Independence in Christ – 2 Corinthians
3:17
Now the Lord is the
Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
I.
Introduction
Benjamin Franklin was
born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He was one of 15 of 17 children. At age 15,
he ran away from home and took up residence in Philadelphia. He became famous
for being a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a printer, a philosopher, a
musician, and an economist. Today, we honor Ben Franklin as one of our Founding
Fathers and as one of America's greatest citizens.
As an older man, he
vividly remembered a visit he made as a young man to see the Puritan preacher
Cotton Mather and the life lesson learned. Franklin recalled:
"He was showing
me out of the house, and there was a very low beam near the doorway. I was
still talking when Mather began shouting, "Stoop! Stoop!" I didn't
understand what he meant and banged my head on the beam. "You're
young," he said, "and have the world before you. Stoop as you go
through it, and you will avoid many hard thumps." That advice has been
very useful to me. I avoided many misfortunes by not carrying my head too high
in pride."
Benjamin Franklin, one
of our founding fathers, would often struggle with his faith during his life.
But he was always tethered to the Lord, and was the one to suggest that the
Constitutional Convention in 1787 that it begin in prayer daily. As he queried,
“how has it happened that we have not, hitherto once thought of humbly applying
to the Father of Lights to illuminate our Understandings?” Perhaps he was
thinking back to this story that I have just told you, that those in attendance
at this convention might be well served by keeping their pride in check. Sadly,
as Franklin noted, the proposal to open in prayer was not passed, and Franklin
would also note “the Convention except three or four persons, thought prayers
unnecessary!”
Franklin would also
say that without God’s aid, the Founding Fathers would “succeed in this
political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Even though he would
struggle with faith in Jesus, at least one of our Founding Fathers would
realize that the independence that we celebrate today would not have been
possible without the divine help of the Lord. And that is what leads us today,
that we cannot know true independence without Jesus Christ. I want us to look
at three verses today. Look at these verses this week, and think about what
true independence is in our lives, and know that it is only through the
dependence on Christ that we are truly free!
II.
Do
Not Submit to Slavery Again - Galatians 5:1
Look at Galatians 5:1,
which reads “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do
not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” As we visited various places this
week, I was reminded so much of the cost of the freedom that we enjoy
throughout our land. We went to a military museum, and throughout that place
there were scattered Medal of Honor winners and their stories. To a man, each
one had died in the defense of their country and to the saving of their fellow
countrymen “above and beyond the call of duty.” Not only did these men do this,
it was because they wanted to protect their fellow soldiers and the people that
they loved back home from the evils that they were encountering in the
field.
Christ did this for us
as well. Christ sets us free from the sentence of death that comes when we sin
against God. When Paul wrote this to the Galatians, they were facing a false
teaching from certain leaders stating that the only way to be saved was through
the old Law. When Paul wrote this letter, he wasn’t trying to pet his own ego,
or to try to persuade the people of something that he had personally thought up
on the spot. No, Paul was trying to show the people of Galatia that the only
way that we are truly free is to follow Jesus Christ fully and personally. But
in this verse particularly, Paul makes sure to point out that if we backslide
into the sinful nature and think that the Law will save us, that we are
willingly taking up a yoke of slavery.
I remember in one of
my classes from high school. Of all things, I took Latin as my foriegn
language. I felt like it would help me in the future to understand a bit more
about the classics, and it actually has! But we talked about classic slavery in
that class, and one thing that would often happen was that people would get
into a spot where their debts became too large and the debt collector would
literally sell that person into slavery to fulfill the debt. As the person
would pay off that debt over time, they were eventually freed. However, many
times we know from records of the time that some of those people who were freed
never learned their lessons, and were often resold into slavery over and over
again. It was a vicious cycle that would lead the people back into the slavery.
When we think of this verse in that context, I think that we can understand this
better. Christ has bought us, and if we are truly saved we cannot ever be lost
into sin fully ever again. But the devil will try to get us out of his freedom!
But we cannot do that unless we allow it ourselves.
III.
The
Truth Sets Us Free - John 8:31-32
We know that Christ is
the only true freedom that we have. We see that Jesus himself said in John
8:31-32 that “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to
my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free.” As I studied for this week, I looked at a
Bible dictionary to see what they said about what freedom is. But I looked at
what they said truth was first. They said in this particular dictionary that
“the word truth denotes something that conforms to actuality, is faithful to a
standard, or involves sincerity or integrity. The ground for truth is reality
itself.” This is a fancy way to say that truth is something that can be
believed to be true because it is something that is tangible, that is right,
and has been tested as true. Jesus saying that you will know the truth means
that you will know him personally! He repeats this statement in a slightly
different way in John 14:6, saying “I am the truth and the life. No one
comes to the father except through me.” This means that Jesus is the ONLY
way that we can come to Father God, and it is only through his sacrifice on the
cross that we are set free.
That statement, you
will know the truth and the truth will set you free is a phrase that has been
bandied about a lot in the last few years, often in secular settings. But that
truth that they say when they use this statement, often blasphemously, is a
truth that cannot be held to the standard of what we know as THE Truth (with a
capital T). We talk about in church about the Life, the One, and the Savior.
Why is it that we talk about those things with such importance? Because it is
the Truth. As we just saw, the truth is something that we know is true because
we see the evidence of it in our lives. We know that it is because we can point
to things in our lives that have been changed because of the Truth. We know
that it is right because we have the Holy Spirit to guide us. I remember Billy
Graham once said that the Holy Spirit enables our conscience to do the right
thing.
We also know that the
Truth is the Truth because it can be tested. I know that some of you will
bristle with the thought of testing Christ. We have been so many times told
that we aren’t to test God. I will agree that we need not frivolously test God.
We are not to ask God for something we know we do not need and then pout
because He didn’t give it to us and say that God doesn’t exist because He
didn’t give us our every whim, or give us that massive amount of money that the
prosperity Gospel preachers keep saying that if we only ask (which they really
mean tell God to do), he’ll give it to us. No. When we test God we are showing
an immaturity in our faith. However, God will show us the Truth through the
hardships of our lives, and the great power of the Truth when he releases us
from those troubles. As one author put it, “God has shown us that He is with
us; He has nothing to prove to us. If we refuse to see it, we are as bling as
Israel was in the wilderness.” When we are faced with trouble and we know that
it is testing us in our faith in Christ, we can rely on the fact that Jesus is
always with us, and that through Him we are truly free!
IV.
Freedom
has a Price - Romans 8:1-4
We know that our true
freedom has a price attached to it. Look at Romans 8:1-4. This is perhaps one
of the strongest statements of the faith that Paul wrote to the Christians in
Rome. It reads “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life
has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless
to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in
the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully
met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
We can know as Christians that we do not have to live in fear of the
condemnation that we had on us when we did not know Christ personally. Paul
points out that our freedom has been bought. Now, as you well know that in the
time of Christ, it was customary to go and buy a sheep or doves at the Temple
(usually at a great markup) to offer to God to cleanse yourself of sin. This
would often take a great toll on the finances of someone who was not wealthy,
and would cause great problems for those people. But Paul writes here that our
sin has forever been forgiven from Christ!
Let me ask something.
Have you ever done something for someone that cost a great deal? It could have
been in time or in money, or it could have been something that you didn’t want
to do but you did it anyway because you knew that it would make that person’s
life easier? I know that there are many within this congregation today that
have done that many times over the years, and even are planning on doing more
of that in the near future. I am reminded of a story that I came across a while
back. Lee Strobel, the award-winning editor of the Chicago Tribune, and who
would become international famous for writing The Case for Christ, wrote
a story on an inner-city woman named Perfecta Delgado. It was Christmas, and
Mrs. Delgado had her two granddaughters with her at the time. When he stepped into
the apartment, he was struck by the emptiness of the apartment, which only had
a small kitchen table to greet him. This family had been burned out of their
tenement, and were scraping by in this two room apartment. Even though
arthritis kept Perfecta from working, she talked confidently to Strobel about
her faith in Jesus. She was convinced that he had not abandoned them. As
Strobel put it, “I never sensed despair or self-pity in her home; instead,
there was a gentle feeling of hope and peace.”
Strobel's story ran in the newspaper and there was a generous outpouring of
gifts to the Delgado family that Christmas. Strobel revisited the Delgados that
Christmas and was amazed at Perfecta’s response. She believed it wasn't right
that she should gain so much while her neighbors had so little. So she gave
most of the gifts away to her neighbors. As reported by Strobel, Perfecta said
“This is wonderful, this is good. We did nothing to deserve this - it’s a gift
from God. But, it’s not His greatest gift. No, that is Jesus.”
The greatest gift ever
is Jesus. I know it’s strange to tell a story of Christmas on July 4th, but as
we remember from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we are to have
Christmas in our hearts all year around. We have Christmas in our hearts
because Christ has bought our freedom on the cross. It was a dear price to pay,
one that we did nothing to earn, no way that we can pay it back, except through
believing and serving our Lord every day.
V.
Conclusion
As we finish today, I
want to reflect upon the thought of freedom. There is a monument that is named
the National Monument to the Forefathers. There are four corners on it, and
each has a statue, representing law, morality, freedom, and education. But above
it the largest statue that commands each of the four corners is that of Faith.
In its left hand is a copy of the Bible, and the right hand is lifted, pointing
towards God. It is a reminder that the United States, if we live under the
motto of “In God We Trust” will continue to be the land of the free and a light
for mankind.
Also, go back sometime
in the near future and read the State of the Union address that Franklin
Roosevelt made in 1941. It was a time of great trouble within the world. Europe
stood at the brink of collapse to the Nazi war machine, and there were
troubling signs that those within power in Germany had intent on dominating the
entire world, including the United States. More concerning to Roosevelt was
that the rights and freedoms of peoples all across the globe, including in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and in the Pacific, were being systematically stripped
away. Roosevelt saw a great danger to the freedom that was so hard fought over
the previous 165 years, through various wars outside of the borders of the
nation, and including the war that nearly tore the nation apart. But Roosevelt
knew that the freedom to choose for ourselves as a nation was being threatened
greatly. As he warned the Congress of the impending attack he felt would come
in the near future, he was already setting a course for world peace after the
war. Specifically, he stated that after the war was done, there should be four
essential human freedoms, all of which were promoted and pushed by the founding
fathers themselves. Perhaps Roosevelt was thinking of the four freedoms that
the pilgrims established in our country when he said that there must first be
freedom of speech. Next, the freedom to worship God in his own way. Third, the
freedom from want. And finally, the freedom from fear.
Norman Rockwell, the
great painter of so many Saturday Evening Post covers, decided in the spring of
1942 to paint a set of paintings based on this speech. He had just completed a
piece for the war ordinance department to help the morale and productivity of
war materiel. As he mulled the idea of the four freedoms, he happened to attend
a town hall meeting where a man got up
to give his
thoughts, which proved to be very unpopular. Rockwell would then use this as
inspiration, settings from his own life and of those around him to create
perhaps four of the most famous paintings in the world today.
We celebrate freedom
today, from tyranny, from a government that sought to take from us, that sought
to keep us in our place. Has the United States been perfect in its history? No.
But has it been a country that relied upon God? Yes. And often! But when we
think of the four freedoms, or even the four founding parts of our country,
none of them could be attained without the dependence that we have on Jesus
Christ. Today, take that dependence upon yourself, and you will have true
independence from sin. Let’s pray.
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