Twentieth Anniversary Service of First Free, St. Louis
Free Indeed!
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: I considered very carefully what passage or topic I should address at this our church’s Twentieth Anniversary service. The theme of thanksgiving jumped out at me, for only God knows how much we have for which to be thankful. Church planting would have made another great choice, for our church was founded with that as a core value, and that initial gathering of five families has now become eight churches with over 6000 worshipers on a given Sunday morning–just in greater St. Louis, to say nothing of the many churches we have helped plant in out-state Missouri, Utah, Tatarstan, and many other places around the world.
I thought about integrity and excellence, which have long been core values of the leadership of First Free. Another theme that really attracted me was restoration, for we have tried to be a hospital where the fallen can be restored to usefulness to Christ, and there are some magnificent trophies of grace sitting here this morning! And then a very natural topic would have been God’s faithfulness, for He has certainly been faithful to our church as we saw in the video and heard in the letters I read earlier, and as we have sung about.
But I have opted instead to talk about freedom this morning. “Free” is part of our name, First Evangelical Free Church. More often we are simply called E. Free or just the Free Church. Early on, some misunderstood and referred to us as the “eat free” church–the donut holes this morning are a reminder of those early days when we bribed young families by offering donut holes to their children.
I often hear people outside our church speculate about what “free” means–does it mean you can do whatever you want, or that you don’t have to put anything in the offering plate? I’m not even sure how many of our own members understand the origin and meaning of our middle name.
The history and significance of the “Free” in our name
Let me share a bit of the history of this movement known as the Evangelical Free Churches. On Easter Sunday, 1817, H. Cesar Malan, the young pastor of the Lutheran cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland, stood before his congregation and announced that he had recently been born again by faith in Jesus Christ. He thought everyone would rejoice with him, and some of his members did, but the church hierarchy was scandalized (as were his wife and parents). Hadn’t Malan been baptized as an infant? Did not that automatically and irrevocably make him a member of Christ’s church? How could he then have the gall to claim that he, an ordained pastor, no less, had just become a Christian? He was eventually defrocked and removed from his pulpit for heresy, found guilty of substituting the Bible for the manual on religion.
But Malan felt called of God to gather a small group of his parishioners together and to continue preaching and shepherding them. That was the beginning of the Free Churches. The term was used to signify that they were free from the hierarchical control that characterized virtually every branch of Christendom. But it also meant they were free of governmental control. Every country in Europe had a state church, supported by tax revenue, and that invariably involves interference and some measure of control. Malan and his followers wanted to be answerable to God, and God alone.
The Free Churches spread throughout Europe, but especially in Scandinavia, , and eventually to America in the great Scandinavian migration of the 1880’s. The early Free Church people were fiercely independent, cherishing the marvelous religious freedom they experienced in the United States.
Maybe you grew up in a church environment that was free; I did not. I grew up in a movement known as the IFCA–Independent Fundamental Churches of America. We called ourselves “fundamentalists.” That’s not a very unpopular term today, thanks to Islamic fundamentalists, but I want you to know that we were not terrorists or even violent. As a matter of fact, fundamentalists in the 1950’s were strong Bible believers who were committed to the fundamentals of the faith, and for the most part they very concerned about personal holiness. They were good people, deeply devoted to Christ and very concerned about reaching the lost.
As fundamentalists we were independent and thus free of any denominational hierarchy, but in my estimation we were not really free. In fact, we were largely in bondage to life-style legalism. We tended to be a bit (and sometimes a lot) self-righteous about all the things we didn’t do–drink, smoke, dance, play cards, go to movies, cuss, etc.–and those who did such things were highly suspect.
Some of the early families here at First Free grew up in mainline churches that were in bondage to liberalism instead of to legalism. One of our founding families came out of a mainline denomination, which by the 1980’s had rejected any semblance of biblical authority, advocated abortion on demand, and was appointing homosexual activists to the ministry. They called that freedom, but it was just another kind of slavery.
Others of our early families came from churches that were not particularly plagued by either legalism or liberalism, but they were so rigid and dogmatic about their theology and Bible interpretations that if you didn’t dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s the way they did, they considered you spiritually out to lunch, possibly even unsaved.
It was into this atmosphere that God led the founding families of this church to join a denomination known as The Evangelical Free Church of America. They wanted a church that was free from legalism, from liberalism, and from dogmatism–one that was solid on the essentials of the Christian faith–like the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the sinfulness of man, the substitutionary atonement, the Second Coming, the reality of angels, demons, heaven, and hell–but also a church that was willing to grant freedom on issues that are not essential to the Christian faith.
For example, though convinced that believer’s baptism by immersion is the most sensible interpretation of Scripture, the Free Church has always recognized infant baptism so long as the individual isn’t relying upon it for his or her salvation. Though committed to the security of the true believer, we have always balanced that with the many warnings in Scripture about the danger of apostasy. Though we hold to and teach the difficult doctrines of election and predestination, we have never felt those viewpoints needed to be rammed down people’s throats or be constantly displayed as badges of orthodoxy.
The whole foundation of this freedom we desire for ourselves (and are willing to grant to others) is the conviction that God is bigger than any of our theological systems, that God’s Word stands above every creed or statement of faith, and that humility should prevent us from being overly dogmatic on issues regarding which great and godly scholars have differed for centuries.
Furthermore, we are convinced that a spirit of freedom and tolerance is essential to the unity of the Body of Christ. We certainly don’t think denominations are evil; in fact, we belong to one, but we know that if every denomination insists dogmatically that all of its individual distinctives are absolutely right and everyone else’s are heretical, the church of Jesus Christ will never achieve the kind of unity that Jesus prayed for. In other words, certain truths are indisputable and cannot be compromised, but not everything we believe must be put into that category. On some issues we can legitimately agree to disagree and still love and respect one another. One of the early church fathers stated the issue well when he said, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”
In 1983 First Evangelical Free Church was a breath of fresh air in a metropolitan area largely divided by legalism, fundamentalism, liberalism, sectarianism, suspicion, and dogmatism. I am not accusing any particular denomination or church of being any or all of these things; I am simply saying that in general we were a divided city where pastors of different denominations rarely prayed together and even more rarely cooperated together. The inner city churches might as well have been in Africa for all the contact the county churches had with them. In fact, the city churches would have received more contact if they were in Africa, because most county churches sent missionaries to Africa but almost none to the inner city.
Our presence has not totally revolutionized the spiritual landscape, but I do believe we have contributed in a significant way to breaking down some of the walls that have divided our community. We have played a strong role in bringing Billy Graham to town, in supporting Promise Keepers, in sponsoring city-wide seminars, in planting an inner-city church, and in supporting a metro pastor’s fellowship. Even more importantly, since this church was founded two decades ago, a number of other churches have started using the model of freedom we pioneered here.
Now I would never be satisfied to just give you a history lesson, even a history lesson on our own church, and call that a sermon. So, allow me to turn your attention briefly this morning to a powerful passage from the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John–a passage devoted to the topic of freedom. It has something very important to say about how to find freedom, but it goes even a step farther, telling us how to be “free indeed,” or, if you will, how to find freedom to the second power. Listen to the Word of the Lord as found in John 8:31-36:
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’
Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’”
I see here three key propositions that I want to share with you concerning freedom:
Every human being longs for true freedom.
That’s how God made us–to desire freedom in every area of life. We see the desperate desire for political freedom in Bosnia, Iraq, and in North Korea. Several weeks ago Matt Lauer told the story of a South Korean family that overcame tremendous odds to extricate their extended family from North Korea, spending huge amounts of money to bribe soldiers and risking their very lives to sneak into the most brutal and repressive country on the face of the earth to bring their family out. What causes people to do this but the heart cry for political freedom?
The drive for social freedom caused Martin Luther King, Jr. to put his very life on the line time and again, and eventually to surrender it, as he rallied his people to achieve social equality.
Every human being also desires financial freedom. We see this positively in the human tendency to save resources, but we also see it negatively in the drive to get rich quick through working long hours, investing in risky schemes, and even by gambling.
The longing for emotional freedom is seen in the huge number of people seeking psychiatric help, counseling, and drug therapy to free themselves from psychological bondage.
But the most intense drive of all is the desire for spiritual freedom. Our own nation was founded principally for this kind of freedom. The Pilgrims accepted deprivation and danger of untold proportions to establish a place where they could worship God as they saw fit.
But while every human being longs for true freedom, there is a powerful force that works against every one of these kinds of freedom, and that force is ignorance. Ignorance leads to slavery. Ignorance of human rights leads to political slavery. Educational ignorance leads to social slavery. Ignorance of business and markets leads to financial slavery. Ignorance about good mental health habits leads to emotional slavery. And ignorance of God’s Word leads to spiritual slavery. The latter is the issue that Jesus addresses in our passage, as He tells us that while ignorance leads to slavery, the truth will set you free.
Ignorance leads to slavery, while truth sets you free.
In the passage of Scripture I read a few moments ago Jesus equates knowing and holding to His teaching with true freedom: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Most people, unfortunately, are ignorant of Jesus’ teaching. Some are ignorant because they have not been exposed to it; others are ignorant because they have chosen to avoid it. And still others are ignorant because they know the truth intellectually but refuse to allow it to change their lives. And it is such ignorance that leads many people into slavery.
For example, we have been through a sexual revolution in our country over the past forty years, a revolution that can be traced directly to an abandonment of God’s standards regarding sexual conduct. Has that revolution made people free? Well, many think so; in fact, they call it “sexual freedom.” But in fact, the number of people dealing with various kinds of sexual addictions has skyrocketed, and by its very definition, addiction is slavery. Countless others are plagued by sexually transmitted diseases, which create their own physical bondage, and sometimes even death.
Or consider the financial freedom that has been pursued so strongly, particularly through the roaring 90’s. Has this unprecedented level of wealth given people more freedom to enjoy life and leisure? Often not. Rather it has caused more stress, as now people have more stuff to maintain and protect, and even wealthier friends with which to compete. A Spanish philosopher said something that may be even more true in the 21st century than when we spoke it decades ago: “The twentieth century has given us greater life expectancy, but it has not given us more to expect from life.”[i] This situation can be traced directly to ignorance of God’s Word, as for example 1 Timothy 6:9: “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
How about religious freedom? We have, of course, redefined that concept here in the United States. It used to mean freedom to practice one’s faith without government interference. Now it often means freedom from any religious influence in the government. But even viewing religious freedom in its more traditional sense, has that made people truly free? For the most part, no, because they have often used their freedom to pursue false religions, cults, and heresies that only lead them into further spiritual bondage. Just think about the Shiites in Iraq. They were terribly persecuted under Sadam Hussein–hundreds of thousands executed, and some even buried alive. But what are they clamoring for now? To be ruled by Islamic law, by ayatollahs and mullahs. Hello! I think that was tried in Afghanistan. I believe that’s what set Iran back about a half century.
I want you to think this morning about this statement Jesus makes, “The truth will set you free.” Right there you have the cornerstone of the philosophy that First Free was founded upon. The truth Jesus is talking about is embodied in this Book. This is what he was talking about. This is what grounds an individual for life. This is what guides our footsteps–the truth as revealed by almighty God about who He is, who we are, what we’re doing here, where we should be going, and how to get there!
Now obviously it’s not just knowing the stories of the Bible that brings freedom to one’s life. It’s not being able to find the books of the Bible or commit a few dozen verses to memory. It’s not even having your theology straight. You see, it’s possible to have an immense amount of Bible knowledge and be totally screwed up in one’s daily life. The Scriptures must be lived and applied–i.e., put into shoe leather.
But by the same token, you cannot apply what you don’t know, and too many churches are expecting people to grow on the thin gruel of preaching and teaching that is biblical in name only. A passage of Scripture may be read, but then the sermon is based on current events or pop psychology or the latest Christian book. The perceived needs of the individual are too often the focus of the sermon rather than the inspired Word of God.
First Free was founded on the Word of God. The original Elders made it crystal clear that the pastor’s principal duty was never to be administration or visitation or counseling, but rather the study and teaching of the Word of God. Our Children’s Ministry has always been focused on the Bible. Karen Woolsey, the leader of that ministry for nearly the entire 20 years of our church, recently visited a world-class mega-church to observe their Children’s Ministry. She told me they were doing some incredible things with visual media, but it was definitely Bible-light. I hope and trust it will never be said of any department at First Free that it is Bible-light.
If it’s the truth that sets us free, then may we never water down the truth. We can and should work hard to present the truth in culturally relevant ways, we must illustrate the truth so that it can be grasped by all ages, we must apply the truth to our daily lives, but let us never water it down, for it is the truth that sets us free.
Now Jesus’ offer of freedom to these Jewish followers causes a negative reaction from them. They answer, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. (They have very short memories!). How can you say that we shall be set free?” Then Jesus gets very specific: “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” He does not mean that everyone who has ever committed a sin is a slave to that sin. Rather He makes it clear by the present tense of the verb “sins” that He is referring to the person who keeps on sinning, the one who violates God’s law regularly and without repentance.
You know, slavery to sin is the worst kind of slavery; it is more devastating than any political or social or economic or emotional or religious slavery. Just how serious is it? Well, it can determine who belongs to God’s family. Slaves, you see, do not enjoy family privileges, but children do. Here’s how Jesus puts it: “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.” The natural question that arises, or should arise, in everyone’s mind when they hear these words of Jesus is, “How can I stop being a slave to sin and become a son to God?” Well, Jesus tells us very plainly:
If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Truth will set you free from a lot of things, especially the truth of God’s written Word. But if you want to be free indeed, if you want to be completely free spiritually, you also need God’s living Word, Jesus Christ. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed!” As the passage unfolds, it is clear that the Jews, sadly, were counting on their Jewish heritage, as children of Abraham, to make them free. What are you counting on? Is it your denomination? Is it your baptism? Is it your Bible knowledge? Is it your parents’ faith? Friends, all those are bound to disappoint you in the end, for there is no adequate source of true spiritual freedom other than a personal relationship with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who died for you and paid the penalty for your sin.
To those of you who already know Jesus as your personal Savior, I want to say to you that this freedom can revolutionize your life if you grasp it fully. You can enjoy God and the abundant life He provides. You are free to become all that God intended you to be when He created you. More important than anything else, you are free to love and be loved. There is absolutely no greater freedom than knowing that someone loves you unconditionally, and Jesus does! But I want to add that the love of Jesus is most readily experienced in His Church as we work and minister together with brothers and sisters who share our love for Jesus. In Christian community we can love each other even when it hurts, and we can receive love from one another if we are not too proud to do so.
That’s what First Evangelical Free Church stands for, always has, and I trust always will:
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed!”
DATE: June 8, 2003
Tags:
Freedom
Ignorance
Slavery
History of the Free Church
History of First Free of St. Louis County
[i] I believe this was said by the Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, but I cannot find the citation.