2012 July 4 Special

 

Tomorrow (July 4) we celebrate the birth of our nation and we ought to ask a question or two as we come to this day. We should ask the question: What is it that made the founding of this nation so unique? What is it that makes the establishment of the United States of America such a one-of-a-kind event in human history? What is it that made this a nation that became such a beacon to people throughout the world? Even today—even though it is no longer what it was 30, 40 or 100 years ago—when many of our freedoms have been eroded by an overactive judiciary, an ignorant legislature, and an overbearing executive branch, still, when people around the world talk about the United States of America it brings hope to their souls because they know there is still a land of freedom; it is more free than where they are. They do not have the kind of liberty, hope and opportunity wherever they are that we have in this country—or hope we still have in this country.

 

So we should ask, what is it that distinguished the birth of this nation and this nation from all other nations? Let me suggest that the answer to that question is found in the content of the Declaration of Independence, which was not actually signed on July 4, it was signed by John Hancock, the Secretary of the Congress, on that day but other than that it was not really signed by most of the other members until the beginning of August.

 

There is one word that comes out of the reading of the Declaration of Independence that is what we want to focus on, and that is the word “liberty” or its synonym, “freedom.” In the United States of America let me suggest that there is something unique and distinct to the way that liberty and freedom was understood and applied in 1776 and through the writing and establishment of the Constitution.

 

Where did they get this idea of liberty? Where did they get this idea of freedom that was unique to the United States of America? It didn’t come from the philosophers of France. It didn’t come from the philosophers of Scottish common sense philosophy, or the rationalism or empiricism of John Locke and others, although they had some influence. But even they, even those in the common sense school of philosophy, and especially John Locke, stood in a stream that came out of the Bible. In previous times we have mentioned studies that were done by a political science professor at the University of Houston in the eighties where the words of many of the major documents and speeches and diaries of the founding fathers were analysed in terms of, where did they get these ideas? What was the source of these ideas. The primary source was the Bible. To a huge degree the largest percentage of quotations are from the Bible than anywhere else, twice as much as the second which was John Locke. And a number of the quotations from John Locke are based upon the Bible. He was raised in a Puritan home.

 

This is not saying that all of his ideas were orthodox biblical Christianity or that he was an orthodox biblical Christian, but he was influenced heavily in his thinking by a worldview that was grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament and the Greek Scriptures of the New Testament. And this influenced all of the culture of that time because it was a culture that was grounded in a theistic worldview that came out of the Bible. There were many different theological ideas. There were ideas that came from Roman Catholicism, ideas that came from Protestant theology, ideas that came in from Eastern Orthodoxy, ideas that came from just the Old Testament in terms of the Jewish background. Most of these quotations that were cited, referenced, alluded to by the writers of the Declaration, the Constitution and other documents were quotations from the Law of Moses. They were looking to ancient patterns and models for a just law code and understanding what it means to be free—what the limitations were that God placed upon various authorities that were ultimately established by Him.

 

So these ideas did not come out of sociology or psychology, they did not come out of a matrix of philosophical notions; it had its roots in the Scriptures. And it flourished in the soil and it produced a theology that was what we would call a Protestant, Puritan theology, coming primarily out of England but also out of the Continent—France, Holland and Germany. It was a foundation that honoured and gave tremendous respect to the Law of Moses as the foundation for morality and freedom.

 

On Friday, June 9, 2012 the Wall Street Journal published and article entitled They Preached Liberty, written by Joseph Loconte who is a professor of history at King’s College in New York. In this article he began by going back to the story of some of the different preachers in the early revolutionary period, and then he writes:

 

“The “fighting parson” was a common sight in the American Revolution. Why? Because American Christianity—anchored in a Protestant understanding of religious freedom …”

 

That is a critical statement: “anchored in a Protestant understanding of religious freedom.” His focus in this article is on the role of Protestant clergy in the American war for independence. But if he were taking a broader position we would change that word “Protestant” to Judeo-Christian. It was specifically Protestant, not Roman Catholic, because it held to a view of interpreting ancient documents in a literal sense; understanding them in their historical, grammatical, original meaning.

 

We have lost that today, which is one reason we had this distorted decision last week at the Supreme Court, which is just the last of many distorted decisions because the role of justices—their self-perceived role—is no longer to interpret the original documents in light of the meaning and intent of the authors, but to come up with a new meaning, a new interpretation. They view the Constitution as a living document. Justice Clarence Thomas said a few years ago at a conference in New York that if you were not interpreting the Constitution in light of the intent of the original writers then you are just making it up. And that is exactly what has happened.

 

But we live in a world today where everyone just makes it up. If you attend any course in school, from elementary all the way up through graduate school, having anything to do with poetry—take for example the English 19^th century romantic poets or earlier poets—one teacher will say it mean one thing and another teacher will say it means another thing; and nobody analyses poetry in light of the historical, grammatical context of the original writers of poetry.

 

In my last year at university I had to take one more English elective and I took one from a rather elderly white-haired English teacher. She was the first person from whom I actually understood what poetry meant because she applied a historical, grammatical, literal interpretation of poetry. She gave us wonderful lectures on the lives of the English romantic poets, where they were when they wrote poetry and what was happening to them in their life at the time they wrote it, and all of a sudden things made sense and you understood what they were saying; you weren’t interpreting them in light of how it impacted you or of what it made you think, or any of this other subjective nonsense. There was an understanding that there was a foundational meaning at the core of the literature.

 

We have lost that in every branch of literature today. Nobody seems to believe in that in university anymore. Nobody believes that except for a few radical conservative theological seminaries; the rest of them are all teaching some form of allegory, some kind of liberal theology which grows out of it. And then in law schools nobody studies the Constitution, they study the interpretations of the Constitution. It is just like Roman Catholic theology. Roman Catholic theologians don’t study the Bible anymore; they study what has been concluded by various theologians down through the ages. Nobody goes back to the original texts. If they did there might be a reformation! The same kind of thing has happened in Judaism. They read all of the writings of the rabbis and how the rabbis interpreted it, but they don’t go back and do original exegesis to determine what the original documents say. But when we do that with the law and when we do that with history, then we come up with a more accurate understanding.

 

So this is what this writer refers to when he says these “fighting parsons” had their understanding anchored in a Protestant understanding of religious freedom. It came out of the text. By “anchored in a Protestant understanding of religious freedom” he is emphasising that it is not only a Protestant who understood this—they weren’t the only ones concerned with religious liberty—but even though the numbers were few in the colonies at this time (there were only a few thousand Jews) they came here because they could not find the level of religious freedom and tolerance anywhere else in the world that they could find here in the colonies.

 

We should also ask in terms of this idea of religious freedom, from what power is it that we are free from? Religious freedom is freedom from something. When we talk about being free it is not just free to do whatever we want to, it is freedom from something. Here within the idea of the freedom is that there is some power, some authority, some group that seeks to limit our decisions, limit our options, limit the things that we can do. So are we to be free in the sense of just being free to do whatever we want to do, or are we free from government, free from the oppression of a monarchy or some form of republican government?  That is not meant in terms of the Republican Party but the form of government. Are we free from some ecclesiastical organisation that seeks to mandate and to control what is acceptable in terms of an individual’s belief in God, their worship of God, or their practice of those beliefs? Those two ideas must go together: what a group believes and what they are free to practice.

 

Some people think that freedom of religion means you are free to believe anything you want to. But true belief entails action, doing something, putting something into practice. So true freedom of religion means the freedom to believe whatever you want to and the freedom to put that belief into action, as long as it is not criminal. So freedom means freedom from government interference, from dictates in our beliefs, and the application of our beliefs. The founding fathers understood that religious freedom was freedom from the restraints of government. Religious liberty was liberty of conscience—a key phrase; that because a person’s conscience was what held them before the God that they believed in, that they had to be free, they had to have the liberty to follow the dictates of their own conscience.    

 

Loconte goes on to write in this article:

 

For many evangelical ministers, unconstrained British rule not only represented an oppressive monarchy that trampled on their civil rights. It supported a national church, the Anglican Church, which they feared would impose its doctrines and practices on the colonies if given half a chance. As dissenting Protestants, American churchmen were as passionate about religious liberty as they were about republican (or "Whig") political principles.”

 

“Republican” there doesn’t refer to the Republican Party, it means ideas about a form of government, a representative form of government. They were “as passionate about religious liberty as they were about republican [government].” Why? Because they understood that these two ideas go together. If you don’t have religious liberty you cannot have civil liberty; they go hand in hand. In fact, religious liberty, freedom  of conscience, is the foundation for civil liberty.  

 

Despite their theological differences, colonial Americans shared a singular doctrine about the nature of religious faith: It could not be imposed by force but must be embraced freely by the mind and conscience of the believer.

 

Note that phrase: it has to be embraced freely, i.e. unconstrained by government dictate, but the mind and conscience of the believer.

 

1. Freedom of conscience is at the very core of religious liberty. And religious liberty is at the heart of civil and political liberty. So if you don’t have freedom of conscience you can’t have freedom of religion, and if you don’t have freedom of religion you can’t have civil and political liberty.
2. Without the freedom of conscience the foundation for all freedom is gone. There is no freedom. Once any government—local, state, or federal—begins to dictate anything that is an intrusion upon conscience (religious conscience, belief of a certainly established religious organisation, not just some individual, isolated person saying, “That violates my conscience”) that foundation of freedom is gone.
3. To impose or mandate action by any government that violates the freedom of conscience of the individual, as it has been defined through the history of English common law and the history of the US Constitution, is an assault on the very bedrock of liberty and freedom.

 

All of these things have a history to them. When the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution wrote, when they argued, when they had their debates over all these things, they firmly understood that the history of English common law that was behind them for several hundred years and they weren’t doing something completely and totally new. They were within a stream of thought that had a long legal tradition. And that was for the most part clearly articulated in the writings and commentaries of Williams Blackstone on the English law.

 

One last observation from Loconte:

       

It is now widely assumed that religious toleration—a hallmark of the secular, democratic West—grew out of the 18th-century Enlightenment. This may be true in much of Europe, but not in the United States… 

 

Not in England either. In England and in the United States it has a distinct tradition that came more out of the Bible than  it did out of autonomous philosophy.

 

  … The evangelical preachers who supported the Revolution knew their Bible and believed it. They insisted that the gospel of Jesus upheld the rights of conscience in religious matters—Jesus never coerced anyone into following him, they pointed out—and that republican government would collapse without it.

 

Republican government, i.e. representative democracy (as it is known by some), he says, cannot stand without the freedom of conscience. That is a blinding flash of the obvious. And yet it is not obvious to probably more than eighty per cent of the people in this country anymore because of a lack of education, a lack of knowledge about history, the inability to work their way through the original writings of the founders of this country; and because of that ignorance they are the victims of whatever the pundits in the media say to them. They have every opportunity in the world to go out and discover the truth but are too busy with whatever it is that satiates their various fleshly appetites and/or developing a business or leading their life to ever go read these things and to understand and evaluate the very core foundations of the American culture. 

 

John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and also an ordained Presbyterian minister, said that there is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entirely. “Therefore we yield up our temporal property [i.e. if we yield in any area related to the ownership of property. That relates to taxation. Taxation can easily turn into a simple way of confiscation of property] we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”

 

What did he connect there? He connects economics and taxation with the freedom of conscience and religion. Those two are connected; you can’t disconnect them. So when we hear the famous slogan coming out of the American War for Independence, “No taxation without representation,” they understood that that was a moral issue and that it was directly and integrally related to theological ideas and concepts.

 

So in this insightful article by Loconte he makes the basic point that the ground or bedrock for civil liberty, for true freedom, is the freedom of conscience, to worship God according to one’s own understanding and beliefs without interference from secular government and to apply that as one sees fit in terms of one’s belief system.

 

Freedom is not just freedom in some abstract sense. We see people all the time running around in mobs and demonstrations saying they want to be free. Free from what? Free to do what? They never think about that, they just use this word “freedom” is an abstract sense. But the founders in America understood that it was freedom from government interference, freedom from government getting involved in people’s lives and dictating what people should do. Action flows from belief and those beliefs were untouchable by the government as understood in the Constitution.

 

So liberty is the freedom to live on the basis of one’s personal sense of responsibility: the freedom to succeed and to reap all of the benefits of one’s hard work and endeavour, and to determine how and when those rewards should be shared with others without government interference, without the government dictating how those rewards should be shared with others or even that they should be shared with others. It also includes the freedom to fail, and to learn from that failure the lessons of life—lessons related to humility, lessons related to dependence upon God. Without the freedom to fail there really is no freedom to succeed, and when the government comes in and makes it impossible for people to fail and suffer the consequences of that failure then the government is also making it more and more difficult for people to have real success.

 

This is the cause of the great division between rich and poor. It is not because of capitalism; it is not because of the free market. It is because it is not a free market; it is because it is not real capitalism. It is a market that has been dictated to and controlled by an ever-increasing control freak federal government that tries to protect the so-called poor. The poor are in worse shape to day than when we started the war on poverty 50 years ago. The federal government has done nothing to help; it has only done things to hurt. It has created more and more of a division between the rich and the poor. The result is that when the freedom to fail is limited the freedom to succeed is limited, and whenever the government or the church, or whomever, limits one they always limit the other. That is tyranny.

 

If tyranny is not fought, not resisted with everything that we have then liberty will be destroyed and the people will be enslaved to government. That is always the case. Throughout history, as the writers of the Declaration of Independence articulated in their writings, mankind’s normal state is slavery to government. But there was a unique experiment that occurred on this continent and it brought us a true freedom, a freedom from government interference. But that vision today has been lost. Freedom must be won and must be appreciated in each and every generation. Each generation decides whether they are going to follow truth or follow the lie, whether they are going to become enamoured with a fantasy and live on that basis or whether they are going to pursue the truth.

 

There are two men who are examples of this Judeo-Christian heritage that we have. The first was a Jewish financier who understood the principles of liberty whose name was Haym Solomon. He was often called the patriot financier of the American War for Independence. He was one of those unsung heroes of American liberty. He lived 1740 to 1785. His life was brief and often storm-tossed. He was in his twenties before he came to the colonies.

 

It is often said that freedom is never free. Freedom is bought with a price. Often when we say that we are talking about the price paid for on the battlefield: the price of human lives. But those human beings gave their lives because they were in an army. Armies had to be paid for, salaries had to be paid, wages had to be paid, ammunition and weapons had to be bought, uniforms had to be bought; all of these things had to be paid for. Freedom isn’t free because it is paid for by the lives of its citizens who fight and die for it; somebody has to finance those armies. And the great financier for the American War for Independence in the continental army was Haym Solomon.

 

He was a Polish immigrant who came to New York City in 1772, when moves toward independence were already strong. He had been seeking a secure home in western Europe for about a decade or so, travelling around Europe where he picked up numerous skills including six languages, as well as the ability to be a successful merchant and to deal in the securities trade and make a fortune. While travelling in Europe he also realised that there was no country that gave the Jews equality of citizenship. He learned that without freedom to worship, the liberty of conscience, that governments become tyrants and abuse their authority to unjustly tax and to illegally steal fortunes from those who are unprotected by law. He, too, understood the connection between taxation and religious freedom, and freedom of conscience.

 

He came to England in 1770, staying there shortly, and then left for a new life in the colonies in 1771. Not long after he arrived in New York he became an active member of the New York Sons of Liberty and the cause of the patriots. In 1770 after the outbreak of hostilities with Britain, not long after the British had captured New York, a fire broke out. It was often thought that it was started by the Sons of Liberty but no one really knew who. The British nevertheless went out and arrested everyone that they knew was involved with the Sons of Liberty, and that included Haym Solomon.

 

He was put into prison but he was a very smart, flexible, adept individual and as he observed that the English commanders could not really communicate with their Hessian (German troops) he suddenly made it known that he understood German. He really didn’t want to do something to help the British but he made it known that he communicated some with the Hessian soldiers. This was observed and the British decided to take him out of prison and let him  serve as a translator rather than to let him just rot in prison. So while working for the British he would then encourage in German the Hessian soldiers to desert and go over to the Americans. Legend has it that he managed to get 500 Hessian troops to go over to the American side.

 

During this time he was working with a secret ring of spies about which little has ever surfaced, most of whom were involved with the Sons of Liberty in New York, and it wasn’t long before he came under suspicion again by the British. He was arrested in 1778, sentenced to hang, but he managed to bribe his way out because he had sown a number of gold coins into the lining of his jacket. He made his escape and made his way to Philadelphia. While there he re-established himself. He had lost everything in New York. He remade his fortune and he had redeveloped his contacts with a Dutch Jewish community on the Island of St Eustachius in the Caribbean. That settlement of traders were the main suppliers of French-made rifles and other war materials for the patriots. It was due to his connections there that he set up these trades. He re-established himself in Philadelphia and set up shop in a London coffee house there. The French, the Dutch, and the Spanish governments all used him to sell securities by which they supported their loans to the Continental Congress. Solomon was extremely successful and made another fortune and became widely known among all the members of the Continental Congress, many of whom he personally supported out of his own pocket so that they could stay in Philadelphia and continue their work. Without him they would have had to go home, the Continental Congress would have broken up and never would have completed their business.

 

As his financial skill became known he came to the attention of Robert Morris who was the finance minister of the Continental Congress. But Robert Morris was under observation, under surveillance from all of the British spies that were operating in Philadelphia and George Washington knew that he had to resort to someone the British weren’t watching, someone he could trust to raise the funds that they needed. One of Washington’s youngest staff members was a Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Isaac Franks, the son of a senior partner of an import-export business of Levi Franks in Philadelphia. Franks’ sister was the wife of Haym Solomon.

 

When Robert Morris found it impossible to carry out his business then Isaac Franks suggested his brother-in-law, the currency broker Haym Solomon who made it possible for Washington to clothe and feed the troops at Valley Forge. It became known that whenever things got really tough financially George Washington always said; “Call for Haym Solomon.” Without his loans, many of which went unpaid, the members of the Continental Congress would have gone home, the army would have dissipated, and the war would never have been pursued.

 

When it came to the end of the war, the final campaign (Yorktown campaign), Washington estimated it would take $20,000 in order to defeat the British. He did not have a dime left in his coffers so he sent for Haym Solomon. Solomon raised the money in a very short time and this allowed Washington to defeat the British.

 

One of the ironies at this time was that the British were expecting aid and assistance and resupply from a General George B. Rodney. But he was too late. By the time he arrived the British had already been defeated and surrendered in Yorktown. Why was he late? He decided to take a detour to go to St. Eustachius and to wipe out the Jewish colony there because they were supporting the American patriots. He destroyed their synagogue and killed many of them, so he not only was delayed in coming to the aid of the British but he increased the desire of the Jews to support the American patriots.

 

Haym Solomon was very much involved with the Jewish community. He was one of the key leaders. Remember, there were only about 2000 Jews in the colonies at this time and so this was a formative time for Jewry in America. They were heavily influenced by this man who made a fortune and loaned out more money than he had to make it possible to have the American Revolution.

 

During the war for independence there were anti-Semitic cries raised against Haym Solomon and other Jewish patriots who were funding and financing the cause. In response to that Solomon wrote an editorial in a Philadelphia newspaper entitled, “I Am A Jew.” This was one of the most eloquent writings defending religious freedom ever printed. He wrote the words, “I am a Jew; it is my own nation; I do not despair that we shall obtain every other privilege that we aspire to enjoy along with our fellow-citizens.” For Haym Solomon the bedrock issue in why he supported the patriot cause was because he understood that religious toleration and religious freedom and freedom of conscience was the bedrock for all liberty, and that if you don’t have liberty you can’t succeed and you can’t become wealthy, a successful individual. He was able to connect those dots.

 

One example of the significance of his belief in, again, the role of the Jews in the colonial period, was that several years after his death as the state of New York was debating the ratification of the US Constitution in 1788, the supporters of the Constitution had originally set a date for a parade and a celebration in New York in order to promote the Constitution. It turned out that that date, July 22^nd, was a Jewish holiday so they decided to postpone it because they didn’t want to infringe on the religious liberties of their Jewish constituents. This shows the understanding of the importance of religious liberty in the colonial period.

 

From the horrors of the anti-Semitism in the diaspora in Europe Haym Solomon understood that without freedom of conscience there was no freedom for success or freedom to have real liberty to establish business.  

 

On the other side was the Christian side. Throughout history there is this confluence of the influence of Judaism and the Jews and Christianity. On the Christian side we want to talk about Samuel Davies, one of the most eloquent preachers  and considered by some to be second only to they great evangelist George Whitfield himself. Samuel Davies was a Presbyterian pastor who had fifteen years of ministry in Virginia. Later he went on to be the president of the Law College of New Jersey, which later became known as Princeton Seminary and Princeton College and Seminary. He influenced two different founding fathers. He influenced Patrick Henry who as a young man, starting at the age of twelve, was driven by his mother to church every single Sunday morning to hear Samuel Davies preach. It was fro0m Samuel Davies oratory that he learned to be a great orator. But he also learned fabulous doctrine from the Word of God and the importance of religious liberty and freedom.

 

As a Presbyterian in Virginia in the 1760s anyone but an Anglican pastor was considered a dissenter. They were not part of the established church. There was no freedom of conscience, freedom of religion in Virginia at that time, and so Samuel Davies, too, understood the importance and the central role of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience that must exist for there to be true freedom and true liberty in a nation. He not only influenced Patrick Henry but during his last two years of life when he was the president of the Law College of New Jersey and Princeton Seminary he influenced Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Constitution, who had one on the most phenomenal Christian testimonies in his life and spent his life giving enormous sums of money to establish many different Christian ministries in the United States. He was a great voice for Christianity.                              

 

Samuel Davies ministered for about fifteen years in Virginia and it was interrupted by a rather lengthy mission trip. The Presbyterians sent him back to England in order to raise money among the Presbyterians or Puritans back in England for an endowment for the Law College of New Jersey. He raised money from various people, including the grandson of Oliver Cromwell. But he had an impressive track record as he preached throughout England. One story that is told of him shat shows his fearlessness as a preacher in the pattern of John Knox. It is said that while he was preaching in London King George the Second, attracted by the reputation of Davies and wanting to hear him, attended one on his services. He was so pleased as he was listening to Samuel Davies that he shared that joy with those who were sitting next to him. While he was distracting everybody by his royal interruption Davies fixed his eye upon him and said with great seriousness: “When the lion roars the beats of the forest trembles; when the Lord speaks, let the kings of the earth keep silent.” The King shrank back in his seat and remained quiet for the remainder of the service. The next day he sent for Mr Davies and gave him fifty guineas for the College, observing at the same time to his counsellors, that “he is an honest man.”

 

He was so successful in his labours in the ministries. He was one of those great voices of the gospel in the first great awakening. He was the noted primary preacher in Virginia. There were others like Jonathan Edwards in the north. In fact, Jonathan Edwards was appointed to be the president of the Law College of New Jersey but he contracted smallpox as a result of getting a smallpox inoculation and died in just a few weeks of taking the office of president of Princeton. The committee met and offered the position to Davies who had declined it once before and this time he accepted it. He was known as the father of the Presbyterian  church in Virginia and his colleagues declared that he was the prince of all American preachers. In his physical person he was tall, well-proportioned, erect. His carriage was easy, graceful and dignified. They said his dress was neat and tasteful, his manners polished. One distinguished Virginian commented that when you saw Davies walk through a courtyard he looked like the ambassador of some great king. He was a voice that influenced many from his pulpit because he taught the truth and because he understood how the Word of God influenced and impacted what people think—the ideas. Ideas matter.

 

It was under his influence that Patrick Henry grew up. He influenced Benjamin Rush. He influenced numerous others, which led other who were involved in the House of Burgesses in Virginia and others who went on to represent the Virginia colony at the Continental Congress were influenced by his ideas.

 

Lest we think that this is just history, today we fight the same battle. We have the same fight against tyranny and it has to be fought in every generation. And it can only be fought from the foundation of truth. Those who do not have truth cannot be free, and the truth is the Word of God. If you do not have a biblical—Judeo-Christian—worldview, a worldview that comes out of a literal, historical, grammatical interpretation of Scripture, then you cannot sit in judgment. You do not have an objective vantage point to critique the moves of political leaders. Our hope is never in political leaders, it is always in the God who raises kings and who removes kings. We have this same fight today against tyranny. There are always those in every society, in every culture, in every nation in every generation who are waiting to defraud the citizens of their freedom. And all that they have to do in order to lose their freedom is to fail to protect their freedoms and to fight for their freedoms.

 

As we look at history we see that sometimes these attacks are obvious; they are overt. There are those like Adolf Hitler and Ahmadinejad who are overt and tell everybody what they are going to do and they express their ambitions to conquer other nations and to extend their power base. But there are many others who are secretive, deceptive, covert, and who work through all manner of deceptive means in order to destroy personal liberty, generation by generation, millimetre by millimetre. And their focal point is always on destroying personal liberty and the freedom of conscience.

 

One form that this has taken today among many is this attack on personal freedom that comes from what is called by Congress “the Affordable Care Act,” called by its detractors as “Obamacare.” As part of this Act there is a universal mandate which was declared to be Constitutional by our uninformed Supreme Court last week. This universal mandate includes within it in its provisions a provision which demands that religious organisations participate in funding an insurance program that as part of its core provisions violates the principles of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion for some organisations.

 

In one sense, an important sense, it does not matter what the particular violation is in the principle of conscience. We may or may not agree with it. We may think it is a foolish thing to have as part of somebody else’s religious system, but that is their freedom of conscience. That is the glory of giving people the freedom of speech, the freedom to believe what they want to believe, and the freedom to worship what they want to believe. They are free to be wrong, and we are free to fight for them to defend their right to be absolutely wrong. But they have the right, just as we do to hold those beliefs and the freedom to practice those beliefs.

 

 By the very nature of principles of conscience there are those who are going to agree with those principles and those who are going to disagree with those principles. But this is the essence of freedom. People are free to believe and they are free to apply their religious beliefs as long as that does not involve criminality. So the flashpoint issue is not the real issue, although the proponents of National Healthcare say that it is. This on their part is evil at its very core for it attacks and assaults the very foundation of freedom and liberty, and turns the Constitution upside down and perverts the cause of justice in the United States. And in this matter the Roman Catholic Church gets it; they really do. It is not about affordable healthcare, it is about extension of the power of the federal government to reach out and dictate in matters of conscience, as long as it fits the agenda of the federal government. This is a fight over freedom, and it is a fight over the First Amendment and the freedom and liberty of conscience.

 

The issue is not whether we agree or disagree with the Roman Catholic Church, the issue is does the federal government have the Constitutional right to dictate terms in violation of religious conscience. The left tries to spin this to be about birth control when anyone with a brain can see it is not. It is all about freedom of conscience and freedom of religion and the extension of federal power.

 

This last week there was a rally at the Kansas City State House where Republican Senator Sam Brownback and the state’s Roman Catholic bishops rallied against Obamacare, calling it an attack on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. They were absolutely right. This policy has been legalised now by this ruling of the Supreme Court which is in violation of the First Amendment. We now have a government that is in violation of our founding documents, but they get around it by the subterfuge of bad interpretation. We have a culture that no longer understands genuine historical, literal interpretation. If the Constitution is a living document it can mean whatever you want it to mean, whenever you want it to mean something you like. It no longer is an absolute.

 

Once that happens you have made freedom and liberty meaningless words and you have given all of your freedom and rights to the federal government. This must be fought constantly by everyone who has understanding of truth. Brownback in his message said, “Freedom is a gift from God. It is not a privilege a government is entitled to take away.”

 

Incidentally, the liberals are now mocking conservatives because we believe that we have been endowed with these rights from God. Because they don’t believe in God and they believe in evolution. We in their eyes are absolute fools and idiots. The divide has now come. There is now a cultural war of enormous proportions. Those who side with President Obama and the liberal left have basically denied the history of the United Sates and have thrown the gauntlet in the face of those who believe in God and those who believe in truth.

 

This is not a call to arms but we have to get active. There is one way in which people have always lost their freedom, and that is to be passive and just sit back, fold their hands and do nothing. We need to be involved and we need to do certain things.

 

In closing, a recommendation of two things. First we have to realise that in politics there is no solution; there is no solution in the voting booth. The only solution is a spiritual solution. If the people in this nation don’t turn from error to truth then we will be like the northern kingdom of Israel that pursues idolatry. The nation will ultimately disintegrate from the inside out and ultimately come under the judgment and the discipline of God. And those who know the truth are going to live through that. But what enables us to live through that and to have hope and optimism, confidence and joy, is the Word of God. Because we know that God is in control, and no matter what happens we know that God is working out His purposes. God controls history. Those who yield to their passions and the slavery of their sin nature and pander to the passions of the masses will never understand liberty or enjoy its rewards. And until they change there really is no hope—that is, in terms of political discourse.

 

However, just because things look a little dark and gloomy doesn’t mean we don’t have hope, don’t have confidence. We have many things to be thankful for in many ways in which we can be engaged in this battle. First we must pray; we must pray more than we have ever prayed before in taking these things before the Lord. Second, we must be informed about what is going on and we must be engaged in every level of political discourse, from local precinct meetings all the way up to national politics. We need to have the phone numbers of congressmen and senators, state and federal, speed dial on our cell phones, and calling them every time. Send them emails, send them letters, but calling is the most effective. Operate on the basis of truth, kindness, graciousness and generosity, but always letting the truth be known.

 

Above all, we need to press on spiritually. We need to pursue spiritual maturity and spiritual growth. We need to become ever-present students of our Bible. We need to be memorising Scripture more than ever before because the day may come when  the only Scripture we have is that which we have memorised and that which is in your soul. We need to be a more active witness with our lives and with our lips. And that is the only real solution.

In closing we have to remember what the Lord said to Jeremiah, recorded in Jeremiah 17:5-8 ^NASB “Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust is the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.’”

This is Jeremiah writing as the Babylonians are coming over the horizon. It doesn’t matter how bad things might look in terms of our immediate experience, we have hope in the Lord so there is cause for great joy. It doesn’t matter which way things go in November. We need to be involved; we need to do everything we can. But it is not the ultimate solution. It may be part of the solution, but no matter what happens we can have hope—hope and happiness, because our happiness is not based on what men do, not based on political parties, not based no who gets elected. It is based on the everlasting God who is our constant hope and strength.   

Father, we than you so much that we have you to depend upon and that no matter what happens in the world of politics, the world of government, the world of nations that go to war with one another, we know that your hand controls history. And the only real hope, the only real stability comes when we are focused upon you. Then as we walk with you, you produce real prosperity in our soul and in our lives, and only as a result of our walk with you.

 

Father, we continue to pray for our nation. We pray for our leaders. We pray that those who have plans that will produce ill will be stopped, and even if they are not, even if it is time for you to allow this nation to go through a time of unprecedented testing and economic horror that we can have hope, we can have confidence, and that we can be a real sign of strength, a real testimony because we know that life is not based on how much we make or what kind of job we have, or what we do from day to day, but real life comes from our relationship with you, walking with you and knowing the truth, living in relationship with you. As long as we have that we have hope and confidence, we have peace and we have stability. We pray that we might be part of the solution and not part of the problem, and that we might be encourage to be involved and active, engaged and informed, and that we might be able to look back on what happens, no matter what happens, and say that we did what we could do; we have nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, but that we were fully involved an did everything that we could do and left it in your hands. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.