Word of Salvation – Vol. 19 No.50 – September 1973
How Free Are You?
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on 1Peter 2:13-17
SCRIPTURE READING: 1Sam. 26
PSALTER HYMNAL: 71; 55:1,2,3 (after Law); 55:4,5; 459; 443:3
FREEDOM is a very catchy word.
It always was.
To be free, to be able to “do your own thing” has ALWAYS been the dream of people in bondage.
The teenager thinks: “Once I’m away from home, THEN I will be free” but he discovers he isn’t because he needs money to make a living and land-ladies have their rules, too.
Ah, thinks the girl – ONCE I AM MARRIED, THEN… but now she must please her husband, she is no more her own and soon there are children and an endless row of chores.
BUT she thinks. . . later. . . later! When the children have gone and we’re together again, THEN we’ll be free!
It is this longing for freedom that makes people sell their house buy a caravan and traipse off on a trek through this big empty land.
But one still must eat. . . . and still one takes himself along.
Freedom. . . yes it’s a catchy word, but the real article seems awfully hard to get.
In the life of the nations, too, freedom is the motto. Young nations arise out of colonial rule, but they find that what they get back for it is just another form of slavery.
They HAD the rule of white masters NOW there is the rule of black masters.
They HAD the yoke of foreign nations, but NOW there is the harder yoke of economic trouble.
FREEDOM – cries the revolutionary, CRUSH the cruel bosses! But the result is tyranny that’s even worse!
Revolution usually ends up in tyranny again!
Fidel Castro in Cuba meant very well for his poor exploited country. He wanted it to be free. But now, see how it is tied down to a cruel system, how men and women are FAR from free!
Ho Chi Minh wanted freedom for his country and fought against the French. But the communism he ended up with can only survive by building walls to keep people in, by assassinating men and women in villages and towns, by brainwashing children away from their parents, by deceit and violence!
Freedom for the negroes to be themselves. . . what will it be, in America or South Africa? Will they have it – and live? Or will they have to buy it at the bitter price of murder and destruction?
Freedom. . . how free ARE you, how free am I?
In a world full of searching for freedom lives the Christian. He is a pilgrim in that world. He is on his way to a new world that God has promised.
Yet he is here, and part of the show,
What kind of part is he?
Revolutionary?
Or just conservative?
Does he defend the status quo? Or does he fight for those who are oppressed and poor and helpless?
And when he does that fighting, does he do it by revolting against the System?
We are left in no doubt here, how God wants His children to live in this world. The question, you see, is not:
HOW FREE DO YOU WANT TO GET?
but
HOW FREE ARE YOU?
He who wants to GET free like the teenager at home or the busy mother in her family or the labourer in the factory or the negro in his state will discover that revolution only leads to a new slavery, to just another boss.
Just as the Russians in 1917 fought themselves free by bloody revolution from the whip of the Czar, only to find themselves under the vicious cat-o’-nine-tails, of the Communist System.
But he who IS free can be that under any regime, and he can show it under very harsh circumstances indeed. For Freedom is an inner joy, an obedience to Jesus out of love, that can work in any country, any household, any walk of life.
He who is truly free will not DEPEND on his circumstances so much any longer.
LIVE AS FREE MEN, writes Peter, for YOU ARE!
And then the RIGHT KIND of freedom, not the kind that just ‘wants to do my own thing’ for ‘my own thing’ is often just another form of slavery. Plenty of people took up drug-taking because they defiantly wanted to “do their own thing” but it is slavery worse than death.
No, LIVE AS FREE MEN but never use that freedom as a pretext for evil. Here the Bible clearly says that the Christian is to be RADICAL (in his search for righteousness and fairness and Christ- rule in his life and world) but NEVER A REVOLUTIONARY.
David knew he was to get that throne, and therefore he had no need to kill Saul when he could. That’s how FREE David was. He trusted God! Jesus KNEW He was going to get the Kingship of all the world, so he had no need to kneel before the devil, and he could respect even the power of Pilate as given him by God.
YOU MAY KNOW that you are free-under-God. . . well, says Peter, then you can afford to WAIT FOR GOD, and you don’t have to fight for GOD’S rights or YOUR OWN rights with the silly little swords of revolution, for said Jesus once to Peter when Peter himself was yet to learn this lesson, “all who take THAT KIND OF SWORD” will also perish by it!
The “Little Red Schoolbook” may tell children that they can be free “to do their own thing” and that adults are but paper tigers, but disobedience was never a sign of freedom it is always a sign of being worried or angry. Like the first sin in Paradise disobedience and rebellion is an unhappy, discontent thing.
But – says Peter. . .
God’s child can live even under cruel emperors like Nero and respect such men as sent by God, rendering obedience, UNTIL the moment comes that they are asked to disobey God’s commandments. And then ONLY in those things they must defiantly say:
we cannot do what you say because we must obey God rather than men.
There are plenty of foolish men around. They believe in no god, and they believe in no decency. They foolishly say ON THE ONE HAND that man is good enough to manage HIS OWN affairs yet on the other hand they say that human life makes no sense.
Saul was such a fool! He lived and acted as if God were not alive! In the end he foolishly even contacted a witch because he wanted to know the future.
But what was David to do? Kill him? Defy him?
No. . . just carry on and trust that in the end GOD would take care of Saul – and He did.
We are living in a world that is getting increasingly evil. How must we cope with it? How must we show our faith in such a place?
Well, says Peter: just DO GOOD, DO RIGHT. . . !
And the foolish men will have nothing to say against you. When you find that someone does you evil your first impulse of course is HIT BACK, give him a taste of His own medicine!
But that way you are down to HIS level and you are NOT in the peace of our Lord Jesus. No says Peter who needed quite some time to learn this lesson himself, you must end the chain of evil and revenge, YOU JUST DO GOOD.
That is the wisdom of God!
That is what Jesus makes the people do whom HE has made free.
For your freedom, Christian, is a blood-bought freedom. You were not free but a slave as all men were! Slave to sin, slave to self, slave to systems!
But Jesus came and took the FORM OF A SLAVE and DIED THE DEATH OF A SLAVE (which is exactly what crucifixion was) that YOU might be the CHILD of God, forever free, the spell of sin broken! With the wonderful freedom of finally being yourself again, and Doing Your Own Thing is then for a Christian Doing God’s Thing always! Being under Nero Christians could yet be free! Because sin – the worst master – was broken!
Being in prisons for their faith and even facing martyrdom Christians yet could sing the song of liberty, because Satan had no more hold over them!
We live in a day in which black wants to be free. BLACK POWER, they scream.
But does not that power make new slaves? We live in a day in which women want to be like men!
WOMEN’S LIBERATION, they say
CHILDREN WHEN WE WANT
AND WHEN WE WANT NO CHILDREN
WE SHOULD BE FREE TO KILL THE LITTLE BRAT
RIGHT INSIDE THE WOMB,
as a Dutch minister (!) said it:
a woman has a right to be BOSS of her own BELLY.
Oh? But is she then free?
Or is she a slave to her own fads and fancies,
driven from the one want to the other?
Is she not unable to serve, unwilling to love; hard-as- nails;
one step away from that OTHER form of killing
in which the Nazi’s ‘bumped off’ old people,
who, like the unborn babies also were unwanted!
Is that a free life? Who does not see that this kind of rebellion kills the joy and submission and freedom of the gospel? When we become like little children wanting OUR OWN whims and wishes rather than obey the rules of the house, we show that we are the slaves of those whims and wishes. And boy, they go with us where we go, they’re the worst masters you can think of.
But when my heart is free to serve Jesus and do HIS will:- then even in prison I will be free: even in a busy home or in a pressurised job, I will be free and relaxed to serve and to love, and to spread light. And the darker the home is, the darker the place where I live and work the brighter is that light then! And the more people will come to it.
Do you begin to see it?
We think so often, because modern man thinks it, that we can get free by CHANGING THE CIRCUMSTANCES. But we are free when OUR HEART is free, when we are CHANGED OURSELVES. Otherwise, wherever we go, we just take ourselves along. And so we find in Scripture this strange and un-modern call to submission. Submission to the Rulers, (even though in a democratic country we may and must fight for our Lord in trying to get the best rulers possible! Of course…!)
Submit! – says Peter.
Not: Be uninterested!
Submit! Not just: Be passive!
Our text shows the Christian shining his light and proclaiming His wonderful Lord RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS WORLD AND HIS COUNTRY: There people must see it, But REFORMATION, and NOT, REVOLUTION, is the Bible’s answer.
We find that particularly underlined in these last four short commands of our text:
Honour all men
Love the brotherhood
Fear God,
Honour the emperor.
1. HONOUR ALL MEN
Strange is it not?
In a Bible that says ALL MEN ARE SINNERS (so that many people think that God’s book really RUBBISHES all men) there is this call: HONOUR ALL men! But think again!
What did GOD do?
He HONOURED all men, too!
Even when he throws a rebellious sinner into hell he HONOURS him because he regards him as a RESPONSIBLE PERSON account- able for his deeds!
But of course He honoured men even more by saying to them – saying to that lot of MURDERERS AND LIARS that we were – and still are – “I give MY Son for you!”
“I want you!”
“Come and be saved and live with Me as children in MY HOUSE!”
Jesus who washed the feet of both Peter AND Judas now says THROUGH Peter: “Honour all men!”
Honour them as more-than-animals! Honour them, Christian, as potential Kings and priests! Honour even the drunkard because in him is the image of God and when he gets converted he shall rule with the Lord in heaven! Honour even the mental patient and the doddering incontinent occupying space in an old people’s home.
Because God calls them MEN – they have an immortal soul. Our age is the age of the snarl on the face. Revolution does not know of honour. It knows of the elbow-push, of the girl called chick and grabbed for lust. It knows of the man shot for money. And the innocent bystander mowed down with the machine gun because somebody wants to make a political point.
But God is the One Who gave His Son that such murderers might live. He swapped the Holy One and just for such a one as me, HE has the right to ask of you and me,
of the teenager with his grudges
and the housewife with her cares,
the nurse with his insight in human weakness
as well as the salesman with his quota to make:
“WATCH IT,
LOOK AT PEOPLE AS JESUS TAUGHT YOU TO LOOK AT THEM.
Show the respect that even the LORD shows:
HONOUR ALL MEN.
If anything makes a Christian STAND OUT in the world, it is that!
2. And only then – there is the second call: LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD.
That is the church: those who also belong to Jesus. It does not say “the friends’ circle.”
Friends you pick. . . and loving them is natural.
But brotherhood: those unpicked oafs and uncouth knaves who happen to be children of your father, too!
Love them, in this church and beyond it, in others.
Love them, and make them feel welcome
when they suddenly come on your doorstep
and have nothing but want your help,
your hospitality, your openness of heart.
Love them when they sin and need your firm help.
Love them enough to give them concern
and discipline to give them a place in your prayers when they need it.
And a place at your table.
Love the brotherhood that is a tall order.
When you are a prisoner to sin or to human systems you cannot do it.
But when you are free, you can.
Then people are to you more important than things, and you can do more for those brothers than perhaps you thought. The question is: how free are you? Really free, made free by Jesus?
3. FEAR GOD…, Peter goes on.
Strange word, that: FEAR!
Must we be scared of our father?
No, it means that WE TAKE SERIOUSLY that He is real.
Most of our problems as Christians and as church, most of our problems also in our personal lives, are that we do not take the reality of God seriously. He is a word to us, a name, an idea. But when we begin to FEAR God, we begin to get wisdom. We know He always sees us, and so stop pretending. We know He searches our hearts, and so we stay a lot closer to Jesus!
We know that what GOD thinks of us is most important and so we are no more so upset when PEOPLE misunderstand us. We know that HE will judge the world soon, and so we are not ALL THAT MUCH concerned about pleasing the world or sticking to what the majority thinks. We are really FREE when we FEAR GOD.
Nothing can harm us when we’re in HIS Hand and nothing can separate us from His love. “My God is real” sings the Christian, and therefore even in prison he can sing and even in the face of death he has hope! And so Peter is back to where he started:
4. HONOUR THE EMPEROR.
Yes, that awful man Nero, but even when he has lions for Christians and in madness is murderously threatening any citizen of his realm, the Christian can afford to honour him, because he fears God more than Nero, he needs no revolution, because he knows that the Gospel of God can give what is better: it can give REFORMATION!
He goes on quietly, knowing where he goes.
A free man
who needs no deceit to get his way
for he wants not HIS way but GOD’s way.
A free man, a woman already liberated,
who can afford to be kind and courteous, to be patient and tolerant.
Because he knows Whose he is…
Whose blood-bought, cherished property he is…
both in body and soul, both in life and death.
And if you do not know that yet, or had almost forgotten,
then ask the Lord Jesus to show you!
ask the Lord Jesus to free you from sin the cruelest master of all,
and to make you His.
The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Freedom,
can still make YOU free, today!
Amen.