An American Prophet

Uh let me welcome you again, add my welcome.

Uh most of you, if you're not a guest here, most of you know that I do speak here on Memorial Day weekend a lot of years, and quite often around the 4th of July.

And uh, you know, after Rachel sang, I almost felt like I didn't need to speak.

But then the video helped me uh decide that I probably should.

But I have to say what a real privilege it is to speak here.

For someone like me, I'm I'm very thankful to God.

I'm thankful to Kurt, and I'm thankful to this wonderful support team.

If you speak here, and I've spoken a lot of places, but if you speak here, you're the music team, the the technical team, the people that support you, the sound system even makes me sound better.

It's it is a privilege to speak here, and I have to admit that speaking is somewhat of a passion of mine.

I like I like to speak.

But you know, I also like to listen to a good talk.

I like to listen to a good sermon or a great storyteller.

I even like some political speeches.

There have been some good ones.

Many political speeches from the past have gained quite a bit of notoriety, and I think within those speeches there are always these quotable quotes that we remember.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself from Franklin Delanore Roosevelt's first inaugural dress at the height of the depression.

Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do from your country, from John Kennedy's first inspiring inaugural dress, and believe it or not, that was the subject of my high school graduation speech that I gave a long time ago.

Yes, I have wanted to be a speaker all my life.

Now, my wife claims that I go to bed talking and that I get up talking.

But I have no idea how she would know that because she doesn't pay attention.

And I feel sorry for her because she has missed some incredible wisdom over the years that has flowed from my mouth while she's looking at her email and drinking coffee.

You know, most politicians today, all politicians today, have speech writers, and I'm sure that Roosevelt and Kennedy probably didn't coin those phrases themselves.

Maybe they did.

But one of the greatest speech writers and speech givers of all time was Abraham Lincoln.

I know he wrote his own speeches.

He might have had someone review them, but history records that he actually read his speeches slowly.

He's most famous for the Gettysburg Address, of course.

But some historians, and I agree, his greatest speech was his second inaugural address, right near the end of the Civil War.

It's 703 words long.

There's an entire book written about that speech.

It probably took him six to seven minutes to deliver it.

But we're here today, regardless of what we learned in the video, we're here today to acknowledge the beginning of our country, Independence Day, July 4th, 1776.

There were some quotable quotes from the founding period as well.

Patrick Henry's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, Nathan Hale's brief declaration of I regret that I have but one life to give for my country, before he was hanged by the British.

But I want to talk today about an address that was never spoken.

It was only published in a newspaper, but it speaks to us through the ages, at least it should.

George Washington's Farewell Address to the Nation.

It is one of the most famous addresses that you've never heard.

You know, there's so many books written on the founders about who was the greatest, who was the most important, and quite frankly, I've read an awful lot of those books, and I certainly don't have a degree in history, but I have an opinion.

And it's not close.

It was George Washington.

He was the greatest.

He was the glue that held this young country together through the Revolutionary War, through the post-war Articles of Confederation, passing the new Constitution, and then becoming the first president of the United States.

You know, I have to be careful speaking in church and calling someone a prophet, but if you notice on your updates, that was my choice for my title today, an American prophet.

Washington was an American prophet.

I'm not putting them in a category with the great prophets of the Old Testament in any way, and I'll talk about them shortly.

Although Washington believed very strongly that the founding of America was inspired by God and said so quite often.

And he used the term, like many did in those years, of providence instead of saying God, but he meant God.

George Washington was one of those rare people, and there are people like that today, but he was one of those rare people that could see beyond the horizon.

He had a limited education compared to the other founders.

He didn't travel very much, but he was able to see further than most.

He was a visionary, and he saw this great country, he imagined this continent, not as it was at that time on the East Coast, but as it could be.

A great country reaching from sea to sea.

Everyone knows, I guess except some of the people in the video, that Washington was the commanding general of the Revolutionary Army and he became our first president.

And unlike Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, they were the next three presidents.

Washington was not classically educated.

He didn't travel very much, only once outside the country, and he didn't speak any foreign languages, and the other three did.

He didn't grow up privileged either.

His family home burned down on Christmas Eve when he was eight years old.

His father died three years later, and really left his family in not that good of straits.

And so at the young age of 16, George Washington cut his education short, and he became a surveyor, a working surveyor.

He embarked on excursions into the wilderness and he became a land speculator.

You see, he had been the son of a planter.

And so he realized, as a visionary, how important land would be in this new vast country, how valuable it would be.

And he made his first purchase of land when he was barely out of his teenage years.

He bought 1,500 acres in what was the wilderness of Frederick County, Virginia.

But his fortunes changed dramatically at age 27 when he married the wealthy widow, Martha Curtis, and he began building a profitable plantation growing tobacco at Mount Vernon.

Tobacco was a very competitive product at that time, and George Washington, seven years later, found himself in debt.

Something that frightened him and concerned him for himself and for his country the rest of his life.

And so he showed that he was also an entrepreneur.

He switched from tobacco to wheat.

He sold superior flour.

He made rye whiskey.

He caught shad and herring in the Potomac and shipped it as far away as the Caribbean.

And he used the extra fish to fertilize his wheat fields.

And yes, he was a sinful human being.

He was a politician.

He was a slave owner.

But he had a unique vision for America.

Now, this is all chronicled in a wonderful new book by John Avalon titled Washington's Farewell.

Avalon calls Washington's Farewell Address the Founding Father's warning, and I emphasize that warning to future generations.

Or as Washington put it, warning from a parting friend.

Washington served two terms as president, but as early as the end of his first term, he was considering leaving.

While being very powerful and very popular, he loved nothing more than his plantation and being at home.

In his own words, he said he'd rather go to his farm, take his spade in his hand, and work for his bread than remain president of the United States.

But the young country was still extremely unstable.

And he was convinced to stay on.

But by the end of his first term, he was determined to work on a farewell address to the nation.

Avalon describes it this way.

He first brought together a team of ghost writers to help him flesh out his ideas.

He first went to James Madison, who was an excellent writer, but then he went to Alexander Hamilton.

But for over five years, Washington worked on and off on this address himself.

His farewell address represented lessons he had learned from his time as a surveyor, as a soldier, as a farmer, as a revolutionary general, as an entrepreneur, and as the president of the United States.

And he drew on such diverse sources as the Bible and the Constitution.

In many ways, this address was so important to him it was autobiographical in a sense, but not of him, but of his ideas.

The 6,088-word address, 54 paragraphs long, had been written over five years, and it was not read aloud like some European king or like a departing president would do today on national television to prop up his legacy.

No, on the afternoon of September 19th, 1796, readers of Claypool's American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia paid six cents.

And they scanned the front page to find the customary catalog of one ads and items for sale.

I think it might have been something like the penny saver used to be.

And when they opened the paper to pages two and three, they found the space occupied by a single item.

It was addressed to the people of the United States.

Now, most speeches or addresses by politicians are full of promises.

Washington's farewell address had none of that.

It was a warning from a parting friend written to future generations of Americans about the forces that he felt could destroy our democratic republic.

Please listen to these.

These are amazing.

Consider they were written 220 years ago, and consider the state of our country today.

His first warning was about hyperpartisanship, political parties that could not cooperate on much of anything for the good of the country.

Washington believed that the history of republics up to that date showed that political parties led by cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men distorted democracies by pursuing narrow agendas at the expense of the national interests.

Washington said this could be constrained by vigilant citizens, and I would add, citizens that know something about the history of our country and know something about our constitutional government, which is why the opening video was funny but frightening.

You know, even the lady at the end that seemed very smart.

That's the preamble to the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence that she spouted.

It was good, but wrong document.

Washington was our only president who did not belong to a political party.

He detested the friction that party politics brought to government.

For example, he asked James Madison to help him with that speech.

And then he asked Alexander Hamilton, because those two had worked together as a team tirelessly to write the Federalist papers to help ratify our new Constitution.

But by Washington's second term, really the end of the first term, James Madison had aligned himself with Thomas Jefferson, and they had formed the Republican Party, which would later become our current Democratic Party.

Jefferson and Madison, Jefferson left Washington's administration, he resigned.

Jefferson and Madison became bitter, bitter enemies of Hamilton, and they actually worked to undermine George Washington's second term.

If Twitter had been around then, it would have been wild.

Except these men were very wordy and could never have done it in 41 characters.

But it does sound familiar, doesn't it?

Our Congress can't come together on much of anything.

Not on health care, not on tax reform, not on immigration reform, not on debt reduction, or anything just for the good of the country.

And it doesn't matter if it's Democrat, Republican, or independent.

It always has to be politics instead of the good of the country, as George Washington hoped for.

His second warning is amazing also: excessive debt.

Washington said that a very important source of the strength of a country was its credit.

And of course, he meant good credit.

George Washington could not imagine that we owe nearly$20 trillion.

The wise old Benjamin Franklin, you know, he had a lot of very wise and catchy sayings.

He said, think what you do when you run in debt.

You give to another power over your liberty.

George Washington's third warning was foreign wars and foreign entanglements.

Excuse me.

If you were here on Memorial Day weekend, I reminded you that we're involved in combat in at least six countries.

We have military personnel stationed in 150 countries around the world, and we have absolutely no apparent plans to end any of these conflicts that I'm aware of.

But you know, maybe the most important advice that George Washington left us was this.

I'm quoting him.

He said, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

And let us with caution indulge the idea that morality can be maintained without religion.

Our democracy will not endure without the morality that comes from a religious people, in the words of George Washington.

These were warnings and advice from the father of our country over 220 years ago, which have all come home to roost, which we continue to ignore.

You know, Kurt often poses the question at the end of his sermons about he doesn't know where this finds you today.

He doesn't know if you are here as a member of this church and you believe in Jesus Christ for your eternal life, or maybe you're just here searching for answers to find out who this person Jesus is.

And today you just might be here to hear a Fourth of July message.

But if you are searching for answers, I'd like to suggest a true source.

It's a really good history book, and you know I read a lot of them.

And I always recommend a book when I speak here, but this book is the Bible.

It is a book full of warnings and prophecies and promises that you can believe and you can trust.

It isn't written by some author, it's the breathed word of God.

Several weeks ago, Kurt gave a wonderful message about when Jesus came to visit two sisters, Mary and Martha.

I hope you were here to hear it.

But he told how when Jesus came, Martha was very excited, and she was hurrying around, taking care of all the details, and didn't have any time to spend with Jesus.

But Mary took the time to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen.

You know, I left here, I know, I repeated to my wife, and I repeated it over.

I loved the phrase sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Well, we can't do that literally anymore.

But I had an experience this last year, from September to May.

I was involved in a very concentrated study of the book of John every Tuesday night.

And some nights I left there, and I shared this with the people in my group.

I left there, and I felt like I had been sitting at the feet of Jesus.

I'd read John before, but not at that level.

John was written, of course, by the Apostle John, and it was probably written a little later than the other three Gospels.

The possibility that John was the only apostle still alive when he wrote it, and it's different than the other Gospels in that it doesn't contain a genealogy, it doesn't contain the record of Jesus' birth, his childhood, it doesn't contain the transfiguration or even the parables.

You see, John was laser-focused on one thing in his book.

He wanted to prove conclusively that Jesus is the Son of God and that all that believe in him will have eternal life.

I also found it interesting.

I use an older NIV study Bible.

I know that some of you here are new Christians, and some of you might be non-Christians searching.

And I don't think it was a coincidence either.

I don't think anything's a coincidence in my in my faith life, to be quite honest with you.

But while I'm studying John in depth, Kurt was teaching a series on the book of Isaiah.

And Isaiah is the prophet, a real prophet from the Bible.

He foretold so much that later occurred in the book of John and other New Testament books.

Let me give you an analogy of sorts, to the point of how important I think this is and how it speaks to the real truth source of the Bible.

If you've heard me speak, I think it's pretty obvious that I love history.

I read a great deal of history, but I'm also careful about what I read.

You know, before I read a history book, unless it's just for pleasure and I don't do that very often, I look at the author.

I do some research on the author, and then I look at the footnotes.

Was this book well researched?

Is it well documented?

Or is it just the opinion of someone?

If I want opinions, I read editorials and I do read those too.

You know, if the main theme of a book on George Washington was that he couldn't tell a lie because he told the truth about chopping down a cherry tree, well, I wouldn't put much credibility in that book because that's a myth.

That's a myth I was taught in grade school.

I don't know when I found out that was that really wasn't true.

And in many ways, Isaiah and other books of the Old Testament, they provide for me the footnotes for the book of John and the other books of the New Testament.

You know, when I read my study Bible, and I know so many of you do, you look out to the side and there are those references, the cross-references.

Well, they cross-reference the words, the phrases, or the passages that I'm reading that are referenced in another part of the Bible.

My study Bible has 23,500 cross-references.

You know, for me, that just gives incredible authenticity to the truth of every word in the Bible.

I counted at least 17 cross references to Isaiah in the book of John.

And of course, there are many, many more from Old Testament and New Testament sources.

And as Kurt reminded us in the Isaiah series, much of the latter part of the book of Isaiah is devoted to the coming of the Messiah, the Christ.

And just as Kurt was teaching and approaching the Easter season and the Messiah, so was I in my study of John.

And so his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus took on more meaning for me this year at this Easter season than it ever did before.

I felt figuratively that I was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

I guess some people could say I'm a little obsessed with history, and I'm not into dates and like those tests you used to have to take, match, and choose.

I don't care about those things, but I do care about the substance of history, and it amazes me.

It frightens me, and even at times it angers me that we simply Refuse to learn from the past or even to listen to the wise voices of the past, just from our country or from the Bible.

Do you know the Senate has read George Washington's farewell address every year?

I said that's a waste of time.

Because I don't think they're listening.

I just finished reading David McCallow's latest book, The American Spirit, I recommend it.

It's a collection of some of his very best speeches, and they're all great.

And he said one of, he said this in one of his speeches, which really I liked.

He said, How can we know who we are, where we are headed if we don't know where we have come from?

And then he went on to use this great way of demonstrating this.

He said, he's decided that the digital watch is the perfect symbol of an imbalance in outlook of our day.

The digital watch.

It tells us only the time it is now, at this very instant, as if that was anything and everything that anyone would ever want to know.

Now he ended that speech, which he was delivering before a joint session of Congress in the House of Representatives.

He ended that speech by referencing a clock that had been handcrafted and was in the House of Representatives installed around 1837.

He said it's an old clock.

It has two hands, it has an old face.

It's the kind of clock that shows you what time it is now, what time it used to be, and what time it will become.

That brings me back to the coming of the Messiah.

You know, there's so many references in the Old Testament to the coming of the Messiah.

But two of my favorite and two of the better known ones are found in the book of John.

First, in John chapter 12, verses 12 through 15.

John 12:12–15

This is announcing Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem.

The next day the crowd that had come for the feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.

They took palm branches and they went out to meet him, shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Blessed is the king of Israel.

Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it as it is written.

And then in verse 15, do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion.

See your king is coming, seated on a donkey.

And the reference to the side of verse 15 in John is another prophet from the Old Testament, Zechariah 9.9.

Zechariah prophesies this nearly 500 years before this actually occurred.

And Zechariah 9.9 reads, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, daughter of Jerusalem, see your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

But of course the shouts of Hosanna, blessed he is comes in the name of the Lord, turn to crucify him within a few days.

Also found in the book of John, when the people were beginning to turn against Jesus, John writes in chapter 13, verses 37 and 38, even after Jesus had done all of these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.

And this was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet.

And the reference to the side of John 13, 38, of course, is Isaiah 53, 1.

And Isaiah prophesies this, wrote this nearly 700 years before it occurred.

And it reads this way: Who has believed our message?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a shoot out of dry ground, like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, like one whom men hide their faces.

He was despised, and he and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities, he carried and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, and the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his words we are healed.

With these prophecies that the people of Jesus' time knew from the Old Testament, they missed the coming of the Messiah.

You know, Kurt, for the last number of weeks, at least last week still, was teaching on dismissing Jesus.

And that's exactly what the people of Jesus' time did.

They dismissed Jesus by missing the coming of the Messiah, by missing the coming of the Christ.

And so I'll I'll finish this morning by asking you have you missed the coming of the Messiah?

Have you dismissed Jesus in some way in your life?

Were you here at Easter or were you at another church at Easter?

And did you not grasp the magnitude of the sacrifice for you that Jesus made on a cross?

Did you miss the fact that the blameless, sinless Son of God was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities?

The punishment that can bring us peace was upon him.

And that by his wounds we are healed.

Well, we haven't listened to the wise counsel of George Washington or many other wise people in our country.

And I believe, I truly believe, that it puts our democracy, our way of life in jeopardy.

But not listening to the words of the prophets of the Old Testament or the words of Jesus in the Gospels or the teachings of the Apostle Paul and others in the New Testament puts your eternal life in jeopardy.

So my hope is this Independence Day week, you'll take some time.

Contemplate what it means to be an American.

Read George Washington's farewell address.

But more importantly, I hope you'll contemplate what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and how that affects your eternal life.

Would you please pray with me?

Dear Heavenly Father, this Independence Day week, and frankly every week, Lord, help us to be thankful for the rich blessings that you have bestowed on our country.

And more importantly, help us to remember where these blessings came from.

In the words of the Declaration of Independence, we're told that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And Lord, sometimes we think we did that.

Let us remember that those rights came from you, our Creator, not governments, not men, not institutions, but from you.

And finally, let us not dismiss you in any facets of our lives.

Because without your guiding principles, our country will not endure.

And without your guiding principles and love, our lives will not endure.

And I pray this all in Jesus' holy name.

Amen.

Thank you very much for coming today.

I hope you have a wonderful, happy, healthy Fourth of July.

Thank you.