Hillsborough Reformed Church at Millstone

Sermonjanuary292012

“Unchained and Fettered”

“Knowledge puffs up but love builds up.(I Cor. 8:1)”

We have a problem with the gospel. We hardly get starting reading Mark’s gospel, the one gospel of the four that scholars think was the first written, than we run into an unclean spirit. A pneumatic akatharto.

A demon.

Normally when we come to passageslike this in the Bible, which can be a little embarrassing to modern sensibilities, we read through them quickly, or just ignore words like “demon” and “unclean spirit” altogether and move on, skimming over the surface of the passage like a flat stone skims across the water of the pond when thrown just right.

The only problem is, the Bible really doesn’t let us do that. We can’t help but trip over it – it is right there at the beginning of Mark’s gospel and hardly the only time we come across these troublesome words – “demon” and “unclean spirit.”[1] This unclean spirit is a menace. First of all it makes the person who is possessed rave like a madman, then it attacks Jesus on a very personal basis – the unclean spirit knows who Jesus is, and then Jesus addresses it personally and exorcizes it. That is pretty hard to ignore. Everyone, it seems – right here in the opening chapter of the gospel – the man possessed, Jesus, and the disciples all interact with this unclean spirit, behaving as if it is real.

The modern way of dealing with this is to say that the man was mentally ill. Okay. But if we look at it that way, we miss the power of the passage. So I say, let’s deal with the passage on its own terms.

The man with the unclean spirit had lost control of himself and was being dominated by the demon.

That’s what the gospel passage is about, and that is what we need to see to be amazed, like the people who witnessed the freeing of the man were amazed long ago.

Because our Jesus is still casting out unclean spirits today, in the here and now.

The truth is – and it is the truth of this passage, that the only way to freedom is through Jesus Christ.

Jesus and Jesus alone can free us from the things that possess us – the things that control us and dominate us and move us away from God.

Without Jesus, according to the Bible, we are slaves to sin. It is not our natural inclination to turn to God and love him. A multitude of things stand between us and God, our sin being the all embracing category. We put ourselves first. We covet things. We gossip about others. We wish others ill. We have enemies. We hold back in our commitment to the church.

Even the better angels of our nature are corrupt. We may care for things greater than ourselves – our family, our country, but even these things are selfish. Jesus told us everyone loves their families, and by extension, everyone loves their country.

We need to be set free.

I am glad we do not come to church and rant and rave at Jesus as did the man in the passage, but we are possessed too and in need of being freed.

“For freedom Christ has set you free,” says Paul. (Galatians 5:1)

And so he has! Our sin is forgiven, the penalty has been paid, we stand before God pure by the grace of God.

So we are free – for what?

Ah. . . .

That’s the question we need to ask.

We are freed, like the man in the passage with the unclean spirit, but if we are just freed, soon we will be lost again. Jesus said an unclean spirit can be cast out and the place swept clean. But it will return with seven spirits worse than the first to fill the space if it remains empty. (Matthew 12:45)[2]

We are freed for a reason.

Let’s see how that plays out in the epistle reading this morning. This passage about eating food offered to idols seems strange to us, because we don’t offer meat to idols and sell it in the Stop and Shop. But the peoplein Jesus’ time did. In the pagan religions, animals, like a sheep would be offered to a pagan idol. It would be one of the best sheep, so what was done with the meat? It would be wasteful and foolish and unholy, really to throw it away. So it was sold in the public markets.

Well, what if you were a Christian, and the lamb chops from the lamb offered to a pagan idol were on sale that week for $2.49 a pound? If you were like me, you would be tempted to buy them and take them home and enjoy them. But wait! This meat was offered and sworn to a pagan deity. Wouldn’t it be a sin to eat it?

“Naw,” says Paul. “Idols aren’t real, and meat is meat” We know that. It is fine to eat the meat, especially if it is a killer sale. He didn’t say that, I did – the part about the sale.

But as the butcher puts the meat on the scale and weighs it, and I count out my shekels and drachmas, watching me is the man who just joined the church. He had been a pagan and now is on fire with his faith in Jesus. He sees me buying that meat and he is crushed. He thought I was a true Christian, Now he sees me acting like a pagan. It is eroding his newfound faith.

So, says, Paul. Don’t eat the meat if it is offending someone in the faith.

Ok, Paul. Look, you can’t have it both ways. Either I am free or I am not free.

I guess the truth is, I am not free.

I am not free to do whatever I want no matter who is offended. I am unchained from sin, but I am fettered by something else.

That is true. And it is not so hard to understand. Consider examples from elsewhere in life.

So here is a young man. He has finished college. He works hard. He lives where he wants to live. He buys the car he wants to drive. He goes to the game with his buddies when he fells like it. He is completely free.

Until he meets her. She steals his heart, and before long he is spending all the time he can with her. He is no longer saving to buy a better car, he is saving for a diamond to give away – to her. He now cares as much as he cares about anything about making her happy.

Is he free?

Yes! But his freedom is bound up in his relationship with her. He is free in a sense, but he has surrendered to love.

Or consider a parent. Is a parent free? Hardly! You are responsible for that child for everything until he or she is 18 and really for the rest of the child’s life. Are you free not to get up and feed your baby a bottle? Are you free not change the diaper? Are you free not care for the child’s every need?

The two mom’s were having lunch and one was especially haggard. They started complaining about housework and kids and how hard it was keeping up and being the only ones doing housework. There was a lull in the conversation as they ordered dessert. Then the very tired mom said, “And he is especially bad! He won’t budge off the couch, he leaves his clothes where he drops them, he won’t leave me alone, never hangs anything up, messes up the kitchen, and won’t even put a new roll of toilet paper on the roll when it is empty.” The other mom says, “You have to set rules for your son.”

“My son!?” I’m not talking about my son, I’m talking about my husband!”

Love between a woman and a man is not freedom. Parenting is as far as oyu can get form freedom. But in these things we find fulfillment.

We have been set free for a reason. To serve Jesus Christ,. It is the purpose of oour lives.

We come out here to church on Sundays because God commands us to worship. It is wonderful and beautiful and joyful, and satisfying, but it is what we are bound to do.

In Jesus we are unchained – unchained from all that binds us – every evil, the sin that possesses us, inability to do good, and set free to follow Jesus serve God.

Jesus lived the perfect life, and his life was totally devoted to God.

In communion we say we offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices.

We don’t throw ourselves on an altar for slaughter and immolation, instead we do something far, far better, we live for God. Our faith is our fetter, holding us fast to God. But it is not a bad thing to be bound to God, it is the best life for us.

But that isn’t all!

Remember Paul talking about the food offered to idols? He is free to eat it, but won’t take that freedom because it would be a “stumbling block” to a brother. So is Paul free?

Yes, he – free to love! If we care about others, we won’t hurt them, even if what we do is an exercise of our freedom as people of faith.

Not everyone is at the same place on the faith journey. Paul says mature Christians have the knowledge that there is nothing wrong with eating meat offered to idols. But do you remember what he said before?

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

There is something more important than my personal liberty. The needs of others matter more than my own liberty.

I am free in this country to get as wealthy as I can. Does that mean I am free to hold on to my money and use it to have others serve me?

That is not God’s will. God’s purpose for me is to serve him and my neighbor.

God frees me at last from selfishness, and at last from what many great Christian thinkers have called the last sin – pride.

Knowledge puffs up. As a mature Christian you may feel a cut above those less mature in the faith. You and I are bound to serve and help others, not lord it over them.

Free to love God.

Free to serve God.

Free to serve neighbor as self. Paul writes, (I Cor. 9:19) “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.”

Freedom is at the root of our faith. The story of God’s people is the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt. God loosed the chains of his people in Egypt and set them free. Free for what? Free to serve him. Free to love God and have the ultimate liberation of obeying the holy law of God – the best life of all.

Jesus could free a man from an unclean spirit. He can free you. And he can free me.

In fact, I don’t think anyone would argue that Jesus was the freest man who ever lived.

In his freedom, Jesus allowed his enemies to arrest him, bind him torture him and at last lash his arms to a rough cross and for extra measure, nail his wrists to the wood just to be sure he suffered the most.

Hands and feet bound he was lifted up from the earth, bound hand and foot, the most free man in the world. He was fastened to a cross.

The most free man in the world suffered the most complete fettering of all, so that he could do the will of his Father and set you free, and free me. Then, after God had let his Son he held fast to the cross (fettered) till he died, he gave him the ultimate freedom – freedom from the grave, from death. As he has set you free from death for heaven.

Fred D. Mueller

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

8Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3but anyone who loves God is known by him.

4Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— 6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

7It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8“Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

Mark 1:21-28

21They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

[1] For those reading this sermon – the fact that Jesus dominates these shows that the kingdom of God has come in his person. The kingdom comes (Jesus is Lord) But it will not com ein its fullness – the reign of God – till Jesus returns.

[2] Unless the void is filled with the Holy Spirit, it is vulnerable to be possessed by things unworthy – either you are possessed by Jesus or possessed by what is unclean and evil