What Has Entangled Us
Category: Suffering, Trials & Burdens
Key Passage: Exodus 14:1-4
Speaker: Anthony Aaron
Date: December 27, 2020
I have another joke here I want to give out to you. This one is elderly wisdom. I know there is a lot of wisdom in elderly people, but a pastor went to an elder sister/widow in the congregation to discuss some problems with her lifestyle.
He said, “Sister, you have been setting a rather bad example for the young people. You’ve married four different times in just a few years, and I’m here to question, do you know what you’re doing?” One was a banker, then an actor, then a preacher, afterwards a mortician. She replied, “Reverend, I know exactly what I’m doing. One was for the money, one was for the show, one to get ready, and one to go.”
So that elderly wisdom—that is great. But anyway, Exodus chapter 14, verse number one. We will just look at a couple verses here. You can stand for me. We will just read these four verses, and then we will get going in the message tonight. Exodus chapter 14, verse number one. All right. Everybody has got it there? Great.
The Bible says this: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land; the wilderness hath shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that he shall follow after them: and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
You may be seated. The title of our message tonight is, “What Has Entangled Us?” What has entangled us? We see here in this story, this is the children of Israel. They had just left Egypt. They were on their way out of Egypt, and this is what the Lord is telling Moses to tell the people. This is what the Lord is prophesying is going to happen.
But they were leaving Egypt. They left Egypt with everything. They did not leave a little boy behind. They did not leave older people behind. They brought everything with them. They brought cows. They brought sheep. Everything that they owned, plus whatever the Egyptians owned, they brought that with them. And they were on their way to this Red Sea, to cross the Red Sea. But they thought that it was over with. They thought it was done. They thought they had left Egypt. God worked the miracles. He showed the parables—the plagues, there we go—he showed the plagues, and they were home free. They took everything; the firstborn were slain, and they were just going to head out, unscathed, untouched, they were just going to go. But they did not know that the Egyptians were going to come and follow them. They did not know that the Egyptians were going to come follow.
You know, the Egyptians loved the slave labor that they had with the Israelites because it was all free. Everything that they did, everything that they worked for, the only thing that they had to sacrifice as Egyptians was just to have somebody there whipping them the whole time and ordering them what to do. But Pharaoh, he enjoyed having the labor. He enjoyed having people that he did not care for their lives; he just cared for the things that he wanted to get done. But he thought he would get the children of Israel again without a fight.
So we know the story. The children are visual; they leave, they go towards the Red Sea, and they are stopped at the Red Sea. And it is amazing that the Lord does this. He kind of gives them a little bit of a trial period, if you will. They are free from Egypt, they are free from that bondage, but here they are at the Red Sea. They are at their first real trial. And what happens here is Pharaoh gets his men together, and he notices, “Hey, what were we thinking? Let us go after them and let us bring them back. They have been slaves this whole entire time. All we have to do is just show up, and they will come and follow us back home. They will come and follow us back to Egypt.” And that is what Pharaoh did; he came after them. He thought that he had them. He thought that he had them. Because if you notice there in verse number three, at the bottom of verse number three, this is what Pharaoh says: “For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land; the wilderness hath shut them in.”
So Pharaoh thought he had the upper hand because these children of Israel were entangled. That is what he thought. That is what he thought in his mind that he was going to get the children of Israel, he was going to conquer them again, bring them back into Egypt because they were entangled between the land and the wilderness.
How many can say that about ourselves today? You know, how many people have made a decision, “I’m going to break free”? The Bible very clearly—Egypt is a representation of sin. It is a representation of sin throughout the Bible; it is just a symbol of sin in the Bible. But the children of Israel came out of that bondage. They came out of sin. And what happens? Pharaoh is wanting to bring them back into it. And how many can say for our lives, when we try to get out of sin, when we try to break free from that bondage, when we get out on our own, we get that freedom, we get that liberty—what happens?
That taskmaster comes back to get us. That person, the Pharaoh in this case, comes back to bring us back to sin, bring us back to bondage, bring us back to slavery. They offer nothing. Nothing. The children of Israel did not get anything for working for them. They got their kids killed. They got their—you know, the elders were killed and abused. People were abused. They were sold for slave labor, and nothing. They did not profit from anything.
Here we are in our lives; we are faced with the same decision. We want to make a decision for Christ. We want to live for Christ. We want to break free from this bondage of sin that we so easily get set in. And yet, every day, we are fought with this same battle. This same scene is played out in our lives where we are taken with the taskmaster coming to try to take us back into sin, try to take us back into bondage.
How many goals have we set in our lives? I mean, New Year’s is coming up; this is a great time for it, but how many goals have we set for the new year only to be tripped up and fail within the first couple of months? If you were to look and get a stock—if I were to buy a stock in a company—I would definitely buy it in treadmills at the beginning of January and then sell it as soon as January was over with. Because treadmills are on. You know, I used to work at Chick-fil-A, and man, the salads would just—we could not make enough salads. You know, the fried chicken was still going, but man, those salads, everybody wanted salads. But come February, they started slowing down, and then in the summer, they were just gone, all right? People were just eating sandwiches, fried sandwiches all the time. It is like I used to eat salad, and then give me four or five of those sandwiches; we will eat those up. But that is what happens: we have a goal that we shoot for, but we are tripped up, and we are entangled again with this bondage, with this bondage.
Why does it seem like we have good days? Maybe there is something we are struggling with, maybe there is an addiction that we have, maybe a sin that we are working on, and we have good days, and we feel, “Man, I am overcoming this. I am getting over this. I do not have that lust anymore in my heart. Maybe I have gotten away from smoking for these couple of days.” And we have these great days, and then just a little bit of a trip, and here we are back where we started. We are all the way back where we started. Why does that happen? Because we are being entangled. We are being entangled. That is the title of the message today: “What Has Entangled Us?” What has entangled us? In order to find out how to handle being entangled, we must first realize what is it that entangles us. What is it in our lives that entangles us? I will go over just a couple of things here. But the first thing is the cords of sin.
The cords of sin—that is what entangles us. Let us look at Proverbs chapter 5 and verse number 22, if you would. Proverbs chapter 5, verse number 22. We will not go back to Exodus again. But Proverbs chapter 5, verse number 22: the cords of sin is the first thing that we notice that entangles us, entangles everyone. Proverbs 5—I will get there, here we go. Proverbs 5, verse number 22. The Bible says this: “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself. And…” Read this to the end of the verse with me, ready? “…and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.” The Bible says that there are cords of sin. There are cords of sin that a man can be held down by. There are things in your life, a sin that you can commit, a trespass that will hold you back, will hold you down—a cord of sin that will come and entangle you.
You know, for a Christian, our goal is for us to grow. We need to grow as Christians. I mentioned it this morning: if we are not growing, we are dead. But we need to keep growing. We need to keep growing as Christians. But if we have this cord of sin, it is holding us back. It is holding us back from really truly growing like we should.
The Bible says in John 8:32 through 34, it says this: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And they answered him, “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?” Jesus answered them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” Is servant of sin.
There is a taskmaster of sin in our lives. That taskmaster looks at us, and maybe you came from a life of sin, and maybe you were out in the world and you were involved in the wrong crowd with drinking and smoking and the wrong crowd. And maybe you came from that life, and you got into church, you got your life changed, you got saved. And then those old friends come back around. And what does it want to do? It wants to bring you back around. It wants to bring you back to that sin.
You know, sin is a cruel taskmaster. You know, you think about it this way: if you can imagine applying for the job of the pleasure of sin, all right? We have sin sitting on the other side of the desk, and we are sitting there in our chair, looking sin right in the eye. And he says, “All right, here, I’ll take you on part-time. How about that? I’ll take you on part-time. We will put you to work, but you are only going to get—you only have to work part-time. You still get the full pleasure of sin, but you only have to work part-time.”
And that sounds like a pretty good deal. Okay, that is fine. But a week into working, the sin, your taskmaster, comes back to you and says, “Hey, we are going to have to up your hours. Same benefits, same pay. You still get the pleasure of sin for a season, but you are going to have to work harder for it. You are going to have to work harder for it.” Okay, that is fine. Sign me up. That is okay. I still want that pleasure of sin. And we keep working for that sin; we keep enjoying that sin. But then the taskmaster comes to us again. It says, “Hey, you know what? We need you to work more hours. We need you to work overtime.” Okay, a little bit of overtime? No, a lot of overtime—twenty, thirty hours of overtime. And you are like, “Okay, and what do I get in return? What is my return?” Well, the same thing. You still get that same pleasure of sin for a season. And that is what sin is. Sin comes to us all the time, and it is so enticing, but it offers us nothing. It offers us nothing. The goal is to work you to death for the same result.
You know, those that are in—if we call it sin—they are out in the world; they are shooting themselves up with heroin, they are homeless, they are out with pitiful lives. You know what? They still have the same pleasure of sin that they are working for that we are. And maybe I am not strung out on heroin or anything like that, but I still work for the pleasure of sin. And I have to work at that. There are cords of sin that come into my life and want to take me back to being under the taskmaster of sin.
There is another thing that gets us in these cords of sin: bitterness—his bitterness. Hebrews 12:15 says, “Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” You know what happens is maybe you have conquered sin in your life, and you have conquered a certain amount of sins, but we as Christians are always going to fight with sin. It may be different. We can have different sins that each one of us are struggling with. But you know what? This bitterness can affect anybody. There is no respecter of persons when it comes to bitterness. Bitterness will affect children. Bitterness will affect adults. It will affect anyone that it can get a hold of. And the Bible says there very clearly in Hebrews that says, “Hey, you need to watch out unless that root of bitterness springs up.” And so true with our lives, we are held back from what God really wants us to do, our full potential in Christ, because of bitterness, because of these cords of sin.
What about laziness? The Bible says in Proverbs 15:19, “The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: but the way of the upright is made plain.” Now, laziness—this is, if I can be honest with you, this gets me a lot, all right? I wake up in the morning; that alarm—it is not an alarm o’clock, but an alarm clock. It is an opportunity clock. And it starts ringing. And I look over there and I go, “Oh, man, just give me some kind of excuse to just hit that. Just stop it.” I do not want to hit the snooze. I do not want to play around. You know, I am in business, all right? And, you know, then the baby will cry, “Oh, can you hold the baby?” Okay, I will hold him on the couch under the covers. That is what I can do that, and I will fall back asleep. Or maybe I will be praying, and, you know, I will get tempted, “Man, I am just tired. I am just going to go ahead and sit down and I will continue to pray.” If I sit down and pray, I am going to fall asleep. And this laziness will creep in. And the Bible says there it is a hedge of thorns. Because laziness, it not only affects you, it affects others. Other people are affected because of this laziness that we have.
What about pride? What about pornography, gossip, the love of money, and hatred? These are all cords of sin that if we are not careful, we will gather around us and pull us down. We will pull us down. That is what the cords of sin do in our lives.
Let us look at the next thing. What are some things that entangle us? Number one, the cords of sin. Number two, look at Luke chapter 8. Luke chapter 8. I will have you turn to a couple of these here. We will not be long. But Luke chapter 8. And we are going to look at verse number 14. This is the parable of the sower. And he talks about a certain kind of ground that we as Christians will, if we are not careful, be caught up in. And that is the ground of the cares of this life. What is something that entangles us? It is the cares of this life. Look at verse number 14 of Luke chapter 8. The Bible says, “And that which fell among thorns are they, which when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring forth no fruit to perfection.”
You know, that could be said of so many people. You look at somebody and you say, “Man, they have got all the potential in the world. They are just going to do something great for God. They are going to do something great, even in the business world.” And the cares of this life come in and hold that person back, hold us back from reaching our true potential for Christ.
There is a story here, and I do not know how true it is; I just pulled it up here. But shortly after joining the Navy, the new recruit asked his officer for a pass so he could attend a wedding. The officer gave him a pass but informed the young man that he would have to be back by 7 p.m. on Sunday. The man said, “You do not understand, sir. I’m in the wedding.” “No, you do not understand,” the officer shot back. “You’re in the Navy.”
And for us, we get so caught up with the cares of this life that we miss what we are really here for. We are in God’s army. We are in the army of God. We are soldiers of Christ. And when we get caught up with the cares of this life, we get distracted from what God has us here for. There are some things that are not bad, but there are some things that hold us down when it comes to the cares of this life.
I think about we get caught in this attitude of bigger and better. You know, I have to have a bigger house. You are never content with the house that you have. You have to have a bigger house. You have to have a better house. We have a house now, and it is not done. Everybody asks us, “How is the house coming?” “Oh, it is still standing, so we are doing okay.” But I look at the house and I am like, “Man, what if we added a second story? Just finish the second story off. What if we built a two-car garage on the side?” And Cotor just goes, “Okay, all right, just finish what you got done first, and then we will worry about something else.” It is never enough. It is never enough. And we get too busy with the cares of this life that we lose focus.
Materialism is such a big thing for us. The latest gadget, the newest smartphone, the nicest cars, the highest paying job—those are all things that are—they are not bad. But if we make that the focus of our lives, we lose what God really keeps us here for. God does not keep us here so I will put my money in the offering plate, and I am good to go. No, God keeps us on this earth so we can see other people get saved, but also that we can worship Him. And when we get caught in the cares of this life, we mess what God wants us to have. So materialism is not something bad, but it does keep us down.
Another thing is selfish pleasures. A lot of people say, “Sunday is my only day off.” I talk to some bus parents, and they use Sunday a little bit different than most parents, maybe not, but they say, “Well, yeah, I will go sit in my kids, but this is my day alone with me and my wife,” or “this is my day alone to go do shopping or to do something like that.” And the selfish pleasures that we have—it is thinking about just us. That is when we lose sight; we lose focus. Going on vacation—you know, I am not against vacation, but not going to church while you are on vacation, not reading your Bible and walking with God while you are on vacation. Those are things that get in our way. Hobbies can get in our way. The Miata that I put a new engine in—and now I was just consumed with that Miata that I was letting so many things slip because I wanted to get that Miata done. Sorry, it is a little red sports car, but I wanted to get it done. I wanted to get it done. I let things slip. And there is nothing wrong with this, but if we make this the goal, then we lose focus of what God wants us to have.
There is anxiety, the fear of the future, afraid of what people might think. There is worry that comes into our life. And these cares of this life, the cares of this world, will come and they will choke us. What does the Bible say there? They fell among thorns—they, when they had heard, go forth and are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life—and notice what happens: “and bring forth no fruit to perfection.”
We bring no fruit to perfection. The fruit that God talks there is the salvation of other people, is giving the gospel to other people. We do not bring any fruit. Our life consists of nothing but just dust. And when we get to heaven and God weighs and puts our life in the balance, “Well, oh, look, you had a really nice house where you were on earth? That is great. It is gone.” But hey, you know what? You gave to the missionary. You went across the street and gave a tract to somebody. My brother was on his honeymoon, and he was in a hotel on his honeymoon. He is still in his wedding clothes, all right? And praise the Lord, what a wedding dress! But he was in his wedding clothes. And there was a guy that said, “Hey, man, you look sharp over at the hotel.” And he said, “Yeah, man, it is my wedding night.” And he said, “Oh, okay.” And he is like, “I am about to go to Memphis.” And my dad pastors near Memphis. And so my brother is like, “Well, hey, if you are ever going to Memphis…” And he had a tract from my dad’s church. He said, “Hey, if you are ever going to Memphis, here is a good church to go to.” He said, “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” And he brought Matthew over, and they sat in a chair. And Matthew was able to lead him to the Lord on his honeymoon. And it is just—but when we let, you know, if we lose sight of the focus, we do not get that fruit to perfection.
So there are things that hold us back: the cords of sin, the cares of this life. Look at Luke chapter 9. Look at Luke chapter 9, just a couple of chapters over here. Luke chapter 9, verse number 57. Luke 9:57. The Bible says this: “And it came to pass, that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” And Jesus said unto him, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” And he said unto another, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” And Jesus said unto him, “Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow thee; but let me go first bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.” And Jesus said to him—this is key here—“No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
You know what is another thing that entangles us, another cord that entangles us in our life? It is our past. Our past holds us back from doing what God wants us to do. I know of a man that wants to be an evangelist. He wants to be an evangelist, but he is held back from decisions that he made in the past, and he is not able to do what he feels God is calling him to do because of the decisions he made in his past. And that could be said for all of us. You know, we have failures in our life, we have disappointments that we look back and say, “Well, you know, I want to do this for Christ. Maybe I want to be involved in a ministry,” and the devil reminds us of our past. And God says, “Look, if you keep looking back, you are not fit for the kingdom of God if you do not keep your hands on the plow looking forward, looking forward to what Christ is going to do with our lives.” Failures that we have committed or that have been committed to us are failures that haunt us for our life. And we hold on to those failures. We hold on to those hurts instead of letting them go, casting all our cares upon Him because He careth for us. And we give those to God, and God is able to use us, but our past holds us back.
If you look at Paul, Paul was a man that killed Christians. Can you think about that? If Brother Dumpur went on a killing spree in a Baptist church, and then he came the next day and said, “Hey, I had a vision while I was driving down Murphysboro Road, and I am going to preach behind the pulpit.” We would not let him back in here. You know, we would send him to jail. But Paul used his past to be able to push him forward to do something better for Christ. Paul had every excuse in the world to say, “All right, well, Lord, I have just done so much wrong. I just cannot—I cannot move forward.” And God says, “No, I want to use you. I want to use your past. I want to use you for me.” My dad—my dad got saved when he was about 18 years old and just lived a life of sin, lived a life of wickedness, drugs, alcohol, and a life that he regrets. But my dad is a pastor now. But as a pastor now, he is able to use that to connect with others and to grow other people. But he is using his past, not letting it hinder him.
So the cords that hold us—the cords of sin, the cords of the cares of this life, our past holds us back. And then the world. Look at 2 Peter real quickly here. 2 Peter chapter 2, and we will look at verse number 18 through 20. 2 Peter chapter 2, verse number 18 through 20. The Bible says this: “For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who were entangled with the living in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption. For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.”
If you read the beginning of the chapter, it is talking about false prophets that come through, and they promise this liberty that they want to give to you. And the world has an imitation liberty that they want to give to us, an imitation freedom. But you know what? The end of it, as the Bible says there, actually in verse number 22, it talks about the dog returning to his vomit, the pig returning wallowing in the mud. It is vain. There is nothing there. The world is always offering a counterfeit. The world offers a counterfeit freedom. You know, they never have on the billboards for the alcohol, the beer, the Budweiser, “Man, you know, the guy is sitting on there and his family is gone. His body is in ruin. His finances are gone.” They do not ever have that. They have him living it up. They have him having a great time. Why? Because it is a false—it is a counterfeit for what we have as Christians. I have never drank a day in my life. But you know what? I am happy. Not because I have drank before, but because I have been able to live a clean life. And that is through God. But the world offers that counterfeit for us. It offers a counterfeit.
I had a friend in college, in Bible college. And he was a good friend of mine. We were good friends together. We worked together a little bit as security guard officers, and we worked together. We shared thoughts with each other. We were on the same bus route. For him, he went into college the same time I did. He was about four or five years older than I was. But he had come from a life of sin, a life of wickedness. But when we were in college, I could just tell something was not right. He was trying to do the right things. He was in the right place, but you could just see him slowly drift off and slowly move away. He was hanging around the wrong people, and eventually he got out of college. Eventually he got out of church and went right back into the life that he was from. But the world, what it does is it holds out an empty bag of chips and promises you everything, and it gives us nothing. It gives us nothing in return. Once the world uses us as Christians, once they use us up, they are done with us. They will go on to the next person. There is nothing special about you. There is nothing special that they want, except that you are a Christian. That is what the world wants. The world wants to destroy us.
So there are things that entangle us, but this is what we need to do real quickly, and I will get into this. But what do we need to do to break the bondage? Break the bondage. First thing is claim Christ’s liberty. Claim Christ’s liberty. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” There is liberty with Christ. Christ is the only one that can offer us true liberty. My life verse is Galatians 5:1. It says, “Stand fast therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” There is a yoke of bondage that is placed on us, but most of the time we place that on ourselves. We place that on ourselves. So what do we do? We have got to claim Christ’s liberty. No sin, no care, no past, or worldly influences can hold you down. Because the Bible says, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” If you have Jesus Christ in your heart as your Savior, you have been made free from sin and death. You have that as something you can hold on to. But so often we pick up that bondage that was breaking off. We pick up those chains that were taken off of us, and we go ahead and put them back on our wrists. We go ahead and follow those Egyptians back into Egypt because we do that ourselves. And there are things that entangle us. So the first thing we need to do to break the bondage is claim Christ’s liberty.
The second thing is we need to stand. I preached about it on Wednesday a couple of weeks ago, but standing, standing for Christ. “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand, stand therefore.” God wants you to stand. When the evil comes, when sin comes into your life, when the devil tries to bring up your past, stand. Stand. Stand in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.
The Bible says that the Bible is the law of liberty. The law of liberty is in James 1 and 2, but the law of liberty is what the Bible is called. The Bible says in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” You know, there are cords that will come into our life, and if we are not prepared, if we are not ready, those cords will come and they will hold us down. That is all the devil wants. He is not looking to completely destroy your life—man, if he could, great, he will—but if he could just get you to just slow down, if he could get you just stop and not take things as seriously, not take spiritual matters seriously, and just get a lax and apathy in your spirit, he has won. Because a lazy Christian is not going to do anything for Christ. So we have got to stand in that liberty.
The Bible talks about the Word of God is quick and powerful. When those cords come, you have to have something that can cut those cords. And we can cut those cords with the Word of God. Many of us struggle with a certain sin. If I were to ask you to write it on a piece of paper, fold it up, and hand it in, I am sure everybody would be able to come up with something. It is anonymous. You could be able to come up with something that you are struggling with. You know what? Do you know some verses in the Bible against that sin? Do you know some verses that would help you? Maybe you struggle with discouragement. Do you have some verses in your arsenal that you know of from the Bible? You know, what we do is so good to do a Bible study on something that is hurting us, something that is affecting us. Man, if we are struggling mentally with maybe thoughts that we should not have, or maybe we are struggling with addictions that we have, you know, why do we not know verses about those? Why do we not work at that? We have to stand fast at the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. God has given us all the tools to be free. He hath made us free. We have to stand. He gives that challenge to us to stand fast.
You know, maybe you do not always have your Bible on you. I know I have it on my phone. And maybe there is something that is coming, and maybe you are around friends at work and they say, “Hey, why do not we go over and get a couple of drinks or whatever?” (Preacher asks me that all the time. No, I am just kidding.) But why do not we get a couple of drinks after work? And you are tempted. And you are tempted, and you do not have your Bible with you. But maybe you remember a verse about what the Bible says about alcohol in Proverbs where it talks about, you know, “Do not even look at the cup when it turneth itself aright.” You know, it brings nothing but the end is wickedness; it is death. But do we know those verses? Do we have those—maybe not the full sword that we can pull out, but maybe a little pocketknife that we can cut those cords away and we can be prepared? Memorize some scriptures to be there for those emergency cases. But we need to stand. In order to break free from those bondages, we need to stand, stand in God’s liberty. Do not forget, Christ has already won. He has already won. We are on the winning side. He has given us liberty; he has given us freedom that we can have as Christians. We are not held back anymore. We are just like the Egyptians; we have been taken away from bondage, and we are free.
But here is what happened: even the Israelites, when they were in the wilderness, what do they often say? “Why do not we just go back to Egypt? At least there we had leeks to eat. We had onions and stuff like that we could have eaten.” Why do not we just go back to Egypt? And they wanted to quit. They wanted to put themselves into those bondages. And that is what we do. We do not forget Christ has already won the victory. Galatians 5:1: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Original File: What entangles us - Brother Anthony Aaron - Sunday PM 12272020