Moral and Religious People
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This week is Independence Day.
You may be asking yourself, “What does that have to do with a church service?”
John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.
In other words, for the Constitution to function as it was designed,
For it to protect our rights, including the freedom to worship here today, without government interference.
We the People need to be both moral and religious.
What happened?
More and more evidence shows we are becoming both more immoral and less religious.
And society has suffered.
Fewer people go to church on Sunday,
Preferring athletics, the Sunday paper, or just some extra sleep.
Even though churches have compromised to be more acceptable to them.
Fewer people recognize Scripture.
While many misquote it in support of sin.
Things that were unthinkable as few as five years ago are demanded today as if they were normal.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!
That is the world we live in.
Why is that so?
Because the church stopped being the light of the world.
Light of the World
Light of the World
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
In other words, we are to be moral and religious people.
Not for ourselves, but to be an influence on those around us.
From the 1760s through the end of the Revolutionary War, pastors ministered about freedom.
The sermonized about the evils of what the British king and parliament were doing.
In one example, Pastor Muhlenberg was preaching one Sunday on Ecclesiastics chapter 3, “To everything there is a season,”
At the end of his sermon he said “In the language of the holy writ, there was a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. 'There is a time to fight, and that time is now coming!'
Then he took of his clerical robe and showed his military uniform underneath.
Pastor Muhlenberg did not simply preach about what should be done.
He acted on it.
Pastors like this received a name from the British.
The Black Robe Regiment.
Clergymen who preached the Word of God, and the impact it should have on life today.
Including when to fight for what is right.
These men were the salt of the earth.
And their churches were the light to guide the world.
But somewhere along the way, the church in America lost is flavor.
We stopped preserving the world.
Because we stopped being different from the world.
We stopped being a guiding light,
And instead we were guided by the world’s darkness.
Just as Solomon’s wives turned his heart after other gods,
The world has turned the church’s heart after other gods as well.
Mammon
Mammon
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Do you know how many times I’ve heard people show concern about a sermon or a church policy, because they were afraid of endangering the church’s tax-exempt status?
All because some bureaucrat used some unconstitutional law that does not even apply to churches, to threaten their tax-exempt status.
These churches claimed to serve God,
But what they really served was the mammon of donations.
Donation which are driven by attendance.
Before you try to take the speck out of someone else’s eye on that topic, look behind you.
There’s a plaque to this churches former worship of attendance, and by extension, donations.
How often does the Bible record a king of Judah doing what was right, but failed to take down the high places?
Is that plaque our “high place”?
And what about Jesus’ commands about the poor?
For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always.
Have we done good to the poor?
As soon as the government claimed the power to care for the poor, many people in the church sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge:
“My taxes pay for these institutions, the poor will have to go there.”
James told us:
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Yet we expect others to visit the orphans and widows,
And get into bed with the world, so they can do it for us.
Is it any wonder that morality and religion have been on such a decline.
Unequally Yoked
Unequally Yoked
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
For generations, the “church” in America has yoked itself to the world.
Don’t talk about politics, people won’t like it.
Don’t talk about the sexes or marriage, you might offend someone.
Don’t use strong language, people will think we’re not loving.
Remember “Separation of church and state”?
It seems lost on most Americans that when Thomas Jefferson penned the phrase “separation of church and state” he was telling the Danbury Baptists that the Constitution would protect the church from the state.
Today, even those in church act as if it is meant to protect the state from the church.
Claiming that if the government speaks about something, it’s forbidden for the church to contradict.
But Jesus talked about politics and the sexes.
He even used strong language, calling the the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” and “brood of vipers” or sons of snakes.
(We have a slightly different phrase for it.)
We have let the world tell the church what it should look like and how it should act.
And just as happened with Solomon, the world has led the church away from God.
Without the salt of God’s people, the seasoning of morality has faded in this country.
As John Adams said, without morality and religion, our Constitution cannot protect us.
Freedom of Religion
Freedom of Religion
The First Amendment to the Constitution states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
Based on this, those in the church think their freedom of religion is safe.
But John Francis Mercer said on the floor of the Constitutional Convention, “It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the Government and interest in maintaining it that is to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance and must do the business.”
The Constitution is just words on parchment.
It’s We the People who have the ultimate responsibility to protect our rights.
And the responsibility for those men and women we send to government to represent us.
Similarly, it is our responsibility for the morality and religion of this country.
When the country started walking away from God, for the most part the church did nothing.
As Patrick Henry said “It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.”
Rather than standing athwart the road to Gomorra, the church hitched a ride.
When the world told us to stop praying and teaching about Jesus in schools, what did we do?
Did we act like Peter and John?
So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge.
No, we hid in our pews and prayed to be left alone.
We bent the knee to those who hate God and religion.
Is that what Peter and John did?
NO!
But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done.
Because we did not glorify God before man, He has not glorified us.
We have watched while morality and religion declined.
And worried more about how many were in the pews,
Than how Godly they were.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Is all lost?
Has the church in America so bungled their responsibility that nothing can be done?
if My people who are called by My name will 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.
This promise God made to Israel,
But can we not hope He would treat America the same?
During the Constitutional debate, things looked bleak as well.
That is when Benjamin Franklin stood to speak:
“I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that "except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without [H]is concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move -- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”
Arguably the least religious man at the convention recognized that God governs in the affairs of men.
If we wish to enjoy the rights and freedoms protected by the Constitution, we must once again become a moral and religious people.
Since none of us can control the minds and actions of others, there is only one thing we can do.
“I therefore beg leave to move -- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our nation and our public servants, be held every morning before we proceed to business,”
This Independence Day, let God’s church seek our independence from the world and its tyranny, by seeking dependence on the Almighty and His Son.
Let us pledge to each other to restore both the salt to preserve and the light to guide our nation to morality and religion.
And let us remember another quote from Benjamin Franklin:
“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”