Dennis Tuuri

# The Liberty Bell

I would like to ring the Liberty Bell this morning. Couple weeks late, I suppose. I’d like to ring that bell. You know, you can’t ring the Liberty Bell anymore. A couple reasons. One, it’s cracked. I don’t know if you know or not. It was the third bell that was cast. The first casting, there was a big crack the first time it was rung. Second bell, they melted it down, made another casting, it was no good. Third casting was okay.

Supposedly it rang on the day the Declaration of Independence was signed and then over the years every 4th of July until the 1800s it was cracked. I don’t know. Legend has it that it was rung in relation to the announcement of a new Supreme Court justice. I don’t know. It’s cracked now. You can’t ring it anymore. Besides that, it’s behind glass. It’s all encaged. It’s in a place that if it was rung, you probably couldn’t hear it because it’s got pretty thick glass around it.

But you know, that doesn’t have to stop us because the Liberty Bell, the ringing of the Liberty Bell, as understood by the men that cast it and the men that designed it had to do with the ringing of God’s word inscribed on that Liberty Bell with the inscription—by the way, the very scripture citation, Leviticus 25:10—inscribed on that bell is to proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.

And that bell, that clear clarion tone of God’s word, the year of Jubilee and the implications of it can be rung and can be rung out loudly once more in this land and should be to some extent every Lord’s day. Yet, sadly, it isn’t. Sadly, that bell remains muted for all too many churches, men. That bell remains muted in our own lives. That bell declares the release of those who are held captive. That’s a picture of the release from sin in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And yes, we can complain about the civil government that increasingly takes away the liberty of its citizens. But we must also today think about the implications of a Christian people. You, me, the church in this country and around the world that pretends that those shackles of sin are still locked round about us. But in fact, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving grace shown to us by the Holy Spirit has released us from the spiritual slavery to sin that we were held in.

God has released those shackles. He’s unlocked the lock. But all too often, we walk around like those shackles are on us. We feel compelled to sin in thought, word, and deed. And to the extent that we Christian people do that, and do not understand the implications of the Liberty Bell and the inscription thereon in our own lives and our own release from sin. To that extent, we will increasingly face political oppression and tyranny in our land.

I don’t know what your week was like last week, but I can tell you a little bit about my week. Early on in the week, we went to another citizen review board meeting about the Kits Miller children. Well, they’re talking a little different now because they have the potential threat of a lawsuit. They’re talking a little more nice about everything. And it was interesting in the providence of God, I sat across from this lady at the table that I had a lot of discussions with back in 1987 and ’89 when we tried to change the child abuse laws.

She used to be head of child protective services in the entire state. Been demoted for some reason. I don’t know why, but it’s interesting that here we are again, looking at each other across the table about controversy relative to the lack of freedom that parents have, the lack of civil liberty to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I mean, the reasons given here is you can’t return these kids because they don’t want to go to church and they don’t want to go to public school and you know, they want to be able to hang out at the mall and probably smoke cigarettes, whatever else it is.

They want their own social patterns. So, the state of Oregon finds that a complicated situation. We were told, “Oh, these things are complex. That’s a very complicated case we’ve got going here.” Well, there are a few complications to it obviously because of a blended family. Nonetheless, the basic case is fairly clear. The only thing that complicates it is that the state doesn’t ring the liberty bell anymore and they don’t understand the implications of the Jubilee year and they don’t—they try to fashion a civil government not based upon representation of the people but now based upon the imposition from a centralized state upon its citizenry.

So, as part of my week, watching the continuing—yes, I think I can use the word tyranny—that remains in this state with the children’s services division. I know that the CSD is required because children are increasingly abused because as a culture moves away from the Lord Jesus Christ there’s no natural affection that’s going to prevent parents from beating their children unduly severely, breaking arms, limbs, ignoring them while they’re on drug trips, etc. I know that’s going on increasingly. When the CSD takes the sort of actions it does relative to the Kits Millers, we know that the real liberty bell is muted in our land.

I got two emails yesterday on the Knox ring. Several actually, but a couple of them specifically. There’s a case, and I don’t know much about this case. I hesitate to even mention it, but God gave it to me yesterday, prepared to preach this sermon. There’s a Christian university in Louisiana called LaSalle University. Now, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a cult. I have no idea. Maybe it’s a hard reformed Christian. I don’t know. All I know is that a solid reformed Christian fella thought it was important that other solid reformed Christian ministers and lay people across the country understood what happened on July 10th at LaSalle University.

What happened was the FBI came in with warrants and closed the school down. It’s two blocks worth of school. They locked the doors. They told everybody to get out. They drove away with truckloads of material. Apparently, no charges have been filed. No arrests have been made. We don’t know what the charges are. The FBI says the documents are sealed. There’s an ongoing investigation for over a year. And so they’re taking away things and they’re threatening employees of the school. You better quit. Better turn statements to the school. No charges. Apparently been communicating to these people as of yesterday at least nearly two weeks of this going on with intimidations and threats.

Now, you know, this school apparently has over a hundred employees there on site, 15,000 students across the world. I don’t know much more than that about it. But I know that everything is in place for the government to do whatever it wants to do against whomever it wants to do it today in that manner with the FBI because the Liberty Bell isn’t rung anymore and the meaning of the Jubilee doesn’t sound out anymore.

Another one of those emails was another update on Mr. Hussein, Robert Hussein in Kuwait who is under potential death sentence from the court system or the religious court system because he converted to Christianity. And now for those of you who are interested, I have his email address. He appreciates notes of encouragement. He’s very fearful for his life and actions continue to be taken with men from around the world trying to talk to Kuwaiti ambassadors and get this situation reversed.

I mentioned that one because in terms of liberty, Webster’s 1828 dictionary talks about civil liberty. We usually think of political liberty. We’re thinking really of civic liberty. And they talk about political liberty and the definition has to do with a country not being subjugated to another country or somehow under their dominion or authority. And if you think of that particular aspect that Webster pointed out in his 1828 dictionary of liberty, the Kuwait situation and that whole engagement in the Middle East on the part of America and the subjugation of America and its soldiers in terms of presentation of the gospel etc. in that country is an example of the loss of political liberty for the United States of America, for these United States of America, to worldwide powers and authorities.

We can go on to talk about economics and how that’s been given over to an international trade organization and nobody knows today because Webster’s 1828 isn’t used. That’s the loss of political liberty for the United States. That was another part of my week. Another part of my week was acknowledgment that the unborn continue to be slaughtered in this land. I listened to a song by Leonard Cohen, not a Christian, but listen to the last words.

I’ve probably read this to you before, but his album he put out a couple of years ago called The Future—a CD, rather. The first title song is all about “I’ve seen The Future.” The last set of lyrics before the chorus are: “Destroy another fetus now. We don’t like children anyhow. I’ve seen the future baby. It is murder.” See, one of the few rock singers to actually—that’s a sarcastic comment. The point is, he’s criticizing abortionists.

And I know that this country this last week was filled with thousands more children being killed in the womb because people don’t like people anymore. And those births have been betrayed. Here’s another line from one of his songs: “And in this country, those birds are betrayed on a daily basis through the sin of abortion.” And that continues apace.

And God shows us with huge pictures there what the future of America is on the course it’s on. Our course is one of increasing tyranny, increasing difficulties, increasing loss of liberty and increasing lack of knowledge about what this country was all about and its origins. How is it that this country had on the Liberty Bell the picture of what American freedom is supposed to be about emblazoned in each of our minds since childhood?

Why does it have this quotation from Leviticus 25 about release from captivity in the year of Jubilee—this Old Testament, stodgy, old, unrelated case law? Why does it find it so necessary to put that in front of the American people in perpetuity when that bell rings out? It’s because this country was started by Christians. Because in the year that the Liberty Bell first rang, 1776, there were 3 million people, about 1% of what we’ve got now.

But out of those 3 million, 2 million of them were Calvinists and Presbyterians. It wasn’t some 10% influence on a largely secular country. Two-thirds of them Calvinists, Presbyterians, and others. 500,000 of them, half a million of the country were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians specifically. Tremendous wave of migration there. All the foundings of this country, including that Liberty Bell, has as their roots among the scriptures of course, but then down historically through John Calvin at Geneva because Calvin understood the application of the reformation to the political structures of his day.

Indeed, Lewis Ford Battles, the great translator of Calvin’s works, suggested the first edition of the Institutes could be understood primarily as a sort of political treatise. Calvin had an overriding concern with proper government and that’s shown by the fact that the opening epistle of the Institutes is dedicated to King Francis I of France and it was an apology for the persecuted evangelicals in France.

As Doug H. writes in a recent book, the same governmental concern is dealt with again in considerable detail in the last chapter on freedom and ecclesiastical and civil power. Calvin saw the relationship between liberty, the church, and the state. And so we have the Liberty Bell ringing out a message consonant with Calvin’s view of the civil magistrate. Calvin wrote letter after letter to civil rulers in the context of his life.

Indeed, resistance to civil authorities was a central part of what John Calvin was about. Let me read a couple of quotes here about John Calvin. He developed what is known as the theory of the lesser magistrate, as probably most of you know or many of you might know, that says that when you’ve got a tyrant—when you’ve got, you know, CSD for instance—acting improperly in some cases, and then when people have taken it upon themselves, or maybe this LaSalle University, I don’t know—what do you do when that kind of problem exists? And Calvin says what you do is you appeal to a lesser magistrate, someone between you and him that can interpose himself between you and that person in a governmental structure. And Calvin taught that was legitimate and even necessary, too.

Listen to this quote. I found this quote in a book I just read last night, to tell you the truth. A new book by Tom Rose. It’s actually a little booklet or pamphlet. Tom Rose has written various books on Christian economics and has been a college professor. And he sent me this book with a nice little note with it, this little booklet, and it’s all about interposition—by the way, I highly recommend it—this doctrine of civil magistrates being able to interpose themselves between a tyrannical government and the people.

Listen to this quote from John Calvin that Tom Rose has, and this is found in Calvin’s Institutes. He says: “If there are now any magistrates of the people appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings, so he says there are these lesser magistrates. I am so far from forbidding them to withstand in accordance with their duty the fierce licentiousness of kings that if they wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk, I declare that their dissimulation involves nefarious perjury because they dishonestly betray the freedom of the people of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God’s ordinance.”

Calvin as much says that if a civil magistrate, if a legislator for instance or a county commissioner refuses to engage himself to interpose himself with every means he has to protect citizens who are tyrannized by another governmental agency, they’re guilty of nefarious perjury. They’re sinning. They’re sinning by way of omission to their responsibility to God. So it wasn’t just that lesser magistrates could interpose themselves. They had to interpose themselves when they saw injustice.

Now it’s the sort of sin today that is a result of improper teaching. But what I’m saying is that as we teach Christian magistrates the truth of this doctrine, we must teach them as well the responsibility to protect people in the context of tyranny by interposing themselves between people and tyrannical states.

Now Calvin in his later writings actually seemed that as he was moving toward his death, he was also moving toward a position that the citizen himself, without the aid of a governmental interposition of authority, could resist the king’s dictates or the governor’s dictates which were wrong. Let me read a quote here from his commentary on Daniel. Again, this is Tom Rose’s new booklet.

“For our earthly princes lay aside all their power when they rise up against God and are unworthy of being reckoned in the number of mankind. We ought rather utterly to defy and”—in the original language, literal translation—”to spit on their heads is what he said. Literally to defy, spit on their heads—them. We are utterly to defy them than to obey them whenever they are so restive and wish to spoil God of his rights and as it were to seize upon his throne and draw him down from heaven.”

So what he’s saying there is that even if there are no intermediate magistrates, when a king or a governmental authority acts so badly as to wrest from Christ his crown rights and to engage in tyranny in a strong way, then the average person, now the Christian, has the ability by himself to say I’m not going to obey in that particular matter and to resist him and to defy him and in a sense spit on his head in terms of figurative language.

So Calvin seemed to be moving not just—he gave us the doctrine of graded courts, lesser magistrates, giving us political liberty from tyrants. He gave us that. He gave us an understanding of the word of God and reform and the reformation taking that word of God and applying it to civil liberties as well as of course the spiritual release we have from sin in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Calvin’s thought then became important to the development of the Huguenots in France, who were French Calvinists under tremendous amount of persecution, and the Huguenots gave to us a heritage, an understanding of civil government that its primary purpose—the primary purpose of civil government—was the protection of liberty and to maintain the safety of the people that the gospel might be preached, men might live out their lives in expansion of the visible manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They were ahead of their times in giving us a doctrine of the civil magistrate consonant with Romans 13 and 1 Timothy 2 that says that government is not there to nourish the people. That government is there to guard the people, to punish evildoers and so guard the good, law-abiding citizens that they can themselves then perform the work and ministry that Christ has called us all to do. Very developed sense of government in Scotland.

Then we had really the flowering of an understanding of civil government under the Presbyterians, under what some refer to as the second reformation that occurred in the context of Scotland. And then we have given down to us in the context of that a sense and understanding of government based upon a Presbyterian/congregational view of how God ministers authority.

And I would love to spend much more time today talking to you about authority. I cannot do it. Time will not permit it. But let us just say that the origins of this country were certainly Presbyterian. But what that means different things to different people. What I mean by that is that if you understand the nature of how America was started, there were these charters or grants by the crown of England to the original colonists or from other governments. But those charters were very loose, gave them a lot of freedom.

And what then the Puritans and Presbyterians did here is they began then Puritans, particularly the congregational Puritans, to draw up church covenants and to see in that—when this church began the same sort of thing happened. Church people would band together, start a church, write up a church covenant, pledge their loyalty to God in the context of that church covenant. That became the basis for the idea of constitutional government in America—that people, the citizens themselves, could draw together, assemble and create a covenant that was civil as well as ecclesiastical for a particular town, county or state.

And so the whole understanding of what American government is today, that is reflected in that liberty that the Liberty Bell rings out as it talks about the year of Jubilee, was based not upon—and in fact was based absolutely against—the idea that power comes from the top down. In other words, what we had was not power coming from the top down. It was representative government of the people, coming from the bottom up.

Now it was really a blend of those two because there were Scotch Presbyterians who saw more that power flows down from God into the presbytery and then the creation of local churches. I know it’s a little complicated, but all I want you to understand is that in America’s idea of freedom it was very important that in that mix, this idea that people can voluntarily band together, covenant together for various purposes, several ecclesiastical purposes.

Now that’s important to understand because when I talk about the loss of freedom that I just mentioned in a couple contemporary examples of, it’s in the context of the growing usurpation of local authority on the part of a centralized bureaucracy. You see, we’re moving back. As the country’s moved away from Christianity and moved away from a reformation view of what the scriptures teach and moved away from John Calvin, we have moved toward centralized government.

We have moved toward the usurpation of state authority by the United States. We now call it the United States. It’s an entity now. It used to be called these United States or in other writings the States United, because the states were viewed as independent republics who voluntarily then met together and covenanted for particular things. But that union, that covenant, now has imposed itself as creator over the states.

And so we’ve moved from states united, these United States, to the United States. It’s important to recognize that when the year of Jubilee is sounded out here, it is a decentralized tone that rings out. The scriptures teach a decentralized government with local representation chosen by the people. Exodus, the rulers that were selected by the people. Book of Acts, the New Testament—”Select out from yourselves those to put over this business”—local representation.

And we’ve moved away from that. We have, in another lyric from Leonard Cohen off that same album, The Future: “We ask for signs. The signs were sent. The birth betrayed. The marriage spent. The widowhood of every government, signs for all to see.” Well, that’s what we have. The birth betrayed. The abortion is a birth betrayed. But this country, where it stands today, where wicked men seize authority away from the Lord Jesus Christ and his delegated magistrates or attempt to do so, is a birth betrayed in the context of our government.

And when we think about the Liberty Bell and when we think about the fact that that bell is behind glass, then we should think about the fact that the birth of this country, founded on the principal sound of the case law of Leviticus—it’s the central picture of what all the freedom in America was all about—that birth of this nation has been betrayed by a faithless people.

Now let’s talk about the Spirit of Jubilee a little bit. Let’s talk about if we want to ring the Liberty Bell today, if we want those clarion tones to ring out, what does that ring? What is that message that is indeed rung out and embodied in Leviticus 25:10?

I read verse 9 because actually the word Jubilee itself is taken from a Hebrew word meaning the sound of the trumpet. There’s a very close association to what this year is all about with the blowing of the trumpet to produce that blast, that signal of the coming of that year of Jubilee.

The bell in Europe and then in America is really simply a way—it is a symbolic horn, as it were. It is a trumpet blowing things out. It rings out the same message. So this correlation in the mind of the founders of this country are the Liberty Bell ringing out this message as the trumpet was used to blow out the message in Leviticus 25.

And I want us to do a quick run through of various scriptures that talk about the blowing of trumpets and the coming of liberty to God’s people. And let me just go over these quickly first. I’ll tell you what they all are by way of an outline. You can write these down. And this is the Liberty Bell. What is it? It is what is the message that is sounded forth as the Liberty Bell rings? The message is Jubilee.

First of all, the message is law. Secondly, the message is grace and repentance. Thirdly, the message is enrollment. Fourthly, the message is conquest. The fifth part of your outline if you’re writing these things down, the message is a message of Sabbath rest. Sixthly, and then seventh, the Jubilee message is a message of coronation.

So we’ve got Jubilee: law, grace/repentance, enrollment, conquest, Sabbath, coronation. The trumpets that are used, the trumpet that is used rather to blow out Jubilee is as we said found in the text in Leviticus 25:9, 10, and 11.

And so first, those trumpet sounds bring out the bell. The Liberty Bell of America was intended to ring out the Jubilee. Now what was the year of Jubilee in the particular structure of the book of Leviticus and the people in the land of Canaan? Every seventh day was to be a day of rest, Sabbath rest. Every seventh year, the entire year was set apart as a year of sabbatical rest, which mean you had to live providentially or starve in the seventh year.

And every 50th year, so you got seven sets of sabbatical years—7 times 7 years, 49 years. The 50th year was the year of Jubilee. And in the Year of Jubilee, things happened. And specifically, the text tells us that land was returned to the original owners. You might have sold your land. You might have had your land taken for debt. Whatever it is, the land all gets back to the original owners in the 50th year.

That’s number one. Number two, complete release of all debtors. In the sabbatical year, some debtors are released in the sabbatical year rather, but all debtors, no matter how they got there, in the year of Jubilee are released. Okay? So, in the year of Jubilee, it’s a release from debt. And then third, it’s a release from slavery. So with your person, your productivity, you get a new start because you’re no longer a slave.

And with your commerce, with your checkbook, with your visa card, you get a new start in the year of Jubilee. And you even get a start that is on the basis of God giving you graciously land, as Canaan was given to the people of God, to work with your hands and to labor over and produce income for yourself.

Well, now there are a lot of political implications for this and I could draw out some implications relative to the accumulation of massive amounts of wealth on the part of centralized families in America and Europe. And this has implications for that. And we could talk about that, and implications for what land ownership is and the reminder in this system that you’re always a steward. You’re never complete owner of property. It’s a gift of God and he gives it to whom he wills and restructures it, etc.

Release from debt. All these things are interesting politically, but I want us to understand the central meaning here, of course, is the release from the debt of sin and slavery. And I want us to understand that the year of Jubilee, the Liberty Bell rings out, involves all of who we are. It involves our labor. It involves our money. It involves where we’re standing on the physical earth we live on. Okay? So, all of us is involved in this year of Jubilee.

And the Liberty Bell subconsciously proclaimed liberty. It was release for the captives. The chains were taken off and the people were set to be at liberty. And of course, the direct reference in the American War for Independence was the release from the tyranny of a king whom the colonists saw as being rebellious to the constitutional government of England.

Okay? England had a constitution. England had certain things that were declared and written and the king was in violation of those things. And so the year of Jubilee throws off the tyranny of political oppression. And we need to ring out that tone again today of a release from political oppression. We need to ring out the tone of Jubilee.

But secondly, the trumpet blast in the Old Testament isn’t simply the announcement of Jubilee. That Jubilee is in the context of law. I mean, we’ve just read from the book of law about the year of Jubilee. But more explicitly, we find in Exodus chapter 19 that there was a trumpet sound where the people were called up to the mountain at Sinai. Exodus 19:13 says: “They shall not touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through, whether it be beast or man, it shall not live. When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mountain.”

So the trumpet was sounded forth. And then later there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. The trumpet of God that blows forth is a calling of the people to assemble to receive rule or government from God. God gives his people law. He doesn’t give them that law to bring them into salvation. He’s brought them into salvation through deliverance out of Egypt.

But now he gives them that law to structure their lives. And so the trumpet blast, the Liberty Bell ringing out is a bell that is to ring out the implications of God’s law. And remember that year of Jubilee is declared unto all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. And if we’re going to ring out the Liberty Bell again today, we need to ring out the message of the Jubilee. We need to ring out the message of freedom.

But we also need to ring out the message that this only is accomplished when people take upon themselves the law of God. And so that trumpet blast is a blast of law.

But third, the scriptures tell us that trumpet blast is also a blast that is a blast of repentance. It is interesting that when in Leviticus 25:10 there is to sound forth liberty—the word liberty, freedom—this word has a connotation to it that is not normally talked about much, but it has a connotation of purity. For something to be free means to run free as well. Water running free and as a result pure or free of hindrances, obstacles or obstruction. And so the blowing forth of God’s trumpet is the blowing forth of liberty. It’s the blowing forth of the year of Jubilee. It’s the blowing forth of his law.

But there’s also the blowing forth of the need for personal repentance. The same word translated liberty is translated pure in reference to myrrh in Exodus 30 verse 23. The same word purity is what’s to be blown out.

Now so far it’s fine. Yeah, we’re good theonomic people and we want to blow out the Liberty Bell and we want to reform the political structures and we want to proclaim the law. But God says that happens through purity. God says that happens when we hear that bell ringing in our ears and that horn blast blown to us, that reminds us of the need of purity in our lives.

I’m not talking about sinless perfection. It is incapable of being accomplished in this world. The scriptures tell us that very clearly—that he who says he doesn’t sin is a liar. Romans 7 says that you know we want to do it right but frequently we don’t. The confessions say sin attaches itself to all that we are. But I am saying that our lives must be marked by a high, certain sense of purity in reference to the blowing forth of the law of God.

And the implications for the people in Acts, in Ezekiel 33, we know about the watchman, right? Well, in Ezekiel 33 and following it talks about how the watchman, when he sees problems coming upon people or a town, he’s to blow the trumpet—same trumpet being blown here—a shophar. And the watchman blows the trumpet as a call to purity as well as a call of warning that there’s dangers coming. The judgment of God is coming unless you amend your lives. That’s the picture given for us.

Listen to Hosea 8:1: “Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord. Why? Because they have transgressed my covenant and trespassed against my law.”

Again, in Isaiah 58:1: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins.”

The trumpet blast of Jubilee law is a trumpet blast calling God’s people to recognize their sin. Because when political tyranny comes upon us it’s not because some conspiracy moves—that happens of course, men do conspiracies—but God only allows it to prosper. Those conspiracies when his people have transgressed his covenant and broken his law.

You and me. If we want to ring the Liberty Bell, then we have to do it saying, first of all, what does that bell say about my transgressions and my sins?

At our prayer meeting last Sunday, I asked, how often do we confess sin to each other? It is a tremendous burden to me that I don’t see that very often—that I seem to have a reluctance to confess sin, members of my own family sometimes, members of the church. I don’t hear people coming up to me saying, “I sinned. Sorry I did that. Can you forgive me?” I hear it occasionally. Don’t hear it very much. Maybe you’re having a lot of people from church or from your family or from your close friends come up and confess sin.

I hope so, but I don’t think so. And you know, that’s not because we’re getting better as we go along. We are. But as Paul got better and matured, he understood the further the depth of his own depravity. He said, “I am, not I was. I am the chief of sinners.” Because as he grew in the grace of God, he grew in knowledge of his own sin.

And folks, in the flesh, what we’re going to do at the law of God is use it as a standard for the other guy. And we’re going to start confessing his sins. And we’re going to start looking at his problems and that church’s weakness and that guy’s weakness and that government’s weakness. But the law—you don’t have the ability. The Holy Spirit doesn’t take you to write the law upon somebody else’s heart. The Holy Spirit writes the law in your heart.

Now, he does use you in that other way, too. As we dialogue together in community, you help me to see where I’ve screwed up. The Spirit takes the law and writes it upon our heart. We want political freedom. Then we’ve got to throw off the shackles of sin. And you’re not going to do it. And the only way to throw off the shackles of sin is to confess sin and to repent of it. To be smitten by God over the sin you’ve created, you’ve taken and you’ve violated God’s word.

The sin—you the defacing of God that you’ve attempted to do through your sin, that’s got to be repented of. And the effects on God’s community.

My week last week was marked by, you know, a contemplation of things that I’ve done in the past. I praise God that he’s removed some of the scales off my eyes about things that I’ve done that were wrong and hurtful to people, hurtful to God’s people. That I’m moving toward repentance in those things. And I hope, I pray to God, that you know that there is a movement of God’s spirit going on in this church and across the country.

And the way we will see it, yes, we’ll see it in enactment of civil legislation proclaiming the word of God to kings, ringing the bell politically. But we’ll see it first as a movement of God’s spirit confessing sins. That’s what we’ll see it here in this church. And I believe we will. I believe that’s what God has called us to do.

The message of the Liberty Bell is Jubilee and law. But it is repentance. It is grace that God forgives your sins in the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn’t come to effect in the first place political revolution or reformation. When he came and when he quoted the text from Isaiah 61—that is based upon this text—that he’s come to set the captives free, he was talking about his atoning work for sin.

Because it’s the sin of the people that creates and brings forth God’s judgment against his people that brings political oppression. It starts right here in our hearts. It starts the way you treat me and the way I treat you and the way you treat your kids and the way your kids treat each other and the way you treat your wife and the way your wife treats you. That’s where it starts, folks. And it moves itself out into these other arenas.

But don’t expect it to happen in those other arenas because those problems in civil government happen because God’s people as a group now are suffering his chastisements because we’ve transgressed his covenant. We’ve broken his law and we must repent.

Now God’s word moves on from there. The Great Awakening was the prelude to some of the governmental structures of America. But you know what? The Great Awakening had as many problems as it had benefit. Well, I don’t know about many, but it had problems. It was not a secular movement that moved us away from the holy commonwealth that God has called America to be. In every country, by the way, not exclusively America.

It was the Great Awakening that probably had more effect upon the movement away from America as a holy commonwealth than anything else that happened. Because the Great Awakening had to do with this third point here, the year of Jubilee. They understood this part real well. That bell rings forth the need for personal repentance and sorrow for sins. But those sins were seen exclusively in a personal sense, not corporately in the church and not in terms of the civil government.

Increasingly, at the Great Awakening, as people turned more and more inward to themselves and became more and more obsessed with the searching out of personal sin, they failed to see the implications of God’s word for the civil structures and for ecclesiastical structures and the outgoing of that repentance and the new man into all of life and into the holy commonwealth that God has called us to engage in this country.

And so the whole thing went flat. Christianity became privatized. It became a matter for in the pew maybe and in the house. And you know, they can take away the commerce. They can take away your kids through public school. They can take away the gold and silver backed currency. They can take away the independence of the country by subjugating your children’s education and upbringing and the commerce to the United Nations.

And most Christians couldn’t care less because they’ve got that little rubber ducky of they can go to church and worship. That’s the only thing that matters. And I need to just concentrate on myself, my own sin, and my kids. Well, I don’t know exactly what’s going on. They’re doing okay, I guess. But I got to be so focused here. And I want you—I got this freedom to go and worship. Well, that’s, you know, they’ll give us that any day of the week.

If the trade is we’ll take your kids, we’ll take your money, we’ll take your land through zoning laws, what else do you have left? All you’ve got left is that pew you’re sitting on. Rubber ducky Christianity. Marshall Foster used to call that. And that’s what it is.

So we need to move on from this third implication of the ringing of the bell of God’s grace and repentance because in the fourth implication of this, there is an enrollment of the people.

It’s interesting that in Revelation 4:1 that John says he looked and he turned and he saw as it were—he heard, he says—”the voice of a trumpet talking with me which said come up hither and I’ll show thee what must come to pass.”

In Numbers 10:2 there were two trumpets made. Now these are silver trumpets, not a shophar as ram’s horns, but nonetheless two trumpets made. And when these trumpets were blown, they were for two purposes. It says in Numbers 10:2: “Use them for the calling of the assembly and for the journeying of the camps.” Numbers, and then verse 9: “If you go out to war in your land against the enemy that oppresses you, you shall blow an alarm with the trumpet. You shall be remembered before the Lord your God.”

Numbers is about the people of God on the march. And the repentance for sins purifies the people so that they can be enrolled in God’s army. That’s what this trumpet is. It is one of enrollment. The Liberty Bell called for enrollment of God’s people in the army of God. And it calls for enrollment relative to going out and being engaged in warfare against those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, we hope to that warfare is accomplished so that people are brought not through the death of the sword, but rather to recognize their deadness and come to newness of life in Christ through the preaching of God’s word. But nonetheless, it is a war that we’re involved with. It is a march we’ve been called to do.

At the end of every service here, you hear the benediction from Numbers placed upon you. That was placed upon the army of God. And so we move from this understanding that the Liberty Bell rings forth a call for repentance, to recognizing that once that repentance is engaged with and is part of your life continually, that you become then part of the enrollment of God’s army to go out.

And fifthly, it’s not just an enrollment in an army that goes out in a negative sense to lose. It’s an army that goes out to win.

Did you see in the book of Joshua, you have seven trumpets blown by the priests? “So take seven trumpets up, go walk around Jericho, you blow these trumpets, and on the seventh day, the walls are going to fall down.” And in Revelation, John records seven trumpets that blow throughout the book of Revelation. God blows those same trumpets to bring Jerusalem down because Jerusalem, the literal city, in AD 70 was destroyed.

It had become Jericho. It was referred to as Babylon in the book of Revelation. It was idolatrous. It was warmonger ing. But the point is that Jericho wasn’t the last city in Canaan to be destroyed. It was the first one. And when Jesus came, died at the cross, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and then pictured the historical judgment on Jerusalem, the city that killed the prophets, the Son, and the church—that’s the beginning of God’s people going out and conquering.

As surely as Jericho was the promise by God that he would sovereignly bring all of Canaan under subjugation to his people who rule for him, just as surely the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was the beginning of a great historical movement that we’re only in the beginnings of 2,000 years later that shall continue until not now just Canaan but all the world is evangelized for the Lord Jesus Christ.

That Liberty Bell rings out liberty. It rings out law, rings out repentance and grace. It rings out calling us to come forward and be enrolled in God’s army. And it calls us to go forth and assures us of conquest with the sevenfold trumpet sounding. That conquest ushers us into Sabbatical rest, which is the sixth thing that this Liberty Bell is to ring out in our day and age. It rings out rest in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 27:13: “It shall come to pass in that day that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria and the outcasts in the land of Egypt and shall worship the Lord in the holy mountain of Jerusalem.”

The trumpet brings forth the bell, rings out, and it rings out this idea of law and grace and enrollment in the army. And people come who are ready to perish, dead in their sins and transgressions from all corners of the world because the bell rings out everywhere. And those people come forward. And the end of that is to meet with God and worship the Lord God in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

The Liberty Bell rings out Sabbath rest. And if we want to take one commandment that God’s people are guilty of violating, it is the Sabbath. Don’t think that’s not us. We’re doing okay here. I don’t know what you do to rest the day. I know I break Sabbath. I know I do it all too often. No, I don’t buy and sell. That’s obvious. But I do other things. My mind goes other places other than focusing on God’s people and recreating with his people in his word.

And I do other things by the time evening comes around. We need to recapture the idea that this liberty—if we want political liberty to ring out again, we’ve got to understand that what we’re aiming for is what we now work in the context of, which is the Sabbath rest that is given us every Lord’s day.

And then finally, this Liberty Bell rings out the coronation of King Jesus. In 2 Kings 11, we read that as the king was brought forward, at the coronation of the king, the trumpet is blown at the pillar as the manner of the princes were, and the trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land rejoiced and blew with trumpets. And Athaliah rent her clothes. She was the bad, wicked mother that had killed all but this one young man.