A Promise Fulfilled For All People

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you notice that when people get together

people tend to have different ideas on how things should be done?

Many times it’s difficult for just one person to take in all the details for solving community issues.

Abraham Lincoln knew this very well,

and he seemed to know how to work with people

and set a vision or a hope for the people to follow.

This President from the 1860’s had to deal with a divided nation.

Yes, the nation dealing with the issue of slavery

but the nation was also just struggling to get along.

The people would have different ideas in how tariffs, infrastructure development, and immigration structure should be handled.

Political parties would just disagree with whatever vision or idea their opposing party would suggest.

And people were having a difficult time figuring out whether some responsibilities should be handled by the state or the federal government.

After Abraham Lincoln became president

a civil war broke out.

…By the time it was finished,

about 700,000 US citizens had died.

When the war was finally over

he gave a public speech on April 11th, 1865.

He said that the nation

ought to be thankful that the war is now over,

and that each state will be gradually rebuilt

to follow the laws of the union.

I didn’t find this speech to be necessarily a memorable speech

but rather a quick response

for giving the next steps in rebuilding the nation.

Abraham didn’t have time to put together a more polished speech about the future

as just three days later

he was shot in Ford’s Theatre.

But I’d imagine his speech wouldn’t be much different from the Gettysburg address.

--the speech he gave on November 19th, 1863.

Being that this speech is just over 250 words

it wouldn’t be too much to share with you now

on this Memorial Day weekend.

The speech President Abraham Lincoln gave, said,

Four score and seven years ago

our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,

conceived in Liberty,

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war,

testing whether that nation,

or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,

can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field,

as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives

that the nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense,

we can not dedicate

-- we can not consecrate

-- we can not hallow

-- this ground.

The brave men,

living and dead,

who struggled here,

have consecrated it,

far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note,

nor long remember what we say here,

but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather,

to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have

thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us

-- that from these honored dead

we take increased devotion to that cause

for which they gave the last full measure of devotion --

that we here highly resolve

that these dead shall not have died in vain

-- that this nation,

under God,

shall have a new birth of freedom

-- and that government of the people,

by the people,

for the people,

shall not perish from the earth.

Well,

eight score, or 160 years later since the Gettysburg Address,

the United States of America is still here.

But our nation is divided in a different sense.

Race still seems to still be a dividing issue.

And I’d argue people today have different ideas of what individual freedoms look like.

And people have different ideas in how those freedoms ought to be enforced.

But this Memorial Day weekend

we get to remember the people

who have died

to keep this experiment of a nation going

-- an experiment focused on the will of the people

over the will of the government.

In our lesson from the Book of Acts today,

there was a new order of leadership going on.

The 12 disciples of Jesus

were taking leadership

over the 12 tribes of Israel.

But this wasn’t the will of anyone in Jerusalem on this Pentecost morning

2000 years ago.

It was God’s will.

And God’s power and Word had just been poured into the city

for the people.

The disciples were just filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit gave the disciples words to speak to the large crowd.