Land Of Liberty

Liberty is America's second name. We have such national symbols as the

Statue Of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and the songs of liberty like My Country

Tis Of Thee-sweet land of liberty, of thee of I sing. The Preamble to our

Constitution says, "We the people...in order to establish justice, insure

domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of

liberty for ourselves and our posterity, due ordain and establish this

Constitution. Our Constitution exists to secure for us the blessing of liberty.

Our Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag ends with, "With liberty and justice for

all." The Declaration of Independence says that we have the right to life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Why is liberty so important? It is because bondage of some kind is always

a battle. If we are not in bondage to some master or government, we are in

bondage to sin, and if not to sin, then to our past, or someone else's legalism.

We may be in bondage to family tradition, or social tradition. We are in

bondage to our culture and to our peer group. We are in bondage to fears,

anxieties, and guilt. We are always fighting to be free from some kind of

bondage. The biggest battle of the believer is in staying free as the Son has set

us free.

The battle never ceases, for the oppressor is always somewhere seeking to

bring you into bondage. The Judaisers sought to do this to the early

Christians. They tried to bring them again under the bondage to the law of

Moses. Paul had to shout in their ear, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us

free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke

of slavery." Liberty is the name of the game. Liberty is life. It is the

abundant life Jesus came to give. Liberty is the goal of almost all we do, or do

not do. To be free from sin is a goal of God for us. To be free from tyranny is

the goal of our government. To be free of all that robs us of God's best is

what it is all about, and so liberty is life.

In Isa. 58:6 God says, "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen-to loose

the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed

free and break every yoke." As Christians and as Americans we are, by our

very nature and heritage, a people committed to liberty. But why do we have

it when all men have always loved liberty, and yet have not achieved it? It is

because we have a piece of paper that prevents human nature from doing

what robs us of our liberty, and that is our constitution.

In our text of Jer. 34 we see human nature for what it is, and how that

man is the worst enemy of liberty. Here we see Jews who will not let their

fellow Jews be set free from bondage. It is to their benefit to keep them in

bondage, and so they enslave those who worship the same God. It is in direct

violation of the revealed will of God and leads to judgment. What we see in

this passage is an example of why it is a perpetual battle to secure human

rights and liberty. Christian history does not differ from Jewish history, but

reveals the same danger of power being used to rob people of liberty.

The Christians who came to America to enjoy liberty did not come here to

escape the bondage of atheists or humanists, but of other Christians. In our

Western history it has been Christians who have been the greatest opponents

of religious liberty. The people who fled to America were not coming from

non-Christian lands, but from England and Europe where Christians were in

control of the church and state. These state-church Christians came to

America as well, and so the battle continued in this land for liberty of

Christians from other Christians.

The Puritans were some of the most godly people to ever inhabit this

planet, but they were convinced that the church and state should be one, and

that the laws of the land should be laws that support the church. What they

failed to realize was that other Christians did not believe this was right. They

assumed that all Christians would benefit from the laws, but the fact is, the

laws hindered other Christians to be free to worship God as they were

convinced they should.

The Puritans had all kinds of law that put Baptists in bondage. The laws

of the early colonies demanded that all babies be baptized, and that all

citizens be taxed to support the state church. As the nation became more