True Liberty and Unity vs Their Dangerous Counterfeits

True Liberty and Unity vs Their Dangerous Counterfeits
What is true liberty? What is true freedom? What is true unity? Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! Jesus came to set us free and to liberate us from our sins. Liberty means you are no longer a slave. Unity is not forced compliance, it is voluntarily gathering around the life-giving principles of God’s Word!

With a country divided, the Republican risk and morality being redefined, it’s time to gather round a camp fire, get back to basics, and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American Camp Fire revival with Cook Cameron.
There’s a couple of words that that came up, and and I noodling on them today as as I was preparing for, uh, what we could talk about.
And there’s there’s a word that is just I’m hearing lots of right now. and it’s liberty.
And another one is unity. Now those are
two great words. Liberty and unity.
but those are also words that that that strike fear into the hearts of students of history.
Because if you know anything about the French revolution, If you know anything about Nazi Germany, you know anything about regimes of terror, you know that those
are the words that are
used and twisted
to take advantage of people
in the French revolution. You had Equality. That’s equality. Fraternity.
That’s fraternity or brotherhood or sisterhood, like a fraternity or or sorority. It’s community unity.
So you have liberty and equality and and unity.
And they’re great words if You define them correctly, and you use them for good.
Not for evil. The French revolution, it turned out that it led to not a lot of liberty for a
lot of people. It led to the French guillotine cutting off the heads of, uh, tens of thousands of people.
and the brotherhood really wasn’t so brotherly love about brotherly love.
The unity was really more like forced compliance.
And the equality, well, sounds great, but it really was the removal of of of opportunity of of choices.
And so I wanna talk with you about that.
Liberty has been the cry of the human heart from the beginning of time. Let me be free.
And from the very beginning, we see men enslaving other men and races of people or tribes or groups trying to get other people to work for them, enslave them, and and and you see that throughout all of history.
I’ve got a few notes here that I wrote down. Some of my favorite uh, scenes from history.
You have Patrick Henry who called for Liberty. Remember, Patrick Henry was was talking
at the Virginia convention, and
he was looking to get troops together to fight in the revolutionary war against the the British who were seeking to strip them of all of their freedom.
And he said in that famous speech, he said, is life so dear or peace so sweet?
do you value life and peace so much that you will let them purchase those things that you will purchase those things at the price of chains and slavery, do you really wanna live so bad and have peace so much that you will buy those things by allowing them to put chains around your neck and turn you into slaves, he said forbid it almighty god I do not know what course other men may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
He would say give me freedom or give me, I’d rather die than be a slave.
And then you’ve got Braveheart, that great movie of William Wallace, the Scotsman, the freedom fighter who was looking at those who wanted to and slave him and all of his friends and his family.
And he looked at his men. And he said, look, you’ve got 2 choices.
He said, fight and you may die.
Run and you will live for a while and yet dying in your bed many years from now.
I’m doing my best at miss Scottish accent.
You, he said, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance?
Just one chance to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom.
Remember that great scene?
With the blue face, freedom was the cry of his heart and Patrick Henry’s heart.
And remember in the declaration of independence, what did our founders write they said we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that means rights that god gave us that cannot be ripped away from us because he he baked them into the human uh, bill of rights.
And among these rights that god gave us are life. What’s the next one? Liberty.
freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
Listen to what Jesus, the great liberator himself God coming from heaven to to to bring freedom to men and women and young and old said this, The spirit of the lord is upon me.
He has sent me sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.
It’s the cry the human heart has been since the beginning of time.
It was the it was it was it was the purpose that Jesus came to set men and women free.
And at liberty, And the apostle Paul said this famously, uh, of late where the spirit of
the lord is There is freedom. Freedom. Now freedom is a precious thing. Many people in
the world don’t have freedom. Right? you go to countries where there is no freedom, but there’s lots of unity.
Now it’s
not really unity. It’s forced compliance. Forest obedience. Everybody’s doing Everybody’s doing the same thing. Everybody’s behaving.
Everybody’s, uh, towing the line in places, uh, countries that I’m
not gonna name right now. but that’s not unity. Right? That’s not liberty. That’s not freedom. It’s not voluntary.
No. That’s not liberty. Liberty is precious. It means you’re not a slave.
You you’re free to think. You’re free to live. You’re free to work and enjoy the fruits of your neighbors.
You’re free to worship god according to the dictates of your conscience. You’re free to love your family.
You’re free to help those who are in need, and you do it with a joyful heart because you’re free to do those things.
But freedom costs something. What does it cost? It costs.
It comes at a price, and the price is godly integrity, godly character, and virtue.
If we’re going to be free, it requires us to have the moral code of the most just and loving person in the universe, god himself.
If we’re gonna have freedom, we have to love one another and take care of one another.
If we don’t and we turn selfish, and we lack virtue and character, we’re gonna begin to abuse one another.
And and and and and men and women have done
that throughout history. We we we talked about that.
And when people begin to take advantage of one another through their liberty, through their freedom, because they have choices, what happens?
People get angry. People get frustrated.
People begin fight back and pretty soon, there is lawlessness, there is anarchy, there is war and fighting, and then people become desperate for someone to bring order, and then they look to a to an all powerful government, somebody with with with power and guns and authority to come in and set order.
and to and to then then to to build something new out of the ashes of the lack of character and freedom and they build something back, which they say is better.
And it’s a community where there is no more liberty because liberty led to anarchy because the people lacked character.
So if we wanna have liberty, the price has always been, you must have godly character in your heart.
How do you get that? You’ve gotta turn your heart to god and say, oh god, left up
to myself. I’m I’m gonna make a mess of my own life, and I’m gonna take
advantage of others it’s it’s it’s what you see on the news all the time.
It’s what you see in history.
God’s changed my heart set me free to love you and to love my neighbor.
and help me to live up to your moral standards
of liberty injustice and compassion for all and putting others above myself.
That’s true. Liberty. And that’s what liberty requires.
Do you know that in in other care,
in other countries, uh, people are referred to as subjects Right? They’re the subjects of the
king or the subjects of the queen.
We we think of that in in kingdoms and and stories and and and even in nations.
Now your subject of the lord or the emperor. In America, we’re not subjects. You know that? Think about that.
We don’t call one another subject. We’re citizens. Different.
the word citizen actually means co kings because our government doesn’t have
a king or an emperor or a czar or a a a a a show gun or a or a a a whatever.
We have a representative government where the ultimate authority
is actually we the people.
We the people are the ultimate government of the United States of America.
And we have a constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.
And so we are citizens of the United States, not subjects of the United States, because we actually are the governor We, the people, for the people, by the people of the people.
We have freedom. That’s what makes this place so unique. That’s what makes our form of government so unique.
and it requires personal character. That’s why George Washington said that morality and true religion are true religion, meaning a true love of god, true love of your neighbor, those are the indispensable supports for a free country like ours.
If we lose those two things, It’s all gonna go away. Freedom.
Liberty requires real character. That’s why we’re going to church.
That’s why we’re reading god’s word. That’s why we’re loving god. That’s why we’re praying together.
And then the other big word
that we hear throwing around a lot is unity unity.
Well, there’s a big difference, I think, done what you think, between voluntary unity and forced compliance.
Like I said earlier, you can find places where everybody seems to be unified in what they think and
what they say in what they do, but it’s not voluntary. It’s not because they want to.
It’s because they have to because if they don’t, they get punished, canceled, deleted, released.
Bye bye. And so forced compliance with laws and rules is very different than voluntary unity.
When we talk about unity, we’re talking about, as the family of faith, we’re talking about the freedom to gather voluntarily around the life giving truths of god’s word.
Let me say that again, true liberty is I mean, true unity is voluntarily gathering around the life giving principles of god’s word, which always bring maximum human flourishing for all people regardless of race or gender or background nationality.
That’s very different than forced compliance, which is forced obedience to the dictates of man or man made governments that actually enslave us.
They don’t set us free. That’s not unity. That’s forced compliance.
In fact, this reminds me of a movie that I saw. It’s a really creepy movie.
If you haven’t seen, it’s actually incredible acting. Jeff Bridges and Merrill Streep are starring in it.
Um, and Taylor Swift is actually playing a small part in this in this movie called the Giver And the giver is this is this movie where it
says out of the ashes of this this past republic where they had freedoms and choices and liberty, it led to chaos and ultimately out of this this this, uh, ruins rises a new community.
And the whole movie’s in black and white, and you see, like, everyone seems to be getting along and and and there seems to be lots of unity, but guess what?
It’s because all their choices have been removed and they have been already decided by an elite group of elders.
It’s those in the governing class who have actually taken away all choice, and people don’t live in homes.
They live in dwellings.
people have first names, but they don’t have last names that that that basically, um, attach them and associate them with a family.
their units and their dwelling places.
And, uh, people are actually assigned to their jobs, and they all wear the same clothes and they ride the same bicycles.
And then they actually dedicate their lives to the government.
And then when they’re no longer useful, they’re actually released.
little babies, if they don’t meet certain standards of weight, they’re released. You know what that means?
If they get old enough to they’re not contributing to the society, they’re released to elsewhere.
And there’s one person who actually understands what’s going on here in this false freedom and false unity, this forced compliance with the rules,
and this is the giver.
This is the person who actually knows, and he lives in a house somewhere where he has a library full of of history.
And he’s getting ready to pass on his knowledge to another young person and this person begins to experience little by little what’s actually out there beyond the community.
And that is freedom freedom to love, freedom to choose, freedom to feel emotion, and he begins to see that there’s a whole world out there outside of the community where there is real liberty.
And he wants to bring these experiences that bring life from black and white to color to the rest of the community and so that they can embrace them voluntarily by choice.
And in that, they will find unity
around the truth, which leads them to liberty both in their own heart, in their own mind, and liberty for their community.
But, of course, there’s the bad guys who wanna stop them.
And so this is The dilemma, I think we find in our our find ourselves in today.
Let me ask you this question.
As you look around you right now, where wherever it is that you live and you’re watching this, Are you seeing more liberty growing
in America or more forced compliance?
I don’t wanna try to lead you in that, but this flag back here represents Liberty.
This flag here on this fire pit represents Liberty. and justice for all.
And as a family of faith, we wanna be in unity and in communion, common unity with god and with one another.
What do you see growing in our culture, in our society right now in America?
More unity, voluntary, Gathering around the life giving principles of god that lead to maximum human flourishing, or do you see growing forced compliance from those who want to dictate what we should say and what we should do and how we should think.
And that kind of forced compliance, another telltale sign, it tends to divide people.
it splits people up into groups rather than bringing them together. It gets one group fighting against another group.
And this group thinking that group is bad and that group thinking those people are the danger.
And pretty soon, it destroys all of the unity.
And then it’s easy for those folks to take away our liberty.
What do you see growing more? Here’s our solution.
Let’s continue to gather together voluntarily Did anyone make you come here tonight?
Did anyone say? We have
ways of making you turn on Facebook and watch the campfire. No. Right?
Uh, I’m awful accents tonight. Did you come here voluntarily, willingly, freely?
Yeah. Force compliance would be come to the campfire
or you get deleted? You get canceled?
No. we’re here because we want to be. We love god. We love the truth.
And I want what’s best for you. and I hope you want what’s best for me.
And I want your kids to be free. Not forced into fake unity.
and the choice is taken away. That’s what’s at stake. This is communion. This is liberty.
This is unity. in the true sense.
And it starts with the great liberator liberating you and me in our heart, and then we liberate.
our homes, and we begin to celebrate and stand for liberty for our neighbors, even those who disagree with us.
Let’s pursue god and loving one another together.
and pray that he blesses and and and, uh, gives success to our efforts.
To god, we love you. We thank you for this night. We thank you for, uh, true liberty.
Thank you that you sent the liberator.
Thank you that you set me free.
And I thank you for true unity, which is always voluntarily gathering around the truth.
that sets men and women free and puts your goodness and kindness and power on display.
That’s what we want, and we ask for you to accomplish this dear god. Do this and do it quickly.
In Jesus’ name, we pray, name Alright. God bless you guys.
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