Isaiah 1:2 “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”
While Samuel Langdon largely focused his condemnation on the corruption of the British government, he recognized the condemnation due to the people themselves because of their corruption. Langdon stated:
“Let us consider–that for the sins of a people God may suffer the best government to be corrupted, or entirely dissolved; and that nothing but a general reformation can give ground to hope that the public happiness will be restored, by the recovery of the strength and perfection of the state, and that Divine Providence will interpose to fill every department with wise and good men.”
“But, alas, have not the sins of America, and of New England in particular, had a hand in bringing down upon us the righteous judgments of Heaven? Wherefore is all this evil come upon us? Is it not because we have forsaken the Lord? Can we say we are innocent of crimes against God? No, surely; it becomes us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand, that He may exalt us in due time. However unjustly and cruelly we have been treated by man, we certainly deserve, at the hand of God, all the calamities in which we are now involved. Have we not lost much of that spirit of genuine Christianity, which so remarkably appeared in our ancestors, for which God distinguished them with the signal favors of providence, when they fled from tyranny and persecution into this western desert? Have we not departed from their virtues? Though I hope and am confident that as much true religion, agreeable to the purity and simplicity of the gospel, remains among us as among any people in the world, yet in the midst of the present great apostasy of the nations professing Christianity, have not we likewise been guilty of departing from the living God? Have we not made light of the gospel of salvation, and too much affected the cold, formal, fashionable religion of countries grown old in vice and overspread with infidelity? Do not our follies and iniquities testify against us? Have we not, especially in our seaports, gone much too far into the pride and luxuries of life? Is it not a fact open to common observation that profaneness, intemperance, unchastity, the love of pleasure, fraud, avarice, and other vices, are increasing among us from year to year?”
Christians should look inward as well as outward as we consider the errant direction of our nation. Our government is a mere reflection of us. Even the best governments can be corrupted and dissolved by our sins. Alas, our sins have had a hand in bringing down the righteous judgments of Heaven upon us. We are not innocent of crimes against God, and as we have departed from His virtues, we deserve His wrath.
PLEASE PRAY FOR CHRISTIANS TO EXAMINE OURSELVES TO ROOT OUT ALL SIN. Even the best government cannot withstand an onslaught of sin from its citizens.
