Patriotic Songs in Church

Some churches in my area advertise their services around the 4th of July as "Patriotic services" which are filled with the songs of our nation. Here is a snippet I added at the end of my sermon Sunday. My sermon was not about this, but not wanting to ignore what was happening in our nation completely, I tried to weave this in at the end as a conclusion to the main thrust of the sermon. You can click here to read the whole thing, but here's the snippet:

This weekend, while our nation is celebrating Independence Day, we’ll watch our fireworks and sing patriotic songs, but not in here. The Kingdom in here is different. We give thanks for our nation, yes, and all the blessings God has so graciously bestowed upon it. But God doesn’t care about nations. Those are divisions we have made. He uses nations and works and blesses through them, but the only anthem that is sung in heaven isn’t a national one, but a heavenly one. And we’ll sing that one again here today, that greater one, as the Kingdom of God crosses the line and comes to us. Holy, holy, holy, we’ll sing with the angels. For we are now, and will be in the end, not one nation under God, but one people in Christ Jesus, in His Kingdom. So sing it loud, even if our nation and world don’t want to hear that anthem, and proclaim that the Holy One is here. Here with His gifts of forgiveness and life.