Ground Rules for Christian Freedom — Part Three

Well, let’s turn to the Word together in 1 Corinthians and in chapter 10, and let’s read from verse 31. First Corinthians 10:31:

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

Father, we come to the moment in our worship when, having spoken to you in prayer and worshipped you in song, we now wait to hear your voice through your Word. Let that be the summation of our desire: that hearing it, we might understand it, and in understanding it that we might obey it and live it out, as we think again about the nature of Christian freedom. For we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

It was Jesus who said—and you’ll find this in John chapter 8, if you’re looking for it, verse 32—“[And] you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The issue of freedom at any level is directly related to truth. And the claim of Scripture and, indeed, the words of Christ make it clear that there is no experience of genuine freedom, ultimately, outside of Jesus Christ.

Now, that is a revolutionary thought in a culture that is increasingly pluralistic and syncretistic, for we live in a culture that has allowed tolerance to sit upon the throne and has devalued truth. So having now worshipped at the shrine, if we might mix the metaphors, of tolerance and having set aside the notion of truth in any absolute form, then it’s hardly surprising that our culture should be so confused as to the nature of freedom, as it clearly is. And all the scrambling of our day—in relationship to human sexuality and in the realm of education and in the concerns of family life—display a manifold absence of any grasp at all of the nature of genuine freedom. Indeed, most of what is held out to people as freedom is in actual fact some form of bondage.

The question of freedom is a relevant question, because so many people are concerned about it. Some are spending all their days, at the moment, in the quest for financial freedom: “If only I could be free of these debts or these restrictions and I get this kind of freedom, then I’ll be really free.” But in actual fact, you can be introduced to people who are free of all those limitations financially, and they are not free. They’re just free of the financial bondage, but they’re not free. Some people think that if they can have simply freedom from any kind of political restraint, others from parental restraint—youngsters who are saying, “Once I get out of this house, then I’ll be really free.” Not so. And this morning, the issue of freedom is a vital issue.

I quoted this before (I remember it from Colossians, when we studied there), but the cry of the little Monkee—the human Monkee, that is, Davy Jones (of the Monkees, remember? “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees”[1])—you know, Davy Jones sang the song “I wanna be free, like the [bluebird] flying [high].”[2] Basically, “I don’t want to sit in this office, and I want to be free.” But we have pilots in the church this morning; they’re going as high as anybody. They’re not any freer up there than you are in your office or you are in your laboratory.

The cynicism in relationship to freedom was never better expressed than in Janis Joplin’s words in “Me and Bobby McGee” when she writes, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free.”[3] Kinda stupid. Sounds heavy, but stupid. I mean, you think it out, it doesn’t even make sense!

So, it is with great excitement that we turn to the Bible to teach us about freedom. And the fact of the matter is that men and women all around us here this morning, one of the reasons that they don’t want to come and attend church or listen to the Bible or hear the Ten Commandments or be confronted by any of these things is because they think that this will introduce them to bondage. What a great bill of goods the Evil One has sold to our culture—that he suggests to them that in here they will find bondage and out there they will find liberty, when in point of fact, in here they may find liberty, and out there they live in bondage.

And down through the ages, men have done all kinds of things in order to be free. There is probably no greater period of time for a kind of comic-tragic picture of men’s quest for freedom than in the Middle Ages, when people—and we cannot question, I’m sure, their sincerity or their longings—but we might marvel at the strategy that they used in a quest for freedom. Some interesting folks, like Saint Jerome the monk [sic], “who for thirty years,” in a quest for freedom, “lived exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of muddy water.” Another of his friends, “who lived in a hole and never [ate] more than five figs for his daily repast.” You think you’ve got it bad, kids? Check this out. “A third, who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes” and “never changed his [jacket] till it fell to pieces …. St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his body naked to the stings of venomous flies.”[4] That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? “Oh, what are you going to do this morning?” “Well, I thought I’d strip naked and see if I can get bitten all over my body by mosquitoes.” “Well, why are you doing that?” “I wanna be free.” It’s good.

And right through that period of the Middle Ages, you had all kinds of people doing all kinds of bizarre things. Hermits living in the desert in “dens of wild beasts.” Others liked to live “in dried-up wells.” Some “found … congenial [little places amongst] the tombs.” Many of them “disdained all clothes,” and they “crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair.” There was a famous group in Mesopotamia called the “Grazers,” and you understand where they got the picture from: they “never lived under a roof,” they didn’t eat flesh or bread, they “spent their time … on the mountain side,” and they ate “grass like cattle.”[5] Why? ’Cause they wanted to be free. But they weren’t.

Now, if they read their Bible, that would’ve helped, or if they read it with understanding, that would’ve helped. If they’d read the words of Paul here in Corinthians and also in Colossians, then they would’ve understood that these external quests are absolutely useless, because the very strategies are “destined to perish”—I’m quoting Colossians 2, at the end—because the “regulations … have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body.” So people look at them and say, “Oh, there’s somebody who really knows what he’s doing. After all, he hasn’t cut his hair in a year. He never changes clothes. He never washes. And if you ever saw him without his clothes on, you never seen anybody with as many mosquito bites in all your life. I mean, there’s somebody who really understands freedom.” Stupidity! These things, says Paul, “lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”[6]

Transformation can only happen from the inside out. Only Christ can bring freedom to the hearts of men and women.

That is why we will never transform the United States of America by legislation from the outside in—because it can only happen from the inside out! And only Christ can bring freedom to the hearts of men and women. Therefore, it is a crying shame of some magnitude when those of us who wish to proclaim the name of Christ find ourselves at sixes and sevens when it comes to the matter of Christian freedom—on the one hand, as we’ve said, either tying ourselves up in dreadful knots of our own legalistic program; or, on the other hand, having introduced license into a form of chaos.

Now, in the verses that are in front of us this morning, what Paul provides for us are four verses of entirely positive guidelines. Everything he says here has a positive directive to it, is there for the encouragement of God’s people. And whenever God’s people are prepared to get serious about these kind of things, then the impact must always be revolutionary. You cannot have individuals applying these principles without major change. You cannot yourself begin to apply this without that it will change your life, it will change mine, and therefore, it will change our church. So, let’s look at them—at least three of the remaining five—this morning.

Focus on the Glory of God

Principle number one: focus on the glory of God. “You want to think in terms of freedom?” says Paul. “Well, listen: whether you eat or drink or whatever you do”—whether you do laundry, whether you drive your car, whether you sweep out your garage, whether you are involved in recreation—“whatever you do, do it all for”— purpose—“for the glory of God.” Why am I doing what I’m doing? That’s the question.

Now, the contrast is a clear one. You see, these individuals have been asserting their rights. They’ve been talking about their freedoms, and they’ve been preoccupied with that. And Paul is saying to them, “We can’t at the one and the same time be preoccupied with my personal freedom and also be giving God the glory that is due his name.” Everything that we do—everything that we do—says the Bible, is to be subordinated to this overarching objective: that God would be praised and glorified.

And I think one of the sad mistakes that many times the church and pulpits have helped to fan into a flame is the idea that somehow or another, our expressions of Christianity are like one of those little disks that you have for your computer, and you write on the outside what that particular card or disk has do to with, and then you get one of the little boxes, and then you store them in there. And whenever you need your address file, if it’s on a particular floppy [disk], hard [disk], you pick it out, I’ve discovered, and you put it in, and then it brings it up. But when you don’t need it, you take it out and put it away, and it doesn’t matter. And so, that kind of compartmentalized thinking can so easily pervade everything that we do. After all, we go to the office, and at the office we must focus on this. Now when I come home, it is a different card; it is now family. And when I am finished with family, then it is recreation. And these are all different cards in the computer file. But Christianity is not that. Christianity embraces the totality of our universe, everything about us and everything we do.

Earlier centuries of believers I think had a greater grasp of this. Let me quote to you from a hymn:

Fill thou my life, O Lord my God,
In every part with praise,
That my whole being may proclaim
Thy being and thy ways.

Praise [or glory] in the common things of life,
Its goings out and in;
Praise in each duty and each deed,
However small [it seem].[7]

It is this, you see, which transforms mundane, routine activity. When we suddenly begin to understand that the God of the universe has employed us that we might give him the glory due his name no matter what we’re doing, then it puts a different spin on the whole of our lives. The excellence of God’s attributes—think this out—the excellence of God’s attributes seen in our actions.

How does that work? Well, let me tell you. Are you tidy or untidy? We never declare God’s glory in untidiness, but we do declare the excellence of his being in tidiness, for he is a God of order and not a God of chaos.[8] Therefore, if you’re a teenager and your bedroom looks like a tip, you’ve been at the Sunday school class this morning, you’re planning on going to the events this week, and somehow or another, you’ve got a clear disengage in your mind between what happens there and what happens back in your room, I want to encourage you this morning: cleanliness and godliness and tidiness are interwoven. Why? Because in tidiness, we declare God’s glory.

What about the issue of punctuality? God is not glorified by a lack of punctuality. Why? Because God is concerned for the care of his children. God never did anything too soon, and he has never done anything too late, and he never will. Therefore, when we show a disregard for others by our desire simply to please ourselves and let them wait—whether it be our wives, our children, our bosses, our church family—then we don’t bring glory to God’s name.

What about the issue of sensitivity? When I speak insensitively, when my heart is cold towards genuine need, I bring no glory to God whatsoever. But when we act out of sensitivity, then we glorify God. Did you ever see the tiniest, tiniest, infinitesimally small bug crawl across the floor? I saw one this morning. It was so small, I’m surprised I even noticed it. My first instinct was to grind it. It was just that much away, and I thought I could just [imitates squishing sound] that thing and it would never know. Then I looked down on it, and I said, “Well, it hasn’t done anything to me,” and then I had this whole process of thought. But the amazing thing about it was that… I mean, if that thing was up here, you couldn’t see it with the best set of binoculars, a magnifying glass, or anything. Believe me, this thing was so small, it was smaller than the point of a pin. I must have been very close to the ground to see it. I was.

Now, in the sight of Almighty God, we’re not even as big as that bug. But we’re suffering from fat heads and inflated egos. We’re suffering from ourselves. And God delights when we give him glory.

This idea of the glory of God is not some kind of remote piece of theological junk that you keep up in your attic. This is at the very heart of life.

We could go right through it. We could go all the way down the line in terms of practicalities. I hope the truth is dawning on us. This idea of the glory of God is not some kind of remote piece of theological junk that you keep up in your attic. This is at the very heart of life. That’s why the Shorter Scottish Catechism begins with the first question, “What is the chief end of man?” and replies, “[The] chief end [of man] is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”[9] In other words, there is no explanation of life, there is no rationale to life, there is no meaning and purpose in life, until we get it straight on that axis. That’s why people are scurrying for freedom, but they’ll never find freedom till they find the truth that sets them free in Christ.

And you may be here this morning, and this encounter for you is a bizarre encounter. You’re not quite sure how, on this particular morning, you arrived here. But already the Spirit of God’s at work in your heart, saying, “That’s really what you’re looking for.” Inside of yourself you’re saying, “I want that freedom. I need to know that. I’m in bondage to myself. I’m in chaos here.” We’d love to tell you about it.

What were the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount? “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good [deeds], and glorify your Father [who] is in heaven.”[10] See, we’re suffering from the Little Jack Horner syndrome: “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,” and congratulated himself, “said, ‘Oh, what a good boy am I!’” Okay? So we get involved in ministry or in preaching or in singing or in ushering or in caring for the children, and somehow or another, we feel that now we have justified our existence. We have paid our dues. We have done something that God ought to be really charmed with and pleased with, and so should everybody else. And we wonder why it is that we don’t get the accolades when the plum’s right on the end of our thumb.

So whether you eat, drink, swim, study, love, ride your bike, clean your room, brush your teeth, sweep the floor, take out the trash, phone your grandmother, do it all for the glory of God. The one right answer to the same question every time is this answer: “Why are you doing that?” “I’m doing it for the glory of God.” “Christopher Wren, why are you building this great cathedral?” “I’m doing it for the glory of God.” “Parkside Church members, why are you gathering together as you do? Why did you build the building as you have?” “For the glory of God.” May it be so.

God’s Intrinsic Glory

All right. Well, let’s just think for a minute or two about this idea of the glory of God. Because it does seem like such a mouthful, doesn’t it? And people every so often say, “Well, what is the glory of God? Because we seem to be talking a lot about it already, and I’m not sure I’ve grasped it.” Well, let me try and help a little.

When we use the word glory, some of the synonyms would be praise or exaltation or brilliance or beauty or renown. That’s what glory essentially means. Theologians have historically spoken about the glory of God in two ways. (If you’re taking notes, you may want to write this down. I think you’ll find it helpful.) First of all, they speak in terms of God’s intrinsic or inherent glory. Now, don’t be put off by those words. It simply means that God has a glory, possesses a glory, in and of himself. And in that, God is unique. God is the only being in the whole of existence who can be said to possess inherent glory. He is, in and of himself, glorious. That means that no one can give it to him, because it already completely belongs to him by virtue of who he is. If nobody ever praised God, if no one ever sang to his glory, he would still be the glorious God that he is, because he is fully glorious and was fully glorious before ever he created any beings.

In other words, we’re addressing the issue of God’s self-existence. This is very, very important. You may not have thought it out, but see if this has ever rattled round in your mind or if you’ve heard this expressed by others: the mistaken notion that God somehow lacked glory, and so he created in order that the lack that was in him may be made up by the praises of his people. If you’ve ever expressed that or thought it or heard it, it’s a mistake, and it’s an unbiblical idea, but it’s very prevalent. It goes right along with the idea that God somehow or another needs love, and therefore, he created humanity in order that humanity might bring that love to him.

A correlative notion is that God somehow, after he created the universe, was lonely, and therefore, he created humanity in order that he might walk with them “in the garden in the cool of the day.”[11] Nothing could be further from the biblical truth. God himself is altogether glorious. He does not need worshippers. He gives to us the privilege of worship. He does not need defenders. His Word is true and his power is unlimited, with or without our apologetic protestations. In other words, Jesus is still the person he claimed to be, whether we can argue for the veracity of the resurrection or not. And he actually doesn’t need witnesses.

Do you remember in the encounter in John 8, he hits the Pharisees with the fact that they’re really not coming from as good a background as they thought they were? Remember they said, “We have Abraham as our father. We don’t need to know anything about freedom.”[12] And Jesus turned to them and said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”[13] Actually, he didn’t say that. I’ve got two passages mixed up in my mind. That was John the Baptist said that to them. And John the Baptist told them, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jesus, the same thing: he said, “Your father is the devil. He’s the father of lies.”[14] They did not understand freedom. I wonder where we are in relationship to this this morning. “Out of these [very] stones,” said Jesus, “God can raise up children for Abraham.”[15]

So, he doesn’t need us. He chooses to use us. When I understand that, it ought to prick the bubble of my conceitedness, and it ought to put any giftedness in the right kind of perspective. For we live in a world that continues to puff up, to exalt, and to make it seem as though what it regards as significant is really significant. And that’s why we have such a hard time with the words of Jesus saying to his disciples, “I tell you, if you give somebody a cup of cold water in my name, you just made a dent for the kingdom of God.”[16]

Nobody has expressed this better, I think, than A. W. Pink. Some of you will have read his writings. Let me give you a statement from him under this heading of “God’s Intrinsic Glory.” Listen to this:

God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own good pleasure …. That He did create was simply for His … glory. … God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that.[17]

Tozer:

Were all human beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these owe nothing to the millions who benefit from their light. So, were every man [and woman] on earth to become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.[18]

See, when we start to ponder at this level the nature of God, we realize we’re not now dealing with some little cosmic genie. We’re not dealing with a principle. We’re not dealing with a notion. We’re dealing with the creator of the ends of the earth. “Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to[wards] the children of men!”[19]

God’s Ascribed Glory

“Well then,” you say to me, “if that is true, what are we doing in worship? Why would we be doing these things?” Well, because God is glorious not only in his intrinsic glory, but God is glorious as a result of ascribed glory. For example, if you went nowhere else, you could go to the Twenty-Ninth Psalm, which begins,

Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones,
 ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due [to] his name;
 worship the Lord in the splendor of … holiness.[20]

Okay? So we know that while we cannot add to his glory any more than we can add to his strength, nevertheless, the psalmist urges us to recognize and acclaim the glory which God has already. You understand the distinction?

You see, this is what marks the child of God out from those who are not in Christ. The man or the woman who does not know God in Christ is not saying, “In my life, Lord, be glorified,”[21] is not saying, “In my business dealings, Lord, be glorified,” is not longing that their life would be “a sacrifice of praise”[22] to God. If God has put that within your heart, it is a remarkable evidence of his grace towards you. It’s a wonderful thing. Man by nature turns his back on God. Man by nature lives in unbelief. Therefore, when we express belief and when we find in our lives a desire to glorify him, it is as a result of his great and inherent goodness towards us.

How does this work itself out? Well, take the pronouncements of the last few days at multiple levels in relationship to the floods in the Midwest. Have you heard anything about God in it all? No. Is God not involved? Yes. No, it’s Mother Nature who’s involved in this. The president of the United States was pleased to let us know that this was just Mother Nature. Loved ones, that’s deism. That’s the idea that there was a Creator, he created, he took his hands off the creation, and it’s doing its own thing ever since. Therefore, it is suffering from all the ebb and flow of various forces and powers—one of which, of course, is Mother Nature. It doesn’t fit.

And the disciples were in the boat. Many of them had lived their lives in boats. They’re on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is asleep on a pillow in the stern. An unbelievable storm whips up. One of the disciples goes back to wake the creator of the universe to let him know that he is about to drown. If that irony misses us, we’re asleep. “Jesus, creator of the universe, you’re about to drown.” They weren’t really concerned about him; they were concerned about themselves. Jesus stands up in the boat, speaks—“Whisht!”—and the sea is instantaneously calm. We’re not talking here about five and a half hours later, after the moon had moved in its track and the ebb and flow of life had changed. No. Jesus said, “Cut it out,” and it cut it out. And what did they say? They looked at one another and they said, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind[s] and the [waves] obey him?”[23] And they bowed before his glory. This is not “Jesus Christ Superstar, do you think you’re [who] they say you are?”[24] This is the Lord of the universe.

Do Not Cause Others to Stumble

Well, I say to you this morning, if we’re going to understand something of God and his glory and we’re going to relate it to the practicalities of our lives, then we need to go on with these other principles. And the very next thing that we’re told is that we ought not to cause people to stumble. I think that I could fall foul of that myself by continuing with this point, although I know some of you think that I established a game with these ten points and I’m trying to see if this can be the longest running sermon in history. I’m genuinely not endeavoring to do that. Some of you think that I don’t have anything beyond point number one; I know that. So you can feel free to come and check my notes. That’ll help you, you cynical people.

And I just think we should stop it here. I think that the issue this morning is that God would speak to us concerning freedom—some of us who need to be liberated from the power of sin, some of us who need to be set free from the power of bondage and of our own self-assertiveness. And the key to it is to bow before God’s glory, to recognize who he is and what I am.

Let’s bow in prayer:

Lord, I pray that you will give us undivided hearts. The skyscrapers of our city, the cars in which we drive, the edifices of steel and mortar tend to make us think that we’re it. But a good walk in the park in the early morning hours, a visit to the newborn-baby ward in the hospital, a bedside scene in the face of death reminds us that we are “frail children of dust,”[25] and our hearts and our hands reach out to you. Give us lips to praise you. Give us hands to serve you. Give us hearts that will honor you and glorify your name. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[1] Bobby Hart and Tommy Boyce, “(Theme from) The Monkees” (1966).

[2] Bobby Hart and Tommy Boyce, “I Wanna Be Free” (1966).

[3] Fred Foster and Kris Kristofferson, “Me and Bobby McGee” (1971). Paraphrased.

[4] William Edward Hartpole Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (New York: D. Appleton, 1869), 2:114–15.

[5] Lecky, 2:116.

[6] Colossians 2:22–23 (NIV 1984).

[7] Horatius Bonar, “Fill Thou My Life” (1866).

[8] See 1 Corinthians 14:33.

[9] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1.

[10] Matthew 5:16 (KJV).

[11] Genesis 3:8 (NIV 1984).

[12] John 8:33 (paraphrased).

[13] Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7 (NIV 1984).

[14] John 8:44 (paraphrased).

[15] Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8 (NIV 1984). The speaker in these verses is John the Baptist, not Jesus.

[16] Matthew 10:42; Mark 9:41 (paraphrased).

[17] Arthur W. Pink, The Nature of God (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1999), 12.

[18] A. W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God; Their Meaning in the Christian Life (New York: Harper, 1961), 40.

[19] Psalm 107:31 (KJV).

[20] Psalm 29:1–2 (NIV 1984).

[21] Bob Kilpatrick, “Lord, Be Glorified” (1978).

[22] Hebrews 13:15 (NIV 1984).

[23] Mark 4:41 (KJV).

[24] Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, “Superstar” (1970).

[25] Robert Grant, “O Worship the King” (1833).