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Ship of Cages
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Clark Fork Seventh-day Adventist Church, ID, USA
Delivery: 2010-10-09
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2010-10-27 19:00Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-shipofcages.php
A couple of years ago, I stopped to get gas for my RV in Dexter, near the southeastern corner of Missouri. Sixty-five year old Joe walked out of the store while I was filling. He saw my out of state plates, and we fell into conversation about gasoline prices. Then he told me: “All of my life, I’ve never been more than 70 miles from home.” Joe had food to eat, a television, a radio, and a place to stay. And stay he did.
But suppose that Joe was surrounded by a tall fence 200 miles long on four sides. Could he live his entire life, imprisoned, yet never know?
There are two kinds of prisons: (1) Those which you are supposed to know that you are in, and (2) Those which you are not. Why put someone in a prison that they do not know that they are in?
Exploitation Through History
From the beginning, the history of our race demonstrates theme of exploitation. In the Garden of Eden Satan sought to exploit human curiosity for his own ends—and he did. Man was warned, but Satan prodded him to disobey and thus led him into captivity to the law of sin and death. He did not tell Adam and Eve about the fine print; it was to his advantage to limit man’s knowledge of the boundaries that choosing to sin would impose on him. When man disobeyed, he enclosed himself in a prison (Hebrews 2:14, 15).
In Egypt, the Hebrews were taken captive and made slaves. They were very aware of their bondage, and, had not God intervened in their behalf, they would have been destroyed. The Egyptians exploited them by forced-labor. In Moses, God brought a deliverer. And yet, soon Moses was more hated by those whom he had risked all to deliver, than by the Egyptians.
In the Time of Judges, God provided plentiful guidance, but the people mostly ignored Him, and chose to do what they wished. Many times God’s people were exploited by surrounding nations, but God delivered.
In the Time of the Monarchy, God first warned them that having a human king would mean certain exploitation (1 Samuel 8), and that becoming like all the nations would be no help to Israel. They chose it anyway. And, it wasn’t.
In Babylon, Hebrews again provided labor. Their nation and temple were plundered, and the cream of their youth forced into service in the court of Babylon. The lives of the captives Daniel and his three friends were spent there. A later generation was granted opportunity to return out of captivity, but only a small remnant actually made the effort to leave.
In the Time of Christ, Jesus announced the purpose of His coming, to deliver the captives and the blind. The Hebrews could see only their bondage to Rome. And they were mostly in denial even about that.
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you’ (John 8:31-37, all Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version).
Jesus is the Son; He brings freedom. The Jews are claiming to be free, never to have been in bondage to anyone. And yet, they will soon embrace the calculation of the High Priest, that it is expedient for one man to die rather than a whole nation (John 11:50), i.e., that unless Jesus is murdered, the Romans will destroy the remainder of autonomy they still felt that they had. Already, they were far from free. But they chose not to think about it, not to acknowledge it. And so, a creepy truth; sometimes both prisoner and prison-master, feel it an advantage to refuse too admit that there is bondage. Depending on one’s values, it may seem more satisfying to be under bondage than to be free.
In the Modern Era, men are continuously exploited. They are enslaved to fight wars they have no real stake in, to die in lands they cannot pronounce, for causes obscure. Meanwhile, others are taxed to pay for these weapons and missions of death. It is said that these are fighting for freedom. But the security of the West has not been in doubt for many decades. The conflicts it has entered into have been wars of choice. Other taxes are spent to transfer wealth to bankers and investors who have made poor decisions but whose enterprises are designated by government as “too big to fail.” Then there is fiat money, dollars backed by nothing, printed out of thin air, their supply sharply increased, thus value reduced and inflation produced, all by those in authority. Some would prefer that we not understand the cages we and our children are in. It is much easier to exploit those who are unaware of their bondage than those who are prying at the doors and pounding on the locks.
In the End-time, a period of tumult will bring a search for the apparent reasons that the divine protection is withdrawn. Those who obey different laws (Esther 3:8; Daniel 6:5, 10, 13; Acts 16:20, 21) will be seen as causing God’s wrath. Then, people will not be permitted to buy or sell unless they have thrown in with governmental powers under the control of Satan. For those who receive the mark, which is a license to continue to buy and sell, the fiction that “we are not enslaved” will be comforting. But those in the cages will still proceed to their doom.
A Disordered Nature
Humankind, after Adam chose to sin, is in serious trouble. All of us have a disordered nature, and are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil, that is, a psychological distortion by which our innate outwardness has been turned to an innate inwardness. We incline to serve ourselves first.
What does this mean? That we develop into persons who prefer not freedom but captivity. But we do not want to admit this preference and so we invent ways to claim that we are free while we live unfree. We are drawn to goodness (Romans 2:4), but inclined to evil (Luke 11:13). That is, we are spiritually bipolar. We try to serve two masters, but are unable to (Exodus 20:3; Matthew 6:24). Here is a fundamental insight from monotheism. Unfortunately, we are often poor monotheists.
A Deliverer
Jesus came to save us, that is, to deliver us from this bipolarity. Free choice has never been removed from us. This power God has given to men; it is ours to exercise. And so, Jesus has come to strengthen us so that it may be exercised to choose deliverance. As He announced the beginning of His ministry, He read from the scroll, and outlined this central purpose and theme:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4;18, 19).
Jesus came to deliver a people who did not want to admit they needed delivering. When we see how they reacted to His announcement (Luke 4:28, 29), we recognize that they felt they were free enough, rich enough, were respectably clothed, and had need of nothing—a warning us (see Revelation 3:14-22).
Slinking Back Or Going Forward?
This was their “meta-narrative,” or “story”: They were doing fine. The kind of deliverance the Messiah proposed, to them, seemed unnecessary. What they were into was making life in their cage more livable. But Jesus had come because the life men were living was unlivable. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Human organizations and institutions, and I mean governments, corporations, even churches, if care is not exercised, and sometimes even if it is—can become sources of justification for our dodging God’s ways. They put just enough structure and supposed sanctity over something to give it a sheen of spiritual approval. Then we live in our own way, in our own prettified cages, imagining that our course of action is legitimate, and that we can retain our vices and preferences and add heaven too.
This is all wrong. It collides immediately with the fact that Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He came to release the captives—not in offer of more convenient ways for living in bondage.
And so, it is as if we all find ourself on a ship of cages. The ship is moving, relentlessly, irrevocably, to its destination of death. But did I mention? The cages are unlocked. And Jesus provides free airlifts off the ship for all who are willing to leave it before it reaches port.
We all have our “story,” our conception of the world and where we fit in it. Some of us win by winning, and some, strange as it seems, by loosing. But winning and loosing, competing, defeating or being defeated by others—all of that is B.C. stuff (before Christ). When we come to Christ, old things pass away and all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are not talking about consequences, but about the new life that the gospel of Jesus brings. We are a congregation, a covenant community. We are not about competition but about being lights in a poorly lit world (Matthew 5:14-16), and about doing whatever it takes, at whatever cost, to see our fellow travelers safe in the kingdom at last.
Conclusion
Jesus delivers us. But are we willing to move forward to wherever God is taking us next? Or, are we satisfied with our cages—our unlocked cages? When Jesus announced what He was really about, some sought to throw him off the cliff.
Let’s regroup around the cross. Let’s accept Jesus’ mission at face value. Let’s bolt with horror from our comfortable cages. Jesus is ready. GCO
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