Deliverance: A Way Out

Many years ago, when I was about 12 years old, my dad, Lochie and I went out for a day on the water, in the boat.

We had this beautiful boat that was previously my grandfather's for many years.

It was white with a yellow stripe.

And if you know anything about boating, you know that the way you get the boat into the water is you back it in on the trailer, take it off the trailer, pull it to the side, attach it to the ground, and then you have to go park the car in the car park.

So we were in that part of the story.

Dad had left Lochie and I in the boat while he ducked out to go and park the car.

And we were having a great time.

It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, we had snacks, we were going to go fishing.

But then all of a sudden, water starts to accumulate in the bottom of the boat.

And so we're thinking, oh, someone's drink bottle's leaking, there's water coming.

Very quickly we realised, no, the boat is taking on water.

This is not a drill, this is not a drink bottle, it is a leak in the boat.

And so we look up to get help from our father, and we see him dead set driving the other direction, driving away from us.

So we're panicking.

We managed to find a cut off half of a milk bottle, and we start furiously scooping the water out over the side until we realize the water's coming in far, far, far quicker than we can get it out.

And so Lochie and I, we start to come to the terms with the fact that we're going to sink.

We're probably going to drown, and we'll be on the news as the first people in history to sink a boat two meters from the shore.

We are panicking, and we're dealing with this in our own ways.

Lochie was in the corner, curled up, singing My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

No, I'm joking.

That was me.

I was singing it.

The boat's taking on more and more water, and after what felt like an eternity, finally we see in the distance, Dad is walking back towards us.

So we're standing and waving our arms doing these ones, and he sees from a distance that something is clearly wrong.

So he starts running towards us.

And when he was within earshot, we start shouting, and if I remember correctly, this is what we were shouting.

Deliver us, Father.

We need deliverance.

We are human beings with an inbuilt, innate longing to be delivered.

We know something is not right with the world, and we need deliverance.

Something like that.

You can ask Lochie later.

Finally, Dad makes it to the boat, and he gets in, and he can see there is, in fact, a problem.

There is water filling up in the boat.

So Loch and I start to try and work out what the problem is.

Have we hit oysters or maybe an iceberg?

But I don't think icebergs come in this part of Sydney.

But Dad knew what was wrong.

He forgot the bung.

The people laughing are the people who know what a bung is.

A bung is the little rubber seal, kind of like a cork, that you put in the back and the bottom of the boat to stop the water from getting in.

But when you're outside of the water, you take the bung out to let the water drain.

So Dad, long story short, Dad finds the bung, puts it in, we get all the water out with the pump, and we were delivered.

We had a great day.

We probably didn't catch any fish, but we had a great day on the water.

Deliverance.

We need deliverance.

Human beings have this universal longing, this magnetic point that drives us to our need to be delivered.

We have a sense that something is wrong with the world.

It shouldn't be this way.

When we look at the brokenness inside us and around us, we know that this is not the way that things should be.

We have a desire and a need for deliverance.

Lochie and I knew in the boat that we needed deliverance.

We know that water should be on the outside of the boat, not on the inside.

And even though we didn't know what the problem was, we knew that we needed deliverance.

We're in week three of our five-week series called Human, Five Magnetic Points Leading Us Home, and we're exploring in this series what it means to be a human being.

And specifically, that there are five points, five longings, five magnetic points in the heart of every human being across time and place and culture.

We find these magnetic longings.

Human beings wrestle with these five questions.

Firstly, we have a longing to connect, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to find community.

We want to stand and belt Taylor Swift with 80,000 in the arena.

We want to feel swept up into something bigger than ourselves.

The technical word for this is totality.

It means to become a part of the whole, the total, and yet without losing our individuality.

We long to connect.

Secondly, as human beings live in the community of society, we long to know how to live.

What standards should govern the way that we live our lives?

Across time and place and culture, people have had different answers to these questions, but humans want to know what is right and what is wrong.

What rules and expectations does our culture have?

The word for this is norm.

It means a standard, a way to live, a normal path for being human.

And thirdly, the third magnetic point is that you don't have to look at human beings for long to realize that we have fallen short of the norm that we set for ourselves.

We're broken, selfish, we hurt each other, we don't always choose the good.

We know that there is something wrong with this world, and so when things go wrong, and they have gone wrong, we long for deliverance, for a way out of this mess that we find ourselves in.

This is the point that we're gonna unpack today.

Fourthly, in view of the brokenness in us and in the world that we live in, all of us come to wrestle with the question of whether we actually have the ability to control our lives.

Can we get out of this mess?

Or are we active agents in our own story?

Or are we characters in somebody else's story?

You might call it fate, or destiny, or luck, or chance.

But the question is, who is really in control?

It's the question of destiny.

And finally, what sums up all the magnetic points and holds them together is this insuppressible question of the higher power.

Human beings have a longing across time and place and culture to peel back the layers of what we can see and find out what is behind all this, to find a meaning and a purpose that is transcendent.

Briefly, those are the five magnetic points that we're unpacking in our series called Human.

And as always, if you missed any of the messages, you can catch up on our website or via the podcast.

These are the questions human beings need answered.

And every culture across time and place and people group offers different answers, maybe explicit answers or maybe implicit answers to these questions, totality, norm, deliverance, destiny and higher power.

These five points come from the book Making Faith Magnetic by Dr.

Daniel Strange, who was building on the work of the Dutch missionary and theologian JH.

Boeving.

And they've done incredible work, the two of them, in putting this together.

But really, Strange and Boeving are only putting new words to something that the Bible has been saying for 2,000 years.

Romans 1 says this, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claim to be wise, they became fools and exchanged, we might say substituted is a synonym, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Suppress and substitute.

That's what paul says that human beings do to the truth that is inside us.

We suppress and we substitute.

That every human being finds these magnetic longings for totality, a way to connect, a way to live, a way out, a way to control and a way beyond.

We find these longings and they were put there by the God who made us and designed to be fulfilled in Him.

But we have suppressed and substituted.

Now, you might not agree with that statement.

The statement that it was a God who put those longings in us and it is a God who can fulfill them.

And that's okay.

You might not be a Christian this morning, but I want to tell you from the start that what I aim to do in this message is to tell the story of the Bible on deliverance.

I'll give you the world view of the Bible on the story of what is wrong with humanity and what God did about it.

And I invite you, if you're not a Christian or if you are, to try it on.

See if it makes sense.

because it is my conviction that the Bible is true.

Not only in the deepest sense of what it means to be true, but more than that, that it connects with something deep, deep inside every human being, that we have these magnetic longings that are best answered by the story of the Bible.

That is my conviction.

We need deliverance.

We all need a way out.

We long for this broken world to be made right.

Something has gone wrong.

So here is the story of the Bible on deliverance.

Where does the magnetic point of deliverance come from?

In the biblical world view, the story of the Bible, the need for deliverance, starts on page one.

The Bible opens with the Book of Genesis, and the opening three chapters of Genesis tell the story of God's creating a good world.

The best summary that I've come across for Genesis is, Creator creates creation.

A good and perfect God creates a good and perfect world, and in the middle of that world, God made a garden called Eden.

And in that garden, God placed the first human beings, and he told them that they were to function as his image bearers, to extend and reflect the good, true, and beautiful reign of God over the earth.

And God said it was good.

That's how the story starts.

In the Garden of Eden, our forefather and foremother, the origin of humankind, Adam and Eve, they lived in perfect relationship with the God who made them.

God gave them longings, and he himself fulfilled every longing that they had.

It's this picture of perfect union and intimacy between God and humanity.

That's the way it was meant to be.

Until you turn the page on chapter 2 into Genesis 3, and a serpent arrives in the garden whose appearance is not really explained, but the serpent causes Adam and Eve to doubt God.

He causes them to doubt, is God really good?

Is God holding out on you?

Does God want what is best for you?

Can you trust him?

So Genesis 3 tells the story of humanity, Adam and Eve, in a spirit of desiring to elevate themselves to the position of God, to become like him and throw off all limits.

Adam and Eve break the one explicit command God gave them by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

And it says that their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked and they hid from God.

Adam and Eve knew in that moment something has gone wrong.

They didn't need God to tell them what had just happened.

They hid themselves because they knew that something had changed.

And yet God does put words to the consequence of what they had just done.

In Genesis 3, God pronounces the effects of sin on humanity, on man and woman, on the ground and on the serpent.

And that kind of monologue in Genesis 3 ends with these words.

The Lord God said, The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

He must not be allowed to reach out his hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

And after he drove the man out, God placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim in a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

The story of creation that the Bible tells in Genesis 1 to 3 is that God creates a good and perfect world.

He creates human beings to live in perfect relationship with him, where every longing of the human heart is fulfilled in God.

But humanity turned our back on God.

And so by the end of Genesis 3, we are exiled from the Garden of Eden, cast out from the presence of God.

And so if we read the Bible as a story, as a narrative, as a world view, we see that from page 3, the central conflict of the story, the driving plot line of the story of the Bible is how are humanity going to regain access to the Garden of Eden.

We have been exiled from the perfect presence of God, and the story that the Bible tells is how humanity are going to get back into the presence of God.

How are God and humanity going to be reconciled, be made right again?

That's the plot conflict of the story of the Bible.

And Christians believe that that's where the need for deliverance starts.

And I think human history tells us the rest of the story.

If you've read the news this week, we saw another school shooting in America.

Even in our shire, we heard stories of people suffering under the injustice of a lack of affordable housing.

People being forced to move.

Four times in one year was the story, because they just can't afford to live here.

We look around and we see this world is not as it should be.

War continues to rage on in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Famine in many parts of the world.

Flood in other parts of the world.

Something is wrong with this world.

And we need deliverance.

Human history tells the story in a million and one ways of the way that humanity need deliverance.

Human history is the story of humankind stuffing up and hurting each other.

And breaking ourselves and our world.

because there is a longing inside us.

A magnetic point that drives us to realize it shouldn't be like this.

This is not the way that the world should be.

And so we need deliverance.

History tells the story of humanity's need for deliverance.

But it also tells the story of the ways that humankind have tried to deliver themselves.

And that comes from this idea that if there is this innate, inbuilt recognition that we need deliverance, it drives us to try and realize that deliverance for ourselves.

And when you look at human history, the quest to save ourselves always hinges on the question of what we need to be delivered from.

And there's 101 answers that if humans are to find, to achieve the deliverance that we long for at the deepest level of our soul, we have to know what the problem is, to know what the solution needs to be.

This is, I don't know if you realize this, the heart of advertising.

Advertising is the story of deliverance in three acts.

Act one, you live in a messed up world in some way.

You're tired, you're overworked, your world is not right.

Act two, here's this product.

If you will only buy this thing, subscribe to this thing, get this thing, then act three, it will deliver you into a world where you don't have those problems anymore.

Advertising is the story of deliverance.

So I'm going to do a Kerry Wills, and I'm going to say an advertising tagline, and you tell me what the product is.

I'll say the tagline, you tell me what they're selling.

Firstly, have a break, have a KitKat.

So what's the story?

The story of deliverance in three acts is you work hard, you work all day, you give so much, but you need a break.

How do you take a break?

Have a KitKat.

Act three, if you have a KitKat, then you can work hard and you can rest hard.

You'll have that sweet chocolate in the biscuit, you'll have a great time, you'll work hard and you'll rest hard.

What about this one?

I just want milk that tastes like real milk.

paul's Milk.

I feel like they didn't nail it by having the name of the company in the tagline.

But what's the story of deliverance?

We're all drowning in a sea of too many options of milk.

There's full cream, no cream, skim, da da da da da, an extra dollop.

And so act two, paul's Milk is milk that tastes like real milk.

If you buy this milk, you'll be delivered from a world where you have to be confused about which milk to buy.

You'll know that you always have the right milk.

We'll have one more.

Did somebody say?

Well, menu log as well, but KFC was what I was thinking.

Did somebody say KFC?

What's the story of deliverance?

Life is awkward.

Something has just happened, and we don't know how to get out.

It's like awkward, no one's talking.

KFC.

If you get KFC, the party's back.

The awkwardness is gone.

Advertising is the story of deliverance.

And advertising hinges on defining what the problem is that we need to be delivered from.

If the problem is we're all drowning in a sea of too many milk options, paul's milk is the answer.

If the problem is we work hard and we don't know how to take a break, have a KitKat.

And if the problem is life is awkward, then have KFC.

Advertising is the story of deliverance, but it's not only advertising, it's religion and philosophy too.

Religion is the story of deliverance.

For the ancient Greek Stoics, 2,000 years ago, human desire was the problem.

And so the solution then was that if we could only become disconnected from our emotions, if we could become rational, reasonable human beings, we would be delivered.

For Buddhism, the problem is the never-ending cycle of suffering and reincarnation.

So if we could only meditate long enough, think hard enough, we could achieve enlightenment.

We could be delivered.

Vegetarianism says meat is the problem, and plants are the solution.

Secularism says God is the problem, and we are the solution.

Modernism says tradition is the problem, truth is the solution.

Postmodernism says truth is the problem, and tolerance is the solution.

So what's the problem?

What is the deepest problem that humanity need to be delivered from?

What is our most pressing need?

All of us human beings have a longing for deliverance, but we have suppressed and substituted that need, trying to fill the void with a hundred things.

The problem is they don't get deep enough.

Our deepest problem in life is not that we're drowning in a sea of too many milk options, or that life is awkward and we need KFC.

But religion tries to go deeper to the problem of what is really wrong with humanity.

In the world view of the Bible, the answer is the most compelling answer that I find in any of those systems of thought.

One word, three letters, sin.

The most fundamental problem that humankind have is sin.

Now, you might recoil when I say those words.

It's an ugly word.

But the Bible has this expansive definition of sin.

This is why I find it so compelling, because unlike every other religion or system of thought, which more or less narrowly defines what is wrong with the world, for Buddhism, it's the never-ending cycle of suffering.

For the Stoics, it was desire.

Christianity, the world view of the Bible says that sin is kind of everything.

It is a deep and vast and complex problem that we find ourselves in.

paul says in Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And for 2,000 years, when Christians have thought and reflected on sin, they've realized that it has many layers.

Christians have spoken about the four levels of sin.

Firstly, we have the level of gross sins.

That doesn't mean gross as in, eww, that's disgusting, but gross as in major.

Overt, very clear major sins.

Things like murder, adultery, stealing.

This is the level of gross sins.

We talked last week about the magnetic point of the norm.

And when you look at the norm, most cultures across the world, within their own people group, recognize that if we kill each other, it's kind of unhelpful.

And if we steal from each other, it kind of is not gonna help us stay together.

We can kill other people, if they're not from our tribe or our people, but let's not kill each other.

These are gross sins.

If you go deeper, Christians for 2,000 years have reflected that there are conscious sins.

These are things that we know are wrong, but we can't seem to stop easily because they're wired into our bodies.

Things like gossiping or watching inappropriate things or lashing out in anger.

You maybe know that it's not right to do, but you're conscious of it.

If we go deeper still, the third level of sin is unconscious sins.

This is at the level that we are so deeply broken that our brains, our neurology has rewired itself around unhelpful ways of treating ourselves and other people.

We harbor bitterness against people, anger.

We have these unconscious sins that we don't even know about.

Even deeper still, the fourth level of sin is attachments or idols.

Same word.

Now, these are not necessarily bad things.

They could be good things.

But as Tim Keller defines idolatry, which is attachment, it is a good thing, which has become an ultimate thing.

It is good to love your family.

It's good to love your work.

It's good to enjoy life and pursue happiness.

But if any of those things were to become the number one focus of our life, it would distort our entire life around that thing.

And that would be the deepest level of sin.

And so when the Bible says the most fundamental problem that humankind has is sin, I find that so compelling because it is a expansive view of the brokenness of humanity and the brokenness of our world.

It is so deep, the many levels of what is wrong with us.

Stuart read for us paul's Lament in Romans 7.

And paul is wrestling with sin, wrestling with what it means to be a human.

And so, I'll read part of what Stuart read again.

paul says, I do not understand what I do.

For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

As it is, it's no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.

Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me who does it.

So I find this law at work.

Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

For in my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

paul concludes, what a wretched man I am.

Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Human.

paul is expressing the human condition.

That is deeply relatable for me, and I'm guessing every person in this room.

We know the good we want to do, but we don't seem to be able to always do it, and the evil that we don't want to do, we feel drawn to.

It is the human condition.

We are stuck in sin.

The world is not right, and I believe the Bible's answer that sin is what is wrong with the world is the most compelling of all the options.

So, where do we go from here?

This is all gloomy.

Where does deliverance come from?

Which faith, which religion, which philosophy, which system of thought can get us out of this mess?

Which religion will actually deliver us?

Well, I would put it to you that Christianity is not the only system of belief that thinks that something has gone wrong.

Everyone knows something has gone wrong.

Christianity is also not the only faith that thinks that something in here has gone wrong.

But here is where Christianity is unique in the entire world.

There is no other faith or religion or system of belief or philosophical thought that says that human beings cannot ultimately save themselves.

Christianity is unique in saying that you cannot try hard enough, pray enough, give enough, come to church enough, sacrifice enough blood, sweat and tears to deal with your sin.

You cannot squeeze it out of you.

Only Christianity takes seriously our utter inability to deliver ourselves.

because in every other religion, if you will do this and this and this and this, you can deliver yourself.

If you will pay this much and do these right things and pray this prayer, you will be saved.

Christianity says you cannot save yourself.

It's the most pessimistic of all the world views.

We cannot save ourselves.

The story goes that CS.

Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia books and a professor at Oxford University, he once walked into a room at Oxford full of the most brilliant professors and thinkers of his time.

And the professors at Oxford were debating the question of world religions.

And specifically, they were asking the question of what is it that makes Christianity unique?

Why is Christianity different from every other religion?

Well, as the story goes, Lewis walked into the room and the professors asked him that question.

And without hesitating, CS.

Lewis said, Oh, that's easy.

It's grace.

Grace is what makes Christianity unique, because it is this belief that we cannot save ourselves.

We can't pray hard enough, try hard enough, climb high enough to escape our sinful condition.

We know we are broken, and we need grace.

Grace is the act of God coming down to us to save us.

Ephesians 2 says, It is by grace that you have been saved.

No other religion matches grace.

No other religion, system of thought, philosophy, has grace at its heart, but the story of the Bible does.

Daniel Strange, in his book, Making Faith Magnetic, has this beautiful line, which he puts in every chapter, and I'll use it here, too, if I may.

Let me offer you Jesus.

Did you know God loves you?

The God who made the stars and planets, the rocks and trees and birds and bees, that God demonstrated his grateful love for you and I when he did not abandon us unto death to the consequence of our brokenness, but he did something about it.

Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God and son of man who lived a perfect life, died for our sin on the cross, rose again on the third day, and ascended to the right hand of God the Father as King of Kings and Lord of Lords so that you and I might be delivered, that we might be loved, forgiven, and freed today.

In Jesus' name, that is the good news.

Amen.

That is the good news.

The story of the Bible begins with the narrative that human beings were made to walk in the garden with God.

We were made for perfect relationship with God, where every longing that He put in our heart was perfectly fulfilled in Him.

But we turned out back.

The Bible calls it sin, and we were exiled from the garden.

And so what is mind-blowing about the good news of Christianity is that Jesus subversively fulfills the longing for deliverance.

because Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man, does not walk us back into the Garden of Eden.

He doesn't pull back the flaming sword and allow us to go back into eternal life.

But Jesus subverts the story.

Jesus walks not backwards into the Garden again, but our Lord Jesus walked forwards, through the cross, and into the cave of death.

He took on himself on the cross our brokenness, our sin, our shortcomings.

He defeated the ultimate enemy.

He let it crush him.

But then death could not hold him.

And so he rose again.

He kicked out the back wall of the cave of death, and returned to us in resurrection life.

And so now if we will put our faith in Jesus, we have forgiveness, victory, and a new life.

We become loved, forgiven, and freed.

We get back into the Garden of Eden only because Jesus died and rose again to get us in there.

The story of the Bible begins with the Garden, and it ends with the Garden City.

That God, through His grace, is redeeming and recreating the whole world from the inside out to get us back into His presence again.

That we might find our deepest longings fulfilled in relationship with the God who made us.

That's the story of the Bible from beginning to end on deliverance.

We cannot save ourselves.

And so if you and I today will only trust Him, we will be delivered.

If we will only in repentance, which means turning from sin, turning from ourselves, and in faith believe that what Jesus did on the cross and in the empty tomb is enough for us, we will find deliverance.

And we will find that Romans 7 is no longer true of us at the deepest level of our being.

Romans 7, what a wretched man or woman or boy or girl person I am, who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Thank you, God.

You deliver us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And these are the words, Romans 8 is now true of you if you believe in Jesus.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set us free from the law of sin and death.

This is the good news that the Bible tells, the good news of Christianity.

So will you receive it?

Christianity says you cannot work hard enough to deliver yourself, but God did what you could not.

He gave His Son in an act of amazing grace, that we would only grab on to the lifeline that He offers us, and we would be delivered.

We all need deliverance.

It's what makes us human.

We know that something is wrong with the world, but in God, there is a way out, and His name is Jesus.

The deliverance that we long for, every one of us human beings, is fulfilled in the person of Jesus.

He rescues us from our sin, gives us new life even now, and a freedom that you've never known, and a joy that overflows, and a peace that transcends understanding, and a love that will guard you and hold you.

So I pray you will receive the deliverance that is in Jesus this morning.

Let me pray.

Lord Jesus, we've swept through the story of the entire Bible, and we are in awe at what you have done for us.

All of us feel that we can't save ourselves.

We can't try hard enough, or give enough, or sacrifice enough, but we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you in your amazing grace came down to us.

You became one of us, and you saved us.

And so, I pray for those in this room now, or hearing my voice online.

For those of us who have not experienced your deliverance this morning, would you lead us in what it means to repent of our sin and trust in you?

Maybe for the first time, and for those of us who have experienced your wonderful deliverance, we come back to you again this morning with a fresh awe at your greatness, Lord Jesus.

And so, as we sing now with this offering, these melodies and words and chords and rhythm, would it be pleasing to your ear?

We want to worship you and give you thanks for what you've done for us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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