July 4th,
2014
“The Declaration of
Incompleteness”
Galatians 5:1; et.
al.
SIS – No man or woman is truly free until he or
she is spiritually free.
The Preamble to the
Declaration of Independence, the second sentence, is perhaps the most
famous. It states:
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.
Someone has referred
to that sentence as, “One of the best known sentences in the
English language.” Freedom is
that important.
The freedom declared by those gathered in Congress that 4th day of July in 1776 was a declaration of “complete and total freedom,” specifically for “all men.” Yet, most of the Signers of that Declaration did NOT, in fact, extend freedom to “all” men. The majority of the Signers owned other people. Most of the Signers benefitted from the owning of human flesh which worked their farms and enterprises. It would be many years, long past the death of every Signer before Abraham Lincoln would “free the slaves.”
Still, freedom was”incomplete.” True freedom would not come for “all” Americans until Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964, only 53 years ago. Until then, Black Americans were still not completely free. I would suggest, that even today, racism enslaves both white and black in chains of prejudice.
Freedom has many components: national, political, moral, and spiritual. A person is not completely free until he or she is spiritually free. Therefore, I refer to this message as, “The Declaration of Incompleteness.” Many people remain in bondage today, whether it is national, political, moral, spiritual, or a combination of one or more of these.
The freedom declared by those gathered in Congress that 4th day of July in 1776 was a declaration of “complete and total freedom,” specifically for “all men.” Yet, most of the Signers of that Declaration did NOT, in fact, extend freedom to “all” men. The majority of the Signers owned other people. Most of the Signers benefitted from the owning of human flesh which worked their farms and enterprises. It would be many years, long past the death of every Signer before Abraham Lincoln would “free the slaves.”
Still, freedom was”incomplete.” True freedom would not come for “all” Americans until Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964, only 53 years ago. Until then, Black Americans were still not completely free. I would suggest, that even today, racism enslaves both white and black in chains of prejudice.
Freedom has many components: national, political, moral, and spiritual. A person is not completely free until he or she is spiritually free. Therefore, I refer to this message as, “The Declaration of Incompleteness.” Many people remain in bondage today, whether it is national, political, moral, spiritual, or a combination of one or more of these.
There are many
“declarations of freedom” in the Bible.
I’d like us to read one of the most powerful together. Let’s
read Galatians 5:1. The majesty of the KJV is unmatched in this verse:
5 Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
The word translated
“stand fast” is a form Paul seemed to prefer over other alternatives and
synonyms. It is a particularly “strong”
construction that indicates an ability to stand that is gained by a
relationship with God. It is in the
imperative mood meaning it is a command. It is in the present tense meaning it
is a “continuing” action. Our declaration of independence from sin is, like our
declaration of independence from tyranny, also a Declaration of
Incompleteness. The battle continues.
There are several
components that are necessary for a person, or people, to have true
freedom. In fact, as we examine these
various components of freedom, we will come to understand why I feel God led me
to entitle this message: “The Declaration of Incompleteness.”
Absolute freedom is
not something we attain, as much as it is something we are in the constant
pursuit of. The moment we take our
freedom for granted and are not constantly at the ready to defend it, we are in
danger of losing it altogether.
This is what the
writer meant when he wrote: “The price
of freedom is eternal vigilance.” It is
only when we are pursuing and promoting all the components of freedom that we
are, indeed, truly free. At present, our
freedom is neither complete in its composition nor its progression. Each component requires daily diligence to
keep it operating in our lives. The first component I want to examine this
morning is:
1.
The NATIONAL component.
Let me state what I
mean like this: “We are not truly free if we ignore any threats from any nation, any
group, or any despot who wishes to violate our borders and do us harm.
This past week, my
nephew shipped off for the Middle East to take up the defense of our freedom
here at home. Now, most Americans do not
live as if we are at war. Most Americans
have forgotten the terrifying images of 9 1 1 – now nearly a decade and a half
ago. We have tucked them away into the closed closet of our collective
national conscience. Because we do
not hear the bullets whiz by our heads or feel the concussion from an live IED
(Improvised Explosive Device), we do not even realize we are still at war. The lesson of
9 1 1 is lost to most Americans, today. This
endangers our freedom.
But, I want to remind
us that we are in a war to secure our national borders. There are those that would do us harm, and we
are not truly free if we ignore this threat. No great chains can be forged
than the chains of apathy.
Most people do not
acknowledge that in the economy of God, He established the right to national
borders. He did this when He, Himself,
set forth the borders for Israel. The
Book of Numbers says,
34 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Command
the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that will be
allotted to you as an inheritance will have these boundaries:
Actually, The Book of Numbers does not completely outline all of
Israel’s borders. Genesis 15:18 gives a more comprehensive survey:
8
On
that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I
give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.
That’s
a border stretching from Egypt to Iraq, north to Syria and South down into the
Sinai Peninsula.
I won’t go into all
the arguments concerning how America’s borders were established. They are now established. Israel is God’s “visual aid” for all nations. Just as God expects Israel’s borders to be
recognized – and one day they will be recognized in toto – we have a right as a nation – no, a responsibility as a
nation – to secure our borders and defend our citizenry.
Much more could be
said, but for our purposes today it is sufficient to say that the Bible
recognizes the right of national borders.
Freedom has a national component.
I am a Christian, but I am an American, too. This is my God-ordained
nationality (Acts 17:26).
The battle for our national
borders remains incomplete.
2.
Freedom has a POLITICAL component
Let me say it like
this: “We are not truly free as long as
we let tyrants rule from the bench of OUR high court or act like kings in the
halls of OUR congress.
I think it could be
argued that our most dangerous foe does not lie beyond our borders, but has
taken up residence in our politics.
In the 40’s one of the most famous comic strip
writers of all time came onto the scene.
His name was Walt Kelly and his strip starred a swamp possum by the name
of Pogo and Pogo’s very animated swamp buddies.
Kelly used his strip
to promote his political point of view through satire. The most famous line ever spoken by Pogo came
in a strip promoting the Earth Day Anti-pollution campaign in 1970. Pogo, lamenting all the trash they were
bringing to the swamp said, “We have met
the enemy and he is us.”
How true this
political comment is today. Our greatest
enemy in the on-going struggle to protect and promote our freedom, is
“apathy.” When we don’t care what they
do in Washington, we get what evil, fallen, men and women of sin will give
us: t r o u b l e!
At least in part, the
Founders of our Nation and the framers of our Constitution, took their cue of
how to form a government from the Bible.
They proactively and distinctively rejected the corruptible form of
government commonly called a “democracy” – the rule of the majority. Instead, they chose a form of government,
Benjamin Franklin, called a “Republic” – the rule of law. And the “law” they saw as the rule was
mentioned in the Declaration: “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”
Some try to make of
this that the Founding Fathers wanted a “godless” nation ruled by the laws of
nature. However, the term “Nature’s God”
is capitalized for a purpose because it refers to the “Creator,” the God of the
Bible. It was a rhetorical device of the
Founder’s choosing to show great reverence for God and establish Him as the
Only True Sovereign.
So, where in the
Bible would they get an idea for a “representative republic?” This idea is mentioned several times in both
the old and the N.T. One such time is in
Exodus 18:19-23. It is repeated to a new generation in Deu. 1:6-13.
19
Listen
now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be
the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. 20
Teach them the decrees and laws, and show them the way to live and the
duties they are to perform. 21 But select capable men from all the
people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint
them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 22 Have
them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every
difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will
make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. 23 If
you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all
these people will go home satisfied.”
Deuteronomy uses a
key phrase that shows the beauty of “representative government”:
9 At
that time I said to you, “You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. 10
The Lord your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as
many as the stars in the sky. 11 May the Lord, the God of your
fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised! 12
But how can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all
by myself? 13 Choose some wise, understanding and respected men from
each of your tribes, and I will set them over you.”
Notice the command in verse 13: “You choose,” meaning
“you choose for yourselves.” The people who are responsible for government are
not the leaders who are chosen, but the people that choose them.
It would be – and is – foolish for any American to think that we can
send someone to Washington to work on our behalf and then not hold them
accountable. BUT – that is exactly what
we have done on a large scale since at least as early as the 60’s.
And, what have we received in return for our apathy? We are a nation in crisis by about any form
of measure you wish to apply:
economically, socially, physically, educationally, or spiritually. We are a nation that cannot even
unequivocally decide on whether the only valid arrangement for a marriage is
between a “woman and a man.” As a
nation, culture has even abandoned the distinction between male and
female.
Until we reestablish the principles of Christ upon which any nation is
“exalted,” we will continue to slide further and further into the dust bin of
history. Christians must always fight in
the political arena.
True freedom has a political component that we as Christian ignore to
our own peril. The political battle for
our freedom remains incomplete.
3. True Freedom has a MORAL component.
Let me say it like this: “We
are not truly free as long as we let a “pro-choice” agenda endanger our weakest
citizens.”
Here I want to beat the drum for a “pro-life” agenda as the platform
not only of the Republican Party, but as the platform upon which our entire
body politic rests. Only when our nation
fully embraces the Biblical doctrine of the Sanctity of Human Life will we have
any hope of revival in – and survival of – our nation.
This is not a “political issue.”
This is a moral issue. Let me
direct your attention to a very old story in the Bible. This goes back to the very first conflict (at
least recorded) in the history of man.
Turn to Genesis 4:9:
9 Then
the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 The Lord said, “What have you done?
Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now
you are under a curse.”
Just the blood spilled from one innocent life sent a cry up to God and
brought a curse down to a man. How much
more does the blood of millions of innocents cry out to God and bring a curse
upon our land?
We simply cannot be blessed as a nation with the blood of one and one
half million babies a year – or over 65 million innocent babies we know of
since 1973. We have blood on our hands
as a nation and a curse upon our head like Cain. That decision may have been the death blow to
our nation, and embracing homosexuality may be the nails in our coffin. Morality counts! No political issue matters as much as the
moral issue of “killing inconvenient children.”
None of us experiences true freedom when our weakest, most defenseless
citizens are not even free to have “life and the pursuit of happiness.” Unless we continually fight to reverse Roe v.
Wade’s assault on the unborn, we as Americans will labor under the “Curse of
Cain.”
America has many other moral failings that threaten our freedom, but
none is so important as the failure to protect the most innocent and vulnerable
in our society – the unborn.
As it was in Hitler’s Germany, so it can easily be in America: the assault began first on the unborn, then the unable, and finally the undesirable until the stench of
Germany’s immorality filled the sky in a black smoke and the nation was lost. America’s battle for godly morality wages on.
Freedom has a moral component.
Freedom has a national component and a political component as well. But, the most important component – the only
component that brings eternal freedom –
4. is the SPIRITUAL component
Let me say it like this: We
are not truly free as a people or nation as long as there is one relative,
friend, neighbor and fellow-citizen who has not been freed from the shackles of
sin.
This brings us back to where we began this morning in our text of
Galatians, chapter five:
5It is for freedom that Christ has
set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a
yoke of slavery.
The slavery Paul is speaking of here is “slavery to sin.” The jailer that imprisons us in sin is trying
to get free by keeping the “Law” – by being religious. Paul says in verse 2:
2 Mark
my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ
will be of no value to you at all.
There is absolutely NO VALUE in religion and it actually wraps more
chains around your heart and makes it harder for you to “ever find freedom
in Christ by God’s grace.” Religion is a “man-centered” approach to eternal
life that will have you climbing the ladder of ritualism only to find the
ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Religion is a “slave-master” that
exacts an eternal toll.
Salvation is the essence of “true salvation.” The national component, the political
component, and the moral component all contribute to what was declared to be a
human beings inalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.”
But, these three components:
national, political, and moral have no power by themselves or together
to bring about the true freedom that only comes when we appropriate for ourselves
what Jesus provided for us when He died in our place on the cross.
We still live in the freest, greatest, most abundant nation on the face
of the earth, but unless we have personally been freed from the penalty of sin,
we have nothing. As the Bible reminds
us:
“What shall it profit a person to
gain the whole world and yet forfeit [or lose] his or her soul?”
Paul goes on to say in Galations 5:13:
13 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. 14 The entire law
is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Sin is a hard task master and wicked dictator. You cannot be truly free until, by the grace
of God, your old sinful nature is put to death and replaced by the nature of
grace, which produces a spirit of deep love for others. This battle will be “incomplete” until the
Lord comes to take us home. We must
fight sin on a daily basis.
The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin emerged
from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a woman asked him, “Well Doctor, what have
we got, a republic or a monarchy?”. Mr.
Franklin replied, “A republic, madam – if you can keep it.” Just a few short years after the initial
Declaration of Independence, men like Franklin and other Founding Fathers
(especially Jefferson) realized that “Independence” was not, and would never be
“complete.” The same declaration of
independence was also a “Declaration of Incompleteness.” For Christians, this applies to our spiritual
“freedom” as well. While the victory may
ultimately be assured, the fight is not, and never will be over, as long as we
are in this flesh
My declaration to us as a people of God today is a Declaration of
Incompleteness.
I do not feel that we are as free today as we might be if we would turn
in humble confession back to the God of our Founding Father, and to Jesus
Christ, the Founder, or Author of our salvation.
On this, the birthday of our great Nation, may we resolve to be “truly
free.” May we say with sincere and
longing hearts: GOD BLESS AMERICA!, and
really desire for a full and complete freedom for every man, woman, and child
in America and around the world.
<<end>>
In reading about the Declaration of Independence, I came across this
analysis. I thought it was worth
sharing.
From the "when less is more" department:
God so loved the world: 5 words
The Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
The Lord's Prayer: 66 words
Archimedes' Principle: 67 words
The Ten Commandments: 179 words
The Gettysburg Address: 286 words
The Declaration of Independence:
1,300 words
---The U.S. Government regulation on the sale of cabbage:
26,911 words
26,911 words
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