Freedom!

 Do you ever have the experience of reading a passage of scripture and you go, “Ok, that’s nice, but what does that have to do with me?”

Exodus 21:2-4 says, “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone, but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.”

Now, I am not a Hebrew servant and I don’t intent to buy any Hebrew servants. So, I didn’t see that this passage had any meaning to me.

Then I noticed one word in this passage and it changed my thinking about it having no meaning for me. The word is free.

John tells us two essential things about being free in John chapter eight.

Verses 31 and 32 says, “So Jesus said to the Jesus who had believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’”

Jesus says that it is His word that sets us free.

A disciple is someone who sits under the teaching and the authority of another. So, listen to what Jesus is saying. If we sit under Jesus’ teaching, listen to what He says and believe, we will know the truth and that truth will set us free.

Then in verse 36 Jesus says, that if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.

We are told in culture that many things will set you free. The truth is none of those things will set you free. In fact, those very things that offer us freedom really makes slaves to them. Jesus promises that He will free us and He is always faithful to do what He says He will do.

Why did Jesus have to free us?

Because of what Paul shares with us in Romans 6:20-21. “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.”

Why did Jesus have to free us? Because we were slaves to sin and that brought shame to us in our earthly life and death to us spiritually. Jesus loves us and does not want us to live in shame and to die spiritually.

The only way to be free is for Jesus to free us, so He did.

How did Jesus free us?

Colossians 2:13-15 says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Jesus freed us by His death on the cross.

According to what Paul writes in Colossians, Jesus:

Forgave our sins – He freed us from the penalty

Canceled our legal indebtedness – He freed us from what we owed

because of our sin

Overcame our condemnation – He freed us from God’s wrath and turned it

          into God’s favor

Disarmed the powers and authorities – He freed us from the power of

          Satan        

We needed to be free and Jesus did it. He did it because above all else, God loves us.

Jesus wants us free to know Him.

Jesus wants us free to experience His love.

Jesus wants us free us to experience His blessings in our lives.

In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and lean from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Jesus intentionally invites us if we are weary and burdened to come to Him so that by being yoked or connected to Him we will find rest (be freed to rest in Jesus).

Freedom comes from:

Acknowledging that we are slaves

Turning to the one who can free us – Jesus

Believing that He has freed us

Living in that freedom

So, when a passage in Exodus about freeing Hebrews servants seems not to have anything to do with me or you, the truth is that it does. It does because the Christ has come and by His grace provides freedom for us and offers it to us.

In the Freedom of Jesus, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                   Joe