·         Everyone’s life counts and everyone’s life says something that others are reading. In other words your life is important and the way you live it says something about you. Your life literally is your message.

·         The purpose of this series of messages is three-fold.

o   It is to face the honest fact that we are all born prisoners and everyone is a prisoner to something.

o   It is to show that there are patters to our prisons.

o   To see that the biggest prison break of all will also set us free!

·         Most people who are in prison are there because of the patterns established early or throughout their lives. And the scary fact that most people who live free actually live life enslaved to their fears, past, pain and patterns.

1.  The Epistle

A. What is an epistle? The verb is a Greek word that means to ‘to transmit a message’ and an epistle is a letter written for the purpose of transmitting that message. More specific it is the message itself. Two types of epistles we find in the Bible. 

i.     A hand written message. Colossians 4:16 Now when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. NKJV So Paul in this passage is referring actual hand written letters. In modern language, Paul may have said, read my email to the Philippians. Or download the document to the Colossians. Point being, Paul had something to say to a group of people he could not actually be with so he wrote them a letter containing the message—those epistles we call Paul’s letters or 1/2 of the NT.

ii.  A living message. 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. NKJV In this passage, Paul is stating the letter is not on paper, or on a flash drive, but you, yourself are the message. He was stating loudly when he wrote this, that our lives say something by the way they are lived out and to the Corinthians he was stating that your life is our message! You are living what we preached to you.

B.  In the Bible we find a series of letters written by the Apostle Paul called the Prison Epistles or the Prison letters. Those letters are: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon (a letter written from prison to a slave). They came about because the Apostle Paul was put in prison for preaching the Gospel. 

i.     That is unique in itself because Paul was a man who went about doing good like Jesus and he too was imprisoned and later executed for his faith. Yet the prison that held him was unable to contain the freedom he proclaimed. The prison may confine the man but it cannot confine the message. Even in jail others can read your life. 

ii.  Paul, though a ‘free man’ in prison was writing letters to believers that they may truly become free men.

C.  The prison epistles were letters written by a prisoner instructing others how to experience freedom in its fullest. If you receive the right message you will experience freedom.

i.     John 8:36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. NKJV

ii.  2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. NKJV

iii. Paul loved the church and understood the freedom we are given in Christ but in looking at the church understood that so many were living as prisoners, enslaved by sin, entangled in ungodly patterns that lead to death. They were living as slaves/prisoners even thought they were free.

2.  The Message

A. The Truth is the Liberator! Paul in prison is telling free people how to live free!

i.     The power of Satan is in the lie and the power of the believer is in knowing the truth. That is why we are to pursue truth and not power. Persons in bondage are not liberated by what I do as the pastor, but what they do with the truth I present to them. It is not what I believe that breaks the bondage but what they believe, confess, renounce and forgive.

ii.  John 8:32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." NKJV

iii. John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. NKJV

iv. John 16:13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. NKJV

v.  Don’t take them out of the world Father…John 17:17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. NKJV

vi. Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, … meditate on these things. NKJV

B.  You are in prison because you believed a lie. And you go to prison/into bondage because you believe a lie. The majority of people literally in prison are there because they believed a lie. There is no difference between the person incarcerated and the person who is freely walking in bondage. They have both believed the lie. The results are the same except for the bars--misery. And all because someone, somewhere, told them a lie and they believed it.

i.     You are no good…You will never amount to anything….Who would want to marry you…What makes you think you are different from us…You will go to jail just like your daddy…You’re ugly…You’re stupid…You won’t get caught…You will fail…you will never succeed…If you don’t cheat, steal, lie, or threaten you will never be able to care for yourself…it won’t hurt you… if you really loved me…if you were really my friend you would…

ii.  Most of the time these lies come from or through people we love and care for: our parents, a coach, an instructor, someone we look up to or wish we were like.

iii. Sometimes the lie comes from life’s experience. Poverty, consecutive failures, tragedy, loss

iv. Sometimes the lie comes from life’s pain. Divorced, child of divorce, ridiculed as a child, victim of abuse, rejection, neglect etc….

v.  Sometimes the lies come from fears that are born out of the last three.

C.  The Power of the lie—id Bitterness

i.     Mt 18-Unforgiveness. Bitterness. The man forgiven was a free man but still a prisoner.

a.  Tormentors vs. 34-35—anger/ulcers. Bitterness/

b.  Strong man is bitterness

(i)    Unforgiveness—how many of you can still remember a person and feel yuck/I don’t like them etc. That is unforgiveness and it lead to resentment…

(ii) Resentment—is the record of wrongs that is now being fueled by feelings of holding on ‘it’ and meditating on ‘it.’ So now you think “up here” head and you feel down here [heart]. This is a spiritual problem not a psychological one. If you don’t deal with these will later become the foundation of fear: fear of man, fear of rejection, fear of failure, abandonment, etc.

(iii)Retaliation—after resentment gets a foot hold we move next to retaliation. We look at ways to get back/get even. This is a spirit!  Not a psychological disorder. Sure you can medicate it but if you want to get free you have to deal with the issue—unforgiveness.

(iv)Anger—after retaliation—if you don’t deal ‘it’ you will become angry. You will have a real strong spirit of anger.

(v) Hatred—After anger set in comes hatred. Hatred says we cant exist together, be in the same room together etc. and it begins to entertain ‘elimination’.

(vi)Violence—violence says, before I eliminate you, you are going to feel my pain. You’re going to hear my voice. You will know it is me.

(vii)          Murder—this is the seventh and final fruit of bitterness. It can literally be physical murder/character assignation/or verbal abuse. No one sets out to murder! They believe a series of lies. See the pattern? The pattern leads to prison.

(viii)         I have found that if you see any one of these seven in a person’s life, look at the ones preceding because they are there. Ie. If you see anger, you will see retaliation, resentment and unforgiveness.

3.  Get Out Jail Card!

A. To get out of prison you must have the truth.

i.     John 8:32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." NKJV

ii.  John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. NKJV

iii. John 16:13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. NKJV

iv. Don’t take them out of the world Father…John 17:17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. NKJV

v.  Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, … meditate on these things. NKJV

B.  Jamie Buckingham wrote a little book entitled: The Truth Will Set You Free but First It Must Make You Miserable. If you are feeling miserable you are probably encountering the Truth and that is the Spirits way of saying, “You have need of this!”

i.     Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. NKJV

ii.  Doulos –slave

iii. Addiction-- the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice

v.    Galatians 4:9 But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? NKJV

a.  Ie Israel desires to go back to Egypt.

vi.  Acts 7:6 bondage and oppression go hand in hand.

i.     2 Peter 2:20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. NKJV