Idea: No God. No gratitude. No accountability. No moral consensus regarding right and wrong. Law replaces national conscience.
Introduction/Review
* For these two weeks, I'm putting on my prophet's hat.
* Several of the issues we face as a nation intersect with biblical principles.
* So, I decided we should talk about it.
* The current debate continues to be framed as rich vs. not so rich, capitalism vs. socialism, big government vs. big business, and Republican vs. Democrat.
* But there is another contrast that would better frame our current national debate--one that if taken seriously might restore our national conscience.
* Namely those who recognize God as the ultimate source of our provision and those who do not.
* Those who are not ashamed to say, "In God we trust" and those who say, "In government and American ingenuity we trust. In 'we,' we trust."
It's 'grateful and accountable' vs. 'ungrateful and unaccountable.'
If you are uncomfortable with connecting spirituality and state, that's understandable . . . especially as we watch the Middle East.
But if you remove religion--divine accountability and conscience--you have to replace it with law. As a culture becomes more secular, it requires law that is more complex and the culture becomes more litigious. At that point, right and wrong is not determined by law, but by judges and jurors. If a court finds you not guilty, you are not guilty. CASH replaces CONSCIENCE. The person with the most money wins.
Law without God means "I'm not guilty until I'm caught."
In China: The mountain is high and the Emperor is far away.
How many laws are there in a healthy marriage? Home? Company? Few.
1. Several weeks ago, President Obama appealed to the conscience of AIG employees who received big bonuses. He said, "You ought to give those back."
Based on what? Law? Nope. Fairness? Common decency? What is that based on? What makes something the 'right' thing to do if there is no law? He shamed them . . . the public sense of right and wrong that went beyond law.
2. Our national conscience was shaped by a sense of personal accountability to God--the God of the New and Old Testaments.
3. So much so that our current national motto is: "In God We Trust." [In 1956, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution to replace the existing motto with "In God We Trust." President Eisenhower signed the resolution into law on July 30, 1956.]
I. Accountability to God and God-talk has fallen and is falling out of favor.
A. We don't want to make people uncomfortable.
B. By eliminating God from our national conversation, we eliminate our ability to publically recognize the source of our prosperity.
C. If we can't give God the credit, we will take the credit.
II. Prosperity without gratitude makes us arrogant.
A. This is the number one complaint leveled against Americans by the rest of the world.
"Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?'" (Proverbs 30)
B. Increasingly, we are a nation that is saying: "Who is the Lord?"
III. Just before Israel entered their new home, Moses gave them a little pep talk and warned them of this dynamic.
A. God would give them a system of civil laws, but that wasn't enough. If they were not committed to HIM, it wouldn't work.
B. In this system, there would be no KING. The authority would not rest in a person, but in law and conscience.
C. The hope was that God's law would shape their conscience. They were coming out of Egypt with slave law: Pharaoh was law.
The entire talk is found in Deuteronomy. I want to read part of Chapter 8.
6Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him.
Notice the connection between law and God. To obey his law is to honor him.
7For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land--a land with . . .
Then he goes on to describe how rich the land is--water, springs, copper, bread, honey, barley.
. . . and you will lack for nothing.
10When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.
Recognition and gratitude were critical components. This is why it is so dangerous for us to continue to remove GOD from the national conversation. It keeps us from expressing THANKS. If we don't express thanks, what happens? We forget and take credit.
11Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.
Why did he say that? Because prosperity is not conducive to humility and gratitude.
12Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down,
13and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You will think YOU pulled this off.
17You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me."
The problem with "My power . . . for me" is that I'm not accountable to anyone for what I do with it. It's mine! Free enterprise/capitalism/libertarianism becomes a vehicle for hoarding and injustice. And the only way to confront hoarding and injustice is through more laws so that the hoarders and the unjust can't hoard and act unjust anymore.
18But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.
That's true of all of us. We earned it. But where did the ability come from? You are the product of what somebody taught you and the health and talent God gave you, along with your willingness to put it to good use.
Gratitude should drive us. Gratitude makes us generous and humble. But if you take God out of the equation, both disappear quickly.
19If you ever forget the LORD your God . . .
He's talking about a nation forgetting, not just individuals.
. . . and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed.
At which point we say, "Glad we aren't Israel. This was a specific deal he had with them." That's true, but he keeps going.
20Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.
Does this mean God actively destroys nations today? I don't know. Maybe arrogance, which always results in the removal of God from the conversation, carries consequences of its own.
IV. Increasingly, we are a nation that is saying, "Who is the Lord?" But it hasn't always been that way.
A. In 1944, everybody in America knew we were about to invade France. Nobody knew when.
1. On June 6, D-Day, thousands . . .
2. And it was announced in the U. S.
[Read excerpts at end of this outline from D-Day by Stephen Ambrose]
3. And there were critics, but they were largely ignored. And this was insensitive to atheists . . . but we didn't establish a national church or religion.
And it's a good thing we didn't eliminate God-talk from the conversation because a mixture of God and government fueled the next big event in this nation. Its leader was a pastor. Before he was a "Dr.," he was Reverend Martin Luther King. And he played to the conscience of this nation.
4. The Civil Rights movement was a movement of conscience that was overtly tied to the divine.
5. His message: laws should be changed because they are unjust . . . based on?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.:
"Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
". . . and we will not be satisfied until 'justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream" Amos 5:24
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: (quotes from the Declaration of Independence) 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
He ends with a quote from what he referred to as an old Negro spiritual:
"Free at last! Free at last!"
What are the next three words?
"Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Dr. King appealed to our national conscience. Not law. Our accountability to God; our divinely informed conscience created leverage.
Conclusion
1. Erase God from the national conversation and you eliminate our ability to be grateful to anyone but ourselves.
2. Eliminate God from politics and national leadership and we are accountable to no one but us.
3. Dismiss God from the equation, and we detach our conscience from our policies.
4. Why do we have to work so hard to protect our kids and ourselves from harmful websites? Why is what we know to be harmful legal?
5. Why is my "In God We Trust" government more committed to protecting the rights of an industry that we know is contributing to the destruction of minds/families than protecting those same families? Why do we have to filter the Internet?
6. Because law has replaced conscience.
7. And while we debate the size of government, stimulus plans, and "How rich is rich enough?" we lose "under God."
8. We do not want to be a theocracy. We want to be governed by law by those who understand every single day that law is not enough.
9. We must be a nation of conscience led by those who understand that they are accountable not only to the American people, but also to their Creator.
10. Let's unashamedly invite God back into the national conversation.
11. CLOSE: Let's pray that he would become part of . . .
Excerpts from D-Day by Stephen Ambrose:
June 6, 1944
On D-Day, Franklin Roosevelt used the power of radio to link the nation in a prayer. Throughout the day, the networks broadcast the text, which was printed in the afternoon editions of the newspapers: "At 2200 Eastern War Time, the President prayed while Americans across the country joined him:
Almighty God,
Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor . . . Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith . . . These men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate . . . They yearn for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom . . . And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other . . . Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
The New York Daily News threw out its lead articles and printed in their place the Lords' Prayer.
Lord & Taylor never opened at all. President Walter Hoving said he was sending his 3,000 employees home to pray.
The New York Stock Exchange called for two minutes of silent prayer at the opening and then went to work.
