The subject, again, is peculiar treasure, and it comes from the Old Testament, and I'll have to say this at the first of every one of these radio programs for those who have not heard or those who have just probably forgotten what was said in the weeks before. In the book of Exodus, chapter 19, verse 5, God said, if you will obey my voice and keep You shall be, and here is our object now, you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine." Now, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew children were called a peculiar treasure. We don't like that word peculiar. If there's anything we don't want to be, it's unlike other people, and yet that is exactly what salvation intends to produce within us, a peculiarity all our own. If you come to the New Testament, in Titus 2, verse 14, Christ gave himself, and I'm going to paraphrase this real quickly, to make us peculiar. Did you know that? Christ gave himself on the cross to make us peculiar, that is, to make his disciples, his followers, peculiar. He gave himself for us, now a cult of earth, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people who will be zealous of good works, and that's what makes us peculiar. Again, in 1 Peter 2.9, You are a chosen generation. Chosen for what? To be peculiar. You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You are a peculiar people. Now, folks, there's one thing about something peculiar it's not hard to recognize. Because it's so different, you say, that's strange, that's unusual, that's odd. And so the Christian is supposed to look and talk and act unlike those who are not Christian. We're supposed to be able to be identified as being peculiar just by listening to us talk and look at us live. Now, if you don't look like someone peculiar and you don't talk like someone peculiar from a Christian standpoint, from the standpoint of what salvation has done to you, then there's something wrong. People ought to be able to look at you and say, boy, are they peculiar. And you can say, yes, the reason I am peculiar is because I am no longer like you. I have been changed by the redemption and the salvation of Christ. The new birth does not just produce another person. but it produces a person unlike anything we have ever known. It produces a peculiar person, and growing in grace is nothing but growing in peculiarity as the Christian lives. Now, I'm going to be going through the peculiarities of a Christian. I looked at two last week, and we'll look at two again this morning. And when you begin to say things that I'm about to say, people look at you and say, You're crazy. You must be out of your head. You don't make any sense. How can you say such a thing? And by the way, I find a lot of Christians make those very comments and observations about the things that the Bible says makes us peculiar. Now, I begin by saying that a lot of people say, well, a Christian is a person that you can test by if they act right and do good and are benevolent, and they just do good work. That's how you know a person is a Christian. And so that's the question you really want to ask them. Are you a good person? Now, that's the way the world thinks. That is not the question. Of course, you can't be good enough to be saved. You have to be perfect if you want to choose the route of goodness to be saved. You can't even commit one sin. I don't care how many good things Adam and Eve did after they sinned in the garden, they still died, and they still had to suffer the penalty of death, and so it did not change anything about God's verdict You are a sinner, and you deserve to die and perish. I don't care how many good things Adam and Eve did after the one bad thing they did. So, goodness does not save a person. You've heard that thousands of times, and you'll hear it a thousand more times, we'll call this truth. But the point is, if you're not going to use that as the criteria, you say, well, what do I have to be, fella? to be a Christian according to you? Well, first of all, you have to be dead. If you want to become a Christian, you have to die. You say, what are you talking about? Well, that's last week's sermon. I can't go back and I can send you the tape. I can't go back and tell you that. But if you want to be a Christian, you have to die. So the question is not how good are you, but are you dead? When did you die? And you say, well, that sounds peculiar. You're right. You're right. Christians are peculiar folks. They're dead. One time a person was being persecuted and said, if you don't renounce Christ, we'll kill you. And the man said, you can't kill me. I'm already dead. Now, he was telling a biblical truth about a born again Christian. They're dead. Now, that makes you peculiar. Now, the second thing that I said last week was that if you're a Christian, you're bankrupt. You see, what are you talking about? Everybody who becomes a Christian becomes bankrupt. You own nothing. If you own nothing, folks, you're bankrupt. You say, well, I own a lot of stuff. No, you don't. And I can't go back and talk about this one, but a Christian has given everything he has and is away to Jesus Christ. If you give everything away that you have, you're broke. All right? You're bankrupt. You have nothing. And that's exactly what a Christian has done to acquire salvation. He has given his life, his all, to Jesus Christ. That makes him bankrupt. And he stays bankrupt. all during his Christian life. Now that's two peculiarities that you can say to a person, I'm dead, and I'm bankrupt. Now that makes you peculiar, but you're talking now the language of being a converted sinner. Now we want to go into our third peculiar trait this morning, and I want to ask you now how good have you been, how many good works have you But I just want to ask you a simple question. When did you get out of prison? Did you know that a Christian, every Christian, is an escaped prisoner? You say, what are you talking about? I've never heard of such a thing. Well, if you read the Bible and understand what salvation does, you ought to understand you are an escaped prisoner. That's what the Bible says. And that's what I'll show you now this morning as we look together in the Scriptures to prove this. Now the extreme cases of imprisonment pictured in the Bible are referred to people called demon possessed. They are under the absolute bondage and control of the demon that possesses their body. And Jesus came to set these people free of the demonic powers that totally enslave them, imprison them, so to speak. Now that's the extreme case in the Bible of spiritual bondage. A demon actually possesses your body and controls your mind and your actions and conduct at will. Now the prison itself in scripture is described as nothing more than sin or the lust of the flesh. And these sins, our lust of the flesh, our sinful nature, locks you into a certain pattern of thinking and conduct. You are locked up in bondage to sin. And while you're in this sin prison, the devil and the other evil spirits, in a sense, become the jail keepers. the taskmaster. And they speak to it, that you remain bound by the chains of more and more. Every time you sin, you get more bound by the chains of sin. You're digging in deeper and deeper and deeper in the captivity of the devil. Which, of course, if this is somehow not broken, and you don't get relief from this sin prison, you'll end up in the grand prison, which is called the Lake of Fog. Now, in 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 26, And those that may recover themselves, out of the snare of the devil. Now, notice this next point. The devil takes men captive at his will. Whenever he desires to take a lost person captive, he has no problem whatsoever doing so, because he has them, in a sense, locked in the bondage of sin. Jesus came claiming to be a deliverer. You know that? A deliverer. In Isaiah 61, it's the prophetic verse. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the heart of the broken. He has sent me, now notice this one, to proclaim liberty to the captive. Who are the captives? Every lost person is captured to sin. Jesus said, I have been, or the prophecy says, the Messiah will come and he will proclaim liberty to the captives and he will open the prison to those that are bound. That's what it says. And Luke, Jesus stands up in the temple and reads from Isaiah 61 and says, I am that fellow that this prophecy says will one day come. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Luke 4, because he hath anointed me a priest of the gospel of the poor. He hath sent me to preach deliverance to the captive. and he hath sent me to set at liberty those that are bound." All right? Do you understand that? Now, that's what Scripture really states about the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was on the cross that Jesus enabled the sinner to be set free from the bondage and the power and the captivity of sin, because on the cross Jesus Christ gained the possibility to forgive us of our sin and break the power of sin in our life by giving us a new birth, a new nature, a new man who does not have the sin nature hang of. Colossians 2.14. Christ blotted out the handwriting that was against us and took it out of the way and nailing it to the cross. What handwriting? We were bound by sin and doomed for hell. He cancelled the jail sentence, so to speak. Romans 8, 1 through 2. Now therefore there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who no longer have to walk after the flesh, but now can walk after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free." You see this? "...has made me free from the law of sin." The law of sin just simply says, when I want you to do evil, you do it. And man, being bound, must obey the law of sin operating in his life. The devil will apply mental pressure, the law will apply pressure, and the sinner cannot keep from obeying the law of sin. He'd fight it, and he'd grit his teeth, and he'd say, I'm not going to do it again. But he will if the flesh, the lust, and the power of the sin and the devil apply enough mental pressure. He will break down, and he will do it again, and again, and again, and again, because he is not free from the law of sin until Christ makes him free through salvation. James 4, 7. Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he'll flee from you. Now, that's said to a Christian. That's said to a person who has been set free by Christ. Romans, Paul makes the comment, even as a Christian, there are things that he hates that he does. And things that he wants to do, he cannot do. And he says to himself, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? He's talking about being delivered from the power of sin to manipulate and compel us to do that which we do not want to do, which we say we will never do again in a promise to somebody else. So there are those who are locked today in the bondage, the captives, the prisoners in the prison of sin, and the prison of their flesh, and the prison of their love. And they have sinful habits which have been ingrained and established almost from the time of their birth. And some of these habits you can break. But those that really desire to capture you and control you, you will never be. Never, never, never blink. You have not the power to get out under every habit that sin can put you under. Sometimes we hear people say, well that's just the way he is. What you're saying is, that's the way he has to be. And he has no way to get out of that. We say, well, that's just his personality. No, that's just his captivity. That's why he has that kind of personality. We say, well, what you see is what you'll get. That's true. That's true. You know, once I get him married, I'll change him. Don't kid yourself. You don't understand. You can't change a person's luck in defense. You can't change a person in prison. You can't free them. You can't change them. Only salvation and Christ can work that miracle relief. A lot of times folks say, well, don't expect me to change. They're being honest with you. What they're not saying is, I change. I really change. Oh, you change one day. No. You don't understand. When there is a habit that kicks in by the power of the law of the flesh and the influence of the devil, from that habit you will not get free. From many you will. But from some they will grip you and lock you as though you were in a prison. There are many who have enslaved temperaments. They're violent. They're vindictive. They're rude. They're arrogant. They're hot-headed. They've been that way for 40 years. Unless Jesus changes them, they'll be that way for 40 more years. There are those who are overbearing. There are those who are grouchy. I mean, there are grumps that's been grumbling 95 years and still grumbling. They're going to always grumble. And they don't want to grumble. They wish they could stop it because they lose friends. They cause problems. They have regrets. They say things they shouldn't want to say. But they can't stop it. There are those that are bound by prejudice. There are those who are unforgiving, and there are well-forgiving persons. There are those who are spiteful. There are those who are envious. There are those who are vulgar. There are those who are immoral. And I could just stand here this morning and go on and on. There are those locked in to these things. Some have a hang-up with money, and you can't unhang them. Some with sex, we call them sex maniacs. You can't unhang them. You can't set them free. I don't care how much psychoanalysis you use on them. There are those that hung up with stealing, hung up with lying. I mean, they are locked into bondage in these areas. Some have chains of laziness. They've been lazy all their life, and they're locked in unless God sets them free. They will not be free They're going to say like you can first Adam all you want to You can threaten them all you want to you never threatened or first anybody out of prison I mean they're locked up. We have to understand that they're locked up They can't get out They're prisoners And they have some temperaments and some habits that are so strong resolutions and condemnation and even punishment cannot set them free. We've got foods that are people that are foodaholics as well as alcoholics. I mean they have a problem here and they are locked in. Now that's something that We need to understand about the Christian that's peculiar. I am an escaped prisoner. Now, Paul was saying, I still find the old sinful nature trying to compel me to do what I always did. Oh, who will set me free? Jesus, Paul said, has set me free. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, applying Scripture in my life against the old sinful power of the flesh, I can be free. I have been set free. I should live free from sin. That's what Romans talks about. I should be free from the law of sin. I should live free from the law of sin. I should act like I have been set free. I'm peculiar. I'm running around in a state prison. And we ought to be able to give that as our testimony, and people ought to be able to say, how did you get free? I mean, all those years you lived, how did you get free? How did you come? Well, sorry to say, a lot of Christians don't even know they're supposed to be free. Don't even know they have been given through the Holy Spirit our power to walk out of that old prison house. to walk out of that chain, to walk out of that jail, and to be freed, and they can't come and capture you again and drag you back into prison, we ought to understand that is one of the great privileges of being a Christian. We dwell, I believe, too much, once we get saved, on being delivered from the penalty of sin, which is hell. Folks, the great use is I'm not in heaven yet, and I'm not going to hell, but I've got to live today. What's the news to me today? I have been set free from not just the penalty of sin, I have been set free from the power of sin. I can say to sin, get your hands off me. I mean, don't you try to put those handcuffs back on me. Don't you try to put me back in prison. Don't you try to drag me into that jail cell. I mean, you have no right to touch me. I have a passage that says, I am a free man. It's been given to me by Jesus Christ, and you can't put me back in prison. I am not a prisoner anymore. I have been set free. Now, folks, that's the attitude we ought to have towards all these temperaments and all these lusts and all these things that want to control their lives. And they still will try to run out of their prison and capture you. And still try to drag you back in the bondage. Still try to make you live like you always live. Which, by the way, that won't make you secure in the eyes of the world. It might make you ornery. It might make you hypocrite. It might make you sorry. It might make you an unpleasant person. But I mean, you won't be secure. You'll be just like everybody else in the bondage of sin. You'll be like everybody else under the power of the law of sin. But if you get out, you say, I don't have to come back, and I can be different, and I can stop all these old bad things that are ruining my life, and I'm free. Now, folks, that makes you succeed. All those in prison look out their doors and jeer at you. They want you back in there with them. I don't want to go back to prison. I don't want to go back to jail. I want out. I want to stay out. And so, as I said, I stopped doing all these things that are bad. And I say that, yeah, I know I'm different. I know I used to do that, and I used to do this. But I stopped that. And they may laugh when you say, because Jesus Christ set me free. But that's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says. Jesus said, if I set you free, you shall be what? Free indeed. I have come to set you free. It's sad to say, as you look at a lot of Christian people, they don't appear to be free. They still appear to be the same old locked-up person they've always been. They go around testifying, I'm saved from the penalty of sin. I have my master Jesus. I'm going to heaven when I die." Well, go on and say something else, and you ought to be able to say, and I have been set free from the burden and the power of sin. I no longer have to live under the law of the old flesh and the old sinful nature, or under the commands and dictates and the pressures of the devil's temptation. I am free from all of that. And when I begin to live that kind of life, I will be, in the eyes of other people, a peculiar person. So now we come to three things that are kind of peculiar. I'm dead. Just to quickly say this, you know what part of me is dead, don't you? The old information. The old man. The old flesh. That's what's dead. If you see it still running out of prison grabbing you pulling you back. It doesn't look very big I Yes, I'm a person that believes in Christ But I'm also gay. That's my testimony and I'm bankrupt But you know, I'm an escaped person. That's one of the great benefits of becoming a Christian. I notice my time is almost gone. I want to get to my fourth thing that is in my mind, a strange thing. And that is not just are you a good person, but are you healed? Have you been healed? I know a lot of, and I'm going to have to leave this until next week. I was going to get through with two of them this morning, but a lot of folks. Don't realize that every Christian has had a miraculous, supernatural healing. And that makes you secure. Most folks, you know, they say, I don't have a healing testimony. Yes, you do. You have one of the greatest healing testimonies in the Bible. That could ever happen. It's the greatest miracle Jesus ever worked in the way of miracles. You have been healed. You're talking crazy. No, I'm telling you what the Bible says. You have experienced at the moment of your salvation a miraculous healing. I guess I'll have to leave that until next week. I went a little longer. Got carried away there on being set free. But folks, you really are an escaped prisoner if you're a Christian. And we need to live and act and talk like, I am out of prison. I am no longer a captive. I have been set free. Praise God, I'm free. Three things, so far, that make this peculiar. I'm dead, I'm bankrupt, and I'm a state person. That makes me different than the average person. If you're a Christian, you're peculiar in those three ways.