Let's take our Bibles today and turn to Luke chapter number seven. Luke chapter number seven. So glad you're here today, Luke chapter seven. This man in Luke seven had about the greatest faith Jesus ever encountered. He was a centurion, a Roman, wasn't even a Jew. And the Lord said about him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. But he not only had great faith, he had great love. Great love. In verse one, it says, now when he had ended all these sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum, and a certain centurion's servant who was dear unto him was sick and ready to die. I want you to notice the great love, not just the great faith, of this man, but the great love. This guy's a centurion in the Roman army. I mean, he could have been heartless and ruthless and dominating. To have a hundred soldiers under you in the Roman Empire, the iron-fisted empire, you wouldn't think that anyone would be dear to him. A lot of those people were heartless. The Roman Empire, man, we're glad we're not living back in those times for sure. But he had a servant, a servant no less, verse two, who was dear unto him. Do you have people who are dear unto you? Boy, that's like how God wants us to live. God wants us to live not selfish lives where it's all about us, but where there are some people that are dear unto us. The Apostle Paul talked about those that he had in his heart. We gotta have some people in our heart. We gotta have some people that are dear to us and not just live for yourself. Living for yourself is just a waste of a life. It's a horrible existence. We gotta have somebody who's dear unto us, but that's not the subject. Verse three, and when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly saying, now notice this statement about this Roman, about this centurion, about this soldier who was stationed in the Holy Land by the orders of the Roman Empire. Some of you were in the military. I was stationed in Korea for a year. I was stationed in Germany for six months. This man was stationed by Caesar from Rome to go and this part of the world was his station. But when he got there, he made the best out of it. I mean, this guy was unique. And the Jews said about this Roman that he was worthy for whom he should do this. Now here's our text, verse five, for he loveth our nation and hath built us a synagogue. This is stewardship month and I want to speak this morning on the stewardship of our nation. The stewardship of our nation. Every one of us should love our nation. It says about this man, he loveth our nation. It wasn't even his nation. but he just got posted there by the military and he fell in love with God's people, the people of God and the God of the people. And he wanted their God to be his God and he loved our nation. We need to be good stewards of our nations. The nations were God's idea. If you'll study the word nations out, take a concordance or something, go through it. God was the one who decided to amass people in groups called nations. He said to Abraham, I will build of thee a great nation, and thou shalt be a blessing to all the nations of the world. Nations are eternal. I will show that to you in the scriptures in just a moment. Nations are eternal. And the Lord wants us to love our nation. So I wanna bring at least four points today on the stewardship of our nation. And in our case, we're talking about America. And in his case, he was talking about where he was stationed, and that was Israel or Palestine back then, but he loved his nation. I wanna say today that number one, love your nation. Love your nation. This was a compliment. of this man's character, for he loveth our nation. Yeah, he had great faith, he had a dear love for one of his servants that was sick, but he also loved his nation. He loved his nation. You know, there's a lot of things wrong with America. And boy, we hear it every day, day after day, day after day, but where would you rather be than right here, right now? Where would you rather be? Unless God calls you to go somewhere, you're probably gonna stay put. A lot of people threaten, well, if this person's elected or this person, I'm going to leave this country. They never do. They never do. They stay right here because they know how great it is. And we got a lot of pimples, our country, that's for sure. And there's a lot of faults. But you know, biblically speaking, we should love our nation. Some of you remember Joe Devlin, he made a saying once when he was playing for the Bills, he said, where would you rather be than right here, right now? And the coach borrowed that and became famous for it, Myer of Levy. But where would you rather be than right here, right now? I always think of that when I think of America. America some of us have been around some of you've been to a lot of nations. I've been to 11 different nations but I always felt like kissing the ground when I got back to our country and Thanking the Lord for this and I know things in our history have been bad but but but the great thing about our country is we try to correct those things and Whether we do a great job or a perfect job or whatever, I don't know. But we should be good stewards of our country by loving our country. It just seems like there's a lot of people who don't love our nation anymore. And I want to encourage you to be patriotic, to be nationalistic, to fly your flag, defend the country, and really ask yourself, where would I rather live? I mean, I love our neighbors to the north. We live in such wonderful peace with the Canadians, but they're about ready to make euthanasia a nationwide thing up there. And that is the supposed mercy killing of people who are suffering and so on and so forth. But if you ever followed that, that gets in the control of the wrong people. And they'll say, you know, you're undesirable. We don't like you Christians. We don't like your behavior or whatever. We're just not going to put up with it anymore. We don't want to go there. We don't want to go there. But there's a lot of wonderful nations around. Turn to Matthew chapter 25 and verse 32. Keep your place here, we'll come right back to it. I want you to notice something about the eternality of nations. It says in Matthew 25 and verse number 32, And before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his right hand. But the goats on the left, then shall the king say unto them on the right hand, that is the sheep nations, come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Now, we see that there are some nations that are gonna be determined at the judgment. You know, the Bible says all of us are gonna be judged, all the angels are gonna be judged, and all the nations are gonna be judged at future times. And there's gonna be a division of the nations, the sheep nations over here, the goat nations over here. The sheep nations are those that have embraced the Lord Jesus Christ. The goat nations are those that have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the calendars that we have given out to this church over the years has been to pray for these nations that are hostile to the gospel. And there are 60 nations on here. 41 of them are restricted or closed countries where they will not allow you to have a church service. They will not allow you to own a Bible. They won't allow you to go out passing tracks. Just think of that, 41 nations. And then 19 of these on here are hostile. In other words, they say you have religious freedom, but like over in Egypt, for instance, where they're just killing the Christians. And there's 60 nations right here out of 195 nations on earth that are hostile or closed to the gospel. You're not allowed. We don't want you here. And we're praying that these nations will open. And those in government will see, and I could name them, but you have the calendar, and it's sad, and I wouldn't want to live in any of these nations. But we should pray for their salvation. These are goat nations. Goat nations. They don't want the Lord. America, maybe not so much now, but there was a time when America was a Christian nation, at least in name. and based its founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights on biblical principles, and just have, you know, you go down to Washington, D.C., I've been there six times, and some of you have been there, and they have literal scriptures from the King James Bible just etched in marble and granite and all over that city, all over that city. Above our Supreme Court, you'll see the Ten Commandments. And the Bible talks about goat nations and sheep nations. Turn to Revelation 21. That's the second last chapter in the Bible, way in the back. And the Bible says this in Revelation 21 and verse 22, And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth to bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." I want you to notice that nations are eternal. And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it. I don't know how you ever picture things in your mind. I might be right way off here, You ever watch the Olympics and they have the parade of nations? Ever seen that? Sometimes they do it at the beginning, at the end, maybe both, I don't know. But they have the parade of nations, you know? And here comes your nation. It's just a wonderful moment when the Americans walk in. To me, I don't know, it blesses my heart. I kind of like picture that in heaven. I don't know. I'm not sure how this works. But the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it." And all the saved Americans over all the centuries and centuries where the gospel has come to North America, I think maybe God's going to just put us all in one big group someday and say, send the Americans in. And maybe like in the military, some of you are in the military and you walk by the grandstand. Remember that? And there's the general up there, and you walk by the grandstand, and they'd say, aye, he's right, and you'd go like that, and you'd be marching forward, and you'd see the general up there, and maybe that's how it's gonna be in heaven, I don't know. I have no idea. But maybe God will say, all the Americans, and we'll all march by, we'll just fall down, prostrate before our Lord, say, thank you, Lord, for letting me live in a country that got the gospel to me. where I heard so much, and then maybe let the Cubans walk in, and there might just be a few of them. You ever see some of the parade of nations in the Olympics, and sometimes one person comes in with their flag? They're the only one that made it to the Olympics. And maybe there'll be few in some of these nations coming by. But all the nations that are saved, and all the kings will give their glory and honor to Jesus Christ. We want to have a big delegation there that day. We should love our country. We should want a lot of Americans to be there that day to honor the King of Kings. and the Lord of Lords. I want you to notice number one, love your nation. Now back to this centurion here. I want you to notice again in Luke chapter seven where we started. Luke chapter seven verse five, what a commentary about this wonderful man. For he loveth our nation and he hath built us a synagogue. Number two, do good for your nation. Do something good for your nation. Number two, do something good for your nation. Anyone can curse the darkness. One of our presidents said, instead of cursing the darkness, why don't you light a candle? And we can light a candle. And if this man can build a synagogue, then we can plant a church. We can buy a church somewhere and plant it. And have a place where people can go and praise the Lord and worship God and sing his praises on a platform that they can serve. We should try to do something for our nation rather than just talk about how bad it is. We know the politics are bad and the economy's bad and the violence and all that kind of stuff is bad and ought to break our hearts. Ought to break our hearts to see that. But you can just curse the darkness or light a candle, whichever you want to. I want to light a candle. I don't know about you. That's how I've tried to live my life, to light a candle. And some of you are the same way. You're the same way. I want to do something good for my nation. And boy, something good you can do for your nation is win a bunch of souls to Jesus Christ. This man went to his assigned place, fell in love with that area, and fell in love with the God of that area, and get this, he has built us a synagogue. Now that might seem like a small thing in verse five until you go to Capernaum and you stand in the ruins of that synagogue like my wife and I have. That thing was huge. And some of you have been to Capernaum. No, it's just rubble now, because Jesus cursed the place. The Lord said, Capernaum that I raised up to heaven shall be brought down to hell. And whenever the Lord says something like that, it comes to pass. But here's the point. Before the ruins of this synagogue, this synagogue, this man built, served that area's religious needs for four centuries. One man did something that served that area for four centuries. You can see the ruins today when you go over there. It's amazing. I cannot imagine how much that man invested in building that. Now, the ruins you see today are the fourth century ruins, which are built on top of the first century ruins that this man built. But man, this guy. used his resources for God. And they came running up to Jesus and said, help this man. He loves our nation. He's built us a synagogue. And you know that synagogue he built in Capernaum became the headquarters for Jesus Christ ministry in Capernaum. And Jesus ministered out of there. It's where he went. He went to the synagogue as his custom was in Nazareth all the time. He was raised until the age of 30. Then they ran him out of town. And then he relocated his ministry to Capernaum. And Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, God in the flesh, came to this synagogue, this man built. You know, we could build churches, plant churches, and Jesus will show up. And he'll stay there as long as we can keep the doors open. And I wanna encourage you to do something good for your nation. Don't just curse your nation, do something good for your nation. Invest in missions, invest in the mission down in Buffalo or church planning or soul winning or something. Number one, love your nation. Number two, do something good for your nation. Do something good. You know, if we'll remember the testimony of Isaiah, he said, except the Lord had left us a very small remnant, we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. If you can't do anything else good for your nation, be a part of that very small remnant of righteous people. He couldn't find 10 in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham prayed and said, God, if you find 10 righteous people, will you withhold your hand of destruction from this place? And God said, yes. If you can find 10 righteous, you couldn't find 10 righteous. But I believe as bad as some things are in our country, if there could be some righteous people in every town trying to be a good testimony, living a good Christian life, being holy, trying to be witnesses and soul winners, maybe God would reserve his judgment from us. and keep us free. I'd like you to turn now to Romans chapter number 10. I want to show you a third thing we need to do as good stewards of our nation. And those of you that are listening online and those that will be listening in the future, we know that many people from many nations watch our sermons. Whatever your nation is, love your nation. Love your nation. Apply this sermon to your nation. Your nation is important to God. Verse one says in Romans 10, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. I wanna say number three, pray for your nation. Pray for your nation. Take the word Israel just for a moment out of verse one and stick America in there. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for America is that they might be saved. If you don't know how to pray for a nation, at least pray for their salvation. We're supposed to pray for those in authority over us, that they might be saved, according to 1 Timothy 2. It's the first order of business of the church, is to pray for those in authority over us. And we've afforded you calendars to help pray for those on the federal level, on the state level, on the local level. You know, instead of cursing these politicians, let's pray for them. And then when you see them, you can say, I just want you to know I'm praying for you. Now, they'll look at you strange. I've done this a few times. He said, I just want you to know I'm praying for you. And that God loves you and God cares about you. And Jesus died for you. And he wants them to be saved. Maybe if some of them got saved, they'd start thinking differently. I don't know about you, but when I got saved, I started thinking differently. He renews, he transforms our minds. Then he uses the scriptures and he says, that's not right. And then he fixes the way I think. And we need some, and there's a group down in Albany, believe it or not, that meet together, some of these representatives of ours, and they're having Bible study every week. Maybe that'll spread to the rest of them. God can do anything. You take Manasseh, he was the worst, wasn't he? He was the worst king Judah ever had. But God humbled him so much, it says, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard him. and brought him back from Babylon, gave him another chance. Oh, it's amazing, there's nothing, Nebuchadnezzar was the, he was the hardest man on earth, the king of Babylon, and God had him cross paths in his life with a guy named Daniel. Daniel started preaching to him, they need to get right with God, God was gonna turn him into an animal if he didn't. God turned him into an animal for seven years. He lost his mind. He lost his mind completely. Just lost it. Turned into an animal. Was grazing out in the grass, eating grass. His fingernails all grew and his hair became like feathers. He looked like an animal. Most powerful man on earth. And after seven years, it says his reason returned to him and he began to worship the God of Israel. And he said, those that walk in pride, God is able to abase. And if God can do that to the most powerful man on earth, like a Nebuchadnezzar, a Manasseh, a Pharaoh, the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord. As the rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he will. That's one of the Proverbs. And we need some Americans who will be like Paul. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel, for America is that they be saved for I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Go back to chapter nine, Romans nine, verse one. I say the truth, I lie not. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish that myself were a curse from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites. Again, stick the word Americans in verse four. I don't think that'd be improper, where we would say my conscience bears witness, I have great heaviness, continual sorrow in my heart. You know, we ought to. We ought to have continual sorrow in our heart for what we're seeing in our nation. It ought to break our hearts. And Paul, it's not possible, but Paul said, I wish I could be a curse from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites, who are Americans. Oh, he was a man of prayer, wasn't he? He was a man of prayer. And he prayed for his nation. And by the way, he's gonna get his prayers answered, so all Israel shall be saved. You read that two chapters later in Romans 11, so then all Israel shall be saved. Yeah, he's getting his prayers answered. It'll be a little later in history, but he's getting his prayers answered. And I think if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us, we know that we'll get the petitions we've desired Him. And if we start praying for America to be saved and for souls to be saved, God will hear that prayer. Now we've got to put feet to our prayer. We can't just expect it to happen, you know. We've got to be out there talking to people, writing letters. And I wrote a letter to my mayor a couple weeks ago, my wife and I, about an issue in our town. And he called me last year if I could pray at the Christmas festival, the lighting of the Christmas tree. I said, sure. I prayed a real loud prayer to a lot of people. It wasn't about the Christmas tree. It was about Christmas. Psalm 33, 12 says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. Now that's a promise, brethren. And that's a promise God has kept. There has never been a nation so blessed on earth as America because there was a time where our God was the Lord. We have not been blessed in this country above all other nations because we're so smart. In fact, sometimes I think we're stuck on stupid in this country. We're not that smart. You know, we only use 900 English words these days. That's it. That's how dumb we are. Back when the Bible was written, 1611, they used to use 3,600 average. in their vocabulary. I'm talking about kids and everything. If kids from that day and age, the 1600s, were brought back to life to this day and age, we wouldn't understand what they're saying. They were so smart and so brilliant. Many of them knew two, three languages before they were teenagers. You know, this King James Bible has over 800 different English words in it. There's no book like it except for dictionaries and encyclopedias. You wanna learn English, read the King James Bible. 800 different English words in that Bible right there. We use 900. We're not that smart. We're just proud. We think all these blessings came because of some superior intelligence or something. No, they came because God said, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. And the people whom he has chosen for his inheritance. But I'm afraid we're, We're dispelling God. About 60 years ago, we said, God, get lost. We can do pretty well without you. Well, how are we doing? How are we doing? How's this nation doing without God? I want to say one last thing is vote for your nation. Number one, love your nation. Number two, do good for your nation. Do something good for your nation. Do something eternal, something spiritual. Number three, pray for your nation like Paul prayed for his nation. Now number four, vote for your nation. Now what I mean by this is if you turn over to Proverbs 29 and verse two. Proverbs 29 and verse two. Now here's where I can just be kind of general, It says in Proverbs 29 in verse two, it says, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. Now, if you've ever read the history of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah in the Bible, praise the Lord, we don't live under that. Because they'd get themselves a king like Manasseh, and he'd live 55 years as the king of Judah, and he was wicked. Can you imagine having a leader over you for 55 years you couldn't get rid of? And then the next one would come, and the next one would come. Then a Josiah would show up, and he did a good thing for about 29 years, and then he died. You never know. And Solomon was a king, and this was one of their observations, when the righteous are in authority, the people do rejoice. But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. I don't know what you're doing lately, but it breaks my heart to see the direction our country's going in. We have a contest in our elections even coming up next month. And you got freedom on one side and socialism on the other. That's basically what it's come down to. That's about as specific as I'm going to get. I can't tell you who to vote for, who not to vote for. I never would anyway. But there are candidates who believe in freedom. They believe in liberty. They believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They believe in free market capitalism, which is a fancy way of saying basically you're on your own. No government handouts, you can make it on your own. That exceptional quality of Americans to just dig in and make it on your own. They are a small government. They don't believe in big government, just small government. Maybe a government that'll give you a hand up for a little while until you get on your feet, then that's it. And then there's socialists, that if you've ever studied their methods, they're all the same. They give you all kinds of promises. Free this, free that, free everything. But if you study the history of socialism, which was birthed in the late 1800s, and we have the last century to look upon, it's the bloodiest ism that has ever been invented in human history. According to our congressional record in Washington, socialists killed 135 million of their own people in the 1900s who were dissidents, who didn't believe what the socialists were saying and so they were just killed. Now the socialists go by different names eventually, communists, Marxists, Nazis, imperialists, whatever, those are all offshoots of Socialism, which is atheistic. Socialism is atheistic. No God. We don't need God. All we need is man. We can fix our own problems. We can make it on our own without God. And they become so bloody. They believe in disarming people, taking away all the weapons from all the good people. And they just have bloody coups. I mean, it is bloody. It is just bloody. All I can tell you is it is bloody. They eventually get to where they tell you how much peanut butter you can have each month, how much cooking oil you can have each month, what your ration will be for gasoline for your vehicle each month, how long you'll have your heat on in your house every day, how long you'll have electric every day. And basically under socialism, all history has shown that the poor get poorer. And the rich get poorer. Everybody gets poorer, except for the few elite who run and who think they know better than you do how to take care of yourself. That's what we're up against in this country. Never thought it would come to this. I don't know about you, but I'm voting for freedom. I'm going to try to look at every candidate in every single race, whether it's federal, state, or local. And I'm going to say, who believes in freedom? Who believes in a representative republic? Who believes that you're on your own? That's what Clarence Thomas once said, the Supreme Court, one of the justices. He said, the dirty little secret about capitalism is you're on your own. Well, amen. Sink or swim on your own. You feel good about it when you make it on your own. You really feel good about yourself. Let's see if I can find this. Probably won't be able to, but I think it's Galatians 6 verse 4, but let every man prove his own work and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. But you're not alone, God is with you. and God can help you stand, and God can help you make it, and the American dream is still true. Now we have some socialistic programs in our country, I know that's like Social Security, Medicare, but for the most part, we're still free market capitalists, where you can go on yourself, and men and women today can take part in the American dream still. But I wanna encourage you to vote. You wanna vote for socialism, go ahead, but I've studied it. I'll give you some stuff to study and watch if you really think it's what they're saying. Socialism is not freedom. It's not freedom. I would encourage you to vote for your country to be free. Look at the plank, the platform. Don't look at the commercials that they have on television that tug on your emotions. But look at the plank. What's your plank? What do you believe in? And they usually have a plank or a platform you can study and say, you know, I believe that that's a righteous plank. The person's not perfect, but the Bible says again, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn. I want to encourage you to be a good steward of your nation. Nations are set up by God. The Bible says He sets up one, takes down another. And it warns us in Psalm 9 and verse 17, the wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. I want to encourage you, please don't forget God. Please don't forget God. There's so many things that are distracting us today, but I want to encourage every man or woman, boy and girl in this room, to find a place alone every day, you and God, and drop down on your knees and pray. And pray for our nation. Pray for the lost. Pray that God will have mercy on us. He's good at that, isn't He? He's good at showing mercy when people cry out for mercy. I'd like us to just have a word of prayer and we're going to sing before we're dismissed. Our Father in heaven, we pray for the spirit this man had who loved his nation, who did something good for his nation. He built a synagogue that served that area for four centuries. Help us to be like Paul who prayed for his nation and his nation meant so much to him. He wished there was a way he could be accursed if that's what it would take for his nation to be saved. And then Lord, you told us to try to get the righteous here in authority. Nobody's perfect. There's not a perfect candidate in any race. But Lord, give us discernment at who has the most righteous plank that would line up with the scriptures and try to get them in office. Pray for those that are in office. And so, Lord, help us, we pray, with these things that we wouldn't just let our nation die, but be a good steward of what you've given us. Thank you for letting us live here. Help the Curtis family to go to Malawi and just fall in love with that nation. Do everything they can to pray for that nation, to save that nation. Give them a heart for those in government and to reach many and to do something, to build their synagogue, so to speak, Lord, that would serve those people. So God help us now, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.