It’s been quite a week in my hometown of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, so they call it. Got some Greek words in the name, I guess, the kind that preachers like to use in sermons, you know. Not sure just how much brotherly love there has been over at the State House, though. For ever since that Virginia boy, Richard Henry Lee, read his resolution on June 7, things have been heating up. Quite literally, I bet, for they’ve kept the windows closed so you can’t make out what they are saying. But I bet it’s downright sweltering in that hall in more ways than one. In fact, according to what I managed to find out, Lee resolved that—get this– “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” Can you imagine that—independence!
Oh, everybody knows it’s been coming for a while. For King George has not exactly been responding to all of the list of grievances we’ve been sending over the Atlantic to him. That’s why just over a year ago, in June 1775, that the Continental Congress established an army, put General Washington in charge of it—he’s a good man, though I think he’d rather be a farmer than a soldier sometimes. But as he has said: “whenever my country calls upon me, I am ready to take my musket on my shoulder.”
The king came back, of course, with a proclamation that we Americans were engaged in “open and avowed rebellion,” as he called it, and the Parliament even passed an act making all American vessels and cargoes subject to being seized by the Crown. What’s more, just this past May we found out that King George has hired Germans to come fight here in America. Germans! Guess we shouldn’t be surprised—those Hanover kings were Germans to begin with. But it’s just going to make things worse, I think. For nobody likes a mercenary, a gun for hire.
Of course, to be fair, earlier this year, Tom Paine also stirred it up a bit with his little book, Common Sense—it sold by the thousands. And Patrick Henry—he gave a speech last year in Virginia that was an appeal to God and an appeal to arms. “Three million people,” he said, “armed in the holy cause of liberty and in such a country, are invincible by any force which our enemy sends against us. For we shall not fight alone. God presides over the destinies of nations and will raise up friends for us. The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, and the brave.” And then he summed it all up by asking, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
And with words like those, well, maybe that’s why eight colonies decided to support independence. Only right after old Richard Henry Lee came riding back from Virginia with his motion, which John Adams was quick to second, the Congress postponed the vote and then took three weeks in recess so that everybody could go home and sound out the will of their neighbors.
And in the meantime, they appointed a Committee of Five to work on a draft to tell the whole world what our case for independence really is. John Adams of Massachusetts, of course, was one of the five—that man does love to talk. Roger Sherman of Connecticut was also from New England. Then there were two from the middle colonies, old Ben Franklin from Pennsylvania—God bless ‘em; he really is old—70, I think, the oldest man in the room, that’s for sure—and Robert Livingston from New York. Then they wanted to appoint Richard Henry Lee from the South, but he was already working on the Articles of Confederation and thought it was too much to try to do both; plus, his wife fell ill and he had to go home prematurely. So, they picked another young Virginian to take his place, a fellow named Thomas Jefferson.
Only here was the thing: Jefferson didn’t want to do it—he wanted John Adams to write it. Said he wouldn’t do it, in fact. And when Adams said he had to, Jefferson answered saying, “give me some solid reasons why.” To which Adams said, “first off, you’re from Virginia and a Virginian ought to be at the head of this.” “Second,” Adams said, “I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise.” “Then third, you can write ten times better than I can.” So, Jefferson finally agreed and did most of the writing, with Franklin and Adams making the corrections. Took 17 days to hammer it out but I have to say that Jefferson does indeed have a way with words. For listen to how he started, in fact: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Did you catch that? “All men (and women, too, for that matter) are created equal. Nobody in the world has ever actually believed that, but we do. For there are some rights that people ought to have not because somebody has granted them those rights, but because God Himself did when He lovingly and intentionally created us all to reflect His glory on this earth.
The Congress came back just a few days ago on July 1 and on July 2, they adopted Lee’s resolution for independence by a vote of 12 to 0 to 1—New York abstained—they tend to do that a lot in the Congress. And immediately afterwards, they started to consider the Declaration that the writing committee put forth. I hear that General Washington sent a letter to his wife on the 3rd that said that “in a few days you will see a Declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God. I am fully aware of the toil and blood and treasure what it will cost to maintain this declaration and support and defend these states; [but], through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.”
And in the end, I think the General was right about the light and glory. For even though I’m not sure how much Christianity Thomas Jefferson has in him, it’s pretty clear that the premise on which his Declaration stands–or falls, I suppose–is a religious appeal. Because again, there’s only one authority that actually matters and can give it validity and truth, and that’s an appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” words that the Congress insisted Jefferson add to his document. Because who else do you suppose could have made those self-evident truths so evident? Only the Lord who already put them in His Word. And who are we going to have to depend on when things really begin to heat up? Only Divine Providence, friends. For, you see, this nation really was founded as a city on a hill, a great experiment if you will. And without God, it’s just nonsense to think that we’ll ever really be free at all.
They debated it for a good while. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania spoke eloquently against it. Adams waited for someone else, someone less obnoxious than himself, to rise to answer, but no one did and so Adams got up and he spoke with such power and conviction that it stunned everyone. “Before God, I believe the hour has come,” he said. “My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and independence forever!” Nobody spoke after that, until the door swung open and in came the Reverend John Witherspoon—a Presbyterian, I think, you know, God’s Chosen Frozen—he’s the head of the New Jersey delegation, and he announced that his state was ready to vote for independence. Only Pennsylvania and South Carolina still voted no; New York abstained, and Delaware was split, one delegate for and one against.
It had to be unanimous, so they decided to come back the next day and try again. To resolve the Delaware deadlock, they sent word to Dover, the capital of that colony, to fetch their third delegate, Caesar Rodney. Rodney had had to go home on urgent business, but when he got the word at two in the morning that debate would resume in less than seven hours, he got on his horse and galloped off in a pitch-black stormy night, 89 miles to get here to Philadelphia in horrible conditions, with roads flooded out and no change of horses until dawn. He arrived just as the final vote was being taken, barely able to speak. They had to practically carry the man into the room. But he voted for independence, breaking the Delaware deadlock, and the other delegations followed suite, all except for New York, which abstained. So, they passed that Declaration twelve to nothing, and after announcing the vote, everybody was quiet as the magnitude of what they had just down fell over them. Some wept. Some, like Reverend Witherspoon, said a prayer. And then John Hancock, the president of the Congress, broke the silence by saying, “Gentlemen, the price on my head has just been doubled!” Ben Franklin likewise told the others that they must “all hang together now, or, most assuredly, they will all hang separately.”Everybody laughed a little and then Samuel Adams stood up and this is what he said: “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to Whom alone men out to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven and… from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.” No king but Jesus, my friends, no king but Jesus.
I hear John Hancock plans to be the first one to sign it when they get it back from the printers in a couple of weeks. He says he going to put his name in big letters just below the center, large enough so that old King George can “read it without his glasses.” Everybody then will sign it in geographical order, putting their names on that parchment in the same arrangement as their states are, with New Hampshire, the northernmost state, on the top, and Georgia, the southernmost, down below.
But, you know, in the end that Declaration was not really written just for the 13 American colonies. For if you read it closely, what you will discover is that it was written for the world. Because I have to think our country has been given a mission by God, to carry freedom everywhere. Indeed, we will never be truly or safely be free until all people on earth enjoy that same freedom. It’s a pretty big task. But then we have a pretty big God, as well. Maybe that’s why the good book tells us that “blessed is the nation, the people, the goyim in Hebrew, whose God is the LORD, that is, YHWH.” Matthew Henry once put it this way. He said that the hearts of such a people, as well as their times, are all in God’s hand. All the powers we have depend on Him, and they’re of no account, of no avail at all without Him. But if we make God’s favor sure towards us, then we need not fear whatever is against us, for God’s watchful eye is over all those who have a believing hope in his mercy. And then Henry said this, that “there is no flying from God but by flying to Him.”
I guess in the end, therefore, our job is just to depend upon God and look to Him as a nation, and then step up and do what we can to keep this democracy working. In fact, it might help if everybody simply said the same words that those who signed the Declaration over at the statehouse agreed to. You can say them with me right now if you like: “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, for the rectitude of our intentions, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
My, what a difference that can make if we truly believe it. For as Benjamin Franklin said, “the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” That’s the news from Philly on this Independence weekend, where there’s no king but Jesus, and all of God’s children are strong and brave. May it be the word from wherever you are as well.
(Adopted from the message shared on July 3, 2022, at Christ Church Sugar Land. To see the entire service, done in the style of a radio program, visit the sermon archives at christchurchsl.org/videos/)
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