Bondage or Liberty? You Choose: But Christians Are Free People! Re: 4th of July Kelly Durant 7- 2015
John 8:36 36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
Gal 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
2. How many of you here celebrate the 4th of July? And when is the independence day of your country of birth? It is good for people to remember the day you a nation was liberated from their oppressors! If we forget history we are doomed to repeat it!
The 4th of July is celebrated by people with fireworks and bar-b-ques! Did you know it is Biblical to remember when you as a people were liberated from oppressors? In the O.T. we see the clear example of the Jews remembering the Passover. The Passover highlighted the day that pharaoh decided to let the people go with Moses to the Promised Land and be free from Egypt. We should always reflect on the O.T. because it teaches us parallels to the life of Christ.
Easter for us, as Christians, is our day of independence: our liberation from our own sinful selves and death! The Jews at that time when Jesus was resurrecting were remembering their freedom from the death angel in Egypt! And now over 3,000 years later for Jews and 2,000 for the Christians we still celebrate these liberations! Easter is a big celebration of victory!
4. It is okay to be patriotic and share in the roots of the people you live with and grew up with! We must learn history! All of us can be very glad that Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean Islands did not remain under the domination of the Spanish and oppression of the slave trading Europeans!
Being Patriotic does have its limits. In American history a famous saying is, “God and country!” and the supposition is that you reverence God first then your country! Imagine if every man reverenced the hierarchy in that order, our world would be more like God’s Kingdom!
The problem today is the celebration of nations is under attack by those applying a guilt trip, that your nation because of its past sins is not worthy. More and more the displaying of the American flag is prohibited! The aniti-christ media and corrupted government officials are trying to prepare the world for a one world government and they cannot do that if each person demands respect for their own nation. The world can still have peace with individual nations!
5. There is a well-known image of the cycle of nations. This cycle has repeated itself with ancient Israel, with most every country, and it can be applied to the lives of certain individuals as well. At first a nation starts out in bondage, then they grow and gain strength with spiritual faith, with faith they gain courage; they then fight to gain liberty. Then they progress with abundance and blessings but that leads to selfishness, complacency, apathy, and finally dependence, which is the stage where a majority people see the U.S.A. currently! The next step is bondage again. But bondage usually comes not from the same original oppressor as was the case of Israel who were first under Assyria, then under Babylon.
Today we witness a dozen nations that have fallen under bondage within the past 10 years! The oppressors are Islamic and Communist and these cruel heartless systems that murder with no discretion have been a plague that has taken over a 100 million lives over the past 100 years!
We keep hearing about how the world is over populated. How the U.N. has a depopulation plan, and even the Catholic Church spokespersons say climate change is due to overpopulation! http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/12/vatican-speaker-on-climate-thinks-there-are-6-billion-too-many-of-us/
Today’s liars and deceivers speak of climate change, big-government, abortion, and pro everything immoral as the reason to shift billions of dollars to select groups and make new laws to supposedly liberate the masses. Don’t be deceived these agenda pushers are extreme haters of humanity being Satanic and they use fear, drugs, and strange sex, to weaken and control people! They have a death wish for some horrific plague to reduce the quantity of useless eaters on the earth. They see armies and religions that kill entire populations as needed as it eliminates those who resist them from having absolute power! The mass populous ignoramus is being influenced by current governments, media, and colleges being indoctrinated to accept their own impending doom and destruction. Learn about these agendas and expose them! The anti-christ will show up as a hero to offer peace and safety to solve all these man-provoked social racial religious wars but it will be a false peace obtained by demanding worship and bondage to him. Satan creates the problem, then he wants to be the savior of the problems he created! 1 Thessalonians 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
6. The yoke of bondage the entire world experienced just 70 years ago was frightening! The Japanese controlled one half of the globe and the Germans controlled the other half. Thank God for our forefathers that fought for liberty! In the Salvation Army there are quite a few good men that after they got out of the service in WWII, they joined the Salvation Army. So many people have served country and then God! We are God’s Army, and there must exist loyalty to country but God must be first! Evil was conquered but it is furiously on the attack again!
The Salvation Army’s day of inception is recognized as starting on July 2nd, 1865, and it is important to keep this celebration alive today! Our fight is to free souls doing all the work we can to liberate the spiritual captives, those who are slaves to sin and darkness, slaves to bondage thinking, drugs, sex, fear, or anything not of God. Let’s look up a part in the scripture where Jesus gives His very first message in his mission: to give people freedom! Jesus came to liberate!
Isaiah. Isa 61:1
61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
7. Jesus is very interested in the liberty and spiritual freedom of each of us! He wants us to have an Independence Day celebration! When you first repented and received Jesus that was your Independence Day of sin, and death and your rebirth into the family of God with eternal life!
Apart from everyone knowing the date from which your country was liberated from the oppressors, do you recall the date you personally were liberated from the oppression of the devil who would have destroyed your soul and body as well?
My date is the same as my birthday 3-24, because it was coincidently then when I was 21 that I began a training to go abroad with the Christian mission, and I left 6 months later to serve the Lord in Brazil, and then in other countries for 14 years! I thank God I chose that instead of staying bound in the world of sin I was in! When you are in the University smoking marijuana, acting proud and ugly people praise you, but when you free yourself from sin and seek God and purity people run from you like you have the plague! Oppression and bondage is comfortable for the unsaved majority but the consequences is eternal bondage (hell)!
8. Just like the 13 Colonies of the US had to choose that they would no longer submit to the oppression of the King of England, we too must value independence and liberty as a thing of high value and price! It requires a heavy battle and you will lose some friends, family members, personal things and you will suffer, but the end liberating result is worth it! As in the US history books, Patrick Henry said, ”Give me liberty, or give me death!” We must fight the world & its sin or the result is our spiritual bondage and death!
What’s your story of independence from sin? When were you saved? Let me hear you, when was your independence day when you were freed from the bondage of sin? (Others speak out loud their dates)
How many of you have watched the news and seen the happiness of someone who was captive but then liberated from their guerrilla captors? Liberation and independence is a gift from God that only God can provide for in His time! More than half of the world is under the oppression of a cruel governments or religions!
9. How many people do you know who could be free choose to remain captive in abusive homes? Pray for the oppressed people you know to be liberated!
Why does oppression keep happening all around the world? Why can’t we just live out the freedom we read in the Bible verses in the beginning? How is it that if the “Son makes us free, then we are really free indeed”?
Sometime we will do an in depth study into Galatians but what was happening here in 5:1 was that the common people who were being converted to being a Christians were being told by the Jewish Christians in control that they had to now submit to all the Jewish laws and customs but this was taking them back into bondage and oppression.
In other words, Jesus came to free each of us from sin and to fulfill the law, and we are to obey His commands to love God and our neighbor and preach the gospel and serve others, but we will never be made perfect by being captive to legalism, be it Jewish or be it from any person, religion. (as Islam), or organization with strange mandates, presuppositions, and traditions!
In vain the church in Galatians was tying to obtain perfection by giving up their freedom in submission to the laws of the Jewish customs! Paul rebukes them of being deceived as by witchcraft! Only God’s word frees us! Some people are too weak to stand up and proclaim what is right for their selves and others! We must fight for them! That takes boldness and a fight! Jesus fought to free us and we must fight to remain free and free others!
10. Here is a sad reality; many people live years under the fear and oppression of Satan and when they accept Christ they experience a new strange feeling, freedom! Freedom is true authentic independence!
If you feel freedom from fear, a clean conscious, and a warm strength within claim it, and live it! Do not let the Enemy come back to tell you, this is too good to be true, this is uncomfortable, this is not normal! Go back to the old way! Rebuke Satan in Jesus name!
Since the devil cannot persuade you to stop believing in Christ, he tries to persuade you to stop being free! People without the independence God wants to give them fall back into fear and oppression! We need God’s word daily! So if you feel uncomfortable that there is freedom in Christ that is a good thing! Get use to feeling uncomfortable! That is what Jesus came and died to do for you, to liberate you!
Look at it like this, Jesus has set in motion the new wining world government and soon after an independence war against the anti-christ and his armies, He will be the victor. You owe to Him everything! Your owe to Jesus loyalty, love, soul, worship, service, and everything because He is the one in power!
11. Many countries have been liberated in the past, but many have also fallen back into oppression by abusive governments and ambitious rulers. In other words, freedom from Spain or England’s oppression did not guarantee freedom from local oppression! Do you see the point? Even here today our freedoms are in great danger of being taken away! On earth there is no real liberation or independence except through Jesus! Only Jesus frees, not man’s systems!
Examine your own life right now... Are you being oppressed by someone or by your own guilt for not obeying Jesus as you should? Do you really have independence and celebrate it?
There could be a dark spiritual force oppressing you: a coworker, a family member, or even your own mind could be making you miserable because it is not fully transformed under the liberty of Christ!
Don’t misinterpret freedom to be an excuse to do whatever you want. We need organization and certain rules, in order to function, but those are for our own protection and good. But the rules or laws of a nation or a church is not our main message, our main message, it is Jesus Christ’s liberating and soul saving love! Amen? Let’s pray now for you personally to be free in Christ! Free from oppression & fear! Remember Christ will make you free indeed!
