The Call of Freedom

Turn to the book of John and chapter 15 as we stand together.

Just one verse of scripture this morning.

John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

As I begin today, I want to get you to remember that our enemy has subverted our history.

They rewrote it.

Many people this weekend are ashamed.

And so we're going to just take a few steps down memory lane today.

But we're not going to end in Washington.

Let's end at the foot of an old rugged cross.

John 15 and verse 13, the scripture says, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Can we read that verse together?

John 15, verse 13.

John 15:13

Ready to begin?

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Father, bless in the preaching of your word today.

Lord, I know that I preach and we speak to the ages, but we also speak to this age.

To this day.

So may the message speak to our times, our lives, our world, our family, our church.

Use us today, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for standing, and you may be seated together.

On the night of November 9th, 1989, something that once had been or had appeared to be impossible happened in the city of Berlin.

For twenty-eight years a wall of concrete, barbed wire, guard towers, machine guns, had divided a city in two.

Families were separated, friends cut off from each other.

On one side was freedom, the other was government surveillance, restrictions on travel, censorship, and fear.

And then the gates opened.

Thousands flooded checkpoints, men climbed onto the wall with hammers and chisels in hand.

Mothers embraced children they had not seen in decades.

Strangers hugged one another and wept openly in the streets.

People danced on the top of the very barrier that had once imprisoned them for a generation.

Why?

Because freedom is one of the deepest longings of the human heart.

True freedom is rare in history.

It's costly to defend, and ultimately there's only one freedom that is eternal, and that is found in the nail-scarred hands of the Lord Jesus.

Freedom is not normal.

Since 1973, the Freedom House organization has published Freedom in the World, a comprehensive report that seeks to keep up with political trends and civil liberties of people groups all around the world.

The report ranks countries in three categories.

There are free countries, there are partly free countries, they are not free people.

When Freedom House began its publication five decades ago, only 44 out of 148 countries were free.

Today, 84 out of 195 countries are free, and yet only 20% of the world's population lives in what they call a free country.

It's been noted that if we took all of the civilizations of history together and placed them on a large timeline, stretching out thousands and thousands of history across the front of the platform today, that the age of widespread liberty would only occupy the last couple inches of the timeline before you this morning.

We enjoy our freedom.

But freedom is not normal.

For most of history, freedom has been the exception and not the rule.

400 years the people of God made bricks for another person's kingdom.

They did not choose their rulers, they did not have self-determination of their lives.

Their sons and daughters could be taken from them, even exterminated by the order of the Pharaoh's mouth.

Their labor belonged to the king, their lives were controlled by the whims of kings that they had never elected and could never oppose.

But God heard their cry.

We move forward to the nation of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem beginning in 605 BC.

When he did so, entire families like Daniel and Hanani and Mel and Azariah and Ezekiel were uprooted from Jerusalem, marched hundreds of miles away into captivity.

They abandoned their homes, many of them would never return, their businesses were lost, their families were separated, their temple and all of its relics were either destroyed or made impure in houses of pagan worship.

These conquered people had no constitutional protections, no appeals process, and that the word of a king could be told not to pray or to bow, and if not, would be cast into a fiery furnace or into a den of lions.

Then the Greeks came along.

They gave the world philosophy and learning, but democracy was reserved for only a privileged few.

Women could not vote, slaves could not vote, foreigners had no rights or power.

Political liberty belonged to a very small class of citizens, while the majority remained excluded and ostracized from decent common society.

I'm saying freedom is not normal.

Then came Rome.

The average citizen of Rome possessed freedoms that depended entirely on the mood or the whim of the Caesar.

The emperor could confiscate property, imprison political enemies.

At any moment, if you were walking down the street as a citizen of Rome, particularly a Jew, a Roman soldier could put his burden upon you and make you carry it for an entire mile.

How inconvenient that would be.

Worship services were interrupted by soldiers.

Some believers were imprisoned, some lost their property, many lost their lives, fed the lions, or hiding out in the catacombs of Rome.

Worship was not a constitutional right, it was an act of courage and bravery.

Then mankind moved into the Middle Ages of history, many living as peasants under feudal systems of government.

Farmer often worked his land, would never own his property, he would never meet the king to whom he paid heavy taxes.

His station in life was set, determined, and unalterable by the factor of his birth.

He could not choose his government, he could not influence public policy, he could not vote, he simply obeyed or suffered the consequences.

And so we had the peasants of Russia who lived under the absolute authority of the Tsars.

People of France lived under what was called the Bourbon monarchy.

People of China lived under emperors and dynasties for millennia.

Into modern life came certain political systems that were aggressively anti-libertarian.

We might talk about the Nazi Party for a moment.

Freedom is not normal.

Shall I talk for a moment about the communist?

I said that with a bit of an attitude, didn't I?

Historian Barton Hinkle noted that while the Soviet Union is no more and communism has been discredited in eyes of many for years, it is hard to even grasp now the sheer scale of agony imposed by the brutal ideology of collectivism, what we call socialism or stateism.

Can I just give myself a timeout for a moment and warn you, as an American, we are one of the last generations that will fight the sprawl of socialism in our country.

And as socialism rises, Christianity shrinks.

Socialism is that which fills the vacuum of countries that once believed in the authority of God and the person of Jesus Christ.

If you don't believe me, just read the headlines coming from New York City.

And they're coming for me, and they're coming for you as Bible-believing people.

Freedom is not normal.

Those are anti-God philosophies.

But what would happen if the church and state became one power, one authority?

Sometimes in history, tyranny came not at the hands of the irreligious or the atheist.

Sometimes it came at the hands of the church as well.

Henry VIII came to power in the early part of the 16th century, establishing what we now know as the modern Church of England.

He had a conflict with the Pope over his request to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon.

When Pope Clement VII refused Henry's request for divorce, Henry VIII did the very human thing of creating his own religious system, developing the Anglican Church.

1534, the Act of Supremacy was passed, which declared the English king to be the supreme head of the Church of England rather than the Pope.

Although the break with Rome was initially more political than theological, it marked the beginning of what we call the English Reformation.

Let me just define the word Reformation.

There was a movement in the early 1500s spawned by Martin Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and others who did not create any theology, but they rather reclaimed theology that had been somewhat mistaken or ignored for hundreds of years.

Was Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, a priest, who had begun to read his Bible.

He began to see the extremes of the Catholic Church, their unfair indulgences and penance that was offered to the church, a religious game that damned souls to hell.

And he put on the Church of Wittenberg of Germany in October 31st, 1517, what we now call the 95 Fces in which he gave redresses against the Catholic Church.

And the most famous one, of course, was the just shall live by his faith, that salvation would not be found in a church, salvation would not be found in a pope, salvation would not be found in dulgences or rosary and penance or money or baptism.

Salvation would be discovered through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ for our soul's salvation.

The wildfires of Reformation began to spread, and people we called Protestants were those who were of that religious system who began to protest the church to speak truth to power.

This is the movement of Henry VIII.

Well, Henry had a daughter, a very fair, beautiful, peaceful.

I'm speaking facetiously, of course, his daughter, Queen Mary I, whom we call Bloody Mary.

Mary believed that she, when she came to the throne, was preserving the soul of England by restoring Catholicism as the state church.

She enforced absolute uniformity by using state terror, reviving medieval heresy laws that led to the burning of hundreds at the stake.

And how that basically works is that a sin or a crime would be punished by the state, that a sin in your personal life, and it might look like you disagreeing with church-state doctrine would lead you to a pyre in which you would become a martyr, giving your life unless you recanted of your belief in the church or the state.

Mary killed nearly 300 Protestant men and women executed for refusing to renounce their beliefs, many of them, as we see here, burned at the stake as heretics.

We have a picture here of two Protestants, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who on in 1558, or excuse me, 1555 on October 16th, refused to recant their faith.

They refused to accept the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation as they were led to this pyre where they would give their lives.

Latimer said to Ridley, Be of good comfort, Mr.

Ridley, and play the man.

We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.

And may I say to you today, these men gave their lives as a shining torch of freedom that burned all around the world.

Someone said years ago, way too many people want to shine, and too many are willing to burn.

Let your light so shine before men.

God was working in the hearts of our English forefathers a desire to live and breathe free.

Mary's campaign of persecution, intended to extinguish Protestantism, instead strengthened the resolve of many believers and left a lasting impression on English history.

Hundreds that became known as the Marian exiles fled from England going to Switzerland and other countries in which they could find some semblance of freedom.

When they got to Holland and other countries, they discovered that the culture was too perverse, in which they could rear their children.

They came back to England for a generation or two, and in 1620, our pilgrim forefathers, along with the Puritans, came to America to establish a government that honored the dictates of a man's conscience.

One of those men of the colonies was a man by the name of Roger Williams.

Roger Williams was a preacher.

Imprisoned, beaten for his preaching.

It's interesting what happened here in early American life, that many of our forefathers who fled from persecution began to seek to develop church-state relationships that would perpetuate the very thing they had fled.

But there was a group of people who did not believe in the union of state and church.

They believed that the government had a place in the sight of God, but that the church had to have freedom to exercise its sole liberty before God and men.

They no longer appreciated the inclusion of the government and the Anglican Church, the government and the congregational church, the government and the Catholic Church.

They wanted a wall of separation, if I could use the historical term, a wall of separation that protected the church from the influence of the state and brother and sister.

We call those people Baptists.

Roger Williams was a Baptist and he fled to the territory of Rhode Island.

And in Rhode Island he he founded a little town called Providence.

He believed that by the providence of God, God had led him to a place where he could exercise his sole liberty in the sight of God.

Williams' words ring true throughout the centuries.

Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils.

He came to Rhode Island as one distressed of conscience, and that movement, brothers.

That burning desire in the hearts of our American forefathers eventually led to these famous words.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Aren't you so grateful that our country, listen, does not give us our liberty.

Our country has preserved our God-given right to worship God freely according to the dictates of our conscience.

Can all God's people say amen?

What a gift that we've received.

And centuries of people who have fought to pay that price so that we might be free.

Fellow by the name of Obadiah Holmes would not bow, he would not bend, he, so to speak, would not burn.

They whipped him for his unwillingness to recant, to which he said, You have whipped me with roses.

We, brothers and sisters, are the inheritors of a great trust.

Blood was shed to preserve for us our freedom.

Freedom in world history is not normal, but we have it today.

I went yesterday, if you can pull the slides up, I went yesterday to the website of Voice of the Martyrs.

You ought to go on there sometime.

Voice of the Martyrs has this map, and it you can choose any land around the world.

Let's go to the next one.

And so it gave me an alphabetized list of countries, and I just clicked on Iran.

What is it like to be a Christian today in Iran?

Well, I just want to tell you again, freedom in Iran is not normal.

It says the Islamic Revolution of 1979, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, created the world's only Shiite Islamic theocracy and profoundly changed every aspect of life in Iran.

Today, many of those who committed their lives to Islam and Islamic rule are ruled with despair.

Has opened new doors for the gospel.

It's interesting.

One of the largest growing populations of Christians in the world is in Iran.

97% Iranians identify with the government as Muslims.

Persecutor Christians are persecuted by government authorities who have networks of informants in each city.

Can you imagine we get together where Iranian Christians?

We love when visitors come to Calvary Baptist Church.

Can you imagine being in a country like Iran and a new face walks in?

And it could be one who is aggressively seeking to know Jesus Christ.

It could be one who's come to spy on us and will eventually take our lives.

My buddy Stephen Trell was a missionary in Baghdad, Iraq, teaching language school, but really preaching the gospel and discipling new converts.

A group of Iranians had come to his business.

For many years acted as friends until one night he was out in the city and they took his life.

I say that to say this.

In the history of the world, freedom is not normal.

We ought to be so grateful for our freedom.

Number two, will you note that freedom is not free?

I did some research on the history of our country, discovered that 4,435 soldiers died in the American Revolution.

The War of 1812, 15,000 perished.

The Mexican-American War, 13,283.

In the Civil War, up to 655,000 lost their lives.

The Spanish-American War, 2,446.

In the Philippine-American War, 4,196.

In World War I, 116,516 brave men gave their lives to defend our freedom.

World War II, 405,000.

And some ungrateful miscreant has the gall to step on, spit on, and burn the flag under which these gave their lives.

The Persian Gulf, 383.

In Afghanistan, 2,461.

In Iraq, 4,554, a total of 1,318,463 brave men and women who, with their blood, said to all of us this morning, freedom is not free.

Reagan said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.

Can we just stop for a moment and thank every brave soldier, man, and woman active and retired at Calvary Baptist Church, would you stand if you've served our country to defend our liberties?

Will you stand for us this morning?

Let's give them a round of applause this morning.

Thank you.

And for those who serve to protect our community and law enforcement and first responders, we thank you as well.

Freedom is not free.

Reagan went on to say, freedom is a fragile thing.

It's never more than one generation from extinction.

It is not ours by way of inheritance.

It must be fought for and defended in every generation.

But in John chapter 15, our Lord spoke of a much greater liberty.

John 15 · chapter mention

Greater love hath no man than this that a man laid down his life for his friends.

Did you know that a man can live in the freest nation on earth and still be a prisoner?

655,000 men died in part because of the conversation regarding slavery and the rights of states.

655,000 fought this battle of men that were physically bound.

On a couple of my last recordings, I always recorded a Negro spiritual.

I love the warmth and heart and depth and meaning and passion of those songs.

Swing low, sweet chariot.

Coming for to carry me home.

The double meaning of those songs, not just across the Mississippi, but to cross the Jordan, not just into a different life, oh, but into the life of victory in Christ.

Many in the American South, did you know by the way that American worship was more and most impacted, not by liturgical forms of worship, maybe in New England, but the African-American Negro spiritual influence on worship more influences the way we as Christians worship today than any other factor physically bound, but free in Christ.

But go to Chicago today, go to New York City today, go to Baltimore today, go to any town in America today, and you know what you'll find?

You'll find people that are physically free, spiritually bound.

There is something that we need much greater than just national freedom, freedom to move around the country, freedom of expression, freedom of expression.

We need freedom found only through the merits of Jesus Christ.

Many of those prisoners in our country today are prisoners of guilt, prisoners of shame, prisoners of fear, prisoners of sin, prisoners of death itself.

And ladies and gentlemen, that's why the greatest act of liberation in history did not happen on Yorktown or Gettysburg or the beaches of Normandy or even in Baghdad.

The greatest act of liberation in history was in the Son of God was when the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, came to a hill called Mount Calvary where he bled and died for our sins, was buried, and he rose again.

And he says to these disciples that the model for their love for one another is Jesus' model of love for them.

Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

We were living in Portland, Tennessee a number of years ago, and I'd never seen this quote before.

It just so stuck with me.

Flags were forming the intersection in a very small little town in northern Tennessee.

All gave some.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man laid down his life for his friends.

But brother, Jesus Christ did not just lay down his life for his friends.

The Bible says, if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

When we were enemies with God, when we were yet in sin, Christ died for us.

Freedom is only found in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the ancient world here, even in the New Testament, certain people were known as friends of the King.

There were political friendships.

There were benefactors or client friendships, but that deepest level of friendship was that self-sacrificing friendship in which one would say to a friend, I would lay down my life for you.

You see, a far greater, we had a Sunday school party at our house last night.

And George Green wrote on his cup, King George III, I thought we were going to have a riot on Amsterdam Avenue last night.

Oh, but there's a greater tyrant than King George.

And he's brought us into the ultimate bondage.

We were born as slaves to sin.

We were shapen in iniquity, and our choices have separated us from God.

But Jesus Christ died to purchase our freedom.

We have freedom from condemnation.

There is now, therefore, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.

Brothers, we have freedom from shame.

Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

We have freedom from wrath, for God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have freedom from the fear of death.

But it's now Jesus made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ who abolished death and hath brought life and immorality to light through the gospel.

We have freedom from the power of sin.

Romans 6, 4.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the law, but under grace.

We have freedom from the curse of the law.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us.

We have freedom from legalism, stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

We have freedom from the dominion of darkness.

He has translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son.

We have freedom to approach God with confidence.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

We have freedom to bring every burden to God.

Be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let your request be made known unto God.

We have freedom to walk daily with God.

We have freedom to love others authentically.

We have freedom to do God's will.

And brother, you and I have freedom into God's very presence someday.

How and why?

We have freedom because someone laid down his life for his friends.

Freedom is not normal, is it?

Freedom is not free.

The greatest price that was ever paid.

It was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

When he took your sin in mind, he carried it to an old rugged cross.

And in one moment of time, God took your sin and placed it on his son.

And because he took your sin and placed it on his son, God will take his son's righteousness and place it on your account.

Jesus got what we deserve.

And we get what only he deserves.

Thank God for the miraculous work of freedom that I found.

And I hope you found in the person of Jesus Christ.

July 4th, 1776, they made a strong statement.

Listen, they made a strong statement.

But their liberty wasn't procured that day.

It was just pronounced they were willing to do something about it.

There might be someone in the room today, I want to tell you, if you have trusted Christ, you're free.

But we don't always live as if we're free.

And in that work of sanctification, Christ wants to separate us from the power of that which binds us in our lives.

Help us to fight, Lord, the good fight of faith, and to enjoy what you purchased for us on that old rugged cross.

Let's pray, may we?

It's a special day.

We think about our wonderful country.

How remiss we would be to come to the Calvary Baptist Church today and celebrate America and not think about the greatest gift we've received, and that is salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I believe our country made it possible for the preaching of the gospel to go all around the world, possible for us to speak freely and openly about our faith and relationship with God.

And maybe you came here today as a good American, and I'm so grateful you're a good American, and I'm so grateful that we are thankful for our country.

But I want to tell you, there's no American clause that will get you favor with God.

I'm from the deep south.

I'm from the Bible belt.

Ask a man one time, are you a Christian?

Yes, sir, I am.

How do you know?

He said, I'm an American.

I said, Well, sometimes I sit in the garage, but that doesn't make me a car.

We must place our faith in Christ.

I wonder today if you've placed your faith in Christ.

June 14th, 1995.

I place my faith in Christ.

And he saved me.

I'm gonna encourage you today to place your faith in Jesus Christ.