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Growing Into Liberty

By John W. Ritenbaugh
March 27, 1994
Tape 121

Did the Emancipation Proclamation truly free American slaves from their two hundred years of slavery? Where they able to immediately move into the main stream of American life and participate freely in all aspects of life?

We can look back on our history, that is American history, and see clearly that the answer is no. Even putting aside the general resistance that there was in white society, regarding accepting them as a part of that society, the slaves themselves were not equipped to contribute, except in a very low level way. Even though they had a great number of highly developed skills in mechanical areas, they were still unskilled in many other things that had to do with operating freely within that society and contributing to its well being.

About one hundred years after the civil war, former President Lyndon Johnson said this in a speech, "Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, now you are free to go where you want and do what you desire and choose the leaders that you please. You do not take a person who for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to a starting line of a race and then say, you are free to compete with all the others."

This is a true statement, which applies both to physical and spiritual slavery. In Hebrews 3 and 4, we find that Israel lacked a great deal in regard to the operations of their lives because they carried with them certain ideas, certain concepts, desires that kept them from really being free men and women.

Hebrews 3:9-10 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, 'They always go astray in their heart. [They were free, they crossed the line, and they went from Egypt to the wilderness. God had done a great number of wonderful works in freeing them, but their heart was not unshackled (heart meaning mind—the place of residence in their character and attitudes). They were always going astray, despite the fact that they no longer were in bondage.]

Hebrews 3:11-13 So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest.' [Paul writes] Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; [We need to consider this because Paul is showing here where the problem lay. God says very clearly it was in the heart. Paul makes it much more specific in that it was a problem having to do with faith, unbelief and so he exhorts us.] But exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. [Now a connection is made, if we are following the context here, between the heart, disbelief and sin, almost as though he is showing a progression. Because the heart was not unshackled there was disbelief and the result in was sin, a going aside, a turning off the way.]

Hebrews 3:16-18, 19 For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? [They all fell in the wilderness, except for Joshua and Caleb and I would assume their families—an assumption—but God points them out as not having failed. We would have to consider here then that the whole slew of them unshackled from their bondage to Egypt. (Yet their heart was never unshackled) did not have the kind of faith God would require for salvation. They all died because they sinned.] So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Do you see what connection is being made here? It is a direct connection, almost as if they are synonymous between unbelief and sin. It is almost as if He is saying, one equals the other.

Hebrews 4:1-2 Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

This is why I say that what Lyndon Johnson said in regard to the freeing of the American slaves, well over a hundred years now that they were not really free to go to the starting line. You might say they were not ready to compete on a level field with everybody else because there were elements that were missing from their minds, from their hearts, from their character and from their instruction. They were unable to compete with the rest of society; they were not on the same level.

By the same token, somebody who has been taken from the spiritual bondage to spiritual Egypt is not up to snuff. They are free. They are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ and they have been given God's spirit, but they are not any where near where God wants to get them to so that they can inherit the land.

Israel was freed after around four hundred years of being in Egypt, about one half of that time in bondage. God's power in liberating them from that bondage, I think was evident to all of these people. Unfortunately the very authority of God Himself liberated them but they were unskilled in belief and they failed.

The result was that even though freed, they maintained their traditional slave mentality they had shed the chains that bound hand and feet, but the mental shackles remained. To me it is impossible to think that the Israelites disbelieved God's existence. That was not the problem. They knew God existed. Their belief lay in a much higher level of faith than merely believing whether or not God exists because after God's powerful demonstrations in their behalf, that concept of God's existence should have been drilled into their heads. Israel's disbelief lay somewhere else and it is so today as well. There are millions of people who believe in God's existence, but at the same time they do not submit to God any more than the Israelites. That belief is, at a very low level and of course it is shown by what they do with their lives.

They believe God exists, but the demons believe too and they tremble before God. Apparently men, who believe God exists, do not tremble before God. I think we can begin to see that there are levels of faith. I think we can understand why Mr. Armstrong wrote two different booklets, one saying, "What is Faith?" the other saying, "What Kind of Faith is Required for Salvation?"

Two different cans of peas altogether, the one leads to the other. The one is only a launching pad, that is, the kind of faith or understanding what faith is and believing in the existence of God, but the other kind of faith has a much higher level of capacity to it.

Deuteronomy 31:19-21 "Now therefore [God is telling Moses], write down this song for yourselves [he is talking here about the song of Moses which begins in chapter 32], and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel. " When I have brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them; and they will provoke Me and break My covenant. [Did God know what was in their heart? Of course He did.] "Then it shall be, when many evils and troubles have come upon them, that this song will testify against them as a witness; for it will not be forgotten in the mouths of their descendants, for I know the inclination of their behavior today, even before I have brought them to the land of which I swore to give them."

When the book of Deuteronomy was written, the forty years where just about up. Israel was ready to go into the land and God could clearly see what they were already purposing in their heart. They were simply going to continue the behavior, a behavior that was motivated by what was in their heart, by the attitudes that were there. Even though this was the second generation they were not free from the mental shackles, even after all the experiences that they had—direct experiences and demonstrations of His providence.

Everyday they got up and the manna was out there. Whenever they needed water, it came out of rocks. Whenever they needed protection He gave it to them. Yet even though their clothes did not wear out, their shoes did not wear out, the cloud was up there and the pillar of fire was there, they still did not believe Him. Their heart was shackled to thinking, which under the circumstance they could not change.

Now we understand that God was not trying to convert these people. He was putting them through lessons for our behalf so that we can read these things and understand. We can begin to see that the level of faith that God is talking about is not a function of mere knowledge of God—mere knowledge of God's existence—there is more to it than that.

John 8:30-32 As He spoke these words, many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed." And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

The key phrase is, if you abide, if you continue, if you live in His word. Now it is interesting that Jesus' response to these peoples' belief was to admonish them that His word was of value only as they were committed to it. Without commitment, they accepted what He said as being true, but they did not accept the implications of it for their lives.

Without commitment, a person is not really devoted to truth. Without devotion love of truth is lacking and without love of truth, there is little understanding of what they are dealing with. It is interesting that in an old radio broadcast of Mr. Armstong, he said, "All of his life he craved understanding." Not knowledge necessarily, understanding.

Israel never understood. They did not see. They did not get what they were involved in. You see that is a function of God's spirit and God's spirit was not given to them. God put them through these paces in order to have something written for us, but we are with out excuse because we do have God's spirit.

In relation to this, in I Corinthians 8, I want you to think about this book and its context. This was a really troubled congregation, divided all over the place. Paul admitted that they were converted, but yet they were carnal. He said in I Corinthians 3 that they were carnal. They had knowledge of God's existence, they had knowledge of God's plan, they knew the purpose that He was working out, but they were badly divided against one another. Now look what he says in verse 1.

I Corinthians 8:1 Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.

Regarding this particular subject, they had knowledge. This was no little matter in their day and age, this thing of meat offered to idols. It was a main part of the decision that was made in Acts 15 when the people were told to abstain from those things that were offered to idols.

Here in I Corinthians 8, we have a different look at it. Maybe it was a couple of years later Paul said they had knowledge of it.

I propose to you that they did not understand. They did not understand the knowledge that they had and thus they could not properly apply it. I know that I am on good solid ground because the instruction from chapter 8 all the way through chapter 13 when He finally gets to love, is explaining that these people do not understand that they had. So knowledge of and by it self is not the answer. Understanding knowledge is a great part of the answer and then there is another part beyond that. It has to do with actually using knowledge and applying it in ones life, but I tell you one cannot apply knowledge in the right level to the right degree until one understands what he is dealing with. You only get started with it. That is what happened to the Israelites, they only got started when they came out of Egypt.

Do you think that these Corinthians would have done what they did, what Paul shows all through this book, if they really understood? Considering that they were converted, considering that they had God's Spirit, considering they had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, do you think they would have done what they were doing here—offending one another and dividing the congregation left and right? Would they have done what they did at Passover if they understood what they were doing? I do not think so. I think we have to give them the benefit of the doubt. I Corinthians was written to give the people understanding of what they were doing.

Again when we reflect upon the Israelites, we know they saw God's power. They heard His voice. They agreed what He proposed to them was good and true. We too are very happy to receive good things from Him. We know that there are times when God fights our battles but maybe like the Israelites when it came to, or when it comes to, doing our part of the relationship, we are not as committed as we should be. Like the Israelites we consistently fail.

Romans 8:2-4 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. [We have been freed, unshackled as it were.] For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Beginning to see a progression here? We are freed from the law of sin and death. We are given life. This is accomplished through the blood of Jesus Christ. What is the reason? The reason is that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now again think of the analogy, Exodus through Deuteronomy. Was the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in the Israelites? No it was not. They sinned so frequently while they were in the wilderness. Did they really understand what they did? No. We can look in Deuteronomy 29 and find out that God did not give them an understanding heart that they might go on from what God's purpose was. So we have been given the opportunity to do what the Israelites did not do.

Romans 8:5-6 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Again, think about the Israelites, what did we just read in Deuteronomy. The thing that caused the problem was the inclination of the heart, the heart being the seat of the thinking processes, of the attitudes. It was not a lack of knowledge. They did not understand. We do have understanding, not enough yet. Some have more than others. I am convinced that most of the time when we depart from the way of God and sin, it is because we do not understand what we are doing. I do not think we want to sin, but we just do not get it yet.

This is one of the reasons why Mr. Armstrong so frequently said that when a doctrine is being considered, one has to consider all of the scriptures on any given subject. When portions of an explanation are left out, the understanding at best is shallow and might even be wrong. If the understanding is shallow the chances increase, incrementally, that we are going to go off in the wrong direction even though we do not want to. We just do not get it yet. So to be carnally minded is death because the carnal mind is still chained to what? Spiritual Egypt.

You ought to be able to begin to see one of the things I am driving at here—and actually it is the main theme of this sermon—is that liberty is not something that comes to us all at once. Liberty, freedom is something that must be grown into. If we are really and truly growing in the grace and knowledge, then our freedom is going to increase by increments that have everything to do with what we understand about God's Word. Though we all have knowledge, we do not understand on the same level. God is bringing us to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, but we are not there yet.

Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

This series of verses shows to what the Israelite commitment was given. Essentially if we can say it in broad terminology, it was to themselves rather than to the One who liberated them, provided for them, protected them and promised them a wonderful inheritance. So powerful was the pull to what the Bible calls the flesh that they could not stay committed to God.

When push came to shove, what did they fall back on? They always fell back on their Egyptian heritage. I am not talking about blood heritage. I am talking about their psychological mental makeup heritage, their carnal heritage. Israel could only be faithful to God for short periods. Usually it was in a period that fell right after a miraculous delivery. Then their attention wondered back to themselves again. Once again they became the center of their own world.

What is a slave? The dictionary defines a slave as "a person held in bondage to another." But I think it is interesting to think about where the actual English word 'slave' comes from. Do you know it is an adaptation of a national name? It comes from the name Slav. Do you know who the Slavs are? They are the eastern European and Russian peoples. The adaptation came whenever the Germans supplied the slave markets of Europe with captured Slavs. Do you know what the word Slav means in Slavic languages? It means 'glory.' Through a perversion and sometimes malice, a word that originally meant glory, came to mean servitude.

II Corinthians 4:3-4 But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds [heart] the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

God created us for His glory. We are to glorify God in everything we think, say and do. It is an honor to be able to do this, and it should be glory to us to be able to do something like this. Instead God finds that all of mankind is held in slavery to the god of this world. That came about through malice and deceit, as it says in Revelation 12:9, about the serpent that deceives the whole world.

So the Bible shows all of us enthralled into Satan. We are bound to it through a combination of malice on his part and wrong choices on ours. The story of Israel's release from their political bondage is a physical type of our redemption from our spiritual bondage. The story continues in its parallels and just as surely as they were vulnerable to disbelief, the chances are very high that we too are vulnerable to disbelief. There are reasons for this. To me there are two major reasons as to why we drift away so easily, so frequently, even though we have knowledge.

II Peter 3:3,4,7,8 Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts [walking according to the carnal mind, walking according to the inclination of their heart], and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation." [Uniformitarianism, we would say in the scientific world, everything continues as it was from the past.] But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, [instruction, knowledge for you and me. Do we understand this?] do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

I am not going to go into technical aspects regarding this because there is a broad principal that I want to extract from it. The problem that Peter is talking about here occurs because mankind does not think in the same parameters as God in regard to time.

That is why this is given here. Do not forget that God does not think in the same parameters in regard to time as we do! That is so important in regard to faith and operation of faith, whether or not if we are going to be saved, whether or not we are going to be doing the right things, whether we are going to understand what it is that we are going through. Time moves frighteningly fast to us and we feel the need, the pressure of fulfillment. We know that we are going to die. We feel as though life is slipping away. We feel as though our health is degenerating, society is degenerating. Our children are growing older and we feel responsibilities to them and to our mates that certain things ought to be accomplished. We feel the responsibility, the pressure to obey God. We want to enjoy pleasures, but always with time, our attitude toward time and our understanding of time, there is a certain measure of discouragement that tugs at us.

We are such that we get a concept in our mind and very rapidly, sometimes largely, solely because of time it becomes a fact. We are so impatient it is incredible; we think and act as though all life hinges on what I do or what happens right now. The result, unfortunately, is that we act impulsively. And that creates a great deal of instability, not only in ones own life, but those who are in contact with those who are impulsive and impatient.

There may be hundreds of things associated with the passage of time that motivate us to do, or not to do, things in relation to God. They are things that serve to put us into bondage to time from which we will never be free until our faith is such that we know, and we are acting because we understand, that God is in control of time. It is never too late for God, He can resurrect us from the dead if need be. It is never too late.

Let us look at another area that we are going to connect to this.

Hebrews 2:14-15 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

This is another broad area—faith in relation to time and faith relation to fear. The fear of death here represents all of the fears that constrict a person's life. We bear with them but they nonetheless have very powerful effects on what we do. Maybe if I change this word to 'insecurities' rather than fear, we would understand it a little bit better. Our insecurities force us to feel certain ways and unfortunately they very rarely, (I mean these feelings of fear, these feelings of insecurity) induce noble conduct in any of us. Yet despite all of the energy expended in bearing our insecurities, they only serve to help us bring about our death all the while making us miserable all along the way.

Let us notice how this is expressed in the Exodus story.

Exodus 14:9-12 So the Egyptians pursued them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, his horsemen and his army, and overtook them camping by the sea beside Pi Hahiroth, before Baal Zephon. And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the LORD. Then they said to Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt? "Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, 'Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?' For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness."

Moses was not afraid but he was a man of faith, they were not. So what did they do? When they saw the problem, fear quickly came to mind and it determined their action! Was that the act of someone filled with faith? Moses was the one who was filled with faith and his reaction was not one of fear. He said to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

What I am talking about here—the principle here is that this frequently happens in our lives: we get a fear, an insecurity and it is what determines what our action is going to be in relation to God and to other people. We do not act out of faith; we act out of our insecurity.

There is an interesting example that my wife mentioned to me; it shows God telling Israel what they are going to do when the crunch is on. In Isaiah 30:1-4 this is a political situation; we are talking about something here that happened five hundred years at least, maybe close to seven hundred years after the Exodus. What does Israel do when they are in political, military, and economic trouble, where do they turn?

Isaiah 30:1-4 "Woe to the rebellious children," says the LORD, "Who take counsel, but not of Me, And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit, That they may add sin to sin; Who walk to go down to Egypt, And have not asked My advice, To strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, And to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame, And trust in the shadow of Egypt.

Seven hundred years later they are doing the same thing as Israel did in the wilderness. There is instruction there for us, you and me, because if we would follow the story of the children of Israel all the way through the book of Exodus on into Numbers and into Leviticus and Deuteronomy, we would find a theme repeated over and over, numerous times. What is that theme? We find that Israel is being pressured by a combination of what they feel is time closing in on them and their fear that God is not going to take care of them and provide for them. So what do they do? They turn back to their own council, which had been trained in Egypt.

The lesson is there for you and me, that when push comes to shove so frequently in areas regarding faith, we are going to turn back to carnal thinking. We turn to things that we have learned in this world. Are there times when you fear that you are not going to make it, that you are unworthy of your calling, that God did not give you His spirit, that He does not hear your prayers, that He is gone way off somewhere or that He is not aware of what church leadership is doing? Do you know what He shows repeatedly? He shows that the fearful quail before problems and they flee, as God says when nobody is chasing them. It is something that we need to learn.

Why did these people do it? They did what they did because they did not even have God's spirit. We do these things because we have not reached the level of growth that is needed to be able to face the problem in the right way, a way that involves using the faith of God. So we turn to what Paul calls in Hebrews 3, disbelief.

In Deuteronomy 32:28, we are right in the song of Moses. Now look at God's indictment here about Israel.

Deuteronomy 32:28-29 "For they are a nation void of counsel, Nor is there any understanding in them. [Did they have knowledge? Yes. Did they believe that God exists? Surely they did. Did they understand the knowledge that they had been given? No they did not and not understanding it, they did not know how to use it.] Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, That they would consider their latter end!

What is he telling us? They always reacted, not according to the council of God, not according to right understanding. They fell back on their Egyptian trained hearts. They did not consider the outworking of faith. So Israel was a nation driven by bondage to time, driven by their fears but deceived in to thinking that they knew better than God and His servant Moses. Their whole thinking process had to undergo a conversion. They had to learn to be free!

All their lifetime, up to that point, they were subject to bondage. Somebody else was doing their thinking for them, telling them in the types, when and where to sleep, when and where to work, when and where to eat, maybe even telling them when they can go to the bathroom, and all the while filling their minds with negative God rejecting attitudes.

Now the author of these attitudes that turns us in on ourselves is Satan, but we willingly reinforce and eternalize his ways into our mind to such an extent that we think they are ours. He imprints on us almost from the day that we are born and he programs us to believe his lies. Again did you notice what God said, that they would consider their latter end.

Faith considers the end; the outworking of what one is going to do. Their excessive concern about time and the fears that they would not be provided for express themselves in their lack of trust. They lived for the moment, and I guess I might say, that deferred gratification was not in their dictionary.

Satan is called the accuser, is he not? Now what is his message? Right from the beginning he accused God of being untrustworthy, that God could not be depended upon, that He is that not fair and that He withholds good things from us. His unchanging lie is that God could not possibly be interested in us. Satan does not stop there. He tried to make us believe that God could not possibly be actually involved with us. Again, when the Church of the Great God started, the first sermon was "Do You See God?" How you see God is the crux of our life, because without it the operations of faith are not going to work.

If we do not see Him involved personally in our life, involved personally in the life of this whole group, then we are going to rely upon our own conceptions of time and be motivated by our own fears. We are going to do things, just like the Corinthians, that are going to divide us and bring us into all kinds of offenses against one another.

We, with all of our obvious weaknesses and shortcomings, absorb Satan's lies and over the years in this world, we come to believe them. This world's system now is six thousand years of slavery. You may only be twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years old, but the system from which we are being freed is entrenched in every aspect of life. Very quickly this gets impressed upon our minds. It is not a mind that is free, but it is

JWR/sf/vls

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