Can God Bless America?
Selected Scriptures
Obviously over the last number of weeks we have on Sunday nights been addressing issues that are on our minds and hearts at this time in our nation when we had been subjected to terrorists' attacks. I'm trying to keep up with all of the nuances, all of the twists and turns in the road as we go and try to shed some biblical light on the issues at hand.
One of the new features in our country in recent weeks is this obsession with "God Bless America." In itself certainly a nice tune and a well-crafted song that was sung on many occasions for many years in our country, but now has become our sort of new national anthem, if not, our national prayer. And apparently from all that I can tell, as I see the emotion that is attached with the singing of the song, there is not just symbolism here. There is not just shallow sentimentality. I get the feeling that Americans really want God's blessing, and by that they mean protection. Blessing means, "God, don't let me die." It means, "Don't let my children die...don't let my spouse die." It means, "God, don't let the stock market keep going the way it's going." "God, stop the decline in unemployment." "God, maintain our freedoms, don't put us in a position so we have to make all kinds of laws against terrorism that wind up impinging upon our cherished liberties."
I get the feeling that blessing then is associated with protection, it's associated with safety, it's associated with freedom and it's associated with prosperity. And it is such a loud cry currently that even the usually vocal atheists and militant agnostics have somehow sunk into the shadows, aware that if they were vocal they could actually invite a self-defeating national backlash. Even the bold and counter-productive destructive group known as the ACLU is making very meager and unsuccessful efforts to take down "God Bless America" signs in schools. And they, rather than the people who put them up, are being vilified by the populous.
Americans are to one degree or another in a state of fear. They're afraid. And they're crying out to heaven for an invisible means of support against an invisible enemy by an invisible God. And they hope that God is not only omnipresent, not only omniscient, not only omnipotent, but even more importantly that He's interested. Cry "God Bless America" seems to be getting louder and louder every day and commanding more and more emotion.
And as I was listening to this, it struck me as an interesting issue. The prayer is simple, "God, bless America. Keep us protected. Keep us long-term safe. Keep us free. Keep us prosperous." And I began to think about the fact that if God were to bless America as everybody seems to want Him to do, it might look very different than we would expect.
Will God bless America? Can God bless America? Should God bless America? Are we blessable? There's a new word for your dictionary. And if God did bless America, what would He be saying about His holiness? If God did bless America, what would He be saying about our morality? About our spiritual condition? Could God bless America and protect His reputation as holy God?
Now, of course, God can always do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. But when it comes to blessing, He has clearly and repeatedly set down conditions. I've listened carefully to that song, "God Bless America," there is no verse in there that identifies the conditions. Nor do Americans seem to be opening their Bibles to try to find out what the conditions are. I don't hear anybody say, "God, what do we need to do to be blessed?" So I'm going to answer the question nobody's asking.
In fact, I think this is a serious intrusion. I don't think they want to know the conditions. It's sort of like don't ask, just bless. We'll ask, don't ask anything of us. We just want blessing. Don't impose any conditions. Don't ask for anything from us. Give us protection. Give us safety. Give us freedom. Give us prosperity. But don't meddle with our morality. I don't hear any national cries of repentance, do you? I don't hear any national affirmations of the law of God, the Word of God. I don't hear any cries for virtue and forgiveness. I don't even hear preachers preaching like that.
We're in, frankly, no position at all to be blessed. It seems to me that this prayer is futile. We're actually in a better place to be unblessed...cursed, if you can handle that word, because blessing has always had its conditions...always. And the conditions are not hard to find, you just need to go to Scripture. So let's do that.
A good starting point is the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter 8, just to the left of Esther, Job and Psalms. At this particular point in the history of Israel they were coming to the end of a long curse. They had experienced divine judgment. That judgment had come to an end. They were ready to be blessed. They went back to the land of Israel from their captivity in Babylon where they had been for a minimum of seventy years. They went back to the land and they wanted God's blessing. Their land was a rubble. Their city was torn down. They engaged in rebuilding it, and rebuilding its wall, as you know, under Nehemiah. They needed to rebuild the temple to reconstitute their worship. They desperately wanted the blessing of God and began to move in the right direction in chapter 8. They all gathered as one man at the square which was in front of the Water Gate...a particular gate in the city. And they asked Ezra, the scribe, here's the key phrase, "To bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel."
If there was going to be blessing after cursing, if there was going to be a future of blessing, they had to go back to the book. Bring the book. "And Ezra the priest brought the law, the Torah. He brought it before the assembly of all the men and women, all who listen with understanding, the first day of the seventh month and he read from it before the scroll which was in front of the Water Gate from early morning till midday in the presence of men and women, those who could understand and all the people were attentive to the book of the law."
He read for hours and hours and hours, just read the books of Moses. He was standing, in verse 4, at a wooden podium, just like this one, they had made for that purpose. The first pulpit in the Bible. "And Ezra, in verse 5, opened the book in the sight of all the people, he was standing above them all and he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God and all the people answered, Amen, Amen while lifting up their hands. Then they bowed low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground." Verse 8, "And they read from the book from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they could understand the reading." This is the beginning of expository preaching. They read it and they explained it.
If there's ever going to be blessing, the first thing that has to happen is you have to go get the book. Bring the book. In verse 18, "He read from the book of the law daily, from the first day to the last day. They celebrated the feast seven days. On the eighth day there was a solemn assembly according to the ordinance." Day after day after day after day they read the Word while the people stood and listened.
And then in chapter 9 verse 1 it says, "On the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel," this is indicative of the collective people of Israel gathering together, "assembled with fasting, in sack cloth and dirt upon them." That is a posture and an attire of penitence and humiliation. Verse 2, "The descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers." Now we're getting something done here.
You bring the book. The book reiterates the law of God in no uncertain terms. The people hear the law of God, they now are very much aware of why they have been cursed. They recognize their sin, the very sins for which they endured this prolonged captivity. They posture themselves as penitents. They confess their sins and the sins and iniquities of their fathers.
"And while they stood in their place they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of a day and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped their God."
This sets up the pattern for blessing. In verse 5, "Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever. O may Thy glorious name be blessed and exalted above all blessing and praise. Thou alone art the Lord, Thou hast made the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is in them." And they go on to recite the fact that God is the great sovereign creator. And then in the rest of chapter 9 you can see is a reiteration of God's powerful, sovereign work in Israel. It talks about Egypt and the Red Sea and how they were led by a pillar of fire by night and on and on it goes all the way down through that chapter.
Go down to verse 29 and they're reminded again that they were admonished to turn them back to Thy law. Yet they acted arrogantly, didn't listen to Thy commandments, but sinned against Thy ordinances by which if a man observes them he shall live. But they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not listen. However, and this is characteristic of God who is patient and gracious, "Thou didst bear with them for many years and admonished them with Thy Spirit through Thy prophets, yet they would not give ear. Therefore Thou didst give them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in Thy great compassion Thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them for Thou art a gracious and compassionate God." And they're just going through reciting the history of the people who had the law of God, had the Word of God, didn't obey the Word of God and were therefore cursed.
"Now therefore...verse 32...our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who dost keep covenant and lovingkindness. Do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before Thee, which has come upon us, our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and on all Thy people from the days of the kings of Assyria to this day. However...and I love this...Thou art just in all that has come upon us; for Thou hast dealt faithfully, but we have acted wickedly."
Here you have a people putting themselves by the prompting of God into a position to be blessed. Bring the book. Read the law of God. Confess that you have disobeyed it. And God will bless you.
Israel knew there was no mystery to the standards for blessing. Israel knew that even though they were a covenant people that possessed the covenant that was eternal, they had been given everlasting promises that God will fulfill eternally, they knew that God is a faithful God but they also knew that God was just to punish them because He is a holy God. Blessing begins when you admit your sin and you admit your violation of the law of God. Israel had to start there and they were a covenant people with everlasting promises. We're not. America is not a covenant nation. We are not an elect nation. We're just another nation like many nations that have come and gone through human history. We bear no eternal covenant with God as a nation. America is not a Christian nation, as such. We have no covenant to protect us. We have no eternal promises nationally that God must somehow keep.
And so, if Israel who has those covenants and those promises cannot be blessed unless they obey the law of God and repent for their disobedience, why would we assume that the standard for us would be any different?
And, in fact, listen to a few other scriptures from the Old Testament so that there's no mistake in your mind. Second Kings 17, this again reiterates in terms that cannot be mistaken the standard for blessing, 2 Kings 17, let's go down...well, we'll start at verse 14, we'll let's go back to verse 13. He's talking about idolatry in the prior verses. In verse 13, "Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer saying, 'Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you through My servants, the prophets. However, they did not listen but stiffened their neck like their fathers who did not believe in the Lord their God.'"
This is the problem, unbelief and disobedience. Verse 15, "They rejected His statutes, His covenants which He made with their fathers, His warnings which He warned them, they followed emptiness, or vanity, and became empty, went after the nations which surrounded them concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to be like them." In other words, they just sucked in all the idolatries of all their surrounding nations.
Verse 16, "They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God, they made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, which is a form of an idol, worshiped all the host of heaven, served Baal. They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire, literally incinerating their children in sacrifices to the idols. They practiced divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him. So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah." And that's talking about the captivity of the northern kingdom, the kingdom in the north called Israel, the kingdom in the south called Judah...the northern kingdom taken captive by Assyria.
Verse 19, "But also Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced." In other words, Judah, the more resistant to idolatry because in Judah was Jerusalem, in Jerusalem was the temple, and so because of that there was a stronger influence to stay true to the Scripture in Judah. But eventually Judah caved in. The northern kingdom taken captivity in 722, the southern kingdom taken into captivity in 586. So a hundred and some years later Judah caves in, same thing, didn't keep the commandments of the Lord their God, began to imbibe the same things which Israel, the northern kingdom, had introduced. You remember, the kingdom was divided after Solomon. "The Lord...verse 20...rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, gave them into the hand of plunderers until He had cast them out of His sight."
The bottom line is very simple, even if you are a covenant nation, even if you are the recipients of the eternal, everlasting promises of God, you still must meet the conditions of blessing or you will be cursed. If that is true for a covenant people, it is true for a covenant-less people, which we are.
Look at 2 Chronicles, and again this is very clear and unmistakable instruction from Scripture. Second Chronicles chapter 7, for the moment look at verse 19. The Lord has reiterated the promises of the Davidic covenant. The people are aware of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant, these eternal promises, "But...verse 19...if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you and shall go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot you from My land which I have given you and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight." That's the temple. "I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. As for this house which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, 'Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?' And they will say, even the strangers will know, 'Because they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them from the land of Egypt and they adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore He has brought all this adversity on them.'" And again I reiterate the obvious point, when Israel turned away from God, when they turned away from the Word of God, when they forsook His statutes, forsook His commandments, began to establish other idols, they forfeited God's blessing and they ended up with curses.
Now this had been instructed to them back in the Torah, back in the Pentateuch, back in the books of Moses, Deuteronomy 28, listen to two verses, verse 58 and 63. "If you're not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the Lord your God, it shall come about that as the Lord...listen to this...delighted to bless you and multiply you so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you." If you meet the conditions, God will be delighted to bless you. If you don't, He will be equally delighted to curse you.
What do you mean, is He delighted in that? He's delighted in the sense that He finds satisfaction enduring what is consistent with His holiness. It's a simple principle. You ascribe your life to the truth of God, to the Word of God and where you fall short, you repent, you seek His forgiveness, you then put yourself in a place of blessing. Apart from a national penitence, a national brokenness, a national contrition for having turned their backs on God, on His Word, lived in sin, disdained to worship the true and living God, there is no basis upon which God would bless a people.
Psalm 81:11 and 12, "But My people did not listen to My voice and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart to walk on their own devices." If you disobey God, you'll never be blessed. That's true individually, and therefore it's true collectively.
You say, "Yeah, but that's the...that's the Old Testament standard." No, that's the universal standard. God said, "I am the Lord, I change not." It is pointless really, no matter how well intentioned to keep on saying "God bless America, God bless America, when it is crystal-clear that America is not interested in meeting the conditions of that blessing. God bring America back to the truth of Scripture. God bring America to true penitence. Pray that.
When I was speaking to this group of Jewish people on Sunday night, I said two things have to happen for God to bless America. One, we have to return to God and two, we have to return to guilt. I put them on a God trip and a guilt trip.
What am I saying by that? I'm saying we have to return to a true understanding of God and a true understanding of ourselves. We have to look up to God and His truth, we have to look in to our fallenness and our wretchedness and our sinfulness. While we're seeing the truth of God's morality, we have to see the truth of our immorality.
We have a long way to go to return to the true and living God. Wouldn't you say? You want blessing? God repeatedly said in Leviticus, "Be holy for I am holy...be holy for I am holy...be holy for I am holy." Jesus repeated it in the Sermon on the Mount. Peter repeats it in his epistle. You want blessing? Then you have to go back to the holy standard.
Joshua, turn to Joshua 1...1:8, this is such a great statement. It should be marked out in your Bible. Joshua chapter 1, Moses is dead and the people of Israel are ready to cross the Jordan and come into the land God had promised them. Verse 3, "God says every place on which the sole of your foot treads I'm going to give to you, just as I promised Moses from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory." The Mediterranean, all the way back to the middle of the Mesopotamian Valley, the Tigris/Euphrates valley, north to Lebanon all the way south down to Egypt, that's exactly what God had pledged to Abraham, reiterated that pledge to Moses, is recorded in the books of the law. And now God reminds them as they go into the land of that promise, I'm going to give it to you.
I'm not only going to give it to you, "But nobody...verse 5...is going to be able to stand before you all the days of your life, just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you, I will not fail or forsake you. Nobody is going to be able to overthrow My ultimate purpose for you." Verse 6, "Be strong and courageous," this is speaking directly to Joshua, nobody is going to be able to withstand Joshua who was a godly leader, God's going to be with him. "Be strong, courageous, you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them." Verse 7, "Only be strong and very courageous," and here it comes, "be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right, or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. If you turn from the law of God, I guarantee you will not have success. You will not have prosperity. You will not enjoy safety, protection or well-being."
What's the key? Verse 8, here's the key. "This book of the law, the Word of God, shall not depart from your mouth. You shall meditate on it day and night. Learn it, absorb it, make it your own so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it for then you will make your way prosperous, then you will have success."
The principles haven't changed. America wants success, if American wants prosperity, if America wants well-being, safety, protection, all of these things that are bound up in this particular fear, then the standard is established, go back to the law of God and meet the God of the law.
I mean, it's obvious, we have God in our salute, we have God on our coins, we have God in our songs, we just don't have Him in our minds or our hearts. This is a serious situation because we have turned so seriously against God that we are far, far away from a return. We are in a kind of desperation that I think is best defined by Romans 1.
Turn to Romans 1. This was pretty shocking to the pupil I was speaking to on Sunday night in this meeting because they were not familiar with Romans 1. Many of them not familiar, because they were Jewish, with the New Testament at all. Those who were Christians not familiar with the real intent of Romans 1. But here's what you have in Romans 1, verse 18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men...here's the key phrase...who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." You want to put yourself as an entity, as a corporate group of people, you want to put yourself in the worst possible condition, suppress the truth...suppress the truth. Verse 19 says