This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 23, 1994.
About this sermon
The 1960s produced two rival idols, the worship of government and the worship of personal freedom, and Scripture opposes both. In 1 Corinthians 9:19 Paul is free enough to make himself a slave to everyone, and that paradox cuts against both idols at once. Real liberty shows in what a person is free to give up.
Sermon transcript
We read this morning from 1 Corinthians 9, and we are beginning with verse 1. This is 1 Corinthians 9, beginning at verse 1, and I want you to give your attention to the word of God. I am reading from the New American Standard. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. My defense to those who examine me is this. Do we not have a right to eat and drink? Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord even seek us?
Or do only Barnabas and I not have the right to refrain from working? Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock? I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the law also say these things? For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing. God is not concerned about oxen, is he?
Or is he speaking altogether for our sake? For our sake it was written because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the cross. If we sowed spiritual things to you, is it too much? If we should reap material things from you, if others share the right over you, do not we more?
Nevertheless, we do not use this right. that endure all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple, and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share with the altar? So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.
But I have used none of these things. and I am not writing these things that it may be done so in my case. For it would be better for me to die than have any man make my boast an empty one. For if I preach the gospel I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this voluntarily I have a reward, but if against my will I have a stewardship entrusted to me. What then is my reward? That when I preach the gospel, I may offer the gospel without charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more.
Let’s pray together. We are drawn together, our God, before your word. Lord, we would have your word central to our experience as believers and even to the experience of this church. May we honor you and honor your word. May we receive, then, your word as that infallible truth inspired by you through your servants. O God, may we hear. May our hearing be obedient. hearing. We ask it for the sake of Christ, who always heard and obeyed perfectly. Amen. At the end of the sixties, a British television program made its way across the Atlantic, and for a while captured the minds of all of us restless, yet so intelligent types.
The program was called The Prisoner. It starred Patrick McGowan in the role of a man attempting to quit the system, particularly the political intelligence system. Each episode opened with what became a famous sequence, so expressive of the mood of the time, and even my own. McGowan was seen running along a deserted beach as if pursued by some unseen force, then stopping to raise his clenched fist to the heavens and cry, I am not a number, but a free man. who would have rather missed the Super Bowl, maybe even in those days much more easily missed church than missed the next episode of The Prisoner, understood the storyline to be more complex than just another exercise in bashing the establishment. The political intelligence system that had McGowan by the throat, or No. 6 as he was known in the program, was only a symbol, a symbol for the forces of that which is inevitable, fate itself, if you will. those unavoidable pressures of existence by which we perceive that we are anything but free.
Those of us who were the devotees of that program decided, with McGowan and a whole host of others in our corner, life was, above all, unfair. life was, above all, unfair. And that our major task in life was to let everyone, including God, know just how unfair everything was. Of course, the truly profound and original impulse of the sixties was that of the heroic stand against the inevitability of fate. Here was the true rebel, not the one who foolishly sought to change what could not be changed. but the one who defiantly scorned all convention, and even those silly thoughts that, indeed, things might be changed.
The true hero, for those who represented that original impulse behind the pullments of the came out of Greek mythology. His name was Sisyphus. Do you remember Sisyphus? He’s from mythology doomed in Hades to roll that incredibly large boulder up that incredibly steep hill, only to see that incredibly large boulder roll down that incredibly steep hill so that he can roll it back up that hill again. Here was the true rebel if in fact we were able to conclude that Sisyphus was happy. Happy since only in his happiness, by his happiness, does he defy the forces that first consigned him to Hades, and then to compel him to roll that silly rock up that wall.
Here then was, yes, the true hero as the true and consummate rebel. Those who put Sisyphus forth as the hero of the age were not too interested, however, in figures that rose out of the Bible. For example, as a true rebel, Jesus failed. You see, the true rebel, when perched on that pinnacle of the temple, the true rebel, when perched on that pinnacle of the temple, would have chosen to stand there, to teeter there forever, rather than to give in either to Satan or to God. Only then could the true rebel experience true freedom and find his true self Apart from any external constraint or definition, whether that constraint came from below or from above. Jesus was mistaken. He took the easy route out. He appealed to an authority over against Satan. He appealed to Scripture. Jesus was not free. Jesus is no true hero. He is no true rebel.
Here, then, was the profound and original impulse of the pursuit of freedom in the sixties, as it developed out of the atheistic French existential philosophy of John Paul and even more consistently out of Albert Camus. It’s important for you to realize that this original impulse for that pursuit of freedom had in fact broken ranks with classical liberalism that came to expression at the end of the and at the beginning of the 20th century.
You see, existentialism is thoroughly pessimistic about the world and about society. It is also completely pessimistic about humanity, except when the individual, in an act of the will, finds freedom through resistance to all external restraint. here is true authentication of one’s being. Liberalism, on the other hand, was incurably optimistic about both humanity and its institutions. As liberalism moved through the sixties, However, it capitalized on the existentialist’s veneration of personal freedom, but it refused to accept his position on the omnivorous and inevitable power of faith. Liberalism did in fact take up the pervasive, persistent gripe of existentialism. Indeed, life is unfair, it is unjust, seemingly.
But this gripe, with only despair, driving us to the real heroism. For real heroes don’t retire to a self-satisfied state of rebellious defiance. Real heroes don’t cage into fate. Real heroes stand up for the purpose of changing, if you will, if you can imagine it, the course of fate itself.
After all, to the extent that we can speak about the divine, to the extent that we can speak about God, we ourselves are divine. We are gods who are at work. on the perfection of this world and the realization of an environment in which we will all be able to arrive at our full potential and our complete happiness. Man’s chief end is to glorify himself and to enjoy himself forever.
Of course, what we have learned from the sixties is the value of the establishment for the achieving of these admirable goals. Thank goodness we have outgrown the forewarned dissent of Bob Dylan and the adolescent whine of the Doors, Tom Haven and Jerry Rubin. Thank God that we have moved beyond the appeals for violent revolution from the Black Panthers, the radicals of the SBA, and Elijah Muhammad. We may now realize, having come through this experience of the sixties, this experience that Oliver Stone wants to continually remind us of. We must now realize, as strange as it may sound, more than ever, you see, the establishment, but particularly the government, the political machine, is the vehicle for the accomplishment of our goals.
In fact, only government, the collective effort of humanity, this in fact defining the collective effort of humanity, can superintend and secure our liberation. That political and social liberation of which we are speaking being our only true and worthy objective. The only worthy objective to which we can commit our lives, and to be denied a role in this collective effort, is to be denied any true humanity. We’re not fully human. if we are not participants in the collective effort. Government then is called upon to see to it that we are empowered to participate in the process. Government realizing then, of course, that without us being fully empowered, the dream which is government’s to realize, remains unfulfilled.
Now if you have been paying attention and have not slept through the last few years, you know that I have just described in part the state of the nation. and the mindset of the liberal machine presently at the helm of government. Indeed, government is the savior. In fact, government is Messiah. It has become the railroad we may in fact be railroaded, it has become the railroad to a new celestial city. In the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the true and only heaven that is completely realizable without leaving this world at all.
But of course, this is but a partial description of the state of things. I say that because there are those, not liberals, but conservatives, for example, who identify government not as Messiah, but as Antichrist. this enterprise standing over against the real messiah themselves.
The only genuine mission in life is the maximizing and maintaining of my personal individual freedom. And in the working out of that scenario, falls to the strongest. Survival of the fittest. Even fate itself must back down before my own indomitable individuality.
A true and honorable government will honor my personal mission by not messing around in my personal affairs and by keeping its grubby hands out of my wallet. Now if, in this description of the conservative cause, you have discerned that it sounds very much like a variation on the theme that you heard out of liberalism than you have been listening quite carefully and correctly.
Over events from both stands the word of God. The word of God prohibits the worship of all idols. Whether that idol be government for the realization of freedom, or be it that freedom itself The Word of God is also born to declare to the Church that this freedom, of which it has a great deal to say, that this freedom is given to us as a gift, that this freedom cannot be improved upon by us, nor can it be taken away from us by governments or human agencies or any other thing that exists within the created order.
This freedom of which the scripture speaks is not bound by social convention or circumstance. It was received by slaves and women in the first century, by those who were high and by those who were low. It was received by those from all of the races of humanity. It was received and delighted in, given as it was by grace to them, irrespective of their social circumstance or their standing within society.
The Christian has been made free by God through his sovereign work in Christ. this one Christ, then that one, in fact, who proves to be the means of God’s liberation. Paul speaks about his freedom at the opening of the ninth chapter of 1 Corinthians. That question that he asks, am I not free, is a question that we ask too. Of course, implying the answer in the asking of it. We are, I am, free. Indeed, Paul was free, as are we all who are in Christ.
And that I tell you now, so that you do get it straight, even before and apart from the Magna Carta. even before and apart from the Declaration of Independence, even before and apart from the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Bill, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Now, I do not mean disrespect to those Lords in England that convened before Prince John, or King John, the days of the signing of the Magna Carta. I am not here being disrespectful, I hope, to our Founding Fathers or to Abraham Lincoln or to Martin Luther King, Jr. I may hesitate with regard to Gloria Steinem, but truly I do not mean any disrespect to who are concerned about the equal treatment of women before the law.
But hear me out in this. It is not, and I mean this with all respect, it is not, great God Almighty, I am free, free at last, as Martin Luther King said, in anticipation of the realization of his dream with respect to political racial equality. No! As hard as it is to say that in this setting, in this decade, in this century, no!
Rather, it is, great God Almighty, I have been freed at the cross. And that’s to paraphrase Martin Luther, who himself echoed the Apostle Paul, both of whom gloried in the realization of their redemption in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. This one who alone secures us in a freedom that will last forever. secures us in a freedom from all tyranny of sin, silk, Satan, and death, secures us from the tyranny of the law, even the tyranny of the law.
But I want you to notice how wonderful this freedom is. How much then this man who speaks in 1 Corinthians is set apart even in his expression of the freedom which he claims, which does in fact become paradigm for you, pattern for you. Notice how wonderful, how glorious this freedom is of which he speaks.
It is so wonderful that it can actually surrender its rights for the sake of others. It can actually surrender its power for the sake of others. It can even express itself. So free is it. It can even express itself in the language of slavery. Here is the true hero.
He tells us that he hasn’t arrived in Philippians 3, but I tell you that here’s a man who has arrived as much as we will arrive in this world. So wonderful is the freedom of which he speaks that it could express itself in the language of slavery and still claim absolute freedom.
Did you hear it? The 19th verse? Did you hear the man? Though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all that I might win the moon. I tell you, this is true freedom. I will not comment any further on this passage this morning. I leave you to wonder at it and to wonder about it.
Help us, our Father, in this whole matter of freedom, which so easily becomes an idol detached from You, or even one over which we have laid language about You. Save us, O Lord, from worship at the altars of false gods. And may we know that the one who is true, the true God, has acted to set us free. For freedom we have been set free in Jesus Christ. May we know that the God who has so acted on our behalf, the one who continues to work in us, guaranteeing that freedom which no government can confer or remove. O God, may we also understand that in the course of time you have been pleased to grant to us many secular freedoms.
May we honor you for that. May we respect these freedoms, and may we prove to be good stewards of them. And may we also be concerned, Lord, that as far as it lies with us, we treat people justly, evenly, and fairly. We pray these things for the sake of Christ This one, your son, has our allegiance. We know him, our God, to be the one true Messiah. We pray through him.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.