We're in chapter 21 and you have the handout. And tonight's topic may be one of the most misunderstood, uh, doctrines or topics in Christianity or in, uh, uh, biblical doctrines that we have. And that's the, that's the topic of Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, Christian liberty and liberty of conscience. So obviously you have the sheet in front of you, but as you think about what it means for you to have Christian liberty, uh, usually the two ditches that folks fall into, uh, is that, uh, Christian liberty is a kind of a reaction against, uh, self righteousness or against imposing extra biblical things, uh, to the extent that they. go as far as they want to go and do whatever it is that they want to do. Almost like a no law type thing. And then the other part of Christian liberty, the other ditch is where people just kind of refuse Christian liberty and they nail down and have a very hard line set out, rules, regulations for things that the scriptures just Don't lay out in a very plain way, in a very structured way, or maybe I should say in a very, uh, direct way, they take wisdom issues, uh, and they lay them out as if the scripture speaks directly to these particular points. Um, and so you may say, well, what are you talking about? What do we mean? Uh, what are some of those areas? Well, modesty would be one of those areas. So some people think about modesty. And they go through the scriptures and they collect verses that aren't referring to modesty, uh, as it were, but do have something to do with the way somebody is dressed. And they build a list of this is what you can wear. And this is what you can't wear based off of that. Um, whenever the scriptures talk about dressing in a modest way, they never really lay out point by point. What's, uh, what kind of clothing you can wear and what kind of clothing you can not wear. Now they do speak of it in the sense of someone who dresses in such a way to bring attention to themselves. someone who's dressing in an immodest way they do speak of for instance someone having the dress of a harlot so someone who's dressed in a seductive way but as far as you know measurements and materials and all those sorts of things you can look at the scriptures and you're not going to find a checklist on the other hand People will take that fact and say, well, I'll just dress however I want to dress. I have the liberty to do that. I have the freedom to do that. A lot of people do the same thing. When I say a lot of people, the debate in Christian liberty Folks will do the same thing with things like tattoos and alcohol and different things like that, where they'll fall off either into an ultra-rigid, extra-biblical, you can't do this, here's all the rules as to why you can't, to I can do whatever I want to do because I have Christian liberty and you can't say anything to me about it because I have freedom. I thought the writers of the Confession really laid this out very clearly and laid it out very well. So first, when we're talking about Christian liberty, the liberty that Christians have in Christ, we're talking about freedom. In Jesus Christ, we have been made free. The question is, you've been made free from what? And then you've been made free to what? And that's usually where the confusion comes in. So the first section here talks about the liberty that Christians have in Christ. So when I talk about folks who tend to be on the liberal side of things and they don't want to be told what to do and they say, well, you know, we just have liberty in Christ, that's my Christian liberty. You know what I'm talking about when I say that? Shake your head yes or no so I know that you're alive. Okay. So it's just anything goes, Christian liberty. You don't like this deal with it. Christian liberty. You don't like that deal with it. Christian liberty. Uh, that's obviously an abuse of the biblical doctrine of Christian liberty, but in the first section of the London confession, they go through and they name and really bullet point. Uh, I've got 10 things listed here. There's a one on there. Now I've got nine things listed here. I think there are 12 in the confession. I left a few of them off because I wasn't sure about the verse reference. So the first one, I'm not going to go through all nine of these, but the first one is in Galatians chapter 3. In verse 13 it says Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. For it is written cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Now I know it's written right here, but whenever we read a verse like that, when we read Galatians 313 and we think about Christian liberty, what freedom has Christ given us in Galatians 313? What have we been made free from? It's written right beside the verse. Yeah, the curse of the law. I don't know if you've ever thought about that as part of your Christian liberty or not, but it is. That's part of the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. It's what we've been freed from, the curse of the law. In Galatians 1.4 it talks about the fact that we've been delivered from this present evil world. That means we have freedom from this present evil world. We don't have to be in bondage or live in bondage to the wickedness of the present evil world. We don't have to adopt their practices, their mindsets, their lifestyles. We've been free from that. We've been freed from the bondage of the effects of living like a uh, unbeliever in the present evil world. We've been delivered from that. Acts 26, 18 Paul says, we've been delivered from the power of Satan. That means we've been made free from Satan's power. Romans eight, three, we've been delivered from the dominion of sin. Sin does not have to have dominion over you any longer. That's the Liberty that you have in Jesus Christ. Romans 8 28, you know, this one, um, God working all things for good to those who love him. He says, we're the, the, the writers of confession, just phrase it this way. We are free from the evil of afflictions. What does that mean? We're free from the evil of afflictions. Well, I guess it could mean several things, but one of the things that it means is that we are free and we are given the liberty to interpret our afflictions in a hopeful way. We aren't defined by our afflictions. We aren't overcome by our afflictions, but we have the freedom to know in Christ God is using those for our good and for his glory, and he's using those to make us more like Jesus Christ. You have the Christian liberty to interpret your afflictions in such a way that you can have hope in the midst of despair. Isn't that a wonderful freedom? Only Christians have that freedom, by the way. Christians and folks who are delusional. But only Christians have a firm, real reason to interpret afflictions that way. And when I say folks who are delusional, I say that because outside of the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, we don't have any reason to interpret our afflictions as anything but afflictions. Only Jesus Christ can turn those things for good in our lives to make us more like him. And so there's a value there that we can't just pass over and think everybody gets to do this because everybody doesn't get to do that. Everyone doesn't get to interpret life that way because it's not true for everyone. But in Jesus Christ, you have the freedom, if you're a believer, to lay hold of the reality that in the midst of afflictions, Jesus Christ has freed me from despair and I can have hope even in the midst of this sorrow, even in the midst of this affliction. Jesus Christ in Romans, I'm sorry, in first Corinthians, 1554 through 57, we have been made free from the fear and the sting of death. Free from the fear and the sting of death in Romans eight 15. Let me, I will turn there. Romans eight 15. It says, for you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, 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 of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we also may be glorified together. Now, in that little section, what it's speaking of is the fact that you've received the spirit of adoption. And so because of that, you can cry out to God Abba Father. You can cry out to God, Daddy, Father, Son type relationship. You have free access to God as one of his children. And the reason you have the freedom to approach God as one of his children is because of the Christian liberty that you have in Jesus Christ. Again, you realize not everyone has the spirit of adoption. Not everyone can cry out to God in a real way, Abba Father. Why? Because it's just not true for everyone. That's why. But if you're a Christian, one of the liberties, one of the freedoms that you have is that you have free access to God. First John 4.18 speaks to the fact that we've been made free from slavish fear. Free from slavish fear. And then Hebrews 10.19-21 It's kind of like Romans 8, 15. But we have the freedom to confidently come to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. So in one, we have received a spirit of adoption. And so we can have free access to God. In the other one, we can freely come to God with confidence that God hears us. God is not going to turn us away. God is not going to withhold good from us. And that's because we have freedom through the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, when you think about Christian liberty and you look at that list that the writers of the Confession made there, is that usually what you think of when you think about categories of Christian liberty? I'll have to be honest, I don't. When I looked at that, I thought, I've never thought about these things as categories of Christian liberty. Um, I just think about these things as, uh, these are just blessings that accompany salvation. Uh, this is just what it means to be saved. Isn't it interesting to look back at the mindset that they had in 1689 when they discussed and thought about Christian liberty and the mindset that people in 2017 have when they think about Christian liberty. Now this is a side note, but it's a worthy side note. That's the value of historic documents that, that, that layout, uh, historic beliefs, uh, through the ages. Were it not for this, particularly on this Christian liberty, I would never lump this number one into the category of Christian liberty. But after reading it, I realized that the reason I would never lump that into Christian liberty is because my thinking needs to be realigned when I think about the freedoms that we have in Christ. I need to think about it from a different perspective. Christian liberty wasn't given just so we could have a trump card in a gray area. Which is pretty much the way it's used now. And I'm not saying you or I use it that way, but in by and large, that's what it's used for. But Christian liberty really is a doctrine where we celebrate the fact that we have been made free and you could lump all these all together and say this, we've been made free from the power of Satan and the curse of sin in Jesus Christ. I'm free from sin. I'm free from the power of Satan. I'm free from despair. And that's part of the Christian liberty that I have in Jesus Christ. Now, number two. Number two says this. The conscience of man is subject only to the commandments of God. and is liberated from the commandments of men which are in any way contrary to the word of God or not contained in it." So the second point the writers here make is that our conscience is only subject to the word of God. In other words, when we think about what we are bound to, or the authority that we're under, or the type of accountability that we keep over one another. There may be another word I'm looking for and I can't bring it to mind. But we are under the Word of God and only the Word of God. So what does that mean? It means this. It means that as your pastor, I can't just come up with whatever I want to come up with and bind you to that. Whether that be a brand new doctrine altogether or whether that be filling in details about particular topics that the Bible doesn't fill in, I don't have the right, I don't have the authority to try to hold you accountable to anything outside of the revealed, plain word of God. And you don't have the right or the authority to hold me accountable to anything that's outside of the revealed, plain word of God. Your conscience is not subject to what Louis Sokran thinks is right. It's subject to the word of God and what the word of God lays out as being right and being wrong. And that is so important for believers to understand. Why? Well, one reason why is because brothers and sisters, that's part of the liberty that Christ has purchased for you. You realize that the more you know about the word of God, the more freedom you have in your life. The more you know about what God says about a particular issue, the more freedom you have in your life to live that out. Why? Well, think about the alternative. Think about being confused. Have you ever been confused about something? The answer to that is yes for everybody here. Now, have you ever thought this? I am just so, I'm just in a state of free-spirited confusion right now. I'm just liberated by this confusion. I have no idea what to do here, and I've never felt so free. You ever thought that? Of course you haven't. Confusion can really wear on you, can it? It's just miserable. And what does God's word do? Well, it brings things to light. It's a light unto our path. It's a lamp unto our feet. It's a thorough furnisher that we may be equipped for all good works. The Word of God brings freedom. And the reason the Word of God brings freedom, or at least one of the reasons why the Word of God brings freedom, is because the Word of God brings light into darkness. The Word of God teaches. Remember in 2 Timothy 3.16, it's good for doctrine, it's good for teaching, it's good for getting you headed in the right direction so that you know what God says about what you're doing. There's freedom in that. And there's also freedom there in the sense that if I know what God is requiring of me, and I know what you're asking of me, and it doesn't line up with what God is saying, I don't have to be under the bondage of your preference. That's freedom, isn't it? It is. Look in James chapter four. Verse 12, James says this. Let me start in verse 11. Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother and judgeth his brother speaketh evil of the law and judgeth the law. But if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who art thou that judges another? Now in verse 12, we get this number one, there is one law giver. Who's that again? There we go. Yeah. God is the one law giver. And so whenever he says there's one law giver. Who art thou that judgest another? Or there's one lawgiver. Who are you to judge somebody else? Is James saying God is the lawgiver. And so he's the only one that can, that can declare something right or wrong. You just need to be quiet and let people do their own thing. Is that what James is saying? All right, somebody needs to say something. No, that's not what James is saying. James is not saying there's one lawgiver, so live and let live and coexist and don't say anything about anything and you love your truth and they love their truth and one of these days at the end, then the one lawgiver's gonna say what needs to be said. What James is saying is this. There is one lawgiver who's able to save and destroy Who are you that judges another? What James is saying is you don't have the right to speak evil of, you don't have the right to hold someone to your standard that doesn't fall under the realm of God's revealed word. There's one lawgiver and it's not you. So you can't come up with your own law and judge somebody according to that. That make sense? You can't come up with your own preference and judge somebody according to that. So, for instance, I can't decide that something's okay or not okay just because I like it that way and then say you have to obey me. So for instance, this has been a One where people have differences of opinions. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with having a personal standard. There is something wrong with acting like it's God's standard. So the idea of how you should dress when you come to church, well, we ought to wear our best, right? I think everybody would agree with that. We ought to wear our best. Uh, I don't think there's anything wrong with the exhortation for you to wear your best whenever you come to honor God, worship God on the Lord's day. Well, what about whenever we start getting down further than that? Is it okay to wear pants to church if you're a woman? Well, you could ask a lot of different people and get two different answers. Some say yes, some say no. And so, somebody may have the personal standard that I'm not comfortable wearing pants to church. If that's your standard, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But did you know you cannot hold someone to the standard that if they're a woman, you must always wear a dress when you come to church. You want to know why? Because you're not the law giver. God is. And when you look in God's word, you never find any clear scripture that says women can't wear pants to church. Now they do say men ought to dress like men and women ought to dress like women. Right? And so some people say, well, there you go. Pants and skirts. The only problem is when that was written, everybody wore robes. See, there's liberty that there's nothing wrong with having a personal standard. It's not self-righteous for you to be uncomfortable wearing pants when you come to church. If that's the way you've thought about it, if that's the way you want to honor the Lord and wearing your best, there's nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with condemning someone else in your heart or condemning someone else out loud because they don't view you as the lawgiver. You're not the lawgiver. God is. And so there's one lawgiver. We are bound to that lawgiver. We're bound to his standards. And we don't have the right to make up our own. Now, there's other things we could say and other examples we could use, but that's one that you'll all understand. In Matthew 15. Matthew 15. This is number five. Matthew 15, 9. Jesus, speaking about the Pharisees and the scribes, he says, but in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. And so here he's talking about folks who have taken their role as being religious, taken their role as being pious and holy, And pretty much they've baptized everything they thought was good and presented as if it came from God. The criticism that Jesus lays out here is that they are teaching their own opinions as if they were God's word. And brothers and sisters, that's not just something that's reserved for the scribes and the Pharisees. We can easily fall into that. And the way that we easily fall into that is we see a problem and we try to think of a solution for it. And then the logic goes, if we don't, you know, if we don't stop it here. then there's no way we can stop it when it gets out of hand down the road. And so if we can just hold a hard line here. So I don't know that anyone here has ever done this, but the divorce, the doctrine of divorce has been that way in Christianity. You have some who are no divorce, never for any reason under any circumstance. Well, it's very clear when you read the New Testament, that was not the way Jesus taught divorce. Now, Jesus doesn't celebrate divorce. Jesus doesn't give this loose, uh, divorce anybody for any reason, but Jesus does say there are some legitimate reasons for a divorce. We've never tried, that I'm aware of, we've never tried to hold a hard line on that that says no one for any reason, if your spouse is unfaithful, you have to stick with them, you can't leave. I will say this, we have encouraged folks that if your spouse is unfaithful, it's better to try to reconcile, but if you can't, Jesus gives you the freedom to leave. Now, we're not gonna die on the hill of divorce and make that a major deal here. But when you get to thinking about Christian liberty, that's definitely one of those topics to where some people try to hem the gate a little too close so that the floodwaters don't fly out. And usually that's where this whole legalism thing falls into place. Um, if we can just draw the line closer than it needs to be, then we can keep it from getting out. Again, there's nothing wrong with a standard. There is something wrong with pretending like what you're saying is what God said when God has not said it. And so Christian liberty is when you know what God says and you can live in light of that. In second Corinthians chapter one. 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verse 23 and 24 Paul says moreover I called God for a record upon my soul that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy, for by faith you stand. Paul says, we came to Corinth, and here's why we came to Corinth. We did not come to Corinth so that we might have dominion over your faith, but we are helpers of your joy, for by faith you stand. So in other words, Paul says, we didn't come so that we could rule over what you believed and what you didn't believe. We didn't come so that the buck would stop with us. We didn't come to set ourselves up as some sort of authority that you would believe what we said only, but we came to be helpers of your joy because you stand in faith. Now, faith is just, again, faith is what you believe, what you're trusting in. And our conscience is held captive to, and we trust and believe in, what? This is where you talk. Yeah, the Word of God, the Bible. So that whenever a man comes and he stands in the pulpit, and this is usually not going to happen after one message, but as Paul goes and spends time there, he says, you need to understand, I'm not here to have dominion over your faith. And brothers and sisters, Brother Isaac and I are not here to have dominion over your faith. In other words, don't just take what we say and believe it just because we say it. You need to believe it because the word of God teaches it. And so like those Bereans, you're checking to see if the scriptures actually say what we're saying. But the flip side of the coin is that you see it that a lot of times, or I say a lot of times, there are times where a strong personality, a likable personality, will come in and they'll be a leader and the folks just kind of eat up whatever it is that they say and they don't try to check out and see if it's scriptural and a lot of times their convictions are not necessarily based on the Bible, they're based on a man. That's the opposite of what Paul's talking about here. You ought to have convictions, but your convictions shouldn't be based on what a strong personality told you. Your convictions ought to be based on the fact that God's word is clear enough for you to read it, to understand it, and to be convicted by it. So conviction doesn't come, faith isn't established in a long-term way when a strong personality just starts going, blowing and going. Faith is established long-term when the Word of God is regularly received, believed, enacted upon. And Paul says, I'm here because I want to be a helper in your joy, for by faith you stand. So we're, our conscience is only subject to the commandments of God. We are free from the commands of men. That means this. We are free from traditions. We're free from preferences. Uh, we're free from anything that doesn't fall under the realm of the scriptures. That doesn't mean all those things are bad. For instance, traditions can be good. Uh, there are some times where the scriptures say that we, uh, should, uh, uh, do a particular thing. And it doesn't necessarily give us the ABCs of how to walk through that. So this past Sunday we had our communion service. Well, I imagine our communion service, as far as the functionality of the day did not look like Jesus and the disciples communion service. We had a preaching service before then. After that, Brother Isaac and I came up here, we broke the bread together, we went through the routine that we go through as we pass that, as we eat it together, all those sorts of things. Afterwards, we stopped, we went, we washed feet. We did that in that order and we connected that to the service mainly out of tradition. Would it be unbiblical for us to have a communion service and not preach before we administer communion? No. It wouldn't be unbiblical. Because the scriptures don't say you have to have a preaching service and a song service before you take communion. But it's our tradition to do it that way. I think it's a good tradition to do it that way. I'm content in leaving it that way. But brothers and sisters, you're not bound to that. If we decide to change it one of these days, for whatever reason, you can't act like you're convicted about that. You can have an opinion about it, but you can't be convicted about it, because God hadn't said that that's the way it has to be. Does that make sense? That's what Christian liberty is. Number three. The idea that Christian liberty gives us freedom to sin completely stands in opposition to the biblical teaching that Christian liberty frees us from the bondage of sin. So whenever you talk to folks or maybe whenever you hear folks who use Christian liberty as the trump card to do whatever it is they want to do, whenever it is they want to do it. It's completely in opposition to the accurate understanding of Christian liberty. I'm going to read one verse. I know I'm over on time. I'm going to read one verse and we'll be done. Romans chapter six. Verse 1, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? This is what Paul says. Do you understand grace? Do you understand the freedom that you have in grace? Here's the question he poses. What are we going to say if grace really is the way the scriptures lay it out? Can we continue in sin that grace may abound? The more we sin, the more gracious God is. God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Another way to say that is, how in the world is someone who is freed from sin going to go back and put their self under sin's bondage? It doesn't make sense, does it? If you were in a prison camp somewhere and someone came along and said, you're free from this torturous prison camp, you may go, how much sense would it make for you to leave the gates, circle around the camp, and walk right back in? That wouldn't be a freedom to celebrate, would it? And so the freedom of the Christian liberty and of Christian conscience is not freedom to sin. It's freedom from sin. And that's the freedom to celebrate because we celebrate the redemption that we have in Christ. Thank you for listening to this message. Our prayer is that you've been blessed by the messages and the daily devotional blog on sermon audio from Ripley Primitive Baptist Church. We would love the opportunity to be of greater service to you in your walk with Christ. In other words, we would like to get to know you better. Do you have need of counsel, of a home church, or can we just pray for you? please feel free to contact us by phone at 662-837-8590 or visit our website at www.ripleypbc.com.