True Freedom

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, happy Fourth of July weekend to you. It’s good to have you with us for worship.

I have a few announcements to highlight from your bulletins.

The men’s group will not be meeting tonight, but they will be meeting next Sunday the 10th at 6:00.

We’ll be having our monthly church council meeting on Tuesday at 7:00. If you’re on the council, please try to attend that.

Augusta Health is still looking for hospice volunteers, everything from the musically talented to hairdressers and gardeners and military veterans. If you’re interested in that, you’ll find all the information you need there in your bulletins.

Della, do you have an announcement?

And lastly this morning, Janet Massie’s daughter, Debbie Conner, passed away on Thursday after a very long bout with cancer. I don’t have any information on services yet, but please keep Janet and her family in your prayers, and we can rest knowing that Debbie is at rest with her savior.

Sue, do you have anything this morning?

Opening Prayer

On July 3, 1974, the United States Congressional Chaplain, Reverend Edward G. Latch, offered this prayer to members of congress in honor of the Fourth of July holiday. I thought his words so powerful and needed that I’m repeating them as our opening prayer this morning. Will you bow your heads:

Eternal God, stir Thou our minds and stimulate our hearts with a high sense of patriotism as we approach the Fourth of July. May all that this day symbolizes renew our faith in freedom, our devotion to democracy, and redouble our efforts to keep a government of the people, by the people, and for the people truly alive in our world.

Grant that we may highly resolve on this great day to dedicate ourselves anew to the task of ushering in an era when good will shall live in the hearts of a free people, justice shall be the light to guide their feet, and peace shall be the goal of humankind: to the glory of Thy holy name and the good of our Nation and of all mankind.

Amen.

Sermon

Tomorrow we will celebrate what is probably our most honored secular holiday. We will celebrate freedom and the birth of our nation.

For 246 years, the United States has been the symbol of liberty to the entire world. That’s what we celebrate every July 4. Liberty. Freedom. Standing up to tyranny and defining our own lives on our own terms. Owning the dignity of being an individual. The power to live and do and believe as we see fit.

Our nation has always been a beacon of light shining into the darkness. We stand for the weak, for the defenseless. We stand against oppression and evil and will not be moved from confronting it, and that evil has taken many forms over the course of our history.

It was British rule in 1776. Then it was slavery. Germany in WWI. Nazi Germany in WWII. Korea and Vietnam. Soviet communism and global terrorism.

We salute our flag. Wave it. We let it fly from the beds of our trucks and in our front yards. We wear it on shirts. We take off our hats and place our hand over our hearts in its presence not because that flag is perfect, certainly not because our nation is without sin, but because of what that flag represents. Freedom.

But what have we done with that freedom? One of my favorite writers, Henry David Thoreau, wrote that the fate of our country doesn’t depend on what kind of paper we drop into the ballot-box every four years, but what kind of person we drop from our homes into the street every morning.

So what sort of people are we dropping into the street every morning in 2022? How are we as a nation currently handling our freedom? How are doing at living and believing as we wish?

According to the Census Bureau, a third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression.

71% of Americans are angry about the state of our country. 66% of Americans are now fearful of America, the country that stands for freedom and liberty. Only 17% of us are proud of the United States.

The mark of any healthy nation is that the current generation will leave a better world for the next generation. But only 42% of Americans believe their children will inherit a better life than they live right now.

There are a million suicide attempts in America every year. 47,173 of them are successful — that’s 129 every day. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in people between the ages of 10 and 34. I want to say that again. If you’re 10 years old, you are more likely to die of suicide than anything else.

Again, what have we done with our freedom?

The Bible has a lot to say about that word, and in fact an argument could be made that freedom — whether gaining it or losing it — is not only the theme from Genesis to Revelation, but the theme of human history itself.

Adam and Eve thought they were gaining freedom when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead they gained slavery, and lost a freedom they didn’t appreciate.

The Israelites gained their freedom when God delivered them from Egypt, only to find out that freedom is rarely easy.

The Old Testament is one long story of Israel struggling for freedom against one world power and another. And whenever that freedom was lost, it was always the result of the people taking that freedom for granted and forgetting the God who provided it.

But the New Testament reveals another kind of freedom — not worldly freedom, not physical freedom, but real freedom, the freedom of the soul. And that’s where we turn now, and to the words of the apostles Paul and Peter.

We’ll be looking at passages from three separate letters today. The first from 2 Corinthians 3:16-18. Turn there with me now. Paul writes to the Corinthian church,

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Now to 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 16:

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

And finally to Paul once more, this time in Galatians 5, verse 1:

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

And this is God’s word.

We have a common theme in these three passages of scripture, and that theme fits well with what our country celebrates this weekend. But what Paul and Peter are talking about here isn’t the fragile sort of freedom. Not human freedom, but the freedom that never perishes, the freedom of Christ.

Freedom is a favorite theme of Paul in his letters, more so than Peter and John. Peter often talks in his letters about how to suffer as a Christian. John devotes a lot of his words to the love Christ has for us and the love we should, in turn, have for others.

And that’s very telling, because it makes an important point. We’re all the same in the sense that we’re all created by God, and that deep down we all crave the same things and possess the same fears.

But in many ways we’re also very much different, we’re very much individuals with individual needs, but in Christ all of those needs are met.

We find that played out in the New Testament writers. For Peter, Christ meant there was nothing in this world that could truly harm him. Nothing could snatch his soul from God’s protecting hand.

For John, it meant that Christ’s love overcomes anything, especially the grave.

And for Paul, who aside from Jesus can be said to be the New Testament’s main character, Christ meant freedom.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Remember that before Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, he considered himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, bound to a law he knew deep down he could never fully obey.

But as he writes to the Corinthians and the Galatians, Paul’s come to know a better way. He now has the joy of truly being free instead of being a slave to the law. Peter too, though he’s careful to note in his first letter that freedom comes with a catch.

But what we see in these three bits of scripture are three different ways of thinking about the freedom that we enjoy in Christ, three ways that we all must always be mindful of, or else that freedom will be lost.

Paul starts out in 2 Corinthians 3 by talking about a veil, and this veil has a few different meanings. Paul’s like that, often telling you three things in one.

On the first level, he’s actually reminding the church in Corinth of a story way back in Exodus chapter 34, when Moses was given the ten commandments.

Moses had come down from Mount Sinai, and his face was shining because he had been in the presence of God. Aaron and the rest of the Israelites were too afraid to come near him, so Moses covered his face with a veil.

But it’s interesting how Paul frames this. Up in verse 13, he writes, “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.”

That’s interesting, isn’t it? “What was passing away.” Moses had met God himself. That meeting had left his face glowing with God’s glory, a radiance so great that the Israelites were terrified to even look at him.

But one interpretation of what Paul is saying here isn’t that the reason Moses covered his face was so the Israelites could look at him without being afraid of God’s glory.

Instead, Paul’s saying that Moses hid his face because he had a secret — that shine on his face from beholding God was actually fading.

Here is Moses, the greatest figure of the Old Testament, but he’s still very human because he might have put that veil on because of pride. Moses was no longer on that mountain. He could no longer come near to God, and so the glory of God began to fade from him, and maybe he wanted the Israelites to think it was still there.

Another meaning of these verses is that Paul is using the metaphor of a veil to point out the difference between the glory of the old covenant that God made with Abraham, and the new covenant made by Christ’s death and resurrection.

The old covenant was defined by the letter of the law. The new covenant is one of the spirit.

The old covenant was written on tablets of stone. The new covenant is written on the heart.

The old covenant brought condemnation. The new covenant brings salvation.

And that’s why Paul says in verse 17, “Now the Lord is the Sprit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is . . . freedom.”

Because where the old covenant had a glory that faded from Moses, the new covenant has a glory that always shines on you. A glory that can’t fade. A glory that is everlasting.

Paul says we have a freedom that goes far beyond anything our constitution allows. We have the freedom to approach God.

The freedom to come to God with every care and every worry and every fear.

The freedom to carry his glory upon our face and shine his light into every act we perform and every word we speak.

And we have the freedom to know that He is always beside us. Always. Not on some mountain. Not in a whirlwind. Not only if we deserve it, or if we follow all the right rules. No, God is right here, right beside you, every moment.

“And we all,” he says in verse 18, “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

What’s Paul talking about here? He’s talking about the veil or the thick curtain that was hung in the temple between the holy of holies, the place where God dwelled, and the people.

Only the high priest could go beyond that curtain into God’s presence, and only once a year. And before the high priest even went back there, he had to have a rope tied around his waist in case God struck him dead and he had to be pulled out.

But at the moment of Christ’s death, that veil was torn.

No longer would anything stand between humanity and God. Moses had to turn away as God passed along Mount Sinai. All he could glimpse was the back side of God, and even that sight left him changed forever. But we now have the freedom to approach the very throne of God with confidence.

In that regard, we have something supremely precious — our relationship with God is closer than even the one Moses enjoyed.

There is a curious bit of verse 18 that I want to talk about as well, because it’s important. The English Standard Version and the NIV take out a phrase of verse 18 that the King James includes, and it’s so beautiful that I have to mention it.

The King James translates verse 18 as, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

I love that — “with open face beholding as in a glass.” The word glass is taken from the Greek word for mirror. Not a common word at all, which means Paul used it for a very special reason.

What he’s saying is this: when we see the sun reflected in a mirror, the light illuminates us. But when we gaze into the person of Christ, a change comes over us. The old person we were begins to fall away, and the new person we are rises.

Christ makes us free, and so there’s no need to cover our faces the way slaves do in the presence of a great king.

There’s no veil over our hearts, and so we can see God clearly. We all enjoy the freedom to approach God the way Moses did, to stand barefaced before the Lord. But we are also greater than Moses, because the glory we’ve received never fades.

The greatness of this country lies in the fact that here, you have the freedom to become anything you want. You just have to work, go out there and get it.

The greatness of the freedom that God gives is so much better than that, because it’s the freedom to remove the veil between you and God completely. We’re promised mercy and grace to in times of need, and that mercy and grace is not earned, it’s certainly not deserved, it’s freely given.

It’s freedom to become the person you were always meant to be but couldn’t, because you always tried on your own instead of with His help.

Freedom to live your life knowing that you carry the glory of God both in you and upon you.

Freedom to know Christ truly and without any barrier.

Freedom, even, to become like him, and to know the truth that sets us free, the truth that allows us to see clearly. “We know that we shall be like Him,” the Apostle John wrote, “for we shall see Him . . . As . . . He. . . Is.”

Peter builds on this idea, and in verse 16 of chapter 2 he reminds us of something else, something very important that we all need to remember: freedom always demands a price.

“Live as people who are free,” he writes, “not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”

And here’s where so many of us get into trouble so often. Because on the face of things, it seems incredible that the freest nation on earth should contain so many angry and desperate and unhappy people.

But on the other hand, it’s easy to understand why that’s the case: too many people in our nation don’t see their freedom in the same way that Peter sees it here.

They say my liberties are guaranteed, because they’re in the Constitution.

I can say what I want, because I have freedom of speech.

I can gather where I want, because I have freedom of assembly.

I can believe what I want, because I have freedom of religion.

And because I have all of those things, I can do what I want, because that means I am free.

Peter says no, that’s not what freedom is. And he calls out people like that here by saying they’re using the freedom they have in the wrong way.

They’re living as if freedom itself is the most important thing, when really the most important thing is what we do with that freedom.

It’s how we live with that freedom and how we think about that freedom. We can’t say, “I’m free, and that’s the end of it,” because every freedom God gives us comes with a responsibility that doesn’t end with us, it ends with how we treat and think of others.

“Don’t use your freedom as a cover-up for evil,” he says, and here is where this scripture links back to what Paul said. Because guess what that word cover-up means in the Greek? Veil.

Paul said that in Christ, we’re free to remove our veil. But Peter says don’t take off that veil and use it as an excuse to do whatever you want. That might be how the world defines freedom, it might even be how our nation defines freedom, but you can bet that’s not how God defines freedom.

Because with the freedom that God grants comes the responsibility to use it in a way that’s pleasing to Him and lifts up others.

Freedom isn’t something we hoard for ourselves, it’s something we’re supposed to make sure gets carried to others. True freedom isn’t the liberty to do whatever we want, it’s the strength to do whatever is right.

That’s what Peter is saying. It’s almost as if he’s not just writing this letter to the Christians in Asia Minor, he’s talking to us specifically. It’s almost like God gave Peter an insight into how our modern society would become.

It used to be that this country was governed not by laws, but by honor. And what does honor say?

Honor says that all of us are a part of something larger than ourselves.

Honor says you are you, you are a unique individual. But you are also husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, Christians, and citizens of the United States.

And honor also says you are all of those things first. You are yourself last.

Your own needs come after the needs of those roles you play.

You’re a father, a mother. That means you take care of your family before you take care of yourself.

You’re a husband, a wife. That means you take care of your spouse before you take care of yourself.

You’re a citizen. That means you work toward the strength of this country before you work toward your own success.

That’s how this nation endured World War I, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, and the threat of Nazi Germany, and, even if it was just for a little while, the months after 9/11. Because we stood up for each other in defense of our national honor.

But something’s changed in the last 50 years or so. Somewhere along the way, honor was replaced by what people called “personal integrity”.

Personal integrity says it’s the individual that matters. You might be a father or a mother or a son or a wife or a Christian, but you are you first. You are the most important thing. It’s MY freedoms, MY rights, MY wants, MY comfort, MY happiness. Me first. That’s what counts, and it counts more than anyone else does.

Peter says that’s not living freely, that’s living selfishly. It’s honor we should live by. It’s looking out for others. It’s knowing the world doesn’t revolve around us, and that the story God is telling throughout history doesn’t have you or me as the main character.

There is one other thing Peter points out here, and he does so in an amazing way. Live as free people, he says at the beginning, but then at the end of that sentence he says, “but live as servants of God.”

Servants of God. Does being a servant sound like freedom to you? It is freedom, but only if you’re a servant of God.

Freedom is guaranteed in this country. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. And why did our founding fathers hold those truths to be self-evident? Because they are given by our Creator.

But Jefferson and Washington and Franklin, Adams and Patrick Henry and all the rest, they knew something that a lot of people today have forgotten — we may all be free, but we all still have a master. We may break the chains that bind the oppressed, but then we freely put those chains onto ourselves.

None of us are truly free in the worldly sense because we all make ourselves servants to something, whether it’s our prosperity or our comfort or our politics or our jobs, and Peter says all of those things will break us in the end unless we are first servants of Christ.

And Jesus isn’t willing to be second fiddle. He won’t stand to be one among many, and he refuses to be our personal assistant.

There’s only one place for Him in our lives, and that is master and ruler. He is the one who directs us. He is the one who calls the shots. He is the one we must acknowledge in every act we commit and word we speak.

Peter says you’re free, but you’re only free in the sense that you get to choose your master, so you better choose wisely.

If you choose Christ, you’ve chosen well. But you better be careful there. You better be careful there most of all, because too many people choose Christ because they want a Savior, but they don’t want a Lord. They say, “Save me, but don’t tell me what to do.” That’s not freedom.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians that with Christ, we have the freedom to remove the veil that separates us from God. Peter says here that with Christ, we have the freedom of choosing our own master. Now we move to Paul again in Galatians 5:1 and the freedom that matters most of all to our lives.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Paul’s simply carrying Peter’s thought further here in the same way that Peter carried Paul’s.

Paul said in our first scripture that we’re free. Peter says we’re given freedom in Christ, so use it wisely. Now Paul says you have freedom, so use it wisely and stand firm.

Christianity is defined by liberty, true and complete liberty, and the price of that liberty was paid once and for all by Christ’s death and resurrection. But that price is also secured, it’s held firm, by each of us looking to God every day and saying, “Not my will, but yours.”

Here’s what Paul is saying: The world’s freedom can be taken. We’ve seen that all throughout history. We see that even now in our own country, where freedom is being taken away bit by bit not by the government, but by the mob.

Spiritual freedom, the freedom given to us by Christ, is both the same and different. That freedom, too, can be lost. True salvation, once received, can never be taken away. But the freedom that salvation offers can fade just as easily as God’s glory faded from the face of Moses.

But listen, because this is important: that freedom can’t be taken from you. The only way you lose your spiritual freedom is if you give it away yourself.

That’s why Paul says to stand firm. That’s why he says don’t go back to the way you were before. God put your eyes in front of you so you can see where you’re going, not where you’ve been. You’ve been freed, so don’t put back on those old chains that Christ got you out of.

Our nation was in tatters at the end of the Civil War. It had been the bloodiest fight in the history of our nation.

Half a million dead, which at the time made up 2% of the entire population. The national economy was in ruins. A president had been assassinated. And a new amendment to the Constitution had been signed into law. Men, women, and children who were once slaves were now legally free.

But many of those men, women, and children continued living in fear and poverty as though their freedom had never been granted. Even after they were freed, many former slaves chose to remain as slaves simply because slavery was all they’d ever known.

Paul says don’t live like that. He says stand firm, knowing you are free, because standing firm is the only way you can remain free. He says you have to remind yourself daily of the liberty you have, and you have to cherish that liberty, you have to hold onto it tight, otherwise it will slip right through your fingers.

Peter says we have the freedom of choosing what master we follow. Paul says we have the freedom to remove the veil from our faces. And what he reminds us of here is to stand firm and never give up the most important freedom we have. Freedom from.

Freedom from fear, because you know that God, God Himself, walks with you and behind you and ahead of you wherever we go, and there is nothing and no one powerful enough to snatch you from His hand.

Freedom from worry, because you know that your life is safely in his hands, every circumstance, every trial, every time of suffering, and that He cares for you so deeply and profoundly that it’s as if you are His only possession, the only thing He has ever created.

Freedom from despair, because though you know that this world is filled with sorrows untold, He holds you in His arms and makes every hurt better, and because you know there will come a day when you will stand face to face with Him, and the hand that created all, the great hand of judgment, will touch your face with a gentle caress and wipe away every tear.

Freedom from guilt, because you know that God looks upon you and sees not the sins you’ve struggled with, but the Savior who took those sins upon Himself.

Freedom from emptiness, because you know that your life is shot through with meaning, that your time upon this earth is short but counts for eternity, and that you are given life by God because He has a purpose for you meant for no other person in history, and a vital role to play in a great battle that rages in every corner of creation.

And finally you have freedom from death, because you know your names is written in the great book of life, and that ink will never fade nor be crossed out.

That, friends, is freedom. And that is why I will cherish this flag behind me always and stand up for what it stands for.

That is why I will always be thankful for the men who stood up in the face of tyranny to begin a nation founded upon liberty, and why I will honor them in spite of their sins, because this world will never again see their like.

But there is a greater freedom that you and I enjoy that should be celebrated and cherished and honored every day, and that is the true freedom that Christ provides.

Because that is a freedom that no man, no government, no mob can ever take from is. That is a freedom you can lose only if you give it away. So don’t let another day go by with those chains weighing you down. Be free.

Let’s pray:

Father we thank you for what this weekend means — freedom for all, regardless of who they may be and of where they may be from, freedom granted for all Americans. And we thank you more for the greater freedom you provide, those freedoms to and of and from, because by those we know we can face everything, endure anything, and live truly and wonderfully free. Freedom is your gift to every person, and what every person does with that freedom is their gift to You. Help us to use that gift wisely, and seriously, and in service to You, to Your kingdom, and to this country. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Benediction:

And now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.