We Seek the Better Country - Pastor Tom Loghry Rockland Community Church Download

Christians are ultimately citizens of a better, heavenly country promised by God, not any earthly nation—so while we love and serve where we live, our deepest hope and allegiance belong to Christ's coming kingdom.

Transcript:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country-- a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

Let us pray as we come before God's Word.

Dear Father, as we come before your word this morning, as we hear the testimony of the faith of those that have gone before us, we pray that the Holy Spirit would work within us so that we might share in their faith, so that we may share in their hope, and persevere in the way that they too have persevered.

We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. You may be seated.

As most everyone knows, the United States has been playing host for many of the games of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Playing host has not only brought foreign teams, but also their fans to our shores. So if you've been on social media at all, you know that many of these fans have been struck with awe by the many good things our country has to offer. Air conditioning, free refills, large portion sizes, and yes, also the friendly qualities of the American people, too. Amidst all the negativity that pours forth from our regular news cycle, these anecdotes remind us of how blessed we are to live in a country like the United States. Any time that I've gone overseas, I've always returned with a renewed sense of gratitude for being able to call this place my home.

In celebrating the 250th anniversary of this country's founding, we are reminded of our family histories and how we got to be in this country and call ourselves citizens of these United States. In my own case, a man named William Loghry and his wife, Nancy Purdy, emigrated from Northern Ireland to Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s. The family later moved to upstate New York, then Illinois, then South Dakota for several generations, until my grandfather bounced off the West Coast and sunk down his roots here in New England. That story, and the story of all who made their way in this country, is a story of pioneering. It's a story of seeking a better life, of seeking a better country, even long after our ancestors first arrived here.

Even if you have lived in one place for generations, there's a certain restlessness in our bones that seeks a better situation. We might call it especially American, but we could also just call it simply human. From one country to another, we all yearn for a better world. Some have believed we can perfect this world, and this belief has inspired some people to lead political revolutions in pursuit of utopia. To their credit, I don't think the American founders envisioned a utopia. They were not naive- they understood our sinful, selfish condition, which led them to desire an entire system of checks and balances. It's not the most efficient system of, of power. Monarchy, the rule of a king, is most efficient. But they set aside that vision of a perfect efficiency because they understood the reality of human brokenness, of corruption, a reality which extends to all earthly kings. They understood that even at our best, we cannot produce utopia. But we could have an improved political arrangement in the meantime.

But if we're honest with ourselves, our spirits sink at the thought of resigning ourselves to relative improvement, marginal gains, and temporary successes. That desire for something more abides within us. And so the question returns: Will the satisfaction of our desires come from ourselves or come from beyond ourselves? Both the Bible and our own experience teach us that it's foolish to trust in ourselves because we are, in fact, the problem. It begins with us. Instead, the Bible turns our gaze to God as the one who can save us from ourselves. The words of promise, spoken by the prophet Micah in Micah 4, resonate with us.

In that chapter, he talks about how all people are gonna be streaming to the mountain of God, streaming to God's presence. Of how swords are going to be beaten to plowshares, and spears are gonna be turned into pruning hooks, that there's going to be a real peace, a lasting peace. In Micah 4:4, he says, "Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken."

When we hear those words, there's something that resounds deep within us because we want that peace for ourselves. We want that better country. And we are not the first to desire it. And this takes us to our central passage this morning, Hebrews 11:13-16. Hebrews 11 is the New Testament's iconic passage about faith, in which the writer of Hebrews does a roll call of all the great figures of faith that are set before us in the Old Testament. He takes their example as being instructive for us. Verses 13 through 16 especially draw from the example of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm gonna read those verses once again for us. Hebrews 11:13-16. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

To grasp the full import of what is being said here in these verses, we have to remember the general story of, of these patriarchs, of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Jacob. We recall that God called Abraham out of his homeland, out of the city of Haran, with the promise that he would inherit a land for himself, that he would become a great nation, that through him the whole world would be blessed. And this is a promise that belonged not only to him, but to his family. It was a promise given to Sarah, and it was given to Isaac and to Jacob, his son and his, and his grandson. But when he was first called, Abraham and Sarah didn't have any children of their own. They were called to set forth in faith, and in time, the promised son, Isaac, was born to them.

But still they did not see all that God had promised to them. They were never able to permanently settle into the land. Their family was not as countless as the stars or the sand on the seashore. They still seemed quite small in the world. And ultimately, Jacob finds himself outside the land of Canaan, outside the land of promise, in the land of Egypt, and that's where he, he dies. And so God had given these, them these promises, and yet they had not been able to see them come to pass. But they were content to persevere. They were content to continue traveling onward as nomads in this world because they were looking forward to the fulfillment of God's promise, even if they would not see it in their immediate lifetime.

And in fact, what the writer of Hebrews here is saying is that they were actually longing for a better country than even that which their immediate descendants would eventually inherit in the land of Canaan. Verse 16 says, "Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." What they were desiring was nothing that they could construct themselves. It was nothing that they nor their descendants could bring about by the dint of their own efforts, by their own strength. It was something that could only be God-given, a heavenly country, a city prepared by God Himself. And we see Jesus speak in a similar manner in John 14, verses two through three, of this promised city of the, which is to come. Very often when we think about what is the hope of the Christian, we think in terms of us dying and going to heaven. But this is not the vision that is set forth in scripture. Rather, it is a vision of this city which is to come. And we see Jesus actually speaking along these lines, even though we, we so often easily miss it in this passage.

In John 14, verses two through three, he says, "My Father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you, you that...