SPEAKER_02: Welcome to City Church Dublin Semmon Archives.
SPEAKER_02: Join us this week as we continue to walk through the Book of John in our series, The Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: Let me add my welcome to Duncan's.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders here at City Church.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you if you're new or visiting.
SPEAKER_00: Can I invite you to have that passage that Rory read for us open either physically in your Bible or on your phone so you can uh be uh just consulting it with me?
SPEAKER_00: It's John chapter 8, verses 31.
SPEAKER_00: We're really not getting down to verse 38, we're really only doing to verse 36 because 38 kind of gets us into the rest of the chapter and we'll deal with all of that stuff about fathers and Abraham and Father Abraham, many sons.
SPEAKER_00: Many sons had Father Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we'll do all that next uh next week.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's our kids' song.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Um uh answer this question for me if you uh if you would.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about freedom today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there will be no references uh to uh to Scottish Lords or any movies uh about that, don't worry.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we are gonna talk about freedom.
SPEAKER_00: So uh answer this in your own mind.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be free?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for you to be free?
SPEAKER_00: What is freedom?
SPEAKER_00: Because if we're gonna talk about it, it's worth thinking about.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you think it is?
SPEAKER_00: When are you at your most free?
SPEAKER_00: What is freedom?
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe uh some of you here in the quietness of your mind uh answered that in terms of a negative.
SPEAKER_00: It's about not being something about not being bound, not being constrained or suppressed or oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: Uh well done, those of you who answered like that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you all get a name badge when you go out, and it all says Elsa.
SPEAKER_00: Uh no right, no wrong, no rules for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm free.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first of our movie references.
SPEAKER_00: It's about having no more boundaries, no more constraints.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine that some of you maybe answered in slightly more, perhaps, what you would consider kind of neutral terms.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom uh is about being able to choose how you wish to live.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom's about being my own master or mistress, freedom's about self-creation and self-determination.
SPEAKER_00: Uh at that point, you perhaps resonate with Brendan Gleason's daughter in the movie Calvary.
SPEAKER_00: If you've seen sorry?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, not his not his real daughter, yeah, doesn't have a daughter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but in the movie Calvary, uh, if you've seen that, uh she in this scene with her father um says to him, I am my own, I belong to myself.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's kind of what you think about freedom.
SPEAKER_00: I I am my own, I belong to myself.
SPEAKER_00: To think about freedom in those sorts of terms is uh, I would say, quite pervasive in our world.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom is uh an extraordinarily high value, possibly the highest value in the West, something that we aspire to and seek to achieve for us.
SPEAKER_00: It governs so much of uh who we are and our decision making.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, people want to be free uh to express themselves what they describe as their true inner being.
SPEAKER_00: And so part of what freedom means today is to kind of uh analyze and be able to uh to feel who you are and then project that into the world in a way that is uh celebrated and affirmed, that unless you're able to live that out, who you perceive yourself to be internally, then then you'll never be free.
SPEAKER_00: And if freedom is about self-determination and autonomy and independence and uh radical self-expression, then Christianity is the enemy of all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is seen as the enemy of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Surely that's what people tend to think about the church, that it is constraining and oppressive and repressive.
SPEAKER_00: That it's the church's that's Christianity's reputation.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of stifling freedom, of enslaving people who would otherwise express themselves differently to the values of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a problem here, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we come to this passage, and Jesus is talking about setting you free.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about freedom, he's offering freedom, not just a little bit of freedom, but he talks about being free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of being free indeed, when Jesus uses that term, it's about freedom at every level of analysis, holistic freedom at every part of your being.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus is offering.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the reputation of Christianity and the reputation of the church is something quite different.
SPEAKER_00: So what's gone on?
SPEAKER_00: What's gone wrong?
SPEAKER_00: What's happened that the guy who here in this passage offers you freedom is now perceived by many as being the archenemy of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: In the movie Calvary, come back to me with Brendan Gleason and his fictitious daughter.
SPEAKER_00: They're actors, they're pretending, Andrew.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00: She says, I am my own, I belong to no one else, or I belong to myself.
SPEAKER_00: And Brendan Gleason responds and says, True.
SPEAKER_00: False.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that the idea of expressive individualism that I am my own is true to a certain extent, but ultimately false.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, this idea that Christianity limits your freedom is true to a certain extent, but it's ultimately false.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you how.
SPEAKER_00: What is freedom?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be free?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem with this definition of freedom as no right, no wrong, no rules for me, as uh self-assertion and independence and autonomy, no constraints.
SPEAKER_00: The problem with defining freedom in that sort of way is that it's unworkable.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: It is not possible to live that way.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second, uh an old uh an old man, a grandfather, and he has uh two deep desires.
SPEAKER_00: One of his deep desires, and this is basically me me projecting into time, is that he loves to eat.
SPEAKER_00: You you know some people some people are food food is fuel, some people are food is pleasure, food is pleasure, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, amen.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: Food is fuel, people, just out of interest, give me a whoop.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: Food is pleasure, people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to you.
SPEAKER_00: Feel is fuel.
SPEAKER_00: You can uh you can get a different example later on.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about skydiving later.
SPEAKER_00: We'll bring you back, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh food is fuel or food is pleasure people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the deep desires that he has is he loves to he loves to eat.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's going through the Instagram stories, seeing all of the different recipes and seeing those greasy cheeseburgers.
SPEAKER_00: He loves food, he loves the pleasure of social company and and and eating whatever he likes.
SPEAKER_00: The other deep desire that that that grandfather has is he loves to spend time with his grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: He derives great joy and pleasure from being with them.
SPEAKER_00: And they make him feel young again.
SPEAKER_00: He goes for his uh his annual physical for his annual checkup, and the doctor takes his blood pressure and uh and measures his cholesterol and uh and says, Mark, uh if you don't take drastic action to limit the quantity and type of foods that you eat, you're going to develop heart disease and die.
SPEAKER_00: You need to take drastic action now, and so the man's left with a dilemma.
SPEAKER_00: Does he indulge his desire to eat whatever he wants, or does he indulge his desire to spend as much time as possible watching his grandchildren grow up?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing he desires both, but he's not free to do both.
SPEAKER_00: He has to constrain himself to one of those desires.
SPEAKER_00: He's not free in respect to both.
SPEAKER_00: And so freedom for that man is not being free to do whatever he wants, the absence of constraint, no right, no wrong, no rules for me.
SPEAKER_00: No, freedom for that grandfather is the strategic loss of certain freedoms in order to gain a greater, more joy-giving freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: You know this if you are a student or if you have been a student, this idea of strategic loss.
SPEAKER_00: Say you want to do really well, get a first when you finish.
SPEAKER_00: What you're going to do now is you're going to voluntarily give up some freedoms.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to go out and party every night.
SPEAKER_00: Because people who do that don't generally get firsts.
SPEAKER_00: If you're one of those people, we all hate you.
SPEAKER_00: Because generally speaking, you have to constrain yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You say, no, I'm not going to go out to Coppers for the fourth night in a row.
SPEAKER_00: Because I need to study.
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: You might have the desire to go out, but you're constraining yourself voluntarily.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: For the joy of achieving the degree classification that opens up the job prospects, that opens up the future that you're aiming for.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: So you constrain yourself now.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom is not no right, no wrong, no rules for me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the absence of constraint.
SPEAKER_00: It's strategically limiting yourself for certain greater, deeper joys.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a better definition of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: You might say, well, that's fair enough.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm still choosing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm still choosing not to eat the cheeseburger.
SPEAKER_00: I'm still choosing not to go out.
SPEAKER_00: It's still my agency, it's still my autonomy that's saying, no, I'm I'm turning aside from that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not really what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Not really.
SPEAKER_00: Because woven into the fabric of reality are these truths that if you just eat junk food your entire life, you're going to get heart disease and die.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you just party all the time, you're not going to get a first.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of, it's not so much that you choose that to be true, it's that you conform your life to the shape of reality anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Now, those are kind of physical examples.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe kind of slit silly examples about food or about study.
SPEAKER_00: What about something like love?
SPEAKER_00: What about something less tangible, more metaphysical?
SPEAKER_00: Like love?
SPEAKER_00: Can you take the definition of no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free into a love relationship?
SPEAKER_00: Or is there constraint in a love relationship?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you start going out with someone, you're falling in love with that person, but your approach to your life is I am my own.
SPEAKER_00: I belong to no one else.
SPEAKER_00: I am my own master.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the captain of my own ship.
SPEAKER_00: And your partner, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your spouse says, could you help me take the bins out?
SPEAKER_00: And you respond by saying, I belong to no one else.
SPEAKER_00: I follow my own desires, and so no.
SPEAKER_00: Or they say to you, uh, this is a completely fictitious example, it doesn't come from my life at all.
SPEAKER_00: Um, your partner may hypothetically say something like, uh, could you stop leaving your underwear on the floor and put it in the wash basket?
SPEAKER_00: To which you respond, no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free.
SPEAKER_00: A few days later, your boyfriend or your girlfriend look at you and say, I think we might be breaking up.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because in a love relationship, you undergo the strategic loss of freedoms.
SPEAKER_00: You set aside certain freedoms, the freedom to date other people, the freedom to have sex with other people, the freedom to marry other people.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you're now a prisoner?
SPEAKER_00: No, because you love the person.
SPEAKER_00: You voluntarily, joyfully, you don't even think about it as the loss of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Because you love the person.
SPEAKER_00: And what's more is you go even further than that.
SPEAKER_00: You deliberately constrain yourself to the things that make them happy.
SPEAKER_00: You do things that bring them joy because in them finding happiness, you get happy too.
SPEAKER_00: To do something that makes your partner, the person that you're in love with, smile or brim with delight, it brings you joy.
SPEAKER_00: I hate fish pie.
SPEAKER_00: Fish pie sucks.
SPEAKER_00: But my wife loves it, like has a kind of slightly weird obsessive relationship with it.
SPEAKER_00: I would never voluntarily for myself cook fish pie.
SPEAKER_00: But when we were dating, and she was living in England, and I was living in Dublin, any time that she would fly over, there would be a fish pie in the oven when I would go and get her from the airport.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: And did I put it in the oven and think, oh, I'm so I'm so bound and constrained by this woman who is suppressing and repressing my desire to eat steak.
SPEAKER_00: No, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm putting that in the oven because I love the woman who's coming to eat it.
SPEAKER_00: And to see her derive pleasure from it, particularly because she's a food as fuel person, brings me joy.
SPEAKER_00: So freedom, whether in the physical realm or in the metaphysical, in the example of love, it's not simply about the absence of constraint.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how freedom works.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the strategic limiting of certain freedoms in order to maximize freedom and joy.
SPEAKER_00: So the question then is what freedoms should you constrain yourself to?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the same way that there is a kind of order to the physical realm, so to the metaphysical realm.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here talks about offering us freedom.
SPEAKER_00: How is he able to do that?
SPEAKER_00: How is he able to set you free?
SPEAKER_00: How is he able to make you free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: He's able to do that because Christians believe that Jesus is our maker.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who designed us.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what makes human beings flourish.
SPEAKER_00: And so freedom for a human being, like freedom for all of life, is about living the way you were made to live.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second a fish that decides by its own independence and autonomy that it desires to live in a tree.
SPEAKER_00: You might think, well, no right, no wrong, no rules for it.
SPEAKER_00: It's free.
SPEAKER_00: But a fish that lives in a tree is dying because it is not living the way that it was made to live.
SPEAKER_00: It is not living according to its nature.
SPEAKER_00: It's living contrary to nature.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom for fish is found when it's in water.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in order to know for us what freedom is, we need to ask, well, what am I made for?
SPEAKER_00: Or to put it more precisely, who am I made for?
SPEAKER_00: Where am I designed to flourish the most?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer to that actually comes in verse 31, when Jesus says, Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, if you abide in my word, not just give intellectual assent to some of the tenets and precepts of Christianity, not just kind of say, Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
SPEAKER_00: Abide.
SPEAKER_00: What is the environment that maximizes human freedom and flourishing?
SPEAKER_00: It's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the environment that you were made for, in which you enjoy full, holistic freedom at every level of analysis.
SPEAKER_00: So what's freedom?
SPEAKER_00: It's not the absence of constraint.
SPEAKER_00: It's not workable.
SPEAKER_00: It is the strategic loss of certain freedoms in order to gain greater joy.
SPEAKER_00: And if freedom and joy is maximized, it is maximized when we live according to how we are made.
SPEAKER_00: Your most life-giving, freedom-giving identity is not one that you create for yourself, but one which you discover and then live out of.
SPEAKER_00: So what are they, what do they mean when they say we've never been enslaved to anyone?
SPEAKER_00: Are they morons?
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, let's give them a little bit more credit than that.
SPEAKER_00: I think perhaps what they are saying is something like that they have never had to constrain or curtail their Jewish identity.
SPEAKER_00: That wherever they were, they were able to express that.
SPEAKER_00: They were still able to freely express their religion.
SPEAKER_00: In that sense, the Nobody has made them a slave.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus pushes them.
SPEAKER_00: So that their slavery is not geopolitical.
SPEAKER_00: It's not even religious.
SPEAKER_00: So much as that it's spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: That there is actually something that is taking them captive.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
SPEAKER_00: The slave does not remain in the house forever, but the son remains forever.
SPEAKER_00: So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: So here we must turn our attention from the issue of what it means to be free to what it means to be a slave.
SPEAKER_00: What is a slave?
SPEAKER_00: And what does it mean to be a slave of sin?
SPEAKER_00: How does sin lead to slavery?
SPEAKER_00: The answer to all of this is contained in the contrast that Jesus offers between a slave and a son.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35 the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever.
SPEAKER_00: The answer to what it means for us to be a slave is in this contrast.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's familiar with Downton Abbey, right?
SPEAKER_00: Slightly dated reference, forgive me.
SPEAKER_00: Um but we got we understand the concept, even if you've never seen it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh a large stately home, uh turn of the 20th century.
SPEAKER_00: And what have you, what's part of the drama there?
SPEAKER_00: What have you got there?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you've got the family who own the estate and live in the house.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then you've got the uh you've got the servants, you've got those who live below stairs, and they all live in the same physical building.
SPEAKER_00: And in one sense, you say, well, there's an equality there.
SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you watch Downton Abbey or wherever, there's there's there's anything but equality going on.
SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between those who live below stairs and those who live above stairs.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between the servant and the son.
SPEAKER_00: I know again, Andrew, that there was no sons there.
SPEAKER_00: Three three daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Stay with me, don't like to get to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between the servants and the son.
SPEAKER_00: Very different relationships with the master.
SPEAKER_00: How are they different?
SPEAKER_00: They're different in four ways.
SPEAKER_00: They're different at the level of desire, different at the level of ability, different at the level of opportunity, different at the level of destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Those four things are going to be important.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say them again.
SPEAKER_00: Desire, ability, opportunity, destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: They have different desires.
SPEAKER_00: The servant's desire, perhaps, is to see that his master is pleased.
SPEAKER_00: Or his desire might be to get out of the house as soon as possible and move on somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: But the son's desire is to learn from and emulate and to please his father and then take on that mantle.
SPEAKER_00: Different at the level of desire, different at the level of ability.
SPEAKER_00: The servant cannot walk into the dining hall and plonk himself down beside Maggie Smith.
SPEAKER_00: The servant doesn't have access to every part of the house, but the son does.
SPEAKER_00: The sun goes where he pleases.
SPEAKER_00: He can be upstairs or he can travel downstairs.
SPEAKER_00: Different at the level of ability.
SPEAKER_00: Different also at the level of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: The servant does not climb the social hierarchy.
SPEAKER_00: He remains a servant, but the son will one day manage the estate and inherit the titles of his father.
SPEAKER_00: And they have different destinies.
SPEAKER_00: The servant, no matter how long or how beloved, isn't it, doesn't matter if they're Carson.
SPEAKER_00: Carson still left the house.
SPEAKER_00: He's still retired.
SPEAKER_00: But a son remains and inherits.
SPEAKER_00: Being a slave to sin is about being a servant and not a son.
SPEAKER_00: You can be a religious person and still be a slave to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: You can be a religious person and still be a slave to sin if you view God as a boss to be appeased, as a master to be placated.
SPEAKER_00: If you view him as a master and not a father, that your religious duty is seen as services rendered.
SPEAKER_00: That you're trying to please God in order to get something from him.
SPEAKER_00: You're still a slave.
SPEAKER_00: If you are performing morally in order to win his favor, you are a servant and not a son.
SPEAKER_00: See, you're religious.
SPEAKER_00: You're even sitting in church, but you're still a slave.
SPEAKER_00: Non-religious people, maybe even anti-religious people, are also enslaved.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we all serve something.
SPEAKER_00: We're all pursuing something.
SPEAKER_00: We're all pouring ourselves out for something.
SPEAKER_00: We're hardwired to do that.
SPEAKER_00: We're hardwired to pour ourselves out for something or someone.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's not God, then it's something that's enslaving us.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that takes us captive at those four levels: desire, ability, opportunity, and destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you how.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine three things that might take you captive.
SPEAKER_00: Sex, money, success.
SPEAKER_00: How do they take you captive?
SPEAKER_00: They take you captive at the level of desire.
SPEAKER_00: If those things are your ultimate, then you want more.
SPEAKER_00: More sex.
SPEAKER_00: More money.
SPEAKER_00: Greater success.
SPEAKER_00: They take you captive at the level of ability.
SPEAKER_00: If you are captivated by sex, you ironically will struggle to be ever truly intimate, vulnerable, and self-giving with anyone.
SPEAKER_00: If you're captivated by money, you will find it nearly impossible to be generous.
SPEAKER_00: If you are captivated by the desire to succeed, you will find it utterly debilitating to fail.
SPEAKER_00: You are constrained and enslaved at the level of ability.
SPEAKER_00: Those things will also blind you to opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: If you worship sex, you will lose sight of the joy of lasting intimacy and vulnerability with someone in a love relationship.
SPEAKER_00: If you worship money, then you will miss the chance to be a blessing to others with the resources that you have.
SPEAKER_00: If you worship success, you will struggle to see and regard those who you deem to be lesser than you.
SPEAKER_00: You are enslaved at the level of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, you will discover that you are enslaved at the level of destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Those things will destroy you.
SPEAKER_00: They will never be enough.
SPEAKER_00: They were never designed to be enough.
SPEAKER_00: Those three things aren't wrong in themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They're gifts.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're worshiping them, pursuing them as ultimate, they will enslave you and they will destroy you.
SPEAKER_00: They will never be enough.
SPEAKER_00: Success will go to your head, failure will go to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Taken together.
SPEAKER_00: This is the anatomy of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: In order to be truly free, free indeed, as Jesus says, you need to be set free at each of these levels.
SPEAKER_00: You need to be set free at the level of desire, ability, opportunity, and destiny.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine you're skydiving.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a food as fuel people, come back.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second that you're skydiving.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it means to be free at all of those levels.
SPEAKER_00: You get there to the field, field, airstrip.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's go with that.
SPEAKER_00: You get to the airstrip, you see the the plane there, you have a look at it, and all of the desire drains out of your body.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, no, I'm fine.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I'll stay here.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: All of the desires gone.
SPEAKER_00: Are you free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not free with respect to your desires.
SPEAKER_00: You're now constrained to stay on terra firma.
SPEAKER_00: Or you get there and you realize that you didn't listen to any of the lessons.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't listened to the instructor.
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what a ripcord is or where it is.
SPEAKER_00: Are you free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not free at the level of ability.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the ability to go skydiving.
SPEAKER_00: You are not free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Or you get there and the clouds have rolled in and the pilot says the plane is grinded.
SPEAKER_00: Are you free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: You're not free at the level of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have the opportunity to go skydiving today.
SPEAKER_00: You are not free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Or you get up there and the plane is soaring, and it is a beautifully clear day.
SPEAKER_00: You're pumped, you listen during the lessons, you know where the ripcord is.
SPEAKER_00: The guy says, three, two, one, out you go.
SPEAKER_00: You're soaring down, and it's exhilarating.
SPEAKER_00: And you pull the ripcord, nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You pull it again, it's just moth.
SPEAKER_00: Are you free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: You are not free with respect to your destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Gravity has now enslaved you.
SPEAKER_00: You are not free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone here this morning who is living however they want, you say, I feel pretty free.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing what I want when I want.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not harming anybody.
SPEAKER_00: I'm discovering my identity.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living that, or I'm creating my identity and I'm living that out.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pursuing, I'm pursuing sex and career and money, and it feels exhilarating and wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: I feel free.
SPEAKER_00: It's freeful sex.
SPEAKER_00: It's freeful greed.
SPEAKER_00: It's freeful power.
SPEAKER_00: It's freeful self-creation.
SPEAKER_00: You're not free at the level of destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not a son, you're still a slave.
SPEAKER_00: So, how does the son set you free?
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus promises.
SPEAKER_00: That's the desire that we all have.
SPEAKER_00: We all understand at some level that there are things that are constraining us.
SPEAKER_00: We understand at some level that there is a freedom to be achieved, that there's a freedom that we are pursuing.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is here, he's offering, he says, Come and be free in me.
SPEAKER_00: So hi.
SPEAKER_00: How does Jesus make you free?
SPEAKER_00: How does the Son set you free so that you would be free indeed?
SPEAKER_00: Free at the level of desire, ability, opportunity, and destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier on, we noted that in our love relationship we constrain ourselves to the other person.
SPEAKER_00: Because in doing so, we find freedom and joy.
SPEAKER_00: You can perhaps think that in Christianity, God is constantly asking you to constrain yourself to Him.
SPEAKER_00: He has all of these demands that you have to bend and flex to and give stuff up in order to make Him happy.
SPEAKER_00: That we are always the ones doing the accommodating, doing the constraining.
SPEAKER_00: That's true of every other religion.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: That's true of everything else that you could pursue in your life.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not true of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because in Christianity, God is moved by love for humanity and constrains himself to that humanity.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord Jesus constrained himself in the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: He, being moved by love, constrained himself to the limitations of hunger, thirst, tiredness, grief.
SPEAKER_00: Constrained himself in love to the bonds of wicked men and to the nails of a Roman cross.
SPEAKER_00: God has constrained himself in love for you.
SPEAKER_00: Long before he ever asks you to do anything in return.
SPEAKER_00: He has constrained himself in love for you, that he might take you from being a slave to those things that captivate your desires and set you free to be a son, a daughter.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't say, constrain yourself to me and I will love you.
SPEAKER_00: No, he says, I have loved you and I give up the glories of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I gave up the freedom of desire and said, Not my will but yours be done.
SPEAKER_00: I gave up the freedom of ability when they cried out, save yourself if you are the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: I gave up the freedom of opportunity to come down from that cruel cross.
SPEAKER_00: I gave up the freedom of destiny by falling freefall into the grave that I might break the power of death for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so the chains of death encompassed him, as Psalm 22 says, before he burst them apart and was liberated from that grave.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is the great liberator of your life.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one that will ultimately set you free, free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, it is the truth that will set you free, and then parallels it with the Son, with himself.
SPEAKER_00: He is that truth.
SPEAKER_00: The truth that sets us free is the truth of who Jesus is and the truth of what he has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: In order that he might liberate us, in order that we might be free indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of you here wants freedom.
SPEAKER_00: A greater level, a greater measure.
SPEAKER_00: If the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.
SPEAKER_01: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website found in the links below.