Our Focus
Our focus at church yesterday was God. Every time we gather our focus is God.
Romans 11:36 sets the tone for the life of the Christian and all the Christian does:
“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”
One area in which we should be thankful is for the nation into which we have been born.
Our heavenly citizenship is eternal and that is the Christian’s first allegiance, but we can also acknowledge our earthly citizenship and give thanks to God.
We do not worship our nation or our history, but we should give thanks to God for His blessings upon our nation and its people.
We do not believe any nation or people are perfect, but we can acknowledge the good and the excellent and give thanks to God.
My Visit to the Liberty Bell
On March 10th, 2015, my family and I met some friends in Philadelphia and we were privileged to see many of the famous sites. Most memorable to me were the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I never imagined then, that 11 years later I would be celebrating Independence Day as an American citizen.
I’m not the first to set out on that surprising journey.
America’s Foundation of Faith
Two hundred fifty years ago, as the summer sun beat down on Philadelphia, a bell sounded and called a group of men together to a congress that would change the world. They didn’t know they would become citizens of a new country either.
The bell that would have been a familiar sound to the delegates of the Continental Congress was not a particularly special bell. At the time, it was just another bell, cast for the Pennsylvania State House. Later it would be named the Liberty Bell, and its story would become woven into the story of a nation.
According to long-standing tradition, on July 8, 1776, just four days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, that same bell rang again, summoning the citizens of Philadelphia to hear those words read aloud for the very first time: that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights.
But the bell’s story doesn’t end there. When British forces threatened to capture Philadelphia in 1777, patriots did something remarkable. They didn’t let that bell fall into enemy hands to be melted into cannons.
They loaded it onto a wagon and carried it nearly sixty miles to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where they hid it beneath the floorboards of Zion Reformed Church. The symbol of American liberty spent a season of the Revolution hidden beneath the floor of a church. When the British finally withdrew, the bell was brought home. It had been protected not in a military fortress, a bank vault, or a political parliament, but in a church.
Even before being hidden in a church, it already had a connection with the Christian faith.
Engraved around the bell is a portion of Leviticus 25:10,
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” – Leviticus 25:10
The Thread of Faith in the History of the United States
As you study American history, you repeatedly find Christian faith influencing the nation’s development. It wasn’t the only influence, but it was an important one.
When the Declaration of Independence speaks of rights, it doesn’t ground them in kings or parliaments, it grounds them in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
It says we are “endowed by our Creator” with those rights. It closes by appealing “to the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rightness of the cause, and with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Four separate references to God, in one of the shortest documents ever to reshape the world.
When the First Continental Congress opened in 1774, its very first act, before any debate about grievances or taxes, was prayer.
A minister named Jacob Duché stood and prayed over those delegates, and by most accounts, grown men wept.
John Adams described the event in a letter to his wife, Abigail. He wrote that Jacob’s prayer was,
“…as pertinent, as affectionate, as sublime, as devout, as I ever heard…”
He also noted that George Washington, who would later become General and Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and first president of the United States, knelt during the prayer.
In the years that followed, Congress called the colonies to formal days of prayer and fasting, in 1775 and again in 1776, asking citizens to humble themselves before God as they faced war with the most powerful empire on earth.
Long before the Declaration of Independence and the founding fathers the foundation of faith is seen in the Pilgrims.
In 1620, a small group of Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower drafted a document before they ever set foot on land. The Mayflower Compact bound them together ‘for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith.’ In the absence of an established civil government, they covenanted together to govern themselves under God for the good of the colony. It became one of the early seeds of American self-government.
The Puritans who followed carried that same vision. John Winthrop, aboard the Arbella in 1630, preached that their new settlement would be “as a city upon a hill”, a phrase drawn straight from the Sermon on the Mount. They believed their community was accountable not just to one another, but to God Himself.
A century later, that faith exploded across the colonies during the Great Awakening. It swept through the colonies in the 1730s and ’40s. Preachers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards called men and women, farmers, merchants, servants, to a personal, living faith.
Unlike anywhere before, faith became the possession and responsibility of the individual and not a state church. If a person stood as an individual, equal, before God, then why could that same person not have a voice, as an individual, in the governing of their nation?
Many historians have argued that the Great Awakening prepared the colonies for the ideas that would later shape the Revolution. I would have to agree with them.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a room full of disagreement, weeks into a stalemate, it was eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin, no one’s idea of the most devout man in the room, who stood and said:
“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 His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
That line of faith ran through Washington’s Farewell Address, where he called religion and morality “indispensable supports” of good government.
It ran through the abolitionists who read their Bibles and could not reconcile slavery with a Creator who made all men equal.
It ran through Lincoln, who during the darkest days of the Civil War called the nation to days of prayer and fasting, seeking God’s mercy on a divided land. And it surfaced again in that same season on our coins
“In God We Trust” appeared for the first time in 1864, at a minister’s request, so that a nation tearing itself apart could still declare where its trust ultimately rested.
In 1954, President Eisenhower signed the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance.
Two years later, in 1956, “In God We Trust” was formally adopted as the national motto of the United States. In a time of great division, a deliberate decision was made to remind the nation where its ultimate hope should rest.
Conclusion
So when we celebrate 250 years of our nation, we are not simply celebrating a government or a flag. We are celebrating a story where faith and freedom have always been linked.
The reality did not always live up to the aspiration. But the Christian faith helped shape those aspirations and repeatedly called the nation toward greater applications of justice and freedom.
I want to close where I began, by thinking about the Liberty Bell. The bell that once called men to Congress, summoned a crowd to hear of liberty, and was once entrusted to a church. It’s more than a museum piece. It no longer sounds out the tones it once did, but its message still echoes throughout the nation.
Christians as individuals and churches must proclaim liberty for all. I believe it is good for us to fight for and defend the right to political freedom. But more importantly, we should proclaim the Gospel, spiritual freedom.
This article is already long enough but let me summarize my sermon from today that builds on Leviticus 25:10 and led up to Christ.
- (Leviticus 25:8-10) The Proclamation of Liberty
- (Isaiah 61:1-3) The Promise of Liberty
- (Luke 4:16-21) The Person of Liberty
- (Galatians 5:1) The Power of Liberty
Today, the Liberty Bell is silent, cracked, resting behind glass in Philadelphia. But its charge has not gone silent. “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.” That charge is aimed at us.
An ordinary bell became extraordinary because of the part it played in U.S. history. In part, because of the powerful message engraved upon it.
You may feel ordinary, but as a Christian, you have God’s Word and you too can accomplish the extraordinary for the glory of God.
May we, this Fourth of July season, take up the charge to proclaim liberty throughout the land, with gratitude for 250 years past, and with faith for whatever years lie ahead.
May we always remember that the Declaration of Independence can declare political liberty but only the Gospel can declare a sinner justified before God.
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