“The Spirit Brings Freedom” | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Original Broadcast of Sunday Morning 10AM Bible Class, 07/05/2026

Speaker: Pastor David K. Caruthers

Message Title: "The Spirit Brings Freedom" 

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Sundays at 10am & 11AM 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This month we are our series is walking in the spirit. We'll be talking about several things. And so, of course, today, since it's uh Independence Day weekend, we're we're we're talking about the spirit that brings us freedom. And and the main verse is on your uh handout in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 17. Now, the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There is liberty, there is freedom that God grants us, that God gives us, as his spirit moves in our lives and in our hearts, and uh and he is the King of kings and Lord of Lords, and so he gives us that liberty. He gives us that freedom. And so I want to just talk about uh uh several areas, and you can kind of see on the handout that it's freedom from, freedom to, and freedom through will be sort of the backbone of what uh of the lesson today of the of the discussion today. So I uh of course the first thing we think about when we think about that the Spirit of the Lord gives us freedom, it gives us freedom from sin. In Romans 6.18 it says, being then made free from sin, you have become the servants of righteousness, the servants of godliness, the servants of doing right, of living for God. And because we've been set free from sin. And that's really important for us to wrap our hearts and minds around because uh we cannot get free from sin by ourselves. We can't do that by ourselves. Now, we can make decisions, we can change our lives, we can change some things we do, but we can't free ourselves from sin and the consequence of sin because we inherited that. It comes with us as human beings, and so God has to give us freedom from sin to have freedom from sin. It has to come from Him, it has to come from His Spirit working in our lives. And I I think we all sort of understand and embrace that today. We understand and receive that today, that we need God's help to overcome sin in our lives. And whether we're talking about in the sense of salvation or whether we're talking about in our everyday relationships, in our everyday life, and our everyday activities, we have to have God working in our lives to be free from sin. The Spirit also gives us freedom from condemnation. Freedom from condemnation. And in Romans chapter 8, verse 1, it says, There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Like I read it to here, you will lose some of the emphasis of the verse. Because even reading the verse itself, you can see that it's important that you know something more because it says at the very beginning, there is therefore. Therefore it tells you something has already been talked about. And that is the preface for this verse. And so Romans 5, 6, and 7 is a long discussion about us still living in these human bodies. That we are still human, we are still subject to our humanity, and our humanity, our carnality, our humanness that we read about in the Bible is drawing us, is pushing us to fulfill the desires of the flesh or the desires of our humanness, the desires of our carnal, human, sinful nature. And so there's always going to be a struggle between that and living for God. And so this, these verses, these chapters really in five, six, and seven, is talking about that struggle that goes on in our lives. And we are dead to sin and alive to Christ. So we're supposed to be dead to the sinful things of our lives, or supposed to be dead to those things, but we still live in these carnal bodies. And so that struggle continues. And that is true. Sometimes people, when they come to um to the place of salvation and and God gives them a wonderful uh experience of repentance, of infilling of the Holy Ghost, baptism in Jesus' name, and there's no question in their minds or the minds of anyone around them that God has done something transformative in their lives when they have received the Spirit. There's no question about that. And and then, you know, Monday comes, you know, the next days come, life continues, and then oftentimes they're astonished that they still are tempted, right? It's like, well, that was such a such a power of God and such a renewing and and and new birth experience in my life, and I'm so like on fire for God and passionate about following after God, and now I'm getting hit with this temptation. Why is that happening? I must be doing something wrong. But that's because we're human beings. We don't get exempted from being human beings as long as we're living here on earth. And so we know as we learn and we study and we and we see the word of God that we are drawn, we're tempted by by our sinful, or our human nature that draws us. And so Romans 5, 6, and 7 is really talking about this sort of struggle that goes on because we're still living in this world and we're still human beings. And how we surrender to God and how we follow God and how we're born again, and we're born unto Jesus. We're baptized in his name, so we're dead to sin through him, and yet we still have some struggle because we are human beings. There's still that war that goes on between the spiritual man and the human man inside of us. And so that's the preface to all of this, as Paul writes in Romans 8, that there is now, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. And that word condemnation doesn't mean to feel bad. It doesn't mean feeling embarrassed because I did something I shouldn't have done or did something I wish I wouldn't have done. That word condemnation here is a word that means verdict or a sentence has been passed. So when we say there is therefore now no condemnation, that the Spirit removes the condemnation from our lives, that is not to say or not to deny that we were guilty of sin. We were still guilty of sin. It doesn't excuse us from the sin. It doesn't say, oh, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. Yes, it is a big deal. Yes, we sinned. It's not removing any of that. What it's doing is removing the consequence. It's removing the sentence, it's removing the verdict because Jesus took our place. He gave his life, he shed his blood to take our place, and so we are relieved by his power and his strength, and so we don't have to live in the condemnation of our past sins. And if anybody would uh would appear at least to have a hard time with that, would be somebody like the apostle Paul who was writing these words to the church at Rome. Because we all know that he persecuted the church. He didn't just uh, you know, while while one sin is not greater than another in the sense of sinfulness, he didn't just tell a lie. He had people executed for the gospel's sake. He had people killed for the gospel's sake. So he could relate to what this meant, and and you could understand how the apostle Paul would spend, you know, the rest of his life with this heavy load on his shoulders of guilt and shame and condemnation because of what he had done. And so to hear this being written, these words of God being written by the Apostle Paul make them even more poignant than they would have been from someone else to remind us that that there's no there's no denying that we are sinned, have sinned, but God has shown us grace and mercy, and we don't have to live in the guilt and shame of that sin in our past. But the spirit removes that from us. So it removes the sin, it removes the condemnation of the sin, and then the spirit transforms our lives. It frees us from the old patterns of our lives. 2 Corinthians 5.17 that we started out with, there is, uh therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Excuse me, that's not the verse we start out with, start with the other one. Uh he is a new creature, all things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. That we are transformed, that we are made new, that we are born again. That we don't have to live in those patterns of our life that we once lived in because we are free. As the verse I was referring to says, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And we have the Spirit of the Lord in our lives, and that releases us from those patterns of our lives that we were once bound by. Because we're born again, we're released from the heritage of sin. We don't need to claim that anymore. You know how people do things like that. They say, Well, I can't help it because I'm something. I can't help it because I'm something. You know, whatever that is. I can't help being angry because and they name something, maybe some heritage, some uh uh uh culture, something of their past. I can't help it because I'm this or I'm that, and they claim something that is not what they should be claiming. What they should be claiming is I'm born again of the water and spirit, and so I don't have to be bound by that anymore. Why would I pronounce that pattern on my life now when God has set me free? When God has given me a new heritage, a new lineage that God has has filled me with. I don't have to live in those patterns of my old life anymore. I've been set free. The Spirit gives us freedom from those patterns of our lives. Now, uh uh I understand as human beings, sometimes we want to claim that. I struggle with this because my dad struggled with this, I struggle with this because my parents struggle with this, I struggle with this because you don't have to claim that anymore. Because you're born again. The Spirit sets you free, makes you new. And the Spirit gives us freedom then to continue and to walk in the newness of life, in that new birth. Romans 6 and 4 says, Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. We should walk in newness of life. I'm always amazed when uh people claim to be born again, but their life hasn't changed. When you're born again, your life changes. It just changes. It changes because you're not what you were before, that you were born again of the water and spirit. And so there is a change. There is a change in the way you think, there is a change in the way you live, you walk in a newness of life. You walk in a new life, just like Jesus, who was raised from the dead after being executed on the cross. Your new life in being filled with the Spirit is as dramatic as Jesus rising from the dead. It's that much of a change. That's what it's comparing it to. That's a big change. That's a big difference. And so when when we talk about walking in in the spirit or walking in this newness of life because uh of being filled with the spirit, it makes a difference in our lives. It changes the way we approach things, it changes the way we think about things, it changes our actions. And it helps us to uh to hear God, to hear what God is saying. We're thinking through a different perspective, we're thinking through a different, a different uh, a different point of view. Jesus said in John 10, 27, My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. Because when we're filled with the Spirit, we're listening for the voice of God. We're not listening for what the culture's saying. We're listening for the voice of God. When we read the word of God, we're listening for the voice of God to speak to us in his word. That doesn't mean we fill in, you know, all we want to hear. That means we read the word of God with the expectation that it is the word of God, and we are going to hear what God is saying as we read his word. We're listening for God to speak to us, and we we can hear God. We can hear his voice speaking in our lives. And I don't have time to have a whole message. If I fold this in half, I can see the rest of the page. I know where you are. We we hear the voice of God, we are listening for the voice of God. And it doesn't mean that, you know, we're just wandering around and constantly, you know, God is thundering from the heavens, but God is directing our lives. God is leading us, and he leads us in the direction he wants us to go, in the purpose that he has called us to accomplish. Every one of us have a purpose, not only because God created us and breathed into us the breath of life, but because we are born again of the water and the spirit, because we are born again in him. The spirit has filled our lives, the Holy Ghost has filled our lives, and so we walk with that purpose. Ephesians 2 and 10 says, For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus, unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. We are his workmanship, we are his handiwork, we are the work of his hands. And we were made unto good works, which God has ordained that we should walk in them. He has purposed that we should walk in the way that he has called us to walk. In those good works. That's what he wants us to do is to walk in those good works he has ordained for us to do. Don't let anybody tell you that you don't need, you don't have to worry about doing good works. We are created to do those good works. We are born again to do those good works. Now, those good works won't save you. You are created to do those good works. So you were born again, you are the workmanship of God to do those good works. And so we can live with that purpose, with that sense of destiny, with that sense that God has put in us a purpose for our lives. And that's really great for you and I because then we know that God, having a purpose and plan for our lives, that God knows how to fit the other pieces around us into our lives too. It also means I don't have to, I don't have to do everything. God has a purpose, and I just have to do my part. And you do your part, and you do your part, and you do your part, and when we all do our part, God does what he wants to do. It's not all on my shoulders to do everything, God coordinates all the pieces, God directs it all together, and so I can I can say today, well, I I can't do much, and I don't have much, and I'm not capable of doing very much, and and and I so I'm just not I'm I'm gonna bury my talent in the ground because it's not gonna make much difference anyway, but we don't know that. We are created for the good works God has called us to do, and your good work that God has purposed in your life may seem like something small, but it's part of God's bigger plan, and it it could be much more critical to God's plan than you even know. We have no record of Ananias preaching the gospel all over the world, but we do have a record that when God spoke to him to go pray for Saul, the persecutor, he just went and did what God told him to do. He was nervous about it, he was concerned about his safety, he wasn't sure how that was gonna work out. The Bible tells us that God told Ananias, but I have a purpose for Saul. And he's praying. So you go do your purpose. Now, is that the only purpose he had? No, I'm sure there was other things. That's just the only thing we have recorded in the scripture. But he didn't preach the gospel throughout the world, but he prayed for the man who did. God used him in a pivotal place. And I'm saying to you, when you know that you're that God has a purpose for your life, you don't have to know the ends of all that purpose. You can trust God and just do what God has has called you to do in the place where God has called you to do it. And you can know that God is working it together. The Spirit gives us a heart, a willingness, a desire to obey God. It's not burdensome, it's a joy to obey God. It's not difficulty and it's a sacrifice. You know, it's funny how it is. When we come to the kingdom of God, we talk about sacrifices. When we come to our money, we talk about investments. Right? We talk about, oh, I've got to sacrifice to God. I got I gotta I've got a sacrifice, I've got to fast. It's a big sacrifice because, man, I missed a whole meal. Or sometimes a whole day for the meal. And it's a great sacrifice. No, it's an investment in our relationship with God. I I enjoy obeying God. It gives me the freedom, being filled with the Spirit, gives me the freedom to enjoy obeying God. Have you ever noticed that oftentimes when people receive the Holy Ghost for the first time, that they want to do something for God? One of their first impulses is, I need to respond by doing something, by giving something. Well, that's a natural consequence of the Spirit moving in our lives that we want to give something in return when we recognize what we have been given. Psalms 19 and 8 says, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening our eyes. Colossians 3.17 says, and whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Obeying Him with thankfulness. Obeying Him with gratefulness. And while I was thinking about that and studying about that for a little bit and saying, okay, we we have joy, we want to obey God. It creates a joy when we do and we enjoy doing it and we want to obey God. We know He has the best for our life, He has the purpose for our life, He has the good plan for our life, and He can guide our steps and all the reasons why I would be joyful as I obey God. And then while I was reading and studying, I I uh I don't say I discovered because I've read it before, but it still jumped out at me in Psalms 119. You know, Psalms 119 is all about the word of God, right? It's the, for those of you that may not know, it's the longest, it's the the long psalm in the Psalms. You know, it's like you're having your you know your daily Bible reading. It feels like it takes more than a day to read Psalms 119, you know, it's it's long. In Psalms 119 and verse 60, the psalmist writes, I made haste and delayed not to keep your commandments. That's what we mean when we say we have joy in obeying God. When we're filled with the Spirit, there's this joy. It's like, I made haste, I quickly obeyed God. I didn't wait, I quickly obeyed God. I didn't debate whether uh he had the best plan in mind. I didn't argue or ask for explanations, I just obeyed God. I just have a heart that wants to obey God because the Spirit is alive in my life. We have the Spirit, it gives us freedom through the indwelling of his spirit. And now we'll go back to the verse we started out with again. Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Being filled with the Spirit, as the Spirit works in our lives, that it is God in residence in our lives. It brings freedom to our lives. You know, sometimes when there's a sometimes when there's sort of a power vacuum, there's uh stuff that'll fill in that. You know, sometimes when the leader is not there, that other things sort of slip in, and they're not always good things and start sort of taking control. When when you, whether that's on a job or whether that's in some other organization, when when there's some a leader is missing for some reason, whatever it is, leader is missing, there's often other things that sort of step in to fill that void. And it's kind of the same way I think with us, when we're filled with the Spirit, it's like there's a there's a strength and a stability of our lives because we are filled with the Spirit. It's like nothing sort of slips in and takes over. Nothing can kind of edge out God unless we stop following God. Nothing can sort of edge out God's authority. Nothing sort of squeeze out God from our lives. We can replace God with other things in our lives, but nothing is going to sort of push or force God to get out of the way. He fills that space, and because he does, that creates a stability and a freedom in our lives. It creates a strong foundation in our lives, and we're filled with the spirit. And it's important for us to remain filled with the spirit. It's important for us to remain filled with the spirit. Because if we if we start letting things creep into our lives and we start letting sins encroach in our lives and in our in our in our what should be a relationship with God, but we're letting other things encroach in that, then what happens? It's like it starts building momentum almost. It creates a chaos and an uncertainty in our lives. But when God is where we want Him to be in our lives, when God is in control of our lives and we're submitted to God, then it gives us a freedom and a strength and a foundation. In Romans chapter 12, verse number two, the Spirit renews our minds and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. How many of you need your mind renewed? Come on. I need my mind renewed more than you know, more than I would like to think I do. Right? I need a renewal of my mind, a refreshing of my mind, a a sort of soft wind of renewal to blow through my mind again. And when we live in a tumultuous life or a tumultuous world, when stuff is happening everywhere around us, it seems like we need that even more. And we live in our culture in such a distracted and tumultuous life. There's so much stuff going on around us. There's so much stuff happening. You can be not doing bad things, but just be filled with all kinds of things. And you still need a renewing of your mind. You still need that. I need that renewing of my mind, that that transforming and that uh uh uh that transforming process of my mind being renewed so that I can have the perspective that God wants me to have, so I can think the way God wants me to think. You know, I feel like I'm relatively smart. And then I find out how wrong I am sometimes. Well, maybe not. You know, God, I need my mind renewed. I don't want to depend on just my own opinions or my own thoughts or the thoughts of someone around me or thoughts of somebody, God forbid, that I heard on the internet. I I need my mind renewed. And we need that today. We need our minds renewed. And being filled with the spirit gives us the authority to overcome the flesh in our lives. Galatians 5.16 says, This I say, walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh or the desires of the flesh. Walk in the spirit. Let the spirit lead you, guide you, help you, be filled with the spirit so that you can be victorious over the flesh or over humanity, or sometimes we say carnal man, the carnal man, the human man. Walk in the spirit, walk in the power of God. How do you do that? Well, James writes in James chapter 4, verse 7 and 8. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. How do you submit yourself to God? Well, you can do that in prayer by saying, God, not my will but yours be done, but you have to do that in everyday practice too, not just in prayer. Submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. You cannot resist the devil enough for him to flee from you if you don't resist yourself to God. I mean, submit yourself to God. Just resisting the devil is never going to be enough. You got to submit yourself to God first, resist the devil. You're not going to be able to resist the devil if you don't submit yourself to God. It's just you don't have the power to do that by yourself. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. I do, I do, I know we you sort of quote that portion of the verse that says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you. But every time I read this, I'm I'm reminded that that little phrase to resist the devil and he will flee from you is sandwiched between two other phrases, the first of which is to submit ourselves to God, and the second is to draw near to God. And he'll draw near to you. I mean, it's important that you resist the devil, but you've got to do the other things to be successful too. It takes it all together. And when you have the Spirit of God working in you, then you can submit yourself to God, and you can draw near to God, and with those you can resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Because he's not going to flee from you personally. It's the power of God in us, it's the Spirit of God in us. And so when we submit to Him and we draw near to Him, then you know, if I can if I can sort of give you an image of that, give you an example of that, it's like if you submit to God and you draw near to God. So it's like, well, I'm out here doing my thing and uh I'm gonna kind of I don't know, it's not probably not how it really works, so just kind of bear with me. You're out here doing your thing, just living your life along, and the devil comes along, you don't get your boxing gloves on and say, Let's fight. I've heard people use that kind of vernacular, but you don't get your boxing gloves on, let's fight. You say, wait, where's Jesus? Right? And you get over to Jesus right next to him, you submit to him, he puts his arm on your shoulder. Because you've drawn near to him, you're submitted to him, you're under his care. No wonder the devil's gonna flee from you. Of course he's gonna flee from you. He's not scared of you, he's scared of Jesus standing next to you. He has no way to sort of pull you out of Jesus' hands. No wonder he's gonna flee from you. I think that's more the image that we need to get in mind instead of this image that I'm gonna grit my teeth and resist the devil. I'm gonna resist the devil by submitting to God and drawing near to God, being close to Him. And that's what's gonna give me the power to overcome. The Spirit of the Lord gives us freedom. The Spirit of the Lord gives us freedom. There's no politician gonna give you freedom like the Spirit of the Lord gives you. There's no government gonna give you freedom like the Spirit of the Lord gives you freedom. In fact, you can be completely oppressed by governments, politicians, and dictators, and still have the freedom of the Spirit. You can still walk in the freedom of the Spirit. Now we are grateful for the freedom that we have. So I'm not minimizing that at all. It's very important to us. But you don't have to have sort of governmental national freedom to have the freedom that Jesus gives you, to have the freedom that he offers. And you can live with and exercise that freedom that God has granted you every day as you submit your life and heart to God, as you put your life in his hands, as you trust in him to work, as you draw near to him. Would you stand together with me? Lord, we thank you.