Matthew-005

 

The theme of our camp is: Freedom. We have heard a lot about freedom, but freedom is meaningless unless we can experience it. So today, I would like to emphasize the question of what freedom is, and how we may experience it so that freedom doesn’t become just an idea, a word, but a reality in our lives. Is freedom a reality in your life? Think about it for a moment.

 

In prison and yet in freedom of walking with the LORD

I’m not talking about freedom to walk around, to eat what you want and so on. Let us look at it this way. Is a person free if he or she were locked up in jail for being a Christian? I had fellowship with three dear people, two brothers and a sister, all of whom had spent a long time in hard labor camp and prison. The two brothers were confined for over twenty years, and the sister for about fifteen. Are you free if you are in prison? 2 Corinthians 3:17 says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Is the Spirit of the Lord in prison? If he is, you must be free even in prison. How can you be free when you are in prison? If you can get food, that’s good enough. One of the brothers shared how they were nearly starved during the famine in China, eating tree bark and grass roots in their hunger. How can you be free if you are in prison? If the Spirit of the Lord is in prison with you, you have the inner freedom. So the freedom we are discussing is not a mere political or external freedom, rather, it is the reality of an inner freedom that remains unaffected by anything. Have you experienced this kind of freedom? Do you know the reality and power of this?

When I talked to these dear ones who have been in labor camps, there is not a sign of bitterness or resentment saying, “They took away twenty of the best years of my life.” One of them was taken away to prison three days after he got married, and he did not come out again for over twenty years. His marriage was ruined, and what was his crime? He was a Christian. The prison authorities tried to make him give up his faith in prison: “Just deny Jesus Christ, and we’ll let you go right away. You can go back to your wife and enjoy your married life.” He said, “According to your constitution, you guarantee freedom of religion. Why do you want me to deny what you guarantee in your constitution? You are forcing me to do some­thing contrary even to the constitution.” He refused to deny his faith because he knew the Lord is real, and also because he could press the point that the constitution states freedom of faith. Everyone knows that the constitution is a different story when it comes to reality, so his insistence made no impression, and he was imprisoned for twenty-one years. Shouldn’t he have been very bitter? Shouldn’t he be saying now, “These people are the worst liars in the world, and they have taken the best years of my life?” No, you don’t find a shred of bitterness in him. This is freedom!

The well-known saying in English is, “Four walls don’t make a prison.” You can’t put a person in prison and break him if he has freedom within. These two brothers and a sister have one thing in common: freedom. There is peace and joy as you talk with them. They are in their sixties but they don’t say, “We are old now, and we’ve had our lives ruined by the Communists.” The reality of God, and the experience of freedom ensured their joy and peace. Yes, they didn’t have the liberty to move around, drive a car, eat what they like in prison, instead, went through a lot of hard labor each day, but that was no loss to them. They enjoyed a closeness with God that people who have not been in hard labor camp could never experience. God gave them more than they ever lost. They enjoyed the freedom of walking with God. Which would you prefer? To be able to be free to do what you like, or really enjoy true freedom and the reality of God? What have you got at the end of twenty years of being externally free? You have got nothing at all!

 

True freedom is within

Some of the best years of my life were the ones I spent in China living under poverty. I was extremely poor, often getting up in the morning not knowing what I was going to eat for breakfast, never mind for the rest of the day. I didn’t have any breakfast. To this day, I hardly have the habit of taking breakfast. But every time I look back, do I think I had no freedom because I had no money? Do I resent not being able to get a job, not even able to sell newspapers without the Communist government’s approval? No, I recall that those years were ever so precious because I experienced God vividly.

Then I came out of China and went to Switzerland. Switzerland is one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world. The scenery is so unbelievably fantastic! The Alps, the lakes, forests and mountains. Have you been to Switzerland? It’s a beautiful country to visit! The people are so well-to-do, so polite and kind. They have such a good life they don’t have to be nasty. When you go into the shop, they are so friendly if they are not too busy. Everything is seemly and elegant – from the scenery, the people, to the very high standard of living. Therefore, you would think that the people must be a very happy, free people.

Freedom is the hallmark of Switzerland. Switzerland is the model for every democracy. It is run by the people. The army is the people’s army because every citizen in Switzerland must join the army to defend his country’s freedom. Singapore models their army on the Swiss and the Israeli armies. The Swiss are so free, but they keep their weapons at home. When I first went there and stayed in someone’s home, I was shocked when I opened the wardrobe to find helmets, rifles, bayonets, every kind of military equipment in it! I thought, this would be considered an uprising in China! Anyone who tries to rob a Swiss home might be in great danger because you are running into soldiers. Every Swiss citizen has got military training and keeps weapons and ammunition as well at home. In some countries, they let you take your rifle home, but not the ammunition. In case of war, you can go and collect your ammunition; if there is no war, you only have a gun which you cannot use. Do they have robbery or a high crime rate in Switzerland? Not at all! It is an ideal democracy.

Therefore, I thought the Swiss must be the happiest people in the world. I said to one of them, “You must be wonderfully happy. You have good income, a beautiful country, wonderful homes, complete political and social freedom, so you must be the happiest people.”

He said, “We are not really happy inside. We do our best to be happy but not too successfully.”

I said, “What do you lack?”

He said, “There’s a certain emptiness inside. Something is not really free inside. You can’t explain it. It’s some kind of hole in the heart.”

I said, “Oh, really? I thought you must be the happiest people.”

He said, “Not really.”

I thought this person must be the exception. So I asked another person, and got the same answer. Then I asked yet another one who also gave the same answer. Everyone finds a certain emptiness within. That is the common feeling in Switzerland.

So today, I’m concerned about the inner freedom experienced by the people in China. Without this, you can live in the richest country in the world but what does it prove? It doesn’t prove anything as far as inner freedom is concerned. You have everything outside but you don’t have what you need inside. How do we have that inner freedom? As I said, when you have that, you can be locked up in prison, your physical and external conditions can be terrible, but it doesn’t matter. Freedom is within.

What if you are sick? What if you are blind? Surely that’s a tragedy. What if you become a paraplegic and can’t even move? What freedom can you talk about? Many of you have read the book by Joni. She was a very athletic person. One day, diving from the diving board, she broke her neck and became paralyzed from the neck down from this mishap. She was very young, good-looking, healthy, and now she was crippled. Can you imagine how you would feel if you were in her shoes? Suddenly, you can’t move anymore; you can’t do any of the things you want to do. Can you imagine that? When you cannot move, what freedom is there to talk about? That’s worse than being in a prison. You still have your mobility and health in a prison. But once you are a paraplegic, you become perfectly immobile; you can’t even lift your hand to your mouth. You depend on other people. But you have seen the freedom within her in her books. It is something that all of us who can move around do not necessarily enjoy. That is the true freedom.

 

God set his people free from slavery

The Old Testament and the New Testament are all about freedom. The Bible is a handbook on freedom. Anyone who is not free doesn’t know what the Bible is about. The Bible doesn’t tell you all that you must not do, and in the end, you can’t do anything. Many Christians simply have the reputation of being so legalistic, so bound by regulations that they give people the impression that the Christian life is all about laws and prohibitions. The Bible isn’t about that at all; the whole Bible is about freedom!

What is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament about? It’s about God setting free a people who were slaves, taking them out of Egypt. The later generations knew nothing except that their father was a slave, their grandfather was a slave, and as far back as they could ever remember, their ancestors were all slaves. They were under 400 years of slavery, and God took these slaves out of Egypt. Some of you may have seen the dramatic presentation of it in the movie, The Ten Commandments. How dramatic it was when they passed through the sea with the waters standing up like walls on both sides! God took this people and set them free. Moses said to Pharaoh on behalf of God, “Let my people go. Set my people free that they may serve me.” The Bible is about freedom! God chose slaves. Why didn’t he choose a free people? He chose slaves to make them his people so that they could experience true freedom. But great problems had to be overcome.

Likewise, the whole New Testament is about freedom. In John 8:32, 36, the Lord Jesus said,

“What is truth?” Pilate the Roman governor asked Jesus this question in John 18:38. He thought he was asking a philosophical question. “Truth is what sets you free,” was the Lord Jesus’ answer back in chapter 8. If the truth doesn’t set you free, it isn’t the truth. How do I know something is true? Just see if it sets you free, then you will know. If you can experience it, you will know that this truth is not just an idea that sets free, but a reality that you can experience. When you look at Christians who are not free, you realize that they don’t really know the truth. That is the whole problem.

 

Freedom from desires and anxieties

Are you free? I come back to this question, and I will come back to it again, throughout this message. Are you free? Or are you governed by nameless problems within that you hardly even know how to describe? There’s something you want and you cannot have. You have this and you want that. You are constantly pulled in different directions by various desires that enslave you. You don’t know which way you are going. You’re longing for something all the time, and yet you don’t know exactly what it is. Then you thought you have it, only to be still yearning for something. There is always a sense of something missing.

Some people spend all their lives looking for this and that. First, you’re looking for good results in your exams. When your results were not too bad, you thought, “Once I get a degree, I’ll be happy.” No, when you got a degree, you weren’t happy. What do you need after a degree? You need a job, so you go job-hunting, and it’s so hard to find one. I knew one poor fellow in Canada who was looking for a job for two years. He had a degree in chemical engineering and he thought, “I have a degree so I should get a job.” No one wanted him. So he thought, “This is ridiculous! I know what, I’m going to make myself more marketable.” So he got an MBA. With a B.Sc., MBA, behind his name, surely employers would want to grab him, and yet no one wanted him. He told me he wrote over one hundred letters of application, and was totally frustrated when he could not find a job for two years in Canada. Finally, he left Canada in frustration, and went job-hunting in the United States. Eventually, someone kindly decided to employ him before he cracked up completely.

You would think, “If I go on from a Masters to a Ph.D., I won’t be doing too badly.” The telephone company in Montreal put out a job advertisement, and the minimum qualification for the applicant was Ph.D. If you think, “Ah! I’ve got one!” And you walk in saying, “Here I am, the Ph.D. you’re looking for!” They would look at you and say, “No.” Do you know how many people applied for one Ph.D. job? Over 110 Ph.D.’s applied! After the post was filled, the other 109 were still left to look around for a job.

In the Montreal church, we have met people with Ph. D.’s in physics, who were cooking in Chinese restaurants, because they could not find any job in the field of physics. There are too many physicists. You’d think, “I’ve spent all my years studying and studying, researching and researching. I’ve finally got a Ph.D., and look at this beautiful certificate on the wall! It’s genuine! It’s honest! I am a Ph.D.! Look, look, look!” Unfortunately, you might discover that you have to cook in a restaurant kitchen! You would think, “I didn’t study cooking!” But either you take the job, or starve, or go on social welfare whichever you prefer. That’s how it is. There’s always some­thing missing. Oh! Life doesn’t seem to be exactly what we had hoped for.

When you get a job, you will think, what can I go on to? If I could get more money, I would buy myself a nice house. So you own a house. Now are you satisfied? No, the house is not bad, but you’d like it to be a little bit bigger. Do you want another house? Do you want to add an extension? What do you want actually? Or you decide to keep the house and buy a car. So you get a car which is a nice model. Then you look at the neighbor’s car and think, “That one looks better than mine. I’ll get another one.” So you have two cars, three cars, four cars, how many cars can you drive anyway? People are never satisfied. In Canada, there are houses with three garages beneath the living area. What will finally satisfy your emptiness within? We don’t know what we are looking for.

Those Christians in China I talked about had nothing whatever. Not even the clothes that they were wearing could be claimed to be their own, because prison clothes belong to the government. And yet, they have freedom, peace, joy. Some of the happiest, freest people I have seen are the poorest people in the world.

Among my friends are some multi-multi-millionaires. They are rich and very unhappy. I talked to the wife of one recently, and she said, “If only we didn’t have these countless properties which are sinking us down!” They can’t enjoy a little bit of married life together. In fact, they haven’t got time for anything because they are both so busy looking after countless properties all over the world. Their proper­ties may be worth millions and millions, but they are some of the unhappiest people in the world. You will discover this if you meet them. Does money buy you freedom? No way! If money could buy freedom, they would be the happiest people, but they are not. Their minds are preoccupied with their properties from morning to night: This one must be sold, that one must be bought, the other one must be rented. Where is their freedom? Their properties are running their lives.

Do you experience freedom? And to what extent? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jo. 14:6). What is truth? Remember, the Lord Jesus said truth is what sets you free (cf. Jo. 8:32). Do you know the truth? Is Christianity the truth? Not unless it sets you free. Let’s be very plain about this. Anything that brings you into bondage is not the truth, as far as Scripture is concerned. Jesus is the truth because he teaches and lives out the truth of God’s righteousness, so that when we measure our spiritual condition against him, and are willing to confess the truth of our sins, God will set us free from the guilt and the power of sin. Have you experienced God’s liberating power through Jesus?

 

A person who is no longer afraid of death begins to experience true freedom

What is the resurrection? Resurrection is freedom. Freedom from what? From what binds most powerfully, namely death. How can we be free when confronted with the inevitability of death? Where would there be possible freedom? Do you know that human life is governed by one thing: the reality of death? The potency of the fear of death is already apparent to us here and now, not just at the end of our lives. How do we know this? By simply reading about occurrences of robberies in newspapers. A person holds a gun at you and says, “Hand over your money, watch, diamond ring, whatever!” He is using the fear of death to control you. If you are not afraid to be shot dead, why should you worry? He knows you are afraid of death, so when he points a gun at you, he has control over you, and gets whatever he wants from you. Fear of death controls us. The terrorists do this on a larger scale. “I’ve put a bomb on the plane. Give me two million dollars or five million dollars for ransom, or I’ll blow this plane out of the sky!” Terrorists hold people to ransom by the fear of death – the fear of other people’s death and ours. The fear of death governs our entire life.

Why do we work at all? Because we need to earn money. Why do we need money? Because we need food. Why do you need food? Because I will die if I don’t eat. I don’t want to die. Exactly! We need food so we must work to have income. The fear of death controls us. If we were unafraid of death, we would not be anxious about going hungry. Have you lived in hunger before? Have you ever experienced hunger pangs that feel like a sharp knife piercing your stomach? I certainly have. With the constant stabbing of hunger in the stomach, you know that your life is now at stake. And in those moments, can you truly say you have no fear? It’s easy to be brave until you actually feel it. As you have never experienced the intense pangs of hunger, you cannot fully comprehend the sensation of being completely satisfied either.

The majority of people live in a condition where they experience neither freedom nor the absence of freedom. We exist in a state of ambiguity, which is the most undesirable situation. You are neither entirely free nor completely devoid of freedom, leaving you uncertain about your status. This is the tragic reality that we face.

Human beings engage in work primarily because they are driven by the need to survive, specifically the need for food. The pursuit of food gives rise to an entire industry encompassing food production, processing, agriculture, fisheries and so forth. All these facets are connected to the provision of food, which enables us to live and not die.

Why do you study so hard? It’s so that you can earn more because you don’t just want to have enough to get by with buying food and basic necessities, but also be able to enjoy a bit.

Why do you need to see a doctor? What is medicine for? Doesn’t pain frighten us? Who needs to worry about cancer, about AIDS? Who would need medical treatment if one were not fearful of death? It’s because all these diseases threaten us with death, and the fear of death overshadows us all the time. How can we be free? With disease, the possibility of death, anxiety that threatens us all the time, a vast amount of money is poured into research to overcome death. When some people get a headache, a cold or the flu, they rush to the doctor as though the doctor can rid them of the illness with some magic tablets. What is this anxiety or phobia about? The fear of death ultimately lurks behind all these anxieties and behaviors.

What has housing to do with death? If you slept outside every day, and the weather got cold, you might freeze to death. Housing is necessary to protect our lives, health and harm by other people. It’s all about surviving death. Everything has to do with death.

Why do we need transportation? We mainly need it to travel to the place of work that helps us earn the money we need for survival.

The shadow of death casts its control over mankind long before he ever gets to the grave. That is why we read in Hebrews 2:14-15 [NRS], that Jesus died to

A person who is no longer afraid of death begins to experience true freedom.

 

I overcame the fear death to fight the wrong battle of liberation

It’s easy to say, “Oh, I’m not afraid of death!” When I was a non-Christian, I wanted to study military science to set China free with the force of arms, and build a new nation. I had grand ambitions, but I got beaten to the game by Mao Ze Dong, who had exactly the same idea, and had the advantage of being quite a lot older than I was. If Mao Ze Dong had not got there first, I might have been doing the same thing, because that was exactly my plan, to build an army and set China free. I thank God that he got there ahead of me, otherwise I would be fighting the wrong battle of liberation.

I was committed to a military life, and I believed, as Mao Ze Dong said, “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” When you have an army behind you, people will listen. Otherwise you can have the loftiest aspirations but nobody cares. So I disciplined myself in that direction. Of course, among all these plans, I learned to overcome any fear of death within myself. I made myself go to the British Council to watch films on surgery, to really look at death and suffering in particular. I didn’t like the sight of blood, and had to toughen myself saying, “Come on, be a man! Look at this red stuff! If you can’t, what’s the use of talking about having no fear of death? Of course, you fear death. Why is pain and blood so frightening to you?” So I sat there, grit my teeth and watched the operations. Sometimes it looked so terrible I wanted to turn away, but I said, “Come on, we must overcome!” I’ve heard of medical students who saw an operation for the first time, and passed out! So I believed I had dealt with this.

 

A lump in my armpit for 5 years

Now I want to share with you my recent experience. One day about five years ago, I noticed a lump under my arm. I felt it but there was no pain. I also knew enough anatomy to know something about lymph glands. And I thought to myself, “What is this lump I’ve got? It doesn’t look very good.” The question was: What am I going to do?

I remembered that my father too, had developed a lump on the back of his neck. The doctor discovered it in a routine physical checkup and said, “What is this lump?” My father, who was feeling fine said, “Do I have a lump? I wasn’t even aware of it.” Then the doctor said, “I’ve got to look into this.” He decided to have a biopsy done, and my father was dead within two months. I don’t want to go into the details of this, but as I read some of the report, it sounded to me like the procedure was not done in such a way as to prevent the cells within the lump from leaking into the blood stream, although it was said to have been done by a top surgeon. Cancer was all over him, and he was dead within two months after the biopsy.

I immediately thought about that when I saw the lump in my armpit and thought, “You say you’re not afraid to die, right? Now look at the reality. It looks like cancer might be staring you in the face. After all, your dad had it too, right?” I thought, “What shall I do? Here’s the test.”

God turned his search light into my heart to see whether or not I was really afraid to die. I just waited on him, and took no action on my own. One year passed, two years passed, three years passed, and all that mainly happened was that the lump got bigger. Actually, by the time I came to Australia three years ago, the lump had already grown much larger, but I said nothing. Initially, I said nothing either to my wife, Helen, because knowing that she used to be a nurse, all the alarm bells would be going off if she heard about a lump in the armpit. I thought, “I’m not going to worry her. I won’t say anything.” But later on, as a couple of years passed, and the lump was getting bigger, I thought it was not very fair not to let her know. So I mentioned it to her saying, “I have a lump,” and I thought she was really going to panic. She looked and said, “Wow! It’s quite big!” That was the only comment she made. But she knew me well enough, that I would just wait on God for instructions. I wasn’t going to rush.

Then I decided I would ask a few friends who are well-qualified specialists some questions. I didn’t want to say I had a lump. I just said, “What would you do in the case of someone who has a lump under the armpit?” Of course, the usual reply was, “We would do a biopsy.” And I said, “What about the procedure? How would you ensure that in the process of the biopsy, the cancerous cells might not accidentally be allowed to get into the blood stream?” They said, “There are strict procedures to avoid this.” A lot must have improved since my father had that operation thirty years ago. I’m sure they have learned a few lessons since that time.

 

Am I controlled by fear of death or by God?

Even so, I just wanted to say, “Lord, what do you want to do?” I wasn’t going to be panicky in any way. I wanted to look into my heart and ask myself, “Do you fear death or not? Now we are not talking theory. You have a tumor in your body. You’re looking at the reality of death.” I looked at my heart, and I noticed there was a little discomfort sometimes. How much time do I have left? And it kept getting bigger to the size of a small egg, and sometimes I felt dis­comfort when it was pressing on something. I wondered if this was going to affect my movement. I still waited, and five years went by. I’m sure many of my medical friends would say, “Foolish guy! You’re really playing with death!” Indeed! But my life is God’s. Do I panic? No, I wanted to be sure that I was fully free from the fear of death, where I could look at the situation in perfect calmness. I will do what God would have me do. When he says, “Go,” I will go for medical help.

Last year, about this time, it suddenly became very, very painful. First, there was a little bit of pain, and then it became intensely painful. It was so painful I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought, “This is it. I’ve left it too long. I’ve had it now. My days are over. It’s time to say goodbye to everyone.” It was getting red and extremely painful, and I thought, “Shall I go to see the doctor? I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to rush me off to the hospital and cut out the tumor.” Then I said, “No, Lord, I’m still waiting for instructions. Unless I’m deaf spiritually, I haven’t heard any instructions from you yet to get it operated on.”

Romans 8:14 says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God.” What leads us? What are we controlled by? What determines our lives? Our fears, anxieties, or God? I said, “Lord, I’m listening. This pain is getting hard to endure. What do you want me to do? Rush to the hospital? I’m waiting for instructions.” There was no word from him. Not a word. I waited. No sound.

On the second night, the pain was simply terrible! I couldn’t sleep because the pain was so bad. I said, “God, I’m still listening.” There were no instructions. If you have read my testimony, you will know that I’m used to listening for instructions from God. When he says something, I will do it. Since I belong to him, I’m not at liberty to do what I want. I certainly can do what I want, but I will pay the price for it. I don’t want to do what I want in my limited knowledge of things about life and reality. I want to know what he wants me to do. So I waited. No instruction. I thought, “How many more days can I endure all this pain?”

I’m sure by now my medical friends will say, “This guy is completely crazy! He’s a mad man! If you don’t fear death, it doesn’t mean that you have to run into the arms of death. What’s wrong with you?” If I didn’t know my God, then I was really crazy. But I know my God. I wanted to wait for his instruction. When I couldn’t sleep with the pain the second night. I said, “Lord, have you got instruction for me yet? Am I free from the fear of death by now? I think by your grace, I can say so.” In the past, I just said to myself that I didn’t fear death, but now I have faced five years of testing, and five years is a long time. It was the final level of test with this pain. This pain marked the ultimate level of testing. I refused to panic. I just looked to God.

By the evening of the third day, I sat there quietly in the living room and suddenly, I felt something strange, my armpit felt very wet. I thought, “What’s going on?” When I touched my armpit, it was wet. What happened was that tumor began to discharge, and my T-shirt was soaking wet in the armpit area. Needless to say, there was a very strange odor that I had not smelled before. So I took off my T-shirt and it was full of pus. Oh! It was discharging! And do you know what? This went on for a month! Can you believe that? How much pus can there be in something the size of a small egg? Certainly not enough to be discharging for a whole month! In the first few days, there was heavy discharge, and gradually, it slowed down. It was almost one month later before it finally stopped, and by that time, there was still some white substance coming out. Finally, the whole lump disap­peared. It seemed that all the toxins in the body were being discharged through that lump, because I cannot imagine how it would be possible to have so much coming out of one lump. It must be that all the impurities in the body were coming out. This is truly remarkable! Up to even a few weeks ago, you could still see a little mark in the place where the lump was. Even that has almost disappeared now. I let Helen look at it, and virtually nothing is visible anymore. Everything has disappeared.

Walking with God is exciting, but it’s not easy. Five years of testing. Am I free from the fear of death? Does death still exercise control over me? If I can be free from the fear of death because of his power of resurrection, I will begin to know true freedom. Nothing worries me anymore. I had this gun pointed at me, as if ready to shoot, for a period of five years. I could have given in, and rushed off to get some quick solution to this. Then I would not have experienced the wonderful dealings of God!

 

“For freedom Christ has set you free” -- Don’t let anything control you

Now I want to draw your attention to the words in Galatians 5:1. This is truly a powerful verse in the Word of God:

Think on these words, “For freedom Christ has set you free.” Paul was saying to the Galatians, “Christ set you free not so that you can go back into some other form of slavery. Christ set you free so that you can stay free, so that you can really enjoy the reality of freedom – freedom from the fear of death, and freedom from every other compelling factor.” Remember: This is what the Christian life is about. Any person who has not experienced this kind of freedom doesn’t know what it is to be a Christian. I make a categorical statement: You don’t know what it is to be a Christian if you have not experienced the reality of that freedom. So important is this freedom that Paul was going to make sure that nothing, whether good or bad gained any control over his life.

Look at his words in 1 Corinthians 6:12. Here is a passage of the greatest importance, but seldom appreciated. A Christian is free, so that “all things are lawful to me, but not all things are beneficial.” You may be free to eat all the chocolates in the world, but it is not beneficial to you. Therefore, to enjoy that freedom—if you call it “enjoyment”—is pointless. All things are lawful to me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Those are the words of a true Christian.

What are you dominated by? What controls your life? Paul says, “I will not be dominated by anything, whether good or bad.” One should definitely not be dominated by bad, but good things can dominate your life too. Then they become bad because they control you. You may enjoy a particular hobby. The hobby is not bad, but if it dominates your life, you become a slave to it. It exercises a controlling, driving force on you. I stress again, Paul says, “I will not be mastered by anything.” I would like you to look into your life, whether you enjoy the totality of freedom, or whether you are mastered by certain things which you say are good. They may be, but they control you. If you don’t make sure that a thing, whether good or bad, does not dominate you, you will eventually come under ever deeper levels of slavery.

 

Bondage to the love of money

I saw in the news the other day, an English woman was arrested in Bangkok for smuggling drugs into Thailand, for which the penalty in Thailand is death. When she was finally caught with a certain amount of these drugs, and sentenced to death penalty, the news camera focused on her and showed the expression on her face. Sometimes, one look is worth more than a thousand words. She was in agony, saying, “Dad, Mom, I am so sorry! I did such a stupid thing!” I can’t act it out because I don’t know the feeling within her. But she was facing death for bringing in a small amount of drugs, knowing that there was a possibility that the death penalty would catch up with her. The British agency responsible for drug enforcement had alerted the Thai police about her involvement in smuggling drugs into Thailand. The police force from her own country proactively reported her to the Thai police, aiming to use her case as a deterrent for others. She would pay with her life for her bondage to drugs, bondage to the desire for quick money, and bondage to getting rich. Just one attempt to bring in this little bit of drugs, and it is possible that she could evade detection and increase her wealth by one or two hundred thousand dollars, or perhaps even more. What a temp­tation quick riches are! The bondage to the love of money. And what was the result? Getting caught and now facing death. The fear of death was written all over her, and adding to that, a profound sense of remorse for the sheer foolishness of her actions. Why not be poorer by a hundred thousand dollars and live in peace, rather than face death in a Thai prison? What is the point? One kind of bondage led to another kind, into the reality of death.

 

Aim to experience God’s power of freedom that Christ died to give us

As we close, I would like you to grasp again, what Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set you free.” I would like us to experience God’s liberating power brought to reality by Christ. How shall we do it? Rather than endlessly talking about freedom, let us actively pursue and engage in the actual experience of being free. Let’s see what that is in our lives every day. Let us concentrate on one thing in life so that we accomplish it. Some people want to do this and that, and in the end, they accomplish absolutely nothing. Set one goal and work towards achieving it. That is the secret of life. Attempting to do numerous things and ultimately accomplishing nothing is foolish­ness. What is the one objective? Try to experience one thing: What is freedom in Christ? That is most worthwhile.

All religions are concerned about that, but not all religions can attain it. What did Buddha want to achieve? He wanted to find freedom from death and poverty, the miseries in this life, by giving up everything. And in his so-called “illumination,” he realized that the path to freedom was the surrender of everything, the turning of one’s back on everything. When one has no more desires or yearn­ings, one is free from every form of anxiety, free from this world and the next, so that one comes to the freedom of nothingness, which he called nirvana. What is the whole religion about? The longing for freedom. But do the Buddhists experience freedom? Do they? Before we ask that, what about Christians?

The path to freedom along the way that Buddha talked about is a very difficult path, a path requiring discipline and concentration and so forth, and few people can attain to it. This kind of freedom is a freedom of “self-attainment,” of “self-realization,” which is also the term used in Hinduism. To be free from every sin, every problem, every fear is also the goal of Hinduism. To do that, there is the disci­pline of contemplation, sitting in a lotus position for endless hours, focusing, concentrating, disciplining the mind. Very few, except the so-called “holy men,” have been able to attain this. Since attaining freedom through meditation is too difficult to achieve, the average Indian must satisfy himself with going into the River Ganges for a dip at least once in his life-time. Of course, we think, “You must be kidding!” But that’s the way it is. Some people hope that they can achieve freedom from sin in this fashion.

We were in India—and I am very concerned about bringing the gospel to India—in the holiest city by the River Ganges called Varanasi. It is one of the most ancient cities in the world. I sat by the riverbank to watch the people who have come from all over India. They must make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi once in their life-time. And what do they do when they get there? They immerse themselves in that river with all their clothes on to wash away their sins. And I’m sorry to say, they go into that very filthy river. I looked at that water and felt, “Oh, to get into that water is something in itself!” How can that dirty river wash away anyone’s sins? How can sins be washed away by the holy Ganges? Well, the buffaloes must be very holy, because they are also immersing them­selves right next to the people. Right beside the water where the buffaloes are, individuals are washing themselves of their sins undisturbed. There are also others who are taking a bath having soap suds all over their bodies.

On top of that, they are pouring the ashes of the dead who have just been cremated, as well as throwing corpses into this river! By Hindu laws, some people are burned but others like lepers and so on, must not be burned for reasons which are mysterious. I would have thought lepers should be burned. But no, these corpses are wrapped in cloth with a sinker rock tied around them and thrown into the river. If the body still floats up, you will have a white-sheet-wrapped body floating on the River Ganges. We actually saw a corpse floating by us when we were in the boat!

Every religion speaks of freedom because there is the need for freedom in the human heart, but can we experience which one is true? We must experience it. A Christian who does not experience freedom in Christ is a Christian only in the head. He has not experi­enced it in the reality of the heart. He doesn’t know whether God is real or not. Freedom is something that can be attained only by un­speakable power because we are kept in bondage by the tremendous powers of sin and death. What kind of power can overcome these? Only the power of God through Christ. But those are words until you experience it. What does Romans 8:2 say?

These are also words until you experience it.

 

Experience freedom by constant discipline and practice

To conclude, I would like to leave you with a program about how we can experience this freedom. We must do this in a systematic, methodical way. Everything that is worth achieving can only be achieved in a methodical, systematic, disciplined way. If you are an athlete, you know you don’t become the best in the world just by fumbling around. You must work methodically, improving your skill day by day by day.

I’ve been an athlete so I know what it is to be an athlete. In my particular sport, baseball, I was at least one of the best pitchers in China. If you watch baseball pitching in North America, you will know what it is. You are supposed to throw a ball into a space of a length measuring from your shoulder to your knee, and the width is only the width of your baseball bat. The batter has to hit that ball only if it comes within that space. Now imagine standing at a distance and throwing the ball exactly into that little slot! The catcher gives you a signal to suggest that you pitch to the upper or lower left or right corners, and what kind of shot. So it’s not just throwing the ball within that space, but you throw the ball so that it curves around and then hits that spot. That takes a lot of skill. There is also the question of how fast the ball should be. Should it be a speed ball, a soft one, or a ball that changes direction? It takes a tremendous amount of training because it involves a lot of skill. You train day by day, rain or shine, until one day, you achieve the standard that ranks you as the best. I once threw a ball that astonished even me. The ball went straight towards the plate and then turned around and went sideways. Even I looked at it in astonishment. I expected it to be a curve, but I didn’t expect it to turn almost at a ninety-degree angle in the air. I thought it was impossible, but it did! Such was the force of the spin that it actually slowed down the ball and turned it in the air and moved it sideways.

The Christian life too, is a matter of systematic training, where in the beginning you try and you fail. When I first tried pitching, I watched my friend and marveled at the speed and accuracy of his shot. When I tried to imitate his action, I was aching all over. My arm, back, whole body was aching, and I thought, “How does he throw this ball? How does he achieve this result?” And I practiced and practiced for months and years, until finally, I actually threw the ball better than he did. Eventually, he became the second pitcher in our team. So it was constant discipline and practice. That is what the Christian life is like.

Paul loves to use the picture of the athlete, so I wonder if he had been some kind of athlete. In 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, he speaks of disciplining himself, and uses the picture of the “athlete,” derived from Greek origins, to describe the Christian life as a process of self-discipline that ultimately leads to winning the crown as the prize.

In what way should you live so as to attain freedom by the power of the Spirit? Where the Spirit is, there is freedom (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17), but it doesn’t mean that you sit back doing nothing. We must co-work with God’s Spirit. We have to do our part to discipline ourselves, and God has the power to accomplish it.

 

The Training Program of Liberation

Every evening, record what controlled you and why

I will suggest this training program. At the close of every day in the evening, we review all that we have done this day, and we see where we failed in respect to the matter of freedom. For example, you lost your temper a little bit, or you got angry, or you said some harsh words to someone. Or even if you didn’t express it, anger mastered you, you were the slave of anger during that time. Or it was irritability, or whatever it was that got control of you. You review that and say, “Yes, I lost control of myself during that time, and now I ask you to give me the victory over this. But first, I have to under­stand what caused me to lose control.” In this way, you are dealing with your weaknesses systematically, methodically like an athlete.

I remember when I first set up the ball team in Shanghai, we went out to play against other teams. Sometimes we were so badly beaten that we came back with our heads hanging down. I remember once, we went out to play against a school called St. Francis, and they beat us to a score of 32 or 36 to 4 or 5, I lost count in the end. I don’t know what we managed to score, but we were really like a dog with its tail between its legs. We were so trounced in that game we didn’t know where to put our face! So I got our very demoralized team together and said, “Look, we took a bad beating today, but the secret of victory is to learn why we were beaten. I would like to hear from all of you what you think were our weaknesses and why we were beaten.” After naming our weaknesses namely, co-operation was poor, skills and so forth, I said, “All right. We are going to do this to overcome this weakness, and we will implement another program to deal with that weakness.” Two years later, we played the same team, and we beat them so badly that they were stunned! They asked, “What happened to this team?”

There is the secret. In everything, there must be a program, a plan of action to gain the victory. The Christian life is no different. The way we conclude a day is by looking at all that happened during the day and say, “Yes, I was beaten here. I was dominated by this feeling of envy or jealousy or pride, whatever it was, and now I’m going to get to the root of it in this way by the power of God.”

We will call this “The Program of Liberation,” which liberates us from every inner bondage. Can you imagine what kind of church we would have? I get excited just to think about it! A church that implements this kind of program day after day, will experience freedom. Each one will experience more and more inner freedom, the freedom that nothing can affect, no prison walls can threaten, no illness can crush. Oh, that is something! Your personal quality as a Christian will keep improving day by day by day.

 

Next morning, review errors and find solutions

When we get up the next morning, we will review the errors we made the previous day, and how we are going to deal with them in the new day, so as not to repeat them. Then we will go out into the new day ready to face the challenge, to experience freedom. One year of this morning and evening of self-evaluation and solution-seeking, can you imagine what you will feel like? You will have the feeling of liberty, the feeling of triumph! You have control of the events that happen in your life. You have control because “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17).

Do you know what one of the gifts of the Spirit is? The last element mentioned in the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit is self-control. It is mentioned last not because it is the least important, but because, in a way, it sums up the whole fruit. This is Christianity in action! It’s the dynamic reality of a Christianity that implements the freedom that Christ has won for us on the cross! Are you prepared to try to implement this freedom? If you are, you are in for a very exciting program, “The Program of Liberation,” as I called it.

To help you, you can even keep a “Journal of Liberation,” if you like to call it that. You record what and why you failed, and write down the proposed ways to overcome them the next time. So one year later, you can read your “Journal of Liberation” to see what things you were dealing with before, and how far you have progressed since then.

 

You must overcome your “slave mentality”

1. Stop grumbling

A final, brief comment on this is: You must understand two things. First, we must understand that this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Why? First of all, we all have a “slave mentality.” Did you realize that? We all have a “slave mentality” because we have been used to live in lack of freedom all our lives. As I said, we have lived in the grey zone. Sometimes, we think we are free when we are not. We don’t really know where we are. The fact is we have a “slave mentality.” That was the problem with the Israelites. When they came out of Egypt, they had been slaves for 400 years. What happens when you have been a slave that long? You think and behave like a slave, because you don’t know how to behave otherwise. This is what destroyed them in the wilderness.

What is the character of a slave? I could keep on analyzing this, but I will limit myself to one main thing that ruined them in the wilderness: the slave always grumbles and murmurs. Why? He has spent all his life grumbling as a slave. It is always: “My taskmasters are bad. These Egyptians are this and that.” It is always passing the blame, always murmuring and grumbling. Are you one of these grumbling, negative, murmuring types of people? When you talk to people, you will soon see that they have a “slave mentality.” They don’t know what freedom is. That is why Paul speaks of the “renewing of the mind,” which means a complete change of the way of thinking. We have to renew the mind because we have become accustomed to slavery and don’t know freedom at all.

We have the means to change. In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 Paul says,

We have God’s power to pull down everything that resists God in our lives when we imitate Christ. But slaves are not used to power, not used to being victorious. So we must get over the “slave mentality” although that is difficult. If we fail, the whole liberation program will fail. The Israelites became so used to being slaves that they were even willing to return when the going got tough in the desert. So little did they understand the value of freedom that they wanted to turn back. Perhaps you don’t understand the value of freedom either. They grumbled: “What’s the point of fighting? Why did we come out of Egypt in the first place? Back in Egypt we had onions, leeks and garlic. We just want to return to these.” So grumbling is the first thing in the “slave mentality” that must be overcome.

 

2. Learn to fight for your freedom

The second thing is that we must learn to fight for the liberation. Even though it is God who gives us the victory, we must learn to engage in combat.

As slaves, the Israelites never had swords before, but now the Levites were to get swords. That is why you read in Exodus 32:27, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you.’” Moses knew that God was going to do the fighting, but the Levites had to learn to get a sword first.

This was the point the Lord Jesus made to the disciples in Luke 22:36b, but they also did not understand. He said, “And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.” He was saying, “The time will come when you will get a sword for yourself.” He wasn’t talking about literal swords of course, but about the fighting spirit to fight for liberation. Most people find that verse very difficult to understand, but you understand it only in the context of the battle for freedom.

 

Must choose: Keep your slave mentality or follow the Program of Liberation

We must close here. I hope that you will grasp the whole point: “For freedom, Christ has set us free.” In front of each one of us, there is the choice: keep your “slave mentality,” stay where you are, don’t move, and when I see you next time, you will be exactly where you are today, or perhaps even deeper into slavery. Alternatively, follow the Program of Liberation as outlined for us. Advance in it from day to day, and you will experience the reality of freedom within, and much more, you will experience the reality of God. Your life will take on a totally different quality than what it is today. In this way, the whole church will become a light shining in the darkness, since every member now begins to be freed from the darkness of bondage and shines like light. What an exciting program the Biblical Christian life puts before us! Let us close in prayer.

 

Closing prayer

Precious God, we thank you that you have given us a glorious calling, and I do pray for each dear one here, that your Word and call to freedom may be heard and responded to; that each person, like the Israelites of old will be ready to move out of the bondage of Egypt, of the world, and go forth even if it means going through the desert; that there will be the readiness to enter into the Land of Promise, the land of freedom, the land of abundance.

O God, grant that your people will hear your call and not just treat it as something to be listened to, but something to be acted upon and experienced for themselves. Hear our plea. Glorify your great name. Amen.