Righteousness Exalts a Nation

Dr. Ryan Rush | Proverbs 14:34

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, I hope you had a blessed Independence Day. I want to talk about what the Bible says about our nation today and about nations in general. It seems like when it comes to talking about the nation in church, people tend to fall into one or two extremes. Some would say that the only hope for us is found in politics or government. Thank the Lord that's not true. Our only hope is found in Jesus Christ, Christ alone. Some other also fall into other camp and say we shouldn't talk about the nation at all in church. But the reality is we talk about everything that the Scripture talks about. And so the Scripture certainly talks about nations and governments, and so we do the same. In fact, we talk about everything that's meaningful to us. And look at it this way: I care about families. That shouldn't surprise you, but I hope it doesn't disappoint you that I care especially about my own family. My family is more meaningful to me than any other family. I care about all churches, but my own church is especially meaningful to me. And I care about all nations, but my nation is especially meaningful to me. And so when I look at the word of God, I want to apply it to where I live. And that's what we're going to do today. Let's turn to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 14, verse 34. Proverbs 14, 34. As you're turning, I want to thank you all who participated in our 250 consecutive hours of prayer. Heard so many great reports. What a blessing it was. That just wrapped up yesterday. Ongoing prayer, uninhibited for 250 hours. It's an amazing thing. And I pray that that spurs us on the momentum to continue praying for our nation. Proverbs 14, 34, not a long verse, but such an important one. Here's what it says righteousness exalts a nation. But sin is a disgrace to any people. Righteousness exalts a nation. But sin is a disgrace to any people. What a powerful verse. And that might be confusing to some because it seems to tie God's blessing to our works. Well, yes, God is a gracious God, and for an individual it's true. Once you have come to faith in Jesus, you are saved for sure forever. But nations are not that way. History has shown over and over again that nations come and nations go. And the same God who can bless a nation has the right to remove the blessing from a nation. Job 12, 23 reminds us that God's sovereign over the work of every nation when it says he makes nations great, then destroys them. So we're one of those nations that God has made great. And if you travel outside the United States anytime, you realize how much we take for granted real quickly. You know, when in America we complain because we have bad Wi-Fi at the airports. You go to other places, they just want an airport. We're the envy of the entire world. We have experienced tremendous blessing. But we seem at times, I think, to lose our full understanding of the source of that blessing. We just assume this is the way things ought to be and we deserve it. So I think it's important that we understand how a nation, any nation, is impacted by the hearts of its people. I want to share three lessons from Proverbs 14, 34 related to how God blesses a nation. Here's the first truth: Righteousness exalts a nation. That's no small statement. If you were to ask a political analyst what makes a nation great, you'd probably get a hundred different answers. Some would say, well, you have to have a powerful Navy. Others would say it has to do with the education system. Some would say it has to do with which leaders or system that you have in place. But the answer God gives rises above all those answers. He says, righteousness exalts a nation. So first it's pretty important that we understand what this statement does not mean. It cannot mean or imply that everyone in a nation is righteous. Instead, it implies a strong presence of people seeking righteousness in the midst of that nation. There has never been a nation in history where everyone was righteous. Sometimes we're fooled into thinking that everybody in America was righteous in the 1700s or the 1950s. No. Look back and we can see all sorts of issues that I'm grateful that God has redeemed and brought us through. It's never been the case. So what was the difference? There were some who were seeking after God. And the acts of righteousness and justice and mercy of some in a land, a land, impact everyone in that land for good. So what is righteousness? Righteousness refers here to moral integrity. You could translate it uprightness or goodness or practicing justice. Someone put it this way: righteousness is responsibility assumed. And that means not only the presence of right, but the acting on right of a people. Righteousness and freedom are always interwoven. Have you noticed that? I mean, this is true actually in family as well. Anytime a people are unrighteous, they're in danger of losing their liberties. Some of you when you're kids, you weren't responsible, so you lost some freedom, right? The ultimate example is the toddler. A toddler has almost no freedom because a toddler has almost no responsibility. And some of you are thinking, well, I know teenagers that have lots of freedom and no responsibility. Well, that's another sermon for another day. But the same principle works in society. Freedom cannot be sustained by laws. It can't happen. And so when we lose character, we eventually lose freedom. Here's another way to look at this throughout history. When there's a decline in character, there's always a growth in government. Show me a time that that's not true. You can't be irresponsible as an individual or as a society and at the same time expect to be free. It doesn't work. The Constitution was written to work for a people of character. And if we lose our character, our constitution will not work. It was created for a society who feared God and sought truth. Listen, we've been blessed not because we've been a perfect people, but because we began at least pursuing godly principles of justice and freedom and personal responsibility that slowly got better and better in that way because there was a remnant seeking the Lord. And there was an entire system, whether everybody believed it or not, was founded on the truth that God had mandated. Let me give you some examples looking back through our history of how there was a recognition of the need for God's hand. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, said the highest glory of the American Revolution was this. It connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. Early American statesman and senator Daniel Webster said, more than all, a government and a country were to commence with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion. Who would wish that this country's existence had otherwise begun? Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our first president, George Washington, in his general order calling for divine services every Sunday during the Revolutionary War, said, To the distinguished character of a patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian. Probably the most revered president of our nation's memory is Abraham Lincoln. And he said, Without the divine or the assistance of the divine being who attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assurance, I cannot fail. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic expression of Americanism. And again, all the men I quoted had flaws, but they were among people in our nation who were seeking justice and freedom and understood our reliance on God. And so if we don't recognize the source, we get into trouble. There was a recent ruling by the Texas State Board of Education that made national news. It became a big controversy. Did you see this? Because they said that students in public education should learn fundamental truths from the scriptures, from the Bible. They had to have a basic familiarity with the Bible. And people went crazy over that. And when you take a deep dive into what it says, it's a big old nothing burger. Nobody's asking teachers to preach the gospel in schools. Here's the principle we need to understand that our founding fathers did. It doesn't even work in that way, but this is what you have to have. You don't have to believe the Bible to recognize its historic influence. You have to. None of those books come even close to the foundation on which we built our civilization, like the Bible. The Bible shaped it far more than any of those. And so I want to say to people who get caught up, riled up, the idea that we look at the Bible in schools, it might not be your faith, but it is your history. Dr. Benjamin Rush was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and in my personal opinion, uh had the most beautiful name of those who sign. He put it this way: We waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be Republicans. He's not talking about the political party. It didn't exist then. He's talking about people who are part of a republic. We profess to be Republicans, and yet we neglect with the neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our Republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible. For this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, the respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism. How many of you have heard the term Christian nationalism? It's a big buzzword today, right? We hear it all the time bantied about. What does it mean? Well, if it means that what we want is to mandate as a government that people are Christians, we are totally against that, right? We don't force people to follow Jesus. It does not work. It's antithetical to our faith. What it's, it's, it has this growing trend to mean is that if anyone is outspoken about his or her faith in Jesus, exercises their freedom to share the gospel, then they slap that label on it as if to incite fear that this is going to take over. That's never been the case. You look at the nation's history. We've always been able to act on what we believe and to speak the truth about what we believe with freedom and recognize, not pretend that it didn't exist, that the foundation of our nation's laws, no matter what you believe, are based on the almighty hand of God and his word. That's what we're talking about. And so listen, we don't expect the government to convert anybody. But when any government ignores the basic tenets of God's word, we get into trouble. And that can happen so subtly by first assuming that the blessings we enjoy come from being American rather than being from under God. And so we need to do more than preserve our heritage. We need to cultivate a heart that seeks after God and the laws that He gave us. Righteousness exalts a nation. Here's the second truth. It's going to be less popular. You ready? Sin brings down a nation. That's the bad news. Just like the righteous acts of a few impact the whole, the sinful acts of a few can poison the well. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. When the remnant turn to sin that are supposed to be the ones who are crying out to God, then a nation begins to erode. A few years ago, our home got struck by lightning, and in a moment the weirdest things happened. Some of our electronics worked just fine after that. But there were appliances and TVs around our house that an hour before had worked perfectly, and then after that they had no power, and they were basically just paperweights in our home to be cast aside. Because the reality is without power, we lose purpose. And that's exactly what the scripture is reminding us here. It reminds us of some warnings that we see also in the Psalms. Psalm 3310 gives this warning to nations. When we turn our backs on God, it doesn't take many generations to lose what made us great. Cornelius Vanderbilt lived in the 1800s. He had a net worth that in today's dollars would be equivalent of three billion dollars. Historian John Galbreth wrote that in two generations, his family had largely lost its fortune. How could that be? It's the danger of inherited blessings. What we don't earn, we fail to appreciate. We've inherited the wealth of great blessing from others behind us, and we're in danger of losing it all when we turn to anything other than God. In fact, this 33rd Psalm offers some specific ways a nation can try to find shortcuts to blessing while bypassing righteousness, and they keep coming back over and over throughout history. Here's the first substitute to seeking God. Some nations seek knowledge. God says in Psalm 33, he frustrates the counsel of the nations. I think we can agree we have more information available to us today than we ever have before, but it's never been so obvious that information is not the same thing as wisdom. There's a second substitute that nations choose, and that is strategy. The psalmist says he thwarts the plans of the peoples. Plans of government will not solve our problems. We want to have good people in office, but some person, some savior is not going to solve all our problems. That's not what's going to happen. It's not going to sell to allow us to move on from God. When Edward Everett Hale was the chaplain of the United States Senate, somebody asked him if he prayed for the senators, and he replied, No, I look at the senators and I pray for the nation. Certainly true today. But there's a third substitute that shows up here in the Psalms that has been tried over and over again when people turn their backs on God, and it's a stronger defense. If we learned anything in history, it's that mighty nations can still fall. In Psalm 33, 16 and 17, we read: A king is not saved by a large army, a warrior will not be rescued by great strength. The horse is a false hope for safety. It provides no escape by its great power, because it cannot replace a heart after God or a people who fear him. The Great Wall of China was constructed by the nation to keep out its northern invaders, and it was seen to be so long and so high and so wide that there was no reason to be concerned about invasion on that part of the continent. But in the first hundred years after the construction of the Great Wall of China, China was invaded three times. Not one time did they have to tear through the wall or go over the wall. They simply had to bribe the gatekeepers and march right in. And the same is true in history as it is today. So what's the alternative? The only hope for America is God's Almighty Hand. The greatest threat to America is not Iran. It's not North Korea. It's a people who think they no longer need God. So we have to circle back to where we started to get to the final truth. First truth, righteousness exalts a nation. The second truth, sin brings down a nation. Here's the good news repentance restores a nation. If sin brings a nation down, we have to return to righteousness. Our nation's history is full of seasons where people departed from God, got too big for their britches, fell on their faces, and turned back to God, and revival took place, and God restored our land. It's happened before, it can happen again. The way to restoration for a nation and for a people is prayer and repentance. When a nation rejects God, it's throwing out the sustenance that makes that place worth residing. And this passage is like a law of physics, really, isn't it? Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. That law can be demonstrated, but it cannot be broken. It's true for an individual as it is for a country. Blessed is the nation, the state, the city, the church, the family, the individual whose God is the Lord. Abraham Lincoln was sitting in the Oval Office of the White House during one of the darkest days of the Civil War, and the Secretary of War wanted to encourage him, and so he said, I do not believe there's anything to worry about because God is on our side. And it said that Lincoln replied to him, Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side. My concern is to be on God's side. And if America is to be great, the source of her greatness will rest in only one place. And if America has lost her greatness, it will be restored in only one way. 2 Chronicles 7, 14 paves the way for any nation. That promise was originally spoken to Israel, not America, but it does reveal something timeless about God's heart as it comes to nations. He responds when his people humble themselves and pray. Here are verses 13 and 14 of 2 Chronicles chapter 7. If I shut the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on my people, and my people who bear my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. See, God said, if my people, God didn't say, if those people, if you people, he said, if my people, he's looking to the remnant, and he's saying, God's calling us to repentance. There's never been a nation in history in which all of its inhabitants were righteous or sought the Lord, but God measures nations on the faith of his people. The solution to this nation's problems is not for the worst among us to clean up their acts, it's for the faithful among us to cry out to Jesus. Later today, in baseball stadiums all across the United States, men and women will stand up for the seventh inning stretch. And just before they sing the old standby, take me out to the ball game. And if they really love America, they're gonna sing deep in the heart of Texas after that. But before both of those, what are they going to sing? They're going to sing God Bless America. It happens in every stadium every Sunday in Major League Baseball. Even with all the secularization of our country, it turns out a lot of people inherently know that we desperately need God's help if we're going to survive. But I wonder whether the tens of thousands who gather in those stadiums or the millions who are watching on TV even recognize anymore that they're really not singing a song about America. They're singing a prayer for America. God bless America. Land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans, white with foam. God bless America. My home, sweet home. I didn't come today to be a prophet of doom. But I want us to understand the gravity of this message, of this text today. That unless God intervenes, there is no promise for a future of any nation. We don't have any guarantees that our ancestors will gather and celebrate 500 years as a nation. But if he doesn't, there's no guarantee in my Bible that we're somehow immune to all the principles that have impacted every other nation on earth and every other time in history. And the condition is if my people, if God's people, will humble themselves and pray and seek his face, he'll turn and he'll change and he'll revive and he'll restore. If we'll turn our hearts, he'll bring the blessings. So what are we supposed to do with a message like this? Well, first of all, maybe somebody came today and you know that you don't know Jesus. Listen, there is not even a close substitute for the freedom that you enjoy in Jesus Christ. You cannot attain it through citizenship in any nation here on earth. It doesn't work. It comes only because Jesus has paid the price for our sin and he can set us free from that sin when we call on him, believe in him, and walk with him. And that's available to you today. But, Christians, what's our response today? Well, I pray that the Lord would call us to prayer that the same 250 consecutive hours we've had for the last few days would just carry forward in momentum that we might be a church that leads out in crying out to God on behalf of our land. I believe also that we understand the source of our freedom, that we will walk in freedom and speak in freedom and act in freedom and enjoy the freedoms that we take for granted every day to share the love of Christ with those around us and around the world. We can do that. It also means that we look at our own homes, not just what we see on the news, but our own homes and say, Lord, as you give me the grace to do it, like Joshua, as for me in my house, we'll serve the Lord. That's where it begins, right? When your household is transformed and your community is transformed, and your estate is transformed, and a nation is transformed and shares the love of Jesus with the world, that's the only hope. And that's the call. So we're gonna end a little bit differently today. I'm gonna pray for us, and then we're gonna move into a season of prayer before we close and seek the face of God. I think that's the most appropriate thing that we could do, right? Is pray for our land together. So let's go to the Lord. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this call you've given us, Lord. Recognize our roles and our household's roles in perpetuating the freedom that we enjoy. We need you, Lord. I pray that if there's one in our midst today who's never trusted you as Savior and Lord, I pray that today, God, would be the day of true freedom that they find. And Lord, because we can walk in that freedom, Lord, we have an opportunity to experience the freedom that we enjoy in our nation in a completely different way. And so I pray that we wouldn't take those freedoms for granted and we would steward them well. We ask these things in Christ's name. Hey, Pastor Ryan Rush here, and I just want to thank you for being with us at Kingsland Online today. What an honor. But I'll tell you what would be even better. We'd love to see you get connected with the physical church in the days ahead if you haven't already. And that means maybe if you're local in the West Houston area, we'd love to see you at Kingsland. Otherwise, regardless, we'd love to help you facilitate uh jumping into a local church near you, and we can do that together. You can go to Kingsland.org slash online connect. Kingsland.org slash online connect to find out the next steps on your journey. Listen, thanks again for being with us today at Kingsland Online.