Sermon Supplement, Kihei Baptist, Kihei, Maui, Hawaii
Morning Worship Service, Lord's Day, July 9, 2006
MESSAGE: SOUL LIBERTY, Text: John 20:30,31
Rev. Glenn Armstrong D.D., Pastor
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Current Message Series: July 2, God of Our Fathers -Move Not the Ancient Landmarks,
July 9, God of Spiritual Liberty-Soul Liberty
July 16, God of Personal Liberty- Freedom of Conscience
July 23, God of International Concern - The Biblical Significance of Growing Centralization
July 30, God of Universal Control - When God Rules
This series of messages will help every believer understand some of the many personal blessings God offers to everyone who trusts Him as their Savior. The messages are also designed to afford us a better understanding of the historical struggles faced by Christians throughout church history and how their persecutions produced personal freedom for us today. Freedom is not an experience for about four billion of earth's six billion people living today!
The series is also designed to make us more alert about a growing world problem in which Christian believers are loosing many of their benefits and which have taken the lives of million in the past--lives which were given to gain freedom for us. It may take many more millions in the days ahead as the world organizes for a one-world dictator.
Freedom has been purchased with a very high price and the cost keeps increasing every time any person casually takes freedom for granted.
SOUL LIBERTY
INTRODUCTION: The theological subject of Soul Liberty has been misunderstood and misused from the foundation of the Christian church. It was one of the errors that Satan first used to corrupt the love and grace that accompanies the gospel.
In the Roman world first generation believers used this concept to teach "antinomianism" (anti-against/and nomos-law). In Corinth the Christian ladies wanted to dress like and behave like the pagan temple prostitutes. They were free in Christ and they used this freedom as a license for loose living. The Apostle Paul wrote against antinomianism in both the Corinthians letters as well as the book of Romans. Neither salvation nor the security of the saints gives one the right to remain in sin, much less the liberty to become sinful. Such an idea is a corruption of the teaching of soul liberty.
Romans 6:15, "Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?
Notice the divine protest - "God forbid!"--Don't even think such a thing! However, the church, at different times, has fostered permissiveness to the point of antinomianism. Perhaps never has this been more observable than the last half-century of Christianity. In a reaction against ridged Puritanism preaching and legalistic holiness teaching, the church has become so positive that it has become as permissive as it has become doctrinally pluralistic. In doing so, believers become "the obedient servants of sin", Romans 6:16.
When we used the theological term, "soul liberty" we are not speaking of a right for irresponsible behavior. Neither the Bible nor Baptist have historically held to such a view and we should not be doing so now!
I. SOUL LIBERTY AND THE FREEDOM TO PERSONALLY KNOW AND WORSHIP GOD
A. The enemy of this first principle is the organized Christian church.
B. The Christian church rapidly changed to incorporate the faith and the follies of other religions of a pagan nature. They used human priests and other spirit intermediaries to assist them in reaching their gods. By copying paganism, the primary theological truth of soul liberty was violated very early in the Christian church.
C. The Biblical teaches that every individual has been given the right and the responsibility to personally know and interact with God directly given over to other professional deity dealing consultants. The clergy and laity classes of people resulted and the laity were taught that knowing and experiencing God in their lives needed professional assistance.
D. The two areas in which it was assumed the professionals were needed the most were, (1) the study of the Holy Scriptures and (2) confessionary intercessory prayer. Average believers were led to believe that it would be an act of unforgivable sin if they did not "interrupt" the scriptures properly and certainly, as sinners, they could not expect to reach God directly without priests, saints, and heavenly deities aiding them. In fact, the scriptures were kept from the people for centuries.
E. The most basic error of the church came into existence when it was taught that redemptive grace was not given to individuals through faith, but rather given to the church to dispense to individuals as they were deemed deserving. Redemption rapidly changed from faith to rituals.
F. Jesus taught that spiritual life was available to anyone who would believe in Him as the giver of Grace, John 20:30,31. In fact, He taught this to be the overwhelming purpose of the revelation and inspiration of Holy Scriptures.
G. "And many other signs did Jesus in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book; But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name." H. Every person has the right to read the Bible and to ask God for understanding for his self -- without the necessity of professional intermediate clergy.
I. If the misuse of Holy Scripture is a great sin and only the professionals have a right to study it and teach it, then the professionals have a huge accountability problem with God -- they, not the common people, have been the perverters of the doctrine of soul liberty.
J. Individual believers have both the right and the responsibility to go directly to God in prayer. There are many passages in the scripture that support this truth. The scriptures know of no intermediate person that is necessary to represent us to God the Father other than the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the ministry of Christ in His unfinished work in heaven as the Great High Priest of every believer, cf. Hebrews 10:19-25; 4:14
II. SOUL LIBERTY AND THE FREEDOM TO BE PERSONALLY ACCOUNTABLE DIRECTLY TO GOD, John 5:39,40
A. The enemy of this second principle is the institutionalized Christian church.
B. Once the right to individually approach God without religious leaders assisting was established, it became a very small matter to teach people to rely on their accountability to men rather than God. After all, if one must obtain the aid of a human agent for redemption, then it would be expected that terms would be established to determine who would warrant such aid.
C. Once the church became an institution rather than a body of believers, only creative imagination limited the invented rituals that the church held over their people. After all, if the church was the dispenser of saving grace, rather than God, they could be expected to define the terms under which they would offer or withdraw the very saving grace of God.
D. Most often the terms of church administered grace was connected to money. Salvation that was given freely by God became a source of vast revenue for the church. In fact, the church once coupled with various governments became the chest for the vast accumulated wealth. Many wars of the history were about the control over church/state resources taken from the common people through redemptive rituals.
E. With the creation of electronics came the ability to communicate directly into homes of people without the need for churches and church leaders. The violation of the doctrine of soul liberty and direct communication with God has now become more than ecclesiastical it has become personal. Leaders of every description now constantly communicate that they are God's pardoners for others personal prosperity. They assume that accountability is not so much to God as it is to them. The wealth flow has moved to religious charlatans in an effort to bypasses the church.
F. Jesus invited everyone to come to him to have life, John 5:39,40.
"Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that you might have life."
G. Clearly, spiritual life is available for anyone who will come to Christ to receive it. Nothing is a substitute for Christ! Redemption is as simple as coming to Christ. Soul liberty makes one personally and directly accountable to God. Receiving or rejecting Christ both argue for direct accountability to God and neither replaces this vital matter.
III. SOUL LIBERTY AND THE FREEDOM TO BE PERSONALLY GUIDED BY GOD, Acts 5:28,29
A. The enemy of this third principle is state sponsored Christian churches.
B. Great error infiltrated the Christian church when it became an arm of the state. State controlled churches or church controlled states, became the dominant form of government for many countries on both sides of the reformation days. To hold their power over the people they became intolerable of anyone that resisted them. Often they passed "laws of loyalty" which persecution, exile, confiscation of property, imprisonment, torture and often killed anyone who would dare to demand freedom of conscience and soul liberty.
C. The early believers knew they were to be personally guided by God and not by religious governments. They would not bow for a moment to Roman rulers as gods.
D. The issue of being guided by God had to be faced by the apostles in the first generation of the church. In Acts 5:28,29 Peter was called before the ruling council of Israel and told, "Did not we straightly command you that ye should not teach in this (Jesus) name?" Peter then spoke for all believers for all time by saying…"We ought to obey God rather than men."E. No area in theology is more under attack in the world today than the doctrine of soul liberty as it relates to the freedom to be accountable to and guided by God.
This right has been removed in well over one half of the world's population and is being systematically eroded in the rest of the world.
F. Baptist and other non-conformist in history have always argued for the right to be guided by God as a part of soul liberty. This is a great Biblical right and should not be surrendered to any church, state sponsored church or state system. The loss of personal liberty will always follow the loss of soul liberty.
G. The right to be personally guided by God also includes the right to reject God and even to live displeasingly Him. Receiving and rejecting the Lord are both a part of the liberty of the soul and accountability. What it does not include is the right to forbid anyone from knowing, worshiping, serving, pleasing and sharing God. Biblically the right to know God and to be guided by Him implies both a public right as well as a private responsibility.
H. The doctrine of soul liberty was the major concern of believers during the centuries preceding the founding of the American colonies. (See paper on the Cost of Freedom, July, 2006 Kihei Baptist Paper)
IV. SOUL LIBERTY AND THE FREEDOM TO PERSONALLY RESIST CHANGE
The God given human freedom of soul liberty is vital to both the spiritual lives of believers, and also to the social/political freedom of all people. It seems incongruous that history demonstrates that such a simple subject would be considered such a threat that it could not be tolerated. Freedom through soul liberty is a God given blessing that must not be conceded.
The following are some of the many forces that have fought to destroy this most important doctrine of Soul Liberty:
1. Rejection of revelation and inspiration as the instructional base for human conditioning.
2. Religious systems, which develop a hierarchy of administration.
3. Governmental control of individual believer's freedom to public worship and witness.
4. Governmental totalitarianism.
5. Any loss of personal liberties.
6. Classification and structure of people.
7. Sacramentarism. (Conversion by religious rituals)
8. Priest/clergy/lay intermediary religious systems.
9. Ecumenicism (the effort to merge and unite all denominations and religion into one system).
10. Priestcraft (the teaching that individual most go to and give to some individual that professes to have special powers, information and enlightenment. Powers that God does not give to lesser believers).
11. New-Evangelicalism that downgrades Biblical doctrine in an effort to infiltrate liberal and social religion.
12. Christian "pyschopop" that replaces by conversion with counseling.
13. Confusion of the church with the kingdom.
14. Elimination of eternal accountability (heaven/hell) and replacing with "here and now" benefit blessings.
15. Demise of clear Bible teaching pulpits, colleges and seminaries.
16. Group guided spiritism as a replacement for God given spirituality.
17. Academic rejection of divine creation and human identification.
18. Social gospel that replaces redemption with social change
19. Worship where entertainment replaces edification.
20. Existentialism (living for the pleasure of the moment, living over knowing, wanting and willing over thinking, now over later, subjective over objective behavior.)
God forbid."GAA-7/13/06
