How a Nation Gets Right With God
Acts 2:14-18, 22-24, 32-40
By John Petty
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church, Kerrville, Texas

Pentecost was an important day in the life of the early church. You might even say, next to the resurrection, it is the most important event in the formation of the church. The Holy Spirit was poured out on believers and they preached the gospel. At the end of that one day, Luke writes that 3000 believed and were baptized. Jesus, before he ascended to heaven, told believers to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit was sent. The Holy Spirit came. It indwelled men and women, sons and daughters. They all preached the gospel and the church grew exponentially. But how? Since that time, the gospel has circled the globe. Almost every country in the world has some level of Christian witness and influence. How has that work been accomplished and by whom? By what power has the church seen so many saved on every continent? Has it been national governments that have brought this to pass? Has it happened by determined Christians who campaign for Christian governments and demand public displays of the 10 Commandments?

I want us to consider today, how the work of the church is done. Scripture tells us plainly it is the work of the Spirit, but over the centuries we have forgotten both the facts of scripture and the lessons of history. Christians in America need a good dose of the truth of history, because lately, many of us have been acting like spoiled children when it comes to religious liberty. Last week in an address to the Religious Liberty Council of the BJC, Charles Johnson, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, remarked, “A disease of uncivil religion has infected our land...The high priests of this uncivil religion desire not so much to speak to God in the public square, but, rather, to speak for God.” He continues, “A weird historical revisionism seeks to rewrite the foundational value of religious liberty as something novel and exotic and dangerous, rather than the basis upon which our founding fathers and mothers built American democracy...Uncivil religion no longer wants government to make citizens. It wants government to make converts.”

What do Christ and Christians gain by being able to post the 10 Commandments on the grounds of the capitol or inside a court room? What do Christ and Christians gain when public tax dollars are used to support religious causes? What do Christ and Christians gain if the state officially endorses prayer in school? I want us to consider today, how the work of the church is done. Scripture tells us plainly, but over the centuries we have forgotten both the facts of scripture and the lessons of history. Even among Baptists whose vision of religious liberty has historically been clear, we have developed cataracts, says Church historian Walter Shurden, executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University.

Of course, the story of Christianity begins with Jesus and his disciples and has its roots in the Old Testament history of the Jewish people. But the church in earnest does not begin until Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is given to the church and she begins to spread like wildfire. My hope today is to remind us that the Kingdom of God began and spreads today not by the power or assistance of human governments, but by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

Let’s look to Acts 2:17 to see the beginning: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.” The work of the Kingdom of God is a work of God’s spirit, not the state. Much has been said in the press of late about the Supreme Court rulings on the Ten Commandments in Kentucky and Texas. Charles Johnson is my friend and the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio. He remarked on the response of a particular Christian group to the Supreme Court ruling on the Kentucky case that said the courtroom display of the 10 Commandments was unconstitutional.

“The forces of uncivil religion reacted to Monday’s Supreme Court decision on the posting of the Ten Commandments by launching a national campaign to place 100 Ten Commandments monuments this year on public property.” 1

Charles responded with a novel but biblical thought, “Free and faithful Baptists know how to respond to this incivility. We are going to launch a counter national movement to post the Ten Commandments. We will not settle for only a paltry 100 postings. No, we will not stop until millions and millions of placements of God’s Law are successfully positioned all over this land. We are not going to put them where the high priests of uncivil religion tell us they must be placed, but, rather where the Lord God himself tells us to put them. Hear the Word of the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘But this is the covenant I will make, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’ (Jeremiah 31.33)”

I want us to consider today, how the work of the church is done. Scripture tells us plainly it’s by the Spirit of God, but over the centuries we have forgotten both the facts of scripture and the lessons of history. How does one go about getting the law of God into the human heart? How do we get people to keep the 10 commandments, to be righteous? How does a nation get right with God?

As Peter and many others preached and witnessed at Pentecost and beyond, many hearers became believers. Many repented of their sin, believed in Jesus and were baptized. And the moment they believed in Jesus, they were made righteous by Jesus’ sacrifice. The Ten Commandments were not even mentioned at Pentecost. They told the story of Jesus, what he did, who he was, and how he died for our sins. They placed no monuments. They signed no petitions. There was no campaign to get a Christian elected to the Roman Senate. And they surely did not ask the Roman government to help them. Nor did they rewrite Roman history to cast Rome as a solely Christian nation. They did not even ask for protection from the state to practice their faith unmolested.

American Christians are blessed with freedoms that the early church could not fathom, yet recently, what we have done with our freedom has done more to push people away from the Kingdom of God rather than invite them in. Peter, the Apostles, and all manner of men and women preached Christ, but to look around at American Christians today it would appear that all we can talk about are the Ten Commandments and state sponsored public prayer in schools as if those things alone constitute a people of God. Christians are demonstrating on the steps of the Supreme Court holding the Ten Commandments. In Kentucky and Texas, Christians have been holding Ten Commandment rallies, whining about the fact that they cannot be posted in the court room in Kentucky and celebrating in Texas because there’s a marble monument on the capitol’s carpet grass. Mind you, the world is watching these pathetic displays. And you know what they see? They see a church clinging to the law when we should be preaching Christ.

How far we have come from Pentecost. Jesus rightly criticized legalists for being so preoccupied with the law that they could not understand the heart of God which is love and grace. Personally, I think this whole flap over the Ten Commandments is a tempest in a teapot. And I think the devil is overjoyed that we Christians are preoccupied with the law – anything to get us to stop talking about grace and preaching Christ crucified. I believe we have been distracted by one of the temptations that the devil tried on Jesus. (Mat 4:8 NIV) “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’”

The temptation of worldly power is seductive. This was the last temptation the devil threw at Jesus. It was the most powerful enticement he had and he had been saving it for last. Jesus refused his offer of course, because to accept it would have taken Jesus away from the cross, away from the sacrifice that would show God’s grace and unconditional love. Christian America has been seduced by worldly power. When we want the state to support or even acknowledge our faith, we are bending a knee to temptation. Christians frustrated by what they perceive as a national slide into immorality, desperately and mistakenly assume that by combining our religious majority with a government favorably disposed to Christianity that we will somehow come out on top. History teaches us this approach has always failed.

If you are one of those well-meaning Christians who thinks that posting the Ten Commandments on government property is a good idea and something that Christians need to press for, ask yourself this question: What does the Kingdom of God gain? Some have maintained that we are honoring and acknowledging God and the place of the Ten Commandments in our nation’s laws. Some quote Proverbs 14:34 and say “Righteousness exalts a nation.” Last time I checked, the Bible said that righteousness does not come through the law, but through faith in Christ alone. If the way of salvation comes only through Christ and not through the law, then what are we Christians doing by making a spectacle of posting the Ten Commandments in every public place? It may very well be that the law of unintended consequences comes back to haunt us. Make no mistake, the world watches the church and our actions and if all they see is an angry church intent on posting the Old Testament law everywhere, they are not seeing Christ lifted up. And if we are not lifting up Christ, we are effectively showing the lost how to go to hell.

Have we bothered to ask God what he wants? There is a simple and joyful solution to this problem. Well-meaning Christians want America to be a good nation, a righteous nation. We know that life really is better when we live by the Ten Commandments. But the only way to guarantee righteousness, if you believe the Bible, is having a relationship with Jesus Christ. Instead of pointing our bony fingers at our countrymen and waving copies of the Ten Commandments, why don’t we bear witness to them of Christ crucified? Righteousness exalts a nation, true. But righteousness comes by faith in Jesus, not in keeping the law. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

If we Christians concentrate on being the presence of Jesus, bearing witness to Jesus’ life, cross and resurrection as Peter and the apostles did at Pentecost, not only will God be honored and acknowledged, but Jesus will be lifted high. People will be added to our numbers, not because they read the words of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse walls, but because they saw and heard the walking and talking, kind and compassionate presence of Jesus in you.

You see, I do not want to settle for posting the Ten Commandments in public places because I do not believe that’s what God wants. God wants more. I want to see every command lived out by every American. There’s only one way to get that done – preaching Christ and him crucified. If all we give them is the commandments we are showing them a good way to live, but it won’t get them to heaven. But if we show them Christ, not only will they get to heaven, but they will have the power to keep the commandments as well. We can give them Moses but it won’t be enough. We can give them Elijah, but it won’t be enough. We can give them state sponsored prayer in school, but it won’t be enough. We can rewrite our history and call ourselves an exclusively Christian nation, but even that myth won’t be enough. Or we can give them Jesus and if you get Jesus, you get everything else thrown in.

Church, there is a way for a nation to get right with God. It does not start with government’s acknowledgment of the Creator. It does not start with recasting our forefathers as evangelical Christians when in fact they were deists. Neither is the secret found in keeping the law. Legalists in Jesus’ day were led astray by that approach. A nation gets right with God when the church takes responsibility without the House of Representatives, Senate, or the White’s House’s help. A nation gets right with God when God’s people, the church, stop whining, start weeping for the lost, and get serious about bearing witness to the risen Lord. God’s Spirit will do the rest.

October 2005