Not My Jesus: Political Jesus

Well, over the past seven weeks, we’ve been challenging a lot of the concepts that people have about who Jesus is. And today, we’re finishing up our series before I begin a series on First John called Into the Light a couple weeks from now.

Next week is Father’s Day, and I want to encourage you to be back this coming Thursday or Sunday for Father’s Day. I have a message for guys that I’ve been really working on, and I’m just excited about being able to challenge guys to the level that God has given you in your home to make an impact, to create an environment for God to really work in your homes. I think you have a unique position in your home. So I want to give you the encouragement and the tools to be able to live up to those things.

They also have a lot of fun planned for us on Father’s Day. So all you dads, show up. If you have something going on this weekend or next weekend, show up on Thursday night at 6:30. It’s the same service, just on Thursday night, and it’s going to be a really good time. We’re going to grow together and we’re going to learn a lot.

But today, I decided to save the safest title of the entire Not My Jesus series for this morning. I’m being facetious, right? Today we’re talking about Political Jesus.

Aren’t you feeling it already? You’re like, “Oh boy, we’re going there. We’re getting in deep this morning.”

If you’re visiting for the very first time, I’m Matt. I’m the pastor here at the church. I’ve been here for 22 years, and I don’t mind going there. If it’s in the Bible, we’re going there. My goal is not to steer clear of any topic because there are cultural taboos about it. I really don’t care about cultural taboos. I care about what God’s word says. So every week we try to ask, what does God’s word say?

I don’t think God’s word should be offensive to a believer. Amen? If you come in and you’re a Christian and you hear the word of God and you’re frustrated by it and challenged by it, and you don’t like what it said, how many of you know the problem is yours, not God’s?

Now, I find that in my own personal life at times I may read something and it will tell me essentially, you were wrong, they were right. Go and apologize, say you’re sorry. I don’t like that, but I have to respond to it. Over and over again, that’s the position we put ourselves in with God’s word. So I’d like you to put yourself there this morning.

Have you ever been to one of the Chiefs playoff games? Someone invites you, they’re having a party, everyone’s over, and you don’t know it, but they invited someone who’s on the opposing team. A Raiders fan, a Broncos fan, something like that. But they’re not one of the cool fans who’s just going to have fun. They’re one of these serious, angry fans who’s going to yell at the refs for every call they make in the Chiefs’ favor and just say, this is garbage, we’re getting robbed. They’re just going to be worked up and angry the whole time.

If you’ve ever been to a party and sat by the wrong fan, or maybe you were the wrong fan, how many of you know that’s super uncomfortable? When they call you back next year and say, hey, you want to come over? You’re like, hey, is that dude going to be over, the crazy Broncos fan? Because if he is, just let me know. I want to watch the game. I don’t want to get in a fist fight with someone. I want to watch a game.

Or maybe you’ve had this thing where right after one of the presidential elections, you go out with someone and their candidate lost and yours won, but they don’t know you have a different candidate. So they’re just saying, this was stupid. Can you believe anyone would vote for that lady or that guy? And you’re like, I did. And you’re like, uh oh, I don’t know what’s going to happen to our friendship right now, because they’ve just thrown the gauntlet out. Right now, we’re going to find out whether our friendship can stand the test of having a different candidate.

So I just want to clarify something this morning: Jesus does not vote in US elections.

Isn’t that a shocker? You’re like, no, I thought he was on this team or that team. And he doesn’t actually vote in elections in England or Russia or Nigeria either. He’s not really part of that.

But while Jesus doesn’t vote your way, Jesus actually wants you to vote his way. In other words, the Bible should guide every aspect of Christian life, including our family life, including our moral life, including the way we parent our children, including the way we act morally in society, including our ethical life at work and our work habits, including our vote.

Do you think the Bible should have any influence on the moral values of Christians? Come on. Do you think the Bible should have any weight or value on the moral values of Christians?

Now, how many of you know that a lot of times when you vote, you’re voting for a value set to occur? You’re voting for a value set. So if you say, well, I want the Bible to weigh in on my value set, then it has to weigh in on the way you vote. There’s really no way to separate those.

So today, I just want you to know that this sermon is not about your party. It’s really a sermon about his kingdom. This is about how people who belong to King Jesus represent King Jesus in their lives. Wherever they are, they’re agents of God in the poll booth. They’re agents of God on the PTA. They’re agents of God at their work. Wherever you are, you represent Christ in your life. You become less, he becomes more, so that he can shine through your life and be a light wherever you are in the world.

Christianity should radically transform every single life of someone who believes in it. Something has been interesting to me. I know a lot of you are not in what I do. I’m a pastor, so I pay attention sometimes to what’s happening in world movements of Christianity in different countries.

I don’t know if you realize this, but nearly every single place where Christianity becomes a movement in a nation, it tends to take over national politics, over and over, in country after country after country. It moves a country toward a series of ethical, moral behaviors that Christianity insists on. When a vast majority of people in a country start having the same moral set, then they start voting for the same moral set, and it starts radically changing countries. Does that make sense to you?

It would be a common thing to say, hey, when a majority of Muslims move into South Detroit, they start bringing Sharia law. You bring a majority religious group into an area and that’s going to affect the area. You bring a majority political value into a school system and that will generate and turn out people toward that. So it’s not uncommon that you should think my Christianity might affect my country as it grows and spreads, and I’m a light, and the church is a light, and more people come to faith in Christ. It should have greater and greater impact on the world around us. That’s the normal part.

Now, here’s what I’ve discovered. There are a lot of people who cannot determine the difference between their loyalty to a political idea or a political party and their loyalty to the scripture. They do a reverse process. They say, I believe this thing that’s on my political party’s agenda. My politicians, the influencers I listen to on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, wherever you go, they believe this and they’re of this political persuasion. And the Bible backs it up because they quoted this quote from the Bible and that quote from Jesus.

How many of you know that both parties, for any issue, can find a way to try to quote scripture to back up what they believe? You can tell that someone’s not doing it right because they’re oppositional ideas that are backed up by the same Jesus in the same book. That can’t work. There’s something wrong there.

So I’m going to help you understand, when you look at scripture, how to make decisions based on the Bible itself, not your political party. The Bible guides your political beliefs. Your political beliefs do not guide the way you view the Bible.

A lot of people have it in reverse order. In fact, I run into probably as many or more Christians who could give an ardent defense for their political belief than they could for a theological point from scripture. If I said, argue for the atonement, they would be quiet. But if I said, argue for your beliefs about life, they might be able to argue for it. Argue for your beliefs about the border. Argue for your beliefs about taxes on the rich. You would have an argument.

It’s interesting how we have an apologetic for our politics but not an apologetic, an argument, for our Christian belief. How many say that’s reversed? How many say that’s messed up?

So what I’m trying to do is make Christians here, not Republicans and Democrats. And I’m going to do that by sharing some scripture and walking you through some common sense things.

The Bible Decides My Vote, Not My Party

Come on, somebody get that. That’s pretty lowball. If you’re here and you’re a Christian, you know the Bible decides my vote, not my party.

The Bible shows how people are designed to work, how nations are designed to work, relationships, families, all of it. God created three structures to govern society. Not society created; God created three structures.

The first structure God created was the family. Husband, wife, kids. He created that in the Garden of Eden. That’s God’s creation. How many of you know the government doesn’t create families by deciding what a legal marriage is? God created families before there were governments. The family comes first.

The second structure came when we fell into sin. There had to be governing authorities because someone had to execute justice on the sinner. Governments were formed primarily as a result of sin, for protecting people from a messed up, broken, fallen world. If you go through the Old Testament, you’ll read a lot of structures God set up through Moses for the governing of the Israeli people. There’s common wisdom that comes from that. They’re not all commands, thus saith the Lord, but there’s a lot of wisdom in the way God structured things.

And then we know that Jesus established the church. Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” How many of you know that structure of the church is structured by God himself?

Sometimes people say, but what about the school? No, schools are not a structure created by God. Every school comes out of the other three. It’s derivative. It comes out of homes where homeschooling happens. It comes out of churches that first established the schools around the world, or it comes now from governments who’ve adopted that. It’s derivative. It’s not created by God. There are a lot of other things you’ll discover are derivative, not created.

So we look at those three and we ask: Should the government replace the church? No. Should the government replace the family? No. The government should really just create a safe space for families to flourish and churches to flourish so that God’s other two institutions can do their job on the human heart, which makes governing a whole lot easier. If families are doing their job and churches are doing their job, it makes the job of the government a whole lot easier.

Before I give you four principles for biblically deciding how to vote, I want to take out one false belief. I’ve heard this statement made, and it’s partly true but mostly false. Here’s the statement: you cannot legislate morality.

Here’s where that’s partly true. You cannot legislate morality for my individual human heart internally and have any knowledge about whether your legislation really changed my life. How many of you know that if you want to be an immoral person, it doesn’t matter what the law says? You can be immoral at the core of who you are, no matter what the law says. In that aspect, it’s true.

However, a lot of legislation is moral. How many of you know it is not moral to kill innocent human beings? So we have laws on the book about murder. Or how about theft? It’s not moral to go steal things that don’t belong to you, and yet we have moral laws to govern against that. And things about rape, and things about violence. How many would say it sounds like we do legislate a lot of morality?

So the answer is you absolutely can and should legislate moral laws to protect and govern your society. What’s your other option? Immoral laws. There are some amoral laws too. Whether it’s 55 or 65, I think it’s almost immoral to drive 55 on a highway, but I don’t know that that’s really immoral. That’s probably amoral, meaning non-moral.

So the question really becomes, what is moral, and can we make that into law? Whether or not we will legislate morality, we always are legislating morality. It’s happening over and over, all the time, in every country. So the real question becomes, whose morality will it be? Is it going to be the morality of Sharia law that governs Lee’s Summit, Missouri, in 85 years? I hope not. Is it going to be anti-biblical morality put into laws that govern the state of Missouri? You find whatever the Bible says and you oppose that ardently, then you write laws to govern anti-Christian morality. How many say, I’d prefer that not be the law of the state of Missouri or the United States? Amen. Or could it be Christian morality that governs it? Because some morality is going to govern it.

Are any of you Christian enough to believe that Christian morality is a good morality and is healthy for societies? So you’re so Christian that you actually believe in the teachings of the Bible, the morality taught in the Bible. Amen. Enough to vote for it.

Oh, wow. You’re a bunch of wackos here. Voting for the Bible like it’s true, like you believe it, like it’s healthy, like it helps society and helps people and it’s good. That means you’re pretty doggone Christian if you believe that. It’s not a back burner issue. It’s integrated into the key aspects of your life. The Bible’s not a sideline thing. It’s a mainline thing for the way you live your life.

Now, the whole why to the message is one verse. Proverbs 14:34. Can I have the whole room and everyone online say this together? “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”

So we literally have a choice about the nation we will give to our children and our grandchildren. I can give a nation that’s a reproach, or I can give a nation that’s exalted.

Now, I know in American culture there’s a movement where the concept of American exceptionalism is really downgraded. So let’s just take that out. This is way before America ever existed. This is way back here in Proverbs, thousands of years before America existed. Solomon was saying there’s a lifting effect in societies that honor God’s command.

How many of you would say, I would like my children or grandchildren to grow up in a nation where God and society and all things are working together to have an uplifting effect on the culture my children are raised in? Are you for that?

So how about we vote for righteousness, if we care about the uplift of our society and passing an uplifted society to our children and grandchildren? Because the opposite is a reproach. It’s brought down in judgment of sin. Would you like your children and grandchildren to grow up in a society that is brought down and collapsing due to the weight of judgment on sin, on our culture, on America? You don’t want your children to inherit that world. I don’t either.

So I think it is imperative on me now, as a father and as a grandfather, that I try to do my part in voting for righteous laws and righteous people when you can get them.

How many just admit you can’t always get them? You can’t always get righteous laws. You can’t always get righteous people. So do you feel like you’re making a compromise? Yes. But hopefully I’m compromising in a good direction toward God, not my own values. You cannot have a perfect vote. Anytime you go and vote, you get to the very back of the ballot, circuit court, and you’re like, I have no idea if those judges are good or bad people. I’m not going to tell you whether to vote for them, look them up, or not vote for them. The fact is, unless you’ve really read up to some degree, you’re trying to compromise in the right direction, hoping that righteousness will exalt a nation and recognizing that sin is a reproach to all people.

Let me give you four things quickly from scripture. Before I do, can I pause and say every one of these categories probably has 50 to 100 scriptures or more that you can look up. And here’s a little hint. When you search for things online to understand a theological point of view, can I encourage you to say, I come from a conservative, biblical, evangelical background? Conservative means don’t stretch the truth. I want to know what the Bible really says. We’re conserving the fundamental truth of the Bible. We’re not going with whoever twisted it to make it say whatever they want it to say. Evangelical means Christ is savior, the Bible is God’s direct word to us, and salvation comes through Christ and his work on the cross. You believe the work of Christ on the cross redeems mankind from their sins. I say that because if you don’t add those words, you get a whole bunch of garbage. So if you don’t want a bunch of garbage in your search, put those words up front. That’ll help you get biblical stuff.

Four Principles for Biblically Deciding How to Vote

The first one is this. Does it protect and honor the dignity of all human life? Genesis 1:27a says, “God created man in his own image.” The word there is imago Dei, the image of God. The concept is that humans ultimately have dignity because they are created in the image of God. If you do not believe in a Creator God, then you don’t believe in the dignity of human life, other than the fact that it’s more evolved than other things and everything has a certain amount of dignity because we all evolved to this state. But if you get right to the end of it, you’re saying we’re all a big cosmic accident. We weren’t here, weren’t in the mind of God, never was, and then someday we’ll never be again whenever our sun supernovas, unless Elon Musk can get us to Mars, where we’ll burn up quicker. The point is, you’re saying there’s no intrinsic value in humanity. The imago Dei says there’s intrinsic value in humanity, which means the unborn child has dignity and is a child created in the image of God and should be protected. So laws protecting the unborn would be in line with Genesis, the imago Dei, the protection of human life created in God’s image. That’s pretty common sense from the Bible. There’s a whole variety of human dignity issues you could continue to go on with, but that’s where I’m saying research it, look it up.

The second one is this. Does this law strengthen the family and guard the sexual morality of the Bible? Genesis 1:27b says, “God created man in his own image. Male and female he created them.” So every child is created to be a male, as that is the design of God, or is created to be a female. God did not get the creation of the child wrong. Now, some people say, but what about birth defects and all that? That’s a whole other discussion about the fall of mankind. You go to Romans 8: all creation is groaning for the redemption that comes, even the human body. All of us have flaws and things that are wrong with us. Whether you’ve got diabetes or ADHD or whatever you’ve lived with all your life that you’re struggling with, all of us are fallen because of sin and it’s a bit messed up. But God knows who he made male and female.

Genesis 2:24 says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This is the first marriage. This is God’s description of marriage. This is where marriage is actually inaugurated by God. It’s inaugurated when he creates Eve and brings her to man. He says, “This is woman, for she was drawn from my flesh.” So here’s what I want to encourage you with: God has a design for marriage. It is ideally one man and one woman for a lifetime. I know divorce happens. I know struggles happen. I know people pass away. My father passed away when I was young. My mom remarried. There was a divorce that happened, and we’ve lived through that. My wife has lived through that. We understand that. But how many of you say, the design’s there in the Bible? So what I’d like to do is protect the design God has for the family. Government should not infringe but should support the God-designed family. That’s the best structure. God is the best designer. God has a design. So let’s protect God’s design for families through our vote. That’s just common sense to me as a Christian.

The third one is this. Does it pursue justice and mercy? Micah chapter 6:8 says, “What does the Lord require?” Everyone say require, not optional here. “But to do justice and to love kindness.” Another version says “to love mercy.” So you look at laws and you ask, is that a just law happening right there? Is that justice? And does it have a balance of not being so hardcore that there’s no mercy involved? One of the classics right now in our culture is the question of our southern border. People will say, well, justice, you’ve got to shut everyone down, no one gets through, zero tolerance. And then another group says, no, you have to have mercy because these people are struggling and they’re having a hard time and they’re coming for a better life. And then you’re trying to say, but how do you do both? Some people say, well, you close it, but you have a lot of opportunity for asylum seekers. I don’t have that all figured out. There are a million things to figure out about that. But the concept of trying to process justice and mercy should both be included as you’re processing. Some people will only process justice. Some people will only process mercy. I would encourage you, the biblical route is to process both justice and mercy. That’s going to come out a little different for different people, and you can disagree about your view. You can have long discussions about that. But I think you’ve got to respect people whenever they’re saying, I’m really trying hard to stick to biblical justice and biblical mercy in the way I’m viewing that. That’s okay.

And then the fourth one I want to give you is this. Does it promote human flourishing? Honest work is human flourishing. Wise stewardship is human flourishing, not getting ourselves into the level of debt we’re in. Thanks, everyone. Congress, Democrats, Republicans, presidents, all of it. It’s not healthy for us to be in the level of debt that we are. That’s not leading toward human flourishing. Maybe you can look and say, does it promote freedom of our faith? That’s human flourishing, where churches can thrive. Or does it hinder the church in some way? Does it provide safety for our citizens, for our cities? That provides human flourishing. Whenever you can live in safe places and safe homes and safe towns and all those things. I look at it right now and say both these things, justice and human flourishing, matter. We have some real issues in Lee’s Summit right now with Downtown Days being shut down because we’re struggling with safety. When you struggle with safety, you struggle with human flourishing, the enjoyment of a community. And I’ll be honest, no one’s brought me on the inside and had some deep conversation to say, well, we did this and tried to do that, we did 10 different things and the outcome was this. No one’s had any of those conversations. I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I do know the importance of having justice, of having safe communities, of creating human flourishing, and something kind of fell through the cracks in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, in the last week or two. How it fell through, I don’t know. You could pontificate all day long about your different ideas on that. But I think shooting for communities, targeting and saying, okay, we’re going to figure this out, we’re going to rework it because we want justice, we want mercy, we want human flourishing, and that didn’t happen, means I don’t want to give up. I want to figure out how to get that in our community. Now, I’m not saying that means they have to have it next year. I’m not even voting on that. I’m just saying these are realities that we have.

So that’s the main first principle, and that’s the heart of the message today. I just want you to ask yourself, am I letting the Bible decide my vote, not my party? And here are the four principles that we follow. Does it protect the dignity of all human life? Does it strengthen the family and guard sexual morality of the Bible? Does it pursue justice and mercy? Does it promote human flourishing? You can take those four, do a truckload of research, and that’ll inform you how to vote on any issue when you can put those things together.

National Law Outranks Personal Law

Now, this is confusing. It won’t be after I explain it.

In the Bible, there are a number of instances where it addresses governors, governments, and kings, and it says, this is how they do this, this is their role, you should do this as a king. And then there are a lot of Bible verses that address you as an individual, like forgive and you shall be forgiven.

Here’s an illustration. If you were to show up in a court of law and the judge were to say, hey, listen, this is your fifth time stealing someone’s car and driving down the road and towing it. I’ve given you a warning multiple times, and now I’m going to send you to prison. How many of you know that if you’re the person getting sent to prison, and you decide, okay, I know what I’m going to do, I know this judge is a Christian, so I’m going to quote the Bible to him and I’m not going to go to jail. So you quote the Bible: Judge, you’re a Christian. You know what the word of God says: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Would you want me to send you to prison, Judge? And all of a sudden he’s like, oh, you got me. I guess I have to let you go.

How many of you know every convict after that would quote that verse? They’d be like, wow, that’s your get out of jail free card. But that’s an application that’s misplaced, because that application is about my relationship with you, not a government’s relationship to those it governs. Because what are you supposed to do? Justice and love mercy. Wait, what about that justice thing? Maybe we need to pay attention to that.

Here’s an example for you. The night before Jesus is crucified, as he’s being arrested, a band of soldiers comes out to arrest him. They’re really the representatives of Caiaphas’s house. As they come out to arrest him, Peter takes a sword out and lops a guy’s ear off. I wonder how many of the disciples were shocked. They were like, whoa, Peter’s got a sword? I didn’t know you’re packing. And Peter’s like, yeah, I’m always packing. You never know what’s going to happen. Whack.

And Jesus turns to him and says, Peter, what are you doing, dude? That’s not the way we roll here. We’re preachers. This is mission work. When you’re out on the mission field, you don’t carry a gun on the mission field. So Jesus says to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Holster it, buddy. Holster it right now. All who take the sword will perish by it.

Now, the Apostle Paul a little bit later, in Romans chapter 13 and verse 4, talking about the governing authority, says this. “The governor is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Wait, they didn’t say to holster it. They said, no, he has it for a really good reason. Not in vain. He’s going to be using that thing. He carries it out for your good, so that when your neighbor steals your lawn mower, you don’t have to grab your gun and go next door. That’s why those guys are there. That’s their job. How many say, oh wow, that’s very different. It’s the same sword, but I don’t get to use it for this reason because I’m just an individual, but the government does get to use it because that’s their role?

So I want you to understand, whenever you try to take a personal scripture and apply it to a political vote, you’ve just misused the Bible. And how many of you know that when you misuse and abuse the Bible for your own purposes, that ain’t godly? That is not the way God designed the scripture to be used. So I want to encourage you, before you say, but God’s word says, how many of you know you can misquote God’s word all the time? People do it. I need you to understand what that passage is talking about before you apply it to a specific political vote, especially when the Bible already addresses it toward governing authorities in a way that actually applies to the situation. When God has a superseding passage about that in scripture, that one supersedes, that one wins. That’s why I said national law outranks personal law when you’re voting. This is applied to governors, to kings, to nations. This is applied to individuals.

Nice Is Not the Same as Good

I just want to tell you today, the huge movement in our nation has been a movement away from God’s good to us being nice. There’s a huge movement away from the value of good outcomes, good laws, God’s good being represented, God’s law being good, to us being nice.

Hypothetical question, but it’s real. Can a mean person promote a good moral law? Of course. Happens all the time. Really mean people can come up with good ideas that are healthy for people. Can a really nice, likable person promote something that’s pretty harmful? Yeah. All the time.

Picture a parent who has a 35-year-old son living at home in their basement. Very able-bodied, could go out and get a job, just doesn’t want to because he gets to sleep until noon, play video games, and raid mom and dad’s fridge all the time, losing his life away in the basement. The nice parent says, oh, but I just love him so much, and he’s such a sweetheart, and he does his dishes some of the time, and he’s just my baby. I just love him. Now, isn’t she nice? But how many of you know that’s not good? Boy, ain’t that nice. But boy, is that not very good. Eventually she’s going to have to not be nice, and she’s going to have to do what’s good for him.

I want to tell you that nice is frequently the enemy of what’s good. Frequently. So I want to encourage you to say, you know what, nice just means that you have good feelings about it. Nice is about you. It really is. Good means it has a good outcome attached to it. Good is about others. Nice is about you feeling nice. Good is about good outcomes for others. Let’s choose good over nice, over and over and over again.

Is there any example in the Bible where that’s true? 2 Thessalonians 3:10. “When we were with you, we would give you this command.” Command. Everyone say command. Amen. “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” The Bible says let them starve. It says don’t let them eat. Stop feeding them if they’re unwilling to work. So you mean the Bible is not being nice? It’s not being nice. How many say that would not qualify as nice, but that would qualify as good?

One of the sayings I grew up hearing in my home, when someone thought you were being lazy, my stepdad in particular, he would say, well, when your belly button hits your backbone, you’ll get a job. It’s kind of good. It can make sense. I get it.

So yeah, it’s not always going to be nice. And I know we’re so selfish as Americans about our own emotions that we just want to feel nice. We want everyone on Instagram to think we’re the nice one. We want everyone on Facebook to think we’re the nice one. We’re nice, we’re nice, we’re nice. All about us, all about our looks, all about people’s perception of who we are. And yet we’ll allow society to burn around us rather than do the good we ought to do that is hard but helpful. Amen.

So I want us to bind ourselves to God’s word, because it speaks of the good for all mankind, for all of our world, that is healthy and is absolutely what we need. And I’ll just tell you a few ways to do this.

Live a holy life where you are. I love this phrase. I read this the other day. It starts with my house, not the White House. How many say an amen to that? We’re always pointing fingers at someone else. Let’s just look in our own home. It starts with my house, not the White House.

Pray for a godly nation. Just pray. Pray for the leaders, the laws, whatever’s coming up. And I think if you’d pray more than you’d post, we’d see a lot more good things happen in our nation.

And then make a godly impact wherever you are, your school, your family, your work, through your voting, through your life, through your lifestyle. Some of you have even over the years felt called of God to step up and be a city councilman or woman, to serve in your local school, in the PTA, to find ways to make an impact. That’s great. When Christians feel a calling of God to do that, just step up. Allow God to lead you. Move forward with that to represent God, not your party. Represent God wherever you are. That’s who we’re representing.

A final thought before we pray. If any president were to step into this room, I don’t care if it’s your favorite or your least favorite, any president were to step into this room, in the moment I saw them walk through the doors, I would pause and invite the room to stand. I would be shocked out of my mind that they walked in the room. And then I’d say, can we just, and the Secret Service would be like, no, no, no, no. I think I’d probably wait if I got a cue. But how many of you would say, I think I would just stand in the presence of a president to honor the office?

I had that opportunity one time, sort of, when I was in college. I’d worked at Richards-Gebaur over the summers cleaning out there while it was still open, over in Belton. They told us the Vice President was coming in at that time. It was Dan Quayle, and he was landing there. When he landed, they had a reception line. I went up to the reception line because I thought, well, I want to shake the Vice President’s hand. Closest I’m ever going to get to a president probably is this guy. And so far that’s been true. But I went up there, and let me tell you, no sitting. Everyone’s standing for the Vice President when he comes in.

But I want to tell you, if Jesus walked in this room, I wouldn’t stand for him. I would bow. You see, that’s the difference in our loyalty as Christians. We may stand for our nation, but we bow to our king. Amen. Amen.

So my challenge to you is this: in every area where scripture speaks, that is your Lord and your Savior speaking to your life, to your values, to your participation. He is speaking through his word. The word of God is alive and active and powerful. Let it speak to your vote. Let it speak to your conscience. Let it speak to your involvement, and bow to your king. Can I pray for you all across this room?

God, we come before you as followers of Christ first and foremost. There are no close seconds to you. There’s no one I would think about bowing to but you. There’s no secondary and no backup, but you are God and God alone to me. And so every area and every aspect of my life, of my involvement in my family and in my church and in my community and in my nation, is filtered through the lens of who you are and what you ask of me as your follower. I pray that for everyone in this room, that we would not be confused by these things. And where there’s confusion, we would find clarity in your word. All of your word, not just the pieces we like, not bits and pieces, but the full counsel of the word of God informing our lives. I pray that grace over each person here. Go with them. Empower them. Let them be the men and women of God you’ve called them to be. And if there’s someone who is not yet a follower of Christ, who’s resisted, who’s rebelled, who’s remained angry, I pray that you would begin a work of softening and opening and drawing them to the son who loves them and gave his life for them. I pray there would be a great grace that happens through this church that we would shine as lights in our community. We would be examples of you in this world wherever we are. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.