Freedom as an essential part of God’s nature and plan for man is apparent at Mt Sinai when God gave the people the Ten Commandments. God identifies Himself as the author of freedom as He begins the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord thy God, which…brought thee…out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2, Deuteronomy 5:6). They were called to remember this “deliverance into freedom” in the 5th Commandment, “Honor the Sabbath Day” (Deuteronomy 5:15). In regard to the 5th Commandment the Bible says, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth… and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11).
Freedom is arguably the point of the Sabbath, because while work is a noble and necessary thing, we are not to be enslaved to it. We are to be free.
Of course, the plain sense of the Hebrew in Exodus 20 verse 11 reaffirms that God made the creation in 6 literal 24-hour days, with 1 day of rest, as does the application to the Commandment to Honor the Sabbath in a 7-day work week. Creationists have pointed out that there is really no other basis for the mostly ubiquitous 7-day week around the world – other than God in creation. It doesn’t have the same astronomical basis, for example, that a 24-hour day has (Earth’s rotation on its axis), or a 365-day year (Earth’s revolving around the sun), or an approximately 30-day month (phases of the moon). The common use of a 7-day week, as with the ancient Babylonians for example, seems like another corrupted primeval memory of creation truth since it fits with the cycle of work and rest for “the image of God”.
By the time we get to the New Testament, freedom is truly front and center. Jesus, when He launched his public ministry from the temple in Nazareth, read out of the book of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor… to preach deliverance to the captives… to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18). He told the congregation that the scripture was fulfilled that day in their hearing.
The Bible exhorts us to “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free…” (Galatians 5:1). To “stand fast” means to firmly resist the tendency to compromise a principle. Thus, United States Founding Father and strong Christian Patrick Henry could famously say, “Give me liberty or give me death!” This is uncompromising courage of conviction. And this is what we also can uphold as we proclaim the uncompromising and foundational truth of Biblical creation!
Jewish historian Josephus wrote regarding the Tower of Babel in his “Antiquities of the Jews”. He described how Nimrod was the principal one to excite the early post-flood world population in their rebellion against God, to reject God and attempt a humanist utopia. He noted in a 2000-year-old statement keenly insightful in its understanding of mass psychology, “Nimrod... gradually changed the government into a tyranny, seeing no other way of turning man from the fear of God but by bringing them into a constant dependence upon its (the government’s) power.”1
Most of the world recently lived through prolonged pandemic lockdowns, and we should realize that there can be “a method behind the madness” in these sorts of things – one of conditioning people to government authority, control, and provision in the place of God.
This is why it is so important to know the gospel of Jesus Christ, with its full revelation in a totally trustworthy and inerrant Bible! And to spread that revelation to others throughout the world.
Ref: (1) Josephus: The Complete Works, Vol 4. Image: The Tower of Babel, McCabe, James Dabney, 1842-1883, PD, Wikimedia Commons.
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