Alright, let's take our Bibles and open up to Romans chapter 13. I want to give a message or lesson tonight from Romans chapter 13. and from some other passages of scripture and this will tie into our study. We've been trying to deal with some basics of dispensationalism and this really turns into what we call the practicalities of it. In other words, like in theology you have what's called practical theology. In other words, theology that kind of is on the the level of where you live. And so dispensational truth and rightly dividing the Bible and understanding some of these things doctrinally, it actually does play out eventually in daily life and in practical life. And tonight the message, I think it's fitting because it fits in where we are in our society, the message is politics, preferences, and preaching. And that's what we'll look at tonight. Romans chapter number 13, most of you are familiar with this passage. Verse number 1, "'Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? "'Do that which is good, "'and thou shalt have praise of the same. "'For he is the minister of God.'" He's talking about the officer, the person who puts in that power, verse number three. "'He is the minister of God to thee for good. "'But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, "'for he beareth not the sword in vain. "'For he is the minister of God, "'a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. "'Wherefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath, "'but also for conscience sake. Four, for this cause pay ye tribute also, for they are God's ministers. There are some more ministers. Attending continually upon this very thing, render therefore to all their dues. Tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to who custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. And so I want to hopefully give us a little bit of a biblical perspective on God and government. We must always check our beliefs back to the Bible. We must always calibrate some of the things that might even be our preferences back to the book. And if your ideals line up with the scripture, that's good. If they don't, you need to change them. Now there are two extremes, and I'm just gonna look at the two extremes just because we don't have time to go into all these details tonight. I call them God and country and God anti-country. Two extremes, God and country. The premise is that America was founded on God and the Bible, so we must pledge allegiance to this country and do what it takes to get this country back to God. The premise is typically that America is a Christian nation, or if it's not technically a Christian nation now, it was in the past. Churches that are involved in this are often very political. A lot of times they'll have voter guides to help you out with figuring out who to vote for. They'll let politicians come in and speak. A lot of times they will have big Fourth of July celebrations where everybody stands up and we pledge allegiance to the flag and we run around with the flag. And they'll do things on Memorial Day, very traditional, patriotic, you know, toward the country. And they'll promote voting and all those kind of things. And that's the that's the one extreme over there. And there's a lot of folks that are independent Baptists. If you go to their Fourth of July service, you're going to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and God bless America. At least somebody will. I wouldn't sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic for nothing. And if you want to ask me about that later, I will. It's the only book in the hymn book I would literally rip out and burn. And it has nothing to do with North and South. It has everything to do with being biblical and all that. Anyway, so you have God and country. That's the one extreme over here. Then you have God anti-country. And the premise is that America is such a wicked nation, Psalm 917. and so corrupt that we should rebel against the established authority. And the idea is that our rebellion concerns our duties as citizens to stand up. And really, it comes down to this right here. Because Uncle Sam does like to get into this. And those of you listening, I'm holding up my wallet. Everything's a conspiracy with this side. I mean, they are out to get you, if you haven't figured that out yet. And it was on YouTube, so it must be true. The first and second amendments are equal authority to the Bible. This is the other side. Militias are really the duty of the people. and you should take up arms against the government. They're gonna get my gun, they're gonna have to pry my fingers off of my cold, dead body, however it goes, you know. That's the extreme over here on the other side. I just painted two extreme positions. And I hope none of you are on those extreme positions. But I will try to lighten the mood just a little bit and talk about politics. There was a congressman, he was asked about his attitude toward whiskey, and here was his reply. or liquor or whatever you want to call it nowadays. This is back when it actually used to be an issue. It's not even an issue now. Used to, they had dry counties. Do you all remember what that was? You couldn't get alcohol. Sometimes you couldn't even get beer, but you couldn't get whiskey and liquor in the county. And then on Sunday, you never could get it on Sundays. They would literally put locks on the things in the convenience stores where you couldn't get it. This was his response when they asked this congressman, What is your position toward whiskey? He said, if you mean the demonic drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, I'm against it. Yes sirree. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I'm for it. That's my position and I won't compromise. They hold their fists like this. You can always tell the politician, you can't tell him anything, but you can always tell them. They always hold their fists like this, you know. There were two politicians, they were holding a debate and one of them just looked at the other guy says, you know, you're lying about that. And the guy says, Yeah, I am. Hold on just a second. Let me finish. Yeah, I'm lying. But let me finish. It's a good argument. That's them, man. You can't trust them as far as you can spit. Now let me give you some Bible truths here. You see Romans 13 is really clear. And I think you just take it as it's there. But I want to give you, first of all, divine contradictions and then divine contrast. Now turn back to Genesis 9 and just notice where human government comes from. It comes from God. So here's some divine contradictions. Look in Genesis chapter 9. And God sets up human government when Noah gets off the ark. And you never see it on this before this. on a worldwide scale, and the Lord sets up the institution of human government. Genesis chapter number nine, Luke and verse number five. Genesis nine, five. And surely your blood of your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. So what he does after the flood is he sets up some boundaries because of how bad the wickedness and the violence was previously, the Lord says, we gotta curtail this. And so he sets up a boundary called government. And that government is there, and in cases where a person's life has been taken because of a crime, it's the duty of that government to take the life of that murderer. And that's all through the Bible. Here's before the law, before Moses ever shows up, And then under the law, we know we read about capital punishment. And then after the law, Paul, the apostle even makes a statement in the book of Acts, if I've done anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die by deserve capital punishment and kill me. And so that's the right of government is to govern. You have to have rules. I do not like the fact that we have to pay Uncle Sam all this money. I don't like it no better than any of the other folks. Can you imagine what the roads would be like if we didn't pay taxes? You think everybody would volunteer and say, hey, let's get together and pave the roads. No. And I'm just saying, I just know how people are. If the fish and wildlife did not have regulations, there would be resources completely depleted. You would think it was some extinction that took place millions of years ago. It might have been, you know, in the 1970s. They would have fished the whole thing out. You say, who? People like you. that don't buy a fishing license. That's the law. And people like you that want to run red lights. And we could go on and on and on and get us all in trouble tonight. So when you think about these things, you need to look at it broadly and realize there's a divine contradiction here because government's from God. And we understand dispensationally that these dispensations, you say, what's that word? Well, the word dispense means to give out a dispensary. God dispenses out truth in different ages. And so we know that he dispensed out this truth about how societies to set up governments. We know what happened. They got together and kicked God out. And then he called Abraham out and he sets up the patriarchal age, the age of the fathers. And he dispenses truth to Abraham and his descendants. But that doesn't mean government's gone because government lasts all the way till now. So there are overlaps within The periods of dispensations and so we understand that Government is still around and it will be here and it's not going to be and it's perfected and sinless form until the prince of peace comes Jesus Christ and the government rests on his shoulders Now this shows the contradiction go to 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 and Luke chapter 4 this is the divine contradiction and I say that obviously I There's no real contradiction, but on the surface, you're like, okay, God set up government, but why is it bad? Well, we know what happened. Adam and Eve sinned, and you're dealing with a depraved nation, a depraved group, depraved leaders. And certainly, we could say there's a lot of governments that have been very immoral, including our own. Amen. 2 Corinthians chapter number four. Look at this, look at this. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 3, 2 Corinthians 4, 3, Notice Satan is said to be the God of this world. Now come over to Luke chapter 4, notice in the temptation of Christ when he's tempted by the devil, what the devil says to him, come down to Luke chapter number 4 verse 5, Luke 4, 5. And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of this world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, all this power will I give thee, and the glory of them. For that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. So who's talking? The devil's talking. Jesus never corrects him. He just doesn't worship him. And he says, hey, I'm only gonna worship the Lord God. Those kingdoms are delivered into Satan's hand. And Satan's part in this divine contradiction will culminate when his own son, the Antichrist, takes the throne in Jerusalem and declares himself to be God. And the whole world worships the beast. That's the Antichrist. That's where this thing's going. That's where all these politics, that's where it's all going. All the stuff taking place over in the Middle East, all the things taking place with the big one world or I should say first world governments and strong economic powers like ourself, all of this will culminate in the devil himself ruling over all the kingdoms of the world in an attempt to destroy Jesus Christ at the Battle of Armageddon, which will be no battle at all. That's where this thing's going. So that's the divine contradiction. Government is of God, but yet the devil's in control. What does that mean? That means the devil's on a leash. Now, I know the devil's big, bad, and ugly. I get that. The devil's so powerful, if you could see him, Job 41 says you'd pass out. You couldn't even stand to look at him. But he's nothing compared to God. The Lord's got him on a leash. He is letting him use and manipulate those things for his own purposes and the Lord is going to take this world, we don't have to turn to it, it was one of our memory verses in Sunday School, Revelation 11, 15, the kingdoms, the seventh angel sounded and saying the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever. So the kingdoms of this world eventually will be the kingdoms of Jesus. See the devil is trying to get him out of the time. He's trying to get him to take the crown before the cross. Jesus had to go to the cross first and he had to accomplish salvation and redemption before he comes back as king. And so we see that divine contradiction. Now let's talk about the divine contrast. Go to Matthew chapter 11. Get Matthew 11 in one hand and Romans 14 in the other. the divine contrast. Now, we understand when we think things politically, anytime you have religion and politics mixing, you have a problem. When you look at the world scene, when you think about wars and things like that in the past, you can go all the way back after the New Testament church there, when you start hitting around 800 with Charlemagne and the popes, and you started having a church-state set up, where there's a religious-political connection. And even early on in our country, some places like Massachusetts, it took them a long time before they stopped taking taxes from people to put into the church state. There's several things like that in our own land that the Catholics were trying to get a hold of this. The Puritans, they thought they were the new Israel. They were coming over here and they replaced the nation of Israel and they're going to set up God's kingdom on this earth. They're going to set up the rules and they're going to take things up. And later on down the road there, even before 1776, Baptists were being publicly whipped for not having a license and being licensed by the state. You say, where? In America. Patrick Henry defended some of those people as a lawyer. And he said, give me liberty or give me death. I mean, he understood the concept of separation of church and state where the state does not control or dictate the church and that's an anomaly of the United States which is a very rare thing and what a blessing it was. Now here's what you want to get from Matthew chapter 11 as we compare it to Romans 14 is that religion and politics do mix with Israel. Way back before they ever picked Saul, God was their king. It's a theocracy. And so religion and politics are fine as long as it's Old Testament Israel and it comes out in fruition with the Davidic covenant and someone ruling on the throne of David and eventually it'll be Jesus Christ, it'll be fine. But when you get any other mix in there, you're in trouble. Now notice the two different gospels here and the difference between these kingdoms. Romans chapter number 14, look at Matthew chapter number 11 first. Look what Christ says. In verse 11, verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there have not risen a greater than John the Baptist, notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. You see that kingdom of heaven? Keep your hand there in Matthew and flip over to Romans 14. Notice in the church age, Where we are now after the cross, we do not preach the kingdom of heaven. Look in Romans chapter 14, verse 17. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Those are ideals. Those are philosophical things, righteousness, peace, and joy. They're not material, tangible things. The kingdom of God is a different phrase than the kingdom of heaven. We'll have time to look up all the references, 30 something, maybe 33 I think it is in Matthew. But the kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God are different just for a quick rundown. If you will look in two more places and we'll kind of summarize it, Acts chapter 20 and Matthew chapter 9. Look in Acts chapter 20 and Matthew chapter 9. Two different kingdoms and two different gospels. So the kingdom of heaven is a literal kingdom. I always think of it this way, I think of heaven not in heaven in the sense of where God is but heaven in the totality sense. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth is in the heavens, plural, so God's kingdom is the kingdom of heaven. But the kingdom of God is a whole lot broader in scope than the kingdom of heaven. That's why you'll have a duality when you read Matthew, it's kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven. You get over there in Luke and Mark and John, it's kingdom of God. People say, well, kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God must be the same thing. Don't rush into that thing too quick because once you start trying to make those the same thing, you're taking two words that are spelled different, God and heaven, And you're taking two concepts that are completely different, God and heaven, and you're making them the same. And that is a bad mistake. There's nothing arbitrary about the Bible. So I think we understand that Jesus Christ is the king of both kingdoms. So he can say, repent, the kingdom of heaven's at hand. He can say, repent, the kingdom of God's at hand. Here's one thing you will notice when you look at that whole ministry. John the Baptist shows up preaching the kingdom of heaven. John the Baptist never preaches the kingdom of God. He gets locked up. That thing begins to shift, and so that thing goes in what we call mystery form, and Jesus Christ preaches the kingdom of heaven, which is a literal kingdom with a literal king on the throne in Jerusalem, but there's also a kingdom of God, which is a spiritual kingdom. This has to do with what I'm preaching on Sunday mornings with the Sermon on the Mount. If I preach on tithe, I would call it the Sermon on the Amount. But on the Sermon on the Mount, There's a principle that's behind those precepts. We're not gonna put those precepts in action. We're not gonna say, hey, you need to make sure you tithe and you bring your sacrifice to the altar and you're under the law and the prophets. You look at all that stuff in the Sermon on the Mount, that's all law. But it's more than just kingdom of heaven. There's kingdom of God that deals with spiritual ideals. And that's what we preach. We preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. Look at it in Acts chapter number 20 and we'll compare it. Acts chapter 20, look at verse 24. Paul says this, but none of those things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. You see that? The gospel of the grace of God. Notice the contrast, look at Matthew 9. Matthew chapter nine, look down, if you will, in verse number 35. Matthew 9, 35, and Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And then you see all the stuff that goes with that, healing every sickness and every disease among the people, so on and so forth. And so we have a gospel of the kingdom of heaven. That is a Jewish gospel. And people get into that kingdom by natural generation. People get into the kingdom of God by supernatural regeneration. You're not born physically into the kingdom of God. We're not Protestants. I like the word Protestant because it's protest. But I'm not a Protestant, I'm a Baptist. And there were Baptists way before there were Protestants. Martin Luther persecuted some Baptists. and there have always been Baptists. A lot of times they'd call them Anabaptists because a lot of them had been sprinkled, but here's the Protestants. The Protestants, what they do, and I'm talking Presbyterian, Reformed, even Methodist, they come out of that whole deal. What they do is they get the little baby and they say, okay, we're gonna christen them and we're gonna baptize them and they're gonna be baptized into the kingdom of God. John chapter number three, you must be born again. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit, except a man be born of water, and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now he's a member of our church. Now, Presbyterians, if they're correct in their doctrine, they do teach that later on they have to have a conversion experience where the blood is applied, but they get into the kingdom of God by proxy, if you will, because they're parents. That's natural generation. That's not how you get into the kingdom of God. No baby gets into the kingdom of God by having water dumped on their head. I don't care how beautiful the church is and how emotional the ceremony is, it's not in the Bible. You realize how much the people refer to when they refer to church and they refer to religious things that have nothing to do with the Bible and have nothing to do with what we do? The gap is getting wider and wider. When people say, oh, I go to church, too. About the only thing that's similar to what they do and what we do is they sit and listen to somebody talk for a few minutes. Everything else is different. The Bible they use is different. The songs they sing are different. The order of service is different. How their money's used is different. The organization is, I'm talking Southern Baptists as well as anybody else. I mean, that's just the way it is. So that's a big contrast and that's been forever and ever and ever. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons you had a great awakening is you had these little hamlets and these little villages where the pastor in the church state in New England and places like that where everybody was a member of the church and the preacher realizes I got 300 members and none of them are saved. And Jonathan Edward gets to preach in the sermon, centers in the hands and half the congregation's not saved. You say why? Because they all became members by being sprinkled. and they never showed signs of being converted. So what is that? That's just the mother of harlots with a baby. That's Catholicism reformed. They should have got rid of that baby baptism, but they couldn't get rid of it. All right, so we got those two, Matthew 9 and Romans 14. So notice you get into the kingdom of God by supernatural regeneration. You get into the kingdom of heaven by natural generation. The kingdom of heaven is brought in by force, armed warfare. You need an army, you need guns. or military advancement. The king is on the throne in Jerusalem in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew chapter number five or six there in the Sermon on the Mount. The kingdom of heaven is an earthly people. The kingdom of God is a heavenly people. Turn over to Ephesians real quick. Now if you've got an old Schofield reference Bible, I want to show you a note. You can mark half of it out, but the other half is good. Look in Ephesians. And what you find when you study history of just evangelical history and you come up into the period that the old Schofield was put out in 1909, you get into the late 1800s and early 1900s, you're still coming off that Philadelphia High. And I say Philadelphia High because the Philadelphia Church Age comes out of there and you had all these great revivals and things like that. And you had some great Bible teachers. And C.I. Schofield was one of them. He was associated with D.L. Moody, if you're familiar with D.L. Moody, you've heard of that big name. He led two million people to Christ. Moody Bible Institute, still in Chicago, founded by him. Scowfield preached D.L. Moody's funeral. He's the editor of the Scofield Reference Bible. And those guys, they came out with a view that is, okay, we're preaching this spiritual gospel to get people saved so they don't die and go to hell. And they were heavily involved in missions. They were heavily involved in evangelism. and those kind of things, and they rightly divided the word of truth. They understood that Israel was separate from the church. And they furthermore believed the promises even in the early 1900s, late 1800s, there were several Bible preachers that advocated for a state to be set up in Israel and for Israel to have their own land. This is way before World War I, World War II, 1918, 1948, way before that. And these old guys, they preached and they taught the Bible and said, hey, God promised Israel that land. Israel is not the church. We don't take the promises from Israel and apply them to the church. like a lot of the old Episcopalians and Protestants did. Even your King James translators, if you have old King James Bibles, what you'll find in a lot of those headings, it'll say, like in the book of Isaiah, it'll say, God's promise to the church. You're reading all this stuff for Israel. It has nothing to do with the church. And you have baby sprinkling Amillennialists. They didn't believe in a millennium. They didn't believe, if they were millennial, if they did believe in a millennium, they believed later on in what's called post-millennialism. People like a great preacher, I like to read DeWitt Talmadge. He is a pastor up in New York City, large church. I think his sermons went in over 2,000 newspapers every Sunday. And boy, he could preach, very eloquent, preach the gospel. And he said, one day, we're going to convert China. I've got it in the books, I've read it through the whole, I'm on about number 8 of the 20-something volumes of sermons. And he was post-millennial. He believed that a revival was going to sweep America and sweep the world and then Jesus would come back. Very conservative, great preacher. Boy, he was off. But you had people like C.I. Schofield and you had some strong conservative Bible believers that rightly divided the word of truth and they taught that, hey, this whole thing with politics, this world is not our home because we're not an earthly people. We are a heavenly people. And here's the note I wanted you to see. Ephesians chapter number one. Look in verse number three. Blessed be God and Father. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. You see, your blessings are spiritual. And we can couple this with over Colossians chapter number three, set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. Now Schofield's note, if you look down, if you have an old Schofield reference Bible, you can cross out the first part where it says you don't need to, you know, the word heavenly is not a good word and it's misleading. You can just cross that out. But you read the last part of his note. The believer is a heavenly man and a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. Now a lot of those old guys, they believed that so much so that, you know what they did? Instead of feeding the hungry and setting up social programs and building hospitals like a lot of the Presbyterians and even some of the Baptists did, and feeding the hungry and doing all these social programs, which is good as long as you give them the gospel. You know what they did? They started setting up mission agencies and Bible institutes. The Presbyterians even had a revival where some of them said, hey, this four-year seminary stuff is for the birds. We need to set up Bible institutes where men and women can come and train for about three years and then they can get on the mission field. T. Pearson, he was one of the editors on the Schofield Bible. He was a big advocate of missions. And he set up those Bible insta against their own denominations. And so what you had is you had people say, hey, this world is not our home. We're not going to get tangled up in all this political stuff because we're not going to bring revival by political reform. We're going to bring revival by spreading the gospel of the grace of God. And they were criticized from that. Nowadays, what's happened is a shift in theology. It's a big, big shift. I preach and teach to you stuff that was popular in 1900. I'm sorry, I'm a little reactionary, but I'm being honest with you. And so when you start looking in seminaries, that thing's come all the way down. In the 80s, the places that were evangelical and more dispensational, they became what's called progressive. And the progressives, they took a big step toward Reformed theology. And they say, you know what? We don't need to be like Scofield and those old guys because they were so heavenly minded, they were no earthly good. They didn't really want to apply the Sermon on the Mount and help our fellow man. We need to give out pumpkins for Halloween. That'd be a great mission. There are churches that actually think they're doing mission work by selling pumpkins. I'm being serious. Pick your jaw up off the floor and, you know, we're going to send people over to Jamaica to build houses. Our youth group went on a mission trip. That's great. It's kind of like talking to a Mormon. You know, they talk about Jesus Christ and they have a King James Version and all. All of their terminology is different. When they say the word dam in their own books, they say it's like a river dam. Because they don't believe in hell fire. Damnation is a river dam. Jesus Christ is the brother of Lucifer. So they can talk the same terminology. It's almost getting that way in Christendom when you're talking to somebody, yeah, our youth group went on a missions trip. You're thinking, oh man, great. What did they do? Well, you know, they helped build a house and they built this and that's good. Nothing against that. Did they spread the gospel at all? Do they even know what the gospel is? Or did they have a Rick Warren gospel? Do you want to go to heaven? You want to go to heaven? Raise your hand. Tell God you want him in your life. Go ahead. God, I want you in my life. If you did that, I just got some good news. You're going to heaven when you die. Go listen to these guys. Man, they're about as deep as a mud puddle. How many people they get saved on the mission trip? Oh, they build a house. They have no clue what biblical missions is. All they see is, you know what we need to do? It's kind of like progressive dispensationalism. We need to put our faith in action, and that means build a hospital and feed the hungry. You are called to be a heavenly people, and that means you're trying to get people to go to heaven with you. I said all that to say this, how to keep a balanced view. Proverbs 11 verse 1, a false balance is an abomination of the Lord. I think we have to renew our personality. then we have to refocus our priorities. Now when I say renew your personality, you say, well, my personality, well, who are you? 2 Timothy 2 says in verse 19, let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. We have to identify as Christians. Like I've told you before, I know I'm beating a dead horse, but we're Christians first, Americans second. I am an American. You want to down this country, if you hate it so bad, go somewhere else. Bye. Just like I'm a walker and I have a family and I'm prejudiced toward my family. I guess I can use that term prejudiced. I'm partial toward my family. They're my family, they're not yours. I like them better than you. I'm sorry. I'm partial toward my church family. This is the best church in the world as far as I'm concerned. I don't care what any other preacher says. This is the best church in the world. I'm a member of it. I told those folks out there when I was given the charge to their church, what a blessing it is just to be a member of a good church. Not just to be a pastor, but to have brothers and sisters, you know, that you can have praying for you and be there for you. That's a blessing to have. But I can be partial toward that. I can be partial toward my country. But number one, I'm partial toward Jesus Christ. You've got to renew your personality. Romans chapter 12, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove it as that good and acceptable perfect will of God. Here's what the world wants you to do. The world wants you to be sucked in to this political momentum. to where it's kind of like, you know, you on Sundays, it's really good. I like how the guys come in and we pray on Sunday morning before we go into Sunday school. And years ago, I remember a lot of times on during college football season, a lot of the talk will be football, football, football, football. And you would hear, yeah, we did this, we did that we I'm thinking we I didn't know you were on that team. But you know how people identify with their teams and they put the flags on, they buy the $50 t-shirt that costs $2 to make, but it's official, college, football, whatever. They want to be identified with something bigger than them. And it's that same thing in politics. People pull you into this stuff and the world wants you to get so involved in this stuff that you see yourself in this, swept up in this momentum and you've got to back out and you've got to renew your personality and say, number one, I am a Christian. I'm not to be conformed to this world. I read a historian who's very well versed in history and he made the statement that there never has been in America a city with over 50,000 people that had the majority of those people in it that were Christians. Let that sink in for just a minute. At least 50,000 and probably even less. I doubt with 13,000 people in Jefferson County, the majority of them are saved. Think about that for a minute. When you get in your little mind, you think, oh, America, God bless America, we're a Christian nation. Do you really think the majority of citizens in our country are saved? What makes you think it's Christian? Furthermore, let me say this. The actual country and all the documents of our country omit the name of Jesus Christ, every single one of them, the forefathers including that. Furthermore, in our public institutions, except the jails and prisons, The same tax money goes to the juvenile delinquents as it does to the public school, but you cannot take a King James Bible and go into public school. Sometimes they let the Gideons do that, sometimes they don't. Would you call an organization that banned the Bible and banned prayer and omitted the name of Jesus Christ a Christian organization? What if you came in here and said, you can come, but don't bring the Bible in here? Would you call this a Christian church? People just don't think. Here's where the confusion comes in. It's kind of like the whole Christmas thing. What you have is a country where you had some great revivals and great moves of God and you had Christians that actually influenced society where people would say, hey man, you don't need to talk that way and you need to do this because there was a power of God on some revivals and some meetings and things like that. There's no question about that. And so you want to make sure you understand that and you renew your personality and you renew yourself in Jesus Christ. Christian first, American second. Number two, refocus your priorities. God first. Set your affection on things above, not on things of the earth. Lay up yourself treasures in heaven. Hebrews chapter 11, we don't seek a country down here, we seek a heavenly country. That's that passage about Abraham. God first, family next, country last. And then resolve to stick to this plan. And I want to give you a contrast to Romans 13, and that's Acts chapter 5. This is when Peter and the apostles had to make up their mind whenever the authorities, which had sanctioned by the Romans, the Pharisees and so forth, they said, hey, you've got to shut up. You can't speak the name of Jesus. Peter said, hey, we ought to obey God rather than men. There may come a time and the laws of our land say, hey, you can't cross this line. And we say, well, I know you say that. I'm trying to be a good citizen. By the way, a good Christian should be a good citizen, whether you're in America, Canada or wherever. You should be a good citizen submitting to those laws of that land. I'll have time to turn to first Peter chapter number two. You can jot it down for reference. But he said, fear God and honor the king. And when he made that statement, one of the worst kings ever was on the throne, Nero, who had people killed left and right. He said, you give honor to him. If the president of our country came in this door, we should we would have to give respect to him because we're Christians. So I don't agree with him politically. Yeah, but you honor the office. If you're gonna be a New Testament Christian, so I don't agree with it. Well, I guarantee you, all the governments have been corrupt ever since. But that's in the Bible. The contrast comes in where you have to draw the line on the sand like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and said, Hey, the law says I got to bow down to this image. I'm not bowing down to this image. Daniel says, you say, I can't pray. I'm praying. The Hebrew Hebrew midwives, they said, you got to kill these little boys where I'm not killing somebody. And so we have a responsibility not to join the government, but to pray for the officials. First Timothy, Chapter two. And we will we will wrap it up, I promise. I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplication, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all that are in authority. that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. He says over there in Corinthians about the slave, he says, hey, if you can be free, use it. If the laws of the land come up for a slave, even under that awful institution of slavery, obeying the laws of the land, you're a slave, submit to it, he says, but then he says, hey, if you, based on those laws, can use it, use it. And so what am I saying? I'm saying there's balance there. Our laws of our land, our government gives us certain leeways. Hey, these are some things that you can do. Take advantage of those things. And if you want to be involved in political processes, help yourself. But don't let the political processes overcome you. Where they fuel you. You know, there are some Christians that will expend more energy in their political candidates than they will in trying to get the gospel out. That's just the fact of the matter. They get more excited and more heated over that. And I can say this, I'm not getting on to you, I am, but same thing with sports, it could be anything, just fill in the blank. You can get so excited about whatever, the point is you get your eyes off Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ first and foremost. You know, I'm still going to be saved come next Wednesday, no matter what the outcome is. And I'll tell you this, according to the book of Acts, man, there were some great revivals under some horrible governments. Revival is not contingent on the people you have in office. And your fellowship with Jesus Christ is not contingent upon who gets in the White House. Or the Crooked House, whatever you want to call it. I just want to encourage you to have balance and don't let it get you sideways. Amen. Too many preachers and aren't you glad at least I'm glad I'm glad I don't go to a church where I where you hear a preacher preach the news and preach the headlines and preach the politics. We had a lady come during revival and she didn't understand She was trying to push her agenda for something she wanted us to vote on. She had all her stuff. It was during revival. Y'all might have saw her. She came in here, had a little signs, and had our little thing. She thought, oh, what a great opportunity. I'm going to take advantage of this crowd. And she came in, and she wanted to put all her stuff out in the foyer to help us to know who to vote for. I just told her, number one, we're here to worship Jesus Christ. We're not here to talk about who's voting for what. And that's all I had time to talk to her about, but here's the thing. How insulting is that? How insulting would it be for me to stand up and to micromanage your conscience, dealing with politics? I think you're ladies and gentlemen that have grown up in the Bible, and I've taught you the Bible well enough, I think, that you can take that Bible and say, you know what? In my own life and in my family, this is how we're going to do things. The Bible's my authority. If I have to, and this goes back to the whole 2020 stuff, if I have to stand up and tell you what to do medically, y'all are in bad shape. Whatever way you want to go on the whole shot thing, and some preachers actually think it's their job to get in the pulpit and waste everybody's time telling you their preference concerning politics. There's a whole lot more in the 1189 chapters of the Bible than what's going to be taking place next week. So I hope that might help you a little bit practically and it definitely is a rightly dividing issue because when you get this book rightly divided, you'll see the kingdoms of this world and how all that stuff plays out and how we need to be focused on the gospel of the grace of God and spreading the gospel in the kingdom of God. All right, let's pray.