Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Sunday, November 09, 2008 1:11:32 AM
‘Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.’ [Proverbs 14:34]
It would be a strange anomaly in the Divine administration if the connection between godliness and prosperity, ungodliness and misery established in individual men should not also apply to nations of men. The Scriptures clearly prove this to be the case. The annals of the chosen people as they were a righteous or a sinful nation are marked by corresponding exaltation or reproach.
Not the wisdom of policy, military prowess, abundant natural resources or extent of empire, but righteousness exalts a nation. Greece in her proud science and Rome in the zenith of her glory both sunk in the lowest depths of moral degeneration. No nation is immune from the reproach of sin.
Beloved America; a nation highest in the profession of righteousness! For you we rejoice with trembling. You were the home of the Pilgrims; the grace of God has come near you; the Bible and the Law was precious in your midst; you saw the establishment of liberty as the law of the land; you saw the church of Christ extend its reach and circulate the word and preaching of the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is your national exaltation.
But these things are your reproach: the exchange of the doctrines of the Bible for the opinions and traditions of men; the want of a full recognition of God in your public acts; the expulsion of God from the education of your children; the flood of infidelity, lawlessness and ungodliness; the slaughter of the innocents and the demeaning of the sacred institution of marriage.
God is not mocked. Judgment has come upon you, but how can you repent when you will not acknowledge there is a God? What an enemy is the ungodly man to his country! Loudly as he may talk of his patriotism and even though God should make him an instrument of advancing her temporal interest; yet he contributes to her deepest reproach.
Let the remnant in her midst remember their high responsibility. Let them take care in their life to add to her righteousness and not to the sin of the nation. Let them plead for their country‘s true prosperity with humiliation, faith and perseverance from a heart given to prayer. Let Daniel 9 be their pattern for this exercise of Christian patriotism. Let them labor for her exaltation with hearts united around the grace of God fully revealed in Jesus Christ: the Lord our righteousness.
[Adapted from Charles Bridges on Proverbs 14:34]