Good evening. I promise tonight
to say hi to my grandkids in West Virginia, James and Isaac.
They're snowed in with a foot of snow on the ground, so there's
no services in Cottageville tonight. And hi, James and Sarah. Anyway,
let's open tonight's service with number 52 in our hardback
teminal. Number 52, majestic sweetness
sits enthroned. Let's all stand. Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
upon the Savior's brow, His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow, His lips with grace o'erflow. No mortal can with Him compare
among the sons of men. Fairer is He than all the fair
who fill the heavenly train, who fill the heavenly train. He saw me plunged in deep distress
and flew to my relief. For me, he bore the shameful
cross and carried all my grief, and carried all my grief. To him I owe my life and breath
and all the joys I have. He makes me triumph over death
and saves me from the grave, and saves me from the grave. Please be seated. We're gonna read from Psalm 86
tonight if you would like to turn there with me in your Bible
Psalm Psalm 86 He saves me from the grave Oh
death, where's thy sting? Psalm 86 verse 1 Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear
me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my soul, for I am holy. Set apart, every believer can
say that. O thou my God, save thy servant
that trusteth in thee. Be merciful unto me, O Lord,
For I cry unto thee. Margin of my Bible says that
that word daily means all the day long. Rejoice the soul of thy servant. For unto thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul. For thou, Lord, art good. and
ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call
upon thee. Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer,
and attend to the voice of my supplication. In the day of my
trouble I will call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me. Among the gods there is none
like unto thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto
thy works. All nations whom thou hast made
shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify
thy name. For thou art great and doest
wondrous things. Thou art God alone. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and
I will walk in thy truth. Unite my heart to fear thy name. Don Williams is having shoulder
replacement surgery tomorrow morning, so I want us to pray
for him. And Jeanette still has waiting for her chemotherapy. So Lord enables you to remember
to pray for her that he will provide what she needs when she
needs it. So let's pray together. Our merciful heavenly father,
what great hope and peace, comfort and joy we have in being able
to come before thee and present our needs before you, Lord, and
know that we have full acceptance in the
person of thy dear son. Know, Lord, that we have your
compassion. Lord, we so depend upon your
grace. We are poor and needy. Lord,
we are a sinful people, and Lord, what great comfort we have in
knowing that the Lord Jesus, thy dear son, in the wondrous
works of his redemption, put away our sin once and for all.
Lord, that we stand in thy presence holy. Lord, we pray that you would
bless the service tonight. We pray that you would speak
to our hearts, reveal to us thy dear son. Lord, we continue to
lift up our sister Jeanette and ask Lord that you would provide
all that she needs and in the time that's just right. Lord,
that you would Encourage and comfort her heart while she waits
on thee. Lord, we pray for our brother Don. Thank you so much
for him. And Lord, be with the doctors
that minister to him and use them as instruments of healing
in your hand. For truly, Lord, you are our
great physician, spiritually, physically, Lord, and most importantly,
spiritually. We thank you in Christ's name.
Amen. Number two in the spiral, gospel
hymns, hymn book. Let's all stand together. Number
two. Lord, we come before thee now. At thy feet we humbly bow. Oh, do not our suit disdain. Shall we seek thee, Lord, in
vain? Lord, on Thee our souls depend,
In compassion now descend. Fill our hearts with Thy rich
grace, Tune our lips to sing Thy praise. In thine own appointed
way, now we seek thee, here we stay. Lord, we know not how to
go till a blessing thou Please be seated. All right, let's open our Bibles
to Luke chapter 14. Luke chapter 14. What a blessing it's been to
see the spiritual meaning of the physical miracles that the
Lord performed. And I hope tonight that The Lord
will speak to our hearts and show us how this miracle applies
to our healing, our salvation, the forgiveness of our sin. I've
titled this message, Taken and Healed and Set Free. Taken, Healed, and Set Free. Let's read the verses together.
Chapter 14, verse one. And it came to pass as he went
into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread
on the Sabbath day, that they watched him, the Pharisees, looking
for something to accuse him of. How many times we've seen in
our study of the miracles, the Lord purposefully performing
miracles on the Sabbath in front of the Pharisees. and every time
it offended them. And his purpose was clear, was
to show them that they had made a works gospel out of their presumed
keeping of the Sabbath laws and that they missed the whole meaning
of the Sabbath. That he was their rest and he
disrupted their thoughts and their patterns
and their hopes as far as their works being determined by what
they did and didn't do on the Sabbath day. His purpose was to upset their
way of salvation. And behold, there was a certain
man, verse two, before him, which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering,
spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, is it lawful to heal
on the Sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he, the Lord Jesus, took
him, the man with the dropsy, and healed him and let him go. He took him, he healed him, and
he let him go. And answered them saying, which
of you shall have an ass or an ox falling into a pit and will
not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day? The whole
purpose of the Sabbath is to point to the rest and the freedom
that we have in Christ. And they could not answer him
again to these things. First thing I see in this miracle
in verse two is that this certain man was before the Lord. And we know that no man seeketh
after God at any time. It's not our initiative that
pursues him, it's he that pursues us. And he puts it in our hearts
to want to be where he is. And yet, why are we here tonight?
Have we not come here that we might find ourselves before him?
It's all we can do. We can't force his hand, we can't
demand anything from him, but we can put ourselves before him. Whether it be in prayer, private
prayer, whether it be in the study of scriptures, whether
it be in public worship, We put ourselves in that place before
him that we might be like this certain man whom he takes and
heals and sets free. How many times we see this in
the scriptures? We go all the way back to the
Queen of Sheba and she had heard about this God in Israel. And she traveled all the way
to Jerusalem and met Solomon. And Solomon showed her his wisdom
and all the glory of the kingdom of Israel that God had established. And what did she say? I heard
of thee. Back in Arabia, I'd heard of
thee, but half the story was not told me. Would she have known
the whole story had she not put herself before Solomon? Had she
not come to Jerusalem? Do we not see the same thing
in the Ethiopian eunuch who left Ethiopia and came to Jerusalem?
Surely he had heard about Jehovah and yet left Israel not having
met him. but having obtained a copy of
the scriptures, sitting in his chariot and reading from Isaiah
53 until the Lord took hold of him and healed him and set him
free. Zacchaeus, I mentioned Zacchaeus
this past Sunday. Zacchaeus knew the Lord was coming
through Zacchaeus couldn't demand anything from God but he could
get himself in a position where he was before the Lord and so
he climbed up into a tree. Oh, might we find that whatever obstacles
get between us and God that we would find ourselves putting
ourselves before Him. In Luke chapter 24, when the
Lord, after the resurrection, is walking with those disciples
on the road to Emmaus, and he comes to their house. Remember,
he's talking to them along the way and revealing himself to
them, but they didn't know who he was. Their eyes were holding,
the scripture says, until they got to Emmaus, and the scripture
says the Lord would have gone on. He basically said, see you
guys later. I'm gonna continue on my journey. He put them in a position to
plead with him to come in. Or don't, come, stay, break bread
with us. And in the breaking of bread,
their eyes were open and they saw who he was. This man was before the Lord.
The only thing you and I can do, brethren, And we do that
by God's grace. We do that by God's grace. We
wouldn't be putting ourselves before him had he not put in
our hearts to put ourselves in that place. But we don't say,
well, you know, God's sovereign. What will be, will be. And I'll
just wait for him to come to me. We go to where he has promised
to be. We go to meet with the brethren.
because he said, where two or three are gathered together in
my name, there I am in the midst of them. We go to his word because
he said in the volume of the book, it is written of me. We
go to him in prayer because he said, if you knock, it'll be
opened. If you ask, it'll be given. If
you seek, you'll find. Lord, enable us to put ourselves
before thee that you might take us and heal us and set us
free. This man was not, notice in verse one
of our text, these Pharisees watched him. In another place
the scripture says they watched that they might find occasion
to accuse him. They were trying to justify themselves
in what they were doing for their salvation and keeping the Sabbath
laws and they were looking for something to accuse him of. How
many times we see this? when we share the gospel with
someone who's trusting in their works for their salvation and
what will they say? Yeah, but. And they try to find reason to
accuse him. They try to find a loophole.
They try to find an excuse. They try to find something wrong
with the gospel of God's free grace that gives all the glory
to Christ and and strips man of all of his righteousness.
Well, we can't have that. And so, men are still watching. They're watching Christ, they're
watching us in the same spirit that these men were watching
in an attempt to find a place of accusation. But in contrast,
this certain man who had the dropsy was before the Lord. I hope I get this right. Doctor,
you can correct me later. If you have any more questions
than the little bit I know about dropsy, you can ask the doctor. But from my little bit of reading
on it, Dropsy is a collection of fluid, particularly in the
extremities, that comes as a result of congestive heart failure. And the point to that is that
dropsy is not the problem. Dropsy is the symptom. The problem
is the heart. You know, modern day medicine
from what I understand calls dropsy now edema. You see it
with people's swollen ankles and legs and arms and you press
on the skin and it doesn't come back because there's so much
fluid buildup. And what do they do? They give
them diuretics and they say cut back on your salt and then sometimes
they even are able to draw that fluid out. But they haven't got
to the cause of the problem. The only thing that's going to
fix the problem is major heart surgery because it's congestive
heart failure. The heart's not able to circulate
the blood properly because there's some blockage somewhere or some
other disease in the heart. So there's the picture for me
and you. The outward evidences of our
sin is not the real problem and yet that's where men want to
try to fix the symptom. It's like taking diuretics or
like drawing off the fluid or like cutting back on your salt. It's not going to fix the problem.
The problem is in the heart. And that's where our sin problem
is. But we see the symptoms and the discomfort, dropsy from what
I understand, edema is very uncomfortable. It's very, the areas that are
swollen are very tender to touch. And whatever we can do to fix
that, you know, to reduce the discomfort and the pain. Religion is all about treating
the symptoms of sin. All about addressing the outward
appearances. Cleaning up the outside of the
cup. Whitewashing the tomb. When what we really need is a
new heart. Sin is a heart problem. Men, apart from the Spirit of
God, they'll not see it as a heart problem, they'll see it just
simply as a behavioral problem. And they'll try to apply all
sorts of, whether it be self-helps or psychology or religion or
whatever, try to change their behavior. Lord, I need you to change my
heart. And if the heart's changed, the
behavior will follow, won't it? It will. Out of the heart, perceives the
issues of life. I said I had three points to
this message and they're all right here in this one verse.
He took him, he healed him and he let him go. He took this man
who everybody saw the symptoms of his problem and he didn't
give him a prescription to follow to cure the symptoms. The Lord obviously healed his
heart. He did heart surgery right there
on the spot. Took out a heart of stone and
put in a heart of flesh. Took out that dead, unfeeling,
lifeless heart of unbelief and gave him a heart of faith. That's
what we need. He took him. He laid hold on
him. He caught him. He grabbed him. Here's the picture. This man
is standing before the Lord and the Lord reached out and grabbed
a hold of this man. This word took him is also translated
to take possession of. Lord, I need you to take possession
of me. I need you to take hold of me. Lord, all I can do is
stand before here and show you the symptoms of my sin. But Lord,
if you don't take hold of me and do a work of grace in my
heart, none of this is gonna change. And this is not a one-time event
that I need. You remember when the Lord came into
Sodom and delivered Lot and the scripture says that Lot lingered.
He lingered in Sodom. Isn't that the way we are? We're
before the Lord. We know that what we need is
a new heart. We know that all this other outward evidence is
just a symptom of a sin problem. But we still linger. We linger
in Sodom. And the scripture says that the
angel took Lot by the hand and led him out. Lot's wife is not the only one
looking back to Sodom. Lot was looking back. But the
Lord took him. He took hold of him. Turn with me to Matthew chapter
14. Look at verse, look at verse
30. You're very familiar with this
story, but I wanted you to read, I wanted you to see these verses.
Peter asked the Lord to bid him to come unto him. Lord, allow
me to come. They saw the Lord walking on
the water, The disciples are in the boat. Peter wants to go
out on the water and meet the Lord, but he knows he has to
be bidden by the Lord to do that. And he goes. And the Lord said
in verse 29, come. And when Peter was come down
out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. You
know, we, we read this story. And so many times we think about
Peter's unbelief. Far as I can tell, other than
the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter's the only man that ever walked
on water. He trusted the Lord. He got out
of the boat. The safety of the boat, he's
out of the boat. And when he saw the wind, yeah,
he's walking by faith. But when he saw the wind, boisterous,
he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried,
saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched
forth his hand and caught him. Now I looked up these words,
this word caught is the same word translated in our text took. He took hold of him, he caught
him. How many times as we walk by faith brethren. The wind and
the waves and the boisterous sea and the trials and troubles
primarily of our edema, of our dropsy, of the discomfort of
our sin. It's really not our circumstances
that cause our problem. Our circumstances could be the
worst imaginable circumstances. It's our unbelief in the midst
of those circumstances. Paul and Silas didn't have any
reason to believe that they would never leave Philippi alive. They'd been beaten to the edge
of their life, they'd been chained to a Roman dungeon as far as
they knew, and what were they doing? Bleeding, obviously in
horrible pain, chained to the wall in a dirty, cold, wet dungeon,
Singing praises. Praise in the Lord. You see,
it's our unbelief that causes our problem, isn't it? It goes
back to this issue of sin being of the heart. It's a heart problem. It's not a behavioral problem,
those are symptoms. It's not our circumstances, it's
our sin. Lord, here's where the problem
is. He cried saying, Lord, save me. Only sinners pray that prayer. Only sinners who are drowning
in their unbelief. That's the reason Peter was going
down. As long as Peter had his eyes on Christ, he wasn't sinking.
But as soon as he looked at the waves and the wind and the circumstances,
he began to sink. And in sinking, he looked again
to Christ. Lord, save me. You see, this is our daily experience,
isn't it? This isn't a one-time thing.
That's why we talk about the sin problem. My sin is ever before
me. Lord, this is my problem. And
I need always to be saved. Immediately, Jesus stretched
forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of
little faith, wherefore did thou doubt? Why did you take your
eyes off of me? And when the Lord asked me and you
that question, it's not because he doesn't know why. The Lord
never asks a question he doesn't know the answer to. He's giving
us the answer. When you ask Adam, Adam, where
art thou? He didn't know where Adam was. Adam needed to know
where he was. And when the Lord says to me
and you, why did you doubt? He knows why we doubted. We need
to know why we doubted. He caught him, he laid hold of
him, he grabbed him, he took possession of him. How contrary
this is to what we hear men speaking of, well I made Jesus Lord of
my life. I invited Jesus into my heart,
I gave him my heart, I let him have his way in my life. It's not where salvation begins.
Salvation begins with being before him and him taking possession
of us. The apostle Paul speaks of his
conversion as Saul of Tarsus as a pattern for all believers.
The Lord took hold of Paul, didn't he? He took hold of Saul. He
arrested him. He just arrested him, stopped
him in his tracks of self-destruction and knocked him off his high
horse. Hebrews chapter eight, the scripture
speaks of the Lord taking the children of Israel by the hand
and leading them out of Egypt. The only way we're gonna leave
Egypt is if the Lord sends our Moses, I will raise up a prophet
like unto thee. That's what the Lord told Moses.
Moses is just a type of Christ. And the only way that we'll be
delivered from the taskmasters of Egypt is if he comes and takes
hold of us and takes possession of us and leads us out by the
hand. Lord, I'll not leave, I don't
have the power to leave. Take possession of me, take hold
of me and heal me, heal me. As I said, the Lord didn't give
him a prescription to go home and do some certain things to
fix the symptoms that he was having. The Lord said if you
have a garment with a hole in it, you don't take a new piece
of cloth and put over that hole. I worked in the textile industry
for a few years, many, many years ago. worked in the knitting plant. And after we knit the fabric
it had to go, the first thing it went to was it went to be
shrunk. Before they could cut it up into
garments it had to be shrunk. And they put it through a hot
bath and shrunk that garment and then it was ready to be cut
up. And So the stuff that we buy
has already been pre-shrunk. But back then, a garment, you
know, if you took a new piece of fabric and put it on a hole
and sewed it in and then in time that new piece of fabric shrunk,
what's it going to do? It'll make the hole bigger. The
Lord said you don't patch an old garment with new fabric.
any more than you put new wine in an old wineskin. The old wineskin
is already swollen, it's already expanded, it's already hardened.
You put new wine in, it begins to ferment and the wineskin breaks
and you lose everything. The illustration is clear, isn't
it? The parable is clear. Lord, I don't need to patch up
my problem. I don't need to try to put this
new wine into an old wineskin. I need a new heart, I need you
to heal me from inside out. And it's a continual need of
healing that I have. Wash me, David said, truly from
my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a new spirit. Renew in me a new heart. Don't just impart a righteousness
to me, helping me to live a better life, impute a perfect righteousness
to me, enabling me to stand in the presence of God. Lord, I
need to be righteous. I need to be perfect. Don't just teach me some doctrine. Lord, I need saving grace. Don't just teach me about who
you are. All you that are heavy laden,
burdened and heavy laden, come unto me. And then the Lord said,
learn of me. Learn of me. Lord, that's what
I need to know. I need to know who you are. And Lord, that can only be, oh,
I can learn some things intellectually. But Lord, I need to know in my
heart. And here's the hard truth to
that is that We never really learned these things apart from
afflictions and trials. What a blessing it is. As hard as afflictions are, as
hard as it is to be confronted with our sin, as hard as it is
for the Lord to put us in a place where we're afraid and sinking and
hurting. He knows. He knows what we need
to cause us to cry, Lord, save me. Lord, save me. I can't be satisfied. Don't just
give me a prescription to take home and work on something. Lord,
I need a work of grace in my heart. The Lord took hold of him. The Lord healed him. And then the Lord let him go.
He let him go. I think about Lazarus when the
Lord went to the tomb there of Lazarus and said, Lazarus, come
forth. Remove the stone. Come forth,
Lazarus. And a dead man. came out of the
grave. But he was bound hand and foot
and a napkin was upon his face. He couldn't work, he couldn't
walk. He was mummified. He was wrapped up. And what did the Lord say? Loose
him. Loose him and let him free. Brethren, we come out of the
grave, we're walking in this old flesh, and this matter of
being loosed and set free is a lifetime experience for us. Long as we're in this world,
Lord, we can't serve thee with these hands, we can't walk after
thee with these feet, and we can't see thee because our face
is covered. Lord, you're gonna have to loose
us and let us free. Release him, set him free. The Lord has set us free from
the condemnation of sin. There is now therefore no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. The law has been satisfied. Lord,
I need to be reminded of that. I need to be set free from the
rigors of the law for there's a self-righteous spirit in me
that will try to earn salvation and try to fix my problem. Lord, I need a heart of grace. I need
a living heart so that I can look beyond myself and look to
Christ as the one who satisfied all the righteousness of God
on my behalf. The curse of the law. Lord, I
think about the curse of the law. The curse of the law is
death. That's death, that's the curse of the law, separation
from God. Lord, I think about that fearful
thing to fall into the hands of an angry God, to be separated
from him. Lord, don't leave me to myself.
Lord, I need to be set free from the curse of the law. I need to be set free from the
control of sin. Lord, I'll be a, I'll be a slave to sin. Turn
with me to John chapter eight. Look at me at verse 33. John
chapter eight, verse 33. And they answered him, we be
Abraham's seed and were never in bondage to any man. How sayeth
thou, you shall be made free. He let him go, he made him free.
Now the Lord says to these self-righteous Pharisees who are trusting in
their physical birth and in their outward appearances, we be Abraham's
seed. How do you say that we're in
bondage? And here's what the Lord says. Verily, verily, I
say unto you, whosoever commit a sin is a servant of sin. Lord, if you don't set me free,
I'll be a servant of sin. I see enough committing sin in
my own life. Lord, I can't say with these
self-righteous Pharisees I be Abraham's seed. I've committed
sin. Lord, I don't want to be a servant
to sin. I don't want to be a slave to sin. I don't want to have
to follow the passions of my flesh. I need to be set free. Verse 35, and the servant abideth
not in the house forever, but the son abideth in the house. And if the son make you free,
you're free indeed. What's the Lord say? If you're
going to be in the master's house, you got to be there in the son.
You got to be there in Christ. He's the only one that can make
you free. Lord said, I know that you're
Abraham's seed but you seek to kill me because my word have
no place in you. Lord, I need for your word to
have place in me. I need to believe on thee, I
need to look to thee, I need to rest in thee. Lord, I need
to be set free from my own, from what I see in my circumstances
and in the world and in my own sin. I need to be set free from
all of this. How can it be? My word, my word
will set you free. Where the Spirit of God is there's
liberty. And if the Lord sets you free, you're free indeed.
How's he going to set me free? Through faith. By his word, he's
going to enable me to believe on Christ and look to him. And
in so doing, I'll not be the servant of sin. Turn with me to Romans chapter
six. Romans chapter six. Apart from the righteousness
of Christ, apart from our union with Christ, apart from the holiness that
we have in Him. Our flesh is nothing but sin,
always has been, always will be until it's put back where
it belongs, put back where it came from. But here the Lord's talking about
sin not as a nature thing but as a behavioral thing. And so He says in verse 11, Reckon
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Lord, I'm crucified with Christ. My sin has been put away. The
strength of sin is the law. And so if I'm looking to my sin,
I'm gonna be trying to fix that problem. And in so doing, I'm
only gonna be aggravating it. The only way I can fix it is
to try to change it. But if I'm looking to Christ
and all that sin's been put away, Brian, you and I were talking
about this before the service, that mountain has been cast into
the sea. That mountain that separated
me from God. If the Lord said, you know, oftentimes
we pray, Lord, increase our faith, but when the disciples ask the
Lord to increase their faith, The Lord said unto them, it's
not the amount of your faith, it's the object of your faith.
Because he said to them, you don't need more faith. For if
you had faith as of the seed of a mustard, a mustard seed,
smallest seed that they could imagine, you could say unto this
mountain, be there cast into the ocean, and it would be. Now,
what did God cast into the depths of the sea? All our sin. He remembers it no more. Our
sin's been put away. And what the Lord was saying
to those disciples who said, Lord, increase our faith. He
was saying to them, you don't need more faith. You need to
direct that faith to me. It's the object of our faith.
And if you look to me, you'll see that I have put away your
sin. And you'll be able to reckon
yourself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. That's what
Paul's talking about here in Romans chapter six. Verse 12,
let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should
obey it in the lust thereof, neither yield to your members
as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourself
unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members
as instruments of righteousness unto God, for sin shall not have
dominion over you. For you're not under the law,
but under grace. Grace doesn't lead to lawlessness,
grace leads to Christ. And Christ leads to being set
free, free to love, free to worship, free to follow, free to obey,
free to look, free. The only way I can be free
is if I know that all the guilt and all the shame of all of my
sin has already been suffered and put away in the life of my
substitute. And in looking to him, that's where that is. You remember Simeon? He was in
the temple when Mary and Joseph brought the Lord Jesus at eight
days old to be circumcised. And Simeon was a man after God's
own heart and Simeon had been praying for the Lord to show
him the consolation of Israel, the Christ, the Messiah, who's
an old man. And And when he saw the Lord
Jesus, God, the Spirit of God revealed to him, thus the Christ. And Simeon said, Lord, let us, let me now depart in
peace according to thy word. Let me depart in peace. according
to thy word." Now the words that are used there are the same words
that are used in our text. Let's go back one more time to
our text and I'll try to summarize this. He took him, verse 4 of
Luke chapter 14, Luke 14 verse 4, this man with dropsy which
was a symptom of sin who was before the Lord The Lord took
hold of him, he took possession of him, he healed him, he fixed
the root problem, and then he let him go. He let him go. Oh, what liberty we have in Christ. I know the statement that I made
Sunday, that there are people that only hear the second half
of that. Love Christ. Love Christ. Love Christ and
live like you want. That's the liberty we have in
Christ. Now, there are people who hear just the second part
of that. Well, you preach, you tell them live, men live like
they want. I know, no, no. I'm telling you, live like he
wants you to live. And that's what you'll have when you are
looking to Christ, loving Christ. You'll have his desire, his heart. Simeon said, Lord, I've seen
the Christ. You told me I would see him before
I died. Let me go. Set me free. Bring me home. Let me die. Even as you have
promised, he was hanging the hopes of being free of this body
of death, the sinful flesh, because he had seen Christ and God had
promised him that when you see the Christ, then you'll be taken
home and then you'll be free. Oh, we have... Let him go, let
him go. Take him, heal him, let him go. We have to have that experience
every day. We have to have to have him take
hold of us. We have to have him heal us. We have to have him
let us go every day. One day, one day, we'll never
have to have that. We'll just, we'll be free, free. We're free from the penalty of
sin. We're free from the power of
sin. We are. The power of sin is that
you can't believe and the power of sin is that you've got to
obey its desires. That's the power of sin and Christ
sets us free from that power. That's clear. One day. We're gonna be set free from
the very presence of sin. And that's what Simeon said.
Lord, let me go. According to thy word, I've seen
your Christ. Lord, take possession of me,
heal me, set me free. Make me free, Lord. I don't want
to be under the rigors and bondage of the law and my sin. Make me
free. All right, Tom. Number 27. 27 in the spiral hymn.
Now, let's stand together. Yeah. ? Free from the law's great curse
? In Jesus we are free ? For Christ became a curse for us
? And died upon the tree ? The rituals of the law ? And all
the law's commands have been fulfilled in Christ the Lord,
established by His hand. No covenant with the law can
now with us exist. Complete in Christ, we stand
by grace, both free and ever blessed. No more the dread of
wrath. No more constrained by fear. We worship and we serve our God
with gratitude and cheer. In Jesus we are free. ? In Jesus we are free ? Free
from all sin and from all guilt ? We live in liberty ? We'll
join the happy song ? With all the blood bought from And sing
the praises of the Lamb, Whose grace makes us His own.