“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Isaiah 61:1-2
As the United States of America celebrates Independence Day it reminds us again that God created man to be free. Man was created with a free will to choose if they would love God and obey Him or if they would reject God and choose to worship themselves. When the
Declaration of Independence was written it said that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain rights”. One of those rights is liberty. When God created man He made him with total freedom. There was no government to rule over men, no dictators to demand compliance or taxes or tribute. God gave man one command. It was a command that God gave them to escape slavery. God knew if man disobeyed and ate of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and evil that they would come under the control of sin and be isolated from God. By Genesis 3 man and woman gave up their freedom to do anything they pleased by choosing to rebel against God. They turned their back on the one true kind and loving master to serve a master that both hated them and wanted wanted to abuse them.
From that time on man has suffered under the rule of Satan, sin and evil masters. Man has longed to find freedom from that situation. We read in the Old Testament how God would deliver His people time and again and they would repeatedly turn their back on Him and sell them back into slavery. For that reason God provided a permanent path to liberty and freedom. What we humans could not do ourselves, God did through Jesus Christ. The Lord on a Sabbath day picked the scroll of Isaiah and read words that clearly defines why He came to earth.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Note the two uses of the word liberty. The Lord came to proclaim liberty – to tell people there was a way to achieve it. Then He states this way to liberty will set free those who are oppressed by slavery to sin. That liberty was based on truth. Slavery is based on lies. Our country was founded on liberty and truth. It is the reason we are the greatest country in the world.
Today, however, the enemy is attacking just as he did against Adam and Eve in Eden and consistently against Israel. He is attacking truth and presenting lies in its place.
Patrick Henry in his great, ‘Give me liberty or give me death” speech said, “Our chains are forged!” He refers to the the prophets who stated that because of sin, “chains [were] being formed of immeasurable weight” for the Israelites. Just as the Israelites were falling under the power of Satan and would suffer just consequences for it, Henry knew that the colonists were likewise about to be chained in slavery to the British. Today God’s freedom is under attack to the same lies and distortions of the truth. Freedom comes through the Good Shepherd only.