Keep on Keepin' On

Today is Juneteenth, a date that commemorates the events of June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Tex., to inform enslaved African Americans in the furthest reaches of the Union that the Civil War had ended and that they were free.

...Despite the surrender of the Confederacy 2 months earlier…which was just days before the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln, a Republican from the North who had run with a Democrat from the South, Andrew Johnson, in order to unite the nation politically and geographically…There had been plans for reconstruction after the war but Lincoln was assassinated and those plans weren’t carried out…in fact, Johnson Redesigned the Reconstruction and undid many of the freedoms that so many had fought for and that the former slaves were promised:

“After Lincoln’s death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons...slavery was being abolished, but “black codes” to regulate the freedmen were beginning to appear.”

Despite that, Congress pushed through The Civil Rights Act of 1866 which declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens, "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." Although President Johnson vetoed the legislation, that veto was overturned by Congress and the bill became law. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the nation's first civil rights law.

The fight for freedom continued because those in power found new ways to keep people in bondage…with Jim Crow laws that criminalized blackness and found ways to have forced labor or indentured servitude throughout the South.

The Civil rights movement which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - 99 years after the end of Slavery in USA, brought about greater steps towards equality and equity, yet we know we’re not there yet…

Today we celebrate Freedom, much like we will again on July 4th…but with a different emphasis today. We celebrate that we live in a country that aspires for freedom and equality without distinction or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Yet, we recognize that these are great ideals and that they’re not fully realized and that it requires that we continue pressing on, personally and politically, to see this freedom fully realized.

In our lives, and in our spiritual walk, Freedom is available for us…It’s what God wants! But “Freedom doesn't come on a silver platter...there will inevitably be trials...You don't get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don't get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can't help but reach it.”

But we live in a world and with an enemy who is actively trying to:

+ Re-Define what Freedom is…what it looks like...

+ Re-Design how we can live…so that we don’t actually live in Freedom...

+ Change Desires to desire the wrong things...

+ Doubt the goodness of God’s desires & designs…and how HE wants us to live free.

+ Liberty is different than License, Licentiousness, or Lawlessness.

+ OT everyone did what was right in their own eyes because there was no king...

+ Now we have a King…the one who brings Freedom and Liberty…where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Freedom…from the Law and from sin, self and satan!

+ Jesus said, “you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free!”

+ He also said of Himself, “I AM the way the truth and the life...”

+ If you don’t believe in Truth then you won’t experience Freedom and you will never find Justice or Peace because those can only be based on TRUTH!

+ God wants us to live in HIS Freedom!

Like MLK, one of the most famous leaders of the Civil Rights Movement said on March 22, 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama, 8 years before the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “Freedom doesn't come on a silver platter. With every great movement toward freedom there will inevitably be trials. Somebody will have to have the courage to sacrifice. You don't get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don't get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can't help but reach it. We won't all see it, but it's coming and it's because God is for it...We won't back down. We are going on with our movement.”

Keep on Keepin’ On

+ The encouragement in Hebrews is to Persevere through the Trials…to stay the course…to be Faithful to the End…to Enter into the Promises that God has for us when we live according to HIS Definitions, His Desires, His Designs, and His Directions…Because He’s a good, good Father who wants what’s best for His children.

Hebrews 13:1-16

Hebrews 13:1-16 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 3 Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

6 So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. 10 We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

+ The testing of our Faith when we face the trials of life reveals what it’s made of…but just like precious metals as they go through the fire, they are purified…so far the exhortation at the end of Hebrews is to press on and to press in…to not give up…to keep on keepin’ on because it’s not only revealing what your love, your faith, or your life is made of, but it is purifying it as well!

+ Let’s look at 4 areas that we’re called to Keep on Keepin’ On

With a Pure Love (13:1-3)

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 3 Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

1. Loving Believers + Philadelphia - ethos of kin...siblings... - cooperation, solidarity, sharing of possessions, etc. - Not kin of a biological nature but belief that all adopted into the same family by God. 2. Loving Others

+ Philoxenias - hospitality...loving strangers

3. Loving the Last, Lost, Least

1 Corinthians 13 defines the love that we’re called to: patient, kind, not envious, NOT Prideful, etc.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-6 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

++Tie in Father’s day with love of the Father reference under PURE LOVE++

With a Pure Life (13:4-8) 4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

6 So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

+ Marriage should be honored and celebrated by ALL…today is our 18th Anniversary!

+ I love Sarah and I love getting to share life with her and I love the family that has come because of our marriage…but it’s worth pointing out here that...

+ Marriage between a man and a woman was God’s idea, we see it in the garden and we see it reiterated by Jesus when He’s asked…MEN would never make up the idea of marriage…it’s not convenient…covenant is not convenient…sex outside of marriage would by far be the easiest way of life for a man…but it’s not good for people…it leaves children without Fathers and it selfishly leaves women to raise the product of their sexual relationship alone.

+ NO TO Porneia = is any sexual activity outside of the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman…from pornography to pre-marital sex to any other kind of sex…and adultery too and the breaking of the covenant.

+ God will not punish us in this life, meaning make us pay the penalty for our sins…Jesus paid the price…but if you don’t accept His pardon in your place, you will face the full weight of God’s just punishment on judgement day.

+ That does NOT mean that there aren’t consequences that God allows because we have stepped out of under His authority and protection and have opened ourselves up to the enemy…or have sown to the flesh and therefore reap from the flesh. There IS a law of sowing and reaping. You should not be surprised when things go bad for you when you walk around living a life that is not according to God’s designs and desires…you WILL reap what you sow.

+ Bad things happening to you are not punishment...wrath is being stored up...but there are natural consequences...the law of sowing and reaping still applies to life...what are you sowing into?

+ This age is ruled by Self...Self led life or self less life? Self led or spirit led?

+ Conformed to culture or transformed by the Word?

+ NOT loving the ways of this world: money, materialism, and sensuality (hedonism)

We DON’T need relationships, sex, or stuff to have a whole life…God is our provider, our source, and the one who we can find ultimate satisfaction in...

With a Pure Faith (13:7-14) 7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. 10 We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

+ Check the fruit of their lives…imitate their faith…Jesus didn’t change…He’s the same one we are following, so always go back to Jesus as your model to follow!

+ Don’t get carried away by strange teachings…get back to Jesus.

+ Legalism and License teachings are out there in abundance…TRUTH and GRACE needed.

+ We have access to God Himself and His Word…don’t take my word for it…see for yourself!

+ We need Training for righteousness...rightly handle the word of truth...Truth AND Grace...You have to have both. You can't just "pray and listen to the Spirit" and not read the word and "study to show yourself approved"

+ Let me read this description to you about the Last days and tell me that this doesn’t sound like our times!

2 Tim 3:1-5 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

+ Go outside the camp…don’t live for the approval of others…don’t try to be like the world!

+ Be willing to bear the shame of being rejected by others for the sake of your life looking like Jesus!

2 Tim 4:1-5 ...For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths...

EXAMPLE: Running race and someone wanders off the course....It is NOT loving to let them go...to redraw course and make a new course for them...those things aren't right and they're not honoring. NOT loving to let the person run the opposite way...or to let a runner who is trying to discourage the other runners continue to do so. + NOT good to take someone who falls or is limping and declare them a winner...and an example to follow.

Loving and honoring would be to help those who fall, call to those who are lost, orient the disoriented, correct those who confuse, etc.

With a Pure Praise (13:15-16)

+ Receiving His sacrifice...offering sacrifice of Praise. + Obedience is better than sacrifice…that’s why Romans 12 says that we’re called to offer our whole being: body, soul, and spirit…as a living sacrifice.

Keep on Keepin’ On!

If struggling with distraction, doubt, deconstruction (not destruction - difference), tempted to be the one who defines or decides... Keep on Keepin' On... towards Jesus! Towards Eternity…live today in light of Eternity. Keep on...loving each other...loving others...lost, last, least Keep on...living the Faith...seeking God's Kingdom...passions and priorities...trust Him to provide and protect...