No Longer Bound
- Isaac Baugh
- Dec 21, 2025
- 11 min read
This sermon was originally preached on July 6th, 2025
The Text
And God spake all these words, saying, "I am the Jehovah thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." (Exodus 20:1-2)
Prayer for the Word to Be Effective
Jehovah our God, we thank You for Your Word, for giving us this gift and rock to stand upon. May the words I speak today be Your Words, and may You show Yourself in Your grace and glory to Your people. In Jesus' name, amen!
No Longer Bound
Intro
God's law is very simple, very straightforward. It's sin that's complicated. Sin is complicated and convoluted, because ultimately, sin doesn't make sense. 1 John 3:4, "sin is lawlessness." Sin isn't orderly, it isn't rational, and yet sin wants to pretend like it makes perfect sense, so it hides its lawlessness in the hopeless tangles of complexity. So there we were, lost in our sin, lost in the maze of our own wickedness, enslaved to our lust. But God broke down the wall and led the captives free. He has freed you from sin, He has led you out of the house of bondage to the lusts of your flesh, because He is the God of freedom. And because He is the God of freedom, His Law is not burdensome. His law is not complicated and convoluted, so you don't need to be a lawyer to understand it. In fact His law is so simple that Jesus could summarize the entire Law of God like this; Love God, Love Your Neighbor. That's the law of God. That's what it all boils down to, love God, love your neighbor, because at its heart, love fulfills the law. Romans 13:10, "Love is the fulfilling of the law.” And love fulfills the law because God is love.
God Spoke
And God spoke all these words, saying,
An evangelist approached a man at a bookstore and asked, "excuse me, but do you know God?" to which the man replied, "Oh yes! Of course I know about God, I'm a seminary professor!" The evangelist said, "Well, I didn't ask if you knew about God, I asked if you knew Him." The seminary professor answered, "Yes that's what I said, I know all about God, I know all about His omnipotence, about His aseity, and about His transcendence." The evangelist, with a concerned expression said, "Sir, you know many things about God, but have you ever met Him?" The seminary professor just gave the evangelist a blank stare and silently walked out of the store.
Like the seminary professor, we can profess to have knowledge about God when in reality we are ignorant of Him, we pridefully profess to be wise when we're actually fools. And one of the ways we indulge this pride is by lining up all the things we know about God on a shelf and alphabetizing them. But knowledge about God profits a man nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Without love I am nothing. But love for what? Love all by itself isn't a virtue or a vice, I could love eggs or I could love sinning. Paul means love for God. 1 Corinthians 8:1–3, “Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” Knowledge about God all by itself in a vacuum puffs up, but love for God builds up. And in order to love Him, you have to meet Him.
So we don't come to Mount Sinai in order to discover knowledge about God. We don't come to hear the 10 Commandments in order to receive information. His Law is not a to-do list. We come to meet the Law-Giver. The problem is, we don’t want to meet God. We hide from Him in our tangles of fig leaves because we don’t want to be known by Him. And we don't want to be known by Him because we don't want to see our sin. We don’t want to see ourselves as we truly are behind the fig leaves. So we make a show of our knowledge to disguise our fear, keeping a safe distance between from that scary looking cloud of fire and lightning because we don’t want to be known.
But here's the thing, there is no salvation without knowing Him and being known by Him. Salvation isn’t a transaction that can be carried out at a distance. You need to meet God. And that means seeing the blackness of your soul against the backdrop of His righteousness. But you don't need to be presentable to meet Him. As Jim Wilson said, God meets you where you are, not where you should've been. And He does this because He is love. He sees us in our misery, He sees all our sin and yet He so loved our world, though buried in filth, that He sent His only begotten Son that any wretched sinner who believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life.
A.W. Tozer, who had met this God of love, said this, *"because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed."* We cannot know the depths of God's Love. But we can know Him. And we can know Him because He speaks to us.
Tota Scriptura
And God spoke all these words, saying,
God is the God of speaking and of Words. Language wasn’t a pragmatic invention. Language is integral to existence because language is integral to God. To hear God speak is to receive Him. He isn't just communicating propositions and information, when God speaks, He communicates Himself, and that's why things come to life when He speaks them. So when we come to the Scriptures, when we come to the Word of God, we meet God.
So the Bible is not information about God. The Bible is not a story-book filled with moralistic fables, and a little note after every chapter, "now what did we learn today?" When we read Scripture, or when we hear it preached, we are meeting God in His Word. So we're not reading dead words on a page, His Words are not caged by time or space. Many today hide from God by claiming that the Bible was written in a particular context that doesn’t apply to us anymore. But Hebrews says that the Scriptures are living and active. This is God’s living Words, every single pen stroke, every single vowel of it is the Holy Word of God. Which means that we can’t just affirm Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, and be done with it. We also must affirm Tota Scriptura, all of Scripture.
So first of all, read your Bibles, and read the entire Bible. And second of all, our baseline commitment as Christians means we wholeheartedly embrace everything Scripture says, even the passages about slavery, even the passages about covenant members falling away, even the "Arminian" passages. To all of them, we say, Amen!
Jehovah
Verse 2, I am Jehovah Your God
The God who speaks is not the generic God of the Pledge of Allegiance. One nation, under God. But under which God? The vanilla God of the American civil religion? Can we insert whichever God we like best into that pledge? The Christian Faith worships a particular God, a God who has a name. We worship Jehovah, the Great I AM, the only true and living God. When He gave His name to Moses at the burning bush, He said, "Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."
So you may have wondered at some point why I say Jehovah all the time, well, this is why. Jehovah is His name that He gave to us as a memorial. This means that He gave us His name so that we would know Him, and so that we would possess Him.
Jehovah Isn't Like Allah
Verse 2, Jehovah your God
- Already He has said that Israel shall be His treasured possession, but here He says that He is their God. In the Islamic religion, they believe that their god Allah owns everything, to him belongs all power and authority. But Allah is not a generous god. He does not give. Jehovah, however, is a generous God. He is generous with His gifts, and He is generous with Himself. He freely gives Himself to His people, I am YOUR God. And everything He says on Mount Sinai comes out of that self-giving.
Unlike Allah who imposes commandments as an extension of His domination and raw cold power, when Jehovah gives His Law, He is giving Himself. He gives out of love. And that's why love fulfills the law, because love looks through the law to the law-giver. Jehovah is the God who shows love in covenant, which means He makes binding promises to sinners to be their God before they've ever done a thing. He hasn't even given the law yet and He's identified Himself as Israel's God. Before the Law was given, before any obedience was rendered, independent of Israel's merits, He covenantally bound Himself to this little nation of ex-slaves.
Deuteronomy 7:7–8, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that Jehovah set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because Jehovah loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that Jehovah has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
Jehovah saves, but not because the people themselves are worth saving, He has saved you because He loves you and is keeping the covenantal oath He made to Abraham. God signed His name thousands of years ago, and you are the heir of those covenantal promises.
Laws Multiply Like Beetles
Verse 2, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
The kingdom of darkness will always pretend to be a kingdom of light, it will always try to mimic God, both in His power and in His benevolence. In the name of love, tyrannical governments will impose unbearable burdens on its people. Remember that Pharaoh justified the murder of Israelite babies as a way to protect Egyptian interests, much like how child murder today is called "health care". And when governments try to mimic God, laws multiply like beetles. In order to mimic omnipotence and omnipresence, the state must swell to a massive size, and encode its sovereign will in its legal system. But because sin and idolatry are the driving force, the legal system will end up hopelessly complex and convoluted. For example, in America, there are at least four thousand federal laws, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, regulations and codes. Nobody is able to actually keep track of how many laws there are because it's so complicated.
Compare that to God's Law here in Exodus 20. There are 10 commandments. And those 10 can be summarized in two. Love Jehovah your God with all of your mind, all of your heart, and all of your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Man's law enslaves us to hundreds of thousands of regulations, but God brings us out of the land of Egypt, and out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son.
Someone Else Has to Save You
Verse 2, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Sin enslaves us, the more you try to stop sinning, the bigger your sin gets. And Scripture tells us that all of us are born into this condition of slavery. In sin did my mother conceive me, sang David. The heart is desperately wicked, said the prophet Jeremiah. Every person has a dragon inside, gripping the heart in its claws. You cannot kill this dragon, you can't save yourself from its power, you can't overthrow it, you are enslaved to its power. For you to be free, someone else has to save you. And that's exactly what Jesus Christ did.
He saved you by taking all of your sin upon Himself. God's righteous judgment for your sin was about to come down on you, but Jesus spoke and said, "Take me instead." So Jesus stood in your place, He went to war against the dragon, and He drank the cup of God's wrath, thus freeing you from sin, death, and the dragon. He broke the dragon's claws, He offered Himself as a sacrifice for your sins, and He gave you His righteousness so that you can walk out of the house of slavery, free and justified.
No Longer Bound
What Jesus has done for you has set you free in at least three ways;
You are free to obey His Law
And remember, His Law is not a burden, God doesn't save you from a yoke of slavery just to put you under a different equally heavy yoke. He frees you from the heavy burdens of sin so that you can run in the path of His commandments.
You are free to say no
Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 10 that no temptation has power over you beyond what you are able to resist, God will not allow it. He will provide a means of escape so that you can bear it. No longer are you a slave to your lusts and desires, no longer are you a slave to the dragon inside. God has given you everything you need to say no.
You Are free to love God
Augustine once said that Christian living comes down to this, Love God and do what you please. Because if you love God, you will want to do what pleases Him. This is why His commandments are not burdensome. We were created to love God, so when He frees us from sin and death, when He speaks His creating Word over us and makes us into new creatures, we are restored to our original purpose; to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Prayer of Application
Father in heaven, thank Your for Your Word, thank You for giving Yourself to us, for speaking to us, and thank You that You meet us where we are. But God please don't leave us where You found us, transform us by this Word, shape us to be people of the Word, people who come to Your Word ready to hear whatever you say to us, ready to see whatever we need to see. Teach us to look through Your Law to see You, and the love that You have for us. In Christ's name, amen.
Communion Homily
Like God's Law, this table is simple and straightforward. Sin is complicated, and so, over time, sin has piled up complicated rules about how and when the Supper should be received, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, man-made regulations that have the appearance of piety. But really this table is a table of freedom. All that is required is that you be a covenant member, baptized into the triune name of God. That's all that's required to come and receive this sacrament.
Some might object that 1 Corinthians 11 requires us to examine ourselves before participating, but Paul is not introducing a new commandment. He's urging the church to make sure they are loving their neighbors. Don't hog all the wine and get drunk while your brother in the back goes without. Love your neighbor. It's not complicated, it doesn't require deep introspection into your heart to make sure you're really worthy. None of us are, none of us ever will be. That's the point. Because here Jesus is giving Himself. The immortal invisible almighty God is giving Himself to you in this bread and wine. You can never be worthy of that. You don't have to be, Jesus gives it freely. And that's why this table is simple and straightforward. This is my body, this is my blood. Take and eat, take and drink. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.
Commissioning
So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment. (James 2:12-13)
How can we who have received the freedom of Christ turn around and subject our brothers and sisters to slavery? How can we, who have been freed from our bondage of guilt, then turn around and hold the guilt of others over their heads? James is very clear, if you withhold mercy, mercy will be withheld from you. If you withhold forgiveness from others, God will withhold it from you. Instead, because you have received mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace, because you have received Jesus Himself, so go and give that same mercy and freedom to each other. Hold nothing over each other, hold no grudges, and instead give as you have received.
Comments