7-4-2018

Good Morning All,

       Galatians 5:1; “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

     Today is the day when almost all Americans speak of freedom and we celebrate freedom almost to an excess.  This has been true from the start.  John Adams wrote his wife a letter after the initial writing on July 2^nd.  He included the following: “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”  So, let’s celebrate!!

    Yet most of us probably don’t feel so free on a lot of other days.  There is always a stack of bills hiding somewhere.  Maybe you are worried about your crops or your job, the price of commodities or the pay raise you didn’t get.  Maybe your job is headed for China or Vietnam.  Perhaps you and a loved one are feeling less than loving.  Perhaps your health isn’t what it used to be.  Perhaps you are experiencing guilt over some past sins that keep cropping up.  Perhaps you are trying to “impress God” so He won’t think your sins are greater than your “good qualities”.  Any combination of these can leave you exhausted and chained to an existence of pain, sadness and sorrow.  We are definitely not free.

    This was and still is the reason we need Jesus.  He came to free us from the burden of guilt that sin leaves to us.  He came to free us from the slavery to the Law that sin requires.  He frees us; yet so often we fall back into the slavery of guilt and sin.  We take our freedom from sin to mean a license to selfish pleasures; these are the same things that enslaved us in the first place!  Jesus’ freedom means that we now have eternal life with him and we no longer need to work to earn our salvation.  We no longer need to obey laws and rules which are meant to appease.  Rather, we are free, free to be what we were created to be; creatures who main desire is to love God and to love one another. 

    That is what freedom really is about; being free to be who you are created to be.  We were created to care for each other and to tend the creation which God has created.  It is when we seek these goals in life that we find meaning in life; we find a purpose for our existence.

    So, let’s celebrate!  Let’s celebrate every day the life-giving gift that our redemption truly brings us.  Remember who and what you are.  You are a redeemed, baptized child of God and you are free to live as His child forever.

Gracious Father, you sent Jesus to make us free.  Send your Spirit so that I may always cling to your great mercy and keep my hope in you.  Defend us from the attacks of the devil and preserve us until the return of Jesus our King.  In His most precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret