What Makes a Nation Great?

Alfred Packer was a mountain man. He lived back in the 1850’s in that part of Nebraska Territory which is now the state of Colorado. It so happened that Packer led a party of five hunters into the Rocky Mountains in the fall of one year to hunt elk. Unfortunately, as often happens in the Rockies, an early blizzard moved in. It lasted for several days and the hunters were trapped. After the storm had passed, search parties ventured into the mountains to look for the men but to no avail. Packer and his party were assumed to have perished in the icy wilderness.

Imagine everyone’s astonishment when, the following spring, Alfred Packer walked into the city of Denver—alone. How had he survived a whole winter in the Rocky Mountains?

A grizzled old Indian chief named Ouray happened to be nearby. He cast a skeptical eye on Alfred Packer and growled “Him too fat.” Their suspicions aroused, the governing authorities undertook an investigation and eventually found the remains of the five hunters. Alfred Packer had eaten them!

Packer was arrested and tried for cannibalism. The presiding judge at the trial was a Democrat, which was unusual for that time in Nebraska Territory. In fact, at one point in the proceedings, the judge declared angrily “Packer, there were only 6 Democrats in Nebraska Territory, and you done et five of them!”

Well, to make a long story short, Packer was convicted and hung—the only man in the history of the United States who was ever executed for the crime of cannibalism.

The postscript on this story is that at the University of Colorado, the students have named the school cafeteria the Alfred Packer Memorial Dining Room.

I tell you this story to illustrate that, throughout the history of our nation, government has performed a needed function. All of us, at one time or another, especially around April 15th, complain about our government. Often times it appears to be intrusive, inefficient, and wasteful. Someone said “We can be thankful that we don’t get as much government as we pay for.”

But in fact, human government has been instituted by God for our good. We read in Romans 13…

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you.

For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Now I would remind you that Paul wrote that during the Roman Empire, at a time when the government was persecuting Christians for their faith and fully one third of the population lived in slavery.

Even so, Paul said “We need government. Even if it’s a bad government, it’s better than no government—for then we would have chaos and anarchy, with everyone doing what was right in his own eyes. There would be no protection, there would be no laws, no justice, there would be no government services or public works for our benefit. Therefore we owe the authorities our obedience and allegiance.”

But as Christians, we owe even more. For a nation and its government to be truly great, the people of God must do more than just pay their taxes and give their grudging obedience. We must do three additional things:

1. We must intercede

2. We must be informed

3. We must be involved

1. America needs us to intercede—to pray.

2 CHRON. 7:14 = if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

God addresses this to “my people”—the people who bear the marks of God’s ownership. In the OT, that was the nation Israel. In the NT, it is the church of Jesus Christ.

He says “I’m talking to the people who are called by my name.” As Christians, we bear the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God says “If you humble yourselves and pray…”

Notice he doesn’t say “If you organize political action committees or protest marches or letter writing campaigns.” There may be a place for those things, but that must never be our first priority.

Our first priority is to humble ourselves and pray. And prayer can be a humbling task, because when we pray, we are admitting that our own activity, our own resources, our own ideas, our own solutions, are not enough. Prayer is admitting that God is in a far better position to influence events than we are.

Notice the character of prayer that God calls for—it is not just a rote kind of praying, not just a going through the motions of prayer. It is an intense kind of praying—a seeking of God’s face. It is when we desire to really know God, to draw closer, to go deeper in our relationship with Him.

A lot of Christians are kind of complacent. They seem to be content not to know God any better than they presently know him. Not to draw any closer to Him than they presently are. That’s not the kind of person God is looking for in this verse. He’s looking for people who will hunger and thirst for righteousness. People who desire to be pure in heart so that they might see God. People like Moses, who wanted God to show Himself to Him.

And that kind of desire shows itself in the next phrase in 2 Chronicles 7:14… “and turn from their wicked ways…” You cannot want to know God and, at the same time, continue in sin. When you turn to God, you turn away from your sin. Paul says that the Thessalonian believers “turned to God from idols”. So your fervency in prayer shows itself in your holiness of living.

Now God says, “If this is what you’ll do, and that is how you’ll pray, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive your sin and will heal your land.”

Do you think America needs healing today? Do you think America needs forgiveness today? I do. How will it happen? It will happen if the people of God intercede.

2. Be informed.

Turn to 1 Chronicles 12. In this chapter, we have a list of the men who came to help David while he was in exile in Ziklag. Remember, David had been anointed to be the next king of Israel, but Saul was on the throne. And Saul was intent on killing David, on eliminating him. So David found himself a fugitive, living outside Israel, in the land of the Philistines in a place called Ziklag. And he lived there for 16 months.

And while he was there, mighty men of war began coming to David to join his cause. 1 Chronicles 12 gives us a list of them, and it tells us a little bit about them—their outstanding characteristics and what made them so valuable to David. In fact, if you’ll look at verse 12, it says “Day after day men came to help David, until he had a great army, like the army of God.”

I want you to notice in particular one group of men who joined David’s army. They are mentioned in verse 32. They are the men of Issachar. And then it tells us why they were so valuable— they “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”

These men of Issachar were an asset to David not because they were mighty warriors, or skilled swordsmen, but because of their insight, their intelligence, their wisdom. They understood the times. They knew what was going on in society around them. They had not insulated themselves from their culture. They had not withdrawn into their own little circle. They had their finger on the pulse of the nation—they understood the trends and what people were talking and thinking about.

But they were not just sociologists—they were not just students of society—collectors of information. They were men who had answers. They were men of action. They also knew what Israel should do.

That tells me that they were godly men. They took what they knew about the society around them and measured it according to the standard of God’s Word. That enabled them to come up with a plan of action. And that’s what made them so valuable to David.

They understood the times and they knew what Israel should do.

And it seems to me that America needs Christians who can be like the men of Issachar. There is no lack of information about what’s wrong with America. We know all the crime statistics, we know how many billions of dollars are being spent on drugs, we know all about the appalling number of abortions that are taking place every year in our nation, we know how many marriages are breaking up and how many children are being raised in single parent homes.

The data is right there for everyone to see. It paints the picture of a society that is in crisis. But nobody knows what to do. The experts wring their hands and throw money at these problems, but they don’t go away—they get worse. And the reason they get worse is because America has abandoned the principles of the Word of God.

So what America needs right now is people who know the times, and know the Word of God, and can bring the problems of the times under the principles of the truth in such a way as to find answers.

That means that we need to know our culture AND we need to know our Scripture. We need to be informed.

3. But being informed isn’t enough. We also need to be involved.

Ask yourself this question next time you are tempted to complain about what’s wrong with America. Ask yourself: “What am I doing to make it better?” What kind of concrete, practical things am I doing to address problems like crime, or drugs, or abortion, or family break-up?

Now I know that you can’t solve these problems all by yourself. But are you doing anything to help with the solution? Several of the members of our congregation work with the Lehigh Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center. That’s being part of the solution to the abortion problem.

Some of you volunteer at the Allentown Rescue Mission. That’s being part of the solution to crime and alcoholism and poverty. Some of you are working with youth—we’ve got five leaders and ten youth right now out in Pittsburgh working in the inner city to fight poverty. That’s being part of the solution.

You may want to get involved in your local school board so that you can have a say in things like sex education and family values. You may want to get involved in local politics so that you can address issues like whether we should allow legalized gambling in our communities.

I believe that the prayerful, informed, involvement of people like you—the people of God—is the key to America’s greatness in the years to come.