Freedom
The Rev. Paul McKim Laura Street Baptist Church
We approach an exciting holiday. For many, they will be gathering as families enjoying catching up with one another and renewing the bonds of family that we cherish. Many will take part in either observing or creating a fireworks display, all designed to celebrate the freedoms we enjoy.
We will travel freely where we wish. We will have freedom to make decisions about our employment. We will exercise freedom to express our thoughts. The freedoms we enjoy today were bought with a dear price paid sacrificially by those who have gone before us.
Franklin Roosevelt, when he was outlining his vision for the world coming out of the second world war, said that he envisioned a world where we all would enjoy four essential freedoms. Roosevelt identified those freedoms as freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. As marvelous as those freedoms may be for us, they hold no candle to the freedom we can enjoy in Christ.
Paul wrote to the Galatians and said, “It was for freedom that Christ set you free, therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.” Jesus said it this way in the gospel of John, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
Let us celebrate this season the freedom we can find in Christ. Freedom from the bondage of alcohol, drugs, the addiction to work, the addiction to approval, but the greatest freedom we can celebrate in Christ is this: that we can be free from the penalty and power of sin.
Jesus offers us freedom from all kinds of bondage. We all too easily become slaves to our fears, insecurities, or anxieties.
We can become incarcerated to the wounds and the scars of our yesterdays until we are incapacitated in our lives.
What we need is real freedom, not some pious spouted words that echo in a hollow way in our souls; what we need is to be free. We need to have the chains of our yesterdays broken that we can be set free to live in our today and dream about our tomorrow.
The good news of the gospel is this, “If the Son sets you free you shall be free indeed.” The message of the gospel is that into the darkness of the graveyard, into the bondage of a tomb there comes the incredible announcement of life.
As we watch the beauty of fireworks and hear the loud reports that echo the celebration of the Fourth, may we rejoice in the freedom that is ours at the cross.
