Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 10, 2016 | Timm Collins - Freedom Rings

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July 10, 2016 | Timm Collins - Freedom Rings · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Topeka Bible Church.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to see you.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I uh am filling in today for our pastor, Pastor Jim, who, as you heard, is in New York City, on the streets of New York City with several of our youth and some adults, uh, sharing the love of Jesus Christ.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a great thing.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that our church is about that, aren't you?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So a few weeks ago, uh Pastor Jim uh asked me if I could uh fill in for him today.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we were at lunch and we, you know, got to talking about what he was gonna talk about last Sunday, uh, because you know preachers are weird guys and we always think in terms of you know series and how things fit together.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and so uh he was sharing with me what he was gonna share last week, which was this kind of patriotic message.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's July 3rd, you know, why not?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: What a great time to do it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the types of things that we should be discussing as a church, and I'm so glad that we have a pastor who's willing to do that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so coming out of that, uh, I shared with him, you know, that if I did speak today, and and I am, uh, that uh I wanted to share with you a sermon from that I shared at my church probably 10 years ago, maybe more than that, I don't remember the exact year.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but this is actually not my idea.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I heard this from someone else and so kind of uh uh uh adapted it and and kind of moved some things around.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh we're gonna talk about uh freedom this morning, and freedom uh really the way that God intended it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so they say there are two things you're not supposed to talk about in mixed company, and those are politics and religion.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about both this morning uh because I'm just crazy like that, I guess.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Also because I'm not on staff, so there's nothing you can do to me.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't like what I say, I say it and I walk out.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a unique uh I haven't been in that position in a long time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um this idea is not unique to me, uh, as I said.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is, I think, very um powerful, uh, and I think it's very relevant for where we are today and specifically where we've been over the last uh three or four weeks, and so we're gonna talk more about that at the end.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I really need to rewind uh for those of you who may not know, which I'm gonna assume is most of you, I love early American history.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love to read about the founding of our country.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love uh the Joseph Ellis uh books and and uh just the different theological, I mean uh historical uh books that come out about our founding fathers and who they were, and I love to visit their home sites.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love, love, love anything to do with presidential history, and so uh love we went to the we've already been to the Truman Museum.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've been twice already because I'm this close, and how could I not go twice?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love this stuff.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, about uh probably 10, 12 years ago, uh my wife and I went to Philadelphia.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know if you've ever been to Philadelphia uh or how many of you have been there.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually there are some really uh significant things that happen in Philadelphia when it comes to the founding of our nation and to our fabric as a nation, who we are as a nation.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh specifically, I don't know if you've been to Philadelphia or not, but uh one of the very important things that happened in Philadelphia is, and you can actually go back and see that now, you can see uh the steps that Rocky ran up.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Remember those?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a historic thing, right?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a Rocky guy, I mean, and who isn't?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but no, there are actually some really interesting things that happened early on, and some people may not know that Philadelphia actually served for a time as the capital of our nation.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some really significant things that happened there.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And specifically, one of the things that happened while we were there really affected me, and just kind of bear with me on this, because this this story is really just me sharing with you uh something that happened.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we had gone through, they had just finished at the time uh this complex for the Liberty Bell.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the Liberty Bell um, you know, is is in this beautiful kind of secure complex thing now, and you wait in line and you queue up, and I actually haven't been since then, so it may have changed, but you go through and you get to see it and you get to take pictures and all this really cool stuff, and then you walk out, and where you walk out across the street is Independence Hall.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how many of you have been in Independence Hall in Philadelphia?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: We always all right, I love this.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some people have been in there, and maybe when you went in there, it was no big deal.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was a big deal to me because I'm a nerd about this kind of stuff, and I get really excited, and we went into Independence Hall, and um they so and you know, I wasn't thinking much about it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of in the room where everything happened, where the the convention met, and um this lady who works for the Park Service is giving us a tour.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So she took a group in and she starts telling the story, and she was such a great storyteller, and she's telling the story about what the Continental Congress uh experienced as they met there and uh the what what they had to navigate through politically, and how even as they were getting ready to sign the Declaration of Independence and the days and weeks leading up to that, it was so hot in Philadelphia, and yet they met in this room with the windows closed and the shutters closed because they knew what they were doing and what they were about to do was such a big deal.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: This was such a major thing, and it was so controversial.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: They knew where they were about to put their name to a document to do something very significant.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment it hit me, and I want you to think about this.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: What would it be like to start a country?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: What type of person would you have to be to be in a group of us and we just decide, hey, you know what, we're gonna start a country.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us have started businesses, maybe you've been a part of starting a church, uh, many of us have started a family, but they started a country.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was a major thing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they started a country whose big idea, whose main idea was really just one thing: freedom.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: This was what this new country was gonna be about.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The deciding factor was gonna be freedom.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the the founding fathers, and I had a very interesting talk with someone out in the lobby uh after the first service, and I'll be glad to talk with you about this.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And some of what I'm I'm gonna go ahead and tell you this, some of what I'm gonna share with you this morning is just that's just what I think.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they put the microphone on me, and I'm up here talking, so it's my turn.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to agree with everything I'm saying, even though I'm right.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm kind of kidding.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the the founding fathers weren't all Christian, most likely, uh, but they all understood something.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and you may disagree with me on that, and that's okay.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's just my turn to talk.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were brilliant.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they understood something, and even though they may not have all had a personal faith with God or faith in God, they did understand something about God and about how God and morality really figure into this idea of freedom.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I think they understood: that the only way that a family, the only way that an individual, the only way that a nation can maintain freedom is by faith in God, and that when we abandon God, we begin to abandon freedom.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not sure what you believe about the God thing or about the Bible thing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us in here believe something very similar about that, but not everybody.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so if this is you and you're going, all right, here we go, it's another, you know, whatever political.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, just stick with me, hang in there.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think by the end this is gonna come full circle and it's gonna make a little bit more sense to you.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think the Founding Fathers uh didn't agree on God or religion, but they understood that there was a strong connection between national freedom and us having a national conscience, and not just any national conscience, but a national conscience that was informed by divine law, by this idea that we received something from God.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Their idea or their uh desire was for us to have a system of laws to protect us from abuses of freedom, but that also that we should be inspired to really reach towards, for each of us as citizens, to reach toward the divine law, which is really the ultimate application of freedom.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what we're gonna do this morning.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna read some verses from the book of Galatians, chapter 5.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you brought your Bible and you want to follow along, then that's where you're gonna want to turn.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 5, we're gonna read 10 or 11 verses there, and then we're gonna jump over and we're gonna pull a couple of paragraphs out of the Declaration of Independence, and we're gonna see how these two things really kind of dovetail and line up together.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't necessarily believe that the Founding Fathers had Galatians 5 open as they were writing the Declaration of Independence, but I believe the principles that are contained there most certainly they were aware of and they were involved with those, and they were really allowing those to guide them.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 5 may not have been their direct inspiration, but it's definitely very applicable.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, Galatians chapter 5, we're gonna work our way up to, and we're gonna uh end up with the fruit of the Spirit, those verses at the end of Galatians 5, which many of you and I are aware of, but we're gonna start all the way back in verse 13.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul says.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You were called to, what's the word?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You were called to freedom, brothers.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Listen.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: God called you to freedom.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not the Constitution.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is bigger than that.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were called to freedom, brothers.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is so big.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Paul understood that freedom has a dark side.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when you first got your license and you were first allowed to drive on your own?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You remember what that was like?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are gonna have to rewind a lot.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have to rewind quite a bit.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was back when, you know, it was a long time ago, let's just say that.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I remember what it was like to have first gotten my license, and my parents trusted me, and they were crazy to trust me.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: They shouldn't have trusted me.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But they trusted me and they turned me loose.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I got in a car and I started driving around.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing I did?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I abused my freedom.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what many of us do.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom is great, and freedom is fun, but freedom has a dark side, and the dark side is called a speeding ticket.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, it's kind of funny.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a serious point here.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you abuse your freedom, you lose your freedom.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: This was not my story, and yet it's the story of so many people that you have heard, and maybe this is you, or maybe it's a friend.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've had friends who have told me this story about how when they graduated high school and they went off to college and suddenly they were living at college by themselves, and their parents weren't there anymore, and they made some choices that really weren't the best choices, and yet they were experiencing all this freedom that they'd had for the first time.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And mom and dad are nowhere to be found.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they're a long way away.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that first semester or that first year, whatever the case may be, there was a dark side to that freedom.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, for many people, their story goes something like this.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I actually wound up having to leave college and to come back home because I had abused my freedom so much.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because freedom has a dark side.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom cannot stand in isolation.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot stand alone by itself.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be applied, excuse me, in the context of God and morality, or more specifically, responsibility.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be applied in terms of accountability and responsibility.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when you abuse your freedom?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you abuse it enough, you go to prison.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You lose your freedom.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because freedom doesn't exist in a vacuum.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, and then he makes this statement that we're going to come back to in just a few minutes.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But through love, serve one another.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: The proper handling of freedom is not self-indulgence.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even though we may see that all around us.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And even though from time to time you and I may fall into that trap, the proper handling of freedom is not self-indulgence.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The proper handling of freedom is to leverage our freedom so that we can serve the people around us.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul's telling us.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Use it through love to serve one another.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 14.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: The whole law is fulfilled in one word, and it's not even a thou shalt not.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thou shalt.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: The whole law can be fulfilled in you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the proper application of freedom is love.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: The proper application of freedom is the golden rule.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's to treat other people the way we want it to be treated.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: The proper application of freedom is for us to leverage our freedom for the sake of others.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get to this really interesting verse, and when I read it, I think to myself, this verse sounds like it belongs in the nursery.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, here's what I think he's saying.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you're smart enough or cool enough or slick enough or crafty enough to figure out a way to divorce freedom from accountability and responsibility, if you're smart enough or slick enough to figure out a way to use your freedom to mainly benefit you at the sake of everyone else, and I don't care about everybody else, I'm just going to focus on me, and my freedom is about me.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you figure out a way to do that, and I figure out a way to do that, and that guy and her and somebody back there figures out a way to do that, and we turn our backs on each other and we leverage our freedom for our own sake, it won't be long before we're biting each other and devouring each other.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're misusing freedom.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom didn't come from a document, freedom comes from God.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes from God with a purpose.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It comes with some strings attached.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because God knows, and our founding fathers understood, that's the only way that it works, the way that it's supposed to work.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't separate this from these.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we did this as a as a visual illustration on purpose because you don't have to be a physics major to understand that if I remove one of these, what happens?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whole thing falls apart.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is a system.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it all works together.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you need every piece.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So verse 16, let's read a little bit.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's gonna kind of give us these two sides, the flesh and the spirit.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he gives us this list.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the good list, we have to have a bad list.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the fruit of the spirit, we have to have the fruit of the flesh.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what he gives us.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 19.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now the works of the flesh are evident.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: See if this sounds familiar.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: See if this doesn't sound like Paul wrote this this week.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: The works of the flesh are evident.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality, listen, in the context of freedom, this is the type of language that we use when we're talking about this.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's my body, and I'll do what I want because I'm a free American and nobody can tell me what to do.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but there are consequences.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: There are always consequences.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish that wasn't the case, but I didn't get to make up law.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: God did.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality, impurity or sensuality, which means I can look at anything I want, I can fill my mind with anything I want.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's my right as a free American.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But freedom doesn't work when it's divorced from morality.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, which really means selfish ambition.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got the NIV, that's the way it's translated there.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Selfish ambition, which really means my freedom is about me.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's my money and it's my time and it's my family and it's my property and it's my company, and I'll do what I want to with it, and nobody's going to tell me anything different.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And me, my, and mine, and my, my, my.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Don't talk to me about giving.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't talk to me about sacrifice.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't talk to me about serving other people.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because the purpose of freedom is for me to get, get, get, get, get.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Selfish ambition.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: We keep reading.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom, apart from morality and a belief in God, doesn't work.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the way it's supposed to work.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It will take us to a loss of freedom.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: You don't just affect freedom, you begin to lose freedom, and I think we're gonna prove that pretty quickly here.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But, this is, I think, a great question, is there a positive side to freedom?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is kind of heavy, and this is no fun.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a positive side to freedom?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: What does good freedom look like?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul says.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 22.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Read it with me.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And doesn't that sound like a country that you and I want to live in?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that sound like the place that you and I want to live when people are practicing that?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: When people who have freedom use their freedom to practice this kind of thing?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he makes this brilliant statement.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love this.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Against such things, there is no law.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Against such things, there is no law.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think, at least in part, is what Paul meant.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna be arrested for being too kind.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The police aren't gonna pull you over and say, I'm sorry, sir, you have been too kind, and we're gonna take you, we're gonna run you in on that because we can't have too much kindness around here.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have had it up to here.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can get arrested for being too unkind, can't you?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: What about patience?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be arrested for being too patient.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, we have had it up to here with your patience.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's gonna say that to us.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: They can get us for being too impatient.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is the positive side of it.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is the brilliance of it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Laws come from abused freedom.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the more that we abuse our freedom, and the more that we remove the things that support our freedom, our freedom's gonna go away.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, this is huge.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what you believe about God or the Bible, this doesn't just work for people who believe in God.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is how freedom works.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that you may not agree with everything that we call morality, or you may not agree with what we believe about God, the fact that you have the space to disagree with us comes from the fact that our system is built on this.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's protecting you even though you don't agree with it.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is how freedom works.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: When more people are serving and loving and aspiring towards some kind of morality, we don't need so many laws.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: We have more freedom because we don't need laws.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Could you prove that?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's rewind.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: All the way back to the Garden of Eden.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Before the fall, and everything was great.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: How many laws did we have?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Don't eat that fruit.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's one law.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't eat that fruit.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Other than that, we're good.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because this was in full effect.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way freedom works.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: In order to maintain a society of freedom instead of law after law after law, there has to be a national conscience.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be a morality that's involved in the way that we think.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ravi Zacharias said this this week, and I could not believe when I read it how much this dovetails into what we're talking about.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, true freedom is not in doing whatever we wish, but in doing what we ought.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that has been buried in America.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have slowly, or maybe not so slowly, begun to leverage our freedom for ourselves in a very selfish way instead of for the sake of others.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, that's Galatians.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to set that aside for just a second, and we're going to jump over to the Declaration of Independence, and we're going to read some of these words that these men wrote.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, these men who are not afraid to talk about religion in the context of freedom, because they understood that our Constitution is not the source of our freedom.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: God is.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: God is the source of real freedom.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I can prove that to you right now.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they say.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're quoting from the Declaration of Independence.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: We hold these truths to be, what's the word?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Self-evident.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We hold these truths to be self-evident.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we didn't invent this.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is bigger than us.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was here when we showed up.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even though there's never been a government that was built around this idea, this is a big idea.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge idea, and we didn't invent it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the self-evident part of it.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: That all men are, what's the word?
• 23:36
  unknown: Created.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Created.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Say it again.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Created.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: One more time.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Created.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who were they created by?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: The creator.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We were created equal.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, there is a whole different commentary about whether or not everyone really was equal, because you and I know that they weren't.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And even after America was founded, everybody wasn't equal.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a morality that they were striving to, and they were trying to push towards this.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they knew it wasn't perfect, but they knew that freedom was worth it in the context of morality and in the context of God.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they believed, even though in practical terms all men and all women weren't equal in that moment, that all men and all women were created, much bigger than America, were created by God to be equal.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't establishing this, they were recognizing that it already existed.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that they are endowed by their creator with a capital C.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the basis for freedom comes from God.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come from a government, and it doesn't come from a document.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are the three that you've heard over and over and over: life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to build a nation that gave men their freedom.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to build a nation that acknowledged that God has done so, and in that context, freedom works in a certain way.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to skip to the closing paragraph.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to read two or three sentences from the closing paragraph.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I really encourage you to go home and Google the Declaration of Independence and just read what it has to say.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's phenomenal.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's phenomenal that they weren't afraid to talk about politics and religion together.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: They just did it.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: We therefore, this is the last paragraph.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Would somebody tell them that they're not supposed to talk about God this much?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just keep going back to him over and over and over, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: This nation is established by an appeal to someone who pre-exists us and who overshadows us and whose principles we are leveraging in order to found this nation.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were saying we've set ourselves up as an authority, but we don't have the authority to establish.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have to appeal to someone.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what they're appealing to: appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude, which means the rightness or the correctness of our intentions.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we think we're getting this right, and we're appealing to God to see if we got it right.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, can you imagine the courage that it took to write these words?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: These brilliant men understood that it was futile to attempt to create a free society apart from the accountability of the Creator.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And here we go.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to read the American Dream.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because you and I have been sold a bill of goods.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the bill of goods that we've been sold is that the American dream is that we use our freedom to get, get, get, get, get, get, get.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And freedom may provide you the opportunity to gain a lot.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the American dream.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: These men said, and for deport support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: They had a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And out of that we mutually pledged to each other our lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were saying, the first thing we're going to do with this freedom is pledge to each other our lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to leverage our freedom for the sake of other people.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to leverage our freedom for the sake of other people.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I are sitting here today because they had the courage not just to write those words, but to believe them and to found a country based on them.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they were smart enough to know that freedom wasn't their idea.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't come up with it.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: They just wanted to acknowledge it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ravi Zacharias said this week, he said, we've entered the 20th century, 21st century, having amputated morality from law.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: We've entered the 21st century having amputated morality from law.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're trying to divorce the two.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to pretend that morality has no place in the conversation that we're having about laws and freedom and justice and all these things.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to pretend that morality is not a part of that discussion.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing so, we are removing one of the bedrock things that gives us our freedom.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even if we don't agree with that morality, we've still removed it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're still losing it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So here are the two things that I want to say to you.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Two personal implications.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, I think that you and I need to beware of leaders or organizations who want to remove references to God or Christianity from politics and the law.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to beware.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because we don't agree with them.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's because if you want to remove God and morality from the equation, that doesn't just tell me that you and I don't agree.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: That tells me that you don't understand freedom.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, I promise you, if we're successful in doing that, we will lose our freedom.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's predictable.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: If we're successful in doing this, freedom goes down.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because we need more laws and more laws and more laws and more laws to protect ourselves from each other.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody's serving the common good anymore.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I find it fascinating that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams weren't afraid to mix politics and religion.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, we're not smarter than they were.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've just changed what we believe.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to fear religious talk in political circles.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is a part of the fabric of our nation.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And to divorce God from politics is to lose what we value most.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Our freedom.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the second implication.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: This one's personal.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is for you and I.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: How about if you and I don't leverage our personal freedom for personal gain?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: How about if we don't make that the biggest thing that we do?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: How about if we don't make that our number one chief aim or goal?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: What would our country look like if we chose to leverage our freedom for the good of other people?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: What would our country look like?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: What would it look like if we stood up as those founding fathers did and said, we're going to use our freedom to pledge to each other our lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to use our freedom to serve.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to use our freedom to serve people who don't agree with us.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to use our freedom to love those who are around us.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's how freedom works best.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the calling that you and I have, not because of the Declaration of Independence, but because of the Bible.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because we serve the God of Galatians 5.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: That we should leverage our freedom for the sake of those around us.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: If we have the belief that says, I can do anything I want, that is a misapplication of freedom.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it is destructive to who we are.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: See, America isn't the first republic in history.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one of the most lasting.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a verse in Psalm 33 that says this blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I really believe that for the first lot of years of American history, that was true for us.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we're moving away from it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, it doesn't just affect Christians.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: It affects everyone.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what is our calling as Christians, not just Americans, although that's a it's an incredible privilege to be an American, but as Christians, what's our calling?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's to leverage our freedom to serve others.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we can turn things around.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: God.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: We really are proud to be Americans.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it is an incredible privilege that you've given to us.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest nations that's ever existed on the face of the earth.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And all we have to do is visit somewhere else and come back.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it gets me every time.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: When those people in passport control say, Welcome home.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is our home.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is our land.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was established with a framework in mind.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was established with a context in mind.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And God, our passion is that you would give us the wisdom to know how to navigate the waters that we're in as a nation and as a culture and to stay true to you, to do as Ephesians 4 has told us, which is, I think, one of the most difficult things and yet one of the most rewarding things we could ever learn how to do, to speak the truth and love.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: To speak the truth and love.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Speak the truth with your love.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So give us wisdom to know how to do that as we navigate the days and weeks and months ahead, as we navigate what will surely be a contentious fall.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to remember that it's not people in Washington or people in the media who get to determine the fate of our nation.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's us.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: If we'll stand up and be counted, that we get to determine where we're headed.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be in America.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the freedom that you've given to us, and I pray that through your spirit and through your wisdom, we would steward it wisely, not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of those around us.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to serve one another in love.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.