The Pilgrim Path---John 8: 36-38

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.

Juneteenth?

My Bank (M & T), is closing three hours early today in recognition of Juneteenth. This day is also sometimes called, "Freedom Day." If you are like quite a few Americans, you hardly even noticed. Well, I thought I would give you something to read from: smithsonianmag.com---a portion of an article by Kenneth C. Davis from June 2011 / updated 2020...

Juneteenth falls on June 19 each year. It is a holiday whose history was hidden for much of the last century...In essence, Juneteenth marks what is arguably the most significant event in American history after independence itself---the eradication of American slavery.

For centuries, slavery was a dark stain on America's soul, the deep contradiction to the nation's founding ideals of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "All men are created equal." When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he took a huge step toward erasing that stain. But the full force of his proclamation would not be realized until June 19, 1865---Juneteenth, as it was called by salves in Texas freed that day.

The westernmost of the Confederate states, Texas did not get news of Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox that April until two months after the fact. But they heard once Union Gen. Gordon Granger, a New Yorker and West Point graduate with a distinguished wartime service record, arrived in Galveston Bay with more than 2,000 Union troops. It was on June 19 that he publicly read General Order No. 3,

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

In amazement and disbelief, the 250,000 former slaves in Texas learned that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which could not be enforced until the war was over...Their moment of jubilee was spontaneous and ecstatic...

Some slaves would leave their owners---some would not be allowed their freedom (some would run, be beaten, lynched---others did well).

We still have a considerable distance to go...

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?" Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and escaped slave, asked in his Independence Day speech of 1852. "I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is constant victim."

We still have a considerable distance to go...

In the Spiritual Realm, most men will cry, "I'm free!"---when they are actually slaves to sin---AND servant's of the Devil. This was the point the Lord Jesus Christ was making in John chapter eight. People laugh at the idea, but they come into the world with their will bound---blinded by the god of this world (II Corinthians 4: 4). Only the Son of God is capable of setting them free. The natural man (unregenerate man) hates to hear this. He cries, "I can do whatever I want to do!" And he is correct. We Gospel souls simply reply, "Yes, how true---but You may only Do--- what You Ought To DO----by the Grace of Almighty God. Now Look to Jesus and live---Only He can turn your heart of stone into a heart of flesh." Don't be afraid to talk to people about the matters of the soul. You never know where the Lord may have them---as you encounter them. If someone tells you that they don't have a broken heart to "go to God with"---Spurgeon used to say, "they may go to God for a broken heart..."

Jesus, my Lord, will love me forever,

From him no power of evil can sever;

Lifted me up from sorrow and shame,

Now I belong to Him.

Now I belong to Jesus,

Jesus belongs to me,

Not for the years of time alone,

But for eternity.

Norman J. Clayton (1943)

Grace & Peace in Jesus Our LORD, Pastor Jason