PHILIPPIANS 3:20 - Empires Of Dirt

So, who’s ready for a Red Wave this week? Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, you know that the midterm elections are being held on Tuesday, and all eyes are on the race for Pat Toomey’s old Senate seat, which could decide control of the Senate for the next two years. But beyond that, races for the House of Representatives across the country could very well swing the balance of power in favor of Republican lawmakers, and there are several blue states whose gubernatorial races could actually tilt Republican this year.

So, all in all, the first midterm elections after a presidential election tend to favor the party that does not hold the White House, but with all of the turmoil and acrimony building up over the legislative and social agenda of the Democrat Party (along with crippling inflation, rising crime and global unrest) make it possible that the “red wave” of Republican victories could very well wind up as a “Red Tsunami” of crushing defeat for Democrats all over the country.

So imagine for a moment that the midterms really do turn out to be as bad for Democrats and as good for Republicans as they’ve been saying. Imagine that legislative power is taken decisively out of the hands of those who would use it to further the wickedness that is infesting our nation and put into the hands of those who want to return our country back to a respect for the rule of law, our Constitutional foundations and fear of God.

Do you know what we would have then? A shakeable kingdom. Just like we have now. In other words, even if every wicked usurper was removed from any place of authority in this country, all that would do is buy us some time.

It is far too easy for us to get into the mindset that all we really need is a couple of good elections to fix the problems we have in this country. That if we all just “do our civic duty” that we can turn this ship around. Now, it is certainly true that civic engagement and wise use of the power that we have as citizens of the United States to make our voices heard through the Constitutional means available to us is a noble and necessary task for us. We certainly should be thoughtfully and prayerfully engaged in our political process.

But that political and civic engagement is not the way this country will be saved. We cannot “vote our way out” of the trouble we are in as a nation, and if you think you can, you are an idolater and not a Christian.

What I want to argue this morning from the Scriptures is that there is no way that your “civic duty” as an American is going to rescue anything about this country, unless you are prepared to submit your civic duty as a United States citizen to your civic duty as a citizen in Christ’s kingdom. Let me say it this way:

Your first civic duty is to your CITIZENSHIP in CHRIST’S KINGDOM

We are in desperate need of hearing God’s Word on this today, because it is far too easy for us to succumb to anxiety or fear or anger or bitterness over what will happen in the midterms on Tuesday. (In fact, a good deal of that comes from the media that you are consuming about the elections—they are all operating with the goal of causing you to respond emotionally to their commentary so that you will keep coming back to them for more.)

So how does a Christian carry out his civic duty as a member of the Kingdom of Christ first and a US citizen second? What must you do on Tuesday?

Perhaps it’s easier to start off by asking what you must not do. And so the first point to remember is that, as a citizen of Christ’s Kingdom,

I. You must not put your HOPE in MERE MEN (2 Kings 20-21)

Turn with me to the book of 2 Kings, chapter 20 (p. 327 in the pew Bible.) King Hezekiah was king of the southern Kingdom of Judah who came to power right around the time when the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and carried off into captivity by the Assyrian Empire. He is recorded in the Scriptures as one of the most faithful, godly kings ever to reign in Judah:

2 Kings 18:3–6 (ESV)

3 And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. 4 He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah....5 He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses.

The parallel passages of Hezekiah’s reign in 2 Chronicles 29-31 detail the sweeping reformation of Judah that took place under Hezekiah; there was a return to faithfulness to YHWH that had not been seen in Jerusalem for centuries.

But, as has been noted many times before, “the best of men are men at best.” As great and godly a king as Hezekiah was, he still showed himself to be unreliable in the end.

Hezekiah was FAITHFUL but SHORT-SIGHTED (2 Kings 20:19)

There are at least three reasons I say that Hezekiah was a short-sighted king. Look at 2 Kings 20 with me for a moment. In verses 1-11 we find here the account of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery; in verses 12-15 we read that courtiers from the kingdom of Babylon come to visit Hezekiah. Verse 13 says that Hezekiah took them on a tour of everything in the city;

2 Kings 20:13 (ESV)

13 And Hezekiah welcomed them, and he showed them all his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.

This was a short-sighted move on Hezekiah’s part, since it was clear that Babylon was flexing its imperial muscles around this time (coming to court Hezekiah was a transparent move on their part to ingratiate themselves to Judah in opposition to the Egyptians and Assyrians.) Hezekiah seems particularly clueless here; showing a potential attacker all of his wealth and all of his military capabilities.

Later on in Chapter 20, when Isaiah finds out that Hezekiah had basically shared all his state secrets with Babylon, Isaiah warns him that the day was coming when

2 Kings 20:17–18 (ESV)

17 ...all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. 18 And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

And Hezekiah’s response?

2 Kings 20:19 (ESV)

19 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?”

Again—a short-sighted (and almost selfish) response to news that his kingdom would fall someday.

And the third reason I say Hezekiah was a faithful but short-sighted king is because he failed to raise up a godly son. Hezekiah’s ultimate failure was as a father. Because when his son took the throne,

Manasseh UNDID everything GOOD his FATHER did

2 Kings 21:2–3 (ESV)

2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 3 For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them.

Manasseh’s wickedness was so bad, in fact, that God said that his abominations were worse than the Canaanites who were driven out of the land!

2 Kings 21:11 (ESV)

11 “Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols,

Christian, as you look ahead to these midterms and think to yourself that all this country really needs is a good Hezekiah to come in and “clean house” and “drain the swamp” and “make America great again” remember—that’s exactly what Hezekiah did. And none of his reforms outlasted him. All of them were undone by the next leader in line. “And then a new president arose in Washington, who did not know Tony Perkins...” (Exodus 1:8, Modern American Bible)

Christian, you are a citizen of Christ’s Kingdom first, and that means that your first civic duty is to Him. You do not put your trust in mere men for your nation’s future.

Of course the response can come back: “Well, we don’t have kings in this country; we have a system of government that prevents any one person from gathering that kind of power. We have the Constitution, we have separation of powers, we have the ballot box, we can vote the bums out!”

But as true as those things might be, and as remarkable a system of government as we have in this nation,

II. You must not put your TRUST in a POLITICAL process

In 1798, President John Adams wrote a note of commendation to the Massachusetts Militia, in which he famously remarked,

We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by… morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102, Accessed 10/28/2022)

If there was one thing that was exceptional about our Founding Fathers, it is that they realized how unexceptional this nation was at its founding. The men who wrote our Constitution knew exactly how human depravity worked, and so they were careful to put padlocks on every type of power that a government could have: checks and balances, enumerated powers, government by the consent of the governed, and so on.

And we have spent the past 244 years picking every one of those locks, tearing down those curbs on power because we are no longer the moral and religious people that the Constitution was written for. To borrow President Adam’s metaphor, the whale of avarice, ambition, revenge have broken through the protections that our Constitution was written to provide. You cannot put your trust in the political process to save this nation, because this political process was designed for a people who no longer exist.

This is another way of saying something that we have observed many times before, but in light of the week ahead, it bears repeating:

Politics cannot SAVE us, politics needs to GET SAVED (Acts 4:12)

In Acts 4 we have a sermon recorded for us from the Apostle Peter, after he had been arrested for preaching about Christ’s resurrection in the Temple. In verse 12, he says

Acts 4:12 (ESV)

12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Historians tell us that this declaration was originally a statement of the Roman Emperor’s deity—it was first used of Caesar Augustus: “There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved but Caesar!” When Peter said this, he was deliberately setting up the Kingdom of Christ against the Kingdom of Caesar.

Have we not seen this same kind of blasphemous usurping of the rule of Christ by our government? “There is no other way to be saved from COVID than by obeying our every command!” “There is no other way to be saved from climate change than by submitting to our regulatory demands!” The overriding assumption across all levels of government is that, while religious sentiments such as Christianity might be beneficial to society, any real or lasting benefits will come through the workings of the political process.

And this assumption holds sway in the lives of believers as well. If you doubt what I say, then ask yourself what you think will happen if the Republicans don’t “win” on Tuesday? Say there is instead a “Blue Wave” on Tuesday, and Democrats not only hold but strengthen their majorities across the Federal government and state houses? If your first thought is “Oh, it’s all over!”, then you are not thinking like a Christian. You are looking to a political process to save you; you are not looking to the Throne of Jesus Christ Who is reigning over you and this nation no matter who is in office.

Do not put your trust in a political process, beloved, because

Elections will never OVERTHROW the TRUE RULER (Psalm 2)

The psalmist in Psalm 2 makes it clear that no matter how the nations rage against Christ, they can never overthrow Him:

Psalm 2:2–6 (ESV)

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” 4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

There is no political process that can save you, Christian, and there is no political process that can stop the reign of Christ! John Calvin once wrote that “Even if all the princes of the earth were to unite for the maintenance of our Gospel, still we must not make that the basis of our hope.”

Your first civic duty is to your citizenship in Christ’s Kingdom—you must not put your hope in mere men on Tuesday, and you must not put your trust in some political process, but only in your Sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ!

So much for what we must not do on Tuesday (and in the days to come). But the question remains: What are we supposed to do? How are we to live as citizens of Christ’s Kingdom in the politically polarized and tumultuous days we find ourselves in? Many people succumb to fear and paranoia about sinister government plots to eliminate Christians and close churches, others utterly abandon any kind of political involvement, choosing to withdraw from all of it; still others decide that this country really is a lost cause and are ready to denounce and attack it.

Those responses feel wrong to us, somehow—but we need to turn (as always) to God’s Word for understanding on how we are to rightly relate as Christians to our country. What does it mean to be a patriotic Christian? How do we relate our patriotism and our Christianity without making an idol of our nation, or of wrongfully despising the country God has given us?

I want to suggest that the Bible instructs us on this matter by teaching us to subordinate our loyalties—we can only rightly love our nation when we rightly love God. The Scriptures teach that

III. You must RIGHTLY order your ALLEGIANCES

Think for a moment about the word patriotism—the word comes from the Greek word father - patrios, and it means a love for or devotion to one’s country.

And so I believe that we can understand patriotism as an extension of the Fifth Commandment:

Exodus 20:12 (ESV)

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Benjamin Keach, in his exposition of the Fifth Commandment, writes:

“The fifth commandment requireth the preserving of the honor and performing the duties belonging to everyone in their several places and relations; as superiors (Ephesians 5:21), inferiors (1 Peter 2:17) or equals (Romans 12:10) (Baptist Catechism, Keach, et al)

Patriotism, then, is preserving the honor and performing the duties belonging to you as a citizen of the nation that gave you your life. So we can say that you are to

Love your NATION the way you love your PARENTS (Luke 14:26)

It is an honest and good and true love to love and honor your mother; by extension, it is a good and honorable and true love to love your motherland. We honor and glorify God when we love the nation that gave us birth—apple pie and fireworks and small towns and baseball and pickup trucks and American Legion parades and Lewis and Clark searching for the Northwest Passage and Teddy Roosevelt carving out national parks, the heights of nobility and honor of the Declaration of Independence, the flag hoisted over Iwo Jima, the hard-working, honest and open-hearted people that live all across this land from sea to shining sea-- AND IT IS RIGHT TO FEEL THAT WAY!!!

But at the same time, this “father love”, this patriotism must be bounded by our love for our heavenly citizenship. This is what Jesus meant when He said in Luke 14:26

Luke 14:26 (ESV)

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

There must be a point at which your patriotism for your country looks like hate when compared to your love for Christ and His Kingdom. And this prevents your patriotism from becoming an idol; of loving your country the way you love God or blasphemously equating the two with “JesUSA” bumper stickers or flag and cross mashups that equate patriotism with Christianity. You may deeply and truly love your father, but you would never dream of equating him with your Father in Heaven—why do you do the same thing with your country?

Ordering your allegiances in the way Jesus commands in Luke 14 keeps you from that kind of idolatry; and it also prevents you from a state of denial about how bad a state your country is in. The Scripture we read together earlier in worship really does describe our nation today:

Isaiah 1:4 (ESV)

4 Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.

If you have ever had to walk with one of your parents through grave illness, you know that you would be acting wickedly towards them if you told them all they needed for their Stage IV liver cancer would be a brisk walk in the sunshine and a couple of aspirin.

In the same way, beloved, your beloved nation is desperately sick with wickedness and rebellion and innocent blood:

Isaiah 1:5–6 (ESV)

5 ...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.

A couple of healthy red-wave election cycles and a fresh reading of the Constitution are not going to save this nation’s life. There is only one cure, and that is for the United States of America to repent in the Name of Jesus Christ. You and I have been commissioned specifically by Christ to teach the nations to obey everything He has commanded, to baptize the nations in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and make the nations—make our nation—a disciple of Christ.

Does this mean that we are called to be “Christian Nationalists?” Why yes, as a matter of fact—yes it does. We are not tribalists who only care about our own kin or people group. We are not globalists, who want to subordinate our nation to the rest of the world. We are people who belong to Christ first, who have a rightly-ordered love for the nation God has given us—and we love our nation the way God has commanded us—by calling our nation to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

And so of all the things that means for your life as a citizen of the United States in these days, Christian, it certainly means no less than this: Your first civic duty as a citizen of the Kingdom of Christ means that you

Love your ENEMY enough to DECLARE the GOSPEL to him (2 Chronicles 33:10-20)

The prevailing winds of our diseased public discourse today insists that we cast everyone who does not agree completely and unswervingly with us as our enemy. The talking heads you are all watching on TV and online (and far too many of you consume way more cable/TV/online news/podcasts/videos than Scripture on a daily basis) reinforce this tendency.

And while there really are modern-day Manassehs who are working overtime to break the laws of God from off their backs and shed as much innocent blood as possible in the wake of Roe’s overturn, and who insolently shake their fists against God and the way He has ordered the world, the solution to those attacks is not what Fox News or Newsmax or Glenn Beck or Epoch Times or Daily Wire or Steven Crowder tell you it is. The solution is not a red wave election; the solution is not passing more laws or controlling immigration or protecting the courts or stopping CRT in schools. The solution is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

We began our time together in the Word in 2 Kings 20-21, looking at the fact that we cannot place our trust in mere men—Hezekiah was faithful but short-sighted, and his son Manasseh was as wicked as he could be, overturning every reform his father had put into place.

But there is more to Manasseh’s story—the other history book of the kings, 2 Chronicles 33, tells us about another event in Manasseh’s life. Turn to 2 Chronicles 33 (p. 384). Look at verses 10-13:

2 Chronicles 33:10–13 (ESV)

10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. 11 Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon. 12 And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.

Beloved, here is the hope for your nation today! It is in a God who is able to bring a ruler even so wicked as Manasseh to repentance and faith! There is no Manasseh so wicked in his rulership that God cannot bring him to repentance. He could bring Manasseh to repentance and faith—he can do the same for Nancy Pelosi. He can do the same for Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden and John Fetterman and Stacy Abrams and George Soros and Bill Gates and all the other people that your conservative, red-state pundits have been telling you to hate and fear. You know God’s power to bring a wicked sinner to repentance, because He did it for you.

Do not be an idolater on Tuesday. Don’t go to the polls like a pagan, believing that there is some strength of man or magic virtue of the American political process that is going to save anything. Go as a faithful Christian—in a spirit of true patriotism that loves your motherland even while you acknowledge how very gravely ill she is. Take part in your civic duties as a faithful son or daughter of the United States, but never forget that this nation will never be saved apart from calling on her Savior. And make it your aim that, even as you faithfully carry out your duty to vote for those who will best serve this nation, you will be even more faithful to declare the only real hope for your nation—repentance and faith in the Name of Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

2 Thessalonians 2:16–17 (ESV)

16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Amen

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

What are some ways that you are being pressured this week to put your hope in men for our nation’s future? What examples do we see in 2 Kings 20-21 that warns us against doing that?

What is the definition of “patriotism”? How does the Fifth Commandment (Exodus 20:12) relate to the way we ought to regard our country?

How do Jesus’ words in Luke 14:26 help us order our allegiances between our nation and Christ? How does this help us guard against against the various errors we can fall into regarding love for country?

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