Not Under The Law But Under Grace

So on our last video, we talked about how to win against sin. But on this video, I'm going to show you how to be, like, really free. Like, how to be free and what freedom means, because it doesn't mean what people think it means. In fact, have you ever thought about this? Freedom can only exist inside of boundaries. And anytime we are free from one thing, we are bound by its opposite. And anytime we are bound by one thing, we're free by its. Free from its opposite. That's what we're going to talk to talk about today. So last week, not last week, but on the video, the last video, the fact that it said in Romans 6:14, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. And most people mistakenly think that means that God doesn't care about the law. But that's not what it means. Like, what it means is grace is. Well, if you think about what grace is, we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich for his sakes, he became poor. That you, through his poverty, might be rich for the wages of sin is death. But the gift, that's grace. That word gift means that word. Grace means gift. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So when we come to Christ and we receive him as our Savior, it doesn't just change our destination. It doesn't just change our eternal destination. It changes our nature.

Changes our nature. Our nature changes because before I came to Christ, I was bound by sin. But when I received the grace, the gift of salvation, I am no longer bound by sin. I'm no longer under the law, but I'm under grace. And I showed you last week that grace is up here. The law is here. And I was down here under the bondage of sin. And so when I was under the bondage of sin, the sin said, you're a sinner. I said, I know I'm a sinner. You're gonna. You better get right. I can't get right. If you don't get right, you're gonna have to pay. I know I'm gonna have to pay, but I can't help it, right? And so sin condemned us. It showed me that. I mean, the law showed me that I was sinful, and it showed me that I was sold under sin. It showed me that I was in the bondage of sin, but it couldn't free me from sin because the only thing that the law had to work with was my flesh, right? And my flesh likes sin. And don't look at me like that because so does yours, right? That's the nature of flesh. It likes sin. And so it's. So it's self destructive by nature. And so when. But the law is higher than, I mean the grace is higher than the law. And when I, when I say it's higher, I mean it elevates us not to a low grace. You're not under law, but under grace. So it doesn't matter how you talk and it doesn't matter how you treat people, because you're not under the law, but under grace. So it doesn't matter if you sin. That's not what that means when it says you're not under law, but under grace. Jesus said, you have heard that have been said by them of old time. This is the law. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Right? That's the law. But I say unto you, I who I the gift, the one that was given for us. Unto you a child is born. Unto you a son is given. The one who is the grace, the one who is the gift. Here's what it said. We beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of what? Grace and truth, right? So here's what he said. He said, but I say unto you, you've heard it said in the law, don't commit adultery. But I say unto you, I, the one who am Grace. I say unto you, who shall look upon a woman to lust after her committed adultery already with her in his heart. That's not lower, y'. All, that's higher. But grace can go higher because grace gives you something the law can't give you. And it gives you the desire and the dynamic, the passion and the power. It gives you the aspiration and the ability to do the things contained in the law. How do I know that? Because Philippians 2:13 says, for it is God that works in you, giving you the both to will, that's the desire and to do, that's the power of his good pleasure. God. I love the fact that God doesn't just save me and then call me to a life of righteousness. He saves me. He calls me to a life of righteousness, and then he empowers me to live that life of righteousness. Okay, now you're not in love under grace. And then Paul answers the same question. He, he says in verse number 15, what shall we. What shall we. What then shall we sin? Because we are not under the law, but under grace. God forbid. That's exactly right. God is the One who forbids. He doesn't forbid outside of me with the law. He forbids inside of me with the spirit. More on that later. More to come. More to come. Okay, then it says, know ye not that whom to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey his servants are ye to whom you obey whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. So it says, whoever you yield yourself to, whoever you place yourself under, whoever you subjugate yourself to, that's whose servant you are. So you are a servant who gets to choose your master. You can choose to serve sin as your master who wishes to kill you, or you can serve obedience unto righteousness which gives you life.

How do I know that? Well, to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is what? Life and peace. Oh, so if I want life and peace, I need to. I need to be spiritually minded. I'm going to talk about that when I teach. Do the series on walking in the Spirit. I'll talk about that then. I'm not going to talk about that now because it's a sidetrack. It's a good sidetrack, but not one that I want to get lost in. Because if I get lost in it, I won't make my way back. Okay, so. So it says, know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey is servants of you to whom you obey whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness, but God be thanked. Okay, what am I thanking God for this time? That you were the servants of sin. You were the servants of sin. You were the servant of sin. You're not. Which means if you were, that means you ain't or you aren't, or you're not, however you want to say it. No longer the servants of sin, but God be thanked. You were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart. Where's the heart? On the inside or the outside? It's on the inside. So the obedience doesn't come from me trying to make myself do the right thing. The obedience comes from yielding to the spirit and not yielding to the flesh. The obedience comes from me choosing the master that wants to give me life and not the master that wants to kill me. People say, but I don't want a master. Well, then you already have one. And what I mean by that, There is no absolute freedom. There can't if there can't be absolute freedom. Do you understand that? Right. Freedom from one thing is bondage to its opposite. Okay, so you'll. You'll understand what I'm saying here in a minute more than you do right now, you already understand, but you understand even more. God be thank you are the servants of sin, but you've obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you, by the way. So when we are walking in this, it's really interesting how people mistakenly think that the Holy Spirit is guiding them through their emotions. The Holy Spirit is not an emotional prompt. The Holy Spirit guides you. The Holy Spirit is also referred to as the Spirit of truth. And he guides you to the truth by the word of truth. So when the Holy Spirit is guiding you, he is guiding you to do something that is contained in the Word. Because there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. These three are one. So the Spirit of God, when he guides you, he's guiding you to the truth of the Word of God, not to an emotional feeling. A lot of people will blame stuff on the Holy Spirit. That has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. And I'm not saying you won't feel it. I'm just saying that's not the indicator. The indicator is truth. Are y' all tracking? Okay, so it says, God be thank, you've obeyed from the heart. And. And you've seen me like my whole TED Talk is based on that verse, right? So it says, God be thanked, you have obeyed from the heart. So obeying from the heart was the last thing. That was the last thing in the sequence. You've obeyed. That was the last thing. The heart was the second thing. The doctrine was the first thing. So the doctrine. What's doctrine? Doctrine is teaching. So you learn something that made you feel better about doing the right thing. Are you tracking? You've obeyed from the heart. You've obeyed it from the heart. You obeyed it because you felt like it. Because that is the motivation of human beings. We are mostly governed by our feelings. Which is why you should never follow your heart. Because you'll both end up in a ditch. When the blind leads the blind, they both end up in a ditch. Right? The heart is. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked who can know it. Please don't follow your heart. That's the worst advice somebody ever tells you, a coach ever tells you to follow your heart. Run as far and as fast from that person as you possibly can. Okay?

So. So understand that it is, I need to learn something that causes me to know better.

And then when I know better, that knowing better will migrate and help me to feel better. And when that feeling better gets done migrating. It will help me to do better. So the doctrine is the focus in my head. The what? The doctrine, the teaching is the focus in my head. That's like wheat. We can never behave consistently in a way that's inconsistent with our programming. Right. If people knew better, they could do better. When you know better, you can go better. How many are tracking? Wave at me. My people. And so? So what we want to do is we want to get to the place in our lives where we know better. How do I know what's better? Well, God's way is always better. What Does Isaiah chapter 55 says tell us? It tells us, seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon. What does it say right after that? For my ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither my thoughts, your thoughts. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts and your thoughts. Oh. So what I need to do is I need to replace my worldly. When I say worldly, I'm talking about after the system of the world. I need to replace my thinking that's after the system of the world, with thinking that's after the system of the word. And so when I do that now I've got some new doctrine in my head. And so when I'm focused on the right aspect of the thing, that focus in my head creates a feeling in my heart. And the feeling in my heart. It's really interesting how.

People who are business people will do business things because they feel like doing them. And then when they don't feel like doing them, they won't do them. And so what they attempt to do is they attempt to make themselves do the thing they don't feel like doing, when instead they would be much better served if they would figure out how to make themselves feel like doing the thing. How do you make yourself feel like doing a thing? By focusing on something that makes you feel like doing it instead of like, it's so interesting. And it's easy for me to see when I'm having a. Like if I'm having a conversation with somebody and they're stuck, I can tell why they're stuck. And I can tell by why they're stuck by having a conversation with them about what they're Focused on. And then that tells me how, why they're feeling the way they're feeling. And then that feeling. So the function, the focus in our head creates the feeling in our heart. And the feeling in our heart creates the function in our hand. And the function in our hand is, I've obeyed. I've done the thing. And so the ultimate transformational mechanism is change what I'm focused on in my mind. Oh, you mean like it says In Romans, chapter 12, I beseech you or I beg you. Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed. That word, conformed, means don't be conformed to the world. The word conformed means to be made like something with pressure from the outside. It's like a cookie cutter. We take a cookie cutter, we press it down on the dough. That pressure that we put on the dough is what makes the shape of the cookie. Don't allow the world to put pressure on you to shape it after itself, to fashion it after itself. Right. But be transformed from the conformity of the world. Transform means metamorphosize. Now you're being changed from the inside out. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The word renew literally. Literally means to renovate your mind. When you renovate. Anybody in here ever renovated something? First thing you got to do when you renovate is what? Tear out all the old raggedy stuff.

You can't. You ain't gonna put no new stuff on top of some raggedy stuff. You gotta renovate. When we. When we put this insulation up here, you know what we did? We had to renovate. We ripped out all the old. We ripped out offices. There were four offices right here. There were four offices. A whole big old wall. Four offices. Right. Ripped it out. Why? Because we were renovating. You have to take out the old stuff. You can't put the new stuff in on top of the old stuff and have something wonderful. Okay. Renovate the mind. So you have to replace your old way of thinking that was patterned after the world based on pressure, peer pressure, cultural pressure, social pressure. And then you replace it with word patterns, like with transformation from the word. So now I've got this new doctrine, this focus in my head. It creates a new feeling in my heart. It's. It's. It's so. It's so empowering to know that anytime I feel stuck, all I have to do is change the picture. What do I mean by that? I had all this work I had to get done, like, a lot for this event. Detailed. Like.

That'S how I think of details. I don't know how y' all think of mine. That's how I think of. Right. I had all these details that had to be done. I was like, I gotta do these details. I said, no, don't look at it like that. Look at it like this. These details that you are working on are going to impact people's lives in such a great way that when you get them done, it's going to be awesome. And just see yourself getting it done. Oh, okay. I changed the picture. Then what happened? I got it done like that. Why? Because I changed the aspect of the thing I was focused on. Okay. But God be thanked, you were the servants of sin, but you obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine which was delivered. You did. Being made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

Freedom can only exist inside of boundaries. What do I mean? Well, see, see, your house ain't my house. My house ain't your house. We have walls around our houses. Those are the boundaries. You are free in your house to do what you as you please. You ain't free in my house. Do as you please. You free to go in your house anyway. Like, if I want to walk in my house in the front door or the back door or come in through the garage, that's fine. If I want to climb in a window, that's fine. But I sure pray to God for you that I don't catch you climbing in my window at 2 o' clock in the morning. Because that ain't fine, right? And all I'm saying, freedom exists because of boundaries. It can only exist because of boundaries. It can only exist inside of boundaries. So if there are no boundaries, there can be no freedom. Like, a lot of people hate the fact that Donald Trump talks about a wall. But the reality is you cannot have freedom unless you have boundaries. You cannot have national freedom unless you have national borders. It's not possible. Like, if I go home this afternoon and mine, I like my next door neighbors. I like neighbors on both sides. I like David, I like vj, I like Jim across the street. But I better not come home and catch every one of them sitting in my chair. What you doing in my chair, bruh? What you doing in my house? Because it doesn't work. So to be free from sin is to be bound by righteousness. And to be bound by righteousness is to be free from sin. Just so you know, I ain't Making this up, I speak out. He said, being then made free from sin, you become the servants of righteous. I speak after the manner of the men because of the infirmity or the weakness of your flesh. For as you have yielded your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity into iniquity, even so now do you yield your members, the servants of righteousness of unto holiness. For when you were the servants of sin, you were freed from righteousness. Oh, there it is again. So all of that to say this.

You think, you think you want ultimate freedom. Well, you only get freedom from and freedom to. And all freedom from is freedom to and all freedom to is freedom from. Now you have to figure out whether you want to be free from sin that wants to kill you, bound by righteousness, or do you desire to be freed from sin? I mean freed. Do you want to be free from sin and bound by righteousness or do you want to be freed from righteousness and bound by sin? Everybody's free, everybody's bound. You just have to choose. Pick your freedom, pick your bondage, because everybody has both. There's no such thing as absolute freedom. Now when you get that and then you start making decisions about the things that you are going to let bound you, changes everything in your life. And so decide based on what you know, the doctrine that's in your head. Decide you're going to yield your members, your hands, your head, your thoughts, your eyes, your ears, your feet to be yielded to God for the purpose of righteousness and serving other people. And if you will do that, it'll make your life better in ways you cannot currently imagine if you're not already living that way. I hope this blesses you. Thank you for watching. And in the meantime, in between time, we'll see you on the next video.