The Message of Independence Day

Most Americans consider July 4 as a day for parades, fireworks, and red, white, and blue. In celebration of Independence Day, Americans will spend almost $7 billion on food and will blow off over $675 million worth of fireworks.

While enjoying family, friends, fireworks, festivities, and fanfare, take time to ponder the reason for this holiday. For every American citizen, Independence Day should be a time for remembrance, repentance, and rebuilding.

Remember

The Israelites forsook God when they forgot His works and His wonders (Psalm 78:11). As Israel did, so America has forgotten God’s providence in its history.

We have sacrificed our sacred history in favor of political correctness, revisionism, and consumerism. Like Israel, we have become so busy enjoying the blessings God has given us that we haved failed to reflect on the goodness of the Giver of those blessings (Deuteronomy 8).

In his letter to Samuel Langdon, September 28, 1789, George Washington noted,

“The Man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf.”

Washington could have recounted many “divine interpositions” in the War for Independence, including the 1776 Christmas Day Miracle at Trenton, New Jersey. On December 25, 1776, the outlook felt bleak. Morale among the Continental Army stood at an all time low. At the end of the year, many of the troops would return home, their enlistments almost up.

In these circumstances, Washington called for a daring attack on the Hessian garrison posted in Trenton, New Jersey. After crossing the ice choked Delaware River in the face of driving snow, storm, and sleet, the force was three hours behind schedule, causing Washington to almost cancel the planned attack.

On the morning of December 26, with only one of three attack units, Washington soundly defeated the amply-warned Hessians, who were caught reveling in drunkenness and festivity. On April 30, 1789, in his First Inaugural Address, Washington observed,

“No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step… seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.” 

From the skies of Midway, to the halls of the Constitutional Convention, to the foggy escape at the Battle of Long Island, and to the bursting rockets over Fort McHenry, God’s hand has manifested itself in our history. May we never forget.

Repent

Though we as a nation have been given so much, we have forgotten the Giver of those blessings. Like Israel, our willful ignorance has turned into ingratitude, pride, and disobedience.

The nation that affirmed the unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” has now murdered over 60 million babies. We have spiritually and physically sacrificed our children to the gods of education, entertainment, populism, and convenience.

In legalizing and accepting homosexual faux marriage, we have twisted the very institution God intended to reflect Christ and His church. These tragic departures from God and His law will certainly reap far-reaching consequences.

Today, less than half American children grow up in a family with two parents in their first marriage. We have forsaken the Biblical covenant of marriage for divorce and cohabitation. Truly, we have discarded God’s Word as the final authority and made ourselves as gods (Genesis 3:5).

Perhaps our greatest sin is that of prideful ingratitude, the sin from which all others stem.

Psalms 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” Psalm 9:17 assures, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”

In 1863, in the dark hours of the bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called for a national day of repentance.

“…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 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 that 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...”

Over two millennia before, Ezra called his nation back to God,

“And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God, And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens” (Ezra 9:5-6).

As Ezra repented for Israel’s national sin, so we must humbly repent to God for our personal and national iniquities.

Rebuild

If God destroyed America today, He would be perfectly just to do so. We deserve no mercy for flaunting His law.

How should we then respond?

God promised Solomon, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

As in the time of Nehemiah, we must “Rise up and build” (Nehemiah 1:18). We must repent and rebuild on the individual, family, church, and state levels.

Individual revival begins within one individual heart that burns for Christ’s kingdom. It comes as we humble ourselves, pray, repent, and follow God in obedience.

From individuals, the fire spreads to families who follow the Lord’s Word as the basis for all they do and who corporately seek and worship Him. Just as those in Nehemiah’s day rebuilt their own section of the wall, so each father, mother, son, and daughter must take responsibility within their own family.

The church must demolish its idols of tradition and popular opinion. It must become a place that proclaims the truth, shines the light, builds up the believers, and equips the saints for the ministry (I Timothy 3:15, Matthew 5:16, Ephesians 4:11-12).

The State must be reformed to fulfill its original role as God’s institution. Romans 13 defines the role of government to punish evil and reward good. Proverbs 29:2 says, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people morn.” We cannot expect to have righteous rulers if Christians refuse to vote, run for office, or seek to apply God’s Word to public policy.

Revival Starts Here

The greatest crisis facing America is not from the baby-killing industry, the sodomite agenda, or the socialist bureaucracy. The greatest problem we face is within the church. We cannot expect revival until Christians turn back to God, one at a time.

We must humble ourselves, pray, and seek God’s face. We cannot become so focused on the crisis around us that we fail to understand the One who holds it all.

As painful as it will be, we must each turn from our wicked ways. If we were honest enough, every one of us could find life areas in which we have allowed education, modern philosophy, fear of man, love of pleasure, and desire for acceptance to trump the fear of God and the authority of His Word. We must seek the praise of God alone.

God may grant America another Great Awakening. Or He may relegate America to the ash heap of history. Ultimately, as John Quincy Adams noted, “Duty is ours, results are Gods.”

If you wait for a mass movement to change America, you will have waited too long.

Revival begins today. And it begins within your heart.

Question: How can we each rebuild wherever God has placed us?