If You Can Keep It

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, happy July 4 weekend to you. It’s good to see you here in the house of the Lord.

I have a few announcements to highlight from your bulletin.

The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30. We will also be having our next church council meeting on Monday. If you’re on the council, please try to attend.

Thank you to everyone who helped with out vacation Bible School. I’m sure Jesyka will tell you a lot more about that in a moment, but any church is only as good as the people who volunteer, so thank you to those who did.

Speaking of volunteering, as our community revival date nears, we’re going to be in need of volunteers to help out with such things as parking, ushers, and safety. Barry Lotts will be reaching out to some of you for help there. The other participating churches will also be gathering volunteers. If you’re interesting in helping out on that last week of July, please see me in the next couple of weeks. Our soonest need will be between July 17-19, when the Gospel Hill folks will be here to set up the tents. If you’re available during that time and interesting in helping, please let me know.

Please keep our ailing members in your prayers. Vernie Angus, who is doing well and can’t wait to get home. Ed Lavender is also doing well after his pacemaker surgery. Brenda Johnson is now at Shenandoah for a while, along with Danny. Please keep them in your prayers as well, and especially Danny, who has been diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer.

I’ve also heard that Michael Curry, who was once a pastor here, lost his house in a fire on Friday morning. He and Debbie are safe. Their insurance company is taking care of their physical needs. They were actually returning from a mission trip to find the house on fire. The damage is significant and the rebuild will take at least a year. Michael wrote that “All we need is for you to know what it happening to us, and to pray that what has happened to us will in some way advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” That’s well put, so please pray for Michael and Debbie Curry.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we praise you this day for the freedom that we enjoy as citizens of this great nation, but our greatest praise is the freedom we have in our risen Lord. We ask that make your presence known in this place today, that your Spirit offers us both comfort and hope, and that our voices and minds are given in honor to you. We pray for our leaders, we pray for our families, we pray for this country, we pray for healing and understanding, we pray for peace among one another. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

PLEDGE TO THE FLAGS

Would you please stand as you are able for the pledges to the two flags here today, and to the Bible. We’ll begin with a pledge to our Christian flag.

Sermon

After the last day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin walked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and was greeted by a woman named Elizabeth Powel, whose husband was the mayor. She asked Franklin, “Doctor what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

Ben Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Mrs. Powel then asked him, “And why not keep it?”

Franklin said, “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

Freedom, in other words, is both a precious and fragile thing. Precious, because it only comes at a great cost through great suffering. And fragile, because the sin that darkens the human heart will always either work in the people to take that freedom for granted, or it will work in the leaders of a nation to claim more power for themselves by taking freedom away from the people they serve.

Jesus ended his Sermon on the Mount by telling us just how important a foundation is for anything, and that the strongest foundation we can have is Christ himself. He says in Matthew 7:24, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

In those first shaky generations after our nation’s founding, those rains came often. There was much hardship. The streams rose with other wars and conflicts. The winds political upheaval blew time and again and beat against our house. But America did not fall. It remained, and it remained not because our nation was perfect. Far from it. But America remained because we had a solid foundation on the rock of Christ.

On May 17, 1776, Congress appointed a day of fasting and prayer for the colonies so that they could repent and “appease God’s righteous displeasure, and through the merits and meditation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”

In his first inauguration, George Washington added four words to the end of the swearing in ceremony that have been said in every inauguration since: “So help me God.” The first thing Washington did after saying those words was to bend down to kiss his Bible. He may have been be the most powerful man in the country, but he wanted to show everyone that he still yielded to the rule and authority of God.

On February 11, 1861, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Springfield, Illinois. He held up his Bible and said, “In regard to this great book, I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated to us through this book. But for IT, we would not know right from wrong.”

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “After a week of perplexing problems, it does so rest my soul to come into the house of the Lord and to sing and to mean it, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.’ My great joy and great glory in occupying this exalted position as president of this nation is that I am enabled to preach the practical moralities of the Bible to my fellow countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world.”

Tell me any president of any party who would stand up and say such words today.

It wasn’t just the leaders of our government who understood the importance of faith in a nation’s health and security. Our institutions did as well. One hundred and six of the first 108 universities in America were founded on the Christian faith. Harvard and Yale began as seminaries — schools to train preachers. Christianity was so important to our country that it was commonly believed by those in power that the United States would not be able to survive without it.

John Adams, our second president, wrote, “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. For democracy to work, the majority of the people have to be religious and moral at their core, or it falls apart.”

Those words are over two hundred years old, and they’ve become prophetic in our lifetimes. Because look at what’s happened to our nation, and look at what’s still happening. The firm foundation we once had is now cracked, and as a result, our society itself is shaking.

It was a gradual thing; the loss of something, especially freedom, almost always is. But most point to 1962 as the year when the loss of our nation’s soul quickened. That’s when the Supreme Court ruled that voluntary prayer at the start of each school day was unconstitutional. The case came from New York, whose public school students — those who wanted to, nobody made any student pray — would recite the same prayer before the start of every school day. And what was this prayer that the Supreme Court found so offensive? I’ll read it to you: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee and we beg Thy blessing over us, our parents, our teachers, and our nation.”

Terrible, isn’t it? Those words are just so, so offensive.

It seems such a small thing, that one decision by our highest court. But if you’d look at statistics for things like premarital sex, violent crimes, sexually transmitted diseases, and teen suicides for the decade before 1962, you’d find those numbers were either flat or slightly increasing as the population increased. But beginning in 1963, every one of those categories began to rise, and it’s been rising ever since. The only area that’s gone down in our schools since 1963 is test scores.

Just as John Adams warned, once God is taken out of American life, the country itself would be in danger. A few years ago, the school board at Arlington High School in Massachusetts decided there could be no more American flags in classrooms and no more Pledge of Allegiance said before school. In the outrage that followed, the principal decided that the pledge could be said, but only after school in the lobby area so no one would be offended. Some of the students challenged that, but the principal said, “To be honest, I’m not certain we’ll be able to get teachers willing to lead the pledge in their classrooms.”

A publishing house named Wilder Publications has been printing copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — which is a great thing — but those publications also now come with a warning label that says this:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.” (And thank God for that, I say.) “Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

What’s happened to our great nation, one that’s been throughout its history so blessed by God? And how much longer is God going to sit by until his great patience runs out and his judgment comes? Ronald Reagan said, “If we forget that we are a nation under God, then we are a nation gone under.” And here we are. We can all feel it. We all talk about restoring our nation. Everyone on both sides of our great divide, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, traditionalists and progressives, all say that America is slipping. It’s declining.

How do we restore this country? Well, you can’t restore something if you don’t know how it was built. That’s why we had a little history lesson at the start of this sermon. And at the heart of the nation’s building was God’s word and prayer and a people who sought to become more holy. Restoring our nation means not leaning on the newest technologies, but on the oldest truths. It means repenting to God, and God himself has told us exactly how we are to do that.

Turn with me to the book of 2 Chronicles, chapter 7. Today’s scripture is just one verse, verse 14, but it sure does pack a punch.

The Lord says, “ . . . 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.”

And this is God’s word.

We as a nation love to point fingers. We love to assign blame. We love to say, “Well, if only Congress could stop fighting long enough to do something good for the country. Well, if only the Senate could stop trying to govern from the extremes of both parties. It’s President Biden’s fault that we’re in this mess. It’s President Trump’s fault for the condition of our nation when he handed it over to President Biden. It’s President Obama’s fault, it’s President Bush’s fault, it’s the media’s fault, it’s social media, it’s the schools, it’s entertainment” — and God sits there shaking his head as we list all of those things. It’s not the politicians’ fault. It’s not the media’s fault. God here in 2 Chronicles 7:14 points to the one people who stood by and let all of this take place, which just so happens to be the one people who are responsible for fixing it, and that is the second and third words of this verse — my people.

That means you. That means me. That means every person sitting in every church in this nation on this Sunday morning. That means all those souls who stand against the tide and actually believe that yes, there is a God, and yes, he’s still on his throne, and yes, he has called heaven and earth to witness against us today, and he has set before us life and death, blessing and curse, and he’s waiting to see which one we’re going to finally choose, because we’ve gone far too long being comfortable in the muddy middle between living for the world and living for him, and now is the time to make that choice. Right now, today.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with our local pastors trying to plan this community revival that’s a few weeks away. It is no small task, and we are going to rely on both God and our congregations to make this happen because it’s never happened before. One thing I’ve realized is that our church now has either the largest or second-largest congregation in this town. And we say, “That’s wonderful.” But look around you.

Where are all those people who used to fill the pews of the churches in Stuarts Draft? Many of them have gone to be with the Lord. Some have moved away. But many more are just sitting at home right now. You know these people. They’re your friends, your neighbors. In many cases, they’re your family. They’re sleeping in. They haven’t opened their Bible in years. The only time they pray is when the world goes bad on them, and so when they do pray, it’s like they’re talking to a stranger. Their lives are centered on themselves and not God. No doubt if you asked them, they’d call themselves heaven bound. Maybe they are. They’d call themselves Christian. Maybe they are. But what kind of Christians are they?

I spoke with a man this week whom I didn’t know, but he had a problem that he said only a preacher could help with. He’d had a heart attack a few months ago, and he told me about the operation that the doctor said would either save him or kill him. It saved him, thankfully, and how he has a second chance at life. His problem was that he didn’t know what to do with it. I asked him if he was saved — that seemed the most important thing for him to take care of if he hadn’t already. He told me he was, but what he didn’t tell me was that he also had doubts about that. He hadn’t been to church in years, had forgotten how to pray, hadn’t given God or his soul much thought until his heart gave out. I told him I didn’t know what God had for him to do but was certain that God wasn’t done with him yet, and that I was also certain he needed a good old-fashioned restoration of his relationship with Christ.

Raised in church, raised to believe, but drifted as the years went on. But even as he drifted, that man thought he had a right relationship with God until God woke him up with a heart attack. Now he’s not sure. And that describes a lot of believers today. The church in America has allowed believers to weaken what it means to be a Christian. We’ve become soft, thinking of God like he’s an insurance policy that we can cash in when we need it instead of a living Lord that we must choose to stand beside every day. We’ve allowed our hearts to be compromised, thinking that we can chase after the things of this world and still keep our heavenly reward, so easily quoting verses like “You do not have because you do not ask” and “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord,’” but always seeming to forget verses like, “‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.’” Because being a Christian isn’t about making one choice one time. It’s about making that same choice every day.

My people, God says. It all depends on my people, and the first thing that God says his people need to do is humble themselves. That means to empty ourselves of pride and selfishness. Our society right now is overrun by people who think everything is about them. In the grand cosmic story of creation, they think they are the main character. Well let me tell you something, God’s story isn’t about you. God’s story is about Jesus Christ. No person of flesh and blood is at the center of the universe, and the sooner people stop acting like they are, the better off things will be. It’s not about you, it’s about Christ. It’s him that we should always be lifting up, never ourselves. Humbling ourselves means understanding that God is big and we are small. It means understanding that he is in control rather than the politicians and television networks. It means not voting with your pocketbook but voting with your principles. It means putting your trust and devotion in the Lord Almighty rather than any leader who says he believes like you do and shares your values, and then turns around and lives the life of someone who’s never heard of the Bible.

Humble yourselves, God says, and then God says to pray. Pray as people. Pray as families. Have a conversation with God. Those people Christ says he will tell at the last Judgment “I never knew you” are the ones who never had a relationship with him, and you cannot have a relationship with anyone you don’t talk to often. Share you heart with him. Tell him of your worries and fears and dreams. Ask him to reveal himself. Pray for our leaders. Someone told me the other day that God didn’t want him praying for President Biden. I told him he better pray, because that’s the person God wants in the White House. And how do I know that? Because he’s the person in the White House, and nothing happens without God willing it.

Humble yourselves, God says, and pray, and then seek my face. What does it mean to seek God’s face? If we can’t see God, how can he say, “Seek my face?”

In the Hebrew, the word “face” means “presence.” Seeking God’s face means seeking his presence. The call to seek God’s face was given to his people because they’d abandoned him and needed to return to him. A person’s face reveals so much about their character and personality. Emotions are written in the eyes, the smile, the wrinkles in the brow. We recognize someone by looking at their face. In the Bible, the human face is often used to represent the whole person. Seeking God’s face is the heart of worship. As Christians, our entire lives are devoted to seeking God’s presence, his face. “Worship me,” God says. “Seek my face, know me, because if I’m a stranger to you, you’ll become a stranger to me.”

And once we start humbling ourselves, and praying, and seeking God’s face, there’s something else we have to do. We have to turn from our wicked ways. At the heart of repentance is the idea of turning away from something. Turning away from our own selfishness, our own narrow-mindedness, and turning toward God. It’s not just about saying no to what the flesh wants, it’s also saying yes to what God wants. It’s seeking his will rather than our own desires. It’s calmly submitting to him instead of giving in to our emotions. And if we do all of those things both as individuals and as a nation of believers, God says right here that he will forgive our sin, and he promises to heal our land.

And that’s the only way true healing will come — from him. Strengthening the traditional family will help, but it won’t get the job done. Politics can help if our leaders put their country first and themselves last, but our leaders just don’t do that anymore, and that includes both parties. A bigger and more bloated government is never the answer unless the question is, “What’s going to screw our country up even more?” If revival happens in this country, it won’t begin in the White House, it will begin in our houses. And revival has to come to the church before it can come to the nation. Because otherwise there’ll just be more compromising, more permissiveness, and before we know it what was considered evil even twenty years ago will become acceptable now.

Much of Isaiah records the slow destruction of Israel from the outside, from enemy nations, but it also records the slow destruction of Israel from the inside as the nation lost its moral character. Listen to Isaiah 56:10:

His watchmen are blind; they are all without knowledge; they are all silent dogs; they cannot bark, dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber.

What does that verse mean? Who are Israel’s watchmen? They’re the spiritual leaders of the nation. That’s you, and that’s me. Those leaders were supposed to be watchdogs. When there’s an intruder, when there’s a hint of danger, they’re job is to bark. And Isaiah’s saying they’ve all gone silent. They’re not watching, they’re dreaming. They’re lying down. Not because they’re tired, not because they’ve been at their post for such a long time that they’re exhausted. No. Isaiah says it’s simply because they love to slumber. They’ve lost their purpose. “God?” they say. “Sure, I love God. I’m saved. I mean, I haven’t been to church since I was a kid and I can’t remember much of the Bible and most times I don’t pray before a meal, much less any other time. But I love God. I’m saved. It’s not my fault the nation is this way, it’s the leaders’ fault. It’s big business. It’s social media.”

But the purpose of a watchman is to sound the alarm, and the American church isn’t doing it. We’re letting our spouses stay home on Sunday, and our kids and our grandkids, we’re living like everyone else, and we’re not sounding the alarm. If you’re in a building that’s on fire, the most loving thing you can do is scream, “Danger.” We can’t sit back any longer and watch the foundations of our nation crack and call it progress. “If my people, who are called by my name.” It’s we who have to set the example, and Christians can’t set that example if our lives don’t look any different from the rest of the world.

The past decade has been all about bailouts, hasn’t it? Banks have been bailed out, loan companies bailed out, auto makers bailed out. But the biggest bailout we’ve witnessed has come from the body of believers. We’ve bailed out from honoring the sacrifices of those who have served our country and protected our freedoms. We’ve bailed out from saying that Jesus is the only way to heaven so we can be inclusive. We’ve bailed out of standing up for the sanctity of life while 51 million babies have been aborted. We’ve bailed out of keeping treasures in heaven and instead go into debt buying so much stuff that we have to rent storage sheds to keep it all in. We’ve bailed out of cherishing the wisdom of the elderly because we worship the fountain of youth. We’ve bailed out of clinging to “In God we trust” because the truth is that “In gold we trust.” We’ve bailed out on our first love, who is God, because we just want to fit in.

But God says it’s not too late. It’s not too late. The storm has gathered and the thunder is rolling but there is still the faint hint of a breeze that can drive those dark clouds back. God is ready to bring revival. He’s just waiting for us to get ready. He’s waiting for his watchmen to wake up and begin a spiritual renewal where Christians have their Bibles open at their kitchen tables instead of closed on their living room tables. A renewal were Christians fall on their knees instead of puff out their chests. A renewal where the church is restored and reborn such that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

It begins with us, with his people, and at the heart of the church’s revival is embracing three important things: genuine identity, genuine goodness, and genuine gratitude. Let’s talk about all three of those.

First, as a Christian, what is your fundamental identity? For the majority of Americans today, identity is wrapped up in what race you are, or what gender you are, or what sex you’re attracted to. But if you are in Christ, your deepest identity lies in him. Jesus defines your everything. We said a pledge to the American flag this morning. That is a good thing. But no one can ultimately serve both God and country, and no allegiance can go as deep as the one you have with Christ.

It’s important to never forget you’re a stranger in this land. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul writes, and may we never forget that we are not the sons and daughters of Uncle Sam, we are the sons and daughters of a risen Lord whose kingdom will remain forever. That means when you sing the anthem and say the pledge and enjoy the parades and fireworks, you understand this nation is important, but it’s not as important as your relationship with your Savior.

Second, we have to embrace genuine goodness. Our loyalty to Christ comes first, but that in no way should lessen our loyalty to this country. It is absolutely right for a Christian to love our nation. God never tells us to run away from the world, he tells us to get involved in it. Not of the world, Jesus prays in John 17, but sent into it. In other words, God says stop griping about how everything is wrong and start praying that I’ll make you part of the solution.

And lastly, we have to embrace genuine gratitude. Paul says we are to give respect to whom respect is owed and honor to whom honor is owed. That includes our politicians, no matter which party they’re a part of. That includes the president, no matter who he or she is. They don’t just deserve our prayers, they need them. Because for all of our troubles, for all of our disagreements, for all of the hate we give one another, ours is still a beautiful country and a light unto the world.

We do all of these things because God commands it, and he commands it for one reason — to show others the path to the true country, to heaven and then the new heaven and the new earth. C.S. Lewis said this best when he wrote, “I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”

Our eye is to heaven, and that is exactly why we work so hard to bring as much heaven as we can to earth. We’re going to start his month by celebrating our nation’s freedom, and that freedom is a precious thing. But we’re going to end this month by taking a week to celebrate the ultimate freedom we have in the death and resurrection of Christ. Let those words of God sink into your hearts during all of that time, and every day afterward:

“ . . . 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.”

That’s God’s promise. And that’s our duty. We have a republic. But it’s up to us to keep it. We need revival. But it’s up to us to bring it.

I’m going to close our service to day with a prayer for our nation that was first offered by Abraham Lincoln in the darkest days of the Civil War. If you are ready to meet the Lord of your life, if you’d like to join our church, or if you simply need a word of prayer, I’ll invite you up here as we sing our closing hymn. Will you bow your heads with me:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten you, O God.

“We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us.

“It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”