Slavery and Bondage:Pt2

This is the second part of three blogs exploring the concepts of Slavery Bondage and Freedom in scripture.

Slavery and Bondage : Pt2 : Freedom is Deceptive

In the previous post we set up that we, humanity, in our fallen state, are incapable of defining anything. Especially a concept like freedom, in its truest form, apart from the counsel of scripture. That is to say that God is perfect, and that any error, miss-understanding or misuse of concepts in scripture like freedom, falls entirely on us. So when we try to define things without taking in what the bible says, we set ourselves up for failure, and potential, if not certain, spiritual damages. That being said, we are born sinful and under the deception of that sin. Psalms 51:5: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. We are unfortunately, born this way, and furthermore, this is crucial to understanding the bondage and slavery we are born into. So with that established, here are a few things about our sin....

1.You are way more wicked than you think.

The reason for this is that scripture clearly points out, that every sin is an act of cosmic treason against God. It is not just a mistake, or doing wrong, it is and act of enmity towards God. Effectively making us his enemies. Part of the deceit we believe here is that our sin is really not "that bad", but scripture makes it undoubtedly clear. Jas 2:10  For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. Now, for all of these points I could give several scriptures, but for the sake of brevity, I'll only give a few. The implication from James, is staggering. You may in fact be the best that humanity has to offer, but that one slip, and we all have more than one, that one infraction carries with it the weight of all of God's law. Why? Again, any and all sin is an act of the highest form of treason towards God. He has created everything and set it to bring himself glory, and to give us joy, and he holds it all together by his power, and we, in and with our sin, look at the holder of that power and curse him to his face.

2.You are unable to do anything about it.                                                                                              The narrative of the bible can be read old from new testament, as man trying to gain equal standing with God and failing. Laws and Judges, Kings, prophets and promised lands, and every time we swing back to the default, our sin. Essentially we all are trying to get back to Eden, to paradise, but by our own efforts, not God's, and the bible has shown that all of man's acts have only pushed us further away. Now many of us don't like this sort of teaching, but its is biblical, and I by know means want to cast any more guilt or condemnation on you than you may already be experiencing, however it is necessary to understand the seriousness of our sin. If we don't take our sin seriously, then we will never take God's answer for our sin seriously, Christ and His Cross. The great hope for this is that God finished the story. After all of our feeble attempts God made a way through the sacrifice of his son.

3.Your sin has control over you and doesn't want you to know it.

Tit 3:3  For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. See that underlined word there? SLAVES! That's pretty clear, right? Hopefully much explanation isn't needed, but the implications are huge. I don't want to minimize. There is clearly in us the ability to choose to sin, this however makes our situation even worse, this makes us willing slaves to our sin. It works like this, we buy the lie, enticed by our own selfish desires, then we are snared, trapped...in need of rescue. Then after buying the initial lie, more lies come up to distract you from destroying the first. It is a trap. You are in it. 

So...
Have you ever know someone who stays in an abusive relationship, or someone addicted to unhealthy and self-destructive habits? Of course you have, if that isn't in fact you. No matter how much reasoning, or pleading from loved ones, they never seem to get out of the situation they have made for themselves. The reason is precisely this, they are in slavery to sin. They are in a bondage of their own choosing and making, but they are kept there by subtle deceptions by a cruel slave master and accuser. 2Pe 2:19  They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. 

Bondage is made strong by belief.

What is the deal with bondage? Why is it so destructive? Why is it so powerful? Why do people in it seem unaware of it, or like they don't even care? Well lets look closer at the scripture from 2nd Peter above. 

1."They Promise", in this case freedom, but always something that God gives us anyway, and God gives us better. In the first post of this exploration, we looked at Adam and Eve's original sin. The promise given was that they could be like God, and they bought it, they believed it; but belief in something other than God requires the sacrifice of true belief in God. It is an exchange, if you want to believe this, then you have to disbelieve God. So for Adam and Eve, and us, if the promise is happiness apart from God, then in order to believe this was must stop believing in God for our happiness. In Fact, we have to stop believing that He wants our happiness, and that He knows how we can have it. We are all believers in something, but not everything we believe in is able to fulfill the promise they make. Jesus, the truth, is the only object of belief able to keep his promises, but our bondage keeps us from believing that he is. "I know God knows what is best...I know if I trust Him I could...but I'm just not ready yet....I dont feel like I should."

These are the patterns of people in bondage. "Sure God can, but..." They simply reveal that their belief is in something else, something that they believe is more powerful than God, more hopefull and true than Jesus. They have, what Romans chapter ones says, "exchanged the truth for a lie." We made the exchange, but now we are controlled by the lie, we believe the lie over the truth. Bondage is made strong by belief in the lie.

2. Not only do "they promise," but they lie. This is the natural outworking of belief in promise apart from God. They let you down, they can't fulfill whatever it is that they offer. Here is the trick. They lie more. So much so that your life and the lie become indistinguishable from each other.

2nd Peter goes onto state that we are overcame by these false promise, and as a result a slave to them. They turn your head, advert your eyes and only let you hear what they want you to hear. So that friend who in love, comes to rebuke you, to ask you to turn and repent, is now "Shoving scripture down my neck", they are just "Harassing me." When, in reality, what can be more loving than offering a solution to someone's sin? Its what Jesus did, and he loved better than anyone.


The main root of the secondary lie is to keep you from seeing your sin as the problem. Trust me, your friend, church, pastor, the bible and God, are not out to get you, but your sin is. If you sin can convince you to look elsewhere, then you never escape, you never get out. Jas 1:23  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. Jas 1:24  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. Your sin never wants you to really look at yourself, or else you will see your bondage and you might actually cry to God for help. So it is easiest to get angry at that friend who holds up the mirror to your face, then it is to look at you reflection.

3. "Your Bondage wants you to believe this is who you are." Fallen, sinful, unable to choose good, this is who you are! And that is true, but not the whole truth, but you bondage does not want you to go any further. It does not want you to believe the whole truth, that by the death of Christ on the cross that you no longer have to be given over to your sin, that the guilt and shame and condemnation is taken away and replaced with a new heart and a new identity. If you just so happen to catch a glimpse of yourself in that mirror, it wants you to accept what you see. It also doesn't want you to remember, that even though this may be how things are, it is not how they are supposed to be. Most certainly it doesn't want you to know that Christ is redeeming everything back to himself. And it most assuredly doesn't want you to believe that you can be a part of what Christ is doing.

The deception is to make you believe that God is out there, and your sin is here. One is far, but the other is close. It wants you to see enough of God to feel more condemned, but not near enough to be set free. The truth is that this is reversed, God is very near, very close, not "out there", but everywhere. He is unlimited in his scoop, your sin however, is not unlimited. As horrible as it may be, and is, Christ has destroyed it through the cross. You sin is limited in its reach, not God!


4. All of this is made to seem like something you want. It brings you comfort, peace, happiness, satisfaction, but it is all vain and false. Unable to surpass in trial, unable to extend to eternity, unable to satisfy in a way that, as Jesus puts it, "you will be thirsty no more." It is a small taste, a dangling of the carrot, just enough, but not the whole.  It does this so that you'll keep wanting more, but eventually the supplies of that sin run out, and you are left hollow and lifeless. We see the people of Israel do this during their wandering in the dessert. At one point their bondage beckons out to them and they began to say stupid things like "We were better off as slaves in Egypt!" Egypt ended in death, but it was okay cause we got feed better.


This is the truth, you can refuse to serve Christ, but that simply means you are serving your sin. You can be bound to Christ, or to your sin. You have a master, but one is cruel and wants you to believe he is benevolent, the other is benevolent and shows you by his mercy and grace. You will be feed by either master. One will give you crumbs from his table, and every now and then you get to lick his dishes. Your sin and bondage only feeds you above starvation, but distracts by the quality of the food. No real substance, but it taste nice. He tells you how honored you should be that you got this much, and this is great and wonderful.


What he doesn't tell you is that as your master, Jesus Christ would sit you at his table as his equal, and share the fullness of his food, that your rest will be with Him and from him. Don't be fooled, you have a Master. Who is it? If what Jesus offers is unappealing to you, than you are in bondage, and maybe you are so bound that you know you are in bondage, but you don't care. Slavery to sin is death, slavery to Christ is freedom. You are by no means free, in any real meaning of the word...but you can be. You may think you are free, but you are not, your "freedom is deceptive."

Slavery and Bondage:Pt1

In the next three post I want to explore the topic of Slavery, Bondage and Freedom in scripture, not so much the actual acts, but the opposing and complimentary spiritual implications found in scripture.

Slavery and Bondage : Pt 1 : Intro

I often catch some slack approaching scripture with a primarily black and white view. Now I do believe that they're are some seemingly grey areas in scripture, but mostly in application of scripture, not so much in the principles laid out. Scripture handles most issues very clearly, and very black and white, the grey comes in when we try to discover what this means for us to live out and submit ourselves to the counsel those scriptures. This is because the imperfection of scripture application lies with us, not with the scriptures themselves. We are left, with our fallen brains, the immense task of living in obedience to God's Holy word.

Now, every so often, concepts come about in scripture that leave us with two opposing views, that through some studying, actually prove themselves to be complimentary. Such concepts as slavery, bondage and freedom are often misunderstood drastically by Christians. It is easy to see how these three elements found in scripture are related, but scripture would reveal to us that we are all slaves to something, bound to something, and what we are a slave to determines our freedom. It is a misunderstanding of what freedom actually is that causes us to often think that we are free when we are really under the bondage of slavery; slavery that we were not meant to live under. Meaning that when we think we are free, we are actually in bondage, and at other times, what feels like restraint is often really freedom. This is the meat and bones of what I hope to explore in the next two post, but I feel the need to give a little set up. The easiest illustration of this freedom into slavery, and restraint that is really freedom comes from Genesis chapter 3, the story of the fall. Summed up, Adam and Eve exercise certain freedoms and then they find themselves in the bondage and slavery of death and sin. Whereas, the restraint that were set in place by God, "do not eat of the tree...", was really the means to secure their freedom.

Like Adam and Eve, the lie fed to us is that God is taking away our freedom, when He is really securing it. In other words, Jesus knows the way that freedom works best.

There are certain parts of scripture that everyone, believer and unbeliever, all enjoy. This does not mean that they understand it by any means, and both sides would accuse the other of getting it wrong; but again we are all fallen. So both sides are right when they assume that the other has gotten it wrong. Some of the elements in scripture that we all love are things like love, charity, kindness and freedom. Just so you know, the problem in understanding these things rightfully, is always us. We bring to these concepts our own understanding, scripture would warn against "our understanding" on anything, (Pro 3:5  Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Pro 3:6  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. ) So we define them on our terms and not on God's terms. This is devastating to all of these concepts, but we are going to mainly focus on freedom.

Freedom, is NOT how most of us would define it. Truthfully most of us have never really pondered it, but we would say that freedom is "essentially doing what you want." Does anyone see the danger here? If everyone was "free" by this definition, then we are all in big trouble. Someone who habitually lies is merely expressing freedom, a murderer is only expressing freedom, dictators who kill millions in genocide, are expressing their freedom. This is where we try to then amend the definition. We will then say "doing what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else's freedom." The problem here again, is us. Every expression of you doing what you want is going to, in some way or another, impact someone else's freedom, there is no way around it. Here is the funny thing, your freedom should impact another person's freedom.

Think of it this way. Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of all concepts in scripture, so by extension, Jesus is the most "free" man who ever lived. Jesus lived so freely that his freedom secured the freedom of the world from sin and death. So for us, maybe real freedom is living in a way, that is not so much a concern for freedom in our lives, but freedom in the lives of others. Live freely in a way that encourages other's to find their freedom in Christ.

This freedom includes freedom from the bondage of slavery in sin and death. This is huge, and we all need this freedom. We are free in ourselves because Jesus took all the guilt and shame of our sins to the cross, so we no longer have to strive for our own acceptance, it is secure, and we no longer have to walk over anyone else's freedom to obtain our own Joy, because Christ, freely laying down his life, has secured it. We are then set free from the fear of losing our lives, enabling us to live freely for other's Joy.

Now the reason this is important for us to ponder and search out, is that we easily drift back to slavery of sin and death. Historically God's people have longed for the false security and fake freedom's of their former lives. This is something we will explore more in the next post. Hopefully, searching the scriptures and laying down our ideas of freedom for Christ' true freedom will help us to live our lives full of joy and lives that call others into the freedom of that same joy.

Lonely

I was recently told that leadership, is lonely. This is discouraging news for someone who one: feels called to, and aspires to lead; and two: also happens to be in a pretty lonely storm of life at the moment. Some conciliation is offered in Isaiah, a similar "lonely" picture is painted in the prophecy of Jesus. "Isa 53:3  He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. " To paraphrase, Jesus came to be our friend and we gave him "the finger."

I should not have said "some conciliation", in fact there is more than plenty offered and to be had. Scripture reveals that the last moments of Jesus' life, before the most important moment in history, where completely lonely. So lonely that Jesus even felt cut off from God, quoting a psalms of David. "Psa 22:1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Now, if I only had a minute to offer some hope to someone in a similar situation as my own, i would probably leave it off here. Saying and hopefully encouraging "Jesus knows that feeling as well." He does, and this is immensely helpful and full of truth.

However, this is a blog. I really want to dwell in my loneliness and look for hope and peace; if any at all can be found. Now I don't want to come across as some sort of martyr, my trial is my responsibility, and largely the results of my failure to live the gospel. Maybe, by the end of this blog, you and I both will be better fortified to offer love, service and sacrifice in the middle of our loneliest trials. This is undoubtedly one of the hardest, but also one of the most important ways to learn to be Christ-like.

Back to the Psalms
I always say to Christian friends in a joking but also hopefully reminding way, that "the funny thing about the bible is that it is always right." This is doubly true when it is Jesus quoting scripture. We all know the bible is "right" but to what degree we believe it, or how much we trust it, is truly shown in trial. Most would admit, and if not, you are most likely lying, that in trial and in loneliness, the bible quickly takes a back seat. I would encourage you to do whatever possible, in your heart and mind, to correct this. If Jesus, from the cross, reached into his perfect mind and spoke from his perfect lips these words from the psalms; I think we would all agree that this is well worth our attention.

If I may, the psalms (chapter 22) as a whole is completely raw, open and honest about the brutality of life and our hearts. The psalmist moves from first feelings of despair, to remembrance to confidence in hope. What I love is that this is a real picture of genuine worship. Not clean, neat, dry cleaned or dignified, but full of despair, fleeting memories that seem overshadowed by present pains, sloppy but oh so hopeful. David, is known for a phrase, among other things, "I will become even more undignified than this." 2nd Samuel 6:22 In the Pentecostal circles I grew up in, this meant to become more charismatic, and perhaps there is some merit to that; but looking at the Hebrew, some translations get closer to the actual meaning of the word by using "contemptible" or even "vile" instead of undignified. This is great news for me because I currently feel just like that, full of contempt and vile.

Now I may be going out on a ledge, but earlier in the same chapter of Samuel we see that David was in fact angry at God (v8). I would be lying if I were to say that I've never felt this way before, especially now. I don't think that David meant that he would run the aisles at the tabernacle. It seems more as if he declared that he would be more honest, more open, more truthful about his feelings with his God. "I will bare my soul before my God and he'll sort it out!" It may very well be a true form of worship to tell God honestly that you are upset with him, but to still declare your trust in Him. "I am angry with you God! I know I shouldn't be, but its there and I have no where else to go so deal with it, get rid of it, or use it! I am at your mercy!"

Nothing good comes from our anger, our only and best option is to throw that anger into the heart of God. God loves us enough to embrace even our anger. Do not let you anger keep you from God, that is a trap and a lie. I have been to many churches that would seemingly discourage you from coming to God with an attitude, but this seems to me to be anti-biblical. Even when you are lonely and distressed..."Psa 25:16  Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Psa 25:17  The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses." and even when you are bitter "Psa 73:21  When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, Psa 73:22  I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you." Notice that those last verses where set entirely towards God.

How many of you have felt at odds with God, or at a distance from him because your feelings, even you desires, where less that Holy? Let me let you in on a secret...even you best intentions are less than Holy before God, and all people need the Grace and Mercy of Jesus.

Hope and Peace
I am hopeful in my storm. Jesus knows how I feel, and more over he cares about how I feel. It would seem that in scripture God wants me to plea to him in all of my feelings and emotions, that this may very well be some of the most honest worship that I may ever express. My peace is that Jesus took those feeling and those emotions to his cross and with my sin put them to death. One day there will be no more tears.