Independence Day- Freedom in Christ
Stephen Taylor
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Welcome to YOUR ChapelNext
Welcome to YOUR ChapelNext
Happy Independence Day!
Happy Independence Day!
My name is Steve Taylor and I am one of your chaplain pastors here at ChapelNext.
When you launch a new Chapel on 245th Birthday, where do you being? After seeking the Lord’s wisdom on this , we’ve decided to begin with Jesus.
As we celebrate Independence Day, and revel in Freedom and Liberty as Americans, it it appropriate that we see what the Bible has to say about the subject. The Bible mentions freedom in dozens of verses, and I’d like you to just let about a dozen of these wash over you today. If you’re a note taker and you can’t keep up with the references, the slides will be online later today. The Psalmist writes:
Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me free.
Even on this Independence Day, some of us don’t feel free. Some here might be in the distress of loneliness, maybe enslaved to various addictions or bound up by sadness and depression… the Psalmist reminds us that is okay… it is normal, and the answer is to call out to the Lord who has the power to set us free!
The prophet Isaiah said-
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
God uses His men and women, His faithful servants to bring the good news to the poor, to comfort the broken-hearted and to lead them to God’s saving, delivering power.
---You know this chapel is special. Just before we meet, the Basic trainees are in here worshipping every Sunday and you can sense God’s Spirit moving in this place as 800 trainees worship God with all they have… do you sense The Spirit of the Lord in this place? Paul, writing to the Corinthians said:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
If you need it, there’s Freedom available to all of us gathered here today! Amen?
How exactly can we be set free from all that has us bound up? In John’s gospel we learn that we need to KNOW THE TRUTH
John 8:32 (ESV)
and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.”
You might have noticed that I capitalized the T in truth there- John shares later that:
John 14:6 (ESV)
Jesus said to him, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
-side note: Jesus is not one of the ways to the Father in heaven, He is THE WAY & in Him is all Truth & Life, both now and forevermore. So, for you believers in the room, there is good news! John says:
John 8:36 (ESV)
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
For those of us who call ourselves Christians…we have declared our faith in Jesus, and everything that God’s word tells us about Him- that He came to this world born of a virgin, without sin, fully God & fully man, that He walked this earth for 33 years and spent 3 of those years ministering, preaching & teaching and discipling His closest followers. That Jesus, was scourged and beaten and ultimately crucified for my sins and yours… BUT… BUT on the third day that He rose from the grave in victory over sin & death and He is now ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father...
For we who ARE Christians, we have confessed our sins and repented of them & we have been forgiven… we ARE FREE INDEED. Consider that this Independence Day!
& as people who are free 1 Peter says:
Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
Honor everyone? Even Cowboys fans? YES- even the leaders who don’t share my views? YES - love them & pray for them, they need it more than anyone!
Some of you have fallen into the trap of thinking that you can earn liberation & freedom from God. For thousands of years devoted followers of the Lord attempted to keep the Law of Torah in vain. God’s standard is perfection and no one has ever met that standard except for God’s Holy Son, Jesus & Acts tells us that
Acts 13:39 (ESV)
By Him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
The law COULD NOT & DID NOT set you free. You & I couldn’t earn our salvation and freedom, and we don’t deserve it-
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
You know this is good news right? Next week we are going to start a verse-by-verse study through Galatians and we’re going to study freedom extensively this summer, but I want to give you two more verses to reflect on from this powerful letter to the Galatians:
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Jesus set us FREE! For me that took place on October 4th, 1997! Do you know when it happened for you? We are no longer slaves to the sin & muck & mire of this world but WE ARE FREE! When the Enemy tries to condemn you, remind Him that you are a Son or Daughter of the King of Kings & Lord of Lords. NO- we are not perfect, we are forgiven and we perfectly dependent on Jesus.
So.... what do we do with all this freedom? Galatians 5:13 says:
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Serve one another in love! Praise Jesus, what a powerful order from our King!
In our remaining time, I want to spend a few minutes remembering and celebrating the freedoms God & bestowed on our young country...
1776
1776
In late June of 1776 the Continental Congress finally agreed to dissolve all ties with Great and declare independence. 5 men were appointed to compose the document: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. When the document was completed and presented to the delegates on 2 July, the reports say no one wanted to sign it.
They knew that this was an act of treason to Great Britain and if their efforts in the coming war (a war against the greatest military in history) if those efforts failed, they would all be put to very painful deaths. But, as the story goes, it was Franklin who spoke up and said: ‘"we must all hang together, or ... we shall all hang separately," … and John Hancock stepped up to be the first of the eventual 56 signers.
Notice Hancock took up prime real estate as he signed so large that King George could read it without his spectacles… there’s a lesson in there about being first...
Writing to his beloved Abigail, the day after the Declaration was complete, John Adams said this about the celebration of Independence Day:
“It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
I don’t know about you, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job at fulfilling Adams vision, but that wasn’t all he said… just before talking about the partying and the fireworks, John wrote this to Abigail:
"It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
He concluded his comments to Abigail saying:
“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means”
And then on the 4th, the declaration had its first public reading and proclamation. It happened on July 4th, 1776, 245 years ago today.
Now you probably remember that all this took place in Philadelphia PA in what we now call Independence Hall. There was an old bell called the state house bell which had been commissioned 25 years earlier. Following the reading, that bell was rung boldly as if to underline the importance of the historic moment. Do you know what the inscription on top of that bell reads?
ESV (Leviticus 25:10)
‘proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants’
You see that bell had been purchased and dedicated to William Penn who believed in Biblical Liberty and Freedom and God made sure it was on hand for this pivotal day for America in July of 1776. God had a plan long before we understood all of His purposes! BTW- it wasn’t until 1837 that abolitionists used this bell in their campaigns to wipe out the stain of slavery that it took on the name Liberty Bell. Once again, God had a plan and a purpose, remember the inscription ‘proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the oppressed’.
Of course the declaration of independence was just that, a declaration and it had to be earned, to be paid for by the blood of scores of patriots during the long revolutionary war. More than 7 years later the war was finally over in 1783, but although the colonies were free, they were not yet a country… they needed a constitution.
1787 - Constitutional Convention. After five frustrating weeks, Senior Statesmen Ben Franklin declared to the president of the convention:
How has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. -- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.
I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that "except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel”
George Washington, John Adams and James Madison all wrote about how the freedom America was suited only for a moral & religious people. Every one of them was familiar with the scriptures we read together and they all saw God’s hand in our country’s origin, purpose, and future… but do we?
A few weeks ago I woke up thinking about this day, our first ChapelNext gathering which God providentially coordinated to be on July 4th, Independence Day. You see, when I was born in 1969 when our nation was only 193 years old. Today, we celebrate our 245th birthday. I realized I have been alive for more than 20% of of nation’s history. Even more bizarre was this thought- if I live past 96, I will have been alive for 1/3 of our nation’s history. What will I have done to preserve this precious American experiment. HOW ARE WE AMERICANS DOING AS STEWARDS OF FREEDOMS GOD HAS GIVEN US?
I’m concerned that our children and their children may not inherit the freedoms that we all have enjoyed. It may be that we Americans are more than a little divided and confused about our national identity, & we may be a bit adrift. I encourage you to take Franklin’s admonition seriously and pray. Pray without ceasing… for your family, this ministry, the leaders in your unit, school or workplace, the leaders in our communities, on Fort Sill, in our home states and those that serve in Congress. Pray for the President, the VP & the Supreme Court. Do this when they are the ones you voted for and maybe even more when they aren’t. Pray, pray pray… Pray like Elijah, like David, like Peter and like Paul. The Bible says in James 5:16 that:
English Standard Version Chapter 5
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working
I believe deeply that God has blessed America and that despite our many individual and national flaws He has used us to be a beacon of light and hope and freedom around the world throughout our short history. But… we have a tendency to drift. A tendency to forget the gifts of freedom and liberty that have been purchased for us at a price too high for any of us to pay and yet freely given to each of us. This idea of drift, this idea that we are prone to wander, is one of the main themes we’ll explore in our study of Galatians in the coming weeks.
As we study the Word of God we will grow closer to the God of the Word. When we consider our history, we in the military know better than most that:
Freedom isn’t free
Our freedoms as Americans were bought at a high price as men and women lost their lives to earn it for us.
There is a saying that ‘All paid some and some paid all’ … that’s true regarding our Army and our earthly wars but when it comes to eternal battles and eternal victory, we must recognize the Jesus paid it All! We need to reword the saying to be ‘All paid none, ONE paid all’.
As we celebrate Independence Day today & in the future, let us remember the Divine Providence which established our Liberty and Freedom. Let us remember the words of John Adams & commemorate it as a day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
&
Solemnize it with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and fireworks, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
LET US PRAY