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July 04, 2004
What Makes a Nation Great?
What Makes a Nation Great?
II Chronicles 7: 11-22 / Proverbs 14: 34
Mark 12: 17
July 4th, 2004
The most fascinating truth that the Bible tells us about ourselves is that we are created in the image of God. More precisely, we are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that there is something about humanity uniquely like its Creator. Specifically this refers to the creative potentiality we have that no other created thing has.
Before God created heaven and earth there was nothing. When you or I bake a cake from scratch we don’t actually start from mere “scratch.” We have flour and sugar, chocolate and sour cream. But God started literally when there was not even scratch.
Then in Genesis we read about this formless chaos, tohuvevohu is the Hebrew term. Can you imagine a better term to describe total chaos!? Everything was dark, deeply dark, darker than dark, as well as tohuvevohu, until God said, “let there be light.” It was an eerie light, different from the light given off by the sun. I think it must have been like a principle of order that God pronounced over the chaos.
God spoke again so that slowly from the chaos land separated from water. There were oceans and rivers and islands and continents and mountains pushed up from the land.
God spoke again and vegetation appeared, and then when He spoke again the sun, moon, and stars appeared. On and on the creation story unfolds how the world came to be so magnificent and complex as the world we see. God’s creates order and beauty out of nothing. That’s why we have so many kinds of flowers and humming birds and seahorses. And that’s why humanity has produced people like Dr. Seuss, and scientists who develop nanotechnology and J.S. Bach, and children playing with clay---all reflecting their Creator God.
Something similar happened on the plain of human history when God formed the people of Israel. God took a dysfunctional family that went to a foreign land to survive a famine. Ten brothers in this family sold their youngest brother into slavery when most wanted to kill him. This brother saved them from starvation and gave them the best land in Egypt to herd their flocks. But this brother died and their descendents in Egypt were made slaves. But from the heirs of this family God formed a nation through whom He would bring healing and salvation to the whole world. Who would have guessed the benefits of Calvary when the Israelites were sweating under the hot sun making bricks for the tombs of Egypt’s kings?
I have started this way today because it is the 4th of July. Two hundred twenty-eight years ago on this day this country was begun with a word spoken fervently by from created in the image and likeness of God. They did not begin with nothing as God did, but this was something God did only once too.
Our forebears began with the chaos of tyranny and opportunity, slavery and freedom, poverty and wealth, a land whose borders they had no clue how broad they were and whose resources were unknown. Thomas Jefferson and a few other men spoke and freedom separated from tyranny, and a land was born that would blossom in ways none of our forebears could have imagined.
Thomas Jefferson spoke with his pen, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable 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.” That’s how he first wrote it. Our Declaration of Independence reads a bit differently. And America was born. Brave people came together moved by an idea of freedom, and they fought for it, willingly dying for freedom’s cause. That’s why we will listen to fire works this evening—rifle shots and cannon fire that killed changed to colorful fireworks that celebrate our life of freedom.
The English Puritans who came here in the early 17th century had a vision that God was working on these shores as He had worked with ancient Israel. God enters into covenants with nations, they believed, especially those that have His Word, the Bible, and live by it.
This was an idea that has caught on so that in pulpits all across America today many pastors will speak of America as Christian nation, a nation specially chosen by God to be a light on a hill. We heard this term during President Reagan’s funeral. It is an idea that come from Jerusalem a city on a hill, on Mt. Zion—where there was a house of prayer for all people. We often hear parallels drawn between Israel as God’s people and America as God’s people in some unique way.
Because of this you and I have often heard the words God spoke to Solomon recited in recent years. After Solomon dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem to God, the Lord said to him, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
We hear this last verse quoted often because in our free land many people have used their freedom badly. The opportunity created by wealth, privacy, and freedom has not been used well—by Christians and non-Christians alike. And so Christian leaders have spoken God’s words to Solomon as though the Lord speaks them to America today.
How good it would be if there were a widespread turning to God and turning from evil in our land. Imagine a land with no cocaine or alcohol abuse. Imagine a land where children would not be abused, and women and men lived in mutual joy and respect, and the color of a person’s skin would not work against them, and there was a desire to use our wealth to relieve suffering in other lands. A light on a hill for real!
I believe that even with the many different religions that now find a home here, and even with the highly vocal people who say they don’t believe in God, if only the Christians would humble themselves, pray and seek God’s face and turn from their evil ways, God would not only forgive their sin and God would begin a work of healing in this land. We could serve as a light to the nations, if we would.
Because the world as well as American needs some light right now. These days the reality of terrorism in the Middle East has imposed fear of the threat of terrorism everywhere—even in neighborhoods far from Washington, D.C. This past Monday the University of Pennsylvania sponsored a probing seminar on terrorism.
I was interested to learn that the men who participated in the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center did not come from the dregs of Islamic society. They were not crazy misfits easily stirred to fanaticism. They were not particularly devout Muslims who did this in the name of Allah. In fact, they were quite secular. Some of them sloozed with loose women and drank alcohol. None had a criminal record. Most came from good homes. They were well educated, some with graduate degrees, PhDs in fact. Why the hatred that made them get involved in this evil plan and follow through to the point that they killed themselves in unleashing infernal suffering on so many people they didn’t even know?
Not many months ago if the term “video terrorism” had been used, you would have thought it meant a Steven Spielberg movie with special effects, not actual footage of men being beheaded.
It is a dark time in which we live. The world needs light. And it seems that God has blessed us in this land in a way that suggests we have some opportunity to shed some light. And if we have opportunity, we have duty.
I thought of two other passages from the Bible as pertinent to our setting today, when Independence Day coincides with the Lord’s Day. First, in the Book of Proverbs we read the general statement, “Righteousness exalts a nation.” Second, when some religious leaders asked Jesus if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar he told them to give to Caesar what belongs to him and to God what belongs to God.
Righteousness exalts a nation. Jesus said there is that which belongs to Caesar, but there is also that which belongs to God. And here is precisely where your personal life, your family life, and this congregation fit in the big picture. Righteousness not only lifts up a nation, it lifts up a person. A righteous nation begins with people who purposefully go after a righteous life. A righteous life is a life given back to God—as we confess in the gracious words of the Heidelberg Catechism—I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
Probably if your personal story were told we would all see a surprising tale of how you made it to where you are against odds of a kind that discourage many people. Many people with gifts like yours never succeeded as you have, and you wonder why you made it and they didn’t. In a way your life represents order out of chaos. How many of you made it to academic achievement and even prosperity when the family into which you were born had neither ample means nor high education? How many of us rose above a low self-image to keep on trying and surviving in the quest of high aspirations. You look at yourself and say, “How did I ever get to where I am?” Why all of this? For a purpose.
God made none of us to be islands of wisdom, of plenty and prosperity in a sea of need. God did not offer us the truth of the Gospel so that we could pride ourselves for being right in a world of much wrong. God put us here for a purpose. This purpose is to be part of the catalyst where He causes light to shine in darkness, order to come from chaos, hope from hopelessness, and opportunity from bondage. How do you think of the purpose of your life in the broad sweep of things?
Listen to what God said to Solomon, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” God’s biggest obstacle in using us is what’s going on between our ears and in our hearts. Prosperity and success aren’t the best teachers for humility and a repentant heart. As you see yourself, are you aware of any attitude, any outlook on yourself and others that may keep you from usefulness in God’s hands to bring light in the present darkness?
Finally, I think of us as a congregation in terms of God’s pattern of bringing order and beauty out of chaos. Now we are far from being a congregation that is in chaos. We have good people here. Our bills get paid. We carry on a routine of worship and other churchly activities. I recently made a list of the things that get done in one way or another because of people at Faith Church, and the list is pretty long. But we are like an archipelago, a collection of remarkable islands. What if we came together and became a continent?
I hear cautious, even fearful remarks about the graying of the congregation—and no one cheers if I propose Grecian Formula hair dye as the answer. Gray doesn’t mean dead. I see young families decide there are better helps elsewhere for rearing their children, so they leave us. The archipelago outlook needs an antidote here.
I wonder how God may bring together the raw material He has gathered in this congregation to create something beyond what we can ask or think. Are you available?
The key to God’s creative acts is His Word. God spoke a word and there was light. God spoke a word and there was dry land and water in separate places. God spoke and there was vegetation. God spoke and there was sun, moon and stars. Then there was no need to listen. God did it all with a series of words.
But now God does not just speak and things happen by His command. God has given us ears to hear and hearts to respond. If you and I will give God not only our unseen hearts, but also all that we have and are that can be seen, none of us can imagine what God will bring about in this place.
And so I ask you this morning, as you thank God for the land He gave you to live in, and as you thank God for the bounty of your life, to give yourself back to God. Say with the little boy Samuel, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” And let us hear this response echo throughout the congregation, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” And then begin yourself to do as you ought. And let us as a congregation put together our hearts and our wills that have responded to God’s grace in gratitude, and see what God will bring from this mix of ingredients that is Faith Church.
What a world God created from the tohuvevohu! What a salvation God brought from the dysfunctional family of Jacob! What a nation God brought about on these shores! What kind of wonder will we let God achieve here?
Let’s pray! For the wonders of your creation we thank you, O Lord. For the wonder of your grace poured out in Jesus Christ we thank you, O Lord. For the blessed land in which we live we thank you, O Lord. For lives to give back to you in gratitude, we thank you, O Lord. Take and use what you have made us to be for your glory, for light in this present darkness, for our peace and joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at July 4, 2004 09:30 AM