The Cost of Freedom
I Corinthians 11:23-26
We set aside time in America each year to remember some of the important dates of our history. Tomorrow is one of those days: Memorial Day. On May 30, 1868, our country observed the first day memorializing those who had fallen in battle during the Civil War. It was called “Decoration Day” at that time. In the few short years following the Civil War dozens of local observances honoring fallen Civil War soldiers had sprung up in communities across the country. Most were done by decorating gravesites with flowers.
Although many cities claim the honor, the official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. On May 5, 1868, General, John A. Logan, in his role as commander-in-chief of a veteran’s organization called The Grand Army of the Republic, introduced a proclamation that “Decoration Day” be observed nationally. On May 30 of the same year it was observed and the date was chosen specifically because it was not the anniversary of a battle. The term “Memorial Day” was first used in 1882 and the observances were expanded to include all who had been lost in the time of war. The day became more widely observed following World War II and was declared a national holiday in 1967. The National Holiday Act of 1971 moved the official observance of Memorial Day to the last Monday in May.
So, this weekend and tomorrow in particular, thousands of Americans will make pilgrimages to cemeteries to remember loved ones lost and decorate graves with flowers. There are those who say that remembering should be a common spiritual exercise in the Christian life and in looking to the Word of God I would have to agree. Time and again the people of God are exhorted and commanded to remember. Over 100 times remembering or remembrances are mentioned in scripture. More than once God has instituted memorials so His people would remember: the rainbow (Genesis 9), the Passover (Numbers 9), the stones from the Jordan River (Joshua 4), numerous rituals and sacrifices, all given with the element of remembrance.
Memorial Day is a day that we set aside to remember the price that was paid for our Freedom here in the United States. It has been set aside for those men and women who have given their lives for this country. It’s a day for us to remember the price that these men and women paid for our freedom. They died for our country so that we can have the freedom to live, freedom to make our own decisions, and freedom to worship. But tomorrow as we celebrate Memorial Day I want us to remember more than just those soldiers I want tomorrow to also be a reminder of what Jesus did for us. I want it tomorrow to be a reminder to us of the cost of freedom for our Christian life. If you are free from sin today it’s because a Man named Jesus became one of us and gave His life so we could have ours spared. If you are saved today you owe it to your Lord to give Him glory and praise for what He did for you. Don’t take for granted the great salvation that we have today!
If you were to look up the word Memorial we would see that it means, an object being placed to serve as a memory of something, usually a person or an event. And church this morning I want us to leave here understanding today that when God sent His son Jesus to the earth Jesus became that Memorial for us. Read I Corinthians 11:23-26. Jesus’ life here on this earth serves as a memory to us of how much God loved us and that memory of the life of Jesus does 3 things.
I. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF THE PAST.
This Memorial Day you and I need to remember what Jesus did for us over 2000 years ago. He left His home in heaven to come and live on this earth just so He could suffer and die a cruel death on the cross so that you and I could have eternal life. So you and I could have a way to get into heaven. Because without Him there is no other way into the gates of Heaven. This Memorial Day should remind us what Jesus did for us in the past, which was dying in our place. He took upon Himself our punishment.
It’s a shame how some of us act today when it comes to God. For some of us we act like God is dead. We often live as though He’s not worth praising or living for. This is one of the main reasons why the lost have no need for our God. Take the Israelites for example; remember what God had done for them by delivering them from the Egyptians. However, later on the Israelites had forgotten what God had done for them and they began to live as if God was dead. The Israelites began to live as the gentiles and when they began to forget how great their God was and what He had done for them they began serving false gods. Often just as we do. Many of us have begun to live like the world and for the world and we have forgotten what Jesus Christ did for us. Every time we come to church to worship, or read our Bible or pray we need to remember how lost we were and how the Lord saved us and if we do that then it won’t be so hard to praise Him and to live for Him!!!
II. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF THE REWARD OF THE PRESENT.
If Jesus had not done what He did in the past we would have no present. Without Jesus dieing on the cross over 2000 years ago there would be no salvation for you or I today. There would be no forgiveness of sin for you or I today. Without any past there would be no present.
Church when we begin to look back on what Jesus did for us, how Jesus died to set us free, it’s then that we begin to gain courage and faith to trust Him for today’s needs. Folks listen to me it’s high time that this church begins to believe again that we serve the same God as Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, James, Paul and John and just as God led, guided and directed them in their days He will do the same for us if we just seek and trust Him. Our God isn’t some wimp or weakling that can’t come through for us. He is the I Am, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Savior, Author and finisher of our faith, the chief cornerstone, the almighty, the everlasting father, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the anchor and last but not least the way, the truth, and the life. God will now and always come through for us if you and I will just seek and trust.
The reason so many of us live so defeated in the present, the here and now, is because we fail to remember the past. In our passage of scripture this ceremony, the Lord’s Supper, was set aside by God himself to remind us of how AWESOME our God is and How much God loved us (John 3:16) and that if He had to He would do it all over again today!!
In my opinion there are too many “Just In Case Christians” in our churches today. They go to church just in case the preacher is right so they will have something to tell God one day when they stand before the judgment seat of God. People listen to me it’s a privilege and an honor for you and I to worship and praise and serve our God and the day that it becomes a job and pain is the day you need to find a God you will serve. DON’T SERVE HIM BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO! SERVE HIM BECAUSE YOU LONG TO BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. Because of what Jesus has done for us in the past it makes our present the here and now worth the LIVING.
III. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF HIS PROMISES.
In Nehemiah Chapter 9 Nehemiah is praying about the work of rebuilding the wall and how they are under attack. In his prayer he retells the story to the Lord of how He took them out of Egypt for a purpose. Then he closes his prayer by saying that you did that then and I know you will come through for us now because you gave us a covenant. In other words, God had given them a promise. Just as Nehemiah remembered that His God kept His word we too can believe the same. God doesn’t break a promise.
Church, need I remind you that Jesus didn’t just go through all that suffering nor did He die on the cross to save us just to leave us after we ask Him into our hearts to fend for ourselves for the rest of our lives!! The death and resurrection of Jesus was His promise to us that He will never leave us nor forsake us. The death and resurrection of Jesus promised us that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. The death and resurrection of Jesus promised us that if we ask Him into our hearts that He will save us and that we will live with Him for eternity in Heaven.
And the list of promises keep going and going and going and because God has made so many promises to us we often need a memorial to remind us of those promises that God has made. That memorial is this book right here called The Bible. When you pray and read your Bible let it be a reminder to you of what your God did for you as well as what God can and will continue to do for you. Let it be a reminder to you of all the promises that God made for His children. Don’t take HIS PAIN FOR GRANTED. SERVE HIM WITH ALL YOU HAVE. HE IS WORTH SERVING ESPECIALLY AFTER ALL HE HAS DONE FOR YOU!!
In closing, Paul Harvey tells a story that sums up how we should be thankful for what has been done for us. Paul Harvey said it was gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour, which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.
Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean. For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights moving back as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest sharks . . . ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most difficult: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”
Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking . . . “Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that sea gull. The sea gull meant food . . . if I could catch it.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the sea gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice.
You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset, on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast, you could see an old man walking . . . white-haired, bushy-eye browed, slightly bent. His bucket was filled with shrimp to feed the gulls, to remember that one, which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle.
Just as Eddie Rickenbacker never forgot the sea gull that gave its life, we should never forget the soldiers of our country who gave up their lives. Because that sea gull gave up its life, Eddie got a second chance at life, and because many brave men and women have died in the armed services fighting for our country’s freedom, we too have a chance at life – a life of freedom. Both freedom and life never come without a price. The blood of many fine soldiers paid for the freedom that we have today, just as the blood of the tiny lamb of the Passover paid for the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelites. A price has to be paid for freedom and life, and that price is the death of another. Someone, or something, has to die in order that we might live.
Our country’s soldiers died that we might have a life of freedom, and Jesus died that we might have life eternal. In the story of the Passover, the blood of a lamb was marked on the doorposts and this caused the destroyer to pass over the households that were marked, thus granting them life. This represented the cross of Jesus Christ upon which the very Lamb of God would give his own life that we might live forever in God’s kingdom. Our soldiers died for our country’s freedom, and Jesus died for our spiritual freedom for he said in John 8:36, “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed,” and then in John 10:10 Jesus told us, “I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Jesus paid for our spiritual freedom and gave us a crown in heaven when he died on the cross. There is no freedom without the shedding of blood. We should never forget our many soldiers who died for our freedom here in America, and most importantly we must never forget our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave his own life on a cross that we might have eternal life.
The Cost of Freedom
I Corinthians 11:23-26
I. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF THE ________.
II. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF THE _______ OF THE _________.
III. HIS LIFE REMINDS US OF HIS ________.
