America At 250: The Rule of Law

Deuteronomy 5:6-21

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8b

Just as the Constitution of this United States established our country under the rule of law, so did the 10 Commandments establish the descendants of Abraham as the nation of Israel. Before Abraham’s descendants moved to Egypt because of a famine, they were a small tribe of people. So, the only laws they knew were the ones the Pharaoh forced on them.

These commandments were meant to create a just society, unlike that which they had known under the Pharaoh’s rule.

You shall not kill.

The Pharaoh would kill whenever he decided it was best. But human life belongs to God.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Traditionally, you might remember that commandment as you shall not lie, as if this commandment were about telling children to always tell the truth. And of course, children should tell the truth. But this commandment is about something much more fundamental to a just society. Notice the wording. The Hebrew could have simply read, “You shall not lie.” But instead, it reads “Bear false witness.” That is, you shall not go before a judge and tell a lie in order to get your neighbor imprisoned. This commandment is about preventing unjust imprisonment.

And then there is the commandment concerning the Sabbath:

“On the seventh day you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.”

This commandment is about a call to worship God, but it is also a gift of rest. Under Pharaoh’s rule, you would be worked seven days a week—and sometimes worked to death. Rest is a divine gift from God.

Throughout history, we see this need to reassert the rule of law and reforge a just society.

Five hundred years ago, there was a movement in Europe. The human tendency toward tyranny had once again reared. Not only the tyranny of the king, but the tyranny of the church. These dual powers were unjustly ruling people’s bodies and people’s souls.

And when eventually some of them landed on this continent, and by the late 1700s, they sought to create a church that would protect itself from the tyrannical powers they had fled—and from the tyranny of the human heart—by limiting and separating power.

In this new church, there would be no pope who could declare God’s truth all on his own. No one could dictate what another person should believe.

“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men.” (Westminster Confession)

In this new church, there would be no bishop ruling over congregations and telling them who their pastors would be.

“The election of the persons to the exercise of this authority, in any particular society, is in that society.” (Book of Order)

In other words, you—the people—vote for your pastor.

In this new church, the pastor of the local congregation would not have authority to control what happened in the church. Rather, the people—all of you—elect elders from among yourselves to make the governing decisions for your congregation. Not the preachers.

But the people of this new Presbyterian church did not want these principles woven only into their community of faith. They wanted them woven into their society as well.

If you look at the founding values of our country and those of our denomination, you will see a great deal of resonance. In 1788, one year before our country ratified a Constitution, Presbyterians gathered in Philadelphia. They were led by Presbyterian pastor, U.S. congressman, and Princeton University president John Witherspoon, and by our founding pastor, John Rogers.

In fact, John Witherspoon was a professor of James Madison at Princeton. Madison even stayed an extra year to learn Hebrew and political philosophy from Witherspoon. We can see Madison was clearly influenced by these ideas in the Constitution.

That wonderful Ken Burns documentary about the founding of America pointed out that these founders were attempting to do something rarely, if ever, tried before in the history of the world: replacing a monarchy with a democracy. But the influence goes back much further than the Reformation. The roots begin in the 10 Commandments.

The founding principles of our denomination, the Constitution of the United States, and the Ten Commandments all establish a people by the rule of law.

And just as Deuteronomy recognized that even the king had to follow the law, and just as the pastor must follow the Book of Order, the principle within our land is that the law applies equally to everyone.

Of course, it was not only Presbyterians saying these things. John Adams declared that America must be a government of laws. Alexander Hamilton argued that the Constitution places the law above rulers.

But the laws on their own are not enough. They have never been enough.

For four hundred years, the descendants of Abraham had been enslaved in the land of Egypt. They knew what it was to not receive the fruits of their labor. They knew the whip. They knew what it was to be worked to death. They knew tyranny and injustice, and they knew the false gods of the Pharaoh.

But then, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great power and profound compassion, the Lord delivered them and brought them to a land of promise.

But before God allowed them to enter into the Promised Land, they were brought to Mount Sinai, where they received this profound gift of the Law, the greatest gift any people had received up to that point in history.

For God knows the human heart. And the human heart, as history shows us, yearns for freedom and justice—but tragically, when we get it, all too often we become the tyranny we sought to escape. Knowing this about the beloved human creation, God gave Israel a tool to learn how to live better, to learn how not to repeat the enslaving tendencies of the Pharaoh.

This is why we see a certain phrase repeated throughout the early books of the Old Testament. God reminds them, remember, you were slaves in the land of Egypt. Remember. Remember. Remember. Remember what it was like in Pharaoh’s land, under Pharaoh’s thumb.

So Deuteronomy tries to prevent the repeat of a Pharaoh-type person.

The seventeenth chapter notes that even the king must obey the law:

“[The king] shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes.”

So the law must apply to everyone equally.

Tragically, even as our denomination was founded upon the just rule of law and the shared created nature of all humans, we did not apply this equally to all people.

Tragically, even as our country was founded as a land of freedom and equality, it didn’t apply equally to everyone.

So even though the law moves us forward to justice, it is not enough. It will never be enough, because the human heart is broken. The founders of our country knew this as well.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams (1798)

Two hundred fifty years ago, this nation was founded as an inspired experiment, and ever since it has been filled with triumphant successes and tragic failures. Back then, it was a call for freedom and independence, but I believe hope for our country now lies on a different path.

When I was taught to memorize the 10 Commandments, the first one was “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” But later I learned the Jewish people count them differently, and that difference is fundamental—and, I think, better. Their first commandment is not an instruction, but a reminder:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

This tells us the nature of the lawgiver—that the rules that follow are based on a God of freedom. A God of freedom who acts in history to bring justice and hope to the downtrodden and the oppressed.

And it is on that basis that God wants the people to listen. The Pharaoh’s laws were enforced through fear, for the benefit of the Pharaoh and for the monuments to his legacy—the pyramids.

But God’s laws are given not for the benefit of God, but for the benefit of the people, out of love.

The Lord Jesus showed us how far we should go to reflect this love. He charged us to love everyone. Our society is trying to teach us to hate each other and to presume that those who think differently than we do are evil and selfish. Jesus taught us that we all have sin inside of us. He reminded us, before you try to grab that splinter out of your neighbor’s, get the log out of your own. But he not only talked about this, he went out and he lived it. And so many years later, Abraham Lincoln reminded us:

“I am tolerant of all religions… and as far as my system of religion goes, it is the doctrine of doing to my neighbor as I would that he should do to me.” — Abraham Lincoln

The gift of the law is profound, but the gift of love is what will change the world. I pray that each of us will take Jesus’ words to heart and love our neighbor and love our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Amen.