What a summer it’s been already! Graduation/Wedding Tour 2010 took us to: Richmond, Cambridge MD, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and back to Hamilton. Kudos to: Mandi, Rob and Kim, Courtney, Jarrett and Jessica, Mike and Angela, John and Michelle, and of course Keslie, Arica, Joe and Ashley. It was capped off by the 4th festivities, nowhere better than right here in Hamilton - this year with special guests Jeremy and Jennifer Kitchen. And somewhere in the middle the whole community remembered the life of John Hubbard.
Amidst all of this it’s good to remember that we celebrate freedom. Our system and government are far from perfect, but the personal freedoms we have enjoyed as Americans for well over 200 years are unprecedented. But millennia before Moses laid out for the people of Israel the principles of freedom:
These are the commands, decrees and laws YHWH your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess . . . Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you . . . Hear, O Israel! YHWH our God, YHWH is one. Love YHWH your God with all heart and with all your life and with all your strength . . . and in the future, when your child asks you, “What is the meaning of [these laws] YHWH your God has commanded you?” tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but YHWH brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. . . . He brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised . . . YHWH commanded us to obey these decrees and to fear YHWH our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before YHWH our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” (From Deuteronomy 6)
We usually think of freedom as being from something. It is true, we easily become enslaved to many things: ambition, habits, impulses, addictions. . . . God can and does intervene to free us from such enslavement. Ultimately Jesus has set us free from enslavement to sin (see Romans 6). As NT believers we know that to fear God and to love him begins with receiving Jesus Christ and believing in his name (John 1:12). As we then become his children we can ask the Deuteronomy 6 question. The point is that God has given us his Word - biblical principles - for our own good. They don’t save us - God does that all himself, as with the Israelites’ deliverance from Egyptian slavery. But they are intended to make post-salvation life “go well, and prosper.” We can think of them as “principles for the good life as God intends it.” This will be our righteousness: and it is by faith from beginning to end, as Paul puts it in Romans 1:17.
Our society has increasingly defined freedom as personal autonomy, throwing off any such restrictions - which are seen as oppressive. God’s purpose is just the opposite. His principles are not restrictive, but freeing. We can see where personal autonomy - “freedom” from divine principles - is leading us.
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