Redemptive Liberty
July 5, 2026
This Fourth of July, the fireworks are bigger, the celebrations are bigger, even the Walmart displays are bigger. It is time to fly the flag and wear our red, white, and blue. This year we celebrate 250 years of what George Washington may have called The Great American Experiment.
This idea of experiment is born from a famous line in Washington’s inaugural address “And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
It is a high calling that you and I have been entrusted with: the preservation of liberty and the destiny of our Republic.
Liberty - as our founders understood it - is that individuals possess God-given dignity and rights that the state must not violate. And it is famously declared in our Declaration that it - liberty - is among our inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty gives us the freedom to be who God intends us to be and pursue what God intends us to pursue. In the declaration, we declare our liberty. We declare our independence from political tyranny, that we will protect ourselves from unjust government, and we will establish ourselves legitimate government. And as Lincoln boldly said in his Gettysburg address…this nation - under God - shall not perish from the earth. We have a new birth of freedom and are a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
And there is a deeper liberty. The Declaration speaks about political liberty. That is: liberty that is found in limited government and accountability of civil rulers. The deeper liberty is redemptive liberty. And we see redemptive liberty in our readings this morning (Zechariah 9:9-12 and Romans 7:21-8:6)