The Spirit Of Liberty

The Spirit of Liberty

I. Opening & Text:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

• Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Central to life and the pursuit of happiness is liberty. The Bible has much to say about liberty. It has much to say about release from bondage and freedom. At the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke we read.

Luke 4:16-21 (KJV)

"And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. 17 And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written,

18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 20 And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. 21 And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."

2 Corinthians 3:17 (KJV)

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

• Jesus's self-description of the purpose of His ministry is to bring liberty to the entire person, the community of faith, and the world through the Power of HIs Spirit.

• I want to talk to you this morning on the topic, "The Spirit of Liberty."

II. Introduction:

• The thing that has made the American experiment great, though the founders and all who have followed, have not always gotten it right is the acknowledgment that human rights are not given by human governments, but by the Creator God. These rights include "life." It is the Almighty whose borrowed Breath we inhale and exhale from our first breath until our last. The LORD gives and the LORD takes away.

• These unalienable rights also include happiness. The innate desire for happiness is something that God has placed inside every human life. God does want you to be happy, that is why He placed the longing there. It was Blaise Pascal who said that there is a God-shaped vacuum in each human heart that only God can fill. Just as God gave us the gifts of thirst and hunger to keep us living, so He has created a longing inside that nothing can truly fill but Him, the longing for happiness.

• Central to life and the pursuit of happiness is liberty. Liberty is a word that we will see much of today and tomorrow. Emblazoned in red, white, and blue. Written in beautiful letters under a portrait of the majestic bald eagle, the national bird, whose way of life symbolizes our highest value, will be the word "liberty." Flags will be flown that remind us of the words "give me liberty, or give me death!" Liberty has been defined as "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views." Without liberty, there can be no true life. Without liberty, the goal of the pursuit of happiness can never be realized.

• We value liberty. The founders of our nation valued it so much that they willingly fought to obtain and keep it. Later men fought and died in the Civil War to liberate those who had been oppressed by the slave trade because America had not lived up to its highest ideals. In some of your lifetimes, you watched as others struggled still in the civil rights movement to find the fulfillment of America's noblest of ideals that all men and women are created equal. Liberty is something that America has struggled towards. There is much that has been done and always more work to do, but we've come a long way!