Praying together for our nation and leaders

1Timothy 2:1-7

Praying for our national/political leaders is the number one issue for Christians! You would not think so if one listened to the prayers of God’s people today and yet issues of great national concern are handled by such leaders and even the lives of millions of people are affected by their decisions. This is not a small matter! Generally Christians are profoundly ignorant of the spiritual principles that are involved in this matter and if not ignorant they are confused. That is, many have concluded that their citizenship is in Heaven and therefore we can abandon the world to its own devices! This view crippled the voice of the Church in the Holocaust and six million Jews were murdered and some 53 million people died in the wider conflict of the Second World War! We live under this cloud to our shame.

Sadly many Christians think that the President of a nation should be a preacher like person and at the very least a committed Christian. This is also a delusion and not necessarily biblical. For sure the Bible calls leaders the “servants of God” but not in a Christian way. They are set in place to bring order, law, peace and justice to a people and to, at the very least, acknowledge the involvement of God in the affairs of men. (Romans 13:1-7) The American nation was founded by men like this who were not really “born again” believers but who certainly acknowledged the crucial hand of God in the affairs of men. (Proverbs14:34) To this day the One Dollar note proclaims, “In God we Trust.” America’s prosperity and power has more to do with this than we think. (Psalm 33:12) Its future however does not look good as the Democratic Party has abandoned God, betrayed Israel and the Jewish people and has embraced a culture of chaos that dismembers the family as we know it and celebrates the murder of millions of unborn children all in the name of women having the right to determine what they do with their bodies! God is watching! More troubling still is that millions of Americans think that this is “progressive”, as they put it and so fifty percent of the nation supports this platform. It’s nothing of the sort but merely the moral break-down of the nation and, as Lance Lambert put it recently, the rapid paganization of the State. It’s not new but as old as Sodom and Gomorrah! America is in decline because it is in conflict with the God who made her great.

In short she needs the gift of repentance!

So these principles apply to leaders and nations:

1.    God raises up leaders and puts them down. (Daniel 2:21)

2.    The spiritual state of the nation is measured by its attempt to honor the Ten Commandments. (2Chronicles 7:17-18) These Commandments are written and stamped on the hearts of men even if they do not have access to them as a written code. Their conscience reminds them of them and when they respond accordingly the blessing of God falls upon them. (Romans 2:12-16) As a consequence God establishes peace in a nation and prospers it and enables the Gospel to be freely preached (This is God’s “common grace” at work in a nation-see Matthew 5:45). Make no mistake these Commandments civilized the Western World and made it great (Genesis 35:11; 17:5-6) but today they are being removed from the public domain and the halls of government. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”  It is no coincidence then that many of the great halls pertaining to America’s public and political life were emblazoned with this moral code! The trampling on this code goes hand in hand with America’s plunge into darkness and away from God.  It is to be noted that America’s Founding Fathers saw themselves as a covenant people whose values were based on those of Moses. The word Federal actually comes from the Latin word Foedus which means covenant! So, in 1636 for instance, John Cotton presented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a legal code taken directly from the book of Deuteronomy. This foundation became the bedrock upon which America was built and it was no coincidence that the constitution was signed under the now famous Liberty Bell that has upon it an inscription from Moses that states; “…..Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.” (Leviticus 25:10)

3.    God gives peace, power and prosperity to nations that embrace the yardstick of Moses and He thus gives opportunity for the Gospel of Jesus to be proclaimed. Consider the following:

“Our modern world defined God as a “religious complex” and laughed at
the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter,
came the shattering thunder of World War. And now a blood-drenched,
bitter world-no longer laughing-cries for a way out. There is but one way
out. It existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist
when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey
as a personal favor to God. They are fundamental principles without which
mankind cannot live together.”
(America’s Prophet by Bruce Feiler)

Israel was forged into a nation and given real freedom when God gave her moral laws by which
to live. This concept or idea governed the lives and thinking of America’s Founding Fathers.

4.    When nations abandon this moral code they move to a point of inviting the judgment of God to fall upon them. (Isaiah 24:4-6) This judgment is progressive and cataclysmic. Progressive because it is recognized in the proliferation of sexual perversion, the worship of creation, natural and national disasters and the type of leaders that it gets. God has handed over the nation to its perversions by removing what we call the “gates of consciousness” from its peoples. The consequence is that perversion becomes acceptable, celebrated and approved but actually all this is evidence of the judgment of God. (Romans 1:18-32) It is cataclysmic because the nation is finally overtaken by disaster. Before this point is reached the “spiritual gatekeepers” (Prophets) speak out and begin to warn the nation and its leaders. (Isaiah 14:32)(Jeremiah 7:25)

5.    Somewhere in the progressive phase of God’s judgment, that we already see “burning in America”, the nation reaches a point of no return. It deserves a terrifying judgment and only God’s grace and mercy can avert it. We are now fast approaching this point! (Jeremiah 18:1-10)

6.    A nation’s attitude to Israel and Jerusalem in particular plays a major role in its blessing or cursing. This includes attempts to divide the land of Israel. (Genesis 12:1-3)(Zechariah12:1-9)(Joel 3:1-3)

7.    The Church of the living God must “stand in the gap” and call out to God for mercy. (2Chronicles 7:14) We are, I believe, challenged by the God of heaven to take this position today! We must listen, learn, repent and act!

God says, “So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” (Ezekiel 22:30)

Rightly do we gather here today to pray and call out to God for mercy. We must ourselves repent of our wickedness, slothfulness and sin and humble ourselves before the throne of Heaven. November the 8th will not be the choice of men through a ballot box but the choice of God determined by what He knows about the nation. We should expect the worst or ………………?

Malcolm Hedding.

Note: Readers of this article will be interested to know that two proposals were put forward in 1776 in terms of what the Great Seal of America should be. One of these proposed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson was that of an engraving of Moses leading the children of Israel out of bondage and through the Red Sea to freedom. Freedom came from the moral Law of Moses!

Blog Church Prayer