July 2, Independence Sunday, Communion Sunday

Lesson: 1 Peter 1.17-21

Sermon Title: In God We Trust

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INTRODUCTION:

Young Rabbi Shulman finally summoned up enough courage to say to Mr. Beneson, one of the balebatim (leaders of the community) of the community, "I trust you won't mind my mentioning it, but I can't help noticing that--you always fall asleep when I'm preaching."

"Why not?" replied Benenson. "Would I sleep if I didn't trust you?"

  1. In God We Trust

    1. In God We Trust is on our coins.

    2. In God We Trust is on our money.

    3. But, is In God We Trust in our hearts and minds?

MAIN BODY:

  1. God is, by some Christians, seen to be the one who either blesses or punishes the nation.

    1. This takes different forms, but for the same purpose.

      1. The appeal is to God to preserve the nation.

      2. The appeal is to God to protect the nation.

      3. The appeal is to God to bless the nation.

    2. If the nation because of immorality or policy is out of harmony with God, then we will be punished.

      1. 9/11 was seen by some as a punishment.

      2. Katrina was seen as a punishment on the immorality of the people of New Orleans.

    3. This is a curious and contradictory concept of God.

  2. I recently finished a book, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, by Harry S. Stout, Professor of History, Religious Studies, and American Studies; Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, Yale Divinity School.

    1. A moral history is no so much concerned with the battles but with the conduct of the war.

      1. The basics of conduct.

      2. Especially the religious elements.

    2. Constitution of the Confederate States of America was adopted
      March 11, 1861

      1. I discovered, what I did not know, that the Constitution of the Confederate States invoked the name, favor and guidance of Almighty God.

Preamble (1)

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

      1. This is in sharp contrast with the Union Constitution and the Declaration of Independence which speak of God as:

        1. Nature's God or

        2. Creator.

    1. In the course of the war Confederate victories were the blessings of God and the defeats were the judgements of God.

      1. President Jefferson Davis called numerous days of fasting, humiliation and prayer.

      2. A Prayer by General Lee (2)

General Orders, No. 83. August 13, 1863

Lee's faith influenced every aspect of his life. Here, the prayerful General embellishes a decree from Confederate President Jefferson Davis with a sincere prayer for righteousness amongst the Confederate ranks.

"The President of the Confederate States has, in the name of the people, appointed the 21st day of August as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer. A strict observence of the day is enjoined upon the officers and soldiers of this army. All military duties, except such as are absolutely necessary, will be suspended. The commanding officers of brigades and regiments are requested to cause divine services, suitable to the occassion, to be performed in their respective commands.

Soldiers! We have sinned against Almighty God. We have forgotten his signal mercies, and have cultivated a revengeful, haughty, and boastful spirit. We have not remembered that the defenders of a just cause should be pure in his eyes; that "our times are in his hand"-and we have relied too much on our own arms for the achievement of our independence. God is our only refuge and our strength. Let us humble ourselves before him. Let us confess our many sins, and beseech him to give us a higher courage, a purer patriotism and more determined will: that he will convert the hearts of our enemies: that he will hasten the time when war, with its sorrows and sufferings, shall cease, and that he will give us a name and place among the nations of the earth."

R. E. Lee, General

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      1. In a Sunday sermon titled: EZRA'S DILEMNA The Rt Rev. Stephen Elliot opend with a prayer:

A SERMON PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH, SAVANNAH, On Friday, August 21st, 1863, BEING THE DAY OF HUMILIATION, FASTING AND PRAYER, Appointed by the President of the Confederate States, BY THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, D. D., RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF GEORGIA. (3)

"It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man."--Ps. 118, v. 8.

PRAYER.

O most mighty Lord God, who reignest over all the kingdoms of men; who hast power to cast down and to raise up, to save thy servants and to rebuke their enemies, let thine ears be now open unto our prayers and thy merciful eyes upon our trouble and our danger. O Lord, do thou judge our cause in righteousness and mercy, and whereinsoever we have sinned against thee, make us truly sensible of it and deeply penitent for it. To us, O Lord, belongeth confusion of face as at this day, yet we are bold, because of thy long suffering and patience towards us, to pray thee to lift up once more the light of thy countenance upon us and to bless us and our arms. Save us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hand of our enemies, and send thy fear before us, that our enemies may be confounded at thy presence. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but our trust is in the name of the Lord our God. Hear us, O Lord, for the glory of thy name and for thy truth's sake, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

      1. The sermon by the Rt. Rev. STEPHEN ELLIOTT. Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia, contains in part: (4)

From the beginning of the revolution in which we are yet so sternly engaged, we have boldly assumed the position, that we were fighting under the shield of the Lord of Hosts, of him who "sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers." This has been our boast and our consolation. It has supported us under all our sacrifices, and has cheered us through all our days of darkness. The Psalmist never struck his harp to the animating strain--"The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge"--in more confident faith than we have re-echoed it. Not only has it been chanted in the sanctuaries of Christianity, but our civil rulers have recognized it in their papers of State, and our great Captains have proclaimed it from the head of their armies in victory as well as under defeat[.] The soldier and the statesman, the man of the sword and the man of the gown, has each borne it upon his escutcheon, and our supreme Legislative assembly has engraven it upon our national seal. All our official documents will go forth in the future, with the sacred inscription "DEO VINDICE," and announce to the world our trust and our strength. We have not only nurtured this feeling, which seemed to come upon the Confederacy as an inspiration, within our own hearts, hugging it there as a part of our religious life--looking to it, in individual faith, as a light shining in a dark place--but we have blazoned it abroad, and are conspicuous this day before the world as a people who have taken the Lord for their God, caring for nothing so much as "for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush." We have said not to one King only, but to all Kings within the reach of our voice--not to earthly Kings merely, but to the King of Kings--"The hand of OUR GOD is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him." We are bound to this declaration by the most solemn covenants both private and public, and by it must we now stand or fall. We cannot therefore require of any foreign agency--we should be ashamed to do it--"bands of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way." We have deliberately made our choice. We have taken the Lord of Hosts as our Saviour, and to him must we now turn with fasting and with prayer, and "seek of him the right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance."

    1. It was not this way immediately in the North.

      1. First the focus was on slavery.

      2. Then it was on the shedding of blood.

      3. Then it came to be on God and God's will.

Origin of the United States National Motto IN GOD WE TRUST, designated as the U. S. National Motto by Congress in 1956, originated during the Civil War as an inscription for U. S. coins, although it was used by Francis Scott Key in a slightly different form when he wrote The Star Spangled Banner in 1814. On Nov. 13, 1861, when Union morale had been shaken by battlefield defeats, the Rev. M. R. Watkinson, of Ridleyville, Pa. wrote to Secy. of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, "From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters," the minister wrote, suggesting "recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins." Secy. Chase ordered designs prepared with the inscription IN GOD WE TRUST and backed coinage legislation which authorized use of this slogan. It first appeared on some U. S. coins in 1864, disappeared and reappeared on various coins until 1955, when Congrress ordered it placed on all paper money and all coins. (5)

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    1. Lincoln was reluctant to invoke the name of God except in a general way.

      1. He called only 4 days of fasting and prayer.

        1. This was done primarily to placate the conservative religious elements in the North.

        2. It did not reflect Lincoln's own beliefs which were not well stated then, nor well understood even now.

      2. You can see this especially in his Second Inaugural Address. (6)

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

  1. We are still caught-up in this conflicting and contradictory concept of God.

    1. Our political leaders invoke the name of God to support them and to surround them with divine blessings.

      1. I am not cynical.

      2. I, hopefully, am a realist.

    2. And I take this position because I will not worship at the shrine of the god of the United States.

  2. During the Civil War whose side was God on.

    1. The losers or the winners?

    2. It makes no difference.

    3. God is not the god of war, but the God of peace.

    4. What we need to learn is that Governments serve a useful purpose, but they are not saviors.

      1. The god of the government cannot save us.

      2. The god of the government cannot free us from the bondage of sin.

      3. The god of the government cannot make us better persons.

      4. The god of the government is more like big brother than Savior-brother.

        1. Reports of extensive phone surveillance.

        2. Reports of surveillance of bank accounts from the cooperative, known as Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication).

        3. That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

        4. A recent Supreme Court ruling that the government had overstepped its bounds in holding the detainees at Guantanamo, Cuba and violated their rights under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

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  1. I do not serve the god of the government.

    1. I serve the God-Father of Jesus Christ.

    2. God offers us a way of escape from the ravages of sin.

      1. Look once again at the lesson for this morning from 1 Peter 1:17-21, (NRSVA)

        1. 17If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.

        2. 18You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

        3. 20He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.

        4. 21Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

    3. You have come to trust.

      1. God provides a parachute. (7)

Charles Plum, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a communist prison. He survived that ordeal and now lectures about lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"

"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.

"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"

Plumb assured him, "It sure did -- if your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform -- a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back and bell-bottom trousers. I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said "Good morning, how are you,' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor."

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

      1. Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?

      2. Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day."

    1. We learn not to trust our security in governments, but in God.

      1. We owe to God our first loyalty.

      2. Coming in a very close second that is almost a 1A is our family.

      3. Thirdly is our government.

    2. We learn to trust in God.

IN GOD WE TRUST

      1. It doesn't need to be on our coins or our money.

      2. It needs to be in our hearts.

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CONCLUSION

  1. The blessings of IN GOD WE TRUST, are reflected in the words of an old song.

Who Trusts in God, a Strong Abode

Words: Stanza 1, Joachim Magdeburg, Christliche und tröstliche Tischgesenge, mit vier Stimmen (Erfurt, Germany: 1572) (Wer Gott vertraut, hat wohl gebaut); stanzas 2-3: anonymous. Translated from German to English by Benjamin H. Kennedy, Hymnologia Christiana, 1863; alt. by Edward H. Bickersteth, 1864.

Who trusts in God, a strong abode
In Heaven and earth possesses;
Who looks in love to Christ above,
No fear his heart oppresses.
In Thee alone, dear Lord, we own
Sweet hope and consolation;
Our shield from foes, our balm for woes,
Our great and sure salvation.

Though Satan's wrath beset our path,
And worldly scorn assail us;
While Thou art near we will not fear,
Thy strength shall never fail us.
Thy rod and staff, shall keep us safe,
And guide our steps forever;
Nor shades of death, nor hell beneath,
Our souls from Thee shall sever.

In all the strife of mortal life,
Our feet shall stand securely;
Temptation's hour shall lose its power,
For Thou shalt guard us surely.
O God, renew, with heavenly dew,
Our body, soul, and spirit,
Until we stand at Thy right hand,
Through Jesus' saving merit.

Amen

COMMUNION

1. Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Retrieved from: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/csa.htm

2. Retrieved from: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/stone/leepray.html

3. Savannah, Georgia: POWER PRESS OF GEORGE N. NICHOLS. 1863., pages 5-6 (Retrieved from: http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/elliottezra/elliott.html)

4. Ibid

5. Retrieved from: http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/mottous.htm

6. Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865, From His Second Inaugural Address. (Retrieved from: http://www.brotherswar.com/Civil_War_Quotes_4c.htm)

7. Charles Plum, "Parachutes," courtesy of Tim Puffer, Getfed.com.

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