Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

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!”