Christ, Country and the Cross* (Romans 3)

As we celebrate Independence Day, Pastor Chris Teien invites us to reflect not only on our national freedom, but on the greater spiritual freedom offered through Jesus Christ. In this timeless message from Romans 3, discover how the story of America's founding points us toward the deeper hope of redemption found in the cross. True freedom doesn’t come from doing whatever we want—it comes from being made right with God.

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/16370119

Key Points:

1. Freedom requires dependence on God – (Romans 3:1–4)
 America’s founders understood that liberty came with sacrifice, and lasting freedom must be rooted in faith. We too must choose to live dependent on God, not ourselves.

2. We are not free to do whatever we want – (Romans 3:5–18)
 Sin is anything against God's will. Paul reminds us that apart from Christ, no one is righteous—not even one. Real freedom isn’t the license to sin but the power to live faithfully.

3. Justification comes through Jesus, not our performance – (Romans 3:19–26)
 The law reveals our need for a Savior. We are justified freely by God’s grace through faith in Christ, who became our atoning sacrifice and our propitiation.

4. Our only boast is in the Lord – (Romans 3:27–31)
 We bring nothing to God but our need. All we have and all we are in Christ should lead us to humility, gratitude, and praise—not pride or self-reliance.

Stories:

Pastor Chris shares historical reflections from American founders like John Adams, Benjamin Rush, and John Witherspoon—men who combined patriotic vision with strong faith in Jesus. He also reflects on the shift in modern culture and the importance of raising children to know where their true citizenship lies.

Quotes:

• “You and I couldn’t be good enough. You and I couldn’t do good enough. We couldn’t get through this life without God's help.”
• “God accepts the death of Christ as the sacrifice for our sins and justifies us.”
• “This is your country, but it’s not your home.”

Takeaways:

• Reflect: Am I living in dependence on God or in self-reliance?
• Apply: Let your freedom lead you to faithfulness, not selfishness.
• Take a Step: Boast in Christ this week—share your testimony with someone.
• Next Step: Recommit your heart and priorities to Jesus as your ultimate King.

Scripture:

• Romans 3:1–31 – Humanity’s guilt, God’s righteousness, and the gift of justification
• Psalm 51:4 – David’s confession and God’s justice
• 2 Cor 5:21 – Christ became sin for us
• 1 John 4:10 – Jesus as the propitiation for our sins
• Gen 18:18 – God’s promise to Abraham
• James 2:10 – Breaking one law breaks the whole law
• 1 Cor 1:26–31 – Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord

Keywords:

Freedom, Justification, 4th of July, Romans 3, American Founders, Salvation, Grace, Gospel, Cross, Independence Day Sermon

Challenge:

This week, as you celebrate your freedom as an American, don’t forget to celebrate the greater freedom you’ve been given in Christ. Let your allegiance to Jesus shape how you live, speak, serve, and love—for His glory.

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The WELL Faith Podcast offers encouraging, Bible-based messages from Pastor Chris Teien and guests. New sermons are released every Sunday. Replay episodes are marked with an asterisk. Find us online at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.Church in Virginia, MN. Email comments to wellfaith24@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Good morning, I'm Pastor Chris. Happy Fourth of July, happy birthday to our nation. What a great thing it is to be able to celebrate freedoms, freedoms that we have, freedoms that we need to fight to keep. And the people that say that this isn't a Christian nation, the atheists, these people that say, you know, this nation has nothing to do with religion, they're fighting very hard against anybody that uses any quotes from founding fathers or signers of the Declaration of Independence and whatnot. It's a big war between the people that say this was founded as a Christian nation and those who aren't. And all through the history of this nation, there has been difficulty, there's been toil, there's been all sorts of sacrifices that have been made. And when you think about this, John Adams said the general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. He went on to say in a letter that he wrote to Abigail. He wrote, This day will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. And this is what they said as they signed this declaration, as they put their lives on the line. Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American Medicine and Designer, recorded that day in his diary. In 1781, he wrote to John Adams, Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe to what was believed by many at that time to be our death warrants? The silence and gloom of the morning was interrupted. I well recollect, only for a moment, by Colonel Harrison of Virginia, a big guy, who said to Mr. Jerry, small in stature, at the table, I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Jerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body, I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead. The speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity which the whole business was conducted. And then it talks about the sacrifices that were made. And two things is one, celebrate our country and think, wow, so much has been done for us. I mean, roads, railroads, all sorts of stuff, water, all this stuff that we enjoy. Somebody did. Our nation was founded with sacrifice. This church was founded with sacrifice. It was hard work to bring this country along, and it's hard work to bring this church along. But whether country or church, we should pray. Let's pray right now. Lord, we just thank you so much that our nation is what it is, Lord. And we are we are Americans. We live in this country. We were born in, most of us were born into this country, and Lord, we just thank you for the freedoms that we've enjoyed. And we know that many people want to take these freedoms from us. They want to rewrite history and they want to write you out of it all, Lord, but help us to stand strong for you. Help us to proclaim your truth and message to all who are around, whether they want to hear it or not. Lord, help us to be faithful, to help establish Christian values in our nation and in our community, and help us to continue to establish this church for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

The year was 1776. King George III of England hired foreign mercenaries to wage war against the American colonists.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

And when you look at the American Revolution and things like that, it was a defensive act. The people that lived in America tried everything they could to try to have a peaceful solution. They were trying to submit to the governing authorities, like it says in Romans chapter 13, but it did not work out because the difficulty that was caused. So the King of England himself was in violation of Scripture. The colonists saw the war as a defensive action, not as an offensive war. And it is true that in 1775 and 1776, the Americans had presented the king with formal appeals for reconciliation. These peaceful pleas were met with armored military force and several violations of British common law in the English Bill of Rights. In 1770, the British fired upon unarmed citizens in the Boston Massacre. At Lexington, the command was don't fire unless fired upon, and the colonists therefore saw themselves as defending themselves after the conflict had been initiated by the British. So they wanted to be independent. They wanted to be set free from this insane king and all the things that they were told not to do. They weren't even supposed to have the Bible in their common language, and all these difficulties brought people to America. And they wanted to be independent. And sometimes we want to be independent. What we wanted is we want to be free. We wanted to be free to do whatever we want. Independence, according to the dictionary, is a freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like of others. And the gift of freedom is a gift, and every perfect gift comes from above. And if we want to continue to be free and to enjoy freedom, we need to stay dependent on God. And that's what I'd like to talk about in the short period of time that we have is proclaiming your declaration of independence on God. You and I, we want to be free, but free to do what? Obviously, we don't want a country full of people to be free to do whatever they want, you know, say, I don't want to be bound by any rules or laws because no society could live that way. I mean, what if I thought that the red light meant stop and you thought the red light meant look around and go ahead and go through it? It's better if we all agree the red light means stop, the green light goes means go, and that it's enforced that if you break those laws, there's penalties. So we don't want to be free from everything. We want to be free to do what's right. We want to be free to pursue God. We want to be free to live in a land and enjoy life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, safety, and so we need to be independent on God. So think about that. I'd like you by the time you leave here in prayer or something to say, God, I am independent on you. I want to be more independent on you and celebrate today your independence day. Now, a formal declaration and all that goes through it, you can maybe write that in your journal or your spiritual journal if you want. But we need God. We need God more than anything. Because when we try to live life without God, things do not work out very well. When we try to go through this life and say, eh, you know, God has some principles to live by, some standards to follow. He wrote some laws to his people, and I'm just gonna go do my own thing. Doing my own thing just leads to pain and difficulty for you and all the other people involved. Every time we sin, it not only affects us, but it often has like a ripple effect, and it affects those around us. We need to be independent on God. Dependent on God. We are free, but we are not free to live without faith and loyalty. We are required by the Lord to be faithful to him and to be loyal to him and to his people and to his church and to his will and to his standards and to his principles. And so to say that I'm free doesn't mean that you're free from faith and loyalty, nor did it mean for the original founders of America to be free was free from everything. They were free from oppressive rule, they were free from that bad king, but they were still required to be loyal and even to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. And when we pledge allegiance, think about that, okay? One, we won't this is the country we live in, but this is not our ultimate destination. Heaven is our eternal home. So first our allegiance is to our Lord and then to our country. So Paul writes in Romans, again, he's writing kind of the bad news to the Jewish people, God's chosen people, about their relationship with God. And he had said that they thought that they just had everything because they were God's chosen people, and you know that they were in tight with God because they are children of Abraham, and all this stuff continues on. But he's setting up an argument and then he's basically beating it down with his points and principles, saying it doesn't matter whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, there's one God, and you and I need to follow after him. And just because you were born a Jew, a child of Abraham, and you grew up with God's commands and God's law and everything, it doesn't mean that justifies you, that doesn't put you into a right relationship with God. It requires more, it requires belief and faith in Jesus Christ. So he writes, What advantage then is there in being a Jew? Or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way. First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. So they had the word of God. They were able to read it and have it for their lifetime. And in the word of God, the Torah that they had, the law that they had, there were principles that would bring them to a better life, to a more prosperous life, to a life that they would be blessed as they followed it, because God never gives us rules that are not for our benefit. He never just says, hey, follow these rules and let's ruin your fun. He always lays out his principles, his guidelines, because he created us, he knows how we were formed, and he wants us to follow his will so we don't hurt ourselves, so we don't hurt others, and so that we worship him instead of worshiping the things of the world. And it's a good thing to follow after the things of God, and so he's telling these Jews, he's like, hey, you had the word of God, that was a great benefit, and you were able to carry. And now, as Christians, we have a responsibility and a privilege to have the word of God and to carry the word of God and to learn the word of God. And many of us have it, we need to share it with others, we need to read it. Unfortunately, the Bible is the best-selling book in the world, and it's also among many people the least read, you know. When a pastor comes and visits their house, they're quick to pull it out and dust it out and stick it on the coffee table, like it's always there and used. But nonetheless, the word of God, we carry the word of God. It's a great thing to possess the word of God, to read the word of God, and to live out the word of God. So there's great advantage in that. Then Paul says, What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all. Let God be true and every man a liar, as it is written, so that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge. That actually comes from Psalm 51. David was taking responsibility from his sin, that proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge. David was saying, I sinned, I did what was wrong, and now I'm taking responsibility, and I know God that you are the one I'm ultimately accountable to. Paul then says, But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? I am using a human argument. Certainly not. If that were so, how could God judge the world? So here we have Paul, and he's laying out these arguments, and he's making it clear to you and I that even if all of the children of Abraham, if all the Jews did not follow after God, that God would still be faithful to his promise. God wasn't going to cancel out his promise because some people didn't choose to follow along. Whatever God promises, he will fulfill his promises. God cannot lie to himself. God is holy, God will do everything that he needs to fulfill his promise in every way. We can trust, we can trust that God will follow or that God will fulfill his promises. So we're not free to live without faith, and we're not free to live out loyal without loyalty. But why would we want to? Why would we want to go through this life without faith? What would it be like if we were in the dark and had no idea of what God offered and how we could have a relationship with him, how we could come to him in prayer with our every need, how we could thank him for all the good that he does. Sure there's things out there that aren't so good, things that aren't so perfect, but we can pray about it. We can take action to do things about it. When people try to shut us down and shut us up, we can speak out and gather together in larger numbers and share Christ and make sure they don't pass laws to say we can't share what the Bible says and we can vote for people in leadership. You know, we're still a democracy. So there are many things that we can do, but we want to be loyal to God. We want to be faithful to God. And it's also good if we live in a country that we can be loyal to also. Unfortunately, it seems like there's a lot of people that want to do away with the whole concept of America as a country, and it's sad. So we should pray about that too. But the point here is that we want to be faithful and we want to be loyal to God. We don't want to give up on that, we don't want to, we don't want freedom from that. God had promised Abraham in Genesis 18, 18, Abraham will surely become a great power and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. And as that promise continued on, we are able to enjoy now part of the promise that God has made. So God is faithful, God will be faithful, God will prove his word, and as you trust in God's word, you will see that it's true. Paul says in Romans 3:7, some might argue, if my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner? God is righteous, perfect, moral in every way, and you think, okay, we want to glorify God. We want to do all that we can to make God look good. So if I'm a liar, if I'm a deceiver, if I if I do everything against God, but God still shows me grace, and then maybe that will make him look good, maybe that will look make him look better. The next point out of that would be then I am not free to do whatever I selfishly desire. Many times we think that we have the plan, we have the right way. Even though we know it's against God's will, we think, you know, I can I can cheat right here. God won't care. I can do this thing, God won't know. God actually, God knows everything. God, nobody will know, nobody will care. But God calls us to live a life that pleases Him and honors Him, and so we can't do whatever we selfishly desire because it would hurt us. So Paul then says, why not say, as we are being slanderously reported, is saying, and as some claim we say, let us do evil that good may result. Their condemnation is deserved. What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all. We have already made the charge to the Jews and the Gentiles alike that we are all under sin. So think about that for a second, okay? If we're gonna say that, you know, why don't we just do evil that good may result? Alright? Because if we do, if we're really evil and wicked, yet God forgives us, then he sure is gonna look good, isn't he? Oh, God could even forgive you? What a great God you have. That'd almost be like going out and playing with the fireworks, you know, putting on a little high octane, cologne, gasoline, stuff like that, and saying, you know, that hospital burn unit, they do such a good job. Matter of fact, I'm gonna make them look really good because I'm a the more I burn myself, the better they're gonna look. The more I burn myself, the greater opportunity they'll have to show their skills and how good they are. Ouch, that's not a good idea. And if you're gonna continue in sin, the grace may increase. If you're gonna try to show how good God is by living a wicked, evil life, it's not gonna go well for you. You're gonna burn yourself, you're gonna get hurt. And he makes, again, he makes it clear that the Jews and the Gentiles are in the same boat. We're all under sin. Sin is doing anything against God's will. So what we want to do then is we want to follow after God's will. We want to follow after the Bible, we want to profess God to others, we want to find out what God's will and follow after it. We want to study the Word of God and teach others the Word of God and to live in the truth, and it's a good thing. So don't try to go out of your way to be so bad that you think you're gonna make look make God look better, because it won't go well for you. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned away, they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, and the poison of vipers is on their lips. And so here the Bible makes it clear of man's condition. Not only are we sinful, but apart from God's help, apart from the Holy Spirit, there is no one righteous, not even one, not you, not me. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. So no one who does good. We're liars, our tongues practice deceit. The poison of like cobras, the poison of vipers is on their lips. And without God's help, this is where we would all be. But God does an amazing thing when He had Jesus die on that cross, and I'm gonna talk about that in just a minute. But God does an amazing thing and helps us to turn our eyes and our face towards the Lord, turn our heart towards the Lord. Paul continues to talk about the condition of man in their society. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. I'm not really sure what's going on with language today, but I just, there's more and more cursing everywhere. I mean, words that I would consider, you know, that you're just not supposed to say. You go to the playground, you see a bunch of little kids are using all sorts of swear words just flowing out of their mouth. And I'm wondering to myself, is this the normal way that they live in their house? This is how they talk at school? I don't know, but the more godless our country becomes, the more you can expect language to get more profane. Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. And as we continue down a path where we push God out of our country and God out of our schools and God out of our lives, this is what true freedom from God will bring. It won't be a wonderful place to live, I promise. But in Christ, we are given the opportunity to be set free from fulfilling all of God's requirements on our own. You know, God had written the law to his people, and if you read in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, all the principles that needed to be followed and everything, that was God's demand. Fulfill these laws. They couldn't, so they'd offer sacrifices. When they would mess up, they'd offer a sacrifice, they'd sacrifice an animal, and it was tough. But what it did is it showed that nobody is righteous, no, not one, nobody can fulfill all those laws and requirements. And God has made it possible for us to be set free from fulfilling all those requirements. Because what a religious person wants to do is they want to say, okay, show me the list. What do I have to do to be right in this religion? What do I have to do? I have to read this, I have to do this, I've got to jump through these hoops, I've got to give this so I can be right with God. But true Christianity says, no, it's not about what you do, it's about who you are in Jesus. And then out of that relationship, then you want to do those things. You want to change the way you speak, you clean up your language. Actually, the Holy Spirit can help clean up your language. The Bible says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, so you get your heart right, and your mouth will clean up. And so you go through this life, and instead of saying, Show me the list, you say, Show me the Savior. Show me the Lord. And you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You get the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit teaches you and helps you and guides you and convicts you of sin, and then you change into the person that God really wants you to be. But if you're going to try to keep that law and you're going to look back and you're saying, you know what, I keep a lot of these laws. I'm pretty good at this, actually. James says, Whoa, wait a second there. Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. So it's impossible. It's impossible to fulfill all of God's requirements on your own. Romans 3 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. So think about that. This is like your policy and procedures manual at work. You know it's been documented when you're supposed to be there, what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to do it. And when you step out of bounds, they don't go, oh, we made a new rule and you just broke it. Instead, what they do is they say, you know what? Policy and procedure manual chapter 4, page 17. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to do that, and you've broken, you've broken the policy, and we might have to write you up if you do it again. But God made it clear what his demands were, and he also knew that nobody could fulfill it, but that's why he provided Jesus as the Savior, as a help. Paul says, Therefore, no one will be clear declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. So it's not really a list to follow. It's not a task or to-do list. It's more of a mirror to look into and see yourself and see how you measure up. And I don't think any of us measure up very well to God's perfect law without Christ's help. And he says, but now a righteousness from God apart from the law has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe there is no difference. There's no difference between Jew and Gentile. There's no difference between the country that you live in. There's no special God for the people that live in India, and a special God for the people that live in Saudi Arabia, and a special God for the people that live in America. There's just one God. And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There's no difference between Jew and Gentile. There's no difference between the language, race, nationality, but we are all in the same boat, and we all have one Savior to look to. And then we are set free from the eternal penalties of our mistakes. It's another way to say sin. Sin is doing anything against God's will. We were born sinful, but there's also mistakes that we've made. We've gone through this life, and there's things that we do that we don't want anybody to know about. There's things that we do that were sinful. We stumbled, we fell. It kind of left a stain in our life. We asked God to forgive us, and he forgave us, but there's still the memory. Either we have the memory or other people have the memory of what we did that was wrong. And we go through this life, and the greatest wonderful thing is not only is God gonna forgive us, but he's not gonna hold us accountable or remember all that stuff we did back in this life for the rest of eternity. And it's a great thing. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, God made him, Jesus, who had no sin to be sinned for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So when we're proclaimed righteous, when we're proclaimed righteous, what God says is he looks at us, our eternal penalties of our sin, that's anything against God's will, that we all sin and can be forgiven. We can all be made right and declared positionally righteous because of what Jesus did. And I know when I read this part of Romans, a lot of us are familiar with it, and sometimes I almost feel like I'm reading the list on an insurance policy. You know, you read through and it's like, you know, I know that. But I'm really glad that's in the insurance policy. And if I were to have to make a claim, like stand before God, it's a great thing to point back and say, God, you know, here I stand before you to give an account of my life, and I just want you to remember Romans chapter 3, because I do. Thank you so much for that. And it gives us hope and gives us help. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. It means I've sinned, you've sinned, we all have sinned, and this is a verse to memorize. We want to memorize the whole Romans road. This is part of it. You share with us that everybody's a sinner. You're a sinner, I'm a sinner, we've all sinned and fall short of God's glory as standard. But it doesn't leave us with the bad news. God never says, you know, oh, bad news without giving some good news. And the good news is that we can be justified freely by his grace through the redemption that comes through Jesus. So it talks about Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. So he is my justifier. He is my justifier. So God takes our faith and counts it as righteous. He takes our faith and judges us acceptable to him. So I know that on my own I'm not righteous, I'm not pure, I'm not holy, I'm not sinless. But God accepts the death of Christ as the sacrifice for our sins and justifies us. He makes us right with God. And interestingly enough, there's a quote from John Witherspoon. He was a colonial preacher and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And in the works of John Witherspoon from 1815 on page 276, he writes, I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for there is no salvation in any other. If you are not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, if you are not clothed with the spotless robe of his righteousness, you must forever perish. He writes. So he is my justifier. Not only that, he is my atoning sacrifice. Jesus is my atoning sacrifice. To atone means to make up for a shortcoming or for a deficiency or for something wrong. If you stole a thousand dollars from the bank and you had no money to pay it, and I went to the bank on your behalf to atone for your crime and paid the money and the fees and whatever else to help you get off the hook for your crime, that would be like an atoning sacrifice. But Jesus did more than that. He took our sin with him on the cross. He died in our place. And he then rose again, but he took it was a vicarious sacrifice in our place. He is my atoning sacrifice. He paid the price and made it possible for you and I to be saved. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, the autobiography of Benjamin Rush from 1948, page 166. He writes, My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of his son upon the cross. Nothing but his blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. It was Jesus Christ, his blood, that made it possible for him to be our atoning sacrifice in our place. And he is my propitiation. And basically what that means is that is the satisfaction that God demanded. So it's the idea of appeasement, satisfaction specifically towards God. Propitiation is a two-part act that involves appeasing the wrath of an offended person and being reconciled to him. So basically, it means that God is satisfied with the sacrifice. So Jesus is our satisfaction before God. It is a great thing and a wonderful thing to be able to live and walk in the Lord and to know that our sins can be covered. 1 John 4 10, Christians are saved from God's wrath and reconciled to God, not because we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So we're justified, and Jesus made it possible. He's the atoning sacrifice and the satisfaction, he's our propitiation, and it makes it a great reason for us to praise God, for us to live in God. Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence, signer of the Constitution, from the life of Roger Sherman from 1896, page 272. I believe that there is only one living and true God existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a revelation from God that God did send his own son to become man, die in the room instead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so that all may be saved who are willing to accept the gospel offer.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I've been saying those words since I was his age.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Then to our country. But then we are free to boast in the Lord, but not about ourselves. We have so much to boast about what the Lord has done and how he treats us and how he loves us and how he offers us salvation and an opportunity to be made right with him. And Paul says, in all of this, then where is boasting? Where is your boasting? You have nothing to boast in. You only can boast in the Lord. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, because who could do that? But on faith. We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles too? Yes, of the Gentiles too. Brothers, think of what you were. Since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised with the same faith, do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. But what do we have to boast in? We have absolutely nothing to boast in but the Lord. You and I couldn't be good enough. You and I couldn't do good enough. You and I couldn't get through this life without God's help. And if you're having troubles in this life, maybe you need to turn it over to the Lord. If you have turned it over to the Lord, maybe God's doing something. Maybe there's a reason that you're going through these difficulties. Maybe he's got you in his character training school. Maybe you prayed the prayer that said, Lord, teach me patience, and he's working on teaching you patience. Maybe you're sitting there counting the days until the kids go back to school. Well, maybe you should try to rearrange things so that you enjoy the time with the kids before they have to go back to the school. But nonetheless, we have nothing to boast in but the Lord. Don't boast on ourselves. Boast in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says, Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And you look at the history of America, you see lots of this too. You see people who were willing to fight. They rose up to defend themselves, and God seemed to bless them and help them be victorious, even when it seemed that the statistics would show when that when they would come to battle that they would lose. Instead, they were victorious. Paul says, He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. So don't say, Oh, what a great country this is. Oh, you should be more thankful. Wow, what a great country God has allowed us to live in. What a great opportunity we have as Christ followers to tell people about the great things of God. Be thankful to God for the things He has done. And if you've come into this place and you've never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, today is a day that you could pray something like, Lord Jesus, I know you died on the cross and rose again from my sins. Please forgive me and to come into my life and change me and make me the person you created me to be. I want to follow after you. And if you prayed that prayer, we want to get you a Bible and show you how to start living the Christian life. But it is a great thing, a great thing to celebrate what the Lord has done, a great thing to celebrate what God has done in the history of this country that we live in.