Celebrate Your Independence – From Britain & From Sin!
Word-Of-The-Day: “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles…” (Isaiah 42:6)
Now that we are into June, the next big event on the calendar is Independence Day, the 4th of July. This year is the 249th anniversary of the official birthdate of the United States. We could consider it the year prior given that our Army, Navy and Marine Corps all formed through edicts of the 2nd Continental Congress in 1775, or 250 years ago.
It could also be considered as our nation’s birthdate when the 1st Continental Congress was held on 5 September 1774, when the first independent, united gathering of the colonies’ representatives came together to create the Declaration of Rights that was sent as a petition to King George III.
Independence for the American Colonies meant separating from the British Empire and King George III for increasing subjugation, taxation, and violence against Americans and American goods. These skirmishes began in the 1760s and increased, beginning with the Boston Massacre in 1770. (The first American killed in the beginning battle of the American Revolutionary War was Crispus Attucks, a mulatto former slave.)
The 2nd Continental Congress produced the Declaration of Independence after exhausting all reconciliation with the British crown. It was a repudiation of the illicit and illegitimate treatment of the fledging United States by Britain, a statement that called the United States to come together in a covenant to remove itself from the chains of tyranny and flourish without restraints.
Our Founding Fathers weren’t sure, in 1776, what independence would look like but we knew it had to better than the current situation they were in. They had Faith,
Isaiah 42:6 is what you could consider to be the ‘Declaration of Independence’ God gave us Christians. God in this verse declares that He will bring us all (Jew and Gentile) into a new covenant (the Gospel message) by providing His Son.
This Godly ‘Declaration of Independence’ provides us the means, once and for all, of repudiating the illicit and illegitimate treatment of man by sin and Satan. God declares that His Son, Jesus, is given to us as the Ultimate Sacrifice so that we can be free from the tyranny of sin, for all eternity.
Jesus leads us through this declaration into becoming disciples and apostles for His glory, providing us His everlasting love and a place in His eternal home. Before this, the Jews were to live up to the Levitical Law, and failing that, be faithful in bringing sacrifices to atone for their sins.
But God used this example to show this simply was not enough, that we would fall short and needed God to provide His Son as that Ultimate Sacrifice to gain our independence from sin.
God provides us Jesus, His Manifestation, to ‘take hold of our hands’ and lead us into the Righteousness He called us into, if we accept Jesus as our leader. When we accept Jesus as our leader, God promises He ‘will keep us’, and His children and thus as children He will provide us eternal shelter In Heaven.
Through Jesus, God will transform us into being ‘His covenant for the people’, an example of His love and grace and by being an example of Him by carrying the Gospel through the Great Commission ‘a light’ for all people to attract those who yet have not come to Christ.
Christians can celebrate not only our nation’s independence on the 4th of July, but also celebrate our own personal independence from sin. But we as Christians also need to be like Paul Revere and announce the Gospel and make all aware that it’s not the British who are coming, but it is Jesus that is coming – not to enslave us in tyranny, but to free us from sin.
Jesus will be coming for all; He will come to gather His followers to come to our Father’s eternal home in Heaven, and will come to gather the non-believer for judgement and their eternal home in Hell.
