Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

Psalm 33 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.
² Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.
³ Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
⁴ For the word of the Lord is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness.
⁵ He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord.

⁶ By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
⁷ He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
⁸ Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
⁹ For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.
¹⁰ The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
¹¹ The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
¹² Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.

¹³ The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men;
¹⁴ From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth,
¹⁵ He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works.
¹⁶ The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength.
¹⁷ A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness,
¹⁹ To deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine.
²⁰ Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.
²¹ For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name.
²² Let Your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, According as we have hoped in You.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.  What then of our nation? What will be our condition? We have many gods, but no longer is the Lord our God. Try as they might to rewrite history those who wish to separate this country from its foundation of faith in God cannot deny that this nation was founded with the Lord as God. The evidence can be found in the lives and stories of our founding fathers. It is written and recorded in countless documents. God is written into the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and in God we trust is printed on our very currency. There is an effort to rewrite that history and remove God from our foundation. The process began, and successfully I might add, by changing the present. If God is no longer allowed in schools, then generations after generation will know less of Him. That process started about 50 years ago and has finally become reality.

There are two primary ways to attempt to take away the reality of God’s existence and His sovereignty. The first is to deny that God exists. Atheists and agnostics subscribe to this method of removing God from our society. This is nothing new, the lie that they believe or the lie that they tell has been around since man’s beginning. Those who refuse to refuse to be accountable to someone greater than themselves must then deny that the greater one exists. Their mistake though is in confusing religion and faith with God Himself. They rail against religion when in reality they have created their own religion. They attack those who profess faith in God, yet their faith is based on unseen and unproven theories and philosophies created by people, attempting like them, to explain the mysteries of creation apart from God. By their method they become part of the other method, which is to make gods of many things, or anything. This too is nothing new, but rather is an old lie which has gained new popularity. Rather than try to deny that God exists, these people promote a philosophy and a theology which says anything can be your god. Paul speaks of this in Romans 1:18-25.

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.   ²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. ²⁵ For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Certainly in our culture, our society and now even in the laws of our land acknowledging the Lord as God is no longer acceptable, we truly have become a nation of many gods. Chief among the gods we serve as a nation are greed, materialism and self satisfaction. Greed is manifested throughout the social structure, those who have want more and those who do not have want what others have. When God is removed from the equation of provision and supply, those things become limited to what people have and there is a struggle over control of that finite amount of material and wealth. With God the supply is without limit, He alone can create something from nothing. The god of self satisfaction is also a partner with greed. It seeks fulfillment not only in material things, but also in emotional things, in desires, lusts, perversions and addictions of all kinds. When self satisfaction is god there is no end to what a person will do to serve their god.

The psalmist says: “The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.”      God revealed His plan from the beginning. He said:  “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ²⁸ God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”    Adam and Eve failed, when they believed the lie that the devil told that they needed to satisfy self to be like God, rather than walk in the likeness and image of God in which they were created. Still God had and has a plan, to redeem man and to restore sovereignty and dominion on the earth. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that plan. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation is God’s counsel, which stands forever. Philosophies of man and the governments they are associated with rise and fall, most lasting a few hundred years at best, a twinkling in God’s eternity.

“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.”   Blessed is the nation (and the individual) whose God is the Lord, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.  The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men;
 From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth,  He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works. The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength.  A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength.   May this be our prayer and our declaration:

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness,  To deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine.Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name.  Let Your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, According as we have hoped in You.     Thank You Jesus Christ, my Lord, my Savior, my God.     Amen.