Happy Birthday, America!

The Bible is a book about freedom; it is a chronicle of liberation. If you had to place a subtitle under “Holy Bible”, you wouldn’t go wrong inscribing the words “Free Indeed” right there on its cover. The Word of God is a road map for weary travelers to find their way out of oppression and bondage. It is all about how it has been made possible, by the death, burial and resurrection of the Son of God, to pass from death in our sin to life everlasting in Jesus Christ. Peter tells us how those enslaved in darkness are called, by God’s amazing grace, into His marvelous light, that through His redemptive work on the cross, Christ has made us, who were prisoners of war and captives of the wicked one, to become a chosen generation, a holy nation, and a peculiar (an extraordinarily special) people, made to show forth the praises of our Great Deliverer. That is true Revolution!

Consider the words of Paul, found in Col. 1.13-14, as the believer’s Declaration of Independence: Our Heavenly Father has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

The Bible delivers the clarion call of a Savior who declared His mission on earth with this statement, found in Is. 61, and quoted by our Lord in Lk. 4: The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to bind up and to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty and preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

The men who forged our nation, those 56 brave souls, who in signing the Declaration of Independence pledged ‘their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor’ to the cause of freedom, were individuals who wholeheartedly embraced the Gospel. Far from being the atheists, deists and agnostics some would have us believe, our Founding Fathers were avid Jesus followers, inspired and guided by the truth that, ‘If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed!’ Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the 29 signers of the Declaration who held seminary degrees, declared, ‘My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendant love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins; I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!’