"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. "For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." - Matthew 11:28-30 NASU
Jesus, who is from Heaven, came more than to save us but to exchange with us. His exchange rate is an easy yoke for a heavy-laden yoke and a light burden for a weary one. That is the exchange. However, many folks do not want an exchange but prefer one way transfer to drop off their burdens at the feet of Jesus and then leave without responsibility. Thank you, Jesus; see you tomorrow when I drop off my dirty laundry. I don't want the responsibility. Not knowing they also negate any freedom without responsibility.
However, Jesus exchanges our yoke of slavery for His yoke of freedom. And Jesus exchanges a beast of burden for a burden that somebody can carry. We miss understanding what it means about a light yoke and easy burden.
Receiving freedom is easy. Someone else paid the cost, and we received it. But maintaining freedom is difficult. We want an easy life without cost to us. But the easy life is not what Jesus promised to those who come to Him. There is a high cost to follow Jesus out of the valley of the shadow of death into the light of His kingdom.
Why do people hate freedom? Because freedom costs too much for the flesh to pay!
Living is much easier when someone else makes the decisions. Life was much easier to live as a child than an adult. I am not overlooking some who had horrible childhoods. But for many, childhood came with little responsibility. Parents made decisions to our dislike, but we didn't have to bear the weight of each day's survival, so it was an acceptable tradeoff.
Some people prefer prison to freedom. In prison, someone makes every decision for you—no yokes with people; me against the world—no burdens to carry. Life in prison may not be the best life, but meeting our needs with no personal responsibility to maintain that lifestyle seems ideal.
People are petitioning to have their student loans paid and a free college education from here on out without cost to anyone. Except there is always a cost to someone. It may be free, but someone must pay the price.
It is not about free education anyway; that is a ruse of the flesh. What people want; is choice without consequence. If this doesn't work out for me, I want a free ride without consequence. I don't want to pay a cost and fail in the end. I'm okay with failing if someone else pays for it. We don't want equal opportunities; we want equality of outcome no matter what we do with opportunity.
There is nothing new under the sun. What people did hundreds and thousands of years ago is still applicable today. There has been no evolution of man in the six thousand years since Adam. No temptation is uncommon to man.
We, the people, forsake our freedom to have a judge divide the inheritance of our families while the attorneys take the lion's share. Remember the young man who tried to force Jesus to judge between him and his brother? What was Jesus' response? Luke 12:13-15 Your best life now does not consist of possessions. Too many people are owned by possessions. An abundance of possessions is why I am not worried about the USA being invaded by conventional war. We have too much stuff and are willing to fight and die to keep it. The pride of life has a stranglehold over a nation that God hasn't blessed as much since Israel had Solomon as king.
We hate freedom because we, the people, have become like Republicans that are absorbed in building bigger barns for retirement. Luke 12:16-21 We, the people, have sold our soul to capitalists with no caps looking for bigger fields to plow than the 335 million US citizens. It is no wonder big businesses are turning to state capitalism in China, which offers a marketplace of 1.4 billion people or the 1.4 billion people of India.
Even God put a reset for His people so that the richer don't get richer and make the poor their slaves. There is a small reset every seven years and a large one every fifty years. Capitalism in the Bible does have caps. The US used to break up too big of companies and put an end to monopiles. But now, US companies are borderless and not committed to the people and ways that got this far.
But we, the people, are deceived by the two choices Satan gives us, making us think choice equals free people. We, the people, renounce the money-hungry Republicans in favor of the false compassionate Democrats. Like Judas, we complain against wealth when Congress has its hand in the moneybag. Matthew 26:9, we could sell that expensive perfume and use the money to help the poor. Yea, after the Democrats take their cut, living in the same luxury as their counterparts, the Republicans.
But it is not the Republicans and Democrats who hate freedom; we, the people, also hate freedom. Congress is our representative, aren't they? We voted for them and sent them to represent us.
Why do we, the people hate freedom? Because we want milk and honey without the difficulty of overcoming the personal giants in our path. The Giants are too hard to defeat. We must take special care of everyone who has a problem. And everyone is part of a minority group that must be lifted above the majority. Life is too hard! Give us a king and government to defeat the giants! And we will serve the king! We want a congress who will fight our personal wars.
Give us meat to eat and jobs to do! We, the people, care more about filling our plates with food and our garages with stuff we don't need. Forget about the four seasons. We only want one season: the season where we harvest. Who has time to break up fallow ground and sow seed? Give us a harvest, Mr. President!
Some Christians don't even follow Jesus for eternal life. They follow Him but keep one foot in Egypt. Whoever offers a free fish and bread dinner promising an easy life will get their vote. The food of this world will perish, but eating His flesh and drinking His blood leads to eternal life. Nevertheless, we see these Christians plucking themselves up, deconstructing, and no longer walking with Jesus. John 6:66
God has set before us life and death and says to choose life. The devil has set two choices before us, leading to death. Republicans and Democrats keep playing good cop and bad cop with each election cycle. Who is the good, and who is the bad, you ask? That, my fellow citizen, is subjective. But the church will come together, neither Republican nor Democrat, but as Christ followers and choose life, choose God. It is not political parties that are our fight but the ideologies of man that exalt themselves above God.
And I continue with why we the people hate freedom. Like Eve, we don't want to work six days a week to care for an entire garden and sharing the work and fruit thereof with our neighbor. We prefer to care for a single tree one day a week and leisure under it six days a week. Instead of a workforce we are now influencers for others to be as we are.
Let’s influence from under our one tree and sell the rest of our land to foreign nationals while we debate if we should even be a nation. And open the borders because of our ill-gotten American privilege that we stole from all the wonderful groups of people with communities of love that never hurt anyone. And all acts of compassion to clothe the naked, visit the sick with remedies, feed the hungry, and dig wells for water, were colonization. How wicked are we for wanting to share the abundant life! Maybe that is why so many remain quiet like Adam; the cost of freedom is too high to speak up and say this is not right. It is easier to go along with the influencers and lose the garden.
Like Adam, those who can see, we want to blame the community God has given us rather than stand up for the truth that God has said. Jesus made it possible to love truth and grace and to have justice with mercy. All we must do is go to Him and exchange our pride to learn of His humility.
We hate freedom because freedom takes a lot of work to keep and proliferate. The harvest is plentiful; the labors are few. Harvest is true spiritually and naturally. Our churches have abundant opportunities to see the lost saved. And in our becoming a post-freedom nation, we are still the land of opportunities.
But less I belabor the point, and I could; true freedom is found within the person, not one's surroundings. When we are free on the inside, we can bare much on the outside. But many, like those in prison, had to lose their outside freedom to find true freedom from within. As a nation, this doesn't have to be, but it is the road most taken. We can choose Jesus and responsibility now to maintain freedom.
People will celebrate on Tuesday, July 4th, 2023, for assorted reasons. And for reasons that are incompatible with others to save this nation. What is your reason?
Many will celebrate, like the Pharisees. They celebrate the idea of freedom. In their heart, they hate freedom because they haven't experience freedom themselves. Pharisees trust a vast system of rules and regulations that promise freedom but always fall short. The law perfectly converts the soul but never makes anything perfect nor allows freedom to seek a better way or covenant. Psalms 19:7, Hebrews 7:19
Many will celebrate, not knowing what spirit they are celebrating. They hope the next election will rain down fire on those they disagree with. They don't understand that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. And they are okay with another bloody war, civil or revolution. Like Peter, we do have two swords.
We have the sword of the spirit that fights spiritual enemies, and we have a sword of the flesh that only should be used as a last resort. The sword of the flesh is only a temporary measure that boots the real problem to the next generation to figure out. Bloodshed continues from generation to generation. The sword of the spirit can renew one's mind without bloodshed.
Then there will be those who celebrate the fourth, coming out of the darkness into the light. They have found the balance of grace and truth. They are not looking for a savior of the nation or the world because they have found Him in Christ Jesus. They put no trust in the chariots of men and no confidence in the flesh of men. This group knows the cost of what Jesus did on the cross. This group knows it is finished and vain to continue in the flesh as if it isn't. This group knows to keep this newfound freedom in Christ, it will take praying and standing. This group doesn't hate freedom. This group has embraced the easy yoke and light burden to keep standing when all seems lost. This group knows freedom equals responsibility, and there is a price to get it and keep it.
For those who are willing to pay the cost of keeping freedom stay tuned in the weeks to come. I hope to show you where God heard His people crying out 2 Chronicles 7:14 before the 2020 election. God's ways are not our ways, but they can become our ways if we are willing to follow Jesus and take responsibility for our freedom.