Blessed Is The Nation

The psalmist says the people of God should rejoice because their God is greater, wiser and more powerful than the nations that do not know Him.

He says their plans are reduced to nothing by God, there schemes and trapse have no effect. But in contrast the Lord’s counsel stand for ever, the thoughts of his heart, the plans, the providence, the purposes of God, those will continue to all generations of God’s beloved.

Then our key verse, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.”

This is a kind of summation of the reasons to rejoice in the Lord to this point in the Psalms. Israel was a blessed nation because their God was the Lord, Jehovah. They were blessed as a people because God chose them for His own inheritance.

Israel as a nation and as a people should no longer be in existence, from the time of Egypt’s Pharoah drowning Hebrew baby boys in the Nile, to Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem, to the Medieval king of Europe when banished the Jews from their kingdoms, to the armies of Islam who occupied their anciet homeland and made them slave once again, to Hitler who tried in all his Satanic power to destroy every Jewish man, woman and child in all of Europe. And even today in the Middle east where radical Islamics are still driving out and killing God’s chosen people.

The Jewish nation should not exist. And yet it does. If fact in 1948 they reentered their homeland and became a nation again among the nations of the world. After all they endured, it should not have happened and there is only one reason it could have happened, they were God people and God would never desert them, nor deny the promises He have to them.

Blessed Is Our Nation?

I’ve already said that this Psalm is about Israel, and we cannot take that away and be able to understand it properly. But once we do understand that truth then we can apply that truth to others who share a relationship with God.

Our nation is unique in that it was founded in the belief of a sovereign God who ruled over the affairs of men. It was for the purpose of freely worshipping God that many of the first settlers came to America.  It was our founding, built from the ground up God fearing government, and the many national revivals that have swept this nation that have been the major reasons for the prosperity and blessings of our country in the past. And it is the turning from God and His blessings that is opening the door to the chaos and destitution of this country today.

Can we apply Psalm 33:12 to the Unites States? Are be being ignorant or arrogant by thinking that God’s national blessing can apply even to a gentile nation?  Can we honestly say that we are or at least were a nation whose God is the Lord?

I think the evidence is throughout our history. It is written into the documents that brought us to life and now sustain that life. The Declaration of Independence speaks of being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." The Colonial Congress and the Constitutional Convention were opened daily in prayer.  The motto of our country, imprinted upon our coins is "In God We Trust."  We pledge allegiance to “one nation, under God.”

Evidence of Our Nation and Our God

The Colonies

Eleven of the first 13 States required faith in Jesus Christ and the Bible as qualification for holding public office.

November 3, 1620 - King James I grants the Charter of the Plymouth council. "In the hope thereby to advance the enlargement of the Christian religion, to the glory of God Almighty."

November 11, 1620 - The Pilgrims sign the Mayflower Compact aboard the Mayflower, in Plymouth harbor. “Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia;
The Revolutionary War

Summer 12, 1775 - Continental Congress issues a call to all citizens to fast and pray and confess their sin that the Lord might bless the land.       "And it is recommended to Christians of all denominations, to assemble for public worship, and to abstain from servile labor and recreation on said day."
Our Constitution

At least 50 out of the 55 men who framed the Constitution of the United States were professing Christians. (M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company, Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982).

James Madison who was the primary architect of the Constitution. Said, “We have staked the future of government not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions on the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
The Presidents

George Washington’s Inaugural Address, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

(Historical note to above: Washington added the pledge, "So help me God," to his inaugural oath. He then kissed the Bible to affirm his submission to the King of Kings.

John Adams, our first vice president and second president, wrote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --1798

Thomas Jefferson, our third president and one of the principle framers of the Constitution D.C.: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" --1781

Our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, said this, "Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the Foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?" --1837

Abraham Lincoln Proclamation for National Day of Prayer and fasting

April 30, 1863 - President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. “ We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.  We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the ascended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.- Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 1863

Gerald Ford, our 38th president, quoted a 1955 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower on December 5, 1974: "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first--the most basic--expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be." -1974

Yes, as improbable as it may seem today, We were once a nation whose God is the Lord. And having begun on that foundation it is no wonder that the blessing that grew from that planting are no longer evident. It is no mystery why we are seeing chaos, riots and anarchy in our streets, our capitals and even our homes. We have cast aside the beliefs of our forefathers, the foundation of scripture and have forsaken God who blessed this nation. - Pastor Kris Minefee