Posts

Showing posts with the label license

Sermon on John 8:31-36, for Reformation Day, "Slavery, License, and Freedom"

Sermon outline -freedom turned toward sin and evil purposes ceases to be freedom 1. Truth is under fire today. Can truth be known? Obstacles and bias, mind of flesh doesn’t understand the things of the spirit. Always asking from our direction...but what about from God’s direction? Can God make His truth known to us? Some would say no. When someone tells you that it’s impossible to know the truth, ask is that because they have trouble knowing or finding truth, or whether God is somehow incapable of making truth known. God’s hands seem to be tied. But this falsely limits God’s power just because we recognize our own limitations of knowledge and truth. Such a God is “too small.” The true God can and does communicate His truth in a knowable and meaningful way. Didn’t just leave it up to our “best guess.” Abide in Jesus’ word, be a disciple >> know the truth >> truth will set you free. 2. Blindness to slavery (of sin), and the true nature of freedom. Slavery in Egypt, in Babylon...

Freedom from or for what?

October newsletter We are a country of people who ostensibly love freedom. We take pride in the Declaration of Independence and it’s proclamation that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We consider liberty or freedom to be the freedom from oppression, tyranny, unjust laws and taxation, etc. From this founding document others later argued against the injustice of slavery and inequality. Thus, when we talk about freedom, it is usually understood as freedom from something. Freedom from what constrains, holds back, imposes expectations or limitations on us. Yet even in a free society, we recognize that this freedom is not completely unbounded. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. humorously put it: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.” We also talk widely about freedom of expression, and as that is practiced in countless forms, we see...