Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
Isaiah 1:9-20
At all times in human history God has had a people who have loved him and believed him and obeyed him. When there was a brief period of disobedience God would chastise the people and bring them about to repentance. Sometimes the repentant were few, sometimes they were many. Many repentant people would waiver in their faithfulness until the next generation came along. We call the non-wavering faithful, the remnant, and whether they came from the stock of Israel, or they are post-Pentecostal believers; each one made a conscious decision to walk by faith.
These faithful people follow God’s word which has been revealed to them. They obeyed him whether it was by direct teaching in the Garden of Eden, or it was through Noah and his family who built the ark. God called Abraham to set forth a separated people, first through his son Isaac and then his son Jacob who was renamed Israel. Israel had twelve sons which became twelve separate tribes. The twelve tribes eventually went into bondage for 430 years in Egypt.
In 1440 B.C. the tribes along with their families and their livestock and possessions were led out of Egyptian bondage by an obedient servant of God named Moses. Moses was given God’s written commandments as he led God’s people, Israel, to their promised land.
These commandments were to be observed by the Israelites primarily out of obedience to God and secondarily as a display to the other nations concerning God’s perfect righteousness.
The Law was given as a schoolmaster to instruct Israel in the holiness of God. The laws were given to direct the civil affairs; ceremonial protocol and sacrificial worship acceptable to God.
What is a client nation?
The Mosaic laws were given to the twelve tribes of Israel in order to form them into one nation under God as they became the first client nation under God. A client nation is a nation of people blessed and prospered by the grace of God. It is a nation which God purposes to advance his causes through obedient believers. It is a nation that reflects as a whole God’s institutions of free will, nationalism, marriage, and family. Through these people God blesses other nations, and conversely God judges them for widespread disobedience; for falling away from his word. A client nation also always provides a safe haven for God’s people, the Jews, Gen.12:3.
The Law was given to demonstrate the absolute holiness of God, and the utter sinfulness of mankind. It was given to show the need for the perfect Sacrifice to ransom mankind from his sinful state. It was given to prove that man could not keep the perfect law of God. And then, when the time was prophetically and historically right, Jesus Christ came and fulfilled every part of the Holy Law of God, Gal.4:4.
He was rejected by mankind and was crucified on a Roman cross where he died, and was buried. On the third day he physically arose from the dead, and then after a forty day post-resurrection ministry he ascended into heaven. A new age began in which God would rule in the hearts of men by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the completed canon of Scripture.
In this age God performs his will through positive biblically informed believers, and an accumulation of these believers in a certain area or country comprises a remnant for which God can begin to bless that nation. When those positive believers are allowed to spread the Gospel, and teach the doctrines of spiritual edification to the saints then that nation becomes a client nation unto God, and the blessings associated with their positive free will to obey God are tremendous. When God’s people are ready to follow it is at that time God rewards them with godly leadership, both spiritual and governmental and this applies to anywhere in the world. If those believers, however, forsake their privileged status under God, they will loose their status as a nation under God.
At this time in history Israel is not a client nation unto God, but prophecy declares she will be during the Millennial Kingdom of Christ, Ps.2; 24; Isa.11; Ezel.34-48; Amos 9:11-15; Micah 4:6-8; Zeph.3:9-20; Zech.14:9-21.
Other nations than the United States of America have been client nations unto God, but the tide of apostasy has swept through those nations and God has had to find a new remnant of positive believers to continue spreading of the Gospel and the doctrines of edification.
Before the United States of America became a client nation unto God there was Europe where great reformers struggled against an oppressive Church State and its counterparts who had embraced the Age of Enlightenment. They failed the grace of God due to their unbelief in God’s inspired word.
Today I fear our nation is failing the grace of God and we are loosing our client nation status because positive believers are becoming more and rarer. "Teachability" is nearly impossible for we live in a day when everyone seeks to do that which is right in his or her own eyes. Respect for the pastor and his ordained function as seen in the New Testament scriptures is in disarray. Today his office has been reduced by so many to nothing more than a poster boy for a three ring circus. He has been neutered by congregations who do not want to hear the truth nor be lead and corrected when necessary. He has become a public relations man hyping his church to everyone as the only place to go.
He is respected more if he can book a good show for the kids, and bring in entertaining popular musicians and speakers to stir up the people.
Perhaps the next client nation will be South Korea, or South Africa, or Romania?
God owes the United States of America nothing.
Our nation is spoiling, not so much due to misguided politicians, but by its born again pastors and born again citizens who have forsaken the Word of God, Jer.23:1-2; II Tim.4:2-4. It is incumbent upon us to take and hold the high ground of spiritual maturity and to support those pastor-teachers who know how to do their jobs of effectively teaching the whole counsel of God’s word, Acts 20:27-28.
The impatient church goers today, many who are true believers in Christ, will not remain seated in an expository teaching church long enough to grow up in Christ. They want relevant messages that speak specifically to their present problems. They do not want messages that will change the way they think. They want pastors to address the symptoms of their impatience, not the cure, which is growing up in all things in Christ.
We must do as the Apostle Paul did in Phil.3:14, and “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And what is the high calling of God? The high calling is for believers to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, Rom.8:29.
It is through the transformation of the life brought about by taking in God’s word that we are conformed to the image of Christ. The word is taught in the local church and the people are blessed and they know how to obey God and they do God’s work confidently without hypocrisy and without fan fare.
As a result courage is developed through our confidence in God, and it takes biblical courage to regain ground lost to apostate believers. It takes courage to stick with the stuff while so many around are departing the truth to draw a crowd.
Free nations are formed in the minds of men long before a flag of freedom is ever flown. National freedom is the result of men and women who will not be bound by the oppression of men. Thus God blesses properly motivated men and women who obey his word and want to serve him. He blessed Joshua and Caleb; he blessed Gideon and King David and others who worked to keep Israel as a nation under God.
Coming to America
The providence of God works in forming his client nations many times through the seed faith of just a few brave souls yet those souls would have to be motivated by persecution.
In 1588 the great Spanish Armada set sail northward to punish protestant prone Great Britain and bring her back under the control of the Catholic Church and the oversight of the Pope. But on the way, not far from Lisbon, a port city of Portugal, a storm destroyed many of the Spanish ships and in their diminished ranks the British sent them fleeing. The Spanish fleet headed northward toward Scotland wherein a number of powerful storms destroyed the remaining Spanish armada. These events took place just 32 years before the Pilgrims from England set sail for America.
Imagine what it would have been like if God had not intervened and yet think of the Puritans and the Pilgrims who came here in search of spiritual freedom. Think of the insurmountable odds the early settlers faced with disease and Indian attack.
God’s hand was at work when the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower. This ship had been used to transport wine, and over the years the busted kegs and spilt wine had so saturated the deck of this vessel that the alcohol had killed so many germs and bacteria that only one passenger in that 1620 voyage to America died, and it is said this passenger was a Pilgrim hating deck hand.
The shores of Plymouth rock at one time teemed with Indians who used bows and arrows and tomahawks to fend off any coming by sea, just as they had done to the Spaniards in the south, but three years before the Puritans and Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock a pestilence destroyed virtually all the Indians in that area, wherein they left behind enough corn to save the Pilgrims during their first winter.
Think of the first winters with little to no shelter and food. Think of the next several generations surviving the rigors of colonization and eventual revolution. Forming and sustaining a client nation requires positive volition to God’s word and a willingness to work. God blesses those two components, anything else is substandard. God does not bless laziness and faithlessness. If a people depend on a government to do the work for them, then those people will be beholding to do whatever the state demands.