Using Your Liberty (Podcast) - Gospel News Network

Using Your Liberty Podcast by Pastor John MacArthur for Grace to You

GNN Note – Liberty comes from God while Freedom comes from man. The two principals function somewhat alike, however, their origin is paramount.

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Podcast HERE >>>

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, just exactly what are we free to do? There are things that are very obvious in the Scripture, clear commands, clearly things that God forbids us to do, spelled out in no uncertain terms. There are also not only negative commands, but positive commands, things we are to do and they’re very clear to us as well. But there’s a whole world of things that are not talked about in the Bible and that always poses the issue of how do I make a decision? How do I make a choice about what I will do regarding something that’s not in the Scripture? Things like – well the Bible talks about these things in this category: food, drink, alcoholic beverages, recreation, sports, television, music, movies, Sunday activity, poker, other kinds of games, smoking, smoking dope, hair styles, clothing styles, and it goes on and on and on.

Now I know there are some things in the Bible about these kinds of issues. In fact I heard a preacher many years ago who preached on the fact that women should never have their hair piled up on their head because the Scripture says, “Top not come down,” that’s in a verse that says, “Let those on a housetop not come down.” It’s an adaptation of that verse, having to do with the coming of the Lord. You could twist the Scripture around, a little bit, and some of you can’t still figure out what I’m saying. But that’s okay. It’ll dawn on you later. There are those kinds of issues, and we all ask those questions. We really do ask those kinds of questions, and we generally ask them every day. And the easy thing to do – and this has kind of been the history of what we could call fundamentalism. You know, no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental. So we understand the history of fundamentalism. They want to make a rule about everything, and so they’ll make all the rules for you. I went to a college like that where we didn’t have to decide anything about anything because everything had already been decided and a rule had been made. There were rules about what time we got up, what time we went to bed, what hours we studied, who we could talk to, how far we could walk in terms of feet with a girl beside us before we had to separate. There were rules for everything, and it simplified life on a superficial level but compounded it hopelessly on an internal level.