When a nation forgets the purpose of freedom
Exodus 9:1 records a command that shaped a nation: “Thus says the LORD God of the Hebrews: Let My people go, that they may serve Me.” Freedom, in the Bible, is never abstract. It is purposeful. It is directional. It is given so that a people might serve the God who delivered them. This truth did not escape the attention of America’s founders.
In 1776, when Congress requested designs for a national seal, Benjamin Franklin proposed a striking image: Moses standing at the Red Sea, Pharaoh and his army overwhelmed, and beneath it the motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Though never adopted, the proposal reflected how deeply the Exodus narrative shaped the American imagination.
From New England to the southern colonies, pastors drew explicit parallels between Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and the colonies’ struggle for independence. Sermons frequently returned to a familiar refrain: “Let my people go.”
But they did not stop there.
On December 23, 1776, Sylvanus Conant preached directly from the full text: “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” Ministers such as Samuel West and Samuel Langdon made the same point clear. The goal was not autonomy for its own sake. The goal was ordered liberty under God.
That full phrase — “Let My people go, that they may serve Me” — appears seven times in Exodus. The repetition is deliberate. God’s championing of Israel’s freedom was not so they could do what was right in their own eyes. It was liberation unto obedience, worship, and covenant faithfulness. Deliverance was the doorway to devotion.
Those colonial pastors understood that principle. They warned that liberty detached from moral restraint would decay into lawlessness — and eventually into tyranny. Rev. Langdon cautioned that nations blessed with freedom but unwilling to live under God’s law would follow the same tragic pattern seen in Israel’s history. Conant reminded his hearers that deliverance creates obligation. A people set free must respond with gratitude and obedience or risk forfeiting the blessing they were given.
Even among the Founders, that sober awareness was present. Thomas Jefferson wrote words that still unsettle: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Whatever his theological persuasion, Jefferson understood a fundamental truth — nations are morally accountable.
The Founders did not envision freedom as self-definition without limits. They sought freedom within a framework. Liberty was granted so that a people might govern themselves under transcendent authority, not apart from it.
Now, in this 250th anniversary year of American independence, that original question presses upon us again.
Are we living as though freedom has a purpose?
Have we remembered that liberty is not merely the absence of restraint, but the opportunity to align ourselves with truth? Have we treated freedom as a gift to steward — or as an entitlement to consume?
Exodus confronts every generation with the same call. God delivers people not to independence from Him, but obedience to Him. When a nation forgets that freedom is meant for service to God, it loses the purpose of freedom — and soon, the freedom itself.
The words still echo: “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
The future of our liberty depends on whether we remember the second half of that sentence.
Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.
