3 Issues Facing our Country

A couple had been married for twenty years when they went to a wedding of a close friend’s daughter. During the ring exchange ceremony, the husband started to cry.

The wife, surprised by her husband’s emotional outburst, said, "I didn’t realize that you have such deep feelings about your friend’s happiness."

The husband replied, "Twenty years ago, your father threatened that if I don’t marry you, he would put me behind bars for twenty years.

And I realize if I had just gone to jail, I would’ve been a free man by now.”

What does freedom mean to us?

I am so thankful that I have the freedom to stand up and preach the Gospel today.

I am thankful that I am an American and that people have fought for me to have the right to speak to you today.

I hope you are thankful for this right that we have today.

In many places around the world they have to guard the doors of the Church because of fear of arrest.

In Muslim countries churches are bombed just like the one recently bombed in Nigeria.

How thankful should we be to have this freedom.

Freedom comes with great responsibility and I feel responsible to talk to you about issues that face our country. 

I want to speak to you in a practical way today and equip you for many of the social battles going on today.

Several prominent literary figures were invited to an open forum where someone interviewed them and asked them questions.

These were the most famous writers of their time.

One question that came up was this: “If you were stranded on a desert isle, and you could only have one book, which book would you bring with you?”

- The first person said without hesitating, “The complete works of William Shakespeare”

-The next said, “I would bring the Bible with me”

- They turned to the last writer and said, “How about you? What book would you bring with you to a desert isle?”

He responded, “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Ship Building”

Sometimes we can get so high with our thinking that we are not very practical.

The Bible is meant to be God’s rule for life applied.  Part of wisdom is knowing how to apply God’s Word.

Today I think we live in an interesting time.

A Chinese Proverb once said – May you live in interesting times – well folks we live in interesting times.

It is an exciting time and also a troubling time. 

Exciting because the Church of Christ has a wonderful opportunity.

 Problems have been put in front of us that need to be solved using the bible.

Sometimes the Church must take a stand and say this is what God is for and this is what God is against.

Not because we are special but because God has revealed it to us in Scripture. 

Today I want to share with you three issues that face the Church going forward today.

These three issues have been thrust to the forefront of our political discourse during this election season.

As a matter of fact Billy Graham who usually stays out of such things took out a full page ad in the NYT encouraging people to vote for Biblical values.

So what are those issues that are being talked about so much and what does the Bible teach about them?

Three things that are major social issues facing our country – This is a message that faces specifically Americans.

We need to be reminded that we have a greater responsibility to our culture because we have God’s truth.

When the world is confused and people are saying there is no truth – we need to stand up and say –Yes there is truth and it is non-negotiable.

God has laid down his law and His ways are perfect.

So the question we need to ask this morning is – Do we believe God’s Word?

If we do – will we act on it and as Christians serve our communities by sounding a Clarion call as to what truth is on these matters.

Courage is going to be needed-  we need to be courageous in our faith.

My example to you today is John the Baptist.   Jesus tells us Matthew 11:1 that there has not been anyone born greater than John the Baptist.

I believe Jesus was talking about the type of man John the Baptist was.

What type of man was he?  Courageous- He stood up to evil when it needed to be confronted.

Herod Antipas had taken his brother Philip’s wife from him.

He had somehow seduced her to become his wife.

In other words Herod Antipas had taken his brother’s wife to be his own. 

Now people in our times would have told John the Baptist to stay out of it.  They might had told John hey you need to preach the Gospel and don’t mess with politics.

Don’t talk to the king – you keep your message about salvation and don’t worry about social issues.

But that is now what John does – he calls out Herod and the evil that he did and he loses his life and let me remind you that this story is in the New Testament.

When social issues face a nation godly people need to take a stand and say what is right and what is wrong and be willing to face the consequences.

The weapons that we use are not guns, tanks or the ways of the world.  Our weapons are God’s word.

The sword of the Spirit which is the word of God

Paul tells us in

2 Corinthians 10: 3-5

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,

Our warfare is one that is about ideas – it starts in the mind.  It is teaching and ideas

Ideas do have consequences today – what you accept as just truth can be deception.  It could be lies from Satan.

Paul had concern for the church at Colossae. 

He had taught them truth – he had grounded them in the way of the Lord.  But he was concerned for them.

What was his great concern for these Christians?

Colossians 2:8

8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

Paul was concerned that these Christians would be taken captive by philosophy and empty deception.

In other words dangerous ideas – ideas that we just accept.

All ideas and thoughts are subject to the word of God – we have to challenge notions. 

One such deception is that the Church has no place in instructing the state on how to govern or run the world.

This notion is not Biblical – some take the passage in which Christ says to Render unto Caesar what is Caesars as a statement that Jesus was saying let the state do what the state wants to do.

That is a false idea.  Jesus was talking about paying taxes clear and simple and there is even more at play in that verse than just that. 

After the 1700’s an empty philosophy developed after the Enlightenment period.  The Enlightenment period brought some positives but one negative was the idea that religion was private.

No politics or social policy in the Church.  – where did that idea come from?  Have you ever wondered why that idea is popular?

Well the Soviets in the Soviet Union employed this against the Eastern Orthodox Church.  They tried to silence the Orthodox preachers so that they could carve up the country and push an atheistic agenda.

If the state could get the church to just keep in the church house and just talk about salvation then the state can do just as they please.

Well John the Baptist didn’t do that and he challenged the king of his day to the point that it got him killed.

Paul would tell us that we as Christians need to be on guard against empty deceitful philosophy.

So the first empty philosophy that we need to squash and fill with God’s truth is that religion is a private matter.

No the Christian faith is the THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE-  IT ENCOMPASSES EVERYTHING.

There is no carving up your life into your public life and your private Christian life. 

Today let me share with you some empty philosophies that are dangerous and then share with you God’s truth about those philosophies.

1)   Sanctity of Life

I have preached on abortion before and you know where I stand on this subject.  I hope that you today are convinced that the Bible teaches that the infant in the womb is considered a person.

In that sermon I gave you Biblical teaching on how God views the unborn but today I want to talk a little about the empty, vain, philosophy that is behind it.

First off, how did we get to the notion that the unborn are not fully human?

Well historically and Biblically life has always been considered sacred – the infant in the womb was always considered to be a human life.

How did we get to this point today to where this is even a question?

Well the modern notion of worthy life goes back to the early 1900’s in what is called the Eugenics movement.

The very word Eugenics comes from two words

The first Greek Word is “Eu” meaning good

The second Greek word is Genus meaning birth

Literally Good birth – of good stock or well born but in reality is means the movement of applied science that really got its start in the 1920’s that advocated the killing off of bad genetics.

The notion came up that some life was better lived than others.

The sick and even certain races were considered to be not worthy of life or of lesser quality of life.

If you were older, sickly or certain racial groups your life was less worth than others.

Some think that this was a Nazi German concept but this actually got its start in the American and European academic institutes and Universities and was advocated as a real science.

WWII and the horrors of what the Germans did to the Jews and the sick drove Eugenics into the background.

But Eugenics as a science rose from the ashes of WWII and in our modern day is alive and well.

Let me give you some terms used today by this modern movement to get the same point across.

The two main terms used today are AUTONOMY and CHOICE

Autonomy is the notion that a woman’s body is her own and a pregnancy can be considered to be a matter of her own privacy. 

Like a medical condition the child that she is pregnant with can be gotten rid of through medical procedures just like any common illness.

Why did this come about?

Well some life Is not as important as other life.  An unwanted child would be a nuisance to society and drag on the taxpayers so that life is not as important as a life that comes into a family that can financially support it.

The other word is CHOICE

Choice means that a woman should have the right to choose what to do with her own body. 

It is her choice what she should do to the child.

These terms come right from the Eugenics movement of the 1920’s and is dressed up in new clothes.

The new notion that is coming right out of this movement is Euthanasia.

Now if you are terminally ill or just miserable with your life you have the Autonomy to decide to end your own life.

You decide to kill yourself through Physician assisted suicide.

The word Choice is being used for this too.  It is your body you should get to choose to end your own life.

Do you hear the hiss of the Serpent behind all of this – do you hear the Eugenics movement coming through..

Unborn children not wanted by their parents are unworthy of life as people that are sick.

Also we dress these things up in nice terms.

Consider the word Abortion in the first place – it sounds benign. 

You abort a Rocket Mission, you abort a military operation.

You don’t abort a human life – it is called murder.  We as Christians need to call a spade a spade – abortion is murder of the unborn and not abortion.  It is infanticide – it is the killing of an infant.

When a doctor helps someone commit suicide we should stop calling it Physician assisted suicide and call it homicide.

We need to pull sin into the light of God’s word and proclaim what it is.

We stand for life – we stand for the care of the mother and the child. 

We stand for the dignity of all human beings.  WE believe what the Bible teaches. 

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

All human life is special because we are the image bearers of God. 

God cares about each one of us and we are loved by Him.

For God so Loved the World-

Jesus said that God knows the very number of hairs on our head that is how much he knows us and cares about us.

John 10:10

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full

We are full LIFE people.  The Church should be a place where we cherish all human beings from the womb to grave.

Every human being whether sick  or infirmed.

Every human being of very race or color should be viewed as God’s image bearer.  That is what the Church should stand for.

This is a non-negotiable.

2)   The Sanctity of Marriage.

Believe it or not we are living in times where now we have to define what marriage really is.

Imagine 100 years go or just 50 years ago bringing up this subject.  What is marriage?

People would think you are insane- of course marriage is between a man and a woman.

But when Satan promotes hollow and vain, deceptive teachings into our culture this all changes.

Even Christians have fallen prey to this false teaching on marriage.

James A. Garfield once said, “The sanctity of marriage and the family relation make the corner-stone of our American society and civilization.”

The Hebrew writer declared, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

God wants a chaste nation of people that are sexually pure, that reserve the sexual union only for matrimony.

God wants a nation where marriage is honored.

 Solomon, in all his wisdom, informs us that, “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD” (Proverbs 18:22).

From the beginning of time man had recognized the need of the institution of marriage and the benefits that it bestows.

In the beginning God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” [or, a "helper comparable to him" - NKJ] (Genesis 2:18).

From the very beginning man has been shown that marriage is of great benefit to him.

 Marriage provides for the domestic unit a sphere of stability in which one has the right to a family name, the security of property, and an intimate atmosphere of love and trust.

One of the reasons our country, and even the church in many places, is in its present decaying state is because the family unit is deteriorating.

We have all heard how it was not foreign powers that destroyed the great Roman Empire, but was internal decay – the deterioration of the family.

We know to be true what was said by Solomon in long the ago, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

Strong marriages are a must if the church is to be strong.

 The Psalmist declares, “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

We must build our nation on God’s truth as it relates to marriage and the family.

We now live in a time when many state governments are trying to redefine holy matrimony.

Marriage between a man and a woman is a universal from the beginning and if we want to stand as a nation and make it we must stand on the basic building block of society.

If marriages and families continue to erode in our country we will not continue as a nation.

Many of the social problems we have today can be traced directly back to the desentegration of the family.

We as Christians stand for the truth of God’s teaching on marriage – it is between a man and woman only.

It is only to be dissolved by the death of a mate or marital unfaithfulness.  That is the truth of God’s word and that should be what we stand on.

We should support legislation that would promote stronger families not weaken families.

3)   Religious Freedom

Isaiah 61:1    

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

God wants to set us free – God wants us to have a choice in the matter of following Him

The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

One early Christian wrote a letter to the pagan Roman society and he said the following about the Christian faith:

“Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God”(Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4).

Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—

a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience.

No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.

What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

Christ always called people to follow Him on their own accord.  We reject any form of government that would coerce people to act against their religious convictions. 

One major part of the American Experiment by those that came here to found this country was for that very reason.

To have a city on a hill a beacon of hope to the world that you can come to America and have freedom to practice your religion. 

You may think why are you bringing this up?

We all agree with this and we do live in a free country.    But I will tell you that in some ways the tide is turning.

IN many places religious freedoms are being lost and Christians need to be aware of this.

We see it in the use of antidiscrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business.

 After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in

good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching.

In other words an institution that placed children into homes had to close because they were being persecuted religiously.

In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions.

In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality.

We are seeing a rise of specifically anti- Christian legislation being enacted that would limit the practice of your faith and this is not happening in Saudi Arabia or in the intolerant Muslim countries of the world but in places like the U.S, England, and Canada.

While we witness our own government bend over backwards to try not hurt the sensibilities of Muslims, they in turn run rough shod over the sensibilities of Christians.

WE stand for the religious freedom of all and for the exercise of a free conscience. 

We are not a faith of coercion but of conscience.

I firmly believe that the Bible and God’s word gives us all we need to find truth in navigating this world.

That God came to save us from our sins and show us the way.

Sin has marred this world so bad that it is in many ways turned upside down.  People are being lead astray by empty, hollow, and vain philosophy and it is time for us to crack open our Bibles and say what does Scripture say about this.

It is time to turn off the TV and open the Bible.

It is time to dedicate ourselves to God’s work of redemption and restoration of all things in Christ. 

We have to be willing to speak truth to a lost and dying world- we have to be bold and courageous.

We have to be willing to teach the truth in love.

We must be willing to open up our mouths and lead by example in a world that needs God’s truth.

WE need Salvation – pure and simple- Regenerated saved people are transformed people.

People that are truly saved in Christ bear the fruits of the Spirit and are no longer locked in the bondage of Satan’s deciept.

We need a revival in our land – and that revival must start with us.

It begins with you and me.

We must take the charge of Paul to Timothy seriously

2 Timothy 2: 23-26

23 But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. 24The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will

There are Americans our fellow countrymen who are under the deception of the Devil.

The problem with our country today is not the elected officials so much – it is the Americans elected the elected officials.

In other words we need  a revival of faith in our country. 

We need people wise in the ways of the Lord and not the ways of the world.

This will take great love and patience on our part.

We are to teach them in love – kind, patient when wronged, turning the other cheek.

This change in our country will come to great cost to us – we must take up our cross and follow Jesus. We must bring the truth of God’s salvation to our countrymen. 

We need a nation that honors the Lord.