Faith in Action: Engaging the World with Resilience

We've seen in previous weeks of our study of the book of Acts that everywhere the apostles went to proclaim the Gospel, God blessed their ministry, by giving them fruit, many being converted and added to the church. And yet the pattern is the same in every city they go that there always arises a certain level of hostility and opposition against the proclamation of the word of God. [00:02:31]

Think for a moment of what that manner of execution is like. We can pass over it lightly forgetting how brutal it is to be standing exposed before an angry mob, each one with large rocks in their hands, that they begin to pelt and pummel the apostle as he stands there. And rocks are hitting him in the head, in the face, in the body, tearing his flesh asunder until he is knocked unconscious to the ground. [00:03:19]

In a sense, beloved, we've made a deal with the devil. We have agreed to practice our faith, as it were, on a reservation, a reservation that is removed from the public square. And we are told that as long as we keep our faith private and personal and not intrude into the public arena, we will be able to exercise our First Amendment rights, in terms of the free exercise of religion. [00:06:00]

But in our day, what separation of church and state has come to mean is the separation of state from God -- that God is to have nothing to do with secular affairs of government, that God is not sovereign over the government. Nothing could be further from the purposes upon which this country was founded. [00:08:01]

And it is the responsibility of the church to have a prophetic voice in the culture in which it exists, to call sin, "sin," wherever it emerges in government or anywhere else in the public arena. Now, I know that there are many within the church who believe the church never has any right to criticize the government. [00:09:48]

The purpose of voting is not for what we can get from the government for ourselves. We are to vote for what is right, not for our own personal gain. And I want to elaborate on that. In the Sentinel, I believe it was yesterday, they polled several football players, asked the football players for whom they were going to vote in the election on Tuesday. [00:16:07]

Please remember that, ladies and gentlemen, the government doesn't produce anything. The government can't give to anybody what they don't first take away from somebody else. And when you vote for your own largesse, you are asking the government to use all of its force to take from your brother and sister their private property and give it to you. [00:17:23]

And it's perfectly legal. It's also perfectly immoral and unethical for you to ask the government for a special subsidy for your private enterprise. That's sin, and yet it's the American way. Washington is filled with lobby groups that do this every day. And they ask for legislation not for what is right, not as what is for good, what is good for the welfare of the nation. [00:20:07]

I think slavery is the second worst ethical issue ever to divide the United States of America. But even more serious than slavery is the governmental sanction on the wanton destruction of 1.5 million unborn human beings every year in this nation. I'm not running, and I won't accept a draft, but I tell you, I've written 60 books, and of the books that I've written, the one with the shortest shelf life, the one that went out-of-print first was the book, The Case Against Abortion. [00:27:00]

The church is not asking at this point for the state to become the church when we tell the state: stop sanctioning this murder, this holocaust. What we're doing is we're asking the state to be the state, because the primary reason for the existence of the State in the first place is to protect, to maintain and sustain the sanctity of human life. [00:28:10]

I plead with you as Christians, when you walk into the voting booth this Tuesday, don't leave your Christianity in the parking lot. Let your mind be informed by the word of God. Now it's possible that I'm wrong and that God is perfectly okay with abortion on demand. But I've been studying theology all my life if I know anything about character God, I know that God hates abortion. [00:29:21]

So when you go to vote, and I hope you will vote. I hope you will vote your conscience, not your vested interest, not your pocketbooks. But that you will vote for righteousness, and for justice as your conscience is informed by the Word of God. Until or unless we do that, God will give us leaders after our own hearts, which is a scary thing. [00:30:03]