The Idol We Rarely Question: Freedom – Highlight Episode 371

True freedom is often mistaken for doing whatever we want, but Ray, E.Z., Mark, and Oscar explore how Scripture defines it as living to glorify God and walking in righteousness. The guys explain that the idol of freedom arises when good things are taken too far, leading people to disobey God’s commands and remain enslaved to sin, passions, and self-rule. They highlight that civil liberties do not equal spiritual freedom and that true liberty comes from surrendering daily to Christ, aligning desires with His will, and embracing the unique path He has for each believer. The guys also examine how personal freedom impacts others, showing that sin acts like a dictator and that genuine liberty is doing what is right regardless of opinions or circumstances. They urge listeners to review their lives, yield to the fruit of the Spirit instead of the flesh, and live openly without hidden agendas. Ultimately, the guys remind believers that freedom is relational and transformative, calling them to walk in the light, resist modern distortions of liberty, and continually turn back to the Lord, who alone sets them free.

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Learn more about the hosts of this podcast.
Ray Comfort
Emeal (“E.Z.”) Zwayne
Mark Spence
Oscar Navarro

Transcript

The Idol Of Freedom

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So the idol of freedom. Yeah, what do you mean by this? It's indicative of something good being taken way too far to where it's not just now something good that we enjoy is a gift from the Lord, but you take it to an extreme to where you're willing to violate what is righteous in order to attain it.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

The myth that is found in the West is that freedom is doing whatever you want to do. But you think about what the scripture describes as freedom. As a matter of fact, the scripture describes it almost the opposite: that doing whatever you want to do, pursuing your passions actually ends up in slavery. The scripture describes freedom not as doing whatever you want to do, but doing what you were meant to do. The freedom, not the freedom from, but the freedom to worship, the freedom to glorify God, the freedom to pursue righteousness, the freedom from sin, the freedom from slavery to sin, the freedom from your own passions that often get you ensnared in things.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Freedom in the eyes of the world is absence of law. You're free to do this, free to do that. But that makes no sense. You you do that in a football game, you say, okay, we're not gonna have law in this football game, we're not gonna have penalties, not gonna have any rules, everyone does their own thing. That's not freedom, that's absolute chaos. That the law in a football game gives freedom. If there's a transgression, the whistle blows, then there's penalty. That's really good. And we think freedom in a nation is absence of law, but it's the exact opposite, it's chaos. And when the law is instilled, civil law, and obviously over the top of it, God's law, you get absolute freedom that law brings. No murder, no rape, no adultery, no fornication, no lying, no stealing.

Discipline As A Path To Freedom

Jesus On Sin And Slavery

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I always think about when I talk about this uh from like a non-believer's mindset, how this must sound. Because a non-believer might hear this and go, mate, but like Christianity doesn't offer freedom. It has all these rule rules, regulations, restrictions. But think about it like this sometimes restriction actually frees you to do something. For example, if you're disciplining your body for a sport, you gain the freedom of playing that sport. If you play it professionally, you gain the freedom of the wealth and whatever else that comes along with the success of that, right? In other words, often discipline actually frees you for more. And and for furthermore, again, your passions. This is what's amazing is that Jesus, the scriptures often talk about sin as breaking God's law, and it is that. But what's fascinating about Jesus in John 8, 34 is that he talks about sin as addiction, not just the breaking of God's law. He says, everyone who practices sin is not free, but is a slave to sin. That's the thing about our own hearts is that when we hand them over to our passions, we become enslaved to them. We don't experience freedom. We are enslaved to sin. But Christ offers us true freedom because he doesn't ask us to lay down our lives without first laying down his life for us. And him laying down his life provides for us the true freedom that we were made for. We were made not to do whatever we want to do, but to do what we were meant to do, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

A Personal Battle With Lust

Liberty, Profitability, And Priorities

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, you know, I was thinking of what it says in Second Peter, by whom a person is overcome, by him, he's he is brought into bondage. You know, it it's that which masters us to do what we shouldn't be doing that becomes our master. You know, I'm and I I love the analogy you shared, Oscar. Freedom is is having the ability to function as you were designed to function. Like it's not freedom for an eagle to be digging ditches in the ground. Like freedom for an eagle is to soar with the wings it's been given. You know, for us as God's people, our freedom is to function in righteousness. I remember as a new believer, uh, I was, you know, working uh at our family's gas station. And uh I was a new believer. Look, before I got saved, I was enslaved in in you know, immorality and sexual sin. And and so I'm a new believer and I'm I'm you know getting my bearings. And I remember one day in particular, I'm at the gas station, it's in Huntington Beach, right? Girls are coming in and bikinis all the time, and and I was struggling, I was struggling with lust. And I remember a a distinct moment where that that term popped into my mind, which is a biblical one, and it was simply this I no longer have to do that. Right, I no longer, and it was like this this final like freedom because without Christ, I'm bound. Like all I know is my sinful nature. I don't have the new nature, the Galatians 5, right, 16 through 26 dynamic, the spirit and the flesh battling. All I had was a flesh, and I served sin willfully, joyfully, gladly. Now I no longer had to do that which was destructive for me. Right. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. So there's there's that freedom of like all things are lawful, but but they're not all profitable. How does that play out in the Christian's life?

SPEAKER_03 5:28

I think the Christian needs to redeem the time because the days are evil, and there's certain things I can do. I could travel, I could play sports, but I choose not to because there are certain things that are more important to me. Mainly the salvation of the lost. That's what I live for. So I've got incredible liberty, liberty to do what I want. Um, I think I can say this. A millionaire once said to me, uh, he'd flown us around the world in different places, Mark and I. He said, Where would you like to go in the world? And I said, Home. And uh and I really meant it. And then there's a there's a huge satisfaction in being content with what you've got.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah.

Openness, Accountability, And Walking Free

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Because we've got a new world coming that we can enjoy pleasure forevermore. In the meanwhile, we choose to serve the Lord with all our heart, all our mind, all our strength, because he gave us life. And so all things are lawful for me, but not all things is what's expedient. Profitable, profitable, yeah. Helpful. Yeah.

Blessings Within God’s Guardrails

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Hell is filled with people that say, you know, leave me alone. And so if you're saying leave me alone with this subject, whatever it is, or if you have the uh the desire to say, you know, I don't I don't care what it is, you have freedom to ask me any hard question that you want to ask. You know, when the whole fiasco with uh Steve Lawson went down, you know, many if many of my friends and I, we had conversations, and I'll tell you the top thing that came out as I talked to these guys individually was you have freedom to ask me whatever you want to ask me. Yeah, that that demonstrates somebody who's free, and that demonstrates somebody who wants to walk with Christ. I want that to be said of all of us. You know, you you can't be your own Lord and still call Jesus Lord. Yeah. Right? Our freedom is is bound up in Christ. You don't want to do anything other than what God wants you to do. If if you want to be free, then you want Christ calling all the shots. You you really don't want to make any decisions on your own. You don't want to say, I want this job over that job. You don't want to say, not so, Lord, right? The idea of being free in Christ is experiencing the blessings that are only found within the boundaries that he sets up. Right. If you, if you, in other words, if you want to be blessed by God, his blessings are found within the guardrails of the word of God. And when we when you leave the word of God, when you uh go outside, when you meander outside there, you're not gonna find blessings. You're gonna find chains, you're gonna find a curse, you're gonna find everything that you don't need. So today is a day about Lord, what what is it that you have? What is it that you want to do? Because that's what I want to do.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah, right?

Closing And Full Episode Invitation

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Who do you want to talk to? Yes, well, that's what I want. Do you want me to have flat tires? Then Lord, I want to have flat tires. I want what you want. And in the midst of finding what God wants and walking with him, there's blessings there. There's blessings within the boundaries that he sets up.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast, friends. We value your time. So we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship. Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic. Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.