"Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." ~ Isaiah 58:12
In the hot summer of 1776, a group of 56 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to discuss their differences with the British Crown and Parliament. The most important question to be decided was: Who was the source of their rights of life, liberty, and property? Was the source God or government? England thought the colonies existed for the good of the Mother country. Thus, they thought the rights of the colonists were “government granted”. The people in America thought they existed for the “glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith”, as the Pilgrims had stated. Thus, Americans believed that their rights were “God given”. What had to be decided was: Is Parliament and the English King the highest authority, or is there a higher law in place? If there was a higher law, did the colonists have to submit to laws that disagreed with that higher law?
The Americans did believe there was a higher law, which was the Law of God written in the Bible. The ministers of this time period in America were remarkably agreed on this position. They quoted over and over the passage in Romans 13:1-2 that states:
Who were the thinkers behind the American Revolution which would give birth to the greatest Republic the world had ever seen? Actually, men like Washington, Jefferson, or even Samuel Adams, were not the “root” thinkers of that Revolution. You may be surprised, but the truth is: It was the Pastors who inspired the thinking that brought about the American Revolution. They taught it in the churches! The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts stated in 1774:
“…we cannot but acknowledge the goodness of Heaven in constantly supplying us with preachers of the Gospel whose concern has been the temporal and spiritual happiness of this people…and do therefore recommend…that they assist us in avoiding that dreadful slavery with which we are now threatened…”
(Christian History of the American Revolution, V. Hall (F.A.C.E. pub.), p.402)
The inspiration for the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War, was none other than Jonas Clark, Pastor of the Church in Lexington for twenty years before the Revolution. It was he who authored almost every state paper written to record the town’s position on liberty. Without him, there may have been no “shot heard round the world!”
When I was ten years old, three ladies in the community where I grew up in Pike County, Kentucky came faithfully to our school each week to teach us the Bible. They taught us Who God was, who we were, and what His plan was for our lives. One of the things they taught us was to memorize the Ten Commandments. Then they told us God wanted us to obey those Commandments. So I decided I would obey the Ten Commandments. I committed myself to “Have no other gods” before God, my Creator. I committed to not steal or lie or desire what belonged to somebody else. I committed to always obey my parents. Was I in for an awakening! I found out that, try as I might, sooner or later, I would break one of those Ten Commands. And you see, our Bible teachers knew that’s exactly what would happen: Because that’s the very reason God gave those Commands.
Perhaps you’re thinking: “Don, I don’t understand. Why would God give us a command that we couldn’t keep?” He does so because He’s wiser than we are. You see, He knows that when we refused to let His life indwell us in the Garden of Eden, we received instead “darkness” to indwell us. That is: We lost our understanding of why we were alive. From then on, satan planted different ideas in our mind about Who God was and why we were alive. As we believed his lies, we plunged into darkness about the reason for our existence. Selfishness replaced purpose. This would cause all of the hurt we, as mankind, would ever experience. But we wouldn’t be able to identify what was causing the hurt because we were deceived: In other words our understanding was darkened. This is exactly what Jeremiah 17:9 says:
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; [but] who can know it?”
Thus, God gave the Ten Commandments through Moses. He wants us to try to keep those Commands so that we will find out there’s something bad wrong inside us—something that needs to be changed. That something is the selfishness that darkens our mind and causes us to consistently see everything through a “lens” of selfishness. When we try to obey the Ten Commandments we discover that, even though we’re made in the image of God, and thus, should be able to obey His commands—we can’t. This, in turn, causes us to look for a Deliverer: Someone who can deliver us from our inbred selfishness and Who can enable us to live as God created us to originally live. This is why the New Testament teaches that:
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