Our Independence as a Christian People! Re: 4th of July
Kelly Durant 7-2-2023
John 8:36
36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
Galatians 5:1
1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
3.How many of you here have celebrated the 5 de Mayo? Yeah! Yahoo! It is good to remember the day your country won victories or were liberated from the oppressors!
Here we have the 4th of July! When do you celebrate? Name a few countries and dates…Venezuela, July 5th! And more… Did you know it is Biblical to remember when you as a people were liberated? In the O.T. we see the clear example of the Jews remembering the Passover, the day that marked when they were set free. Liberation from oppressors is essential! Give me freedom or give me death!
4.That Passover Day highlighted the day that pharaoh decided to let those enslaved people go with Moses to the Promised Land. Even today, the Passover is celebrated as a very holy day for the Jews. We should always reflect on the O.T. because it teaches us parallels to the life of Christ. We learn about oppression and freedom. We learn how sins bring on oppression!
God raised up Moses to be the liberator! And you may recall the 10 plagues of Egypt and allowing them to be set free came only after many heavy attacks on the Egyptians. The battle for freedom is always costly but we must battle in order to obtain it. The Jewish day is celebrated on April 5th
5. Easter for the Christians is our day of liberation, the day we celebrate liberation from death! And did you recall it happened the next morning after Day of Passover? Jesus’ resurrection brought freedom from death! The Jews then and even today still remember their freedom which was about 1,500 years B.C.. from their slavery in Egypt, and we as Christians also remember!
Christians celebrate obtaining their freedom from the slavery of death at the same time the Jews got liberated from Egypt, for us it was April 9th, because we remember it the Sunday (1st day of the week) after Passover. It is a total fulfillment of the shadow of God’s parallelisms in revelations! It is okay to be patriotic and share in the roots of your people.
6. In English a famous saying is, “God and country!” and the supposition is that you reverence God first then your country. That is an ideology and it would make a more perfect world if every man reverenced the hierarchy in that order. We must remember these traditional phrases and teach them to the youth on how things should be.
Knowing the history Latinos have educated me on, I am very glad that Mexico, and South America did not remain under the domination of the Spanish. Spain freed the people from the slavery of the Mayans, Incans, & the rest but then Spain made them slaves as well! Bolivar and others liberated those countries and still they have oppression from the elected authorities! To have real freedom God must be at the top, if not, it is always a dog eat dog society!
7. In the Salvation Army there were a few good men that after they got out of the service in WWII, they joined the Salvation Army. Many people have served country and then God. We are God’s Army, and there exists two totally different organizations and ideologies here. Our fight is to free and souls doing all the work we can to liberate the spiritual captives. The soldiers of the world keep us free from outside oppressors. But let’s look up a part in the scripture where Jesus gives his very first message in his mission: to give people freedom!
8. Isaiah. Isa 61:1
61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
God and his Son are very interested in the liberty and spiritual freedom of each of us! When you first repented and received Jesus that was your Independence Day of sin, and death, and it was our rebirth into the family of God with eternal life!
9. Apart from everyone knowing the date from which your country was liberated from the oppressors, do you recall the date you personally were liberated from the oppression of the devil who would have destroyed your soul?
My date is the same as my birthday 3-24, because it was coincidently then when I was 21 that I began a training to go abroad with a Christian mission group, and I left 6 months later to serve the Lord in Brazil, and then in other countries for 14 years! I think God I did that instead of staying bound in the world of sin I was in!
So now let me hear about yours. When were you saved? Let me hear some of you, when was your Independence Day? (Others should speak out loud their dates) Romans 6:22
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
10. How many of you have read the history of countries that get free from oppressors? Liberation and independence is a gift from God!
But how many people do you know who could be free, remain captive?
How many of you have known of a young woman who wishes to escape the heavy abusive oppressing control of her father or mother, only to marry a man that does the same thing, that is, oppress and dominate her as a slave? Or have you seen a woman leave a marriage from a dictatorial man, and with her freedom rejoice she could start again only to see her end up with another man who dominates her the same as the first one did? And men too, without Jesus, are propense to be slaves to addictions, carnal passions, and subject to evil people.
Evil rules with dark spiritual forces. It can be coming from a coworker, a family member, a political group, or even your own mind! You can make your own self miserable when not fully transformed under the liberty of Christ! You can be your own cruel oppressor as in the case of addicts, those who allow in demons, or propagators of false religions or enslaving political ideologies.
11. Why does that happen in life? Why can’t we just live out the verse we read in the beginning, how if the son makes us free, then we are free indeed? Some time we will do an in depth study in Galatians; but what was happening here in 5:1 was that the common people who were being converted to being a Christians were that they were being told by the Jewish Christians in control that they had to now submit to all the Jewish laws and customs. That was not freedom but slavery to the law, which Jesus liberated us from!
In other words, Jesus came to free each of us from sin and to fulfill the law, and we are to obey His commands to love God and our neighbor and preach the gospel and serve others, but we will never be made perfect by legalism, be it Jewish or from some aberrant church of some strange denomination! With Jesus, for 2,000 years now, being “the way” to heaven it is clear that there is no other way or rules that will save you, or free you!
12. In vain the church in Galatians was trying to obtain perfection by legalism, and what it turned out to be was a church full of oppression with hypocrite Pharisees! How many of you have darkened the door of Christian churches that are full of oppression? Over time they close up!
I have visited many of them and I have questioned this matter extensively, why do people choose to attend there if there most of what they offer is a dark, unloving, oppression? Is it fear? Is it that they are too weak to stand up and proclaim what is right? It is in ignorance of Jesus Words! Do you read the scriptures to know wrong from right?
Another curse of churches losing their standing is due to anti-god politics that create laws to shut them down. Also, infiltrators & perverted people often oppress with doctrines of devils!
13. My conclusion is this; many people live years under the fear and oppression of Satan. However, when they accept Christ they experience a new strange experience, freedom!
This is true independence!
They gain freedom from fear, a clean conscious, and a warm strength within, but soon the Enemy comes back to tell them, this is too good to be true, this is uncomfortable, this is not normal! What a lie that security must come from some domineering and controlling devilish system.
So since the devil often cannot persuade a person to stop believing in Christ, he persuades them to go to a church that is not a loving holiness Christian church like the Salvation Army, but rather a church where they will be dominated by fear and oppression! Those with false doctrines, those who are deceivers must be unmasked and shut down. Today we see apostacy everywhere!
14. Remember our salvation and freedom does not come by the completion of heavy works or rules, (Ephesians 2:8,9) and it is not by deceptive feelings either! So, if you feel uncomfortable that there is freedom in Christ that is a good thing! Get use to it! That is what Jesus came and died to do for you, to liberate you for now and forever! Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia, and dozens of countries, were liberated in the past, but many have fallen back into oppression, either from a Satanic governments, or by the oppression of the rich. Examine your own life well. Powers come and go, but are you oppressed? Jesus’ truth can free you!
Freedom is not anarchy; In our church, we need organization, and rules, in order to function, but those are for our own protection and good, but they are not our main message. Our message is Jesus Christ’s love! Amen? Let’s pray now for you personally to be free in Christ! Free from oppression & fear! Remember If Christ has made you free, you are free indeed!
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