First I want to thank every generation of people who have served to maintain freedom in this country from the founding fathers that risked everything to sign the Declaration of Independence and for every service person who has fought to keep us free through all generations. This year exercising their freedom, people march in the streets declaring f*** the 4th of July because of recent court decisions to restrict their rights to kill unborn babies and many who call themselves Christians side with them using various arguments based human reasoning with no sense of accountability to God.
What does it mean to be independent? Is it a complete autonomy from all authority? Scripture is clear that God ordains governments for the purpose for restraining evil in the hearts of people and we are to submit to the authorities. Laws are not intended to make people righteous and good but restrain evil. Adam and Eve tried to have complete independence from God with the serpents temptation.
Genesis 3:5
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
You will be like God and have complete independence from Him and all authority. So we live in a cursed world inheriting the sin of Adam, the sin of striving for self autonomy from God. Yet the responsibility falls back to us that we must submit to the authority of God, even our leaders until those leaders lead us away from God as they are today. Two days ago reading Psalm 2, I reflected on how this seems to be the way of our leaders today.
Psalm 2:1–12
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
As you see in this Psalm the condition of the leaders today they plot in vain, they led people astray with ideas that are not of God, they are all of the flesh, they counsel together, and they seek INDEPENDENCE (bursting the bonds) from God. They do so with ideas of autonomy, privacy, and all human reason to justify murdering babies, irresponsible living, dependence on the government, and all forms of sexual immorality. They strive to make themselves gods. All leaders throughout history as recorded in scripture have come to know God as He asserts his power and authority over them, the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans, and today it is our current political leaders in this country that seeks to break their bondage from God. Kings and rulers of the past were not successful usurping God’s authority and neither will our current leaders be in breaking God’s right to rule and reign His creation.
Let’s pray as believers in God, not for a country of Independents but a country of Dependents declaring our dependence on God and in doing so we will be set free from the bondage of the world and sin. Let us in obedience to God love those that reject Him because Christ loved us in our disobedience to lead us to the Cross and salvation. So we should pray for them. Let us pray for the one righteous King who will return one day to establish a holy and perfect government for all of eternity. Our own King Jesus.
Happy Dependence Day, celebrate your freedom in Christ today as you declare your dependence on him.
rockbridgebc.org 