PENTECOST 6, C – July 4, 2010

SCRIPTURES – Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 6:1-18; Luke 10:1-20; Psalm 33 

 

With these words, spoken through His prophet Isaiah over 700 years before Jesus was born, God promised peace – shalom, wholeness of body and soul, change of hearts and lives – to His people. Jesus, the promised Messiah and Savior, brought this peace. His peace, His salvation is not a little thing, bringing small changes to only a few people. “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,” God says. His peace is a mighty river that has changed countless lives and even shaped nations, including our own. Jesus and His Gospel have changed the world!

 

Paul L. Maier, world-renowned scholar and Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University, wrote this in his forward to the book, How Christianity Changed the World:

     “Not only countless individual lives but even civilization itself was transformed by Jesus Christ. In the ancient world, His teachings elevated brutish standards of morality, halted infanticide, enhanced human life, emancipated women, abolished slavery, inspired charities and relief organizations, created hospitals, established orphanages, and founded schools.

     In medieval times, Christianity almost single-handedly kept classical culture alive through recopying manuscripts, building libraries, moderating warfare through truce days, and providing dispute arbitration. It was Christians who invented colleges and universities, dignified labor as a divine vocation, and extended the light of civilization to barbarians on the frontiers.

     In the modern era, Christian teaching, properly expressed, advanced science, instilled concepts of political and social and economic freedom, fostered justice, and provided the greatest single source of inspiration for the magnificent achievements in art, architecture, music, and literature that we treasure to the present day.”

 

How has Jesus done all this? By receiving sinners and forgiving their sins, thereby changing ordinary, everyday people like you and me. Do you realize how great a thing is God’s forgiveness in Christ? It’s not like debugging a computer and getting the viruses out so that it runs better. By His forgiveness Christ builds an entirely new and far better system! “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come!” says 2 Cor. 5:17. We see this in the 72 Jesus sends out to go ahead of Him to the nearby towns. They don’t just say that Jesus is coming; they change lives, for Jesus gives them the authority to heal the sick and bring His peace. Satan is cast out and falls before them, for, Jesus tells them, “The one who hears you hears Me.” Jesus was present and working in them and their work! This is not only true of those 72. Paul says to the Galatian Christians, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any trans-gression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” You, the average Christian, are spiritual. In your Baptism God the Holy Spirit was given to you to dwell within you, and with the Bible you have the Spirit-inspired words of God that are the powerful voice of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is present and working through you as you live and speak His mighty Gospel that changes lives!

 

And by changing lives, Christ changes the world. This day we celebrate the founding of our great nation. Did you to know that Christ’s mighty Gospel was an important part of establishing and shaping our nation? Just consider:

‡       The Declaration of Independence.

      “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

      We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God; self-evident truths given by our Creator; Jefferson drew these phrases and ideas from the political philosopher John Locke and the legal scholar Sir William Blackstone, who drew them from the Bible.

‡       John Adams – who helped write and then signed the Declaration of Independence; whose ideas formed the backbone of the U.S. Constitution; who served as the 2^nd President of the U.S. – wrote in his 1787 book, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America: "Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone… are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.  The experiment is made and has completely succeeded; it can no longer be called in question whether authority in magistrates and obedience of citizens can be grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion."

‡       Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a well known and influential political philosopher. A 1989 article in Smithsonian magazine declared that “we began to exist as a nation upon the adoption of a Constitution drawn up by men who knew Montesquieu's political views practically by heart and regarded him as an oracle.” In his book The Spirit of Laws he proposed three branches of government, and it was the main influence of Madison and the Founding Fathers in writing the Constitution. In The Spirit of Laws he wrote: “It is not enough for religion to establish a doctrine, it must also direct its influence. This the Christian religion performs in the most admirable manner, especially with respect to the doctrines of which we have been speaking. It makes us hope for a state which is the object of our belief; not for a state which we have already experienced or known… We shall see that we owe to Christianity, in government, a certain political law.”

‡       And, as far as shaping our nation, consider Abraham Lincoln. In his 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas in Peoria, IL, he opposed slavery by saying, “Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run  down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is ‘a sacred right of self-government.’ These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other.” Lincoln was quoting Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount to call for opposition to slavery.

 

Why am I pointing out all these things? To say that we are a Christian nation, and that the United States of America should be governed by the Bible? Not at all. Well did our Lord Jesus say, “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Subjecting spirits and ruling people by governmental decree will not change hearts, will not bring people to heaven. A nation ruled by Biblical morality and Christian principles would bring many earthly blessings; but, it would not bring people to heaven. Jesus came to save souls eternally, not rule nations. But, when people are forgiven and saved eternally, their earthly lives are also changed, and this brings change also to our world. I am simply pointing out that Christ and His Gospel have brought about great changes, not only in the lives of individuals, but through them in the world itself, and especially in and through our own great nation.

 

How fitting it is, then, that we begin this Independence Day of our country in the house of God. Let us rejoice in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the forgiveness of sins we receive in His name! Then, let us go forth rejoicing in His forgiveness, showing by our joyful words and changed lives the change He has worked for all people by His life, death, and resurrection for all. To the glory of God, our eternal Father in Christ. Amen.