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Hey there. And welcome to the City Lights. Podcast City Lights is a church located in the northwestern part of Richmond, Virginia. For more information about city lights you can visit us at we are city lights now. Enjoy today's message. Welcome to City Lights online. My name is Jacob, and I'm on the team here. Last week we kicked off a Siri's called my corn team. Tiger King, is this really life life? And I think a lot of us have been asking that question. Is this real life right now? So, hey, if you're taking notes, you can title part two of this series Finally, Free man. Doesn't that sound give freedom? Sounds pretty good right now. Hey, do this real fast. Drop of comment below at what you are looking forward to doing the most once I quarantine is over. Okay, so for me, it's probably doing church in person. Yes, I miss you guys. And the second thing is going on a family vacation. That would be awesome. All right, now, today I want to talk about a word that may not make the most sense in our quarantine situation, but I truly believe that God wants it for you and that God is in this and that Word is freedom. Freedom. I want it. I want to talk about freedom and I want to encourage some people right now that you are free. Hey, you are free from that anger problem. When you are free from that shame, you are free from that addiction. You are free from that depression. You are free from that pain. Jesus says it like this. He says. Who the sun sets free is free in deed. And I want you to know that God has freedom for your life and it's not a little bit of freedom. It's not partial freedom. Jesus says. You can have freedom through and through. Check this out. Our theme verse for the syriza's found in John 10 10. It says the thief comes on Lee to still kill and destroy. But Jesus says, I have come that that you may have life and have it to the full that you may have life overflow. A full life is a free life with Jesus, but But there's always that big button gets in the way, man. Always a big but often times life does not feel free. Write all the times Life does not feel free. There are temptations. There are people that we interact with it. They say one more slick thing to you. You wanna uppercut them. You know, there's a lot of things going on. See, I think the hardest part about freedom is choosing to be free. See, the hardest part about freedom is choosing to be free. So check this out. Prior Teoh Quarantine. Aaron and I would take our daughter Kingsley to the elementary school playground right across the street from Morehouse. Okay, so now Kingsley loves this playground because there's this underwater like painting thing that with fish and wells and sharks. And and she loves it. And Kingsley always wants to go to elementary school of the sea. They see the pain is especially the shark. She thinks his baby sharks says she's always like babies. I just go see baby shark. So we always wanted take her there, and she also loves this part because the slides that has a lot of great slides for her that aren't too big. You know that you can you can go on so pretty much before quarantine, pretty much every day, rain or shine. Kingsley will want to go see baby shark and go down the side like, no matter what this was this was her go to is what she wanted to do, which wasn't a problem. You know, we enjoy doing that. However, now that there is a quarantine going down, the public parks are off limits, you know, they're not. They're not very safe to go to at this moment. So check this out. Not along with a couple weeks ago, Kingsley and I will go on a walk while Aaron was working from home and she wanted to go see baby shot. So I said, I we could do that. So we go to the school, we go to the area that has all the pain is and we look at all the pains of the shark in the big Well, that she's the way she cause it. And in my head, I know she's gonna want to go on the slide. But I also know that we can't go on these slides right now, so I already know a dilemma was about toe happen. It was about to go down. So as we're walking. Looking at all the paintings of the fishy fishies on that stuff, I say two kings as a Kingsley. Hey, let's go back home and weaken Jump on our trampoline in our backyard. Let's go back home, Kings. It looks at me and then she dashes off to the slides and she's fast, man telling you, she's, She's fast, she's she's gonna be a track star. Maybe she may already be okay anyway, so she so she dashes off to the slides and oh my gosh, I go. I go chasing out there and before she gets on the slides and like Kingsley, hear me out here. You know there's a quarantine going down right now. There's something's happening. We can't get on the slides at this moment. And then she says, Slide slide. Best law. She cares about slide slide like No, no, no, we can't. We can't get on the slide. Then she started to cry. She's having this big melt. Now there's these people working out looking at me and like, Gosh, you know, I think they're looking at me and make him a kid cry. So that tried to reason with their which sometimes I do that too much. Try to reason with With a kid that's not two years old yet, baby, that's a reason work. And I said, Hey, look, look, check this out. The slides can go. But we got a trampoline back at our house with a ball pit, and it's so much better than these slides right now. And then she looks at me and says so I still I don't like Oh, okay. This is not working out. So then I like Look at this government sign right here. Kingsley, look at this. This is an official government sign that says Stay off the playgrounds. We can't do it. And then she looks at me against a side. Okay, So finally, finally, I convinced her that we can't go on the slide, but we can go home and get a Popsicle. Come on, get a Popsicle and going. And I go on her champa lean and and play there. But, you know, I think this is a good picture of how God feels about us. Sometimes. Like Kingsley, I think we see something in we think Oh, this is what I what I have to have. I need this I can nothing else but this. And I think God is more like, Hey, you think that's what you really want? But if you follow me back home, I have something so much better for you. See, that leads to my starting point today. My starting point is this. I finally want to be free. That's our starting point. That's wherever you are. I finally want to be free, and you know the thing that you want to have. Freedom for you. Maybe it's a bad habit. Maybe it's a judgment of view of the world. Maybe it's a generational pattern that she's seen in your parents and your grandparents, and you aren't even seeing those things in yourself and you don't want it. Maybe it's an unkind spirit are self destructive way of living you. But you're at a place in your statement. I just I finally want to be free. I'm done. What? What? Dylan, What this same thing over and over. Which leads me to my destination point. My destination point today is this. Freedom is a daily walk back to grace. Freedom is a daily walk. Back to Grace is a walk back home. It's a walk back home. It's a it's a it's a walk of listening to your father. And even though you want to go on the slide hate the slide is off limit. So but I got something better for you. Now, this is gonna make a little bit more since I would be dive into our our Bible story today. Check this out in Luke 17. Start in verse 11. It says this now on his way. This is Jesus. Now, on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. Now I want to pause for a second there. I want to pause for a second. I want to highlight this because we're reading the Gospels and reading the four Gospels and reading the New Testament. Everything preaches, everything preaches. Okay, So So God is trying to tell us something in these words, that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. And Luke, the gospel writer, highlights how Jesus in his team traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. Now, if you are a Jew in Jesus and his followers are Jewish, the highway takes you the highway that takes you to gout. The to Jerusalem is the Galilee is This is go is going that way. It's not going anywhere near Samaria. And the reason for this is because Jewish people did not under any circumstances associate with Samaritans years. Then do it. Samaritans were considered half breeds are lower class of people to the to the A good Jewish person. So, so good. If you're a good Jewish person, you would avoid them at any chance. You wouldn't even want to be near them. Yet. We see in this story Jesus and his followers who want Jewish, they take the road that puts them in the middle between Jewish people and Samaritans, which symbolically represents how Jesus came to bring freedom for all people. See, Jesus came to bring freedom for the entire world. Not one set of people. Not this people group, not that people group. And maybe you're listening today and you're thinking to yourself, Man, I'm too messed up for God to love me are I made too many mistakes. I got guy can't give guy can't forgive me or the gods with those kind of people. Guys were that kind of person, and I just want you to know today that Jesus, When Jesus is fall people, he's for you. He's four. He's for you. See, the story continues and it says, as he was going into a village, 10 men who had leprosy met him. Oh, this anger. 10 men who had leprosy met him. He continues to says they stood at a distance. Okay, this is good. They're practising social distance, and this is good. They got the memo. All right. Um, and they caught out in a loud voice. Jesus, master, half pity on us now for this to make even more sense left received was a highly contagious skin disease. And basically what leprosy would do It would eat away at your flesh. It could cause it. It caused this for money in your body and your years. Who knows your face all over? You know, in a sense, it was so contagious. If you got leprosy, you are sent out of your community into quarantine. This was your quarantine, Tiger King? Oh, no. They had that show back then. Maybe they did. But this was the real life life. So no matter what community you came for, you were sent out of it. Not many scholars believe that this village community that Jesus purposefully want near was filled. Check this out was filled with Jewish people and Samaritan people who were now living in one community together because they all had leprosy. See, what we see here is previously enemies, but now they share the same problem and they're in community. And I think this is a good picture of humanity. Actually. See, we may and on and on and are We may try to separate people from race and class and political background and all that. But by the end of the day, everyone, every person, no matter who you are, every person wants to love and be loved me at the core of every person they want to love and be loved. However, we all deal with the same problem and the problem is that the Bible will call sin. See, there's a sin problem and sin is what separates us from God. Now the Hebrew word for sin is pronounced Hatta, which means to go straight to Mr Mark to Mr Goal. Now, this is why Jesus tells us that the law in the profits can be summed up with one commandment. Jesus tells us the reason why like one commandment can solve our problems. Is this taking? So he says this Matthew, 22 says love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with oh your mind C s in our nature to choose the opposite of God. But when we love God with all that we have we begin to hit the mark. When we love God with all that we have, we don't go astray, See? But we were no match for the power saying we didn't have what it took. But that's why we have Jesus. See, See, Jesus doesn't walk around our problems. He isn't Take that He doesn't take the route of round our issues or our mistakes. He's not afraid or ashamed of us, but Jesus directly purposefully goes towards us. He goes towards us so much that he lived the life free clinic, that he died a death we deserve and then rose from the grave three days later. See, Jesus says that sin has no more power over us. Check this out. I love the way that the message Bible puts it in Romans five it says this but Sin Dennett and doesn't have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, Grace wins hands down. All sinking do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life. Ah, life that goes on and on and on. World without end. See, Jesus provides us grace for our sin Problem. See freedom. Check this out. Freedom cries out to Jesus. Daily freedom cries out to Jesus daily. This is what we see in the 10 lepers here. They don't have their social status. They don't have their stuff. They don't have their normal routine. They don't have their normal way of life there, Corentin. And this is real life right now for them. But when Jesus came by, they cried out to him. They cried out to him, And I'm telling you today, in order to experience the freedom that you truly desire the freedom that you truly want, you have to cry out to Jesus. Position yourself to cry out to Jesus and it's a daily decision. Daily decision to cry out to him say That's even why I'm a big fan of Christian counseling, as I'm a big fan of it because most of us make daily decisions and we don't know why we're making those decisions. And then we'll say, Oh, I'm never gonna do that again And then the next day, or for some of us the same day we do the same thing that we said We're never going to do again. See, the reason for that is because we have to make sure that we are positioning our lives to cry out to Jesus. Now I want to make this practical for you. How can you cry out to Jesus? Jesus, Because I don't want you to go to the end of your driveway and start shot one out. Jesus, Jesus, have pity on me. We got enough weird Christians out there we don't need anymore. Okay, but how can you make this practical freedom cries out to Jesus by regularly spending time with God by regularly spending time ago. Say we have a small group that's meeting on Tuesday nights at eight o'clock that is showing you how to write devotionals, how to spend time with God. Join that group. If you if you aren't sure how to spend time with God, are even if you think you're a grand Mpaluku Christian that has all the things figured out. Are you regularly spending time with the Lloyd? If you're not, join us on our group. And the second thing is one thing I like to do is spend at least 15 minutes a day with God and that's praying for five minutes. Read my bio for five minutes. Journal in for five minutes. It's amazing. Just given carbon at that time. The second way freedom cries out to Jesus is setting up pop proper boundaries. And that's what people and with things, you've got to make sure that you're setting up those those boundaries. So here are these 10 guys shouting out Hey, hey, Jesus, Help me! Help me! Jesus! Hope And the response from Jesus at first seems so insensitive. Check is that is what the Scriptures say. Verse 14 says we he saw them. He said, Go show yourselves to the priests. Um go show you. Hey, Jesus! I need how pity happily on me. Help me! Jesus! Hey! Yeah! Go show yourselves to the priests. You like the priest men, but But I asked you Jesus, I I didn't talk to. Don't even know where the pre sat around here. You know, I asked you see, they got they got leprosy. They weren't supposed to be around people. If they went into a public area, they could be stoned to death. Yeah, Jesus says, Go and show yourself to the priest. What happens when it's hard to trust? What God, Let's say I come Committee can maybe reel today. I cannot be real with you today. Right now. We go on play church. Can we be riel? See? See if stepping out in faith was easy. All of us would be stumping. We all be doing the two step around here. But stepping out on faith. Isn't I easy? If freedom was easy, we all will be free. It's not easy is hard. See that depression that you feel that you feel captive to Israel? That fear that you have it is valid. See, the miracle of freedom is just one obedient step away. See the freedom? The freedom that you desire is a miracle as a miracle. That's just one step away is one decision away, and I'm not saying it's an easy decision. I'm actually saying opposite. It's a hard decision. You will have tohave grit. You will have to have passion. But most importantly, it requires you to listen to the voice of God in your life. Jesus says Go, he told him. Go, go show yourselves to the priest C. C. But Jesus also keeping in line with Jewish law by telling them this. See if a person was healed from leprosy. Check this out. Come on. If a person was healed from leprosy, they had to show themselves to a priest. The priest then would evaluate if they were completely healed and after he gave them the check, the okay, then they can reenter society. Now this is what I want you to get. The Hebrew writer tells us this in Hebrews four, it says. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we possess. We re profess for we do not have a high priest who is unable to emphasize with our weaknesses. But we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet he did not sin. Let us then come on, love the sport. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us In our time of need friends there's freedom and approaching God. There's freedom and stepping towards God. There's freedom because he relates to us. He says You can come to him. He says, Bring your whole self to him. Bring bring everything you got Bring your shame Bring your guilt Bring your embarrassment Bring your fear. Bring your bring them Must think that you just made today He said Bring it all to him and come to him with confidence because he has Greece for us Jesus tells his lepers toe walk says it'll go. Friends, Are you gonna go when Jesus tells you to go? Are you gonna walk when Jesus tells you to walk? That thing that you think that you want, you do not really want what you really want is a full life and Jesus. So you gotta go when he tells you to go and check this out. The gospel writer says As they went, they were cleansed. I say went, They were cleanse notice. Jesus hasn't touched them in healed notice. They don't run up to Jesus and follow his feet and they repent. Notice that in this scene that Jesus hills them just because he loves just because he wants freedom for them. And I could just kind of picture this walk to the 10 of them instead of these lepers of walking to the local priest station, wherever that is, and they're thinking to themselves, Man, we must be crazy right now. Walk in about a walker to a public place. I mean, I guess there's 10 of us that we're not breaking the rules of social distance in, I guess, you know, and I can picture them doing this. And as they're walking and one of them, they say, Yep. Um, Jimmy Hey, domain. Yeah, you're here. Your ears back. And then Jimmy's like, What do you mean my Here, Billy, your face is back to normal. Like like imagine was happening on this walk as they're walking to go show themselves to the priest, they begin to be healed. God begins to heal their bodies say I truly believe that with each obedient step that we take, we can take a step towards finding freedom. We confined hell and for our lives we could be healed. But check this part on that. This is the part really want us to get check this part out. Verse 15 were verse 13 says one of them, when he saw he was huge, came back praising God in a lower voice. 10 of them went, but one came back. 10 of them were healed but one came back said I want you to know true freedom. Freedom is found when we daily walk back to grace. See, you may have experienced guy before You may have felt God do something in your life But you kind of kept just going on and not really thinking about it. I want you to know this today You got a position your life to daily. Come back to Jesus. You got a position yourself to daily walk back to Jesus because what he gave you yesterday won't do You got to get a fresh start every single day. See, I love the posture of this man. It says he threw himself at Jesus feet and think them and he Waas Ah, Samaritan. He was an outcast. Yet he fell at Jesus feet and thanked him. Jesus asked them were not all 10 Clyne's Where are the other nine? Has no one We turn to praise God as a praise except this foreigner. Then he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well. I see friends We gotta keep walking back. Teoh Grace, We gotta keep walking An approach God with confidence See and daily Walk back to weaken daily Walk back to Jesus by commented Jesus with a thankful heart No matter the circumstance that you're in Come to Jesus with a heart of things giving you gotta thank you I need you Keep praising God no matter what's going on in your life then rise and go. Rise and go. Don't say stuff. Don't stay down. Don't stay in excuse. Don't stay held captive to that thing that God wants to give you freedom for experience. Freedom daily By walking back to grace. Value hasn't means prayer. God, God! We thank you that you approach us that you came to us, Lord, that you come to us in our broken situation and our fear and in our doubt, and I worries and anxieties and our mistakes. You come to us and you do not offer shame and combination, but you offer love and forgiveness. I even felt right now there's some people who are listening that you need to hear that God is not going to give you a plan B. But God is gonna give you a new plan. A. You may find you messed up so much. And guys of race your purpose, your purpose is not a race classes. I'm gonna give you a new plan A for your life. Now you fight, or some people who are relating to those other nine people who had leprosy where they have felt God and they even seen God move. But they have forgot to regularly come back to Jesus. I think the Holy Spirit is saying that he misses you, that he wants to hear the sound of your voice. Come back whom? Yeah, I need later. Some people have been struggling with addictions and even their addictions have highlighted in this time of quarantine and stress and on easiness and God. All right, now this Pray for freedom wherever you are. You can If this is you, If you feel like you're just struggling, you're struggling. Right now. I know you may be sitting next to you. Ah, family member or whoever. I don't care. I don't care who you said the next to you, if that's you right now, if you feel you to struggling, you having a hard time. You're doing things that you don't want to do. You find yourself back in self destructive behavior. So that's you just want you to put your hands out like you. Like you receiving a gift. I want you to put your hands out. And right now I'm gonna pray a blessing over you, Holy spirit. Common brain healing right now. Bring freedom from that addiction. Bring freedom from that self destructive behavior spraying your holy spirit right now. God, I pray for Hill and in the name of Jesus, we asked form or of you and maybe you listening to us right now. And you don't know this Jesus that I'm talking about. But you want to you if that's you if you want to make a decision that trust Jesus with your life. I'm gonna say a prayer and I want you to repeat it after me. You can say it in your heart. You can say it out loud. I want you to say this prayer with me wherever you are. If you don't make a decision to trust Jesus with your life to say Jesus forgive me from my mistakes. Make me new today. I trust you at my life in Jesus. Name a man. Thanks for checking out the city lights podcast. If you'd like to partner with us financially, you can Goto were city lights dot com slash give or you can text any dollar amount to 84321 Thanks for joining us today.