July 4^th, 1776, with a continental colonial army in the field fighting for their rights as Englishmen, the Continental Congress prepared to sign the document that many felt might be their own death warrant.  Several grim and dark jokes seem to have been made about hanging in that chamber but the actual mood was very somber and serious. They did not commit themselves fully to a struggle for independence from the greatest empire the world had ever seen without counting the cost. This is, perhaps, why the final words of the Declaration of Independence, just above their signatures, read “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

With those words they pledged themselves as a sacrifice for freedom. Some of them, indeed, lost their lives. Others, rich before the war, ended it penniless. Others to keep their honor sacred refused offers of the release of beloved family members from horrible and almost always fatal British prison ships in spite of their breaking hearts. They meant what they said. As the people of that day would have put it, they were in earnest.

Earlier in the Declaration they had referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It was more than a rhetorical flourish. These well educated men were very familiar with the background for such a formulation. Back in the 16^th century, the Protestant theologian John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (a very popular book in colonial America), had stipulated that “the law of God which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men.” Many of the men gathered on that solemn occasion were lawyers, steeped in English law and jurisprudence, and were, therefore, very familiar with the statement of the famed 17^th century English jurist Sir Edward Coke that “The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart” and with what the most popular law commentator of their own day, William Blackstone had written in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone had written that “As man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker’s will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature.”

Their self-evident truths and rights endowed by man’s Creator shows that they believed God was calling them to do what they did. With feeble steps of trembling faith, with reliance on one another and on the protection of God, they launched themselves into implacable war with an empire which had the world’s best army and the world’s best and largest navy. For them the “Providence” on which they depended was not merely simply the way things happened in the world. For them, providence, as John Calvin had earlier summarized, meant that God “as keeper of the keys” actually “governs all events.”

Samuel Adams, John’s relative who had formed the Sons of Liberty and was the mastermind of the first Tea Party, noted that the British had tried to make the state a god. He argued that Americans had seen through that folly. On analyzing the Declaration, he wrote “We have explored the temple of royalty, and found the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone.” He claimed that through the Declaration and its emphasis on providence that “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient.”

Samuel Adams dismissed the argument that Americans had to always obey the government in order to obey God. He felt the success of America had given it the responsibility to not give up. He wrote, “The hand of heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world.”

The American pulpit took up this same theme. Before the war, many ministers had called the reverence and deference for the king a form of idolatry. Now they spoke boldly in favor of the cause of independence. In Philadelphia, George Duffield argued that America’s forefathers had fled Europe to escape tyranny and oppression and that freedom is God’s gift to us because we hated tyranny so. He gave thanks for God’s “adorable goodness” and said that Americans “were born the heirs of freedom.”

So, today it is time to throw off idolatry and reject the idea that government is our ultimate security and refuge. Government is made up of human beings and those human beings have all the failings and sins of human beings. Instead we must liberate ourselves from the clutches of a new and growing tyranny in this our most imperial of presidencies. We must refuse the state’s claim to become our new god. The state will prove a false and destructive god. We are the heirs of freedom, meant to make our own way. We are free to obey God or refuse but God never intended us to give his role to a mere president, or to a bureaucracy. It is time for us to cast down these false idols and realize that we must take responsibility for ourselves. We must quit expecting government to do everything for us and to solve every problem and remember that we have a birthright to fend for ourselves. God created us with the ability, right, and duty to make decisions for ourselves. Expecting government to take care of all our problems is selling our birth right for a one time offer of a bowl of soup. If we sell it, it will be hard to get it back.