Introduction
The Gospel is the story of God breaking into the human experience. God indwells human flesh in Christ. He indwells human history – making His will known and actuated – most notably through the Church but He is at work in all peoples, nations, tribes, and tongues. The mission of the Church is not to sit back and wait for God to work. It is to bring about the transformation of society through the means of the Gospel. We are the Lord’s workman in our society. (My Work Crew)
*My mission this morning is not to influence you toward any particular social or political worldview.* Rather, to highlight to the highest principals upon which this great land was founded and point the workman courageously in the direction of the battles for the cause of Liberty that wage in our day.
Transition
We are a nation with a unique promise. We are a nation with a unique blessing. We are a nation with a unique responsibility. In what follows it is my desire is highlight the beauty and worth of our national heritage. Yes.
But even more so, my goal is to encourage you and point you to the mortar that binds the highest ideals of this nation together; the cement upon which this oft drifting nation finds its surest footing. That footing is a fundamental faith in the Lord of all glory, the God of the Bible, from which every notion of the principal of essential liberty which is our highest virtue springs.
These are uncertain times but (CIT / CIS) nothing is impossible with God. These are times of great questioning but we serve a God of great assurance.
Exposition
Textual Context: The specific context of Mark 10:27 is salvation in Jesus Christ. In fact, it is Jesus response to a rich young man whom Jesus is speaking to about the great difficulty of those with great material possession in entering the kingdom.
Jesus is specifically saying that salvation is impossible with man but not with God. Surely though the same broad principal applies to all of the revelation of God in the Bible and to the life of faith for every believer. God knows no boundaries.
The essential contextual meaning of the passage is that God is the Lord of redemptive history in the lives of people individually and in the broader sense of the destiny of all nations. Salvation in Christ and the exaltation of the worth of Christ is the ultimate aim of God in my life, your life, and in the entire world.
God is the Lord of all human history. Whether my personal life and history or the history and life of nations. What about the history and life of our nation? The only thing that is worse than living in the past is ignorance of it.
Historical (Topical) Context: We are a nation uniquely guided. As I wrote in a recent column in the Suffolk News Herald, “The story of America is the story of courage, conflict, and liberty. In a famous sermon in 1630, John Winthrop spoke of the pilgrim’s hope to establish “a city upon a hill.” The hope of their hearts was the establishment of a place peace, security, and liberty. Leaving behind state established religion and monarch rule, they cast sail into unknown waters in more ways than one. What would freedom of religion look like? What would a society built primarily upon the good will of a man’s neighbors be like? That free society has taken many forms and in many ways is still being shaped. American liberty, as embodied in the Constitution, is more of a promise of liberty than a guarantee. Every generation has had to battle to secure and promote liberty. Whether it was slavery, women’s rights, child labor, state and national power, prohibition and temperance, or wars abroad liberty has not come without courage and conflict. Its dream must be constantly brought into reality.”
Even for the casual observer there is no question that the birth and burgeoning of this great nation is peculiar. For religious observers, it seems obvious that God had His hand upon it. The founders and framers of our nation had more in mind than simply the security of freedoms in general.
Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush wrote that “Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.”
That is what we have in our streets today. Liberty, freedom, free from virtue, common ethics and morality, is no blessing to us at all. Its byproduct is crime, destruction of the family, and the denigration of society.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.” As a society we have bitten the bait of pleasure, mistaking Liberty for license. As a result, as a people, so many are not free but enslaved to dependence upon government institutions; looking to man as though he were God; trusting in man for provision and sustenance rather than the Lord and the gifts he gives born of hard work, perseverance, and faith.
Jonathon Winthrop, in 1630 declared that this nation would be “A City on a Hill” for all of the world to see; a society founded on the essential liberty of man as a gift of His creator, where all men might be free to live, worship, and peruse peace.
Are we “A City on a Hill?” I am convinced that: (1) we are a nation with a unique promise. (2) We are a nation with a unique blessing. Prior to the inception of this great nation: never had so few accomplished so much with so little.
John Adams wrote “I always considered the settlement of America with Reverence and Wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design of Providence, for the Illumination of the Ignorant and the Emancipation of the slavish part of Mankind”
For our founders: we are a people with a unique (and grand) responsibility.
There is no question that the founding fathers took action fueled by faith. In spite of its challenges and moral failings, ours is a land incepted and empowered by Christian people who took courage from the Bible and the God who gave it.
In “Information to those who would remove America,” written in 1782 by Benjamin Franklin, he wrote: Atheism is unknown there; infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great Age in that Country, without having their Piety shocked by meeting with either and Atheist or an Infidel.”
The founding people of our land were faced with challenges and imperfectly they pressed on in fidelity. They were people like you and me, ordinary folks, not saints, not superhuman, but they were filled with faith in God and a fundamental belief that what they were doing mattered enough to die for it; and that it was and would continue to be blessed by the God who gives liberty and life.
In sincerity the founder spoke out and took action against tyranny. The battles in their day were different than in ours; taxation without representation, the rule of tyrannical kings and lords, the housing of British military, etc.
That waged battles against injustice. Many injustices remained in American culture but they waged battles and created a landscape of freedom for future battles. Only a fool does nothing now because he cannot do everything today.
Friends, we must take action fueled by faith. Imperfectly we will press on. In sincerity we too must speak out and take action against tyranny. The tyranny’s of our day are abortion, economic injustice, modern day sex trade – pornography.
Political dishonesty is commonplace, children are abused, women are abused, violence abounds. Injustice will continue. No matter how hard we work at Crisis Pregnancy Centers, abortions will still take place. But we must press on and save the lives of those we can save.
We must press on and remain and be available to those women who have been lied to, taken advantage of, and wounded by being told there simply is no other option. We must be the soft place for wounded people to fall! We must be the brick wall against a culture of insanely murderous culture that tears at the worth of life in abortion, women and men in pornography, and seeks to turn upside down common sense of right and wrong!
Our mandate it to do what we can where we are with what we have. Trust God with the results. Don’t say the problem is too big for me. Say, nothing is impossible with God! Don’t say I’m too busy to defend the cause of freedom for little children in our city streets, old men and women who are seldom if ever visited in nursing homes. There is a battle for liberty that each of us can fight!
Conclusion
In the last days of the Civil War, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, fell to the Union army. Abraham Lincoln insisted on visiting the city. Even though no one knew he was coming, slaves recognized him immediately and thronged around him. He had liberated them by the Emancipation Proclamation, and now Lincoln's army had set them free. According to Admiral David Porter, an eyewitness, Lincoln spoke to the throng around him: "My poor friends, you are free—free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it …. Liberty is your birthright."
But Lincoln also warned them not to abuse their freedom. "Let the world see that you merit [your freedom]," Lincoln said, "Don't let your joy carry you into excesses. Learn the laws and obey them."
That is very much like the message Jesus gives to those whom he has liberated by his death and resurrection. Jesus gives us our true birthright—spiritual freedom. But that freedom isn't an excuse for disobedience; it forms the basis for learning and obeying God's laws. It gives us direction in action.
As believers we have a unique responsibility. We are a people uniquely guided. We are a people with a unique promise. We are a people with a unique blessing. Friends, we are a people with a unique responsibility to share the Gospel and promote true liberty in Christ to all the nations.
As an American people, our highest ideals find their foundations in the Scripture. If we are to live up to those highest ideas that we have defined for ourselves as a nation then likewise we must we press on, though imperfectly.
In sincerity we must speak out against the tyranny of Satan and of earthly tyrants.
If would pass the torch of liberty to our children and their children we must get in or remain in the battle for the rights of the unborn, the plight of those who suffer economic Injustice, speak out and advocate for those people in our day whose rights are trampled by injustice. Do not support or turn a blind eye to the abuses of women and the degrading of the mind of men from pornography.
Political corruption is commonplace. Abuse of children abounds. Domestic violence is the order of the day in many homes in our land. You say, “I’m just little old me. Liberty will not be exalted in every heart until Christ return. However, our mandate it to do what we can, where we are, with what we have. Fight liberty’s battles! Fan the flames of justice! Trust God with the results. Friends, let us be a people defined by faith filled action. Our task is to carry Liberty’s torch, uniquely guided, with a unique promise, with a unique blessing, faithful to our unique responsibility – to proclaim liberty in the name of Christ. Amen.
