We crave freedom, but Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” No matter how strong that craving, we’ll find ourselves serving either righteousness or unrighteousness.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

Why is the idea that we must “serve somebody” so difficult for us to accept, and how does Romans 6:16 challenge the way we commonly define freedom?
Where in your life have you chased “freedom” only to find yourself more bound—what did that cycle look like, and what kept you coming back?
The sermon compares sin’s pull to constant phone notifications. What “notifications” does sin keep sending you, and what would it look like to silence them this week?
The psalmist rejoices, “I am your servant… you have broken my bonds” (Psalm 116:16). How does serving the Lord actually free us rather than restrict us?
Romans 6:19 speaks of presenting our members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. What is one concrete area of your life you can present more fully to God in the coming days?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

Well, we are continuing in Romans chapter 6 tonight. We’re at verse 16. And if you recall, last week we were talking about what freedom is. What does it really mean to be free? We’re going to be continuing to think about that tonight because we crave freedom. But the truth is we never actually reach what we often think of as freedom.

A great philosopher once wrote, “you got to serve somebody.” And if you happen to recognize that, Bob Dylan wrote that in 1979. I only use that in just partially because Dylan actually is quite insightful, and he wrote that right after his conversion to Christianity. So here is this man who has an incredible prolific gift of writing music, who continues to put out albums.

Here he’s taking his observations of the world and now looking at the world through Christ-focused glasses, right? What do I see? And what did he see? He saw, well, whether you’re a king, whether you’re a rock star, whether you’re this, whether you’re that, whatever you might be, you gotta serve somebody. It might be the Lord or it might be the devil. Well, he wrote that.

But one of his contemporaries, John Lennon, did not care for this idea at all. There’s a lesser known song that he wrote in response, which I don’t recommend you listen to; it’s profanity-laden. But Lennon penned a year later this very explicit song in response entitled “Serve Yourself.” To make the point that no, you have to go do it yourself. You’re not going to serve anybody. You just need to watch out for yourself.

He hated what Dylan wrote. He was somewhat reserved on the public stage. In fact, that song and response wasn’t released until long after his death. But he, in private, made it very clear this was offensive, this idea that Dylan he’d gotten this Jesus bug and had decided that we couldn’t actually ever avoid serving somebody. It was just who? And in that, I think Lennon was actually tapping something that most of us feel: What do you mean I have to serve somebody? I’m my own master. I can decide my own destiny.

But Dylan was actually the one who was recognizing the truth: we can’t avoid serving someone. And the reason that’s so hard to drill into our heads, I think, our sinful nature resents the idea that we aren’t actually piloting our own ship completely. It’s got to be different.

And so despite having long and similarly productive careers, here were two talented creators and one could not recognize what the other one was seeing. In fact, it angered him because I think it touched a nerve. And I think it continues to touch a nerve. When we talk about our sin nature and the call to actually go from being slaves to sin to slaves to righteousness, that does not appeal to us. That’s not what we want.

We might not write a song of questionable language about it, but we often do so with our lives. I will show who’s really boss. And for a little while, sin seems to offer far more freedom than righteousness. I can do whatever I want. I will be my own boss. And maybe I’ll do the good thing some of the time and do the bad thing some of the time because who’s really to say it’s bad? I am a free agent.

Well, what we don’t realize is every time we do that, we’re actually signing on to enslaving ourselves to sin all the more. Let’s pray tonight that God would help us to see what places we’ve done that in our lives. Where have we said, I am going to be a slave to sin? We might not say in those words and yet by our very actions we do. And how can we become more slaves to righteousness? Would you pray with me, please?

We do pray that you would help us. We can’t avoid serving somebody. We got to serve somebody. It’s unavoidable. Yeah, Lord, we don’t want to think that. We want to think that we actually can just serve ourselves. Would you help us to see clearly those places where we think we’re doing the latter and yet we’re actually just buying into serving sin? Help us to see how true freedom comes in serving you and serving and being slaves of righteousness. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.

Here, if we want to understand the problem — and this goes from end to end of Scripture — if we want to understand the problem with trying to be our own captains, our own masters of destiny, it’s that sin is a vicious cycle of deterioration. And every time that we try to do it ourselves and pick our own path, as soon as we hit part of that deterioration, we’re going to hit more and more of it. It’s unavoidable. That’s what we see in verse 16. Take a look.

Paul writes: “Do you not know that when you offer yourselves obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, leading to death, or to obedience, leading to righteousness.”

So there’s a vicious cycle of deterioration. It is, if we want to use another metaphor, addicting. Sin addicts us, and like any addiction, it then doesn’t want to let go. It says, how about a little more?

Because in seeking freedom through sin, what do we do? Well, I’ll do this one little thing. I mean, I do a lot of good things. I’m a pretty good person. I’ll do this one little thing and that will satisfy me. And then you find out, well, that one little thing to say, I need to do another little thing, and another little thing, and then a big thing.

And of course, because we want to be our own judge, part of that is our big sins never are very big. It’s everyone else’s big thing. Ours, in our own eyes, remains little. And so we resent when we’re told we have to serve somebody because… You have it all under control. What’s the problem?

But then demands our obedience. It doesn’t feel that way, but it does. Here words like obedience and serving and it just, if I put on social media, “Hey come to church, we’re going to talk about how we need to be obedient.” You think I want to be excited about that? Oh, yeah. I know some people who should hear that, right? But not me.

Satan loves to emphasize the weight of obeying obedience. “Did God really say?” From the very beginning, Satan has loved to emphasize a little bit more than what God actually asks and take away any good that could come of that thing that God asked and say, look at this heavy burden that God wants to place on you.

And I think that’s part of what Lennon was reacting to Dylan about. Being told that you need to obey God and do what you have a choice, you can do good or bad, but you’re going to serve somebody. The implication, of course, anyone would say, well, I should do whatever’s good. If it really is good, then I should do good, right? I mean, that makes sense.

It sounds so dry and heavy. What about actually having life? Why throw your life away just chasing after what? Sin some book.

Every generation comes up with new things we can do that will be free. Experience this, do this, toss off this particular set of burdens, and you will be free. And you won’t be subject to the weight of that, paying obedience.

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves you are slaves of the one whom you obey? Either sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness.”

I was really struck by how Paul embraces what we actually want to rebel against here by not only talking obedience but obeying obedience here. Might as well deal with it upfront here, right? Let’s admit exactly what we’re talking about, so we can look at the full undesirability to us of it.

What the Apostle knew is the same thing that we know because we haven’t changed. We’re the same. We’re human beings that are fallen and the idea of going from sin and being told, okay, you’re free from sin. Now obey something. We say, well, but you said I was free. I’ll obey.

That’s exactly where Satan loves to attack then. Where is it in your life that there’s something that God wants you to do? In our own fallen nature and in the sinful world around us, there’s that sense, but that’s just too much. That’s too much.

Or sometimes a sneak attack: Well, if you don’t do this perfectly, God’s not going to love you. Well, give up, right? What can I do? Maybe I should just do what I want to do because at least then I’ll be free. I might die, but I’ll be free.

Paul says here, notice he talks about obeying obedience. He doesn’t just say obeying obedience, but he also talks about obeying either sin, which leads to death, or obedience. Not choice of if I will obey something. It’s a choice of what I will obey. Got to serve somebody. How can I get away from it?

But when I’m sitting, I’m doing whatever I want. And that’s why it’s so important we understand how sin is that vicious cycle, that it isn’t just sin, but it’s sin that leads to death. How does sin go from sin to death? Well, every single sin in itself is worthy of death. And yet also, it does keep moving us further.

Surely we know this. We know there are times when we say, I am not going to do and just take them up, fill in that blank in your head. You don’t need to say it out loud, you don’t need to put in the comments in the chat, but fill in that blank: I’m not going to do. And then you’re in the situation and you can take that blanket. I just am going to do a little, right? Okay, I’m not going to eat the whole cake.

I’ll just eat a little cake. That piece is awfully small. Get a little more cake. Freedom sounds so alluring, but when we have a stomach ache afterwards, it doesn’t sound so alluring anymore, right? I am free to eat the whole cake.

All things are permissible to me, as Paul said, but not all things are beneficial, right? It feels so freeing, and yet it leads to, as Paul says here, ever increasing wickedness.

We can’t. We can’t get out of this. Verse 19 leading to more lawlessness. So now you present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. Why? Because we don’t want to be in that lawlessness.

That, there is understanding how Christ is going to work in our lives, that the path that sounds like freedom is actually just leading to more of everything I’ve wanted to escape. So how about something different?

But sometimes, when we’re just looking at it ahead of time and we’re not actually in it, it feels like, feels like it’s actually looking pretty good. Imagine, imagine 30, 40 years ago. That someone said, Wouldn’t you like when the phone rings never to have to go and find a phone and get the cord untangled? If you wanted to move a little bit away from where the phone was, wouldn’t you like that?

And you’d say, well, yeah, those cordless phones are kind of expensive, but maybe I’ll get one of those. And what do you like if you were outside it still works? What do you like if you were even a distance away from your home that you could still be reached? And wouldn’t you like it if not only someone could call you, but they could also send you essentially what we presently call a letter? It would be someday you call it a text, but you can get these words as well.

And then it can do all kinds of other things. It can tell you how to get places. It can let you know important things that are happening so you always have all that with you. Wouldn’t you like that? Doesn’t that sound more freeing than sitting there waiting for the phone to ring? And then answering the phone and tripping over the cord, and it’s all tangled up and that little twirly cord, you know, is just all in knots, and then you try to untwirl it, and there’s a little bit of a loose wire in there, and the phone’s cutting it out. Doesn’t sound so much more freeing not to have to do any of that.

But of course, we’re not 30 or 40 years ago, we’re in the present and does anyone really feel freer by the fact that you now have a thing in your pocket that buzzes incessantly? That you’re always reachable? That you get letters as in: “Have you considered giving money to this political campaign? Because I’m in desperate need and you need to give right now.” And of course, the all-important, “It’s your turn to play.” Whatever game you happen to be playing, I can’t.

I looked one time. I’ve been trying to tell my phone to show me fewer notifications, but I looked one time and one day there were like 2,000 notifications in a single day. And you think about that, divide it up by hours or minutes. That’s a lot of notifications. That, my friends, is not freedom.

Freedom is not being constantly pestered with this stuff, but if you described it in abstract, if you go back to the time that we also heard this sort of thing was coming, it sounded like a new kind of freedom and an improvement. And of course, when we go back, no, we kind of like our lack of freedom, right? No. Bring it on. I hate it, but give me more of it.

That’s sin. No, not your smartphone, but then it’s constantly something has notifications. Hey, you could use a break. How about you just take this shortcut? It won’t hurt so much. And you click the little notification and it says, okay, I’ll show the algorithm, kicks in, show you five more notifications of things you can take shortcuts. Maybe wanted to patch up where you took the shortcut before.

We realize, no, that’s not actually freedom at all. And yet, I think, but if I didn’t have the notifications coming in, I might miss something.

We have whole debates in school districts on whether parents can insist that their kids have their phones with the notifications pouring in while they try to study in class. You can’t take away my kids’ freedom. Is that funny? It becomes slaves to something.

And if you say, well, maybe they can have the phone for emergencies in a few trusted contacts, but they can’t have everything coming in. How can you be so restrictive? They need freedom. And so we confuse what’s actually for our good with being enslaved.

That’s our personality as people. That’s what we do. That’s why those algorithms constantly are tuned to make us want a little bit more even while it makes us more miserable. That’s exactly what sin’s been doing since the fall, over and over and over again.

We’re going to serve somebody. I was chasing that promise thinking somehow this is going, this time it’s actually going to be better this time. It’ll be better if I sin now because I’m free from the fear of judgment. That’s freedom, right? There’s my freedom. My freedom is that I can sin, that I no longer have to be worried that somehow it’s going to end up putting me in hell fires forever. That’s what freedom’s about, right?

That’s what Christian freedom is about? No, that’s not what Christian freedom is about. What does it mean to be genuinely free?

Paul goes on in verse 17, “But thanks be to God, that though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

You say, Paul, it sounds so good until you got to that last part again. I mean, we’re trying, Paul, we’re trying to be on this wonderful theme of freedom. Here we are on Memorial Day weekend and we’re thankful for those who fought for our freedom and gave their lives for it. And so, Paul, let’s just ignore that last part. Let’s just talk about we’re free, right?

What is freedom? Just as sin leads to a vicious circle or spiral of wickedness, of destruction, of decay in our lives, righteousness leads to a virtuous cycle of being restored.

And you think about what we’re usually chasing when we’re chasing after freedom: is to get to the point where things are right. We want freedom to actually be where things are right — whatever that means to us. Sometimes it’s a good thing that we’re thinking of, sometimes it’s not, but we say, well if it could just be nice. Maybe it’s like what you remember from long ago from your childhood or some really good moment in your life. You say if only I can just get back to that point, there’s freedom.

It’s funny when you think about all those notifications and things that pour in, that as much as we might resent when people say we can’t, you need to turn it off, isn’t there a certain level of relief when you go someplace and like you go to see a performance and they say you need to turn off your phone? We don’t even want buzzing. We want it’s silent in here, so turn it off. Okay, it’s not on me any longer. No one’s going to think I’m bad for turning this off. It’s just off.

You’re angry that I can’t get this. I’m truly unavailable. Or you go out. I love when I’m someplace and you realize that there’s no cellular service. Isn’t that a nice feeling? It can’t come in.

Not all the time, right? And that’s what makes us say, well, maybe the Trump and I sell town over here, I might need contact at this moment. But when you know that there’s not really anything going on and suddenly all the trivial stuff, right? Sometimes a restriction actually makes us feel freer. It doesn’t sound like it, but it can.

And that’s the kind of slavery that Paul is talking about here, something that enslavement that is actually freedom. And not in Orwellian sense, no freedom isn’t slavery and slavery isn’t freedom, not in that sense.

But if we keep in mind the fact that we’re not talking about whether we’re going to be genuinely free or completely enslaved, but we’re in a state as human beings, we are always going to be enslaved. It’s a question of, do we want enslavement that’s for our good or for our bad? It changes things.

Notice what the Psalm says in Psalm 116: “Truly, O Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maid servant. You have broken my bonds.”

Isn’t it interesting here? The thought must recognize what we often can’t. The psalmist says, “You’ve freed me. I am your servant. You have broken the bonds. I serve you.” And that’s so contrary to where our human nature wants to go. Our human nature wants to say, if you’ve really freed me, then I’m not bound to anything.

But the psalmist is rejoicing in the fact that to serve the Lord means to be freed from the bonds of things that actually are degrading and destroying us.

That said, we experience, as Paul talks about, righteousness leading to holiness. Once again, at the end of verse 19: “So now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification, the holiness.”

What does that mean? So actually me, take a look at Romans 5:19: “For just as through the disobedience of one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous.”

Paul says, the problem is, we’ve all been living not actually knowing what it is that we are. Because for all of our lives, we’ve been damaged. For all of our lives, we’ve had sin. From the very moment we had breath, we were sinners. And so we live as Adam did.

But there’s an opportunity to be the true men and women that God made us to be. If we really want to know what freedom is, we better aim for that, to be free to actually be who we were made to be.

To recycle back to what is freedom truly, it’s woven throughout this whole chapter, because if we just keep using it vaguely, we chase after all kinds of things. And yet, because we’re damaged, because sin eats away at us, we don’t really even know what it means to be free.

We always have those lovely hailstorms in the spring. And so inevitably there’s going to be car dealers around that have the big banner out front, “Hail Sale,” right? And so you go in there and there’s the car, there are all those cars on the new car lot that have 23, 24, 25 miles on them. They’ve just been off the truck, that are all banged up, right? The hood has dents in it. Maybe the window has a chip in it. It’s not what it was meant to be.

And that car will never be taken down the road as it was truly fully intended to be, just the beautiful molding of sheet metal, just perfect that it was meant to be. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a way it was meant to be.

We don’t walk up to that car that’s all banged up and say, you know, I guess that car is meant to have those weird kind of dents all over the hood. I guess that’s some kind of new style. No, we say it was damaged by hail. We understand hail damage.

So often though, in our own lives, with the hail damage of sin in our lives, we look at it and say, well, I guess it’s meant to be that way, right? I know I shouldn’t act like this. I know I shouldn’t be like this. I know I shouldn’t think like this, but it’s sort of me. So what freedom would be is I just think more like this, right?

I just try to put my car out in every hailstorm so I can get more banged up because at least it all matches that way.

Paul says, no. Go to the body shop.

There’s a right way for you to be that allows you to be the full, glorious creation that God made and declared good. And freedom isn’t having more hail fall upon you and actually generating the hail and then dumping it on yourself.

Christian life is that journey of sanctification where, yes, it feels restrictive in the moment. Yes, it means I can’t get any notifications and I don’t need to know how many people have posted on my X account for a while.

But in that, there’s actually something better that’s being moved towards. We get part of it, right? When this miraculous thing that isn’t so often miraculous was first talked about, and we started to visualize it, we thought about all the good things. And there are good things that we were chasing after, right?

A loved one needs to get a hold of me in an emergency, boom, it works. You can turn on FaceTime and see someone far away, boom, it works.

We have our Bible studies on Tuesday nights and we can all actually talk and there’s video and interact whether we’re here in St. Charles or in New Jersey. We haven’t gotten any other countries represented during Bible study, but on Sunday night, we do, right? We have oftentimes India and Kenya and Greece and you think about beautiful, amazing things that we were chasing after.

The problem is all the other stuff we drag along with it, right? And a lot of times when we were craving that freedom, we’re not thinking in terms of, well if only I could dump some hail on myself. We’re thinking, well, I’m not really sure how this is all supposed to look, so let me just take a hammer and see if I can bang it back into shape, right? I’ll just start. And it doesn’t work, right?

You need a master craftsman to work on the metal to get it back into shape, and that’s what we need too.

So the very thing that we’ve been provided with, the gift that God gives us, that we remember on Pentecost, that he sent his spirit, and the spirit dwells in us and works in us. 2 Corinthians chapter 3: “And we who, with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into his image with increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

God himself, not just God’s act of force. God himself. That’s what we profess as Christians dwells in us.

The wonder of what happens with the disciples when they’re sent out on Pentecost is suddenly these people who are constantly tripping over themselves, they’re trying to do hail restoration, they’re just banging up the cars of their lives like crazy, trying to knock the little dents out by putting giant ones in and knocking the paint off while they’re at it.

Suddenly, they’re speaking eloquently in all kinds of languages and going out and saying, okay, people want to stone us, who cares? We’re going to go and do this anyway.

What in the world happens there? They’re finally free. Why? Because they’re not the ones doing it anymore.

Reflecting on this passage, William Temple remarked that he could not write a play like Shakespeare. He could read Shakespeare. He loved reading Shakespeare, but he could not write a Shakespearean play. He couldn’t write the lost play of the bard and it would come out and everyone would say, wow, this is beautiful. This is amazing.

He said, but if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like this. And if the spirit could come into me, then I could live a life like his.

You see, a lot of times when we’re chasing after freedom because what we want with freedom is a genuinely good destination. Something that somehow is right. We’re trying to write a Shakespearean play with our own ability.

It comes out clunky. The meter’s off. The wordplays aren’t funny. The plot meanders and the characters are flat.

But when He’s working inside of us, He says, no, but I can get you there. I can write a beautiful play. It isn’t a tragedy.

It isn’t freedom versus obedience. Could I be free to write a really bad play? Yes, but that doesn’t feel like freedom in the end. It doesn’t because it’s awful.

Am I free to live an unrighteous life? Well, some degree, right? I can chase after sin.

But is that really freedom in the end? No.

Just which obedience am I going to follow? Am I going to follow obedience to sin and reach its destination, which is death, or am I going to follow obedience and righteousness? And the Holy Spirit himself is going to author it, and there’s goodness in there to experience.

And there’s what I think I want when I say freedom in there. I gotta chase after that.

Years ago, my friend Ralph retired. He had a nursery, all kinds of beautiful trees and plants and so on. Worked for decades in that nursery. Then he retired. Started another business. And he retired again.

And in the last years of his life, what did he do? He started another business. It’s kind of interesting watching him. He kept retiring. And then the next time, you know, next time I’d see him, “What are you doing, Ralph, with your retirement?” “Well, I started this new business.”

And I was thinking about that, if you’re retired, what was it that you were looking forward to when you’re retired? If you are not retired, what do you think of when you say, well, I’m saving for retirement because I can do this, right?

But you know, the people I’ve seen, like Ralph, who have most successfully navigated retirement is that he didn’t see it as a chance to quit doing things. He saw it as a chance to have the freedom to do innovative things he wouldn’t have been able to do before.

When he was running that little family business to support his family, his family depended on it. So he had to just do the straightforward things. And as he retired and started up new things, they were always actually really great ideas, but they were less obvious ideas, right? And so higher risk ideas.

Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. But Ralph, if you knew him, you’d know he was going to make it work. He was an amazing man. But it was the freedom: okay, I’ve done that. Now I can actually—you know, I have retirement now — it’s just about doing what I was made to do and exploring it.

That’s what it’s like to be in Christian freedom, where the debt has been paid. Jesus has paid our debt. We don’t have to earn for the retirement of eternal life. That is taken care of.

Now the question is, though, was it really just about not having to do anything or was it about actually getting to do what we were always meant to do to begin with, but were always too constricted to get to do? Where can we innovate? Where is it that God says, now that you’re not worried about failing, and you know that I’m behind you, and that I am actually with you, and I dwell in you, where is it that you can do something that you wouldn’t have done before?

The apostles, even after Pentecost, they didn’t always get it right. We go read the book of Galatians. You know, Peter doesn’t always get it right. But he could keep moving. And the freedom they had in Christ was because he knew that his Savior had redeemed him, and he had a good and wonderful gospel to proclaim.

And yes, he was sometimes going to get it wrong, but it was so much better to be in that obedience to that freedom than everything that he thought was going to make him happy before, everything he thought was good before. That’s true for us too.

God’s restoring us. He’s taking out the dents.

Every time we say, well, now that I’m free in Christ, I’m going to go chase after some sin, we’re saying, well, could I put in a few more dents? Maybe they’ll make it look better. It never does.

And you know those dents, they don’t come right back out, right? There’s a cost, right? If you take a sledgehammer to your car, it’s going to cost you something to get those dents removed.

You can say, but I was free to hit the car with the sledgehammer. But it sure isn’t free to get them taken back out, right? You can say, but I’m free. They should just pop back out. No, no, they’re there.

You’ve got to serve somebody. And the initial freedom we chase after, it doesn’t actually provide the freedom that we think it will. What we’re really doing is chasing the illusion of freedom, serving ourselves. It’s chasing the illusion of freedom.

God says, you know, all this freedom talk that you’ve been talking, all this “I can decide for myself what is good. I can fulfill myself by coming up with my own destiny,” all that stuff is really an illusion of freedom.

How do I actually restore you instead? First, that restoration to us.

When Paul writes here of us being put into slavery to righteousness, that’s what he’s talking about. Yes, we are serving somebody, but it’s not like what we’ve seen before, and it’s not ending where that ends.

Sending in the presence of our Savior, He loves. Would you pray with me, please?

Lord, we have our own ideas on what we think freedom is. We chase after it, and it inevitably leaves us feeling rightly enslaved anew because we chase after our wants and our desires and our imaginations. And what do we find? We find that yet again, we’ve taken a sledgehammer to our lives.

Lord, we need your restoration. Even when we resent it and we say, no, I want to be free. Would you help us to see there’s no freedom to be all dented up, and that you offer something better? You offer to restore us to who we were meant to be.

You help us to live in that hope. The true freedom is to be at that point where we can be used by you to go and do the things that our gifts enable us to do. To serve with the confidence that we have our God who loves us right there with us, that you are there not to condemn us but because you love us.

We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.