out of a book about the voice of the martyrs.

[20:47] this guy named Richard Wurmbron back, I don't know what it was exactly, but it was back during the communist regime that was going on in Russia and Romania and all that stuff.

[20:59] The wall hadn't fallen down yet, so he was a missionary kind of underground in Romania, and he suffered a lot of incredibly horrible things. Then he started, when he got out of it, he didn't die, he started this thing called Voice of the Martyrs, and it's a newsletter now that they send out, and it's a ministry.

[21:17] Clay subscribes to him, and he gets all these magazines, and these updates, and things, and I was reading through this update today. I don't exactly know when this happened, but this is a true story about a true person and his wife, and what they went through, and the love that they had for Christ.

[21:40] So, somewhere near the Roman area, I'm not exactly sure, it probably was back a while back, I'm not sure, but he was arrested for passing out leaflets, like gospel tracts, basically, and they were torturing him, and his wife was arrested with him.

[21:57] They were torturing him trying to find out where the Bibles that they had were, because they knew they had Bibles, they knew they had more Christian propaganda, and they were going to try to extinguish that from their land.

[22:09] They hated Christianity, they hated Christ. So, in order to torture him, they put out his eyes with coals, hot coals. Then, they hung him upside down, and tied a chain around his neck, and a big boulder to that chain, and he just was pulling on his spinal cord, basically.

[22:26] And they gagged him, and his wife was screaming at him, stop it, stop it, just tell them where it is, just tell them where it is, tell them where the Bibles are, please, I can't deal with this anymore, I can't take it anymore.

[22:39] They finally un-gagged him. He looks at his wife and he says, woman, don't ever trade your love for your Savior, for your love for me.

[22:57] don't ever trade that love. He didn't tell them. It strengthened her. They took her in the back room to show her a lesson. They tortured her for hours on end.

[23:09] Finally, they crucified them both together. They never relinquished that news of where the Bibles were. That's faith.

[23:22] That's real faith. that's when somebody gets this stuff in their mind and they're willing to go to any length to glorify the God that saved them from it.

[23:36] Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it costs them their life. Oh, by the way, that couple was married two weeks prior to that. Newlyweds. we are elementary Christians here.

[23:54] Okay? We get Christ. We get Christ. He got our sin, our shame. We get him. This is the idea of being ransomed.

[24:07] What a redemption. What a glorious thing he's done in paying our ransom with his own blood. That man had to be thinking something like, my Savior suffered so much more than I ever did.

[24:21] My eyes are put out. My spine's all screwed up. My wife's getting tortured in the back room. I'm going to get crucified soon. And God did so much more for me than I could ever pay him back.

[24:34] He's worthy of our worship. He's worthy of you waking up in the morning early to be with him.! He's worthy of you honoring God with your relationships.

[24:50] He's worthy of everything. Your money, your time, your possessions. God has bought you with his blood. You're not your own. You belong to him.

[25:05] Who or what could be better than Christ? What could be better than that? If you're wandering, don't wander anymore.

[25:19] Turn back to him. If you're still in your sins, if you don't know this Christ, if this isn't a Jesus that you worship, that you know, repent.

[25:31] Don't wait another moment. Repent of your sins. Trust in him. He's done this already for you. This work is complete. If you have him, but you are neglecting him, why would you?

[25:49] For what other thing? He's worthy to lose your spouse over, your child over, your life over. There's a woman on this magazine as well.

[26:01] This is horrific. This woman, she's been burned from head to toe. I don't know how it happened, but she's in there smiling, trying to raise money for more Bibles to be sent to her village so she can share more.

[26:15] I don't know what happened to her. These incredible stories, they don't care about the way they look. We do. We shouldn't.

[26:28] The writer of Hebrews says, how can you neglect so great a salvation? How can you neglect this? this is priceless. Repent, return, and rejoice in Christ.

[26:44] Let him be the source of your joy. Let him be the source of your happiness. Let him be the source of your contentment. Not sex, not drink, not a career, not money.

[26:58] Number two, he freed me. He freed me. Turn to Acts 13. Acts 13, beginning in verse 38.

[27:21] Therefore, let it be known to you, brethren, that through him, that's Jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And through him, everyone who believes is freed from all things.

[27:35] from which you could not be freed through the law of Moses. Through him, everyone who believes, believes, believes, is freed from all things from which you could not be freed through the law of Moses.

[27:51] Understand this from the outset of this verse. Believing in the Bible is synonymous with obeying. Okay, believing means obeying. It doesn't mean intellectual ascent to some truth about Jesus Christ.

[28:03] It means a total and complete surrender mentally, physically, and spiritually to the lordship of Jesus Christ. When you say, I believe, that means you obey.

[28:17] That means I faithfully trust in Christ and I will follow him. It does not mean you believe in him or that you heard about him and that you made a profession of him when you were seven years old. That is not believing.

[28:28] Believing is every day. It's a big difference, believe me. If you don't believe what I just said, turn to John 3.36 and you can see that there.

[28:41] I'm not going to go to it right now, but that's a reference, John 3.36. So, through Christ, forgiveness of sins is offered as we clearly see stated in our verse. MacArthur said, referring to the verse, he said, the atoning death of Jesus completely satisfied the demands of God's law.

[29:00] Making forgiveness of all sins available to all who believe. However, this forgiveness is accompanied by a new heart. Okay? With a new heart comes new desires for new things.

[29:14] This is how you know you're saved. This new heart you have, that's been given to you, it's a spiritual heart, gives you desires for new things. If you don't have new desires, you don't have Christ.

[29:30] And the one thing that is primary in terms of what you desire is God's glory. You desire to see your Savior who is worthy as we've already determined, glorified.

[29:43] Glorified. At any cost to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to anything. You want to see Jesus glorified. Freedom, okay, is found in our choices.

[29:55] Freedom is found in your choices, right? We do what we want to do. And I promise you, you never do what you don't want to do. You only do what you want to do, okay?

[30:07] If you get mugged on the street, and the guy points a gun at you and he says, give me your money, the only reason why you give them your money is because you don't want to get shot. Or you would rather give them your money than you would rather get shot.

[30:20] You only do what you want to do, all the time. No exceptions. You never act contrary to what you want. Sometimes that means wanting, I don't know, to wake up early in the morning more than you want to sleep.

[30:37] Therefore, from God's perspective, which is the only one that matters, a man is in bondage when he cannot choose to do what he originally was created to do, a.k.a.

[30:50] glorify God. So you are in bondage to your sin when you cannot choose freely to do what you were created to do, which is to glorify God.

[31:05] That's the definition of being in bondage to sin. You can't do what God created you to originally do to freely do what a Christian only can do, which is to glorify God.

[31:18] He is imprisoned by sin to act only according to his fallen desires. The sinner constantly throughout his entire life makes decisions and choices based on these wicked desires for wicked things, which never result in the things hoped for, like happiness, like satisfaction, like joy, like contentment, like lasting pleasure, like blessing.

[31:40] It never results in that. Everything that the sinner experiences as a result of making these fallen decisions is a fictitious representative of what God really intended that to be.

[31:54] Only the Christian, only the Christian can experience true joy, true happiness, true satisfaction, true lasting pleasure, true contentment, true blessing, true thankfulness, only the Christian, not the sinner.

[32:08] They get fool's gold. We get the real thing. You know this is true, don't you? Those of you that aren't believers, you know this is true.

[32:23] C.S. Lewis said this, if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

[32:39] You know it's true. You're not satisfied. The last girl was good, but you need another one. The last drink was good, but you need another one. That last show was really funny, but you need another one.

[32:54] You're never satisfied. That means, according to logic, maybe we were created for something other than this world. The freedom that I have experienced in Christ is a freedom from sin and from death and from hell.

[33:10] and from the devil, but contained within that freedom is a freedom from the normal life, is a freedom from worldly pleasure, which is weak in comparison with godly pleasure.

[33:26] I've been freed from the common man's joy. I've been freed from the common man's peace and his love, which is inferior to what I get in Christ.

[33:36] Christ. And I've been freed to all those godly fruits, which the Spirit picks from the trees of heaven and brings to God's earthly children.

[33:51] It's conferred to you by the Spirit of God from heaven. You can't get it through earthly means. What are those fruits?

[34:01] love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, faithfulness. Galatians 5 says, against such things there is no law.

[34:18] You've been freed from the law, you've been freed to these things. That's not the motivation for why you come to Christ. You come to Christ for Christ. But we've been freed from all this lower stuff to Christ and all these higher things.

[34:38] It's part of our salvation. God freed you, Christian. He set you free from the ordinary to enjoy the bliss of the extraordinary, from the natural to the supernatural.

[34:49] Is this your experience? Did you experience this? Believe me, I've tasted. I've tasted.

[34:59] If you're a Christian here, you've tasted in some way that peace that surpasses all comprehension, that you can't explain with words, that joy that is lasting, that contentment in the midst of the worst situation that only Christ could confer to somebody.

[35:14] do you know him or do you just know about him?

[35:26] Do you live in his love? Do you seek for new ways to relinquish all your formal ways of sin? Or do you find that you still love sin? Not one sin can you keep.

[35:38] You must be done with all of them. He freed you for himself. Okay? God freed you for himself.

[35:49] Not for you. Not for your joy. Not for your blessing. He freed you for himself. For himself. Never forget that. For his glory.

[36:00] For his own purposes. For his own pleasure. Not so that you can cheapen his grace by doing whatever you want and then thinking that if you pray a small little prayer then God's going to forgive you. Or my buddies are doing this so then I'm good too.

[36:13] That's cheap grace. That's not comprehending the ransomed sacrifice which was Christ. That's cheap grace. That's an immature thought.

[36:27] God's salvation should so overwhelm your heart with love and ecstasy that all your affections turn their gaze toward him. And the direction of your life takes a 180 degree turn towards him.

[36:42] Towards him. He saved you for himself. For his glory. We benefit from that. We benefit from that. We get the things I talked about. We get those fruits from heaven. But it was for God that he saved you.

[36:58] God has set me free by breaking the chains of sin. By stripping all the authority that Satan had in my life away. And then he enabled me by a bloodied mangled Christ and by his spirit to live for him.

[37:16] And my joy is found in living for God's glory. You get that? That's incredible. The way that God has ordained things to be is that we get the most satisfaction as human beings living in these still fallen bodies by focusing all of our attention, all of our love, all of our money, all of our affections, all of our life on Christ.

[37:38] When you do that, you will experience what God said or what Jesus said himself as this is the life that is abundant. This is the life that is full.

[37:50] You want that life? Come after me. Be willing to deny yourself. Be willing to take up your cross. every single day. Be willing to follow after me.

[38:03] If it requires your wife, if it requires your husband, if it requires your money, it doesn't matter because Christ is more valuable. And even if they die, they get Jesus anyway.

[38:21] What can mere man do to me, says the psalmist. What can mere man do to me? I love that. It's just so bold. If he's going to boast, he's going to boast in Christ. Listen to Paul's words.

[38:35] But may it never be that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. I love that. I'm not going to boast in anything.

[38:47] I'm going to reduce all of my conversation with you to Jesus Christ and Him crucified so that He can get the glory and I can get the joy. I want it. I'm not going to let you stand in my way.

[38:59] I'm not going to let peer pressure, social construct stand in my way. I want Jesus. He was resolved. The cost of our ransomed was the blood of God.

[39:15] You are not your own. You are still a slave of someone. But as I said earlier, the freest man is the one who is enslaved to the greatest master. You are a child of God in Christ.

[39:30] You are a friend. You are a bride. You are an heir. But you are also a slave. You are a slave. We must know what the Bible means when it says that we can be free.

[39:43] Because He says, you can be free. He says that I ransomed you that you might be free. It was for freedom that I set you free. Galatians 5.1 says, you can be free from what?

[39:54] free. For what? Free in Christ means free for Christ. Free to Christ.

[40:06] Free to love Him, to live for Him, to bless His name. Free to claim Him on the last day. Free to sing to Him and to think kindly of Him.

[40:18] Free to worship Him. That's what your freedom is for. not so you can go sin. Not so you can cheapen His grace.

[40:31] Not so you can feel content when you're on your death bed. Free in Christ means free for Christ, free to Christ, free to love Him, to live for Him, to bless His name, to claim Him on the last day, free to sing to Him, to think kindly of Him, to worship Him.

[40:51] You've been set free for that purpose. these are glorious thoughts. My last point, number three, I enslaved me.

[41:04] I enslaved me. It's a strange way of saying that, but grammatically incorrect, but I enslaved me. Turn to Romans 6.18.

[41:35] And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

[41:51] I want to end with a story. This was related to me this week as I was studying. I could read it, but I think it would be more effective if I just said it, so I may leave something out.

[42:06] Back in the 1800s, there was an Englishman who came across the seas to California, and he made a fortune in the gold fields.

[42:20] And he wanted to go back to live with his own people. And so he sent his money back to England by check, and then he started his train ride down through Kansas, down through Missouri, down into Mississippi, and then ended up in New Orleans.

[42:35] Okay? During this time, slavery was still very prevalent. And so slaves were being sold at these blocks, put up for sale, basically.

[42:49] And then from New Orleans, this Englishman was going to ship to New York and then to England. So, as most tourists do when they go to New Orleans during this time, they went down to the slave market, and when he went to the market, he saw a lot of men there gathered around, and there was this one young girl that was up on the block.

[43:10] She was being sold. There was a lot of heated discussion and fighting going on amongst these men, these two evil men in particular, that were bidding for her quite heatedly.

[43:23] And then he heard what they said they would do to her if they bought her. And his heart just revolted against the whole swinish evil thing.

[43:35] And finally, as the bidding prices rose higher and higher and higher and higher, he went to the auctioneer and he said, I will put up a bid for twice the amount of the last bid.

[43:49] He said, you got the money? He said, I got the money. So, sure enough, he purchased the slave, got the bill of sale, wrote everything, signed everything, went back to the block to take the woman that he had purchased.

[44:02] And as she came down one step, she was about eye level with them, she formed in her mouth a bunch of spit. And when she saw him, she spat right in his face and she said, I hate you.

[44:16] I hate you. He didn't say a word, just took the back of his hand and wiped it off, took her by the hand and led her back kind of into the street. He walked down the street, crossed the intersection, through the mud, down another street, until he came to a little office building.

[44:37] She couldn't read, she didn't know what it said, didn't know what the office building was. He went to the desk, he began to speak to the clerk, he began to insist, I promise you this is the law, this is lawful, I can do this.

[44:51] Finally, the clerk relented, came back and the man gave him some money, the English man gave him some money, and got a paper. He then walked over to the woman, who was like a beast, ready to spring on her, or spring on him, I should say, she was so upset, and he stretched out his hand with the paper and he said, here, here are your manumission papers, you're free, you're free.

[45:22] She said, I hate you. He said, don't you understand, I just gave you your manumission papers, you're free, you're free. she kind of drew back and was puzzled, and she said, I don't believe it, you're giving me my manumission papers, you just spent twice as much as anybody had ever spent before at that block, and you bought me to set me free.

[45:54] He said, yes, that's why I bought you, to set you, he said, yes, that's why I bought you, to set you free. Tears came up into her eyes, that hadn't known tears in a long time. She got down on her hands and her knees, she grabbed his miner's boots, she put her cheek down to the toe of one of the boots, and she began to say to him through the sobbing tears, oh, you bought me to set me free.

[46:24] You bought me to set me free. You paid more than anyone has ever paid but just for me to set me free. And then through her tears, she looked up and she said, oh, sir, all I want in life is to be your slave.

[46:44] You bought me to set me free. Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ bought you with his own blood. He didn't just pay twice what it was for the last guy.

[46:59] He paid eternities for you. And when you understand that, when you grasp that, then it becomes the joy of your life to be his slave, to love him, to serve him, to give up anything for him.

[47:24] He bought you to set you free. you to set you free. Christ, all that we have is from you.

[47:38] Everything we own is from you. And is for you. God, we don't own anything.

[47:51] The way that we look is yours. You can take it away. Our health is yours. You can take it away. Our money, our time, our friends, our family, everything is yours, Jesus.

[48:04] We so often want to live for our self. We get consumed with our own little life. We lose perspective. You have bought us with your own blood, the blood of God.

[48:21] There's no small price. to set us free. Please, Jesus, within this little body of believers, and if there is anyone here that's not a believer, please break them in half and make them whole only in you.

[48:39] But amongst us, Lord, please just incite worship tonight. Give us thankful hearts that are lasting in our devotion to Christ, Lord.

[48:51] Please don't allow us to become self-absorbed, don't allow us to become self-centered, don't allow us to become greedy and selfish. Give us humility, give us thankfulness, remind us of what you've done for us.

[49:09] Father, every morning, every noon, every night, we need you, Jesus. And apart from your grace, we would die in our sins. We would be cast into eternal hell justifiably.

[49:21] But God, even if we were never even to get heaven, I pray that we would have such loving hearts for Christ that we would serve you anyway.

[49:35] We would love you anyway. You're worthy of all of our worship. And may we keep no sins for ourself. May we release all of them to you. May we completely cast all of our cares on you, all of our hopes on you, all of our dreams on you.

[49:51] May our joy be only in you, God. Thank you for fellowship. Thank you for time to study, to prepare, to preach. Thank you for our manumission papers.

[50:07] God, please have mercy on us. We are so small. We are so foolish. God, give us a love for Christ that endures.

[50:20] even if coals were gouged into our eyes, we were crucified next to our two-week-old bride. God, I pray that we would love you nonetheless, we would serve you, we would say, the lamb that was slain is worthy of his reward.

[50:43] God, I love you so much. In your name I pray. Amen. Thank you.