PROFITING FROM PROVERBS

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34 KJV).

The United States has clearly been on both end of this verse. She was founded on godly principles and God truly had His hand on her birth. It stood as one of the last places that people could come to flee oppression and worship freely according to the dictates of their conscience. Today, this country has the blood of millions of murdered babies and we can not long endure this ghastly sin against God and nature without receiving our just judgment.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in “Democracy in America,” “America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Can America become great again? We pray that it might, but if we continue to slaughter our children to the god of convenience, I see little hope for our nation.

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people,” who could better understand this verse than the Israelites themselves who could certainly see that when they had good kings and were following God’s way, the nation was “up”, and that when they had bad kings and were following wickedness, the nation was “down”? This is observable throughout Kings and Chronicles.

This verse is often quoted because it is ever relevant. When our two countries were living righteously, God blessed us and made us both great—but history is our sad reminder that sin rots a nation through corruption from the inside.

In my childhood I saw the Russian leader, Khrushchev, predict our demise during a speech at the Polish embassy in Moscow where he said, ““We will take America without firing a shot… We will BURY YOU! We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.”

That threat was an impossibility so long as God’s “hedge of protection” was surrounding us, but our sins have separated us from our Holy God, and that hedge has been removed. Frankly, it isn’t so much a wall that our nation needs, but the hedge of God’s protection.

Father, we have been treading upon your grace for over a century as our nation has waxed worse and worse. The very fabric of our society has been replaced with an anything goes mentality and we are reaping the whirlwind. Can our nation yet repent, and be restored? The evidence would suggest not, but we still have Your promise in Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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” (2 Chronicles 7:14 KJV). Amen.

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