In Scott Brown's sermon on 'Christian Liberty', the focus is on understanding the liberating power of the fear of God and the concept of Christian liberty as described in chapter 21 of the confession. Brown emphasizes that true liberation comes from the fear of God and that freedom in Christianity is not about doing whatever one desires but being set free from the bondage of sin and the law. He elaborates on different types of fear: natural, filial, servile, and sinful, explaining how filial fear is a reverence for God that draws believers closer to Him. The sermon outlines the freedom Christians have from sin's guilt, God's wrath, the law's curse, and the fear of death and condemnation. Brown stresses the harmony between the law and grace, explaining that Christian liberty is not a license for sin but a call to serve God without fear. The sermon concludes with the idea that perfect love, exemplified by Christ's atonement, casts out fear, and believers should live without fear of condemnation, assured of eternal life through Jesus.

Well tonight we go into chapter 21 of our confession to speak about Christian liberty and the liberty of conscience and how the fear of God liberates. We just sang about freedom for the slave. And tonight, the focus is really to see how it is that the fear of God liberates. And we'll explain how freeing it is to have the fear of God in your heart. And remember the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatian Church when he said in Galatians 5 verse 1, it was for freedom that you were set free.

And this is the heart of Christianity and it's the Lord Jesus Christ desire for his children that they be free free indeed and It really is the the power of the Lord Jesus Christ in the soul of man It's a liberating presence and the fear of God is a liberating fear and the confession speaks of it. When you think about what Our Lord Jesus Christ desires for us and to think that it's freedom. It should be such a powerful draw to Him that we would want more of Him because in having more of Him we have more freedom, less bondage, more joy, more liberation. You know, the world really desires liberation, but the only liberation that really is true liberation is the liberation of the soul from the bondage of sin. And you know, we spoke this morning of this fact that there's this great divide.

There are those who are born of God and then there are those who are of the devil. Those are the only two races that are in the world. And the problems in the world really have to do with that divide. It's the divide of those who are of Jesus Christ and those who are not. And it's the only true racial divide that exists.

Two races. The race of the devil and the race of God. You know when I was first converted there were so many passages of scripture particularly in the gospel of John that just absolutely gripped and thrilled my soul. And whenever I hear them, they take me back. They take me back decades.

And one of them is in John 8 32. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And this freedom that God gives to those who fear Him is a freedom that is given by grace. It is a gift of His grace. There's that acronym you've probably heard, it's very common, for grace, G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense.

And That's the freedom that sets free and it's the freedom of the fear of God It's His grace that teaches your heart to fear, and grace your fears relieved. That's how John Newton explained it. And so tonight we're gonna talk about how you're delivered from ungodly fear. And we've been speaking of the fact that there are different kinds of fear in the heart of man. There's a natural fear, fear of danger.

It's a legitimate kind of fear. And then there's the filial fear of the believer. That's the kind of fear that desires God. It's a happy fear that pursues Him. It's a fear of awe and reverence that God is so absolutely remarkably majestic and pure and powerful that you want to be near Him.

You want Him and you do not want to be separated from Him because of all of His goodness and love and power. And then there's servile fear and that's the fear of the unbeliever. That's the person who really wants to get away from God, does not love the laws of God, does not love the people of God, wants to get away from God, his people, and anything having to do with God, and it will do anything to do such a thing. And Then there's the sinful fear of the believer, where we find ourselves wrapped up in the fear of man, the fear of nature, the fear of the political system, the fear of the economy. This is the sinful fear of the believer.

So there are these four kinds of fears. Tonight we deal with this matter of the servile fear of the unbeliever and the filial fear of the believer. The confession addresses those. You have an outline in front of you just so you can track with the thinking that I want to present here tonight. So we begin with chapter 21 and the first paragraph, you have it right before you.

And I would like to read it. The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the rigor and curse of the law, and in their being delivered from this present evil world bondage to Satan and the dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the fear and the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation, as also in their free access to God and their yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and a willing mind." And so this paragraph explains the freedom to which you are set free and explains how we are liberated from slavish fear. This is Christian liberty and what does it mean that we are no longer under the law because this addresses this matter that we're no longer under the curse of the law there's lots of confusion in people's minds about what it means not to be under law but to be under grace and I want to explain that now by walking through several passages of scripture which are listed in your outline And this is the basis of Christian liberty.

The basis of Christian liberty is to be free from the law and what does that mean? Now I think our confession does a marvelous job to explain the harmony of the law and the gospel and how they work together and How they so sweetly comply with one another, you know, it's very interesting this afternoon I was asking my daughter who was reading a book by Maggie Payton, John Payton's wife. She writes many things about their time in these pagan islands. She tells several stories about how they interacted with the natives. They would come to church naked, how are they going to deal with this and all this kind of stuff.

And she says in this book that the role that they played on that island was that that Maggie Payton played the role of the law and John was grace. Law and grace together. They both work together to bring some kind of harmony in their ministry there. But this is the freedom with which you're set free. There is a right use of the law, which is explained in a marvelous chapter on the law and the confession.

And then there is this matter of grace and Christian liberty. Now I've identified several passages of scripture for your reference to understand that you have these statements in the Bible that are often misinterpreted and the first is Galatians 5 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. What does that mean? And then in Romans chapter 6 and verse 14 you read, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. And then going to Romans chapter 7 and in verse 6, but now we have been delivered from the law having died to what we were held by so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

So here you have this this principle of being set free to a newness and then in Galatians chapter 2 verse 16 you find that we're not justified by the works of the law, knowing that man is not justified by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even when we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. And then the fifth passage of scripture, it's Colossians two, 16 and 17, and here the apostle Paul is writing to the Colossian church and he's talking about how the Christian is freed from the ceremonial law And he says in verse 16, so let no one judge you in food, he's talking about the food laws, in drink, he's talking about matters of drink, and then regarding a festival, a new moon, or the Sabbath. And he's talking about the Sabbaths that were part of the ceremonial law. Not the moral law, the weekly Sabbath, but the Sabbaths that were part of the ceremonial law.

So those are the critical passages of scripture that speak about this matter of being freed from the law, being no longer under the law. Now, the confession lists 13 things that define our freedom from the law. It's very important that we understand what it means to be out from under the law. And so I'm going to list these 13 things right here. They're in the paragraph that we just read.

But I want to just isolate them, just so that you can kind of consider them one at a time to get a sense of what it means to be set free. What is this liberty? What is Christian liberty? It is this kind of liberty here that is defined. So it is, first of all, freedom from the guilt of sin.

That is Christian liberty. You are free from the guilt of sin. Number two, freedom from the condemning wrath of God. This is Christian liberty. Christian liberty isn't you can go do whatever you want to do, okay?

Because the scriptures make that so clear. You know, we just heard this morning, you know, little children, keep yourselves from idols. In other words, don't do whatever you want to do. Keep yourselves from idols. Christian liberty is not the freedom to just follow your heart into any direction it might take you.

That's a completely corrupt understanding of freedom, Christian liberty, and the right use of the law. The third is freedom from the rigor and curse of the law. Freedom from the rigor and curse of the law. No one has ever been able to keep the law. James said that if you break one, you've broken them all.

And we've all broken probably every law of God, you know, before we hit the door after breakfast. And there is the rigor of the law, the perfection of the law. In the Old Testament, it was always perfection that was demanded and in the New Testament, it's no different. God didn't relax his standards in the New Testament era. He punished every sin.

He punished his son. So there has never been a relaxation of the law. But there is a justification for sinners under the law of liberty. And so we're freed from the rigor and curse of the law. Rigor in the sense that it demands perfection and curse in that it is a curse upon your life.

And then number four, freedom is being delivered from this present world. So there's this progressive deliverance from the ways of the world. We've talked about that quite a bit lately in 1st John. But this morning there was this language about you know lying in the sway of the wicked one and being under the clutch the very clutches of the devil and how God frees you from that and that's what he's time delivered from this present evil world. And then, number five, freedom from bondage to Satan.

This is the breaking of the power of sin at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then, number seven, freedom from the evil of afflictions. In other words, your afflictions are For the purpose of good because all things work together for good Afflictions are not evil anymore Their source of your sanctification they make you trust him more they make you love him more They make you more dependent upon Him. They make you more like a child. They make you realize that you are not your own.

There are forces upon you that are designed to bring you to glory and they may be painful but we know that every son that God receives he's gorgeous And he loves every son that he scourges. So it's freedom from the evil of afflictions. And then number eight, freedom from the fear and sting of death. It's that kind of freedom. Being out from under the law doesn't mean that you're free to do whatever you want, but it does mean that you're free from the fear and sting of death.

You don't have to fear death anymore. And then number nine, freedom from the victory of the grave. That's a freedom. How about that? Freedom from the victory of the grave.

Yes, you will die, but you will not be dead. Your soul will live. Because you have everlasting life, and the grave cannot hold you any more than it held the Lord Jesus Christ. Because you were raised up with Him. Because He was raised, you're getting raised too.

And the victory of the grave has been destroyed Totally. It has no victory. Your body goes into the ground, but that's it. Not the real you. And then number 10, freedom from everlasting damnation.

This is freedom from the fires and the terrors of hell. And then number 11, there's freedom of free access to God. We can come before Him boldly. Because we have a compassionate and a faithful high priest. And then number 12, we have the freedom in yielding obedience to him.

In other words, he gives us a desire and a joy and a freedom to obey like we never had before. It's that kind of freedom. Again, it's not freedom to do whatever you want. It's freedom to do whatever God wants. You have been given that kind of freedom.

And then the last element of freedom from the law relates to the fear of God. And so it's this freedom from slavish fear. Freedom from slavish fear. Not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and a willing mind. The childlike love and willing mind is a beautiful part of the definition of the fear of God.

This is the kind of fear that God puts in the heart of his children. It's childlike and it's willing and it's love. So we're free from the law in these 13 ways. What does it mean not to be under the law? These 13 things describe what it means that you're no longer under the law.

You're no longer under the curse and the condemnation of the law. It's no longer standing over you to terrify you because you have been delivered from fear. So that brings us to the next part and that is paragraph 3 where the authors of the confession talk about how Christian liberty is corrupted. So let's read that. They who upon pretense of Christian liberty do practice any sin or cherish any sinful lust as they do thereby pervert the main design of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction so the authors are just saying you what I've been tempting to say is that you know Christian Liberty isn't isn't the liberty to do whatever you want to do and to practice any sin that you want or to cherish any lust that you have in your heart.

That's not Christian liberty. That's actually bondage to the devil. And He says, so they wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty. You destroy Christian liberty by saying, Christian liberty means I can do whatever I want. Which is that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies and this is a critical phrase that we might serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives.

Now, there's a kind of fear that corrupts Christian liberty. John speaks of this in 1 John, 1 John 4, 17 and 18. Mike preached on this text a few weeks ago. And John is writing to his little children and he's telling them that there is no fear in love. What does it mean not to have any fear in love?

How does that work? And John speaks of this beginning in verse 17 where he says that that love has been perfected among us in this. That we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as he is so are we in this world so there's this perfecting work of God's love in us and it is being the verb tense is perfected and it's in the past tense, it's a finished work. So love has been perfected among us. That's the first idea that John brings to us.

And then he says, right after that there is no fear in love. Well there's no fear in love because an action in the past has taken place. Your atonement has taken place. So that's why he says there is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment but he who fears has not been made perfect in love so God gives his peace to those who fear him in filial fear because they love him, because they adore him, because they have awe toward him. Have awe toward Him.

And because they have been perfected, because Christ's atonement has already worked in their lives, His love drives out their fear of torment. They will not face torment. You will not face torment if love has been perfected by the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so the kind of fear that love casts out is the fear that involves torment. And so the Christian has this freeing fear that doesn't involve any torment at all.

And that's what it means that there is no fear in love. And you know often because of our immaturity, our lack of understanding, we fall into this kind of fear. And we forget that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free from the law of sin and death. And this is how the perfect love casts out fear.

You know, the people of God should be the most fearless people in the world. Fearless of man, fearless of nature, fearless of the economy, and fearless of the wrath of God. Doesn't that sound scandalous to you? That you are set free from the wrath of God and you don't have to have any fear? How about that?

This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the freedom to which you are set free. This is what Jesus meant when he said you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. You are free from the fear of condemnation of the law and perfect love casts out all fear. In Luke chapter 1 there's this whole idea that Zacharias prophesies of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's prophesying about the coming Lord and Savior. He says, for he has visited us and redeemed his people. He has raised a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David. And then he says, to grant us, in verse 74, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies Might serve him. Can you finish the sentence?

We might serve him without fear This is the love of Jesus Christ. To have a family set loose in the world who can serve Him without fear of condemnation because of the power of Jesus Christ. And this is the liberty that God brings to his people. Again, liberty is not a license to do whatever you want. Liberty is the right to do as God pleases without fear.

Somebody reminded me this morning of the Heidelberg Catechism, the first question. I'll conclude with it. What is your only comfort in life and death? You know, if you want comfort, where do you find comfort in this world? Where will you go to get your comfort?

I mean, you can go to your idols to try to get comfort from them. It's very short-lived, you know. They're a little cold, you know. What is your only comfort in life and death? The answer is this, that I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact all things must work together for my salvation because I belong to him Christ by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. This is the freedom for which you were set free. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That is the fear that liberates and that is your fear of God. That sweet filial fear that delivers you from all of your other fears. What a blessing. Fears what a blessing let's pray oh lord we are so stunned at the grace and the mercy that you have given to us in your Son. We don't understand how you would receive sinners like we are and to set us free like this.

Oh Lord, give us such a heart within us to serve you with all fear that we might love you, that we might keep all of your commandments. Oh Lord that you would pour this kind of fear out in our hearts. Amen.