In God We Trust

July 4, 2010

Morning Worship

Text: Psalm 33:6-22

Subject: God’s Autonomy

Title: In God We Trust

Happy Fourth of July! It is great to be an American today! We may not be thrilled with the direction that our elected leadership is taking our nation, but we still have the freedom to change that direction on any election day.

I have entitled this sermon, “IN GOD WE TRUST”. I think it quite appropriate that on this day we celebrate who we are as a nation and reflect on how we came to be the nation we are. It is because we still stand firm in our national motto,” IN GOD WE TRUST”.

Did you ever wonder where it came from – how did these words come to be a reflection of who we are as a nation?

One of the first times the motto was expressed is found in an unheralded verse from Francis Scott Key’s poem that became our national anthem. “...And this be our motto: In God is our trust. And the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

In 1864, when the Civil War brought a return of Christian sentiment to the nation, the words were first added to new coins. At that time there was much concern for our nation and many appeals came in to the government to recognize God’s role in the history of our nation. Those appeals spoke to the heart of the then Secretary of the Treasury who then passed this request on to the director of the US mint in Philadelphia. His letter reads like this.

Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition. It was found that the Act of Congress dated January 18, 1837, prescribed the mottoes and devices that should be placed upon the coins of the United States.”

Many phrases were considered, but the phrase that most precisely stated God’s role in our country was the simple phrase, In God We Trust. On July 11, 1955, during the height of the cold war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the law making it mandatory that all of our currency be ascribed with the one phrase that separated us from other nations.

As we celebrate today I want to help you see that we trust in God and because we do He still has a great plan for us.

Read Psalm 33:1-22

Lord, open my eyes to see and my ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

I. WE CAN TRUST GOD BECAUSE HE IS WORTHY OF OUR PRAISE Three things we can see in the first five verses. 1) How we should praise Him… 1Sing joyfully to the LORD… 2 Praise the LORD with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. 3 Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy… God loves when we do what we were created to do – Praise him with song… with our words and with music. And notice that it says it is OK to sing new songs. But regardless of what kind of song we sing and what kind of instrument we play, we are to do it skillfully – to the best of our ability. 2) Who can praise Him. …you righteous… only those who are righteous have the right to praise Him. People in the world talk about God with respect. Sometimes they even give Him credit for things in their own lives. But, the only way anyone can truthfully praise Him is to be made righteous in His eyes through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. Our righteousness is as filthy rags but the blood of Jesus makes us clean. 3) Why we should praise Him. 4 For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. God is the only person that you can completely trust. You can have lifelong friends. You can have all kinds of intimate relationships among your friends and family, but ultimately your human friends will let you down. Proverbs 18:24, A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And that friend is the Lord Jesus Christ. God has given us His Living Word (Jesus), His written word (the bible) and is giving us His revealed word as it is spoken by the Holy Spirit to believers through that still small voice in their inner man. We can trust God because He is worthy of our praise.