Lesson 18: Washing at the Cross - Seeing Jesus
Questions 1 and 2
Hello and welcome back to your course.
Seeking the Lord for Freedom
I'm writing to you today from a hotel in Shanghai where I am laying over between flights. In the past, I would have rushed right into the grave of pornography and gratified my flesh, but that life died on a cross and was buried in a tomb.
I just finished a most wonderful study in God’s Word and feel my heart to be nearly bursting with the love of Jesus. As part of my study I read this passage:
To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his. What he tears down cannot be rebuilt; those he imprisons cannot be released.
Job 12:13-14 (NIV)
I’ve experienced so intensely this “tearing down” and “imprisoning”, being locked up in the jail of sexual impurity. And try as I might, for many years I could not be released. “Those He imprisons cannot be released.”
For a time, I read about the brain chemistry, receptors, neuron pathways, etc. involved with sexual impurity, thinking that the clues to why I was enslaved would be revealed. But while the scientific information made me knowledgeable, it left me in bondage to sin.
Looking for help from science is as useless to us as it would have been to Peter if he studied all about gravity while he was sinking beneath the waves. "Let's see, when I try to walk on water, I discover a force that attracts my body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass.“ Yes, Peter, that is indeed how one sinks and drowns.
But if you want to be lifted up out of the waters of impurity, you must turn away from distractions and look to Jesus. Peter cried, "Lord, save me!" (Matthew 14:30) and was immediately lifted up out of the waters and brought to safety. To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are His”. They do not belong to the world, the psychologist or the worldly counselor, or the "addiction/recovery" movement.
If we want to escape the prison of impurity, God must release us. Only the gospel has the power to set us free (Romans 1:16-17; 1 Corinthians 1:18). Once I learned that only God could set me free, I set out to seek the Lord for freedom, turning only to Him, and begging Him to release me. I began to study the gospel, to immerse myself in it, seeking the Lord as if my life depended on it because it did.
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
Psalms 42:1-2 (NIV)
I’m a free man now, made so by God’s grace at the cross. I tell you this with joy. Not that I never sin, just that God has opened the prison door and set this captive free from habitual, life-dominating sin. And I want you to experience this freedom too! I pray for your freedom; I long for your freedom.
If you are to find freedom, it will be by God’s grace and power alone. Only God can free you. And your freedom will come as you meditate on and learn to apply the cross of Jesus Christ. May I encourage you to jettison all worldly wisdom, which will keep you in bondage, and spend your time at the cross of Christ, at the throne of grace, kneeling and asking God to set you free?
To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are His.
Job 12:13 (NIV)
Question 1. Do you see the importance of seeking freedom by God’s chosen method, the cross of Jesus Christ, and not by seeking worldly wisdom? Please share your thoughts.
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Do you remember the previous lesson and the cure that God provided to the Israelites bitten by serpents?
Question 2. What was the solution that God gave Moses to heal the snake-bitten Israelites?
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