Another Country

[00:00:00] Worship the Lord in the name of our wonderful Savior this morning. Good to see each one here, glad for visitors and glad for Phil and Kimberly to be back with us. It's been a while since they've been here. Phil had some surgery this week, he's in the area, and I see he was walking kind of carefully when he walked in. So we're glad that they can be here. Today is a holiday here in our country, and we all know it as the Fourth of July or Independence Day, and it's one that marks when people or a group of people, I guess a congress or I'm not sure just what all the details were, [00:00:54] But at some point they declared their independence from Great Britain, drew up a document called the Declaration of Independence, and of course a war was fought and so on over that. But a new country was established and based upon somewhat of a democracy, a republic, and also the idea of freedom, quite a new concept when that happened. [00:01:27] I don't know if there was any country that ever had really had that whole concept of individual freedoms and so on up to that time. Maybe there was, and I'm not aware of it. So that is what is being celebrated today, usually you might say several days involved in it. One of the interesting things that I found just reading a little bit about it, and that was that two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence became presidents. [00:02:06] John Adams and Thomas Jefferson And an interesting fact about that is is that exactly 50 years later in 1826 on July 4th they both died Just kind of an interesting thing that took place I appreciate our country I'm glad that we live in In the country that we do. And the Bible tells us to pray for our rulers, to pray for our leaders, tells us to obey the laws and to pay our taxes. The Bible is very specific about that. [00:02:52] And not only if you just belong or are a member of the, or a citizen of the U.S., but I think in whatever country we live in, we are to pray for, you should pray for your rulers and so on. But this morning I'd like to speak about another country. The Bible talks about this other country. Sometimes it refers to it as a city and kind of uses those terms, a country and a city, interchangeably. [00:03:24] This is not a country that we normally think of that's sort of political boundaries to it or geographical boundaries. And it's not a country that has a political government as such. It has a government, but not like we think of as a government. It doesn't need a police force and that type of thing. It's a heavenly country that the Bible speaks about. A heavenly country. [00:03:56] One that you might say in a sense is out of this world. But yet, living in this world prepares us for that country that we are looking forward to. Take your Bibles and turn over to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. I'm going to read the first 16 verses and you'll notice in here and somehow one thing that stood out to me as I studied this and that is that usually I think of this of looking for another country as only referring to Abraham. [00:04:42] And, you know, that's probably the one that does stand out to us the most, but I noticed that it's saying that all of them, down here later on, that they all were looking for another country. Now, I think you find that in verse 14. I'm going to start reading in verse 1 and go through verse 16. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. [00:05:16] For by it the elders obtained a good report.