SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Patrick Seymars.
SPEAKER_00: I come from Fellowship Church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm an elder at Fellowship Church in Hooksit.
SPEAKER_00: We meet in the uh Town Hall Gymnasium.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're a church plant.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Aaron's been around since 2021.
SPEAKER_00: We're about three years old.
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's just been a privilege.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a seminary student.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to Midwestern Seminary, uh, which is an SBC seminary, and uh I get the privilege of coming and sharing the message with you all.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I'm grateful to be here.
unknown: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm originally from Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: My wife, Michelle, in the back, is from Hook Set.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she actually went to Valley School where we meet now in church, which is a really cool experience for her to be able to come.
SPEAKER_00: We meet in the gymnasium where they play dodgeball and foursquare and all those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we we meet in the upper room sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: I think that was her art classroom.
SPEAKER_00: So it's cool to come full circle uh all the way back.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm from Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know anything about New Hampshire uh before before I met her.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing I did know was the motto, live free or die.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's about anything that anybody knows uh when I tell them I'm from or that I live in New Hampshire now is the motto live free or die.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I did a little research and I learned about where it came from and what it really means.
SPEAKER_00: So I learned that uh live free or die originated in 1809 uh from the Revolutionary War hero General John Stark, who was from New Hampshire.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he sent a letter uh containing the toast, live free or die.
SPEAKER_00: Death is not the worst of all evils.
SPEAKER_00: Stark's words captured the revolutionary conviction that tyranny is worse than death itself.
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't merely rhetoric for him.
SPEAKER_00: He had proven his commitment to liberty uh through the throughout the entire war, enduring hardship and leading troops in critical battles for American independence.
SPEAKER_00: Today, the motto symbolizes New Hampshire's libertarian political mystique, low taxes, minimal regulation, and a fierce independence.
SPEAKER_00: It invokes to uh it invokes an economic freedom, uh minimal government, and personal autonomy.
SPEAKER_00: The motto has transcended its revolutionary origins to become a broader cultural symbol of American individualism.
SPEAKER_00: It uh symbolizes self-reliance and resistance to overreach, whether it's from the government or from corporations or from social pressure.
SPEAKER_00: Personally, I had some reservations about it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I was viewing, I viewed it as an anti-gospel message of over-reliance on self and a rejection of being told what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I certainly can relate to that.
SPEAKER_00: I certainly know that when I lived by those kinds of mottos, that's when I was living mostly in sin.
SPEAKER_00: So I was a little reserved in coming to a state where that's where uh we live by.
SPEAKER_00: Um certainly live free or die is the absolute spirit of the state.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me what the what to do is the chorus that rings between the verses of everyday life here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, from not wearing seat belts in your cars to motorcycles so loud that you need a doctor's appointment after they drive past, you can see that live for your die courses through the veins of New Hampshire.
SPEAKER_00: And in many echo, and in many respects, it echoes the same mantra of the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: However, once we moved here, and I began, I started to chew on this phrase more and more, I began to see the gospel hidden within it.
SPEAKER_00: That if we truly believe what this phrase is saying and see it through Christ-colored glasses, we could live in a much greater freedom than this phrase originally meant.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to read through Deuteronomy 30, chapter uh chapter 30, verses 15 through 20.
SPEAKER_00: So if you if you have a Bible with you, uh, or you've if you've used one of those phone apps, uh turn to Deuteronomy chapter 30.
SPEAKER_00: It's the last five verses of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And if you uh if you are able, please stand as we read the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Chap uh verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: See, I've set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity.
SPEAKER_00: And what I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes, and his judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.
SPEAKER_00: But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish.
SPEAKER_00: You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter it and possess it.
SPEAKER_00: I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
SPEAKER_00: So choose life, in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him, for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to give them.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you that you draw us near to you, that you give us the word that we can learn from.
SPEAKER_00: God, let us uh open our eyes and ears to see what you have for us today.
SPEAKER_00: May your words course through my mouth, come through my mouth rather than my own words.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we call your Holy Spirit to open eyes and ears to receive the lessons for today.
SPEAKER_00: We love you.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you.
SPEAKER_00: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Please have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna set a little timer here really quick just so I don't go too far.
SPEAKER_00: I have a tendency to get really excited and I don't want to go too long.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, we see a crossroad.
SPEAKER_00: We see a choice.
SPEAKER_00: We see life or death, prosperity or adversity, good or evil.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the chapter, Moses foretells of Israel's continued unfaithfulness after they take up residence in the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar, Deuteronomy is the final book of the first books of the Bible called the Pentateuch.
SPEAKER_00: This is Moses' final song.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is Moses commissioning Joshua to take Israel into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Moses himself doesn't get to go to the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Israel has been wandering around for forty years because of their unfaithfulness and lack of trust in God.
SPEAKER_00: He tells them that they will be cast out of the land and scattered because of the disobedience and worship of other gods.
SPEAKER_00: He also reassures them that God will be faithful to them and restore them back to himself.
SPEAKER_00: While there will be pain caused by their own rebellion, there will be hope in God's faithfulness to keep his covenant and care for his people.
SPEAKER_00: All this came to pass centuries later, when Israel was dispersed by the Assyrians and Judah was captured and lived in Babylonian exile.
SPEAKER_00: And we can see this passage in this passage that Moses is imploring Israel to choose now, this day, to choose life and death, rather than to fall into the traps of Satan and death.
SPEAKER_00: This is Moses saying to the Israelites, live free in the covenant of God or die.
SPEAKER_00: So while Moses is speaking to Israel directly in this passage, we can also apply its principles to ourselves as it applied to us as it is applied to us through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God, by his good grace, gives us a choice, and we get to exercise our free will.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what we do, no matter what we do, we are actively choosing God or something else.
SPEAKER_00: There is no neutrality in anything we do.
SPEAKER_00: Even doing nothing is a choice.
SPEAKER_00: A choice that can either lead to life or death.
SPEAKER_00: It's really that simple.
SPEAKER_00: There is no middle ground with God.
SPEAKER_00: There is no fence to sit on.
SPEAKER_00: That fence is owned by Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Every moment is a moment of decision.
SPEAKER_00: To choose life in Christ or death, every temptation is a choice.
SPEAKER_00: Every unanswered phone call, every hateful word under uttered under our breath, every extended gaze is a choice.
SPEAKER_00: So what is choosing life or death, to live free or die according to God look like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's look at verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you.
SPEAKER_00: We all know what it's like to hold a child's hand in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: They may not want to hold on, but you know the dangers.
SPEAKER_00: You know what can happen if they let go and run on their own.
SPEAKER_00: They must obey so that they can keep their life.
SPEAKER_00: We know what's best in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God knows what's best in all situations.
SPEAKER_00: And he is so gracious of Father that he instructs us and encourages us to follow his instructions.
SPEAKER_00: He offers the path to life, if only we would follow him.
SPEAKER_00: We can learn to love the path that God sets before us through obedience to the bound to the boundaries that he has set around us.
SPEAKER_00: And it is only through Christ that we are able to do so.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself tells us that we must obey to find life.
SPEAKER_00: In John 15, he says, If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is equating obedience to abiding in the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: God is love, and God loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we do what he tells us.
SPEAKER_00: We do what is good and right in his eyes.
SPEAKER_00: We must take up our crosses and follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He was just as much about obedience for his followers in the New Testament as was required in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is our model of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He died so that we may be removed from the curse of sin, but not from the blessings of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He did not abolish the law, but he fulfilled it.
SPEAKER_00: While we're no longer under the law as a binding covenant, as we now stand under the covenant of grace, we can now rightly see the law as a guide for godly living and strive to align with that as a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: This means that we come to Christ when we are falling short.
SPEAKER_00: Not that it is only through him that we can be free from the frustrating hypocrisy that Paul describes in Romans 7, where he says, For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want to do.
SPEAKER_00: We may want to obey, but we struggle to do so.
SPEAKER_00: And it's only through him, Christ, that we have any hope.
SPEAKER_00: To be sure, though, this obedience, it's not a transactional obedience.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a transactional obedience of works for our salvation, but rather the fruit of a faith-filled life.
SPEAKER_00: One that is compelled by a heartfelt service of gratitude, and not by a self-serving religious ceremony.
SPEAKER_00: It is by grace alone, through faith alone, and by Christ alone that we are saved, but this salvation must bear some fruit, beyond mere agreement with doctrine and religious makeup.
SPEAKER_00: So I ask, what is your response when you hear and when you think about obedience to God?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see it as a blessing and a hope-filled, holy roadmap to a fruitful life here on earth and lasting forevermore?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you look at it as a checklist or even a burden?
SPEAKER_00: When does our worldly live, free, or die spirit build up a wall and cause us to believe that we are the ones to choose what is good and life-giving?
SPEAKER_00: I remember when Christ saved me about six years ago, after wandering the wilderness of sin in spiritual samplings from Buddhism to New Age nature worship, I lived in Boulder, Colorado, very uh kind of hippie kind of place.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I went on hikes.
SPEAKER_00: That that was my that was my church Sunday mornings, hikes and yoga.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but what I find and when I finally surrendered to Christ, gave it all to him, I felt a real weight lifted off of my shoulders.
SPEAKER_00: I felt a new life, a relief that I no longer had to determine my life on my own anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I finally felt like I was on solid ground.
SPEAKER_00: I ask, are we selectively obeying some of what God asks us of us rather than allowing Christ to be Lord of our whole lives?
SPEAKER_00: When are you holding back from God rather than holding rather than holding tightly to Him?
SPEAKER_00: The great Christian paradox is that true freedom is found in complete surrender.
SPEAKER_00: For a Christian to live free means that we live free from that which separates us from God, allowing Jesus to remove the yoke of slavery to sin from our necks, and instead placing upon us his yoke, easy and light, a yoke that leads to life and true freedom.
SPEAKER_00: The life we are offered is a life of peace with God, a life that aims at holiness, set apart from the chaos and the emptiness of worldly pursuits.
SPEAKER_00: It's a life given to us as a gift and removes the curse from our hearts, replacing the heart of stone with the heart of flesh, a heart turned toward Him, and not steeped in this world.
SPEAKER_00: As the late Tim Keller tells us, obedience to the law is liberating.
SPEAKER_00: We must freely choose it, and then in turn it frees us.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate bondage is rebellion against the God who has made us.
SPEAKER_00: The despotic master is not Caesar, but shameful self-centeredness, an evil and enslaving devotion to created things at the expense of worship of the Creator.
SPEAKER_00: To live free is to live in submission and obedience to God.
SPEAKER_00: Which leads me to the next point of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to die?
SPEAKER_00: Let's turn to chat to verses 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_00: If your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, you shall surely perish.
SPEAKER_00: Turning from God and worshiping others is not a simple and spontaneous act.
SPEAKER_00: You see the progression, your heart turns, then obedience goes, then you're drawn away, and begin to worship and serve other gods.
SPEAKER_00: I heard earlier this morning the question well, what are the other gods?
SPEAKER_00: We know for certain there is only one God in three persons.
SPEAKER_00: We know Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: But the other gods, what God is talking about here, the first commandment, have no other gods before me isn't acknowledging that there are other gods that are worthy of worship.
SPEAKER_00: It's acknowledging that we create gods ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We create gods in our own image a lot of times.
SPEAKER_00: We do that when we take the words of God and distort them and make them fit our own pet uh affections, the things that we love most dearly.
SPEAKER_00: That's making a God in our own image.
SPEAKER_00: We look at money as a God, as the thing that will save us.
SPEAKER_00: We look at politics as a God, is the thing that will save us.
SPEAKER_00: God is saying here, don't turn your hearts to those things, turn them to me.
SPEAKER_00: When we begin to worship and serve other gods, this is the path to apostasy, turning away from God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the path to destruction.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to fill our minds with things that are not from God, and the rest follows.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with the mind, the heart and the mind, and it goes through everything else.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is clever and subtle.
SPEAKER_00: He worms his way into every aspect, doing just enough to knock us off our course, so as not to be able to discern that, uh discern that we've been knocked off our course.
SPEAKER_00: It's subtle and it's alluring.
SPEAKER_00: What we think brings us freedom actually adds chains to our hands and feet that we can never remove on our own accord.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever overcome addiction, you know what this is like.
SPEAKER_00: Addiction to anything, drugs, alcohol, junk food, pride, work, our phones, whatever it is, it causes us to view the thing that we're hooked on as the thing that brings us life.
SPEAKER_00: It takes everything we have to rewire our brains and our hearts to recognize that we what we see as life-giving is actually bringing us closer to death, that we've become slaves to it, and then turn away from it, and then we must turn away from it and choose true life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is who breaks these chains for us.
SPEAKER_00: He shatters the shackles so that we may be free and enables us by the Holy Spirit to walk out of the graves of our false living and into the pastures along the streams of living water.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: What do we turn to that we perceive to gives perceive to give us freedom?
SPEAKER_00: What in our lives do we believe allow us to maintain the greatest sense of ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: What things that the world around us tells us are good and right, but are contrary to God's desires, and that we allow to remain in our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: What do we allow to take us away from the path of life and draw us into the paths of darkness?
SPEAKER_00: What are your idols or your other gods in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is it money?
SPEAKER_00: Is it family?
SPEAKER_00: Is it your hobbies?
SPEAKER_00: Is it politics?
SPEAKER_00: Is it the news?
SPEAKER_00: How much of these things occupy your thoughts and concerns and time?
SPEAKER_00: I know for me my idols are comfort and distraction.
SPEAKER_00: YouTube and cookies.
SPEAKER_00: These are my these are my idols.
SPEAKER_00: What are the things that you lust after?
SPEAKER_00: Is it a bigger home?
SPEAKER_00: Is it a new car?
SPEAKER_00: Is it your friend's wife?
SPEAKER_00: What causes you to rage?
SPEAKER_00: Where do you feel like you can't back down?
SPEAKER_00: What can you not let go of?
SPEAKER_00: These are all things that begin to creep in our hearts and draw us away.
SPEAKER_00: These things that may promise us happiness, but rob us of life, like a bag of Cheetos when we're hungry.
SPEAKER_00: When John Calvin writes that the human uh John Calvin, he writes that the human heart is an idol factory, and he's right.
SPEAKER_00: Just consider the last 20 minutes sitting here in church.
SPEAKER_00: Where has your mind gone?
SPEAKER_00: I'd venture to guess that wherever your thoughts went, there you'll find your idol.
SPEAKER_00: We may think that our compromises we may think that our compromises are minor and negligible, and we can rest on the grace that we've been given.
SPEAKER_00: But the enemy isn't looking for grand sweeping actions to draw us away from God.
SPEAKER_00: He's too clever for that.
SPEAKER_00: God is calling you to.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we do about this?
SPEAKER_00: How do we live free or die in Christ?
SPEAKER_00: We can look at verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: By loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him, for this is your life and the length of your days.
SPEAKER_00: Moses' bookends this entire passage with love, obedience, and blessing.
SPEAKER_00: We love God, we obey his voice, and we hold fast to him, for he is our life and length of days.
SPEAKER_00: Christ offers this to us.
SPEAKER_00: He is the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: We look to him.
SPEAKER_00: We surrender our whole lives to him, loving him with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
SPEAKER_00: We must love God fully, completely, and trust him above all else.
SPEAKER_00: We must pursue him above all else.
SPEAKER_00: This year, we're we're closing out this year.
SPEAKER_00: We're just a couple days away from New Year's, and a lot of people make new New Year's resolutions.
SPEAKER_00: I'll say the best New Year's resolution you could do, just read your Bible more daily.
SPEAKER_00: Resolve to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Be in fellowship with other believers who are pursuing God often.
SPEAKER_00: Do that more than just Sundays.
SPEAKER_00: Look for all that God has done in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Receive his blessings and recognize the blessings he's already bestowed upon you.
SPEAKER_00: And be on guard for anything that threatens to disrupt your communion with God.
SPEAKER_00: When we do this, the choice is made really easy.
SPEAKER_00: By choosing God, you're choosing life.
SPEAKER_00: By surrendering to him, you're choosing to live free and choosing to die to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you that your presence is what brings us life.
SPEAKER_00: God, that your obedience to your good laws and your good commandments and your uh guidance is what truly brings us life.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you that you love us so much that you came down to live with us.
SPEAKER_00: God, that you came to free us from the shackles of sin.
SPEAKER_00: God, by your perfect life and your undeserving death and your glorious resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: God, and Jesus, you have made a cosmic separation between the curtains of religiosity that separated us from you and your good graces.
SPEAKER_00: God, we come to you humbly, surrendering ourselves to you, knowing that it is only in you that we can have life and that anything else will bring us death.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us truly live free in you.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you.
SPEAKER_00: We surrender to you.
SPEAKER_00: We lift this all up to you.
SPEAKER_00: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.