Independence Day always gives us so much to think about. Given the entire scope of history past, present, and future as foretold in the Bible, America has served, as all things do, to demonstrate the truth of the Word of God. Our nation's founders very deliberately acknowledged God, and left no doubt that they relied on His sustenance. As a young nation, America feared the Lord and as a result, she prospered and flourished, astounding the rest of the world. She became a beacon of freedom and hope for people all over the world who were free at heart. Her military became the hope of rescue for those under oppression, and a source of dread for the oppressor. And as she has wavered and persisted in her rejection of the Lord, her light to the rest of the world grows dim. Only a few years after the American Revolution, a similar conflict arose in France. Both sets of revolutionaries fought against governments that had grown oppressive, unresponsive, and intolerable. However, where the American revolutionaries honored the Lord, the French revolutionaries revolted against Him, doing what they could to expel God from their shores. America worshipped God and created a limited government that derives its power from the consent of the governed, and whose job was to preserve the rights of its people, rights granted by God. The French, however, worshipped a new government, an all-powerful government for which each citizen was expected to sacrifice himself and his rights, rights granted by that government. America got George Washington, a humble, and morally-upstanding man who feared the Lord, and one of history's only figures to refuse more power, and France got Napoleon Bonaparte, an arrogant and selfish man who crowned himself emperor. America enjoyed liberty, and France endured the Reign of Terror.
For a long time Americans enjoyed the fruits of citizenship in a nation that honored the Lord. To a lesser extent, those outside our borders even enjoyed the fruits of living in a world where a nation that feared the Lord was the dominant power: her protection, her advancements in every field imaginable, the overflow of her prosperity. However, today many Americans identify more closely with the ideals of the French Revolution than the American, put simply: to worship government rather than God.
Jesus commanded us to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17). As disciples of Jesus', we are taught to submit to our authorities (Romans 13:1-6). And what Americans have historically understood, and spelled out in our Delaration of Independence, is that a government that violates God's law, thereby seeking to supplant Him, is in the wrong. So America's founding fathers created a system of government and created a Constitution with a Bill of Rights that, instead of dictating what it's people could and could not do, dictated to the government what it could and could not do. As we put another Independence Day in the books, remember what is God's and not Caesar's.