Blessed Is the Nation Whose God is the Lord - July 5, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast. I have made the

Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

As we think about yesterday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of

Independence and saying we are our own nation, I want you to think for just a moment.

What would happen if every American that's alive today returned to their foundation

of faith, specifically their foundation of faith in Jesus Christ?

Let your mind run wild with that for a minute. What would life be like in this

United States of America?

What kind of influence would this nation continue to have on the world,

maybe even a greater sense of influence it would have for more and more godly things.

I don't know if you saw or you participated in any of the celebrations that went on.

And there's some awesome fireworks going on last night, definitely at the Laux

Place, as we saw those boomers going off. And as we drove home,

they were still going off in the distance.

We got to see the grand finale of what was going on over here in Holmedale as

we came and then experienced a little bit of that traffic as we were getting through town.

And even as we went up the hill to Parma, we still saw these big boomers going

off. And I think it was one o'clock in the morning where it kind of started

to quiet down. At least that's what I'm told. I was fast asleep by that time.

But we have all this celebration, all these exciting things, fireworks and flags.

We had cookouts with friends and families and neighbors and parades.

I mean, all this great celebration with fellow patriots.

But when you think about July 4th, 1776, it was a far more solemn celebration,

if you will, than what we celebrated yesterday.

When you consider that the 56 men who signed the document declaring our independence

from Great Britain, they put their whole life and their whole fortune on the line.

In essence, what they were doing was committing treason against the nation of Britain.

They declared independence from a king, King George, but not independence from

the God that they were seeking to serve.

There was a slogan in the American Revolution, no king but Jesus.

They had some priorities going on in their own hearts, in their own lives.

Our founders shaped the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,

the Bill of Rights, and the nation's moral and ethnic vision as they were thinking

about what this United States could be like.

It wasn't just something where a group of guys got together and says,

hey, let's do this, and it was done in an hour.

They prayed. They sweated over what would be this new nation that God would call them to.

They prayed together. They argued about what it would be.

But there's one thing that had a heavy influence on these group of men as they

met to dream about what a new nation could look like, a new nation built on freedom.

And that was they were heavily influenced by the Hebrew scriptures and the New

Testament scriptures, the Bible.

They took those principles and they applied them to what we have today as we

celebrate life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, justice, dignity of all human beings everywhere.

But today, I think a lot of people feel lost.

When we consider the founding of this nation, it was pretty clear,

cut and dry, who we were, what we were going to do, who we were to be,

even if there were arguments over how we were going to come about that.

You see, the confusion today rests in the blurring of the lines between right and wrong.

What we should do and who we should be as a free people versus maybe many times

what we are and what we revert to because of an old sinful nature that likes to hold on.

And sometimes in that blurring of the right and the wrong, we need more than just nostalgia.

Man, it was awesome yesterday seeing those great big ships go in to New York,

these big, highly masted ships with these sails.

It was beautiful to see the air power of the United States and its allies flying

over New York City there. Incredible.

And that gives you a sense of pride. And yeah, go USA, America. This is awesome.

But we need more than that if we're going to get back to kind of the vision,

I think, of our founders, and really more so the vision of what I believe God

has for this nation, Moving forward.

You see, we need to return to the biblical foundation that gave freedom its meaning,

and that gives its citizens moral strength to do what is right,

to act upon that right, to bless not just its citizens, but to bless the entire world,

to turn people's eyes, I believe, to Jesus.

So on this day after Independence Day, I think we still celebrate 250 years

the whole next year, right? We're still good there.

I want to turn you to the Psalms. Psalm 33, verse 12. And it's a short verse,

Psalms 33:12

and I invite you to stand if you're willing and able to as we read this verse from the psalmist.

And it just simply says this, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

the people he chose for his inheritance.

Lord, thank you this morning for your scripture. Thank you, God,

for the blessing that is offered here.

And, Lord, we know that the nation of Israel, Father, the people in the Old

Testament of Israel, they were called out as yours.

And, Lord, they were the ones to receive your inheritance. And,

Lord, you blessed them when they followed you, when they obeyed you.

And, Father, we pray that we will be a people that will take the principle of this blessing.

And that, Lord, we will exalt you above everything else.

And, Lord, that that blessing will return to us so we can bless others in our

own families, Lord, in our own communities, in our own nation,

and throughout the world.

Father, we love you, and it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

Thank you. You can be seated.

There's a lot of debate over whether we were really a Christian nation when

founded, and I don't mean in this sermon to say that we were or we weren't,

but we know that many of the people involved in the founding of this nation,

the United States of America, that they had a belief in Jesus.

Some may have just been deists that just believed there was a God out there

and he created us and sent us on our own.

I mean, there's all kinds of different ideologies about who people were.

But I don't want you to miss this. culturally speaking, everyone in the United

States, as it started out, embraced the Bible as the basis for a civilized society,

a civilized social order.

The Bible was your go-to when you wanted to know how to live.

That was the culture that was available, that was there at the time this nation was founded.

And I want you to know that in this day-to-day of moral confusion,

where it's like, believe whatever you want.

If you believe this plant over here is God, that's okay.

Well, good luck if this is what you believe, because that's going to let you down.

But people are believing, saying our belief in God is the same as believing this plant is a God.

I mean, there's this circumstantial, whatever you need to do at the moment is

okay, even if it's different than what you did 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago.

There's this confusion that's out there. What's right? What's wrong? Who's God? Who's not?

And there's a situational ethics that gets promoted all the time.

One situation might be different than another. You can act this way here,

and you can act a whole different way there instead of being a person of morality,

instead of being a person that has integrity.

We need to remember the anchors that we have in God's Word that will not falter,

will not let us down, that can be counted on time after time after time.

You see, our greatest strength as the United States of America has never been

just its army or its economy, but really the true strength of our nation.

Is our moral and spiritual foundation that is rooted in Scripture.

And that is something you cannot get away from. When you go to Washington,

D.C., I hope someday I have the privilege, but some of you that have been there

have shared with me the things that are inscribed on some of the great buildings in Washington, D.C.

Now, not just in God we trust, but in certain places, Scripture verses that

are engraved into those buildings where decisions for a whole nation are taking place.

But it's on this bedrock of this Judeo-Christian, this biblical ethic,

that our founding documents were formed.

And it's from that that we need to get back to that. You see,

I want to walk this morning as quickly as I can, respecting your time,

but trying to do a good job as well.

I want to go through seven biblical principles that our nation was founded on

that helped shape this country that should be in the church today and should

also be in our nation today.

And so as we go through these, I pray that the Lord blesses you in this.

And so I just want to hit them and we'll just go. Each of these could be a sermon

on their own, and maybe someday they will be, but not today.

But there's seven of these that I just want to go through with you.

I want to talk about the structural integrity of the freedoms that we have here, of being a free people.

First this morning is the dignity of human life.

Exodus 20, 13, we know that scripture. It says, thou shalt not kill.

And in Matthew, Jesus says, hey, obey God, and that means obey the Ten Commandments,

but he also says to love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew 22, 39.

When we think about the dignity of human life, so many times this is lost today.

This is lost not just with love.

The whole abortion issue or the violence in movies and video games and everything else.

But really, it's missed because we fail to remember that Scripture teaches us

the profound value of every single human life, born and unborn, I will add to that.

That each person has worth and each person has dignity just because of the fact

that they were created by God.

The Declaration of Independence says that every person has the right,

to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.

When we think about that, that language is rooted in the Bible and the Bible's

understanding of human worth and how valuable are you to God.

How valuable is every person on this planet to God?

He loves you this morning. He loves your counterpart that's in another part of the world as well.

As a matter of fact, He loves you, He loves them so much, He gave His only begotten

Son to die on a cross for them.

And we, church, cannot lose sight of this fact here, that we need to have the

dignity for the life that God gives us, that He has given us.

You know, our nation, and many of you in here, we've sent men and women off

to fight in battles that weren't ours.

We fought for other people's liberty. We fought to see another group free.

We sought to see and fought to see another group protected from other people

encroaching on their freedom and trying to enslave them as well.

All around the world, we've respected, tried to, I believe, the dignity of human

life in one degree or another.

But I want you to know this morning, freedom is not first about your rights,

but it's about your responsibility to honor the image of God that's in other

people, in other men, in other women, in these boys and these girls,

in the faces we have yet to see of the unborn.

Life is so precious. It's so easy to take, so easy to destroy.

But can you bring that life back into that person? Only God can.

Life is precious. Life is amazing. I want to ask you a question,

and we'll go to the second one.

But how would our politics in the United States be?

Our social media, our conversations change if we truly believe that every person

was bearing the image of God?

How would that change? Now, I know what some of you are saying,

man, Mike, there's some dirty rotten people in this world.

They're ugly and they treat other people ugly. They've treated me bad.

Do they still bear the image of God?

And I'll say, yeah, we're all created in God's image.

But some of us have a little bit more yucky stuff caked on than others.

It takes a little bit more cleaning, a little bit more polishing,

a little bit more coming before the throne of grace and asking God to forgive

us for that to be washed away so that the image of God can shine brightly with others.

But how would things change if we, even in the church, saw other people outside

of the church even as image bearers of the church?

The image of God, of the reflection of Jesus just waiting to get out,

if we could help them to find the cleanliness that comes from seeking forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

So the dignity of human life was a foundational part of our ethic in the United

States of America, and it still is today, and we need to get back to bring back

that dignity to human life.

Secondly, the traditional family. In Genesis 2, verses 21 through 24,

Genesis 2:21–24

it talks about the creation of woman out of the side of man,

and that whole amazing, amazing account.

When we think about what is involved in that and the subsequent scriptures as we go,

we see that the biblical view of marriage and family, God's design,

has been the backbone of our social order ever since that creative event.

That when the traditional family erodes in society, that society falls,

it breaks, it goes apart.

When the marriage is redefined as something other than God's plan as one man

and one woman, at one time, together with the children that God brings them,

when that goes away, society begins to crumble.

You see, God designed marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman.

For the nurturing of the children that would come to them in the context of

love and that the parents would instruct the children.

And to us, it seems common sense, right? To a world that has lost their mooring

of what is right and what is wrong, this is profound. Why?

What is this all about? Well, I think if we want America to be strong again,

we need to take a look in the church, and I just don't mean this church by any

means, but in the church as a whole, we've got to begin to do things that strengthen

marriages even before they start.

We need to begin to honor God's design as one man, one woman at one time in

that committed relationship.

And folks, we've got to make sure that we are discipling our children at home,

that we are intentional about that.

We just can't blame whatever goes on in our United States as outside forces.

We've got to look to our own marriages, our own homes.

Look inside first, protect this traditional family, because if we won't, no one else will.

If we won't protect marriage in the church, who else is going to protect it?

There's all kinds of definitions out there these days. And so I just want to

encourage you, and we'll move on to the next point.

Before we start complaining about Washington, D.C., Democrat or Republican,

President, Congress, whomever, we need to first ask what's happening in our

own homes and our own living rooms.

We need to ask what is the conversation at our dinner tables at night,

if we even have conversations around the dinner tables anymore.

And lastly, we need to ask ourselves what is happening in our prayer closets.

We can pray all we want for the United States, for the Congress,

for the president, but we need not to neglect our homes.

We need not to neglect our families.

And so I know I'm hitting this pretty hard, but it's so vital because you see

when society started to go down and the church didn't step up as a whole,

that the divorce rate in the world outside the church was horrible,

over 50%, but guess what it was in the church? 50%.

So if I were to come down here and I were to marry a couple,

there'd be a 50-50 chance that they would stay together in the church,

talking about Christian young people. Does that blow you away?

I don't know what the statistics are today because that statistic,

if I could spit it out, is about 10 years old.

So what are we doing to protect our families?

What are we doing to protect the integrity of the traditional family within

our congregation, within our communities?

A third, the third pillar, this foundation of American freedom that we need

to shore up today is this idea of a national work ethic.

Now, I'm not talking about some kind of socialist type thing,

but I'm just talking about looking at trying to hire someone to work for your

business, it's hard today because people don't want to work.

So we see a degradation of that, right?

And so this was one of the pillars that made our nation great.

Second Thessalonians 3.10 says, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.

My kids know this very well, especially when it gets close to dinner time and

they wanted to eat, and the trash was not taken out, nor was their room clean.

Sometimes they would have to wait for dinners unless they did an end around

and snuck something from the fridge without me knowing.

But it's this idea that we try to impress upon our children.

Baked into the American spirit is the desire to give an honest day's work for

an honest day's wage. That responsibility that,

We're going to work for what we have, that God has enabled us with the strength

we have to do the work that he's called us to do.

The Spirit helped us, that Spirit, I should say, helped us when the Great Depression came around.

Now, I know maybe your grandparents and mine, they got some bad publicity because

they were called hoarders.

And I know my grandparents, Grandma Raffa Huey on my mom's side,

they had a whole garage burn up with all their treasures in it.

And by treasures, I mean junk they collected throughout the years,

right? And they didn't miss it when it was gone.

But through the Great Depression, they had to work and scrounge for every little

piece, every little morsel that they could have.

My grandparents were some of

the ones that came out to Central California during the Great Depression.

Maybe you've heard of the book, The Grapes of Wrath. They were the Grapes of Wrath kind of people.

Came out to California following the agriculture to go out and to pick tomatoes

and grapes and cotton and whatever else they could to survive.

But it was that work ethic that had lasted over 150 years at that time,

now over 250 years, that we need to make sure that we teach our kids and that

we're not afraid to work.

This ethic came from the biblical mandates of how we are to be about our work,

our stewardship, and our responsibility as people.

There's a story in the New Testament, where after Jesus ascended to heaven,

there's a group of people, man, they're just standing around looking and praising

God. They're worshiping, hallelujah, praise be to God, singing whatever songs

and hymns they would sing.

And they're just waiting for Jesus to come back because he said he would return.

But the problem was they were spending all their time worshiping and doing that.

They weren't working and they expected someone else to feed them.

And that's where the apostle Paul writes what I read just a few minutes ago.

Hey, tell them if If they're not going to work, they're not going to eat.

Jesus is coming back, but there's work to do. And so tell them,

yes, worship God, but also do the work because that is part of their worship.

And a lot of times we miss out on that. You see, freedom isn't laziness.

Freedom was never meant to be a reason to be lazy, but freedom is the opportunity,

the free opportunity to serve God and to serve our neighbor with our gifts and

talents and whatever else God has given us.

And a Christian work ethic means this. It means that we see our jobs Yes.

Not just on Sundays, but we see our jobs every day as arenas,

places where we go to worship God and where we go to witness to other people.

When I was in college, Bible college, I got a summer job doing some construction cleanup.

And so we'd go around after all the buildings were being built and processed,

and we would clean up the site so that the next day, you know,

the framers could come in. The next day, you know, the sheetrock guys would come in.

And the next day, they did a lot of stucco in Central California.

They'd come in to do the stucco. And every day we were there,

multiple houses in this neighborhood, just cleaning up the stuff so that it

was a safe work environment for those that came after me.

Well, I got paired with these two yahoos, man. And they were the laziest guys I had ever known.

I hope that they came to faith in Christ, but I don't know that they did.

And so a lot of times I found out they were sleeping in these new houses out

in the corner and I'm out there trying to do all the work.

I'm like, this is ridiculous. Well, being a young guy, I wasn't very assertive

like I maybe am now at times.

I was just sucking it up and just doing the work, but other people noticed.

The people in the neighborhood noticed.

The owners of the company that was paying us for a wage noticed.

They offered me a full-time job going on and fired those other two guys.

But I'm like, well, that's great, thank you, but I've got a calling to do the

Lord's work, so I'm going back to Bible college.

But it's indicative of some of the people that maybe we work with at times in

our jobs or have worked with.

You see, in my work, just doing what I was supposed to do, there was a witness

that was going on to people.

I was able to share Jesus with other people just because of that.

Tomorrow when you go to work.

I want you to work as people that are free in Christ, serving the Lord,

not just merely serving your employer or a boss.

Work whatever you do to the glory of God and work as if you are working for

the Lord, I believe the scripture says.

A fourth this morning, and we'll speed up here a little bit.

The fourth pillar is a God-centered education.

Deuteronomy 6, 7, I preached on that a few weeks ago, the Shema,

to have the Lord's Word on your mind written on your doorpost.

I mean, you can go and read that, but Ephesians 6, 4 kind of expands on that a little bit more.

Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training

and instruction, the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

And Proverbs 1, 7 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,

but fools despise wisdom and instructions.

Scripture commands parents to diligently teach God's Word at home,

along the road, at bedtime, and in the morning.

And that's what parents are called to do. That's what Mellie and I tried to

do with our kids, was to teach them the Word, to point out situations,

to drag them to church, to drag them to district assembly and every youth and

children's thing we could think of.

We counted this as one of our responsibilities as parents, not just drag them

somewhere and then dump them, but to model that, to teach that,

to make sure that we are personally engaged. And, you know, the scripture says

the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom or knowledge.

You know, you can't truly understand creation without knowing its creator.

There's a purpose behind everything that's created. Even those stinking mosquitoes,

there's a purpose behind them.

But we've got to know the Creator, and we've got to know Him.

We've got to have that wisdom and that knowledge that comes from God.

You know, many of America's earliest universities, you can see them on the screen

there, maybe not, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, they were founded by

Christian leaders with the explicit purpose to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life.

I mean, these very ultra-liberal schools now were not always that way.

They have drifted from their intended purpose to train men and women for ministry,

to reach out to Native Americans with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I believe Dartmouth was founded for that express purpose.

My, have we drifted. But even going down a little bit, if you've ever heard

of the New England Primer or Primer, however you say that, it taught children

to read using biblical truths, biblical principles. Here's a couple of them.

A, in Adam's fall, we sinned all to learn what the letter A was all about.

B, heaven to find the Bible mind.

You know, teach people, if you want to get to heaven, you got to mind the Bible

and what it says. And, you know, just an incredible book. If you're ever able

to get a reprint of that, I would suggest it.

And just to look through that, what were our children taught?

So I want to say this gently as I can.

But if we fail to teach the next generation the fear of the Lord,

we're going to hand them a nation without a moral and spiritual compass,

and the drift is going to continue.

The drift will become worse.

I'm not trying to scare you or play any scare tactics. I'm just saying education is so important.

How you educate your children, how you bring them along and bring them up in

the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And I'm not just talking to our younger parents.

I'm talking to your grandparents. I'm talking to parents-to-be one day.

This is so vital. I'm talking church. We've got to educate the children that

come through this church about what is right and what is wrong. But that starts at home.

So we've got to be intentional in our discipleship. Fifth this morning,

the Abrahamic covenant of righteousness.

You know, in Genesis 12, 1 through 4, God calls Abraham and he says,

I'm going to make you a great nation. Through you, a great nation will come.

You won't even be able to count them because there's going to be so many,

like the sand on a seashore or the stars in the sky.

And he makes this promise that they will be a blessing. They'll be a great nation.

Galatians 3, 7 says, understand then that those who have faith are children of Abraham.

So that faith covenant of righteousness was going to extend even past the people

that would have Jewish heritage to those that would believe in Jesus.

And Proverbs 14, 34 says, Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.

Remember, God promised Abraham, I will bless you. You shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

There's a pattern there. there's a principle that we see here.

Abraham believed God, and so he obeyed, and God formed him, his offspring,

into the nation of Israel.

But the principle here, again, is clear. Nations, and I believe individuals

who obey God's moral truth, are blessed.

There's a blessing when you obey what God wants you to do.

But if you reject it, those who reject it, they bring judgment on themselves.

We don't want to be people that are doomed to judgment.

We want to be people that experience God's blessing because we're engaged in

following what God wants us to do.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying America is Israel.

Please hear me clearly on that.

All right? We are not the nation of Israel.

The moral principle still stands. Righteousness exalts a nation.

Righteousness lifts people up.

Sin tears down a nation. Sin will bring people down. That's a biblical principle you can't get around.

It's a biblical principle we need to take to heart individually,

but corporately as a church and definitely as a nation.

Our prayer should not merely be God bless America, but God, make America righteous starting with me.

Let's start right here with what we can control.

Sixth this morning, common decency. Matthew 22, 39 again, I've read it earlier.

Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said.

The second and greatest commandment.

Decent nations are built from decent people.

Is that an easy, logical thing to surmise? If you want a decent nation,

then it's got to have decent people within it, people that choose to do the

honest and the honorable thing, not just what's convenient or what will get you by.

And historically, I've got to tell you, Americans have sacrificed in wars so

that other people can be free.

We've sacrificed in times where

there's been disasters. We've sent food over there so people can eat.

We've clothed the naked. We've welcomed the oppressed peoples to our own shores.

As a matter of fact, the Statue of Liberty, beautiful icon of our nation,

it has this famous poem, or at least a line from it, give me your tired,

your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, a symbol of welcoming

those in our world who are oppressed.

So to come to the shores, go through our process of immigration,

of naturalization, come to our shores, and you're going to find this. Come about.

Because why? Why do we do that? Why do we make that crazy offer?

Well, because we're people that have a common decency.

We're people that want to see other people treated well. We want to love our

neighbor as we love ourself.

And patriotism, that does not love the neighbor.

I'm going to say patriotism that does not love the immigrant,

the poor, the vulnerable. That's not biblical patriotism.

We leave out the decency in that, the decency toward others.

Folks, we are called to love God with all that we are, but we're called to love

our neighbor as ourself.

Now, I believe that we should do all we can to make other nations a great places

that people won't want to leave.

I think that's a great thing that we have tried to be about.

But when they show up on our shores, and I'll say whether they're here the right

way or the wrong way, we still need to be decent toward people.

Treat them with the love that God expects us to show. Now, part of that is encouraging

them to go about things the right way. Don't get me wrong in that.

But there's still the mandate that we are to love them.

That we are to have this powerful witness with everyday Christian decency and

treating other people that way.

This week, maybe consider one way you can love on your neighbor as you go and

live life with common decency.

Last but not least, and I think this is probably one of the most important ones

that is neglected in our nation, and one of the pillars that may be cracking but need to be restored.

Hebrews 9.27. So if you're looking for Hebrews, you don't have to wait till

next week. Here's a sneak peek. Hebrews 9.27.

I think about this when you consider people who don't care about God,

who in the face of God are doing awful things.

And kind of going off the last point, and this isn't in my notes,

this just kind of hit me right now.

When you consider the awful things that people aren't even afraid of a living

God, the indecent things, the way that other people are treated,

my, we need to remember this, Hebrews 9, 27.

Just as people are destined to die once, everybody's going to die.

It goes on to say, and after that, face the judgment.

Everyone is going to have to give an account one day. Everyone.

You, me, those people that treat you great, those people that treat you lousy,

we have lost this personal accountability to God.

Even in the church, we've got to remember that we are accountable to God,

that we're going to have to explain to God why we do what we do.

And I hope, My prayer is that each and every one of us has the advocate,

has Christ in our corner, has Christ who shed his blood for us,

who poured out his grace upon us.

You see, the greatest restraint against evil is the knowledge that one day each

and every person is going to have to stand before God Almighty and be accountable

for the life that they live.

You're not going to be accountable to me. You're going to be accountable to God.

Now, I'm going to be accountable to God for you.

I'm going to have to give an account as to what I've preached to you,

as to what I've taught you, as to how I've lived my life before you.

Each one of us will have to do that. We're responsible for what we do and for what we neglect to do.

There's a penalty for right and wrong. There's a blessing and there's a cursing.

But there's a blessing if we remember for what is right, what is noble, and what is just.

This personal accountability is so important that someone once asked Daniel

Webster, what is the most sobering thought that has ever entered into your mind?

And Daniel Webster, okay, the dictionary guy, for lack of a better term at this

moment, here's what he said.

My personal accountability to God is the most sobering thought that has ever entered my mind.

That one day Daniel Webster knew he was going to have to stand before God and

to be accountable to him.

Now, I kind of wonder and worry about Daniel Webster. Gratefully,

he won't be accountable for the dictionary that is out now that has some words

he probably never thought or dreamed that would be in there.

So much more of a colorful vocabulary for just keeping it PG.

But we know that nations, they rise. Nations, they'll fall. Flags change. Borders change.

But every soul here and abroad will stand before Christ.

And so what that tells me is that true freedom is not simply political.

A true freedom needs the spiritual element too. And what I mean by that is the

spiritual element that is freedom from sin, through the cross,

the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That's true freedom. That's what brings true freedom to a people.

Not just political liberation, but spiritual liberation, to truly live as free

people, to bless and to love others.

America has indeed, I believe, known this great blessing, not because we're

better than others, okay, but for much of our history, many people honored God,

and they honored the Word of God.

And that brought about, they followed the Bible.

Whether they had a relationship with Jesus or not, that was part of their culture.

And blessing came as a result of that and will still come.

But today the question not as just like, where is America in the standing?

But the question we need to ask you is, where am I with God?

You might have this 250 years of freedom and.

But do you have, are you living in spiritual freedom today? Have you been freed up from sin?

Have your sins been forgiven by the Savior? Are you trusting Christ as your Savior?

Have you asked Him to forgive your sin, to cleanse of your sin,

and to help you live the life that He's calling you to live?

That's where true freedom comes in. And there's people living in oppressed nations

now that have that freedom, even if they don't have political freedom.

The freedom to gather in worship, the freedom to say whatever they want to say,

to do whatever they want to do.

They might not have that politically, but guess what? They have it spiritually.

And folks, we have both.

We have the freedom to do whatever we want to do within decent boundaries.

We also have spiritual freedom to do whatever Jesus wants us to do.

What are we doing with that freedom?

What are we doing with the freedom that we've been blessed with?

As we sang this morning, America, America, God shed his grace on thee.

What are we doing in that grace?

Well, I hope first and foremost that there is a sense of gratitude that wells up in your heart.

I hope this morning that you are so grateful.

As I saw those big ships come in, the airplanes flying on the TV yesterday,

things going on in New York, there was a great deal of humility saying,

Lord, and I talked to Brother Chris about this earlier, we could have been born

in any other nation in the world.

We had no control over that, but it's by God's grace that we are here.

And so the humility saying, thank you, Lord, the grace that we have been shown,

in just our generations here, it's astounding.

We should be grateful for this nation, for those who have sacrificed,

who are willing to give up everything

to go and to serve our nation in the different branches of service.

And we are grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy today.

And so maybe this echoes with us the scripture we read earlier, blessed is the nation.

Whose God is the Lord. And church, the most patriotic thing we can do today

is not just sing about freedom, but perhaps it's surrender afresh to the Lord who gives that freedom.

Would you recommit to the Lord today? If it doesn't start in the church,

it's not going to start in Congress.

If it doesn't start here in our Sunday school classrooms, it's not going to

start in the school classrooms, whether or not the teacher is a Christian.

It's got to start with you and me individually dedicating, surrendering ourself to God.

And saying, God, here I am, so grateful. Here I am.

Just remembering how you've blessed me and how you've blessed our nation.

And so what step will you take this morning? What's the next step you will take?

Maybe it is that remembrance. You're just going to remember all the good things

that God has blessed you with.

I heard someone on the radio saying, you know, it's easy for me to get down

and it's easy for me to start listing off all the things that are wrong in my life and in the world.

But when I flip the switch and I begin to name everything that I'm blessed with,

I can just go on and on for hours.

As we used to sing, and we sing sometimes still, we can count our blessings,

naming them one by one, and our attitude changes.

That's what remembrance does. Remember God's blessing on our nation,

and remember that God will do that again.

But church, we've got to start in our own lives making sure we're committed

to these seven principles that we've talked about this morning.

Maybe this morning, your next step is repentance.

Repentance for where we are as people, as individuals, as a nation.

Maybe we've drifted from some of these individually.

Maybe we've let society dictate what the family's supposed to be,

and we've bought into that.

Or maybe in our work ethic, we've just kind of been being lazy in the freedom

we have and not doing all we can to glorify God through the gifts and talents,

the strength that he's given us?

I mean, I could go down each one and re-preach the sermon to you,

but I know you want to get home to lunch pretty soon.

But is there something that you need to turn away from and turn back to God in?

It's a sobering thought. Well, we're Christians. What do you mean we have to

repent? We need to repent.

The church as a whole, we need to take back some issues. I was talking to someone

not long ago, and we were lamenting, right? After age 50, you get to lament.

That means you get to complain about life. So Derek, you're almost there, buddy.

You're almost there. Well, you can complain anyway. But in this lamenting,

I started thinking because we were talking about, man, when I was a kid,

we were coming to church Sunday morning for Sunday school, actually back up.

We were coming to do bus ministry at eight o'clock in the morning,

getting on the Sunday school bus, going, picking people up, getting to church

by Sunday school time, having worship together, and then getting back on the

Sunday school bus, taking all them kids back home,

and then going home and eating a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken,

maybe getting a nap in, and then coming back for Sunday night service.

And then Tuesday night was some church meetings.

Wednesday night was full-blown Bible studies. Thursday night was door knocking and visitation.

And then Saturday was going out and knocking on doors and inviting people to

come ride to Sunday school bus so we could do all that over again starting Sunday morning.

Oh, that church life that some of us grew up in, right?

And the lament was, man, now the church, if we're lucky, meets not just Sunday

morning, but maybe a Wednesday.

And I'm saying this now that we've canceled Wednesday night because of all the

parking lot stuff, right?

Oh, God's got a sense of humor.

But now if we have even a board meeting or something else during the week,

it throws everyone's schedules off.

And the lament was, well, why do some people give up Wednesday nights?

Because when I was in high school, not that long ago, class of 1990, praise the Lord.

Amen. I know I get an amen from less.

Wednesday nights were protected from sports, from anything else,

even from Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts. Why? That was church night.

And the church protected that. The church would be at a school board meeting,

church members saying, uh-uh, we can't have this basketball game on Wednesday nights.

We got the most incredible thing going on, studying the Bible with our whole church.

And so we gave that up.

We've kind of done the same thing with other things in the church.

I'm not saying we're going to reinstitute all that, although it's not a bad thing.

What I'm saying is maybe there's some things we need to repent of that we haven't

done to stand up for those things that are righteous and right and true.

Folks, maybe what we need is the next step, the third step, and that is renewal.

We need to ask God to raise up families, to raise up workers,

teachers, leaders, and churches to live out these seven truths we talked about this morning.

And I'm humbled today thinking of these seven and where our church is at.

I believe these are still our values. I believe in our neck of the woods over

here in southwestern Idaho, These are still some of the ethic,

a lot of the ethic by which we work and by which we live,

but we can never take that for granted.

We've always got to be mindful of that, not to drift. A drift doesn't happen

like this, just off the edge of a cliff one day, right?

It happens slowly. We believe in the truth, but then we just drift slowly away,

and we just keep on going, maybe not even knowing that we are moving.

And before we know it, we are at the edge, and we fall off of that edge,

so far away from the anchor, so far away from the truth, and we've got to protect that.

So where are you today? Do you need to remember God's blessings?

Do you need to repent of something.

Turn away from something that you've been drifting with and start getting back

to the truth. Or maybe you just need to ask God, would you renew me?

Maybe you're here this morning and you don't have a relationship with Jesus.

And some of this stuff, yeah, I believe in those seven things,

but what are you talking about? The spiritual freedom.

It's the deepest kind of freedom you can have.

And that only happens through relationship with Jesus Christ,

through you, laying down your sin, asking God to forgive you through Jesus what

He's done, accepting Christ and stepping into the life that God has planned for you.

That kind of renewal is a life-transforming thing that happens.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.