July 4th has always had a special place in my heart. It falls in the middle of the summer; it's warm and I love the atmosphere with all the flags, fireworks and food. July 4 is a historic holiday and I am a history buff.
I am proud to be an American and I see no contradiction between being a patriotic citizen and a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's. Being a Christian and being a good citizen go hand in hand.
My thoughts this morning echo some of the lyrics of Lee Greenwood’s song, “Proud to be an American.” And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I am free, and I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me. And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today. Cause there ain’t no doubt, I love this land. God Bless the USA. Indeed, God has blessed the USA. The United States of America continues to be the longest running Constitutional Republic in the history of this planet. We look around at the turmoil in other nations, their struggles, the rise and fall of multiple governments, and wonder how we have escaped such turmoil for so long. We may ask, “how has the stability and blessings of America been achieved?” A careful study reveals that the blessings we have experienced in this country are not by chance or accidental; the blessings enjoyed by our country for so long are blessings from God, because our nation was founded on Him and has followed His ethical and moral principles.
On July 2, 1776, our Continental Congress voted on a declaration of independence to approve a complete separation from Great Britain. In doing so, they wrote that "The history of the present King of Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.” To support that assertion, they then listed some 27 grievances against the British Crown, including “imposing taxes on us without our consent"; “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury”; and “he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” Two days later, on July 4th the early draft of the Declaration of Independence was signed, initially by two men, John Hancock, the presiding President of Congress and Charles Thompson, the presiding Secretary of Congress. With that our country was born. Four days later, on July 8, 54 other men also signed the declaration and then took it to the top steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA and read it aloud to the waiting crowd and to the waiting world. After the reading, the Liberty Bell atop Independence Hall, was rung. The inscription around the top of the bell was appropriate for this monumental occasion; Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all inhabitants thereof (Lev. 25:10).
Today, Sunday, July 4, 2010, marks 234 years to the day that Hancock and Thompson officially signed our Declaration of Independence. Of that day, John Adams, one of the signers, cautiously wrote his wife Abigail, "This day will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.” John Adams was right.
And listen to the core of America’s independence, "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 among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Each man signed the document “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” Again in his letter to his wife, John Adams wrote that, “It (July 4) ought to commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.” John Adams believed that the Fourth of July should become a religious holiday—a day when we remembered God’s hand in delivering us from a tyrannical power and a day of religious activities when we solemnly committed ourselves to God Almighty! This was the spirit of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of the men who led it. It was God-centered and based on the general principles of Christianity. We must never forget this spirit; and we must tell our children and grand-children. I see a parallel, and I’m sure that this parallel did not escape our Founding Fathers. I see a parallel between our deliverance from the oppressive King of Britain and Israel’s deliverance from the oppressive Pharaoh of Egypt. After God delivered Israel, He instructed the people to remember that time with a yearly celebration, so that when their children would ask them in subsequent years what the celebration was all about, they could say to them, “With a powerful hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery” (Ex. 13:14). The celebration would also serve as a reminder of their experience in Egypt and hopefully be a deterrent lest anyone, in time of trouble, want to return to their former way of life. Likewise, we should recapture the essence of July 4 as a day of deliverance from tyranny to freedom by God's powerful hand and it should be a reminder to us that we should never let ourselves be led back into that former way of life. Israel’s great deliverance came at a very high price and our liberty came at a very high price also. Armed conflict with the British had already begun over a year earlier with the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Our ancestors would endure all the consequences of war on our soil until the British formally abandoned any claims to the United States by signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Have you ever considered what it meant for those 56 men, a diverse group of business men, captains, farmers, ministers, sailors, teachers and university professors, to sign the Declaration of Independence? By signing that document, they were putting everything on the line including their material assets, their families and their own lives. The very last sentence of the Declaration reads, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our scared honor."
These men took this pledge seriously.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Father of American Medicine and a signer, reflecting to John Adams five years later wrote, "Do you recollect the pensive and awesome silence which pervaded the House when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of the Congress to subscribe to what was believed at the time to be our death warrants?” He went on to write how the silence and gloom was temporarily interrupted by Colonel Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. As he was about to sign, Harrison, who was a big man, turned to Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who by contrast was a small man in stature, and said, “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing…From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” Colonel Harrison’s remarks highlight the somber atmosphere in which the whole signing was being conducted. They were ready to give up their lives for the hope of freedom.
Robert Morris and John Hancock are examples of men willing to give up their fortunes for this liberty. At the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, our new nation had no banks and no foreign nations were willing to give any loans to help fund the revolution. Robert Morris was chosen as the man to find the needed funding. It was not until 3 years later, after the victory at the Battle of Saratoga, that other nations began loaning us some money to continue the fight. So where did we get the money for the first 3 years? Robert Morris, personally put up his fortune as collateral, and in doing so, acquired loans upon his own credit for ten of thousands of dollars. The Battle of Yorktown in 1781, when Washington captured Cornwallis, and virtually closed the Revolutionary War, was fought wholly on the credit of Robert Morris, an individual business man. America couldn’t repay him because there was no money and yet Robert Morris never complained because he had “mutually pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor."
John Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in the Province of Massachusetts. During the war, when the American army desired to rid Boston of the British, their plans threatened the whole fortune of John Hancock. Yet Hancock approved the plan, declaring his willingness to surrender his all, “whenever the liberties of his country should require it.” It goes on and on. John Hart, also a signer, and a strong Christian from New Jersey, had to flee his home because the British were seeking to execute him as a traitor. They had already ravaged his farm, destroyed his timber and stolen his livestock. After Washington’s success at the Battle of Trenton, Hart finally returned home to find that his wife and died and his children scattered. He lost almost everything that was important to him but had kept his sacred honor to the other signers and to his country.
You may not know that the American Revolutionary War had two mottos. King George III had asserted a doctrine which he called the “Divine Right of Kings." This doctrine asserted that when the king spoke, it was the voice of God speaking directly to the people. The first motto had to do with this outrageous doctrine. It was simple and direct, “No king but King Jesus.” The second motto, first suggested by Benjamin Franklin and often repeated during the war was similar in tone, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
As I mentioned earlier, our Declaration of Independence centered on three unalienable rights endowed by God, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are endowed by God. Endowed means to furnish, give or equip permanently. God has permanently furnished to each man and woman certain rights, which the founders called “unalienable.” Inalienable rights are those rights which once given are not transferable; rights which are not capable of being repudiated because they are given by God. The founders pointed to three rights then that are given only by God which are given permanently and cannot be repudiated…they are the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to the pursuit of happiness. And just as the founders opposed the king who attempted to take away those rights, we should oppose any such attempt also. In fact, the Founders go on to say that it is the sole purpose of any king or government not to usurp or infringe on those rights but to protect them. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter, or to abolish it, and to institute new government.” Our country went through 8 years of war and conflict because she believed these unalienable rights were something to fight for. They are given by God. We have been blessed for 234 years because we have held to these beliefs.
Few doubt that America today, is at a crossroads. Many believe that our nation is in danger of forfeiting and losing these God-given rights. Can we continue to expect God’s blessing, if we give up the very foundation upon which He established us?
In 1948, our Supreme Court declared religious instruction in public schools unconstitutional; school prayer in 1962; Bible reading followed in 1963; the posting of the Ten Commandments in 1980; moment of silence in 1985; the treatment of creationism in schools 1987; prayer at public graduations in 1992; student-led prayers at public football games in 2000. The Supreme Court ruled that unborn children can be aborted in 1973.
Beginning in 1948, we have been witnessing a systematic attempt to get God out of America. It is an attempt to usurp the unalienable rights given to all men and women by our Creator. Those rights that we once took for granted; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are now in jeopardy.
Jim Black, in his book, When Nations Die, lists 10 factors that signal the collapse of any nation.
1.) Increase in lawlessness (we have more people per capita incarcerated in our country than any other in the world) ;
2.) loss of economic discipline (we have just set new highs for debt at the federal level); 3.) rising bureaucracy (we have just created what will become our most cumbersome agency…government provided health-care);
4.) decline in education (in 17 out of the last 19 years, the US has come in dead last in academic tournaments held around the world);
5.) weakening of cultural foundations;
6.) loss of respect for traditions;
7.) increase in materialism;
8.) rise in immorality;
9.) decay of religious belief and
10.) devaluing of human life. Quite a list and eerily relevant.
Your Bible’s defines the health of any nation much more simply and succinctly. It says Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people (Prov. 14:34).
How blessed are those who keep justice, who practice righteousness at all times (Ps. 106:3). I believe America has been blessed as we have all these 234 years; I believe that America has been exalted as a nation on this earth for so long; a nation where the "homeless, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of the world, yearning to breathe free" have come because the United States of America has stood for justice and practiced righteousness. Who determines more than anyone else, whether a nation will be righteous or unrighteous? “…everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him but anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God (1John 2:29 & 3:10). Who determines whether a nation will be righteous or unrighteous…your Bible says those born of Him, the men and women of God. We are slipping from being a nation born of God and practicing justice and righteousness to a nation which has moved away from God and therefore, seems unconcern about justice and righteousness.
Alexis de Tocqueville was a French philosopher, historian and statesman. In 1831, he toured our country for the purpose of observing the American people and our institutions. Later, he published a 2 part work which he titled, Democracy in America.
He wrote, “I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors, in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school systems and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
De Tocqueville believed that America's power and genius was found in the people inhabiting America's churches; the people of God, who have accepted this Bible as the righteous moral and ethical standard for living on this earth. Christians have always been the ones who have determined the destiny of nations, and America has been no different. America will continue to be great as long as she continues to be good and the church is the force that promotes and protects "goodness" by being the voice crying out for righteousness.
Therefore, we must mutually stand up and say “No” when the sanctity of life is attacked, when our freedoms are threatened and when our pursuit of happiness is continually put in jeopardy. But most importantly, we must continue to be salt of the earth and light of the world! As His church, we do not have to help change the people’s laws, we only have to help change the people’s hearts. Jesus will take it from there. The future of our country depends on it. The church must recapture its mission as given by Jesus to Paul, to open their eyes so that they turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me (Acts 26:18).
As we celebrate July 4, 2010; read or re-read the Declaration of Independence, it is not long and remember our Founding Fathers, who said, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" for the greater good of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those 56 men passed us a torch; let us not let it go out. God Bless the USA.
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