Jun 30 2002
One Nation Under God
Moody First United Methodist Church
Moody-Leon United Methodist Church
Rev. Eddie Smart
Romans 6:12-23
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dr. Michael Nedow, an emergency room physician with a law degree and an atheist, started it all. He filed suit, claiming that the Pledge of Alliance to the American flag was unconstitutional. The suit made it to the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week, and they ruled that the pledge could not be recited in schools because it violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against a state endorsement of religion. Before the week was over, the three judge panel decided that all eleven members of the court should rule on the case.
The large majority of the nation was outraged. The President called it “ridiculous.” How dare they invalidate a pledge that has been in place since June of 1954! How dare they trample on such “Holy ground!”
I was right there with the rest of the nation, BUT then I thought about it. Maybe Michael Nedow was not so far off base. Maybe the decision of the Circuit Court was not as ridiculous as the President thought. Maybe, just maybe, they were closer to right than we are willing to give them credit. The question I pose is simply. Are we one nation under God?
Paul wrote to the church in Roman:
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Are we one nation under God? After the court ruling this week, the answering machine on Michael Nedow’s phone recorded messages such as: “I know where you live and I’m coming over there and beat the *#?@ out of you.” ……Now that will surely convince an atheist to believe in the God who is love. That certainly witnesses to grace, the unmerited love of God.
How many of us felt that same rage? How many of us felt threatened by the actions of an atheist? I confess. I did. BUT you know Michael Nedow’s feeling may have been more authentic than mine.
Why should I feel threatened by an atheist? He believes in nothing divine. This man that knows more about the human body than the average person can’t see God in the middle of that, and I feel threatened.
We believe in a God who created us in his own image. We believe in a God who is omnipresent and omniscient-a God who is present with us and at the same time with our friends on the other side of the globe-a God who is all knowing and all powerful. We say we believe in such a God, and yet we are threatened by an atheist. Maybe the atheist is right. Maybe we aren’t one nation under God.
Just look around you. Bill Clinton was a poster boy for adultery and yet I am convinced if the constitution allowed it, he would have been re-elected for a third term. Why do I think that? Because I don’t believe this is ONE nation UNDER God. The scriptures use the word adultery 39 times, and not once in a positive way. In Proverbs 6:32, we find these words: “But he who commits adultery has no sense; he who does it destroys himself.” Have you heard the ungodly amount of money that ungodly President makes every time he makes a speech today? Why does he make that kind of money? I believe it is because this is not ONE nation UNDER God. Too many Americans (too many church members) do not take Paul seriously when he says, “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.”
Please, don’t forget. Bill Clinton is just the poster boy. It concerns me that divorce has degenerated to “disposable marriage” in this world in which we live. Don’t get me wrong. There are times that divorce is necessary. But too many young people approach marriage not with the idea “that the two will become one,” but rather with the idea of “we’ll give it a try and if it doesn’t work we’ll get a divorce. After all breaking one back into two is not painful.” Too many young people see living together outside of marriage as the accepted norm. I guess it is. It’s just not the Biblical norm. One nation under God sees marriage as a lifetime commitment instituted by God. One nation under God sees marriage vows as vows not only given to one another but to Almighty God.
In many ways the Internet is a mirror of this world’s society. It is a mirror of American society. We install virus protection programs in our computers to protect us from those who somehow get their thrills by destroying as many computers as possible and using you to do it. We install filtering programs to protect us from pornographers and other evil people. The police go online posing as young children to protect innocent young people from those who would violently rob them of that innocence. The founder of Microsoft says the next major technological improvements in computer software will be in the area of security because there are people out there who want to use their computers to steal our identity as well as our money. Oh, yes. This is definitely ONE nation UNDER God.
Our young people going to church camp this summer may be presented with some of the following moral questions.
1. Overeating is as wrong as smoking or drinking.
2. To goof off on your job is as wrong as if you stole money from your boss.
3. Because you are late going to church it is not wrong to speed.
4. Cheating on a test in school is justified under some circumstances.
5. There are degrees of sin with God, and God won’t care about the little ones.
ONE nation UNDER God teaches its young people morals that are based on our belief in that God. Too many young people today receive their moral education from television, movies, immoral celebrities, and the leaders of Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom.
I worry about the example we set for our young people. Last night before America went to bed, a choice was made along with a reason for the choice. What time do we set the alarm? The decision was easy. For the vast majority of Americans it was really no decisions. While 85 percent of Americans were upset over the phrase “Under God,” 75 percent of them elected not to worship God this Sunday morning. One nation under God?
I could have filled this sermon with examples of the good in our nation, but that is not what today’s message is about. The question is whether we are ONE nation UNDER God.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome:
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace…For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:14,23
Jesus Christ died on a cross that our sins might be forgiven. The grace of God in Jesus Christ is ours. Are we willing to accept it? One nation under God? I would say, “One nation under God’s grace.” We are one nation under God. The problem is we just don’t always act like it. The question is what are we going to do about it?