Freedom: A Patriotic Worship Service

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

 Sunday, July 1, 2007

[Video] “December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.”

“Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time now depends on us. Our nation will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will not tire. We will not falter and we will not fail.”

“It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick, professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, we, the people.”

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. But first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

“It’s one small step of man, one giant leap for mankind.”

“We will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God.”

“We’ve always needed God from the very beginning of this nation but today we need Him especially. We’re facing a new kind of enemy. We’re involved in a new kind of warfare and we need the help of the spirit of God.”

“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

“We, as Americans, have the capacity now as we’ve had in the past to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.”

“As we’ve been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God’s love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own and may He always guide our country. God bless America.”

God has blessed America. In fact, it’s hard to comprehend how He has blessed this country of ours. We have been and we continue to be one of the wealthiest nations on this planet. Never once has a foreign invader set foot on our soil. God has blessed this nation in innumerable ways but the greatest blessing God has given to you, the greatest blessing He’s given to us as a nation is the freedom we enjoy. For over 200 years, we have enjoyed unprecedented freedoms in this land, unheard of in history what God has given us in this country. It is that freedom we’ll celebrate in just a few days. We call it Independence Day as we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence when those 13 colonies said, “We will become our own sovereign nation.” It will be based on the word of God and it will be based on freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion so we can be here this morning, openly worshiping our God, freedom of the press, freedom to gather, and innumerable liberties that more than likely we take for granted because they’re just a part of our every day life.

So this weekend, as we get ready to celebrate the freedom we have as a nation, we need to do two things. We need to remember that freedom and the country we live in is a great blessing from God and we need to thank Him and praise Him for that blessing. The second thing is we need to recognize the parallel, the parallel between the freedom we have as a nation and the freedom we have in Christ. Scripture tells us we have been set free in Christ. We’ve been set free from sin and we’ve been set free from an eternal death and for over 2,000 years, we have cherished that freedom as believers in Christ. In fact, it serves as the sinful and core teaching of Christianity, of God setting us free through His Son.

So whether it’s the freedom of a nation or it’s the freedom in Christ, both of them have been given to us by one and the same God. Oh, I know there are some who want to remove God from our country, want to remove Him from our history. They say we want to take Him out of our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and they want to strike His name off of our currency but we will not and we cannot allow that to happen because our country is founded upon our almighty God. Our country is founded upon the Christian principles by which we stand and the strength of our nation is those Christian principles because that’s why God has called us to freedom. He’s called us to freedom in Christ and He’s called us to freedom in this nation so we can serve Him and we can love one another.

So as we celebrate freedom, let’s focus in on two facets of freedom, two truths of freedom, two principles of freedom. We go to God’s Word for those principles and we understand they are directed at our freedom in Christ but I believe it’s easy to cross over for the application of our freedom as a nation.

The first thing we learn is this: Freedom comes at a price. Freedom comes at a cost. Scripture says Christ has set us free. St. Paul talking to the Church at Galatia says, “For it is freedom that Christ has set us free.” Well, the obvious question then is what has Christ set us free from? What is it that has had us under oppression? What is it that has had us under bondage that Christ needs to set us free? Jesus Himself answered that question, the gospel of John. He’s talking to a crowd of people. He says, “If you hold to my teachings, you’re really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Well, the crowd back then is asking the same question we are this morning. Set us free from what? So the crowd answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and we’ve never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” So Jesus answered them, “I tell you the truth. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you’ll be free indeed.”

What is it that Jesus has set us free from? He set us free from the slavery of sin. That’s what He’s set us free from. You see, left on our own, we cannot escape our sinful nature no matter how hard we might try. If we’re left on our own, we would just continuously go further and further and further away from our God. We are slaves to sin. You see, it’s not like tomorrow morning you can wake up and say to yourself, “You know what, from this moment on, I’m not going to do anything else wrong. From this moment on, from Monday morning at 6 a.m., I am never again going to tell a lie. I’m never going to stretch the truth. I’m never going to speed down Aurora. I’m never going to say bad things about my boss. I’m never going to gossip. I’m never going to say mean words to my children. I’m never even going to have an impure thought go through my mind.” I’ll give you five minutes. Something will happen. We cannot escape our sinful nature nor can we escape the consequences of sin. It’s the guilt you go to bed with some nights. It’s the regrets of something you did or failed to do. It’s the shame you feel in your heart. It’s the tinge of pain when you find out God says the wages of sin is death and eternal death. Scripture says, “Jesus has set you free from that.” It says, “Jesus has set us free from sin.”

And He set us free from the punishment of sin but it came at a great cost, my friends. Freedom comes with a price and the price is pretty steep. It cost our Father in heaven His very own Son. John 3:16 puts it this way, “God the Father loved you so much that He gave up His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not die. They will live forever.” The Father gives up His heavenly Son so you can be set free. The Son makes the supreme sacrifice and gives up His very life so you can be free. 1 Peter puts it this way, “For you know that it was not with perishable things, such as gold or silver, that you were redeemed but with the precious blood of Jesus.” That’s how we were bought back. That’s how we were set free. Jesus made the supreme sacrifice of laying down His life for us. You see, the Father sent Jesus, His Son, into the world and though He is the Son of God and though He is perfect, He takes on flesh and blood and He becomes one of us. He’s the only one who could say He is not a slave to sin. He’s the only one who could say He lived a perfect life and yet when we nailed Him to the cross, your sinfulness and mine and that of all mankind was put upon Him and He paid the punishment instead of us. And in His death, He set us free. He set us free from sin. He set us free from the guilt and the shame and the regret. That’s God’s gift to us. That’s God’s greatest blessing to us. That’s the freedom we have in Christ. And the moment we forget that it is God’s gift because we know we couldn’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, the moment we forget that, the moment we forget the great cost, that’s when we lose that freedom. Freedom comes at a cost.

We need to acknowledge the cost and remember what a blessing it is from God. We understand the freedom we have in Christ easily translates over and correlates to the freedom we have as a nation because the freedom we have as a nation came at a great cost as well. You know the stories as well as I do, the hardship, the pain, and the sacrifice that our forefathers have made from the very beginning. The signers of the Declaration of Independence might as well have been signing their death certificate as well as that piece of paper they sent off to the king. Of the signers of the Declaration, twelve of them lost their homes to being ransacked and burned to the ground. Thomas Nelson, one of them, was in the field that he watched because the Brits had set up a base camp in his home and he himself said to General George Washington, “Open fire.” And he watched as his family home burned to the ground. Five of the signers of the Declaration were captured, interrogated, tortured, and executed. Twelve others died in battle. Every one of them made a sacrifice of some sort so you and I can sit here this morning and freely worship our God.

And for 200 years, we have paid the price for our freedom. Over half a million men and women have made the supreme sacrifice. Over 500,000 soldiers have given up their life defending this land, shedding their blood for our liberties. That says nothing of the tens of hundreds of thousands that are deployed around the globe at this very moment and every one of them are ready and willing to put their life on the line to defend this nation and to defend our freedom. Freedom comes at a cost.

Freedom is one of the greatest gifts God has bestowed upon us in our life, at least I consider it one of my greatest blessings from God that I grew up in this country, that I get to live in this country. You want to know what the best news I got yesterday? The Honduras mission team returned home. My daughter was on that team. She hit Houston and she called me. She was on American soil again. That meant something to me. It’s the freedom God has blessed us with. We dare never forget that’s a blessing from God and we dare never forget the cost. Freedom comes at a cost.

Freedom comes with responsibility. God doesn’t just give us freedom so we can abuse that freedom. It comes with a responsibility. The freedom we have in Christ is not meant to be abused. Again, St. Paul talking to the Church at Galatia, “You, my brothers, were called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love.” You see, St. Paul had a little bit of problem with the people at Galatia and I fear he might have a little bit of problem with us as well. He had declared to them the freedom they had in Christ, the forgiveness they had of sins and so according to their way of thinking, “Well, great. If anything I do is going to be forgiven from God, then it doesn’t matter what I do. So I can go off and live my life as I well please. I can do anything I want. I can lie. I can steal. I can cheat. I can gossip. I can do anything I want because I know God is going to forgive me.” God didn’t set us free so we can abuse that freedom because if you abuse that freedom long enough, you will lose that freedom. Because if you keep abusing the freedom God has given us in Christ and keep going further and further and further away from Him, certainly that freedom will be lost because you will become ensnared again and you will be slaves to sin once again. Freedom comes with a responsibility.

Scripture says we’ve been set free for freedom’s sake so we can serve God freely. In other words, we don’t follow our God, we don’t worship our God, we don’t live our lives according to God because we fear some threat from God, some punishment from God. He’s taken that all away. We serve our God because we want to, because we desire to. We want to respond back to the love He’s shown to us and we want to love Him in return and to love one another. That’s what freedom is all about. We’ve been set free so we can serve God in freedom.

Freedom comes with a responsibility. The freedom we have as a country comes with a responsibility because the freedoms God has given us in this land are not to be abused. Just because something is legal to do doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Just because you’re able to do something doesn’t mean you should do something. Think with me for a moment some of the abuses of freedom that have happened over the last few years, how we have done things in the name of freedom and justify them because of the freedom we have in this land. Have we not filled the internet with pornography and our airwaves with obscenities all in the name of freedom of speech? Have we not taken prayer out of the classroom, the Ten Commandments out of the courtrooms in the name of freedom of religion and separation of church and state, which have made our forefathers turn over in their graves? Have we not taken the lives of the unborn and threatened the lives of those who are seriously ill and calling it the name of the freedom of choice? How have we abused the freedom God has granted to this country?

You abuse freedom long enough and freedom will be lost. God cannot continually bless the people that keep abusing Him and turning their back on Him. Freedom comes with a responsibility. God has set us free in Christ and He’s given us a free land to live in so we can serve Him and we can love one another, that we can live by His principle that says we should treat others as we would want to be treated, that we can love others as Christ has loved us. You see, freedom comes with responsibility.

And one of the things we cherish the most as Americans is our freedom. And one of the things we cherish most as Christians is our freedom in Christ. Both come from the same loving God. They are His blessing, His gifts to us. May we never forget that freedom comes at a cost and that freedom comes with responsibility. And may we always pray that God would bless us and that God would bless America. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church