Spiritual Freedom

I was thinking, when I was a kid growing up in the church, I remember Mr. Dick would get up and just go through the announcements and be so smooth and polished.

And most ministers I've known can do that. I'm not sure they didn't teach us that in Ambassador College. But that's alright.

There are a few famous quotes that are so much a part of American culture that pretty much all of us recognize them instantly.

And I want to begin with one of those today. Now, this one is mostly known for its last seven words, so it doesn't sound familiar at first. When I get to there, I'm sure you'll know it. It says, This was the conclusion to a passionate speech made by Patrick Henry in the Virginia Convention of 1775. It's a very turbulent time in American history. Of course, the various colonies were struggling with laws passed by Parliament and some people thinking they were okay, others not wanting to obey them. And for the colonies deciding whether they should cooperate together or go their way separately. Partly, and even largely because of this particular speech, the Virginia Convention voted that they would send representatives to what became known as the Second Continental Congress. And this was the Continental Congress that in time would declare independence from the British Empire. Of course, they did so. My mind just went blank. I say, on July 4th, or it was on July 4th, John Adams thought that July 6th would be the day of celebration. And that doesn't matter today. This isn't a July 4th sermon. It is interesting, though, among those representatives chosen after that speech included Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

But many years later, people would look at this and say, liberty or death? Maybe Patrick Henry was being a little overly dramatic. After all, the colonists weren't being slapped into irons. They weren't being thrown into jail. They weren't being whipped. This was a dispute about government, about the idea of where true authority comes from.

And of course, that did lead to some very interesting and deep discussions, including about the degree of responsibility a person owes to authority, to the rule of law. What is the source of authority? What's the basis for law? When is a person free? What does freedom consist of? All these questions and the answers can get pretty legalistic and academic.

And that's one of the reasons some Americans, like Patrick Henry, said, let's put it in clear-cut black and white terms. If you don't mind, I'd like to read a little bit more from Patrick Henry's speech. This is the opening, these are the opening lines. He said, The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it nothing less than the question of freedom or slavery. So he made that stark contrast right from the beginning. He went on to say, Hear not the things which so nearly concerned their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever the anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it. From there, I won't read the rest of the speech. Patrick Henry went into detail the level of troops that were being moved by the British into the American colonies, and the armament that was on the ships, and the countermeasures that some of the colonies were preparing.

The colonists thought a lot about these ideas. They were concerned with the idea of taxation without representation. It's interesting, that's a phrase I'm sure most of us have heard or learned in school. Later on, economic historians came along and said, No, no, it's just they didn't like taxation, period. I don't believe that, though. I think the ideas mattered. They were concerned about the idea of owning a property, private ownership of property, as well as public property.

Now, much as I would really enjoy probably spending another hour or so talking about the ideological origins of the American Revolution, I think it would be more appropriate to focus on some other things. And there are some, I think, greater truths that can be found in what Patrick Henry was saying that apply to us as Christians, and things that we want to focus on in our striving for eternal life.

He portrayed liberty and death as opposites. I think he was more correct than he even realized. He also said it's natural for man to indulge in illusions of hope. I have no doubt about that. That's been true ever since Adam and Eve chose to believe the serpent and not to believe what God told them, the one who would become Jesus Christ. And mankind ever since then has accepted illusions and falsehoods.

Sometimes some people do recognize that characteristic in themselves, though, and that's one of the interesting parts where someone rises above and says, What we do? I found a quote by the philosopher Johann von Goethe. He said this, None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who believe they are free.

I think human beings tend to naturally want freedom. Matter of fact, my thought is, because I don't have an explanation for it, I think God built it into us. Similar to the way Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, that man has eternity bound up in his heart. We long for something beyond this physical life. I think when we lack it or think we lack it, we long for liberty and freedom. Patrick Henry said that whatever it would cost him, he was willing to know the whole truth.

He must have been on to something there. Remember, I'm not going to turn there, but in John 8.32, Jesus Christ said, You will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. You'll know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Are we free? What is the truth that we need to know to be free? Now, you might think all this guy's going to do is ask questions, but I do have some answers I want to work up to.

Because I think we do want freedom. I think we can have true freedom. And that's what I want to explore today, an understanding of what that is. I suspect we could study examples in history of man's desire and his quest for history, starting from the very ancient, going right up to modern times. As a matter of fact, I don't have the exact numbers, but my understanding is that there are hundreds of thousands, and I think the number might even be millions of people on the planet today that are held in slavery, which is just a terrible thing to comprehend.

It's not accepted by governments the way it was at a time. During the revolution in the early years of this country, leaders and educators thought and wrote a lot about what they thought the essence of freedom was. And for those of you, if you didn't realize, that's the period of study that I focused on the most when I was studying history. So some of that comes to mind, and I like to talk about it. I'm not going to let myself go too far there. But they proposed that the idea of power was the tyrannical opposite of liberty.

They said, if you have power, that's the opposite of liberty. And what they meant by that is one person's power over another. They defined liberty as the promise of self-control. So if I have liberty, that means I have self-control within an environment of self-government. Notice government and control are not lacking there. They just were proposing that it's controlling yourself as opposed to an external power imposing control.

That is, one person being controlled by another, by another person or by some other force or even ideas, that's not liberty. But a person controlling himself might well be. Well, let's leave that thought, because it's interesting. While fairly well-educated white men, and of course to be well-educated at that time, usually meant you had a fair bit of money, they were focusing on the fine details, the esoteric, abstract ideas of what is freedom and what does it mean to balance control and power. How much external control does it take before then you're not free? Well, right among them, in their midst, in this country, there were millions of people with dark skin that didn't have to debate the fine values of what's freedom.

They were held as slaves. They knew they were not free. They weren't just under too much influence by an employer. They didn't have a government that had gotten a little out of hand. They were being held as property, with no rights, very little, if any, protection under the law. Now, most Americans slaves during that time had no education. They lived and died, not knowing how to read a letter. But a few who did learn to read or write gave expression to how much they longed for freedom.

And if we read what they were able to put into words, we could see that as representing the many who did not. And with that in mind, I want to read a quote from the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Now, as I was looking at this, I realized I think I used this in a sermon a couple of years ago.

So, hope you don't mind me repeating myself, but once every couple of years isn't too bad. This is from the first version of his autobiography, and the version I'm using, I'm starting on page 74. Because I want to give some expression to the way he describes the mental part of being a slave.

He'll mention whips and chains, but he's mostly concerned with being bound in his mind. So, of course, Frederick Douglass, at this time, he was an older teen or a younger man. He was a fairly young man when he did escape slavery. But he was held by a family in Maryland near the banks of the Chesapeake, and that's where this picks up. Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe.

Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced with saddened heart and tearful eye the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean.

The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance, and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's complaint in my rude way with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships. If you are loosed from your moorings and are free, I am fast in my chains and am a slave. You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip. Your freedom swift-winged angels that fly around the world, I am confined in bands of iron, O that I were free. Keep that thought in mind, that feeling of O that I were free.

As I said, it shows a condition of slavery that wouldn't necessarily have applied only to those who were of African descent in the United States at that time. But, as I said, Frederick Douglass developed not only the ability to read and write, but if you read his writing, a very excellent use of the English language. He had a way with words, so much so I was discussing with someone after services this morning that he had to go find written documentation to prove that he had been a slave.

Many people who heard him speak or read his writing said there's no way he was ever a slave. He's too smart. He's too well spoken. He was largely self-educated. As a matter of fact, the story goes, there was lots of food in the house where he was as a slave, as a young boy, so he would take bread out and trade it to the poor white kids who would teach him to read.

He would get lessons from them and trade for food. But, as I said, he shows not only the condition of slavery in the mind of a slave, but I think how much they wanted to be free. I want to read one more excerpt of him writing as he contemplates running away, which he eventually was able to do, but he contemplates some of the risks. This is beginning on page 86.

We were hemmed in upon every side. Here were the difficulties, real or imagined, the good to be sought, the evil to be shunned. On the one hand there stood slavery, a stern reality glaring frightfully upon us, its robes already crimson with the blood of millions, even now feasting itself greedily upon our flesh.

On the other hand, way back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the North Star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning us to come and share its hospitality.

This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us. But when we permitted ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently appalled. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming the most horrid shapes. Now it was a starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh. Now we were contending with the waves and were drowned.

Now we were overtaken and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound. We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes. And finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot, after swimming rivers and countering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering hunger and nakedness, we were overtaken by our pursuers and in our resistance we were shot dead on the spot.

I say this picture sometimes appalled us and made us rather to bear those ills we had than to fly to others we knew not of. In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us, it was a doubtful liberty at most, an almost certain death if we failed.

For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

As I said, I think he caught that feeling very well, and that's why I wanted to read his words rather than just summarize. The language is a bit flowery and poetic, but those desperate feelings, as I said, I think would be shared by others who long for freedom and who are willing to risk almost anything to be free.

Now, before I move on, though, I would like to point out, in the history of this country, although we do, I think we give attention to slavery and how bad a market was on our history.

But unlike many peoples over the aeons of time, we can say at least that our forefathers, those who went before us, did put an end to slavery.

It took a bloody civil war, and of course the effects were long and still existing in some cases. But some people in the country believed that God did not create mankind to be held in slavery, and so they determined to exert what power was necessary to end it.

Now, I'll make a point. My purpose today isn't to discuss the history of American slavery any more than to discuss the ideology behind the American Revolution.

But I do want to read one more excerpt from another one of my favorite books to demonstrate, like I said, that feeling. I want to recall the emotions evoked later on when we look at some other things.

This is the book Killer Angels. I read this in graduate school. It's about the Battle of Gettysburg by Michael Schara.

You might not be familiar with this book by its title, but it came out in movie form about 15 or 20 years ago by the title Gettysburg. It was a Ted Turner production, about three and a half, four hours long. So, unless you really like the Civil War, you might not have sat through it, but it's an excellent version of the telling the battle. It actually follows a number of the leaders, both North and South. It follows James Longstreet and General Lee. And the hero for history professors, Joshua Chamberlain. The history professors loved Chamberlain because he was a professor who entered the Army and became an officer, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel in the 20th Maine. I'm going to read an excerpt of a speech that he made to some soldiers who were joining his regiment. He wanted to give them some background. He basically was saying, you're going to join these men, you ought to know a little bit about what we've seen and what we've done. And he talks a little bit about their purpose. I'm reading from page 30 of this edition. Describing why they signed up, he said, Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came in mainly because we were bored at home. This looked like it might be fun. Some came in because they were ashamed not to. Many of us came because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. Most of us never saw a black man back home. We think on that, too. But freedom is not just a word. This is a different kind of Army. If you look at history, you'll see men who fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an Army going out to set other men free. Going out to set other men free. What a lofty goal to set other men free. I would even say that it's a godly type of goal. Because doesn't God want people to be free? Or maybe I should ask the question, does he? To understand that, we might have to ask the question about what freedom is. With that in mind, I'll add one other brief quote. You might guess I did some Googling to find some quotes on freedom. Abraham Lincoln said this. Lincoln said, Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. So keeping in mind not so much the history that I've described, but as I said, the emotion and the feeling from the American historical account, let's go to an account in Scripture. As I said, I wanted to look at the accounts from our own past because we've studied this. And I think it brings up those emotions. I'm curious, how many of you remember the miniseries roots when it was on TV? Some of you, if you were younger, you might not have, but I think it can be found on video. And it's really good at evoking that feeling of what slavery was like. Not only just the feeling, but the information. We've been taught this lesson, so it should be easy for us to envision this wanting to be free. That a person desires to have self-determination and self-government. But the great classic example isn't found in an American history textbook. Of course, it's in the Bible. And during the spring holy day season, it's very appropriate that we look at the story of the Exodus and the children of Israel, what they experienced. They were held in slavery. And God would bring them out of slavery. He chose for himself a people that were slaves. They wanted to be free. And God would make them free. At least in a particular sense. We can make a case they were still lacking something, but we'll come to that later. If you will, let's turn to Exodus.

We'll begin in the first chapter. Exodus 1, beginning in verse 8.

Lest you're wondering, I'm going to skip through parts of it. We're not going to read the first 20 chapters of Exodus. It might make an interesting sermon, but I'm guessing a lot of you have read it in recent weeks or months. Exodus 1 in verse 8.

Well, I should, of course, give a little bit of background. After God called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they began to have children and more children. And of course, Jacob had 12 sons, one of whom Joseph was sold into slavery himself, but was brought out of prison because he could interpret a dream that Pharaoh had. And by foretelling first years of plenty and then a famine, he was able to save the country and rose to a position of high office.

During that famine, of course, his brothers were sent to buy food. He in time revealed who he was and brought the family down to Egypt to protect and provide for them. And there they stayed, but the conditions changed. They weren't always related to a high government official. As we see now in verse 8, There arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. I wonder, he might have known who he was, but in time, that importance seemed to fade.

And he said to his people, Look, the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happened in the event of war that they also join our enemies and fight against us.

And so, get up out of the land. Interesting. He's not saying, they're getting to be so many, let's get them out of here. They didn't want them to leave, they wanted to have control over them. In verse 11 it says, Before they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens, and they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Python and Ramses.

But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew, and they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service of the field.

All their service in which they made them to serve was with rigor. In other words, they had to work hard, they had bad conditions. Now, of course, if we would keep reading, we'd see the account of Moses being born in an unusual fashion and protected from death by his parents. Matter of fact, those who are studying mothers from the Bible want to show some particular interest to Moses' mother.

And of course, Moses had some misunderstanding about when it would be that he would serve his brethren. And because of that, he ended up fleeing the country and living in the land of Midian for 40 years. But God in time did want to use Moses. I'm going to move ahead to the third chapter, Exodus 30, verse 2, when God wants to use Moses as a tool to deliver the children of Israel from slavery.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's Exodus 3, but beginning in verse 7. We all know that he saw the bush burning but not burning. And in verse 7 it says, The Eternal said, I've surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and a large land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come therefore, I'll send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

And I wonder, God heard their cry, their groaning. We don't know what exactly it was they said. We don't know their words, but that's one of the reasons I wanted to read what Frederick Douglass wrote, those feelings he had when he saw those ships going off to sea, and him realizing that he was in bondage, and he longed to be free. It shouldn't be hard in that case to imagine.

The Israelites certainly shared some of that. They were much in anguish over their bondage and forced labor. They wanted to be free. But they didn't have the option of slipping aboard a ship going north of the Mason-Dixon line. There wasn't a nearby country that would shelter them and help them to escape. They had no power to become free.

In the story, of course, Moses and Aaron would first go to Pharaoh and ask for a few days off. And sometimes I think this is part of God's sense of humor, because he said, I mean, go to Pharaoh, you need to go three days' journey in the wilderness. And certainly God knew that Pharaoh would say, no way, and things would escalate from there.

Pharaoh thought they must have had it too easy if they were asking for some time off. And if you've got time to think about time off, you've got time to go find your own hay to make brick. So he increased the workload. And of course, the Israelites didn't appreciate that. If we turn over to chapter 5, Moses and his taskmasters called in the leaders of the Israelite people and basically had them flogged because they weren't meeting their daily quotas. And when they came out, they talked to Moses. Exodus 5, verse 21. And they said to them, that is, the leaders of the Israelite said to Moses and Aaron, Let the eternal look on you and judge, for you've made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants to put a sword in their hand to kill us.

And I said, you've made things a lot worse. You're not helping us out. And of course, God knew it would be this way. He knew that Pharaoh wasn't going to let them go just by the asking. God was going to show that only he could overcome the slavery they were in. That it would take the power of God to deliver them. Only he could give them liberty. In chapter 7, beginning in verse 4, Exodus 7 and verse 4, God explains this to Moses.

He says, Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay my hand on Egypt and bring my armies and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the eternal when I stretch out my hand on Egypt and bring the children of Israel out from among them.

And God proceeded to do exactly that. He started with turning the Nile River to blood. And the Nile, you could say, was the lifeblood of Egypt. They relied on it for transportation, for drinking water, for fishing. But God proceeded from there.

He destroyed their crops by locusts, by hail. He destroyed their livestock by letting a plague come on them. Gradually, he was destroying their economic power and their military power. And the greatest of the plagues he saved for last, taking the life of the firstborn, of everyone in the nation, apparently man and beast, with the exception of the Israelites, for whom he made a way of escape. They were told, slaughter a lamb with them not understanding, but God knowing that that lamb was a symbol of Jesus Christ, that he would be the true Passover.

This was a symbol, though, thousands of years in advance, that when they took that blood and put it on the lintel and on the doorpost, that God would pass over them and spare their lives. And by doing this, God delivered Israel from slavery. After that plague, Pharaoh and all the leaders of Egypt pushed the Israelites out.

They said, please get out! Go! Before we're all dead men. I speculate, I think it probably took God a shorter amount of time than the American Civil War that ended slavery here. There's different estimates of how long the ten plagues took. I've heard most of the ones that seem the most realistic to me say it might have been a couple of years. Some people think a number of months, but certainly not the four years of the Civil War. It might have even cost fewer lives.

But whether or not it took longer or how many deaths were involved, this was a dramatic event. This wasn't done, you know, in a subtle way. God freed his people very visibly. Not only did he bring all these plagues on Israel, he led the children of Israel not the easy way through the land of the Philistines, but down into the wilderness next to the Red Sea, then worked a tremendous miracle, parting the waters, so that the people could go through with the water on a wall on the right hand and on the left.

And I keep wondering... Now where was it? I was thinking it might have been one of Basil Wolverton's illustrations, but I've seen one where there's like the wall and a fish comes swimming out and suddenly he's not in the water anymore and falls down. We don't know what it was, but we do know the Egyptians were foolhardy enough to try to follow the Israelites in and then the waters came back and destroyed the last of their army.

And then, of course, God wasn't done yet. He would bring water out of a rock. He would rain bread from heaven. God was showing something. He was doing this for a purpose. Let's go to Exodus 19 and begin in verse 3. He was showing many things I should say, but I'm focusing in on one particular lesson. Exodus 19 and verse 3. Moses went up to God and the eternal called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians.

Notice God said, I did that. How I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. God saved them. He did something they had no power to do on their own. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you'll be a special treasure to me, above all people, for all the earth is mine.

What a transition! They're going from slaves who could be beaten if they didn't meet the required quota, to being promised you can be kings and priests. You will be free. But the freedom from slavery didn't involve freedom from all obligation. It did say, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant. I want to come back to that in a little bit. But we see again here a very nice lesson from history, much more ancient history than 150 years ago for the American Civil War.

And along with history, we can also see the lessons of fulfilled prophecy. God had made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that we're going to be fulfilled not only in bringing the children of Israel out of slavery and into the Promised Land, but thousands of years later, and the blessings poured out on us, his descendants. I want to elaborate that, come back on May 10th, and of course we'll see a lot more of that as Mr. Steiber explains how the peoples tracked across up through northwestern Europe and into the Americas and enjoyed these blessings.

Let's look at some of the spiritual lessons, though, along with these. If you'll turn with me to 1 Corinthians 10, 1 Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul makes the point that these things aren't written just as an interesting lesson of history so we can know what happened. They're there for us to learn from, and learn not just the physical, but learn spiritual. Maybe I should say, learn spiritually. 1 Corinthians 10, I'll begin in the first verse. Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the sea.

All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual rock. For that rock that followed, the same spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. But with most of them, God was not well pleased. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now, of course, this wasn't at one time, but over the years, the Israelites again and again would rebel and break God's law, and He would punish many of them with death.

And he says in verse 6, Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. Our examples, if you look across the page, you see that Paul repeated that thought in verse 11.

Now all these things happened to them as examples. They were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. There's lessons, spiritual lessons to be learned from much of this. And of course, we could take time to spell out in detail many of the symbols that are in the Exodus story. Often Pharaoh is compared to Satan, wanting to keep people down and restrict them in slavery. We know that the Passover Lamb, as I said, was a symbol of Jesus Christ and of the real sacrifice.

As Paul would write in Hebrew, the blood of lambs and goats, that can't take away our sin, but the blood of Jesus Christ could. We know that leaving Egypt represents leaving behind a life of sin. And interestingly, right at the time the children of Israel left Egypt, they began keeping the days of unleavened bread, because of course that's the day they went out.

And so there's a great symbolism for us. We don't leave Egypt, but we do try to leave a life of sin. And once a year, for a week, we put leaven out of our homes to remind us of that. Let's focus on what we can learn for our lives from the symbolism of Israel having been held in slavery and then being delivered to liberty. I said, that's a powerful thing, from slavery to liberty.

I mentioned in my introduction that Christ, at one point in his ministry, said to the Jews, to whom he spoke, You can know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The Pharisees among them, that bothered them. They sort of bristled, and they said, We were Abraham's children. We've never been in slavery to anyone. Which is kind of ironic, because as we pointed out, the province of Palestine had been conquered by Rome, and they were under rule from the Romans.

They had this foreign governor pilot there telling them what they could and couldn't do. And they denied it, but the truth is they needed to be freed, and much more so than being freed from Roman power. Early in his ministry, Christ quoted a prophecy of what the Messiah would do. If you'll turn to Luke 4, Luke 4 and verse 16. Luke 4 and verse 16, this is early in Christ's ministry, it says, He came to Nazareth, where He'd been brought up, and as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

And that was a practice then. All adult males had that option. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. It would have been a scroll in that time, and He unrolled it. And when He opened the book or the scroll, He found the place where it was written. And here we quote, The Spirit of the Eternal is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.

I wanted to underline that, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Now many at that time in history knew this prophecy, written hundreds of years before, and they knew this was a prophecy of the Messiah. And they'd studied the 70 weeks prophecy in Daniel, and knew it's time for the Messiah to show up, so they were looking for Him.

And what they were expecting, though, was, the Messiah's going to come, and He's going to overthrow the Romans. He's going to work great miracles, like Moses did on Pharaoh, and get rid of the Romans, and we'll be a free and independent nation again. That's what many were expecting, and that's one reason they didn't acknowledge Christ as the Messiah.

They missed the prophecies about how He must suffer and die. They didn't understand that the Messiah would come again a second time. Jesus not only did not overthrow Rome, a few decades after He had lived and died, Roman armies came in and totally destroyed the city. As Christ prophesied, not one stone would be left on the other of that temple. It would be all destroyed and raised, and for a long time, no Jews were allowed to live there.

But Jesus did bring freedom to His called-out people, including us. Not a political freedom. That's inconsequential when it comes down to it. Let's turn to Galatians 5. Galatians 5, verse 1. Galatians 5, 1. Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free. Christ has made us free. But Paul warns, don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. So we've been liberated as Christ prophesied, but there is some danger that we could again fall into slavery or bondage. Well, that makes you wonder what sort of slavery are we talking about here?

None of us have ever been held in chattel slavery like Frederick Douglass. None of us have been forced to make brick with taskmasters punishing us if we don't meet our quota the way the Israelites did in Egypt. And I could say there's lots of other types of slavery that we could go into. Looking back to that period in our country in the late 18th, early 19th centuries, philosophers and politicians discussed a lot of different things, and making me wonder what would they think of conditions in the United States now.

In the early 19th century, a lot of economists and philosophers thought that any person that didn't own his own farmland, or at least his own shop, was really in some type of slavery. If someone else was paying you wages, they called you a wage slave, because they presumed if you weren't self-sufficient economically, someone else could control your vote, or control your lifestyle. That's actually the reason for many decades at the start of this country, unless you owned a certain amount of land, you weren't allowed to vote.

It didn't matter if you were male or female, black or white, or anything else, you had to have property. Well, I could debate how much we have or haven't fallen into the conditions that they feared at that time.

Actually, it's a fun debate, but not our purpose for today. That's not the type of slavery Jesus Christ freed us from. All of us have been held in captivity. We've been in bondage. Like the ancient Israelites, we had no power to free ourselves. And I think you all know where I'm going, so now I'll finally say it. We were in bondage and slavery to sin, and only the sacrifice of Jesus Christ could end that.

We were in hopeless servitude and could not end it on our own. And that's what the Days of Unleavened Bread are largely about when coupled with the Passover. I want to go back to Romans 6. I say back because I realized I just read it right here a few days ago, but this is certainly worth reviewing again, especially with the background and the thought of what freedom is and what lack of freedom is.

Romans 6 and verse 16.

Do you not know to whom you present yourself slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves, whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And Paul says, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. I wanted to comment.

Now, he says, I'm making an analogy here. I'm speaking in human terms, but he was choosing something that they would clearly understand because slavery was a common part of their culture and society at that time. The Roman Empire had a lot of slaves. Probably everybody who read this knew someone that owned slaves. Some of them were slaves themselves. Now, that doesn't apply to us, but looking back at the history of our country and the study we've made of it, we understand slavery.

We don't understand it like someone who's experienced it, but we're not unaware. We have some knowledge, and so Paul can say, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. And he says, just as you presented your members slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness. It's interesting. Slaves to lawlessness. Some people would say it's the opposite. But he says, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. He's saying clearly a lifestyle of sin is living a type of slavery. Sin controls us, and that would fit with what the philosophers in the 19th century thought.

Anything from outside that controls you puts you in slavery. It's not freedom to do just anything you want at any time. That's not freedom. Some people think it is, but when you're under control of that sin, it's similar to a chemical addiction that controls you. I don't want to go into that because there's lots of different types of things, but sin has a control.

Let's go on in verse 20. I already read. Oh, there we go. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So you had that freedom that some people think is freedom. Well, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?

The end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and in the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, I realize there could be some room for confusion here because for the sake of his explanation, Paul seems to be describing going from one type of slavery into another type of slavery.

So you could say, well, it's still a slavery. But that's where we want to compare Scripture with Scripture, here a little, there a little. And if we have true understanding, we'll see that studying God's Word shows that submission to God's Word is actually true freedom. Obeying God is the real freedom. Because, for one thing, sin inevitably brings death. And it's generally accompanied in advance of that by a lot of unhappiness. My thought is that angst caused in the life of Frederick Douglass that we described is matched by the angst of someone who's living a sinful lifestyle and just doesn't have the power to change and doesn't have the power to get away from the results that he knows is coming.

And it would be just as bad as that groaning of the children of Israel. And we were like them, like Douglass, like the children of Israel, and that we had absolutely no ability to free ourselves from that slavery. The only way we could be freed from the penalty and the lifestyle of sin is by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If you'll turn over a page or two to Romans 5. Romans 5, and we'll begin in verse 6. Romans 5, 6. When we were still without strength, you could say without the power to free ourselves, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Scarcely, for a righteous man would one die, perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than, having now been justified by his blood, will be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, will be saved by his life.

I think that's a very important point that is worth stressing over and over again. This isn't just a matter of having the penalty for sin paid, because if we stopped there, but didn't change our nature and our character, we'd be liable to just go back and sin again. And God's word shows that we can't keep having Christ crucified over and over again. We have to have a change. And that's where it makes a difference. We're reconciled by Christ's death, but saved by his life, by him entering into us by the power of the Spirit, and making us into new people. That's what saves us. We become something different. People who can live by God's law, who want to live by God's law, and thus be free of the oppression of sin. Let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians 3 verse 17.

2 Corinthians 3, 17 says, Now the Lord is the Spirit... Wait a minute. Now the Lord is Spirit, is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So where the Spirit is, there's liberty, because that Spirit dwelling in us makes us free, because we're people that can't be held bound by sin anymore. There's a power in us that helps us, that makes us free, that we don't free ourselves. I hope we start to see that. As the opposite of life is death, the opposite of slavery to sin is freedom. It's not indifferent slavery that makes us have to obey God's law, but it is freedom within God's law.

The book of James calls it the perfect law of liberty. When we live God's way of life, we find that we don't feel oppressed. We don't have an impending doom of the penalty that's coming on us and squelching our lives. The key, though, is to be living God's way of life because you want to, not because you feel some external power making you do it. And God's Spirit in you helps you to want to. You understand the differences and you say, I want that. Many people believe that obeying, living by God's law, is an oppression.

They think true freedom is being able to do just anything at any time. That's what Satan teaches. That's his doctrine. And it's broad, as Paul said. What did you have when you were free in that regard? Just misery and death. Godly character leads a person who can do anything to choose to do the right thing. I've scribbled that down. Let me say that again. God's Spirit in us enables a person who can do anything to want to do, to choose to do the right thing. Always the right thing.

There have been a few people, even outside of God's church, who have started to have the clearness of vision to recognize that type of thing. To realize the difference between abandon or lack of self-control and genuine liberty.

One, I found a quote by the great English poet John Milton. Milton, in I believe it was the 1500s, wrote Paradise Lost. And he said this, None can love freedom heartily but good men. The rest love not freedom but license. None can love freedom heartily but good men. Everyone else loves license. That's not the same as freedom. And when I was looking at quotes, I was surprised by one I found by Sigmund Freud. I didn't expect this from Freud, but he said this.

Most people do not really want freedom because freedom involves responsibility. Most people are frightened of responsibility. That seemed telling to me. Most people don't really want freedom because that's responsibility. Responsibility means being accountable to accept the results of one's actions. And we know the results of a sinful way of life. Death for you, pain and suffering for everyone. The results of living God's way of life. Happiness, peace and eternal life. If only good men can enjoy freedom, of course we do need a guide to what is good.

And we know what that is. God's law. God's law is the absolute truth. I'll refer you to John 17, verse 17. In that prayer to the Father shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus said, "'Thy word is truth.'" Hope this is sounding obvious to us. God's law shows us how to live.

It can be summed up by the two great commandments. "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself.'" Or in other words, God's law is love. And at the same time, it's truth. I remember, actually in college, once with Dr. Ward writing, all the things that were equal, if you want to do an equation of law, equals love, equals light, equals truth, we can interchange a lot of these things.

But think of it, when we do to others as we want them to do to us, we're experiencing freedom ourselves, and also helping others to feel free. Because I think if everybody's doing to others as they would want them to do, we're all free of that feeling that someone's going to do us harm. And let me give you one more quote. This one seemed too good to pass up, but it seems to summarize some of this. This was from Nelson Mandela, and we remember, as we heard in the news reports recently surrounding his funeral, that he spent a fair bit of time in prison. Mandela said, "...to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." I like that.

To be free is not merely to cast off one's own chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. I think living by God's law, doing unto others, as you would have them do to you, accomplishes this. As I said, brethren, we're here as those who have been set free. Just as God said to the Israelites that he delivered them from Egypt and brought them to him on eagle's wings, so Jesus Christ says to us that he has delivered us, delivered us from sin, freed us from the bondage of corruption, from the sure penalty of death.

And he brought us to himself and gave us the Holy Spirit by which we can live in liberty. We can live by the perfect law of liberty, and we can be indeed free. In 1775, Patrick Henry drew a clear contrast. He said, give me liberty or give me death. But he was just talking about forms of government, oppression by policies. Through history, mankind has dealt with far worse types of slavery. But even with all that, though, a few have been able to clearly see what forms the greatest slavery of all.

The greatest slavery of all is the slavery to sin. And the ultimate result of that is death. We've all been slaves of sin. Every one of us have been held in that slavery. But as the Apostle Paul wrote, we have been made free. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ bought us back.

He redeemed us from servitude. By the power of his Spirit, we can remain free. We can live by the law of liberty, and that alone shows us the way to true freedom.

We can live by the law of liberty.