A Blessing to Your Land (Part 1)

Next week we will come to our country’s Independence Day, the 4th of July. While America’s roots go back to the early 1600s, it was 250 years ago on July 4th, 1776, that these United States declared independence from Great Britain and its king. Not only did we successfully maintain our independence in battle, but we have grown and been blessed in many ways since that time. These blessings ought to be ascribed to Almighty God, from whom all blessings flow. A remembrance of our country’s independence should cause you both to be grateful to that founding generation and other generations that have built up what you enjoy today, as well as to give thanks to God and to recall your personal and national obligation to him. As the fourth verse of our national anthem says,

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!

As you reflect upon God’s blessings upon the labors of previous generations, it should also recall you to your calling, that you might preserve and build upon the blessings of the past and seek by God’s grace to improve and pass on a country to your children that will be a blessing to them. Those whom Christ saves from sin, he makes a blessing to their land. Therefore, those who rest upon him for salvation should seek to be a blessing to their land by his grace.

When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,

and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.

By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted,

but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown. (Proverbs 11:10–11) 

Verse 11 makes explicit what is implied in verse 10. The city rejoices when it goes well with the righteous, because the righteous are a blessing to the city. There are shouts of gladness when the wicked perish, because the wicked tear down their city by their mouth. Consider the example found in the book of Esther: when the decree of Haman was published, the city of Susa was thrown into confusion, but when Mordecai received Haman’s position and went out in royal robes and a golden crown, the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced.

The righteous are a blessing to their city. As John Witherspoon preached in 1776, “it is in the man of piety and inward principle that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier.” God does not call you to a merely private devotion, but to an exercise of righteousness that is also social. Your righteousness must be personal and private, but it must not stop there. In the same Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus teaches us to pray in secret before God, he also teaches us to let our light shine before men, that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven. Your righteousness must be sincere and for God, not hypocritical praise-seeking, but it must also be exercised in the social realm. You must not hide your light under a basket. Jesus has established you all as a city on a hill and as the light of the world. His kingdom is in the world like leaven is in dough - it transforms the whole thing.

“The blessing of the upright” includes prayer for your land and your words and actions in society. The upright bless those around them by their diligence in their work, their honest dealing and faithfulness, and their deeds of mercy. The upright bless others by their wise and righteous use of words - as the mouth of the wicked overthrows the city, so the mouth of the upright is a blessing. May you be upright and exercise that righteousness in your words and deeds, that you might be a blessing.

In Jeremiah 29:7, God told the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” If the Jewish exiles were to seek good of the foreign city they lived in for seventy years, how much more should you seek the good of our own city, your own land?

Whether you like it or not, you participate in the well-being of your country. This is all the more the case when when you dwell in your own country, as citizens, not as exiles. In its welfare, you will find your welfare. You are born into a society full of riches you did not work for - institutions, laws, cultural heritage, language, infrastructure, relatives, neighbors, etc. You inherit a place in a commonwealth. This places obligations upon you of filial piety, of reverent gratitude. As R.J. Rushdoony wrote concerning the fifth commandment, 

honor to parents, and to all older than ourselves, is a necessary aspect of the basic law of inheritance. What we inherit from our parents is life itself, and also the wisdom of their faith and experience as they transmit it to us. The continuity of history rests in this honor and inheritance. A revolutionary age breaks with the past and turns on parents with animosity and venom: it disinherits itself. To respect our elders other than our parents is to respect all that is good in our cultural inheritance. The world certainly is not perfect, nor even law-abiding, but, although we come into the world naked, we do not enter an empty world. The houses, orchards, fields, and flocks are all the handiwork of the past, and we are richer for this past and must honor it. (Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 166)

Patriotism is a virtue. Patriotism is an application of the fifth commandment. It is an extension of the command to honor father and mother. You are to honor and make return to your mother country, your patria.

You and I do not have absolute control over whether it will go well with the righteous or not. Ultimately God raises up and casts down. But for our part, may we be among the righteous who are blessing, so that if you are exalted, it may be a good thing for society, as when God raised up Joseph and Daniel and Esther. May you be such a person, by God’s grace, that the city rejoices when it goes well with you.