Most Free
Most Free by Rev. L. John Gable
July 4, 2021
When God delivered the Children of Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt He did the most unusual, most unexpected, most counter-intuitive thing- He gave them a set of laws- 10 of them to be exact- that He expected them to live by. After 400 hundred years of bondage, rather than saying, “There you are you are free, go and do what you whatever you want”, to the contrary He said, “You will most free, not if you do what you want, not if you live as you please, but if you do as I want and live as I please.”
These 10 laws He gave, rules for Kingdom living, were not intended to bind and constrict them but rather to set them free, truly free. So, how is it that laws, restrictions, boundaries, can do that for us? This is the question I’d like for us to reflect on this morning as we, as a nation, celebrate our freedom.
We think of ourselves as being free when we can do as we please and be masters/mistresses of our own destinies, but God says, “You will be most free when you remember that I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods before me.” We are most free when we know who we are and Whose we are. In Him and in our relationship with Him we find our true identity as Children of God, which means we don’t need to go seeking it in any other way or in any other relationships.
We are most free when we remember that God is God and we are not, nor are any of the other things we make with our own hands that enamor us so. There are many gods, lower case g, mostly of our own making which call for our attention and demand our allegiance, but to Him and to Him alone we belong, there is no other, so don’t worship anything we have made.
We are most free when we are mindful not to take the name of the Lord in vain, to speak it wrongly, casually and without meaning. Imagine for a moment if your name was Joe Biden, not the Joe Biden, not President Joe Biden, just Joe Biden. Imagine how interesting and unsettling it would be for you if you heard your name mentioned daily, hourly, noting what you were doing, what you were saying, where you were going. My guess is at first your ears would perk up and you’d listen to your name being mentioned so frequently, but after a while, you’d tune it out like the people who live close to the tracks who no longer hear the passing of the train. So, be mindful of how you use the name of the Lord, saying, “My god this and my god that, not speaking to or even about God at all, but just using His name casually, wrongly, without meaning. Don’t misuse His name lest He won’t know when you’re cursing or when you’re praying. And remember, when you use God’s name you are using the name of your Heavenly Father, speaking as one of His children.”
We are most free when we remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. We are not beasts of burden nor machines designed and intended to work all of the time. Rather we are children, created in the image of God, designed and intended to imitate our Creator who Himself took a day off in the creation, for rest and re-creation. We are most free when we take some time, at least a day every week, to enjoy Him and take care of ourselves.
We are most free when we honor our mothers and fathers, those who have
borne us, raised us, cared and provided for us long before we even knew them, or what they were doing for us or how much they loved us. They were acting, in a very human way, the part of God caring for us in this way, so give them the honor and respect they deserve. Were they perfect in doing so? No, there is no one who is perfect but God only, and neither are any of us when we raise our children, so we set them free, and ourselves as well, when we honor them with our respect and, as necessary, our forgiveness and understanding, as we too hope to be honored by our children with respect, forgiveness and understanding.
We are most free when we respect the gift of life which God has given us, all of life, your life and everyone else’s as well, so we shall not murder. Every person we meet is a child of God, loved and created in the image of God. As precious as is the new born baby, so in the sight of God is the aged, the infirmed, the disabled and disadvantaged. In recent years there has been great debate and division as to which lives matter…black lives, blue lives, all lives. There should be no question or debate among us that all lives do in fact matter, but sometimes we need to be reminded that certain lives, certain individuals, need to be loved, honored, respected in ways that perhaps they have not been before, in ways that are more just, more fair, more loving, simply because they need to be. Like the mother who was asked which of her children she loved the most. She answered “I love all of my children equally.” When pressed, she said, “I love the one who is hurting, the one who is ill or who needs to know they are loved, and it is not always the same one every time.” We are most free when we remember that all of life is sacred and to be honored.
We are most free when we remember what belongs to us and what does not; what is ours to take and use and what is not; what is in bounds and what is out of bounds; so we should not commit adultery and should not steal – those do not belong to you, they belong to another. We should not covet or be envious of what belongs to our neighbors, nor should we ever bear false witness or tell untruths about anyone else because when we do we are taking away their honor, their dignity, their integrity and self-respect. When called upon to do so we are to tell the truth, but we are not to make up with our mouths what we have not seen with our eyes. We are most free when we protect the honor of another as we would hope they would protect our own.
Can you see how we, as children of God, set free by His gracious act of deliverance, are most free when we live within the boundaries of these great commandments?
When the people first heard these words of the Lord they were frightened and trembled. They thought, “Hey wait a minute, we thought being free meant we could do whatever we wanted, and now God is giving us this list of things we have to do. That hardly seems right.” I can only imagine the Lord smiling to Himself, if indeed the Lord smiles as I think He does, saying, “If you do as I tell you to do and live as I intend you to live you will be more free than you could ever imagine, but if you do not, you will simply put yourselves back in a bondage of your own making and disobedience.”
In his letter to the Galatians, considered to be the Magna Carta of Christian freedom, Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” He then goes on to define what he means by freedom, and it is not the mistaken notion we have that it means “do as you please”. Rather he writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence (our commonly used definition), but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” There is no way to talk about Christian freedom without at the same time talking about the command to love and serve. The law is fulfilled in these ways.
Paradoxical as it may sound, true freedom is not autonomy and independence, but it is being liberated from the false gods of our own making in order to love and serve not only the God who made us, but our neighbors as ourselves. Recall, when Moses went to Pharaoh and said “Let my people go!” it was in order to worship and serve God (Exodus 9:1) and when Jesus was asked to summarize the Law He said, “Love God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is just commentary” (Matt 22:37-40) What this means is, we are most free not when we do want we want to do and live as we want to live, but when we do what God wants us to do and live as God designed and intends us to live. The rules He gives us are not intended to hold us captive, but to set us free and we are most free when we live within the great boundary they give us.
Years ago a study was conducted with a group of children who were taken out to a large open field and told they could go out and play anywhere they wanted. The field was vast and wide-open, but the children tended to huddle and play close to the center, not venturing very far from one another. A second set of children was similarly assembled and taken to a large, open field that had a perimeter fence all the way around it. Curiously the children saw that enclosure not as threat but as safety, not as limiting but as freeing, and they spread out and played in the entire expanse of it.
We have a mistaken notion of what it means to be free if we think it means anything goes. That’s not true freedom at all, not knowing who we are or whose we are, where we belong and where we don’t, what our purpose and responsibility is. That’s not freedom at all. To the contrary, we are most free when we know who we are and Whose we are; when we know where we belong and to Whom we belong; when we know what our purpose and destiny is, and what our responsibility is to both God and our neighbors.
We are most free when we live as God has designed and desires us to live, for freedom such as this Christ has set us free.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN.