Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with the Moment of Truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want you to consider the four properties of freedom that were articulated by our founding fathers. Most people seem to know what freedom is, or at least they think they know what freedom is in the sense of our founding fathers. But really, much of what our founders understood as freedom goes over the heads of many Americans today.

So with the 4th of July season upon us already, what a great time of year. I love the 4th. Hot summer days with fireworks and great food and fun, food, faith, and freedom is what characterizes the 4th of July for me. And so I would like to take just a few moments to review what our founders understood as the four crucial properties to freedom, without which freedom is not freedom at all. And so let's go through that here today.

One of my favorite far side cartoons that was done by Gary Larson has the founding fathers sitting around an empty parchment, scratching their heads with a quill pen, and Thomas Jefferson saying, now is that us the people or we the people? Now, I like that cartoon because it pictures the way that many people naively see our founding fathers kind of making up the constitution as they went along. When in reality, they were drawing upon centuries of thinking and practice and hard experience. And this includes their understanding of freedom, which we of course want to treat today.

The great German author Goethe said, none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. That's a profound and compact statement that says a lot. None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Oh, in order that we might never fall prey to falsely believing we are free when in reality we are slaves. Let's examine the now lost idea of freedom as understood by our founding fathers.

There are four properties of freedom our founding fathers saw as indispensable to the constitution. Four properties of freedom without which our constitution is but an empty scrap of parchment as Gary Larson portrayed it. Well, that first property of freedom is true true freedom begins with spiritual liberty. Ah, so crucial, dear listener. As a pastor, especially I exhort this to you.

True freedom begins with spiritual liberty. The man who is free in his spirit can never be enslaved by anyone or any society. And conversely, the man in spiritual bondage can never be free in any society. All around him, a man may have liberty to act in any way he pleases, but if he does not know how to act, he is but a slave of his desires. For America and most of the founding fathers, that spiritual freedom is summed up in Jesus' words, and I quote, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Ah, despite what you hear in the mainstream media and the culture of death all around us, the founding fathers never conceived of a separation of church and state. In the narrow way, it's being interpreted today. No, the first amendment guaranteed that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, not that religion would have no part in American life into the very chambers and councils of our government, for that matter.

Just before the war for independence, when Boston was being blockaded by the British and all seemed hopeless, one of the leaders of Boston, a man named William Prescott, one of those men who's often overlooked, but one of the great founding fathers, William Prescott. He was a member of the Committee of Correspondence, which committees formed the basis for the Continental Congress. Well, he wrote during the siege of Boston, he said, our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious and transmit them to their posterity.

Let us, then, be of one heart and stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. And may he, of his infinite mercy, grant us deliverance out of all our troubles." Unquote. The patriot William Prescott. At the very heart of the revolution and founding of our Congress, Congress was first and prior a spiritual freedom.

Our founding fathers were free in spirit and soul before they ever established a government. They were free in their hearts, their minds, their spirits because they had found redemption and liberty from sin and death first in Jesus Christ. No human government, no benevolent dictator, no human law can give you spiritual freedom. Only Christ can give you this freedom. And then, conversely, once you have spiritual freedom, no government, no tyrant, no law can take that away from you.

The man who is thus free in his spirit can never be enslaved by any society. Well, the second property of freedom that I want to share with you, which the Founding Fathers all knew to their toenails, that second property of freedom is true freedom is bound up with self-government. Self-government. Oh, we have lost sight of this idea of self-control and self-government as the first government. Government begins in the will of the individual citizen, not in Washington, D.C.

In our day, of course, the use of the word government has narrowed to refer to the federal government. Ask any man on the street, what's government? Where's government? Well, it's in Washington, D.C., of course, right? No.

The Noah Webster English Dictionary of 1828 defines government as direction, regulation, control, restraint. That is government, as understood by our Founding Fathers. Well, government in its broadest sense was seen operative in five concentric spheres, dear listener. Government was seen as transpiring in five concentric spheres that begins with the smallest sphere, that is the self. One must be able to govern oneself.

The next sphere was the family. No father can control and govern his family if he has lost government of himself. And then the school is the third concentric sphere. The church, the fourth concentric sphere. And then the civil government is the last, the fifth concentric sphere.

The beginning and basic sphere of government begins with the self. If a man cannot govern himself, what hope is there for government in Washington, D.C., or Boise or City Hall? From the beginning, self-government has formed the very basis of character and personality for the godly man. For example, Proverbs 25, 28 says, a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Ah, that's the essence of self-government.

A man without self-government is like a city broken into and left without walls. The unbridled lust of an over-sexualized culture, the cynical greed of U.S. aid government officials, for example, or the mushrooming credit card debt and personal bankruptcy of the American consumer, the lawsuits that spring up like poisonous weeds, as Amos put it in his day, or the violence and murder and assault and rape and road rage, the rampant divorce and sexual immorality of our mores and in the media. All of these and more testify to the breakdown of self-government in the individual American in his life and culture.

We hear every spoiled, self-indulgent American insist, my rights, my freedom, away with responsibility. But freedom is not license, dear listener. Freedom is not license to do anything we please. But freedom is a cherished right that has, as one of its properties, the necessity of behaving responsibly according to the biblical moral code, that is, to exercise self-government. Ironically, our very liberties and freedoms depend upon this principle of self-government.

A man who cannot govern his anger and rage, but he assaults and kills, he'll have to be restrained by external government, that is, the state. The man who does not have self-government and cannot control his greed and his covetousness, but he steals and lies and cheats, he'll have to be restrained by external government, that is, the state. Or the man who cannot control his sexual lusts, but commits incest and sodomy and rape and pedophilia, that man will have to be restrained by external government because he has no internal government, that external government being the state.

In other words, the tyranny of the state bears an inverse relationship to the amount of self-government amongst the individuals of that society. That is a formula you can count on, dear listener. The tyranny of the state bears an inverse relationship to the amount of self-government amongst the individuals of that society. The greater the self-government of the citizens, the lesser the need for the external government of the state. And conversely, the lesser the self-government of the citizens, the greater is the need for the external government of the state.

Oh, America is, as Biden's open borders illustrates, America today is like a city broken into and left without walls. Without self-government, we are defenseless, dear listener. Our Department of Homeland Security may make of America an impregnable fortress. Our Attorney General may multiply agents and peer into our computers and bedrooms and bank accounts under the Patriot Act, but you will not be able to secure this nation until her respective individual citizens, you and me, until we secure our own out-of-control behavior with self-government.

Freedom is not license to do anything we please, but rather, freedom is a cherished right that has, as one of its properties, the necessity of behaving responsibly according to the Biblical moral code, that is to exercise self-government. Well, the third property of freedom, as understood by our founding fathers, the third property of true freedom, true freedom recognizes and serves its author. Oh, yes, dear listener, we must have respect unto God. True freedom recognizes and serves its author. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, right?

So states that memorable, illuminating clause in our Declaration of Independence. The great King of heaven and earth is the one who has endowed us with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our founding fathers understood this to the core of their being. Thomas Jefferson took some of this very wording in the Declaration from the Christian philosopher John Locke, who reasoned that since God has endowed us with free agency and self-government, the authority and power of civil government resides in the people themselves, and no one has the right to rule unless the majority of the people have elected that person to occupy that high office.

Do you realize how revolutionary this concept was in 1776, dear listener? As familiar as it is to many of us who remember these things in our own day? Well, even in England, where our first liberties and rights originated, the philosophy of government still held for the divine right of kings. Oh, ergo King George III, who thought he had the divine right from God to rule the American colonies. Oh, au contraire, dear Mr. Tyrant, no.

The people, indeed, we, the people, are that by whom the executive and the legislative and the judicial branches of government must be governed. God endowed kings and princes under the divine right of kings to rule. They said that God endowed kings and princes the right to rule, and that therefore power moved downward in a pyramid from king to princes to magistrates, and then, if ever, to the people. Our founding fathers inverted that pyramid, sensing the biblical model where, indeed, power flowed from the people to their representatives and the executive, if you will. But through it all, it was God who authored freedom in the first place.

Freedom originates with him, bestowed then to the common mass of mankind, and government is only a steward of God, given power on behalf of and at the leisure of the people. We, the people. Every other model of government on the face of the earth, from the tower of Babel on down, has had only and exclusively one source for power, and that was the state. Most of our own citizens have no clue as to whence their liberties. Most of our own citizens have adopted the default setting of the human spirit, which is always the pagan model, the model of tyranny, the model which says our rights and freedom come from the state, not from God.

But it was not so with our founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson said so presciently, he said, God, who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Ah, very profound from Thomas Jefferson. Men will, even as they have in our own day, begin to cede those liberties given from God, begin to cede those liberties to the state, which they see as the head and source of them anyway, so many people.

This is the very attraction of many of our own leaders to the systems and policies of the nations of the world, why our Supreme Court justices can consult other law codes of tyrants rather than our own constitution, why socialists in our own Congress can fawn and drool over the United Nations rather than see to our own free institutions, and why our public schools no longer feel it necessary to teach government and history and civics, but sex ed instead. So, if we refuse to acknowledge the High King of Heaven who bestowed our liberties, we will never miss them when they're taken from us. Ah, make no mistake about this, fellow citizen.

There are forces in America that are working double time to remove the conviction that our liberties are the gift of God, as Thomas Jefferson put it, right? Progressive culture, militant Islam, a hostile press, a whole host of forces would like nothing more than to remove from the collective American soul the conviction that our liberties are the gift of God. Do not let them do that, dear listener, dear fellow citizen. Always remember, true freedom recognizes and serves its author, the living God.

Well, the fourth and final property of freedom, which our Founding Fathers understood to their toenails, the fourth and final property of liberty is, number four, true freedom is a liberty tree watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants. Yes, true freedom is metaphorically a liberty tree watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants. Ah, freedom costs, freedom is expensive, and it can be lost. Thomas Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Oh, this is a significant insight.

Implicit in it are several profound principles, dear listener. Thomas Jefferson saw it. First, it must be noted that tyrants intuitively seek to usurp the liberty of free men. Oh, tyrants cannot stand to see the average man breathe a free breath or earn a free dollar. Just as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, could not stand to see the freedom of the sons of Israel continue, just as King George III could not stand to see the freedom of the sons of England continue in the American colonies.

So, ah, the progressives and socialists and one-worlders in our own country cannot stand to see the freedom of the sons of liberty continue to the next generation. Every generation has faced its own tyrant. The names change, but the principle is always the same. Freedom must die in order that the power of the tyrant might live. Tyrants clinging to their own power and privilege will not relinquish them cheaply to the cost of their very lives.

Therefore, it is necessary for patriots to insist that they pay that price. Tyrants must either yield or die to the advance of free men. This and thus we find the tree of liberty watered by the blood of those very tyrants. And secondly, it must be noted as well that the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of the patriots too. If we insist that the tyrant yield his blood for the life of the tree of liberty, it is only reasonable to assume that we will yield our own blood for that which nourishes us.

As Andrew Ford puts it, he said, the price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood. The person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who's willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty. Profoundly put, are you willing to die for your freedom? The natural state of man is for a few to rule in tyranny over the many. Such has been the course of history for the larger share of our race.

Freedom is the exemption, the exception. Freedom is the realm of the few. Freedom is the province of those willing to pay the price of their blood, having been preceded by the down payment of their forefathers' blood, and having had the promise of the mortgage of their sons' and grandsons' blood. This is true because, just as certainly as the struggle between good and evil will go on to the end of time, so the warfare between freedom and tyranny will go on until the Lord himself returns in great glory to free us one last time for eternity.

You stand here today in a time and place where freedom is again threatened by the tyranny of those who we face in a judicial tyranny, for example, that would rob us of our own property through eminent domain. We face a social and cultural tyranny that would force a soul-destroying diversity and multiculturalism of same-sex marriage and unrestricted illegal immigration.

We face a tyranny of Islamic law and terrorism from radical Muslims who would destroy biblical freedom and our present government, which same government seems increasingly unable to defend us against them properly, and we face the tyranny of a weak and ignorant majority in America who have not yet awoken to the need of the hour, that they might make the necessary sacrifices for theirs and their posterity's freedom, too. It's time to awaken from our sleep, America. Daniel Webster said, God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it, unquote.

Freedom was not won by the summer soldier and the fair-weather friend of liberty in the beginning. The ones who said, I support the Patriot troops, but not the Revolutionary War. Freedom is and always has been kept and transmitted to posterity by those willing to sacrifice blood and treasure, that is, their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, as our Founding Fathers did. The couch potato will not preserve freedom. The man and woman consumed with cocooning in their own little world will not preserve freedom.

The man who's only merely looking out for number one will neither preserve freedom nor his number one, that is, himself. No. Such men will never pay the price, will never bear the burden, will never make any sacrifice for yours or even their own liberty, and consequently will never be free. Samuel Adams had some very strong language for the Tories and the fence-sitters in the middle of the rotors in his own day. He said, If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude rather than the animated contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace.

We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that you were ever our countrymen. Samuel Adams. You can hear the contempt for cowardice and weakness in that freedom costs. It is expensive, and it can be lost.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Are you willing to pay the price of freedom? Are you willing to learn and absorb and become these four properties of freedom that you've heard here? If so, then you will be free, as only an American can be free, and you will be free indeed. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

We hope that you have just a joyous and a refreshing Fourth of July, and may you learn and become these four attributes, these four properties of freedom as you live out your life as an American. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. We invite you to cross our threshold, find out who we are, worship with us, and you can give us more feedback by calling our number, 208-523-0196. More information and feedback, 208-523-0196.