July 04 2025

Friday July 04

“Blessed is the Nation…”

Psalm 33:11

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,

The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.

Proverbs 14:34

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any people.

Welcome to Pastor's Chat today. Happy Fourth of July. I pray today that you'll have the opportunity to celebrate America with millions of other people. We have been so blessed to be able to live in the greatest nation in the course of human history besides the nation of Israel. An America that was founded on Bible principles. An America that believed, as it was being founded by our forefathers, that we were created by God.

In God we trust is still on our coins and on our dollar bills and other bills. My friend, we are blessed and yet we live in a time when America is sick. We might even say, “America is terminally ill.”  Today I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a few things about America and our response as believers and what it should be as we pray for our country. Today, it's hard to pray, “God bless America”. You can't pray blessings on a country or a nation that has wandered away from God and has taken God out of our schools and out of our media and out of our social life and out of our politics.

It appears that we decided that we would exchange God for the things of this world, for material gain, for money, for prosperity, for success, for business, for bigness and all those things. My friend, God will not be set on a shelf. I want to remind us what the Scripture says in several verses: Psalm 33:11, "Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah, Yahweh." And Jehovah is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing Him, having a relationship with Him. More than anything else America needs God.

Through Jesus Christ, we can know God, experience God, worship God, and put God first in our lives. We need God. Blessed is that nation. The Bible says in Psalm 9:17, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Yes, if you read Romans 1:18-25, it reminds us that “when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. Neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened, … Professing to be wise they became fools,…and they began to worship the creature rather than the Creator”. 

The religion of America today seems to be humanism. The worship of man, the worship of man being a better person, doing good things and even having prosperity and being taken. It's all focused on man and finding the answers to our problems in science and psychology. But when we begin to focus back on God, wonderful things can happen in our land and in our country. In Proverbs 14:34 we are told that: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people”. When we are doing right things according to the word of God, living by the truth of God's principles and His precepts, the Ten Commandments, God, it says He exalts the nation. But when we allow sin, that's the transgression of God's word, transgression of God's law. It is a reproach to any people.

Psalm 12:8 tells us “The wicked prowl on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of man”. And so when we exalt wickedness as we have in Hollywood over the last number of years, then it says that then we will have wicked predators on every side. Oh, what a sad day we live in today when we see violence and corruption and immorality in our streets and displayed on our media with no one thinking a thing about it. It appears we've gotten used to the dark.

A couple things I want to close with as we think about what can we do. In Psalm 11:3, it says, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" You know, I used to think and read that verse and say, "Wow, we've destroyed the foundations of our country. What can we do? Should we just throw up our hands and quit?" No, my friend, in the last couple years the Lord put in my mind and heart we can do something! What can the righteous do? Well, there's another answer.

We can pray. We can seek the face of God. We can call on His name. We can turn back to Him. We can pray for America to have a revival, for America to repent, for America to come back to God. That's what we can pray. That's what the righteous can do when the foundations are destroyed. We can turn back to God. Ephesians 5:16 tells us to be "Redeeming the time." “Be wise. Don't be unwise, but redeeming the time because the days are evil”. And that means we buy up the opportunities more than ever before.

We have great opportunities to help people, to love people, to care for people, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is that day to buy up those opportunities. People are broken because of sin. And only Jesus can fix them. Today, let’s pray for America. Let's celebrate America. I still would rather live here than any other place on the planet. It's a great place to live.

I thank God for our country even today with all the problems we have. But we can do something about it. We can pray and we can live righteous, holy lives ourselves. And may God answer our prayer and bring this country back to Himself.

God bless and you have a wonderful Fourth of July.