"You Shall Worship The Lord Your God and Him Only Shall You Serve"

Today, was an incredible day, that the Lord Jesus taught me an incredible lesson.  I pray that I keep this constantly in mind.  So what is that lesson you ask?  Well, before I answer that question let me ask you one.  Do you like being controlled by another person?  Do you like to be told what you can and cannot do?  Sometimes humans can be very domineering, when they shouldn't be and get out of line, trying to "direct" and control the life of another person.  Before I go on in this description of my understanding of being controlled, I would like to admit that I have played both parts.  Sometimes, I do it because I want something so bad for the other person, and end up stepping across the line.  God, however, did not intend for this sort of thing.  I can remember one time, giving a friend bad advice, and then trying to manipulate him into listening to me.  Unfortunately, I "persuaded" this person to take my advice, and in the process, caused them much grief.  We were not meant to be people's slaves.  Take a look at the Book of Exodus, and it becomes clear that we were not meant to be forced to serve people.  Now, notice, I am not talking about service from a willing heart and choice, but rather, I'm talking about "forced" service.  Each person has to make a choice on what he or she is going to decide, and that choice needs to be their own! 

There are many different directions that I could go from here, but I want to focus on a direction that God has impressed me on, and that is the area of sin.  Do we actually serve sin?  Well, let's notice what the Lord Jesus has to say about this in John 8:33-36, so let's take a brief sound bite here from Scripture, and then we will look at the surrounding area, and unpack things, piece by piece. 

Starting with verse 33:

 33 They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? 34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: [but] the Son abideth ever. 36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

So just upon reading this, we can learn a lot about the situation, but some obvious questions come up in verse 33.  Who is the "they" being talked about in verse 33?  Whoever they are, they are claiming that they are free. 

How many times, I find myself doing the same thing.  I think, that because I have been with Jesus for a little bit that I am safe, and start to make myself the person in charge of keeping me out of bondage, but the result of this is never good.  My own power, pedigree, or whatever you want to call it can never set me free!  Never.  At this point you may be thinking: "Where is this going"?  I understand that, so let me back up.  Freedom is not something you are born with.  Even though this sounds odd in the Great USA, where we have outward freedoms. 

According to Jesus, Freedom is a gift.  A beautiful gift, that is given to us at the cost of His Life.  Only Jesus has the power to set us truly free from sin.  Notice Jesus Words here in verse 34:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: [but] the Son abideth ever. 

Have you ever sinned before?  Have you recently sinned?  Unfortunately, I must shamedly raise my hand here, because I am not proud to admit it, but I am a horrible sinner.  I must agree with Paul who says that he is the chief of sinners.  So continuing on with the verse, what Pedigree do I have?  I am born a servant to sin.  Sin is a very powerful master, and orders me around.  My flesh responds and does what it is told.  I'm in pretty bad shape on my own.  

Now we are back to control.  So in the past I have been controlled by sin, and again, I want to re-iterate that you are reading the blog post of a live sinner.  

So at this point, if this was about me, this would be a pretty miserable story, but I am happy to say that this is not the case. 

Last night I was discouraged, because of failures in my life.  I knew I was nothing like Jesus, and so I began to get discouraged.  In the morning, I barely had the energy to open the Bible and read a chapter with my wife and children.  After worship and breakfast, I headed out the door.  As soon as I got outside the cold air greeted me.  Getting to my car, I had a heavy burden on my heart: "I had blown it, and I knew it.  I had hurt God, and now He was probably miles away, after all, I didn't feel His Presence".  As I drove to work, I couldn't listen to any music, because the radio was broken out of the car.  In my mind a real war raged my thoughts went something like this:  

"So, you failed last night.  You seem to be doing that a lot lately.  Do you actually ever think you are going to get better?  Why don't you just give in and give up?"  At this point I was very discouraged, but continued driving to work.  The temptation to give up was so strong, that I actually heard my sins replaying themselves in my mind.  Then, all of the sudden, something incredible happened.  The day before I listened and watched the Resurrection Scene of Jesus, and I was encouraged by the song.  The Song was entitled "Arise My Love". (I will post a link at the bottom of this post so you can see and hear what I heard).  

The voices of failure that were screaming in my ear were suddenly drowned out very definitely by this Song.  "Arise my love, Arise, my Love, the Grave no longer has a hold on You!  No more death's sting, no more suffering", and then I heard it:  "Sin, where is shackles, death, where is your sting, hell has been defeated, the grave no longer holds the King!" As I heard those Words, immediately, it was like a lightening bolt of protection, blew every negative thought in my mind to smithereens.  My discouragements were vanquished.  Later that day while at work, I realized that I couldn't make myself better, and asked Jesus to!  I need to do this more often, and stop trying to make myself better.

This brings us full circle to Jesus very Own Words:   

35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: [but] the Son abideth ever. 36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Who can make us free?  The Son, and He abideth ever.  Notice what Jesus says about the servant. The servant does not abide in the house forever, but the Son abideth ever!!!!  The next part is the clincher:    36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

At this point, I don't care how strong I think my connection with God is, I need Him every second, and this verse needs to be constantly put into my head.  

Only Jesus can make us free!  

He has conquered, but you and I have a choice, we can choose to ask Him to do this for us, or we can try and live on our pedigree of how good we think we are!  I need Jesus and I need Him right now!

So how about you?  Do you need Him?  He's the only True Way out of this sin trap that we are in.  Let us accept His Free Gift of Salvation and freedom to Serve Him!  

Here is the link to that song and video:  Please be blessed: 

 and please remember His Words:

  36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.