Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with A Moment of Truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to challenge you to think through the issue on this Independence Day weekend, and I want to wish everybody who's listening today just a blessed and glorious Independence Day coming up and for the week afterwards, too. This message will run for a couple of weeks, so I just want everybody to consider this proposition that liberty is learnt. Liberty is learnt.

It doesn't come naturally to the human mind and the human soul. It must be taught and inculcated, and it must be done so from the Bible. So let's consider that a little bit today, the proposition that liberty is learnt. And since it must be learnt, and it must be learnt from the Bible, it is definitely a biblical principle where we find it in its best and purest form. Let me read a Bible verse that does have bearing upon this topic today, the fact that liberty is learnt, when, in fact, Israel is taught to teach their children about the living God of the Bible in whom dwells all of the principles of liberty that we need.

And I'm going to read then from Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 4 through 9, and that text reads thusly, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorpost of your house, and on your gates." Unquote. Liberty is learnt, dear listener. For example, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ostensibly freed the slaves of their bondage to the white plantation owner. It took a long, bloody, and divisive civil war to decide the question.

But afterwards, did not the black race slaves in America practiced black race slavery? But that slave, when he heard of his newfound freedom, did he simply walk away and go and enroll in his local college, or run for Congress, or start his own business now that he was free? Oh, that's the simplistic understanding of freedom from slavery. But our founding fathers made a distinction between freedom and liberty. Oh, there is a difference, and we're unpacking that now.

Historians know better, though. And I want to quote from author Mark Oliver. In his work, After Slavery and Before Freedom, that's a significant title, After Slavery and Before Freedom, in other words, released from the bondage of slavery, did not necessarily bring freedom. And I quote him, many slaves knew nothing but their lives of servitude on the master's plantation, and, with their newfound freedom, couldn't find new opportunities. As the Reconstruction era began, many slaves just stayed right where they were, working on the same plantations for the same white overseers.

Despite grand proclamations of freedom, little had actually changed. And I quote now from one of those slaves, Freedman Charles Anderson of Arkansas, who told the Works Progress Administration, in the 1930s, when they were trying to explain why he was still at the same plantation he had been liberated as a slave. Well, that slave, Charles Anderson said, I don't know when freedom came on. I never did know. Master Stone never forced any of us to leave.

Unquote. Oh, Anderson never did leave. No, because he may have been free, but he did not yet know liberty. Freedom and liberty is not the natural state of man. From the beginning of history, that's a naive assumption extrapolated from the false premise that since I have known what liberty is since childhood, everyone else knows what liberty is from childhood.

No, I learned it. I was taught it. I didn't have it deep within my soul. Men do not naturally desire it and long for it, as President George W. Bush tried to tell us. Do you remember what he said before those purple thumb elections in Iraq back in 2005?

George W. Bush said this naively. He said, the desire for freedom resides in every human heart, and that desire cannot be contained forever by prison walls or martial laws or secret police. Over time and across the earth, freedom will find a way. Unquote. That is sentimental claptrap that gets us into wars, and it got us into war in Iraq.

How has that desire worked out in Iraq? No. Instead, what we know from history is that slavery is the rule of history, and liberty is the exception. It's not that liberty doesn't exist. It is rather the exception rather than the rule.

Liberty is not an intuitive impulse of the human soul. Liberty must be learnt. Melton Melzer in his magnum opus, Slavery, a world history. He's written a book, a comprehensive book. It's a little tedious, but it is comprehensive.

It is called Slavery, a world history. Melter documents slavery from the earliest days of our species, he does. And he, in particular, since we transition from a nomadic shepherd existence to a domestic agrarian existence, we find the seeds for true liberty learnt rather than in the heart of the human soul, we find the seeds for true liberty learnt in the pages of Scripture. So let me unpack for you this text that I read for you, and I want to make two points from it. First of all, from verses 4 through 6, remember verses 4 through 6, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. The content of liberty learnt is the love of the Trinitarian God of the Bible and his covenant law. Yes. Here in Deuteronomy, those texts I just read for you, Israel stands poised to enter the promised land with their king, Yahweh Elohim, at the head of the army.

He tells Israel, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And it was no historical anomaly that Israel had sunk into slavery. No, the first generation of Israelites had been purged, their corpses littering the wilderness because of their manifest unfaithfulness. Yeah. They said back in Numbers, we're not able to go up against the people of Canaan for they're stronger than we are.

You remember that? They said, let's elect a captain back for Egypt. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, nothing but your, except your freedom, right? And your liberty that costs nothing. The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and their garlic, their stomach dictated where they wanted to be.

A true slave mentality consisting in a manifest faithlessness, a complete failure to remember the saving acts of God in the past and the promise of salvation in the future. This was Israel. Oh, liberty is learned, dear listener. It doesn't spring up naturally in the human soul. And that faithlessness, that's what springs up naturally in the human soul, slavery and faithlessness.

And it was consistently manifest in disobedience and lapses into idolatry in Israel. But now a second generation has begun to learn liberty in Israel here in Deuteronomy, led by the two men from that first generation who did manifest faith. And that was Joshua and Caleb, Joshua and Caleb. Well, in what does their liberty consist? Well, it consists in nothing less than love of the Trinitarian God of the Bible and his covenant law.

True liberty begins here. Our verses today serve as a kind of summary. It is the majestic, profound Shema, as it's known, which is Hebrew for here. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Verse 4 states positively the negative commands of the first of the second Ten Commandments.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one. That was a revolutionary declaration in the ancient world because it flew in the face of polytheism. And the word one or alone implies monotheism, even if it doesn't state it with all the subtleties of theological formulation. Nevertheless, it is a declaration of monotheism. Christianity is a monotheistic religion.

And this is now revealed. This now revealed being was to be loved. He was to be loved with unreserved devotion. That's the sense of heart and soul. Love him with your heart and soul.

The word love has great import. Our Lord himself, Jesus Christ, employs this as a summary of the law and the prophets. Teacher, which is the great commandment of the law, he was asked? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Unquote. Ah, love for the Trinitarian God of the Bible is the first principle then of true liberty.

Liberty is different from freedom. Freedom, you can be released from chains. But what you do once you are released from those chains, excuse me, is dependent on liberty. And liberty, it must be taught. Well, this Shema, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.

This Shema now belongs to the church and should be on our hearts as much as it was commanded to be on the hearts of that second generation of Israelites. And the words of that law consist not only of these brief verses, but rather the whole of the second reading of the law that consists of the book of Deuteronomy. And consequently, the content of Israel's liberty is our liberty. Now, that's nothing less than the Trinitarian God of the Bible. And the second person of the Godhead tells us of what true liberty consists now, right?

Jesus Christ says this in John chapter eight, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Ah, true liberty, dear listener. Spiritual liberty is the first liberty. All others depend firstly upon it, spiritual liberty. But once one is set free in Christ, that freedom begins to impact all of life.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as Jefferson said, right? The gospel is the starting place for true liberty. And that must be our founding premise. The gospel is the starting place for true liberty. All other sources and forms of freedom so-called things like Marxism or Islam or Americanism.

These are just corollaries of slavery at the end of the day. A slavery, which begins as a slavery to sin, overseen by that first slave master, Satan. Ah, precisely because slavery is the default setting of the human soul that dwells in impenetrable darkness and ignorance. Well, this liberty must be learnt. Liberty must be learnt, dear listener.

It does not arise in the human mind and soul apart from it being specially revealed and particularly taught. Liberty must be learnt. Consequently, we come to point two. Liberty is learnt. This encompasses verses seven through nine.

And that is the mode of liberty learnt. The mode of liberty learnt is the consistent inculcation, the teaching of God's liberating truths. True liberty. Dear listener, I submit to you that true liberty becomes generational when it is thoroughly inculcated and taught by faithful parents to their children. George Washington said, and I quote him, a primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government.

In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country? Ah, liberty must be learnt. And it begins then in scriptural inculcation and education by faithful parents to their children. That's a sense of teaching diligently.

So abysmally ignorant and prone to wickedness is the human spirit that it will not be free unless and until it is continuously, consistently, and in a disciplined fashion taught the gospel and its object, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, for the saint about to enter the promised land, and this was the application and teaching of God's covenant law. In order to love, one must obey. And in order to obey, one must acquire a working knowledge of the Father's will for all things. This is why liberty must be learnt.

Taught, preached, illustrated, inculcated at every opportunity, the things of liberty and freedom, every opportunity made known to the child. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, the Bible says. Talk with them when you sit in your house, right? These are the things in our own context. It would be things like talk about the covenant law and God's will for your kids at the dinner table when you're playing Uno, maybe.

In our modern context, you talk about the law and God's will when you're walking in the park or driving to the grocery store. In our context, we talk about the law and God's will for our kids when they get up and brush their teeth in the morning and recite your prayers. Or at the end of the day, you talk about the law and God's will for your kids when you're putting on your PJs and saying your evening prayers. Oh, so ever-present should God's covenant law and his ways be to your senses and the senses of your children, that they should guide all of your deeds. That is, they should be signs on your hands, right?

As the text tells us, bind them on your hands as a sign. Those were the phylacteries, those little boxes with scriptures in them that the Hebrews would put on their hands and then over their foreheads as frontlets between your eyes, as the text tells us. So ever-present should be the gospel, that it should guide all of your thoughts and all of your actions, right? They should be on billboards on the highway, carved into the doors of your very house. Everywhere your eyes gaze or your hand touches or your foot sets is a potential opportunity for the gospel to be taught, dear listener.

Liberty is learnt. It does not spring naturally from the human soul. The fallen human soul has slavery spring up naturally from within it. It must be a heart renewed in Jesus Christ, a life dedicated to God that has true liberty springing from it, and thus liberty is learnt. And when the fathers and leaders of the church began to formulate principles of political liberty, they brought to bear the things that we've been talking about, dear listener.

All true liberty begins in the gospel. Ah, no king but Christ was the rallying cry of the revolutionary era. No king but Christ, and they learned true liberty from the gospel. Liberty is learnt, dear listener. Slavery is native to our nature, not freedom.

Natural God-given rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not naturally springing from the heart and mind. They must be revealed and taught. We are created for liberty. We are, dear listener. We are created for liberty, but we are created for liberty in Christ.

And the principles of liberty must be consequently revealed and taught. Liberty is learnt. Whether we're talking about freedom of speech and religion or freedom to defend one's person and family with arms or the right to live in a just society where real criminals are punished and everyone has a right to a speedy trial or jury of one's peers or security in one's persons and property, these are principles that must be learnt. They do not spring naturally from the human soul. When it's not taught, we sink back to our default setting, and that is slavery.

And that's happening today. For example, are our fellow citizens wrong in being passionately aggrieved at the school boards that surreptitiously bring in critical race theory into our classrooms? No, we're not wrong for feeling aggrieved. Or are we wrong to be adamant in opposing the gender confusion being deliberately sown in the hearts and minds of impressionable children? We're not wrong.

No. Instead of George Washington, we have men in makeup and dresses held up as models for behavior. Drag queens instead of kings of liberty, right? Oh, liberty is learnt, dear listener, when it is taught. Liberty is learnt when it is taught.

James Madison tells us a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people. He understood this, James Madison. He said it succinctly, right? A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people. Liberty is learnt.

Ben Franklin puts it this way. He says, a nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins, unquote. Oh, Franklin has encapsulated it so well, and we see it transpiring in our own day, do we not? The religion of ignorance prevails in America today, and tyranny has begun.

Tyranny is now here in our nation. It has not only begun, but it is growing and taking over because of the religion of ignorance that has prevailed in our public schools, in our public media, and in the streets of America, even our government leaders are cynically, consciously inculcating the religion of ignorance on America so they can captivate us as tyrants and we as slaves. But a nation of well-informed men, we are not well-informed to stay. Biden can't even cite the Declaration of Independence without getting confused and losing his way.

A nation of well-informed men who have been taught, once again, there's the idea that liberty is learnt. Franklin says, a nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. I will not be enslaved. I have been taught. The inculcation of my rights that God has given me will not enslave those who know them, and I will not be enslaved because I have been taught.

Liberty must be learnt. I have learnt liberty over the course of my life, and I will not be made a slave. The New Testament does reveal to us what the Old Testament pointed to. That is, that the one God of the Bible consists in the three persons of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the first liberty is spiritual liberty.

Just because a man is set free, as we saw back with Mr. Anderson in Alabama, just because a man is set free does not mean he has liberty. And our founding fathers understood this. Just because a man is released from his chains, it doesn't mean he knows what to do, how to behave, how to behave and exercise his liberties if he doesn't know what they are, if he's not been educated in how to exercise and defend them, even as the freed slaves who followed Sherman in his march to the sea. Sherman set free thousands and thousands of slaves, but who knew not what to do? They couldn't provide for themselves.

They didn't know what it meant to speak freely. They hadn't been taught to speak freely or to form a jury in a trial for their peers or how to defend themselves with arms. In fact, the National Rifle Association was first formed to teach the freed slaves how to defend themselves and use weapons to defend themselves. But all of that did not happen overnight. Liberty must be learned, dear listener.

Just because a man is set free does not mean he has liberty. And our founding fathers knew this and inculcated it with everybody. And I want to also then close by quoting one of the founding fathers, Mr. Abraham Baldwin. Now, we don't all know who Abraham Baldwin was, but he was a signer to the constitution. And he says this then about liberty and its inculcation in teaching.

He says, and I quote, when the minds of the people in general are viciously disposed and unprincipled and their conduct disorderly, sounds like the generation today, right? When the minds of the people in general are viciously disposed and unprincipled and their conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with greater confusions and evils more horrid than the wild, uncultivated state of nature. It can only be happy when the public principles and opinions are properly directed and their manners regulated. This is an influence beyond the reach of laws and punishments and can be claimed only by religion and education.

True civilization and liberty, Baldwin says, can only be claimed by religion and education. Liberty must be learnt, dear listener. Baldwin goes on to say, it should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of religion and morality and early to place the youth under the forming hand of society that by instruction they may be molded to the love of virtue and good order. Unquote. Abraham Baldwin, signer of the Constitution, did indeed understand how important instruction is to inculcating liberty.

Liberty must be learnt that by instruction youth may be molded to the love of virtue and good order. Liberty is learnt, dear listener. And as you contemplate, then liberty, our freedom, our Constitution, during this weekend, 4th of July weekend and 4th of July week, really, I hope you take all week to consider these things, then understand how important education is and why the enemies of liberty, the friends of tyranny realize the importance of tyranny realize the importance of education, why they've worked so hard to take over the schools, and they now teach gender rather than generation.

Yes, they teach tyranny rather than liberty, the tyranny of sexual identity rather than the liberty of biblical and constitutional principles, and that must be turned around. Liberty is learnt, dear listener, and we must get about back to inculcating the basics, educating the basics of liberty into the hearts and minds of our children, the next generation, and we must always understand that it is the love of the living God of the Bible that begins freedom, that turns the key to liberty in the hearts and minds of our children. Love of God, love of His Word, love of the principles of liberty that we find there in the gospel.

Liberty from sin and death, first and foremost in Christ, and then liberty flows out like water over the land. Subsequently, when we have, first of all, the spiritual liberty. Spiritual liberty is the first liberty after all, and then we can teach liberty in every other sphere of life. We must teach it, though. We must bring education to bear, and we must understand that liberty is learnt.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and we do teach. We understand that liberty is learnt, and we inculcate liberty, first and foremost, spiritual liberty at New Geneva, and subsequently, liberty in every other sphere of life. And we encourage you to cross our threshold. Perhaps come and visit us. You've been meaning to, perhaps, but come and visit us at New Geneva.

New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for more feedback or more information, perhaps, at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.