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Sermonjanuary292012
Hillsborough Reformed Church at Millstone
“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 passages like 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 people in 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?
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
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“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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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