"Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing." (Isaiah 40:15)
God has a divine purpose for nations, as shown by the fact that there will even be "nations of them which are saved" (Revelation 21:24) in the new earth, outside the New Jerusalem. Nations were evidently first established after the dispersion at Babel when God forced the original post-Flood families to separate and to establish their own distinctive communities by confusing their languages (Genesis 11:9).
It thus has been natural and useful (in God's economy) for each nation to develop a sense of national pride and patriotic loyalty. However, this has often been corrupted into militant expansionism or ethnic idolatry, and God has eventually had to put them down. Nations need to remember that they are really "a very little thing" in God's sight, as a drop in a bucket or the fine dust on a scale. He "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26). Job testified back in the early days of the world's nations: "He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again" (Job 12:23). No matter how powerful and self-reliant (or how weak and dependent) a nation may seem to be, "the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations" (Psalm 22:28).
Therefore, if a nation desires that its "time before appointed" be long and fruitful, and "the bounds of its habitation" be the optimum for its divine mission, it must be careful to honor and serve the true God of heaven, for "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God," while "blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD" (Psalm 9:17; 33:12). HMM
