Our thoughts this morning are
going to be gleaned from 2 Corinthians 3, and particularly verse 17,
with respect to the reference there of where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke to
a group of Jews in John's Gospel chapter eight and verse 31. And as he spoke to these individuals,
we are told that he knew their hearts. He knew those among his
audience whose hearts had been touched by the power of God the
Spirit, whose hearts had been softened by the gospel of Jesus
Christ, by the words of Jesus Christ, and those whose hearts
were hard towards him. When ministers of the gospel
come today and preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, we
look on the outward appearance of men and women, and we cannot
tell what the heart is truly like. But the Lord Jesus Christ
knew men's hearts. And he says to them in John chapter
8, verse 31 and 32, Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed
on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples
indeed. And ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free. If you continue in my word,
you'll know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. There are two kinds of believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ. There are those who are his disciples
in Crete, and there are those who are his disciples in Deed. and there is a big difference. There are plenty who give nominal
agreement to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They make a profession
of faith. They engage in the activities
of religion. They identify with the outward
manifestation of religious practice in this world. They are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ in their creed. But there are also those whom
the Lord Jesus Christ describes truly as his disciples indeed. He says, if ye continue in my
word, then are ye my disciples indeed. It takes to continue in the word. Continue in the word, continue
in the word of Christ means continuing in the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It means believing. Yes, it means
believing the gospel. Yes, of course it does. But it
means living the gospel. It means feeding upon the gospel. It means growing in the grace
of the gospel. It means thriving in the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is not head knowledge. as if it can be once accepted
like a lesson given at school to a child. Yes, I know how long
division works. I believe that if I take this
big number and divide it by this number, I'll get the right answer.
or some textbook notion that is conveyed to the student at
college or university by which he can then begin his professional
career and work up through and never refer back to the lessons
that they learned in the classroom because, well, there's a difference
between the lesson and the life. But you see, when it comes to
the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must be living the lessons constantly. It must always be that we continue
in the Word. If your faith is an insurance
policy, that you took on board many years ago, as a child or
as a youngster, as a teenager, or even as an adult, and thought
to yourself, right, that's good. I believe I've got this area
of my life covered. And it makes no real difference
to you thereafter. There's no liveliness, there's
no vitality, there's no energy. in your experience of God and
your experience of the Lord Jesus Christ, then I implore you to
beware that your doctrine is not just a doctrine in creed
and that you've missed out on that lively experience of God's
grace and you're not able with any legitimacy to describe yourself
as a disciple indeed. The Lord Jesus Christ says we
must continue in his word. Knowing the truth is not knowing
the facts of the gospel. It's not knowing the Bible stories,
or the memory verses, or even having a good working dealing
with the doctrines of Scripture. It's knowing Christ. It's knowing
him personally. It's having this personal experience
of him dwelling with us, dealing with us, speaking to us. We speaking
to him. A channel of communication opened. A means of approach provided
and access granted. He is the truth. Not the things
that we've learned. He is the truth and he is the
way and the life. It is he, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who sets us free. Let me give you an example. Supposing someone says, I believe
that I'm going to heaven because I keep God's holy law. And we say, wow, wow. You keep God's holy law. You don't commit adultery. You
don't covet other people's property. You don't tell lies. Never. And the person says, no, not
never. but I keep it on a Monday and
on a Thursday and on a Sunday, we would say, what are you talking
about? That's ludicrous. How can you
possibly say that you keep God's holy law at certain times? Don't you realize that God demands
perfection? that God requires absolute holiness,
that the righteousness that he looks for is a righteousness
that transcends the whole of our lives. That's the reason
why Paul had to say to the Galatians in chapter 3 verse 10, Cursed
is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written
in the book of the law to do them. The curse doesn't just
come to you on those days that you don't keep the law. The curse
is upon you constantly if you don't keep the law perfectly. Now we understand that, don't
we? It's so stupid, it's so ludicrous to say that I keep the law on
a Sunday. And if you're trying to get to
heaven by law obedience, then Good luck. Good luck. In all things that are written
in the book of the law to do them, that's a big mountain that
you've got to climb. But here's the thing. Why should
we look amusedly upon that response from a law keeper? And yet imagine
that if we want to go to heaven upon the footing of God's grace
in Christ, that we only need to think about that on a Monday
and a Wednesday and a Sunday. or that we only need to give
certain days of the week, or certain times of our life, or
certain periods when we are in particular need, or we're being
particularly hurt, or there's some incident that's occurred
that causes us to be drawn more to the Lord Jesus Christ. I fear that there are many people
who use the gospel of grace as those who simply come when they
have a need arising in their life. The Lord Jesus Christ says, you
must continue in my word. He was speaking to those whose
hearts had been changed. He was speaking to those whose
spirits had been touched, those who were truly the children of
God. And he says, you must continue
in my word. You have to continue in the gospel. Don't think you can believe the
gospel when you're 26 and forget about it until you're 76. If
you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And
you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the
Apostle Paul is talking about the Gospel. He's talking about
the New Covenant. He's talking about the New Testament,
the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and that which had been
revealed. He's speaking about a letter. A letter that is written on the
heart, not on the tables of stone, but on the fleshy tables of the
heart. A letter, a message, a revelation
that has been conveyed to the hearts of men and women, that
has entered into their soul, and that has changed and altered
and revolutionized, converted. those individuals to be the Lord
Jesus Christ's disciples. This change, this conversion,
it's not cold like the chiseled words on the table of stone. It's not formal, it's not dead,
it's not ceremonial, but it's warm, vital, living faith. It is a living relationship with
the Lord Jesus Christ and with His Spirit, because the Spirit
of God has come and dwells in the individual's heart. In Romans 8, verse 11, the Apostle
says, If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you. The Holy Spirit dwells in the
people of God. We are a new creation. We have
been changed. These old things that once filled
our thoughts and our attentions, they've been replaced. They're
not altogether removed in as much as there is still a wrestling
and a laboring and trials that have to be encountered because
of this flesh. But in the new man, there is a growth and a development. There is an enlarging, there
is an experience, there is a liveliness which must continue in the Word,
which must feed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, which must deal
with Him day by day. And this is what our true Christianity
contains, that living relationship with Christ because He dwells
in us. Now, if anybody here would be
truthful with us this morning. You will testify that you've
tried to keep the law. You've tried to live properly. You've tried to make the changes
in your life that your conscience has told you you need to do. But you'll also be able to say
that you've failed in that attempt. And you know that you're a sinner. You know that you have not always
continued to do the law perfectly. And the word of God says that
the curse of the law is thereby upon you. Let me tell you what it is to
continue in the gospel. To continue in the gospel is
having possessing, experiencing, and enjoying the Spirit of the
Lord communing with us. That is what it is to continue
in the Word of God. It is to know all the blessings
of the Lord. It is to have, possess, experience
and enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ day by day. The Lord says, you
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And Paul writes, for where the
spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. What is it to be
free? What is it to have liberty? What
is it to have that emancipation that comes with grace? I remember as a youngster listening
to the words of a song which were quite meaningful to me at
the time I was going through college and lots of talk about
freedom and liberty and opening up our minds and opening up our
experiences to all the new things that were going on. And I was
listening to a song once and the writer of the lyrics sang,
freedom takes on a new meaning when you've got a family of five. And that's right. What is freedom? Freedom to the youngster is getting
away from home. Freedom to the youngster is going
out and experiencing all the new things. But freedom, the
freedom that we enjoy in this country, the freedom that we
have, that we say is so important, that we aspire to, that we look
to our politicians to deliver. What is that freedom? For some
people, freedom is not having to worry about where their next
meal is coming from. For some people, freedom is not
having pain persistently in their body. For some people, freedom
might be not being bound up in some abusive relationship. Freedom
for us is in the eye of the beholder. It means so many different things
to different people. But when the Lord talks about
freedom, he's speaking about spiritual freedom. He's speaking
about a relationship which he begins in the life of his people
that brings us into real liberty, such that we can be free in Christ. despite all the hardships that
come to us in this physical world and in this fleshy body of ours. As we're getting older, we're
getting slower. As we get older, we're getting
frailer. And now we don't move as fast
as we used to move. We don't have the freedom to
be able to take off our jacket and run a hundred yards and hardly
be out of breath when we get to the tape. We can't do that
anymore. We don't have the freedom to
do the things that we once did. But those who have Christ, their
spirits can soar further and faster and more gloriously as
we commune with Him and understand what He has done for us. That's
the true freedom that the people of God enjoy. These are the gospel
blessings. These are the privileges of being
a child of God. It is a birthright, this liberty. It is a birthright of those who
are born again in Christ. It is the state of the just. It is the evidence of life in
the soul of the individual through the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says,
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Let me see if I can unpack this
a little bit for a moment or two. There is liberty from blindness. There is liberty from darkness,
liberty from fear and liberty from sin. The Lord Jesus Christ,
when he came into this world, characterized his ministry by
the miracles that he performed. And people said, we've never
seen things like this before. This is truly amazing. Now that's
not to say that there were not miracles in times past. In the Old Testament, for example,
there most certainly were. And we could go back and we could
list some examples. But when Christ came, it was
an order. of magnitude different. When
he came, he came and he made the blind see. He made the deaf
to hear. He made the lame to walk. He
made the dead alive. Why did he do all of those things?
Certainly, they got him an audience. Certainly, they proved the power
that he possessed. Certainly, they attested the
authority that he had as God. But I think that we would be
failing to grasp the significance of the miracles of Christ if
we didn't realize that they were an object lesson of the greater
miracle which is the transformation of the soul in the life of his
people. That's the real message of the
miracles, that what Christ can do outwardly to the physical
frames and bodies of men, he can do inwardly in the spirit
of his people. And so, when He gives liberty,
He gives us spiritual sight. He gives us spiritual hearing. He gives us the enabling to walk
after Him in spiritual ways and upon spiritual paths. He gives
a meaning to the whole of our life. It means that there is
every event and circumstance of our life, a spiritual dimension
to it, that He has opened up to us and given us the liberty
to engage upon it, to understand that dimension in a way that
basically those who have not Christ can never understand. What Christ did evidently in
the bodies of sinners, he does for the souls of his people. That's the true heart disease.
We talk about heart disease in our society, the true heart disease,
the true disease of the heart is what Christ came as the great
physician to remedy and to heal. There is our liberty. In Luke
chapter 4, verse 18, the Lord stands up and He declares, The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Now he
wasn't there talking about physical ailments, not primarily, for
though he did all of these wonderful miracles in the bodies of men,
he was speaking about spiritual problems. And he was speaking
about the liberty, the liberty from spiritual captivity, the
liberty from spiritual bruising and beating and battering, and
that spiritual dimension. that natural man knows nothing
of. Paul tells us that the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. And the
natural man cannot approach God. They might come to a service
like this. They might sit in the pews. They
might take the hymn book and sing the words. They might go
through a form of prayer. They may have a religious experience. But unless it comes from the
Spirit of God, unless it has been initiated from the Divine
Presence in the soul of a man, then the natural man cannot understand
spiritual things. He cannot approach God. He cannot
please God. Indeed, he does not even discern
the dire strait in which his soul exists before the presence
of the Holy God. For such a man, his heart is
stone, his soul is dead, his mind is filled with confusion,
his feet wander, and we are wrapped up in the bondage of our will
and sin and lust and our own meager estimations of self-righteousness,
and that we don't even see the looming judgment and the hell,
the eternal separation that lies before us. When the Lord Jesus
Christ comes into a soul, When the Holy Spirit quickens the
dead, when new life is breathed in the Spirit, all things are
made new. That's liberation. That's freedom. That's what it is to have a soul
so transformed, so powerfully altered, as to bring the dead
to life. to convert and change and recover
that which was lost. Where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty because our blessed Savior has come into
this world and taken upon Himself all the obligations of obedience,
and righteousness and charity and service and duty and doing. that God ever required of a man
or a woman. The Lord Jesus Christ has taken
our place, not only on the cross, but before God and before the
law and before every demand that is made on a human being. The Lord Jesus Christ has interposed
himself for us. The essence of the gospel, the
essence of the good news, the essence of the message that we
have to speak to men and women today is substitution. The fact
that Jesus Christ has taken the place of his people so that when
God looks upon his people he sees all that Christ did And
he says of Christ, bearing witness of him, this is my beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased. And he sees his people in the
place of Christ. And he sees Christ in the place
of his people. And that statement, that declaration
which flowed from the divine presence in the ears of men concerning
Christ on the day of his baptism is spoken concerning his people. These are my people in whom I
am well pleased. Not the constant legal observances
of being able to do perfectly everything that God demands according
to the law every day of our life without fail, but to see us in
Christ. That's liberty. That's freedom. The Lord Jesus Christ has taken
our place. What we were, Christ became. What we deserved, Christ endured. What Christ was, we have inherited. And all his achievements have
been won for us. Liberty in Christ is ours because
the bands of death have been broken by him. Liberty is ours
because the bonds of sin have been destroyed and the chains
and all the locks have been undone. Liberty is ours because Satan
is cast down and his rule is overthrown. The strong man has
entered his property and he has proved to be stronger than Satan
himself. Liberty is ours because the law's
demands are satisfied and its curse has been endured by another. Liberty is ours because the father,
for love's sake, has justified his people in his son. And here we see the eternal purpose
of God being unfolded. The salvation of his elect, that
people that he loved before time began, that people that he planned,
that he schemed, that he ordered, that he covenanted and promised
that he would deliver them from their sins. We see the length,
the breadth, the height, the depth of the love of God for
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. that work of justification by
which we are reconciled and united to him is much broader and more
extensive than our mere knowledge of it or our experience or reception
of it. It goes back into eternity past
and it will continue for eternity to come. And true it is that
we in some Saints have fallen upon it, stumbled upon it, when
we discovered that there was salvation in the Lord and that
there was freedom from the guilt of sin and the guilty conscience
because we discovered that Jesus Christ's blood has washed away
our sin and we have a sense of justification. but oh, it's just
a little glimpse of that great work which God has accomplished
in eternal purpose. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we
are justified by his death and resurrection on the cross. In God's eyes, we were reconciled
to Him because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. Because the price of redemption
was paid. Because atonement was made. Because we were brought back
into that place of peace and union with God that we could
never attain to. because of our sin and because
of our deadness in our natural condition to the things that
are spiritual and holy and good. Jesus Christ paid the price of
our redemption when our sins were laid upon him. And we will
be justified into the future because the promise has been
made. And hear this, How's this for liberty? How's this for freedom? That even the sins that we will
commit for the rest of our lives are paid for already by the blood
of Jesus Christ. There's freedom of conscience
for you. There's an understanding of what
it is to live day by day in the knowledge of the work of Christ
for us. Justified. Justified in my experience. Justified at the cross when Christ
died. Justified for all the sins that
I will ever commit for the future. They will never be laid to my
account because they've already been carried on the account of
another. But there's more, there's more
even than that. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.
That is before time. And that means that the Lord
Jesus Christ in his eternal capacity as the covenant head, of the
salvation of his people has always been looked upon by God as the
justifier of his people. And in that new covenant that
Paul speaks about in this chapter, in that New Testament, God considered
Christ as having been slain even before time began. and his church
and his people were always justified in the eternal covenant of God's
peace towards us. Christ slain for our sin in time,
yes, but reckoned to be slain in eternity for the salvation
of his people. Our justification is bigger and
broader and more amazing and wondrous than we can possibly
grasp because it is an eternal work in the mind of the triune
God. That's how we explain the salvation
of all the Old Testament saints even before the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ ever happened. They were justified in Christ
in the covenant of God's grace. God's everlasting love for his
people, for the elect of his choice. has always been the overriding
factor in His dealings with us. He has always loved us. His love has always set us apart
from others. It has always been the focus
of His providential dealings for our good and on our behalf. It was the reason why Christ
came. And it is the reason and the purpose of all that is happening
in this world today, the love of God for His chosen people. And the union that we have with
Christ in that justification is because God, the unchangeable
God, regards us from all eternity, regards us now and always will
for the rest of time and into heaven as being reconciled and
at peace with him upon the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Wanted to say something else
in summary and then we're finished. Where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. There is liberty from sin and
death and conscience that we experience when we come to Him
in faith. There is liberty because of what
the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. And there is liberty
to enable us. to come to Christ. Hebrews 4
verse 16 says, let us therefore come boldly. Let us come unto
the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to
help in time of need. Let that be our experience, brothers
and sisters in Christ. Let us have a living relationship
with our Saviour. Let us continue in the Word. Let us continue in these Gospel
truths. Let us have short accounts with
our God in Christ. Let us come boldly to the throne
of grace, bringing our needs, bringing our desires, bringing
our requests. And we have them, multiples of
them, We pray for many things, those things that are nearest
and dearest to our soul. We are enabled, we are entitled,
we are called upon to bring them, bring them boldly. This is the
liberty that we have. This is the freedom that we enjoy
as being those who are Christ's people. Come boldly to the throne
of grace that we may obtain mercy. Find grace to help in time of
need. Freedom of access to the mercy
seat of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. What a privilege you
have this morning. What a privilege is yours, child
of God, to have that liberty that is in Christ. Where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There is liberty
to come to pray, to come to plead, to come to wrestle with our God
in prayer upon the merit of the blood of Jesus Christ. because
of his obedience, because of his death, because of who he
is, we are able to come into the presence of God and to pray. There is freedom where the Spirit
is. There is freedom and liberty
to come and to serve him. We are his servants. We are able
to bring praise. We are able to bring thanksgiving.
We are able to bring our gratitude, which is, after all, our reasonable
service. There is liberty to rejoice in
the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. There is liberty to enjoy the
blessings that he gives of his love and his peace and his grace
and his mercy in the face of and despite of all the hurricanes
and all the losses and all the bereavements and all the hardships
that we are called to carry in this world. That's true liberty. That's true freedom. Where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty to come to worship
Him. Liberty to honor His names. Liberty like the angels to praise
God in His presence with our hymns, to laud and magnify our
Savior for all that He has done for us. Paul writes to the Romans in
chapter eight. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors,
not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For if ye live after
the flesh, ye shall die. But if ye through the Spirit
demortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For
ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but
ye have received the spirit of adoption. That is the spirit
of liberty in Christ, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children,
then heirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ. He says to the Corinthians, watch
ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the
yoke of bondage. Amen.