Set the Captives Free

In Luke, Jesus quotes from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18)

This morning as I was preparing to go to the UofA campus and meet with an international student about a relationship with Jesus, this passage kept resonating in my head.  Another passage that was floating around in my head was:

May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him. (Colossians 1:11-14)

As I pondered these passages and what that meant for my life especially as I was preparing to walk through the gospel with someone else, my outlook on how to do evangelism totally changed.

SPIRITUAL WAR

If I think about the reality of the Christian life, I have to remember that I'm in a war.  As a soldier, I have a little more insight into how that analogy of Christian life really applies to how to apply it practically.  But for people that might not be able to totally relate to my experience, if you've seen the Matrix this analogy should make a lot of sense.

Everyone on earth is enslaved.  We are all captives to sin the same way people were enslaved to the machines in the Matrix.(Romans 5:12-21)  And just like in the Matrix, most people are ignorant of the fact they are slaves.  However, there are a group of people who have had the "plug" pulled and aren't in the "system" any more.  They're aware of reality.  They are aware that they are in a war. (Romans 8:1-16) 

OUR OBJECTIVE IN THE WAR

Every war has objectives that communicate to soldiers their purpose in fighting the war.  The objective also helps us keep everything we do in perspective, it gives us purpose.  For example, if one country goes to war with another country how do we know when the "war" is over?  How do we measure success or the end of the war?  Now for everyone that is a follower of Jesus, we know that ultimately the end of the war comes when Jesus returns in glory to restore all creation unto Himself with the coming of the "new heaven and new Earth." (Rev 11:15-19, Rev 21:1-27)  So we know that in the end those on the side of Jesus will win the war and live in victory.  What then is our objective until that final day?  What are the parameters that define what we, soldiers in the Army of God, are supposed to do?  What is our purpose?

We talked about this earlier in Luke 4:18-19 but another passage that makes our job more plain is found in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21(the whole chapter is awesome)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Our job as soldiers in God's Army is to take part in restoring the World to Himself by "setting the captives free."

HOW DO WE FIGHT THE WAR
So if we've established that our job is to take part in setting captives free then how are we supposed to go about accomplishing that mission?

Well in the United States Army, our entire military system is built on an offensive strategy.  We never want to let the enemy gain a foot hold.  We always want to keep the enemy on their toes never giving them a chance to catch their breath.  This is called "taking the offensive." There are two primary ways the Army engages enemies, accidentally and deliberately.

COMBAT PATROLS

Accidental fighting is a little misleading.  We don't just go about our day expecting to talk a leisurely stroll into enemy territory then suddenly come under attack.  When the Army "accidentally" fights its because it put itself in a position it knew it was going to encounter trouble.  This is called a "combat patrol."  We mount combat patrols because we want to keep the enemy from encroaching on our territory.  We expect to encounter the enemy on combat patrols.  Because we expect to find the enemy on combat patrols we prepare to fight in the enemy, we prepare to "react to contact."  We expect to be attacked in certain ways so before going on the patrol we practice "battle drills" simulations of what we do if we are attacked.

Evangelistic Combat Patrols

In the Christian life the way we put the enemy on the defensive is by encountering people with the message and gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is typically called spontaneous or street evangelism.  We don't have a particular person in mind that we will talk to, but we do expect the opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus.  We also expect certain issues to come up in our encounter with a captive.  We expect the Enemy to have a foot hold in this person's life.  These foot holds of sin and entrapping webs of deceit are things that we plan to fight against with our battle drills.  In the Christian World, the battle drills we have are typically known as the plan of salvation.  These battle drills or methods are things that we memorize because we know that the content of each of these methods are pivotal points in someone coming to an understanding of what it means to trust their life to Jesus.  Some examples of these methods are the Romans Road, ABC's of salvation, the bridge analogy and the Four Spiritual Laws.  

The two key things to remember about Evangelistic Combat patrols:

1.  Keep the Enemy away, establish a presence  

• We won't ever find captives that need to be freed unless we go out to look for them.  
• If we aren't out in the World in the lives of the lost, there is no one to contend for the souls of men.  

2.  Preparation: Get ready to fight

• We keep the enemy from establishing foot holds in our life by preparing to fight with the gospel.  Continually reminding ourselves of the truth of the gospel helps to keep us from being deceived.  
• The success rate of our rescue missions increases when we prepare to address the issues that captives deal with.

DELIBERATE ATTACK

A deliberate attack, is a planned offensive.  We know exactly where captives are.  We know what types of equipment the enemy has.  We know how many enemy we will be facing.  We have more time to prepare for these types of missions because we have more information.  Just as you'd expect, Deliberate attacks tend to be a little more successful than a combat patrol.  When we have a little more information we have the opportunity to plan more countermeasures for enemy forces we encounter.  We are better prepared to fight.  We can come into the fight with more firepower and more men.  Instead of looking for then stumbling across captives to be freed we know exactly where they are.  We save time and go from point A to point B to accomplish our mission.

Evangelistic Deliberate Attack

Just like in the realm of combat operations, deliberate attacks or rescue missions tend to be more successful in the realm of evangelism.  We have a lost person in mind.  We have some background information that will help us in planning the rescue mission.  We should know religious background, experience with the Church, receptiveness to the gospel message.  We should know about patterns of sin in their life, things that keep them from being able to put God first and make Him boss.  With each of these pieces of information we recognize the traps and tools of the Enemy in this person's life and we can prepare a plan of attack to address each of the issues in the captives life.  

Time Frame and Mission Complexity

The way evangelism has been described above is a very simplistic definition of how things work in war.  We aren't factoring in the emotions and complexities of varying attacks.  We aren't discussing a number of things that might come up over the course of an evangelistic encounter.  However, when you boil things down to it's simplest form this is exactly what happens.  The error in applying the analogies above to real life is to think that evangelistic encounters/rescue missions start and finish in short periods of time. There is no hard and fast rule that says how long these rescue missions can take.  It can be 3 minutes or 3 decades.  More often than not the encounters resulting from combat patrols lead to future deliberate attacks or "campaigns."  The information that we gather in the initial encounter helps us to plan future missions.  

Planning Campaigns

A campaign describes a deliberate and intentional action by military forces to significantly advance the war effort and achieve the objective.  In the the spiritual realm, every single life is a significant advancement to the war effort and helps us achieve the objective of "setting the captives free."  When we plan a campaign we make a commitment to continue pushing the gospel forward so that all enemy combatants have been removed from the area of operation. (Italian Campaign) 

We plan in steps to how we are going to destroy the entrenchments and fortifications of the enemy in a captives life.  There are going to be battles fought before a person finally decides to surrender their life to Christ.  While the names of these battles aren't nearly as memorable as military campaigns throughout history, they are far more epic and vastly more important in the scope of human history.  These battles might be named:

• The battle of sexual addiction
• The battle of alcoholism/substance abuse
• The battle of depression/suicide
• The battle of pride

CLOSING THOUGHTS

There are a few more similarities between wars of this world and the larger cosmic war that has raged over the souls of men since the beginning of creation (Gen 3, Heb 11).  This is where the Matrix analogy comes back into play.  We all are captives enslaved to sin and blinded to our bondage.  We are in the "system."  There is no way for us to get out.  We can't get out of the "Matrix" on our own, the only way that we recognized that the world we were living in was a lie was by having someone show us the Truth.  The Truth revealed in Jesus Christ.  This Truth gave us the Way out of the system (John 14:6).  

Jesus is our leader.  He's the beginning of the Revolution.  He will be the one that wins the war.  Because of Jesus we have the opportunity to take part in the fight against sin.  We have the opportunity to help "set the captives free."

Revelation 22:12-20

 “Look! I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me to repay each person according to what he has done.  I am the •Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.  “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright Morning Star.”  Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come! ” Anyone who hears should say, “Come! ” And the one who is thirsty should come. Whoever desires should take the living water as a gift.  I testify to everyone who hears the prophetic words of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.  And if anyone takes away from the words of this prophetic book, God will take away his share of the tree of life and the holy city, written in this book.  He who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!  The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the  saints. Amen.

So after processing through all of this information I had to come to this point of reflection and just stare myself in the face and see where I'm at with all this in my life.  I had to ask myself how I was applying the stuff I know to my life.  

Reflective Challenge Questions:

1.  Am I making a habit of going on patrols to push back the Enemy from my life and look for captives?

2.  Am I preparing myself to encounter the Enemy? (2 Tim 4:1-5)

3.  Am I committing to and planning campaigns in the lives of my captive friends?

4.  Am I keeping others accountable in achieving the objective of "setting the captives free?"  How are others keeping me accountable in "setting captives free?"

5.  How am I working with Christ and others to achieve the objective? (John 15, Ephesians 4:1-16)

B & H Publishing Group (2010-10-01). The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition (Kindle Locations 60448-60464). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

B & H Publishing Group (2010-10-01). The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition (Kindle Locations 57695-57700). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.


B & H Publishing Group (2010-10-01). The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition (Kindle Locations 50734-50743). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.