4th Of July - Let God Be Praised! - Part 2

MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER

RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK

(Powerpoints used with this sermon are available at no charge. Just email me at mnewland@sstelco.com and request #343.)

TEXT: Psalm 78:1-4; Isaiah 33:22

Last week my message was entitled, “Let God be Praised!", which was based on Psalm 150:6, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!",

And also Psalm 106:1, “Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever."

Today I want to add another passage - Psalms 78:1-4, "My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. ... I will utter hidden things, things from of old - things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us.

"We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, His power, and the wonders He has done."

Last week, in my introduction I said, “We've gone a long ways away from our roots as Americans. Our school systems & colleges & universities have become so secularized - so distanced from religion -

"that huge chunks of information about the spiritual roots of our nation are neglected, & unless you hear it from Christians, when will you ever hear it?

So last week I mentioned some things that are worth knowing about the roots of our nation, about what’s right with America. And I pointed out:

“The first thing right with America is that the majority of our earliest settlers were people who came here primarily looking for religious freedom. Other nations, for the most part, came into existence by conquest for selfish & ambitious motives.

But it was primarily in the atmosphere of God, not gold, that America was born.”

Then I said, "The second thing right with America is that the founders of our nation had a strong desire to be pleasing to God & to do His will. After giving some illustrations to back that up, I said:

"But before I go any further, please remember that around 150 years passed by from the time of the earliest settlers to the beginning of our nation. And we’re not very proud of some of the things that happened during those years.” And I told you about some of those things.

But then something amazing happened! Beginning in 1734, a series of great crusades & revivals began to spread throughout the 13 Colonies.

So many people came to Christ that that era is known by historians as “The Great Awakening.” Tens of thousands dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ & were baptized.

ILL. Benjamin Franklin wrote, “It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants.

"From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families on every street.”

Then I asked the question: “Why am I telling you all this?” It was because this “Great Awakening” was a precursor to the American Revolution.

Our Founding Fathers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, those who wrote our Constitution & the Bill of Rights, those who put their lives on the line, who fought & died that we might be free – all these grew up & came into leadership while this “Great Awakening” was engulfing the land.

The generation that experienced the “Great Awakening,” those who had a strong desire to be pleasing to God & to do His will, became the leaders of the American Revolution!

Finally, I suggested that “America was founded by men & women who acknowledged God’s supreme rule over men & nations.”

They weren’t perfect. They weren’t all devout Christians, but they all acknowledged that God was the supreme ruler over men & nations.

With that, I ran out of time, & brought my sermon to a close, mentioning that there was more that could be said. So today's sermon is "Let God Be Praised! - Part 2".

IV. AMERICA WAS PROTECTED & DIRECTED BY GOD IN ITS FOUNDING

Continuing with that message, then, I also believe that America was protected & directed by God in its founding.

The British Empire at the time of the Revolutionary War possessed the most powerful fighting forces, both Army & Navy, on the face of the earth.

The rag-tag assembly of volunteers, farmers & tradesmen who composed the ranks of the Continental Army were out-manned, out-gunned, & out-financed. The colonies had virtually no chance of winning a war against England, short of God’s miraculous intervention. And that intervention seems to have happened.

In fact, both American & British observers of that time recorded their convic-tion that God had actually sided with the colonies against the British Empire.