We will talk today about freedom, what it is, and why freedom in Jesus is super superior. Freedom is a big issue for all inhabitants of planet earth, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. For many years, at the University of Oklahoma, a project was underway to teach a fifteen-year-old female chimpanzee named Washoe to talk by combining sign language with simple recognition. This story intrigued me because two of my children attended the University of Oklahoma.

Since 1966, this chimpanzee has learned 140 signs. Finally, the project directors decided that Washoe was prepared to “conceptualize.” This meant that instead of merely imitating some human words, the chimp would express her thoughts. Now, understand that Washoe was a pampered animal in the university’s laboratory—well-fed, physically comfortable, safe from harm. She had security. And yet, when she was able to put words together on her own into a phrase, these were the first three—and she has repeated them repeatedly—”Let me out.” ¹ Freedom is our focus today; why God’s idea of it is better than yours. All this, and more,  on this week’s Light on Life.

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How to Deal with Thieves and Robbers Jesus Style

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put it into operation.
This week’s call is:

Set it in your heart that you will use your freedom in Christ to be a servant to others.

Join the Conversation Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11). Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony.

This week’s challenge is:

Challenge: Share your testimony of freedom. Please share your God adventure in the comments section below.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 45 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 40 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes

Freedom in Jesus: The Feast of Dedication

John 10:22–30 (ESV) — 22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Freedom in Jesus: What Is the Feast of Dedication

• Let’s talk about the Feast of Dedication, what it is, and what it isn’t.
• The feast of Dedication or Hanukkah is an eight-day Israelite holiday commemorating the re-dedication of the Temple of Jerusalem in 165 BC.
• That’s about 160 years before Jesus came to planet earth.
• Some Greek lexicons define the word ‘dedication’ as renovation, so the Feast of Dedication is also known as the Feast of Renovation.
• You know renovation is about the act of improving by renewing and restoring.
• So, the Feast of Dedication was a call to renew and improve the worship of the Lord in a re-sanctified Temple.
• What do I mean by improving it?
• I mean, bring the worship of God and the service of God back to the way the Lord had it set out in the first place.
• All of this was necessary because the Temple was desecrated.
• We will talk about this temple perversion here in a minute.

Hypocrisy and the Feast of Dedication

• So, the Jews celebrated this national feast every year, commemorating purity and holiness.
• Isn’t that wonderfully hypocritical?
• In John chapter two, Jesus ran the religious money changers out of the Temple because they ran scams in the Temple courtyard.
• They were selling animals for sacrifice at a ridiculous mark-up.
• They were making money by exchanging Roman money for Jewish, dollar for dollar or, you could say, shekel for shekel, all the while lining their pockets.
• Where is the purity in that?
• The poor, and most people were poor in the first century, had no recourse.
• To be part of the group culture of the first century, they had to pony up their hard-earned, hard-to-come money.

Jesus’ Anger Over Hypocrisy and Greed

• Jesus got super angry about this.
• The anger that Jesus displayed is entirely justified.

John 2:14–16 (ESV) — 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

• You would have been mad and angry if you lived back then and turned on the 6 o’clock Jerusalem news only to discover what these synagogue-going hypocrites were doing in the name of God.

Freedom in Jesus: What Isn’t the Feast of Dedication

• Now, there were seven authentic feasts that the Lord ordained for Israel.
• Hanukkah, or the Feast of Dedication, is not one of them.
• The seven Feasts required by the Lord are listed in chapter 23 of Leviticus.
• The Feasts that the Lord designated are as follows:
  • Passover or Pesach – Leviticus 23:5
  • Unleavened Bread – Leviticus 23:6
  • First-fruits – Leviticus 23:9–11
  • Festival of Weeks or Shavuot – Leviticus 23:15–16
  • Feast of Trumpets or Rosh HaShana – Leviticus 23:23–24
  • The Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur – Leviticus 23:26–28
  • The Feast of Booths or Sukkot – Leviticus 23:33–34
• The Feast of Dedication is a ‘man-made feast’ of great importance to the Jewish community.
• When I say ‘a man-made feast,’ I mean it was a national feast.
• There is no ‘Leviticus 23’ reference for the Feast of Dedication.

Freedom in Jesus: Historical Background on the Feast of Dedication

• To understand what this feast was, we need some Bible background, and with that thought, here’s the historical background of the day.
• This is from the Lexham Bible Dictionary.

The Feast of Dedication—also called the Festival of Lights or Hanukkah—commemorated the cleansing of the temple during the Maccabean Revolt. It had been defiled by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but the Maccabees restored it in 164 BC. The name “Festival of Lights” comes from a legend: when the altar was rededicated, there was only oil enough for one day. The temple menorah miraculously remained lit for eight days. For this reason, Hanukkah was celebrated for eight days beginning on the 25th of Kislev (1 Macc 4:52–59). Its festivities were similar to those for the Feast of Tabernacles (2 Macc 10:6).²

• So, we have a couple of things that may need an explanation in this dictionary entry we just read.

Who Are the Players in the Freedom Festival Know as Dedication?

• Like what is the Maccabean Revolt, and who is the Seleucid ruler?
• In that way, we can more fully understand the Feast of Dedication and why it was significant.

Alexander the Great

• So, all of this epic history begins with the sudden death of Alexander the Great
• He was very young when he passed away, in his 30’s.
• Alexander had conquered gigantic amounts of territory.

Alexander the Greats Four Generals

• With his sudden death, his territory was divided up between four of his generals.
• We are talking a couple of hundreds before Jesus came on the scene.
• One of the four generals held territory north of Israel, a second general held territory south of Israel.
• The northern and the southern generals were continually fighting to increase their territorial holdings.
• We won’t talk about the remaining two generals, just the two generals north and south of Israel, to keep this simple.
• The names of these two generals, you ask Ptolemy and Seleucus?
• I have studied this part of Bible history and gone over it, trying to get the names of these and the wars they fought clear in my mind.
• It’s confusing, man – all these facts – all these names that you are unfamiliar with.
• So, I thought, ‘How can we make this simple?’
• For the sake of simplicity, we are going to change the names of the two generals north and south of Israel from Seleucus and Ptolemy to Joe and Harry.

Seleucus and Ptolemy

• General Joe ruled the North, and General Harry ruled the South of the landmass that included Israel.
• There was constant fighting between these two northern and southern generals, Joe and Harry.
• There were six wars between these two tribal families, with Israel caught in the middle for over 125 years.
• So, this is like the ancient version of the Hatfields and McCoys — only on a much larger scale, meaning that the fight between these two went on for several generations of Joe and Harry.
• The relatives, the sons of each family, picked up the fight.
• Again, for simplicity’s sake, we are keeping everybody’s name, Joe and Harry.
• So, the father is Joe; the son is Joe; the grandson is Joe; everybody is Joe and Harry — you get the idea.
• So one of Joe’s descendants, one of his lineage, was really screwed up in the head kind of guy.
• He was such a wickedly lousy person that people thought he was the Anti-Christ.
• His real name? — Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
• Do you see why I called him Joe? — that’s a name and half — Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
• These guys up north come again to the south Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Joe, crossing, raiding, and stealing Israeli crops trying to fund their campaign against Harry of the south. But, General Joe didn’t just want to beat Harry and get his territory. He decided to take on Egypt also.
• He wanted to conquer that nation and add it to his territory.
• So, this Joe, this Antiochus IV Epiphanes, wants Harry’s territory plus Egypt.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes Fight Against Egypt

So, he mounted a very expensive campaign, pressed the Jewish people into service, even stole some money from the temple to help finance the campaign. And in large measure, offended the Jewish people, and in fact triggered a lot of reaction and negative response to him. Well, he succeeded in defeating (Harry) the Ptolemies, but he was unable to take possession of Egypt, his prize. Why? Because by then Rome had intervened.³

• So, Joe is humiliated by his loss, and he takes out his humiliation against the Jews.
• He blames them for his failure to take Egypt.
• And so Joe goes into Israel and tries to change their way of worshiping God.
• Joe or Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrates the Temple, tries to retrain the priests, the Levites, to worship according to his false gods.
• This caused a significant amount of anger in Israel.

Freedom and the Maccabbe-ans

• Well, this is where the Maccabee-and — come in.
• That family starting with the father Matthias starts a revolt by killing one of the kings’ trainers – a guy sent by Antiochus IV Epiphanes to retrain the Levites.
• Matthias son, Judas, spearheads the revolt – get this — his nickname was the Hammer, Judas ‘The Hammer’ Maccabeus.
• Judas hammered Joe and his whole army into submission, and Israel gained their freedom finally after all these six wars in 125 years.
• They held on to their freedom for about 100 years before Rome, the emerging superpower, stepped in.
• So, the Feast of Dedication was a freedom feast celebrating the restoring of the altar after Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated it.
• Let’s go back to the text now.

Freedom in Jesus: A Conversation between Jesus and the Jews

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” — John 10:22–24

• Now, we took time to lay out this background for you so you can understand the conversation that’s getting ready to take place between Jesus and the Jews.
• The Jews looked for the Messiah to come upon the scene as a conquering king.
• They were free for a hundred years under the Maccabee-ans, but now, they are back under servitude to Rome.
• Rome is the new Harry – Rome is the new Joe.
• They are the new bully on the block taking advantage of Israel.
• Israel once again is not free.
• So when these Jews come to Jesus and ask Him ‘Tell us plainly if you are the one, you can almost hear this question popping like popcorn in the minds of these Jews.
• “Jesus, are you the new hammer?”
• Can you imagine that as a name for Jesus — Jesus the Hammer?
• Jesus, are you the one who will restore Israel’s freedom and establish the kingdom?” — not the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Israel.
• The Jews had a warped idea of what the Messiah would do — be king over all of the earth.
• You see if Messiah is king, then Israel is free, free from the Joe’s and the Harry’s and the bullies of this world.
• But here’s the thought that we’ve been building to: does being free to do what you want mean that you are really free?
• No!
• You will never really be free just to do what you want to do.
• Real freedom comes by serving others.
• Listen to Paul on the subject.

1 Corinthians 9:19 (ESV) — 19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.

• Paul made a conscious choice to serve others despite laying aside his personal freedoms.
• Paul had realized a measure of freedom because he was a Roman citizen.
• He had a measure of freedom because of his status in the church.
• What he did with that freedom was to reduce himself to servant-hood.
• That whole phrase — “I have made myself a servant” — is all one word in Greek, and with that thought, here’s the definition of the day.

The Real Definition of Freedom in Jesus

• The Greek word for this phrase, ‘I have made myself a servant’ is the word ‘doulous’ and is the common word for slave.
• Now, you have to get this.
• The Jews were clamoring for freedom.
• But, real freedom is found in service to others.
• Listen to me child of God: Jesus made you free.

John 8:31–32 (ESV) — 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

• What will freedom do?
• It will bring you to this cross-road: will you live your life for others, or will you live it for yourself.
• So, freedom gives you the ability to choose servant-hood.
• That’s what you use your freedom for.

A Tale of Two Freedoms

Charles Kingsley once wrote that “there are two freedoms—the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.” If we are to be truly free we must follow the latter, not the former.⁴

• Israel’s idea of freedom was different than the Lord’s, and that’s what got them in trouble.
• They wanted to be free to do what they liked.
• What they liked was to bow down to false gods and serve the graven images of their choosing.
• That’s not real freedom.

“Men are qualified for civil liberties only to the extent that they are willing to put moral chains on their appetites” ⁵

The Reason Why the Freedom Bell Doesn’t Ring

• Because Israel freely made past choices siding against God’s Covenant plan is the reason why the new bully, Rome, was beating on their heads.
• Covenant violation is the tale of Israel’s woes.
• It can be the source of your woes also.
• Are there areas of your life that are out of line with what you see in God’s Word.
• You long for specific Bible promises to become a reality in your life, all the while wondering why they are not.
• One reason is that Bible Promises are conditional.

Freedom in Jesus Is Conditional

• Freedom is conditional.
• It is more than typical for people to try and claim the good parts of Bible Promises and neglect the conditions.
• Take, for example, the 91st Psalm.

Psalm 91:3–8 (ESV) — 3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.

• Wow, that’s enormously powerful freedom statement: your enemies will fall.
• Who’s your enemy?
• Is cancer your enemy?
• What about pornography — is it dogging your steps?
• My pastor said, 50% of the people in the church are engaging in pornography.
• A 700 Club report puts the number at 70%.
• It’s time to realize freedom, don’t you think?
• Could it be that maybe you’ve overlooked something, some Bible condition?
• Why do the enemies fall by the thousands at your side in Psalm 91, but they are still plaguing you?
• To answer this, you have to keep reading.

Freedom in Jesus: The Lord as Your Dwelling Place

Psalm 91:9 (ESV) — 9 Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place— the Most High, who is my refuge—

• Freedom comes from making the Lord your dwelling place.
• That’s a reiteration of the first two verses of this Psalm.

Psalm 91:1–2 (ESV) — 1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

• One gentleman said the following:

Truth and Freedom: The Pillars of Society

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom–they are the pillars of society.⁶

• If truth and freedom are our pillars, if we compromise the truth — and Jesus said my word is truth — then when we compromise, what do we have left but broken pillars?
• You can’t build your life on broken-ness.
• So ask yourself, are there any areas where you compromised the truth of God’s Word?
• If so, repent and ask the Lord to help you get yourself back in-line.
• The Lord is good and so merciful to forgive.
• Had the Jews made the freedom in Jesus’ choice of doing what they ought to do, serving others instead of choosing to do what they liked to do, the whole’ enemies ruling over Israel’ saga would have never played out.

Freedom in Jesus Is Your Heritage

• God gave Israel His word on the matter.

Exodus 23:25–27 (ESV) — 25 You shall serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. 27 I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.

• Learn from the examples of the Jews.
• Jesus said the following: and it’s right — it’s true, and it is for you.

John 8:31–32, 36 (ESV) — 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Why You Should Stand Up for Jesus Even When It’s Controversial

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