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America has just celebrated 220 years of freedom as a nation. There is a question in the minds of some as to how deserving we are or how long we shall continue to remain a free people.
Our founding Fathers built this nation on faith in God." It was a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It was conceived/as one nation under God. indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all.,, It involved the dreams of men and women who did not hesitate to say: "In God we trust". Ours was a noble beginning, but what can be said of the present trend? Here, I am reminded of the admonition of the apostle to the Galatian Christians when he wrote: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1). It cannot be disputed that our country has enjoyed freedoms and liberties the like of which few nations have ever known. We enjoy freedom of the press, of religion, and the ability to move about to a remarkable degree. Will we entangle ourselves in the yoke of sin to where we become enslaved?
On one occasion, God commanded His people under the Levitical system to pause and hallow a particular year. It was designated the year of Jubilee. The record is given in Leviticus 25. The tenth verse reads: "And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and you shall return every man unto his family".
The year of Jubilee was to be a year of liberation throughout the land. Freedom was to be proclaimed for the poor and the oppressed. The disinherited were to be restored to their lands. Debts were to be repaid and forgiven. Those bound in economic servitude to others were to be freed. It was a year climaxing in love, justice and mercy. It was designed to focus on the faithfulness of God. The year was not to be celebrated by means of pomp, Pageantry, and ceremonial acts, but through concrete acts that would lead to a deeper commitment of God's justice. Yet the history of this ancient peoples reveals that they continually turned to idols and gods of their own making. They trusted in their own self-sufficiency and in things. They overlooked and often ignored the weightier matters of justice, mercy and love. As a result they were confronted with the judgement of God.
Will we in America be guilty of making the same mistakes? It is my contention that we shall unless rather drastic measures are taken to reverse the present trend. David wrote: "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord" (Psalm 33:12). The masses among us have turned to trusting in false values, false gods and idols of their own making. Instead of worshipping God, our people are bowing down before the altar of materialism, progress, technology and weapons. We are relying on what is visible, tangible and synthetic.
Often we hear concern expressed with regard to the enemy from without, communism and the like. Why is it we fail to see that our greatest and most potentially destructive enemy is within ourselves? It comes through trusting in ourselves and not in the Lord. Our greatest danger is one of moral and spiritual decay from within.
Do you recall Babylon the great and how her leaders boasted? On one occasion Sennacherib, King of Assyria had taken his army and overrun all the nations round about down to the land of Judah. He assembled his army before the city of Jerusalem and insisted that it's people surrender. Hezekiah, the king in Jerusalem laid this matter before the Lord, and God answered as follows:
"Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake" (Isaiah 37:33-35). The next verse tells us that an angel of the Lord came into the Assyrian camp that night and smote 185,000, all of whom were dead corpses the following morning. Sennacherib got up and hastily beat a retreat homeward toward Ninevah. There was no battle. The Lord had seen to that. When we trust in the Lord we have nothing to fear.
Today, our people are trusting in the wrong things and consulting the wrong sources. Instead of looking to the Lord, we are consulting the gurus, mysticism, astrology and reading our horoscope. If we hope to maintain our freedom, we must get back to trust in God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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