Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence day everybody.  While we are at it, can we pause to remember that we are free because of Jesus Christ's death on the cross. He died to set us free, and because of Him we are free indeed.

Around 1700 a body of people called Puritans caught hold of this idea of Christ's freedom and ran with it. The Puritans took over England for a while, and were largely responsible for developing America.

To be sure the Puritans had their faults.  Just read any of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works: The Scarlet Letter or The House of the Seven Gables for example.  This son of the Puritans certainly understood his ancestor’s sins.  Or read about, The Salem Trials.  You get my drift.

But right or wrong, the Puritans seem to have had something that we might have lost:

·         Stones – The Puritans had courage and were willing to fight and even die for what they believed.  In our emasculated society nobody wants controversy.

·         Faith – Cut a Puritan and he bleeds Bible.  Puritan faith was not about wishy-washy warm fuzzy feelings about faith in faith and every other thing found lying on the road.  Puritan faith was about objective truth found in the Bible, the facts of history, and hard study diligently applied.

The simple fact is that without the Crucifixion of Christ there would be no America.  Or at least not an America as we know it: that place where freedom is prized above most other values.

The Puritans were not the only ones.  Down through the ages, this Christ has instilled in the human race a love of life and freedom that does not otherwise exist in the world at all.  Here are a few you should remember:

·         28: John — beheaded

·         35: Stephen — stoned

·         44: James — beheaded

·         155: Polycarp — burned

·         203: Saints Felicitas and Perpetua — arena games with wild animals

·         320: The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — drowning and exposure

·         1415: Hus — burned

·         1555: Latimer and Ridley — burned

·         1556: Cranmer — burned

I’m not saying that we should agree with all of these.  They made mistakes, they sinned, but they had courage when it counted.  Today we stand on their ashes and their bones, and are free because they followed this Jesus.

Like it or not; believe it or not; reject it or not: this is what built America. And in our hour of deepest need: this is what will rebuild America again — if we will only let it....