Gateway Church's Podcast
The Role of Christians in Civil Government
A Gateway Sermon
So this morning with a simple Bible principle, we know that the Bible teaches us that the way that a people views its own history affects the way that people behaves. If you look in the book of Judges, you have the story of the nation of Israel that goes through a cycle of ups and downs and ups and downs, seven cycles. And whether Israel is up or whether Israel is down, all this depends on whether Israel remembers her history. As she remembers why God brought her into existence and what her national purpose was, she behaves differently than what she forgets. And you recall the story of Josiah, when they were rebuilding the temple, getting God back in the center of that nation, which is a great thing for any nation to do. And the midst of doing that, they found that old scroll, they brought it out and they said, "You mean we used to be like this?" Seeing that scroll, seeing their history, led to a national revival. And so it is that we have passages like Isaiah 43 and we have Romans 15, 4 and 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 11 and Psalms 3 and Psalms 77. All these passages where that God says recall the former days, remember the former times, God is in the knowing our history. As a matter of fact, when you get to the New Testament, now we've gone through the Old Testament, we go through the life of Jesus and the Gospels. We get into the birth of the New Testament in the book of Acts. There in the book of Acts, who has the longest or ration in the book of Acts? Well, Stephen, Stephen's got two chapters in the book of Acts and nobody else even comes close to that. You look at what Stephen did, they're at the birth of the church, he doesn't give along theological treatise, it's not a big doctrinal dissertation. It is a history lesson. He says, "Guys, don't you see what God's been trying to do in our nation since the very beginning? Let's review." And he went through every generation, he went through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob went through every generation up to the presence that this is what God's been trying to do. Now we call that a providential view of history and we used to teach that in America. We used to know what God had been up to in 1600 and 1640 and 1680 and across the generations we could say, "Here's what his plan was. Here's what he was trying to accomplish. Here's where he was trying to take us." But we don't teach that providential view of history anymore today. Matter of fact, we really don't teach even a good political view of history. I don't say that lightly, I've been appointed by state boards of education in a number of states in Texas and California and Kentucky elsewhere to write the history and government standard for students in those states. And looking at what we teach, it's really fascinating. For example, if you take what we did two weeks ago, Sunday two weeks ago, 4th of July, 228 years we've celebrated that piece of paper. If you look at our textbooks about why we teach that America became an independent nation, the reason we say is taxation with that representation. And as good as far as it goes, but the problem is the declaration gives 27 different reasons that we became an independent nation. We studied one of them today. I wonder how different we would be as a people if we were to study the other 26 or remember why it was that we became who we were. You know, it's interesting, at our place, we're very blessed at wall builders. We own about 70,000 writings that predate 1812. So I own thousands of handwritten documents. The guys who did this in church history and Black history and et cetera. I brought some this morning, 250-year-old works. But in looking back through those documents, it's interesting that this document from 1761 is the charter for the very first missionary society ever since. That's a good idea. Let's have a society to properly gate the gospel. We thought it was a good idea. King George III vetoed it. He said, no. He said, you can't do that. He said, we have an established church. You don't need a missionary society. If you do, I'll tell you, you do. And you don't. So he vetoed our missionary societies and our Bible societies and our tracks. We couldn't have any of these religious societies. And because we could not have those religious organizations, that's why sign of the declaration Charles Carroll of Carrollton. That's why sign of the declaration Sam Adams. That's why they said they got involved in the American Revolution so that we could have religious liberties. It wouldn't. Taxation without representations. Religious liberties. And if you will, these guys got involved so that we could have under God and Pledge of Allegiance. Or so that we could have a prayer to football gamer. So we could post the Ten Commandments. That was the issue to them. That's what drove them to get involved. You also have not only religious issues that we don't talk about, but even the moral issues. I take something like slavery. In 1773, first in Connecticut, then Massachusetts, and then Rhode Island. 1773, they abolished slavery. That's the right thing to do. Move in the right direction. 1774, Pennsylvania, also abolished slavery. This thing started to pick up steam. King George III vetoed every one of those laws. He said, "You can't do that." He said, "You're part of the British Empire." In the British Empire, we have slavery. And as long as you're part of the British Empire, you too will have slavery. So a lot of our founding fathers said, "Great. Let's not be part of the British Empire anymore." You specifically had people like Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Benjamin Rush, both of whom signed the declaration. They said that was the reason they got involved. They wanted to end slavery. And you'll find that in 1776, when we did separate from Great Britain, more than half the states in this slavery right then, you had New York and Connecticut and Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Not every state did, but this was a big issue to a bunch of these guys. And for these two guys, it was such a big issue that they founded the first ever abolition society in America. And if you see across the bottom line, that abolition society says, "Begun in the year 1774." 1774, with still British colony. Yeah. But that is the year that King George III vetoed all those laws and said no more. When he vetoed those laws, he said, "You can't end slavery." These two guys said, "We so believe God wants to end slavery. We're going to do it anyway." So they started this society as an act of civil disobedience against King George III. And you know how strongly you have to believe something to commit civil disobedience? That's a pretty strong motivation. That's a moral motivation, but we don't talk about those issues. You see, out of those 27 issues, we talk about one, and that's economics. And why is that? It's because about 60, 70 years ago, a new group of historical writers started writing textbooks in America. Charles and Mary Beard, W. E. Woodward, Fairfax Downey, others, and they said, "You know, the only thing that motivates people, the only thing that people care about is money. That's all that matters. Why don't we teach history that way?" And in the 1960s, we adopted that as the way we now teach history. We call it the economic view of American history. So there's 27 clauses in declaration. Only one deals with economics, guess which one we study, that one. And because we look at the economic view and not the moral of the religious or the other views, we've even changed a lot of the heroes we used to study. You see today, if we say, "Who's behind American independence?" You're certainly going to hear names, and by the way, this is one of the textbooks that was written by the Bearers. They had a whole bunch of textbooks, but you can see the economic basis of politics. So politics now is just economics. Constitution is just now economics. They wrote the economic basis of the Declaration, et cetera. So as a result of that economic view, what's happened is we have changed our histories because our heroes, because today we say, "Well, Sam Adams is responsible for our independence." I mean, he's the father of the American Revolution, or we can say Thomas Jefferson because he's the chief author of the Declaration, or even John Hancock with that big, bold signature as President of Congress, or even John Adams, because John Adams not only signed the Declaration, but eight years later he was one of only three guys who signed the peace treaty in the American Revolution. So he's there from start to finish. These are the guys responsible for our independence. That's what we say today, but that's not what we said 50, 60, 70 years ago. As a matter of fact, 200 years ago, when John Adams himself was asked, "Who's behind American independence?" He was there, and he was asked, "Who's behind it?" He gave a list of names that we never studied today. His list of names were all Christians and a whole bunch of more ministers of the gospel. He said, "Now, if you're asking me who's responsible for our independence?" He said, "Right up top, you have to put the Reverend Dr. Sam McCooper." And of course, as the Reverend George Whitfield, he said, "And you can't overlook the contributions of the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Mayhew." He went through and named all these preachers and all these Christians. We might know who Whitfield is today, but we probably don't do anything about studying Mayhew or Cooper, or even knowing who those guys were. He said, "We don't study the religious heroes that we had." As a matter of fact, why don't you study the African American heroes that were involved? Pastors like this man, this man is Richard Allen, one of the coolest stories in American history. Richard Allen was a slave and Delaware. A Methodist missionary came through preaching the gospel on his plantation. He heard the gospel. He committed his life to Christ, became a Christian. He's so excited. He starts preaching the gospel to everybody he can reach, which is his plantation. Before long, he leads his master to Christ. When he leads his master to Christ, the master says, "Gosh, what am I doing holding slaves?" And so allows Richard to have his freedom. And so Richard's out of slavery. And he wants to preach the gospel everywhere he goes. So he starts heading across New England, preaching the gospel. He ends up going up the coast there in Pennsylvania. He got to Philadelphia. And Philadelphia at that time was a mega city. There were 40,000 people in the city. It was the third largest city in America, 40,000. So there he is in Philadelphia. He ends up having a church of 2,000 people in that city of 40,000. That was a mega church even back then. I mean, it's a mega church now, but it was really a mega church. But you know, the interesting thing about that church of 2,000, here's a black pastor with a church of 2,000 white congregates. You know, a black church and a white church and in the American founding. You never heard of that. There's a whole lot of stuff we don't hear about. Or the fact that he went on to become a soldier in the American Revolution and fought for independence. You see, in the early American Revolution, unlike the Civil War, we didn't have segregated units. It was black and white, fighting side by side for freedom and independence. We also have heroes like this man, Absalom Jones. He's the first black bishop, the Episcopal Church in America, another hero of the American Revolution. And even Lemuel Haynes, he's a black evangelist. For 30 years, he started churches across New England, preached across New England for 30 years. Interesting thing, he was one of the men at the battle of Lexington and Concord. He was actually wounded there at Lexington and Concord. And he served throughout the American Revolution from start to finish, eight years. Now, the term of enlistment in the American Revolution was one year. He re-upped seven times. He stayed in that thing for eight years, only a handful of soldiers did that. And on top of that, he fought in every single major battle in the American Revolution. Even a smaller group of soldiers did that. And he's one of the elite. And this guy, a patriot and a hero that he was, as he preached across New England every single year on George Washington's birthday in his churches, he would stop and have a special sermon about his commander-in-chief, his comrade-in-arms with whom he had fought side by side throughout the Revolution. I mean, we never hear about ministers in general, and we sure don't hear about all the black pastors that had such a huge impact in the American founding. But why would John Adams point to pastors and Christians and say, "This is responsible for who we are as a nation. This is behind our American independence." Well, he could point to two things. Number one, we as Christians were able to demonstrate to the whole nation how practical the Word of God is. We were able to show that the Word of God applied to every single thing that went on in life. Now, we know, for example, that the Scripture teaches us in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for reproved for correction, for instruction, rises, etc. But verse 17 tells us why God gave us the Scripture. It says that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, that word "every" really didn't mean "every." I mean, no matter what she got into, the Word of God had answers for it. And that's what we could demonstrate 200 years ago, particularly see that through sermons that we preached. It's interesting that 200 years ago New England had a big earthquake, which is really unusual New England. But do you know what all the sermons were that next Sunday in New England? They were all about the great earthquake of New England. Now, I thought that's an interesting topic for a sermon. I don't recall having heard a sermon like that, but I do read through the Bible once every year, and that's a great practice. If you don't do that, let me encourage you to do that. So many of our founding fathers read through the Bible once every year. John Quincy Adams and John Jay and Benjamin Rush and others. So having gone through the Bible once every year, I thought, you know, if I had to do a Bible study, a Sunday school lesson, or something on what the Bible says about earthquakes, what could I do with that? Because I read through the Bible a whole bunch. And I thought I could probably come up with a good 15, 20-minute sermon on what the Bible says about earthquakes. Well, that was a five-week sermon on what the Bible said about earthquakes. I couldn't even come close to that. Never even crossed my mind. There might be that many verses in the Bible in earthquakes. Five years later, the sermon was on the Great Fire in Boston. It's all the headlines, big old tragedy in Boston. Well, they just take the headlines. See what's in the headlines? Let me show you how the Word of God relates to the headlines. Here's how we deal with local tragedies like that. Here's the principles out of the Word of God on dealing with the Great Fire in Boston. And by the way, both of those sermons were preached by the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, one of the guys specifically cited by John Adams is being behind our independence as a nation. There's also this sermon. This is a sermon on a solar eclipse. And I can safely tell you I've never in my life heard a sermon on a solar eclipse. Not even one. And I read that sermon. I was shocked at how many verses in the Bible dealt with solar eclipses. And this preacher spent a ton of time in the little bitty book of Amos. I couldn't believe how many verses and Amos dealt with solar eclipses. And try this for a sermon topic. This sermon, 1851, is a sermon on the moral view of railroads. Now, if you had to do a lesson on that, what Bible verse you could have used to talk about the moral view of man? What did he use? And so I read that sermon. He says, "Well, railroads," he said, "that's part of transportation." He says, "The God's Word tell us anything about transportation." It certainly does. He went through all these biblical principles of transportation, just laid it out. And after having shown all this biblical framework for transportation, he said, "Now, having seen what God says about transportation, here's where railroads fit in right over here." You go, "Wow, cool sermon. Never crossed my mind to look at things like that." You see, the Word of God makes us equipped for every good work. But what's happened in America in the last 50 years, we've had courts that have said, "You know, guys, your faith is really important." Your faith is so important that you guys have a whole amendment in the Constitution to protect your faith. Now, here's what we need you to do. We need you to keep your faith at home or at church. We don't need to see your faith at school. We don't need a graduation prayer. We don't need to see your faith out in public. We don't need an activity scene at Christmas time. We don't need to see your faith on writings like the State of Ohio with God and their motto. You can't do that. So, we've been told for the last 50 years that religion is really important, but only stays in certain areas. I mean, here's faith and here's real life and here's faith and here's business and here's faith and here's medicine. Here's faith and here's education and what we've done is compartmentalize our faith. But we didn't do that 200 years ago. The Word of God applied to every single thing that went on. Matter of fact, here's a sermon from 1796 that was called an execution sermon. It was a sermon preached on the execution of Henry Blackburn for the murder of George Wilkinson. You mean when somebody got put to death, we had a sermon about that? Well, it's in the newspaper or does the Word of God not apply to things that are in the news. And quite often, these type of sermons were preached out of Romans 13 verses 1 through 4, where the Scripture says that God has not given the sword to civil government to barren vain. We'll say, no, wait a minute. What's it mean that God gave the sword to civil government? What's it mean that civil government doesn't bear in vain? And is this a proper use of the sword by civil government? It didn't matter what the issue was, we dealt with it and looked at it from biblical framework. Now, I could show you hundreds of sermons like these, but these are all called occasional sermons. They're sermon preached on the occasion of a fire, the occasion of a tornado, the occasion of a hellstorm, the occasion of the repeal of a certain tax, the occasion of a dedication of whatever the occasion was, whatever was in the news, here's how the Word of God related to it. But we had sermons that were so important that we preached about them once every year. They're called annual sermons. And this is tradition that God himself started in the Scriptures. Remember, after God got his people together, called them all together there, and then the Pentateuch took the first five books and delivers them with a mighty hand out of Egypt, and establishes them as an independent nation. After he goes through all those miracles, he stops and says, all right, guys, three days a year, I want you to show up in front of me. I want you here three holidays, three holidays a year. I want you right here in front of me, and on those three days, what I want you to do is I want you to stop and remember what it was that I had done for you on that day in the past. This is a time to remember what it is that I did when I brought you out of Egypt. And he had three days, three different events that he wanted them to remember. And he said, now, when you do those days, your kids are going to say to you, why are we doing this? And you make sure and teach your kids what it is that I've done for you on that day. So the purpose of holidays is to remember what God's done in the past and to teach the next generation on why that's important. Show them the hand of God in history. So the Old Testament starts with three. By the time we get to the end of Old, God has seven days to decide. Seven days he wants his people in front of him. One was Esther, what Esther did with saving the nation of Israel. I mean, those were all days that we were to stop. And remember what it was that God had done for his people and he's the next generation. Now, in the Christian church in America, we still have annual sermons. I guarantee you that in April, everybody had an Easter sermon. Oh, man, I had an Easter sermon last year and the year before. Yeah, and you'll have one next year and the year after because that's such an important day that we want to stop every year. And remember what it was that Jesus Christ did in the resurrection. We're going to remember that every year. And we're also going to use that time to say, kids, here's what Easter is all about. Here's what Jesus did for us on that day. See, that's an annual sermon. We also have an annual sermon on Christmas. We also have an annual sermon on Thanksgiving. Those are really important annual sermon days. But in the American tradition for over 200 years, we had a lot more annual sermons than just those three. For example, this is called an artillery sermon. It's from 1803. But this artillery sermon, once a year, we would look at what God says was the proper role of the military. It's indisputable. In any nation's history, the military plays a major role. It's also indisputable that the military is a huge subject all the way through the scriptures. Matter of fact, even over in the New Testament, when John the Baptist was baptizing, he had specific instructions for officers and for soldiers. And so once a year, we would look at what it is that God said about the military. We used to know the difference between just wars and unjust wars and offensive wars and defensive wars. We used to know why it was that when Saul went out to whack the Philistines, that God performed a miracle to help him destroy the Philistines. You can't say God's anti-war because God's performed way too many miracles to help armies defeat enemies. But at the same time, Saul goes out to whack the Philistines, God helps him. Saul then goes out to whack the Gibby Knights, and God curses him. Brings a whole curse on the nation for going to fight the Gibby Knights. So it's not that God's pro-war or anti-war is there's principles involved in the military. Saul did it right one time, he did it wrong. What were the principles that were involved that bring God's blessings to a curse? Once a year, we looked at that. And here we are in a war right now in America. I mean, we got this war going in Iraq. And if you ask people across the nation, if you ask Christians across the nation, what do you think about the war? Everybody's got a strong opinion. They're for if they're against it. Why are you for it or against it? They give you humanitarian reasons, they give you political reasons, they give you partisan reasons, they give you economic reasons. They give you lots of reasons. I have yet to have a Christian give me a biblical analysis, either for or against their position, of why what's going on with America and Iraq is either right or wrong. See, we used to be able to do that because we knew the biblical principles that dealt with the military. That's why we did that for 200 years. And for 270 years in the American church, we also had what were called election sermons. And they deal with exactly what you think they deal with elections. Elections, you see, we knew that in America we had a dual citizenship. We are as Christians, indeed, we are citizens of heaven, but we're also citizens on earth. And we're taught in Titus, and in 1 Peter 5, we're taught in Romans 13 that God ordains civil government. So he ordains government. The kind of government we have in America is ordained by God. And the kind of government we have is a stewardship government. He's given it to us. He gave it to us and said, "Take care of this so I come back." So what does God expect of us in this kind of government? And so in these election sermons, we would look at elections in the Bible. You may recall that before Israel became a monarchy, she was a republic. The Scripture says in Exodus 1821, "Choose out from among you." The leaders of thousands, the leaders of hundreds, the leaders of fifties, the leaders of tens, in other words, heavy elections. Elect, if you will, federal, state, county, and local officials. The Scripture says, "Choose able men, such as fear of God. Men of truth, heading and covetances, men who will rule in the fear of God." That's God's list of moral qualifications for officeholders. He doesn't care what you're running for. Dogcatcher or President of the United States, you get this moral list of qualifications. And that was for leaders of tens all the way to leaders of thousands. See, we looked at the verses of the Bible with the elections about choosing our own leaders because that's the form of government he gave us in America. For 270 years, every single year we did that from 1633, all the way until after 1900, we had that every year. Now, another sermon that we had in America, and I've chosen this sermon because you'll recognize the names, is a sermon preached in front of John Hancock, the Hancock, the sign of the Declaration, the President of Congress, but it's the first governor of Massachusetts. It's also a sermon preached in front of his honor, Sam Adams. Sam Adams signed up the Declaration. He's the father of the Revolution. He's the first lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and his sermon preached in front of the Council of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Do you know that for 270 years in America, it was tradition that when state legislatures started their legislative session, they would get together and join session. They'd get the government, the lieutenant governor, house them and get them all together that'd bring in a preacher and say, we're lawmakers, we're going into a law-making session. What guidance is the word of God give us as we go into this next law-making session? Now, man, did we have a lot of stuff to talk about because think how many law givers there are in the Bible. Most of us was a law giver, Joseph was a law giver, Daniel was a law giver. There's a lot of law givers in the Bible, so we could talk to law givers and say, here's biblical principles that deal with law-making and law-giving. Here's what God expects you as lawmakers. Now, see, this is 270 years. We started legislative sessions this way. Now, it's interesting. We haven't done this in America in almost 100 years, but let's say that you get home from church this afternoon, and this could happen for any Christian day in America in any of the 50 states, but here we are in Texas. We get home from church this afternoon. You check your answer machine, and lo and behold, you've got a message in your answer machine from Governor Rick Perry. Governor Rick Perry calls, he says, I'm going to resurrect your division that hadn't been done in 100 years. We want to start these sermons again in the legislature. I've called a special legislative session that's going to begin this next Wednesday. I would like you to come Thursday and preach a sermon to the joint session of the Texas legislature. I'll be there. Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst will be there. We'll have the House there, the Senate there. We're starting on Wednesday. But on Thursday, I want you to come preach a sermon to the whole law-making body of Texas gathered there. If most Christians in Texas had an opportunity to do that, or if most Christians anywhere in America, I mean, Oklahoma or Nebraska, or Alaska, it doesn't matter. If most Christians had an opportunity to do what we did for 270 years, what do you think most Christians today would preach about in that sermon? I'm going to speculate that most Christians would somehow have a salvation message there. Tell these guys about Christ. It's not a bad deal. We need to do that. We need to tell these guys about Christ. But I really think that part of the change in the church today is that the church has become very good at making converts of all men, but not very good at making disciples of all men. We can't say, here's how the Word of God applies to law-making. Here's how it applies to medicine. Here's how it applies to architecture. Here's how it applies to fine arts in all these areas that it applies to for all these years. So because we had this biblical worldview that we taught 200 years ago with that everything was relevant to the Word of God, it had a direct impact on our documents. What we celebrated two weeks ago, Fourth of July, this document is a blessing that we often take for granted. We've been under this document 228 years. That's longer than any nation in the history of the world has been under the same piece of paper. As we were gathered here this morning, we have 29 nations in the world that are embroiled either in civil war or in revolution. War is the way of the world. This year, 182 nations, the UN, it goes up and down from year to year, but any given year, there's two to three dozen nations tearing themselves or some neighbor apart. War is the way of the world. Jesus said there'd be wars and rumors of wars. It was that way when he left. It'll be that way till he gets back. That is the normal condition of man. What we've had for 228 years is not normal. Now, we just think it is. We think other people, not so. In the same period of time that we've had that one piece of paper, France has been through 15 different constitutions. At the same period of time, we've had that piece of paper. You know, Italy, last year, just went into her 55th form of government in the same period of time, and we consider Italy to be one of the stable nations in the world. 55 forms of government. See, other nations are having turnovers, unlike what we have. So, where in the world did these guys get their ideas? They tell us. If you read the writings of John Hancock or John Adams or so many others, they said that their ideas came out of this book right here. This is original from 1765. This is what they use to write the Declaration. It's called The Two Treatises of Government. Now, this is a book that's still available today. This is considered an international classic. I deal with governments across the world, and I can get this book today in Spanish or Russian or Italian or Greek or French or whatever. You can leave here today and go order this at amazon.com. You can go to Barnes and Noble Borders. You can get that. We used to study this in America. Matter of fact, this book was so significant. Richard Henry Lee said that they copied the Declaration of Independence out of this book here. Now, we used to study this in schools in America, but we hadn't studied it in 50 years, but it's worth reading. I would recommend it to you. Now, you can see this book here. It's an inch and a quarter thick. It's 360 pages long. This is what they use to write the most successful government document in the history of the world. If you read this, you'll be amazed. This book cites the Bible over 1,700 times to show the proper operation of civil government. Wow, 1700 verses and how government's supposed to offer it. A whole lot more verses than that, but that's just the Bible verses that were put in this book, 1700. And this is the book they used to write the Declaration. Maybe that suggests why we've been a little different from other nations. Maybe we have a different foundation than what other nations had. Eleven years later, when these guys gave us the Constitution, they placed in their ideas that had never before appeared in any written Constitution. You can't find checks and balances or separation of powers or what we call Republicanism, Article 4, Section 4, which says, when you have elections, you get to elect federal, state, county, and local. You get to elect leaders of thousands, hundred and fifty, no other Constitution had that until the American Constitution did so. Where in the world did these guys get their ideas? Political science professor said, you know, if we can read the writings, see who they quoted, we'll know where they got their ideas. They collected 15,000 writings in the founding era. They read them all. And those 15,000 writings, they found 3,154 direct quotes. They took every direct quote back to its original source. At the end of the study, they said, we can now tell you the 100 most cited sources in American founding. Here's source number one. Here's source number two, which is four times lower. Here's source number three, which is four times lower. Here's source number four, which is 12 times lower. In other words, source number one was up there by itself uncontested, nothing even close. What was source number one? It was the Bible. Twenty-four percent of all quotes from the political writings came out of the Bible. You find in the writings of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, that what we call separation of powers came from the principle in Jeremiah 17-9. You find the three branches of government is in Isaiah 33-22. We have a tax exemption in church today. They gave us that 200 years ago. They gave us tax exemptions 200 years ago. And you try to find in other nations 200 years ago that had tax exemptions. That was a novel idea. Where in the world did they get the idea of tax exemptions for churches? Read Ezra 7-24. Matter of fact, if you don't have a little fun, just some day, pull out the Constitution, lay it here, pull out the Bible, lay it here, and start going through things and see how much Bible language in the Constitution. For example, go to Article 3, Section 3, and deals with judiciary. Article 3, Section 3, Paragraph 1. While you're there, go open Deuteronomy 17-6 and read Deuteronomy 17-6. Article 3, Section 3, Paragraph 1, and you go same language, same thing. Go to Paragraph 2, then go to Ezekiel 18-20. Read it, see. And that's the same thing too. See, it's amazing how much of the Bible is actually embedded in our Constitution. It never crosses our minds because as we know, government's a secular arena, it's a secular institution. Christians aren't supposed to be involved. You know, it's a good thing for us that they didn't believe that because they applied those principles. And that's why John Adams said unequivocally, he said, "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence and the general principles of Christianity." They weren't perfect, but to the best of their ability. They took what they could understand and apply in their culture and put it into there, and that was the basis. Now, significantly today, we're trying to say, no, no, no, it never was like -- I love to collect articles that refute all the actual historical findings. Here's one that ran recently in the National Wire Service of Stephen Morris, the founding fathers, were not Christians. It didn't matter what they said, it didn't matter what they claimed, it didn't matter what they wrote, it didn't matter what they did. They weren't Christians. This was a secular nation, it's been that way from the beginning. Here's an article, editorial that read in a whole chain of newspapers on the East Coast. It says, "The office of the Declaration were enemies of Christ, and out on the West Coast, the LA Times says America's un-Christian beginnings." And notice the little tag that it has there. It says, "The founding fathers were dearest who rejected the divinity of Jesus." Now, we teach this. As a matter of fact, I speak in law schools and universities across the nation. Last five years, the most widely used textbook I've seen is called "The Godless Constitution." Now, why would we teach students that this is a Godless Constitution? Well, we know it's a Godless Constitution, because as I just showed you, all the founding fathers were Godless. They were all atheist and agnostics and deists, and you can't expect a bunch of secular guys to write something religious. No, a bunch of Godless guys give you a Godless Constitution, and that's what's made us great for 200 years, is our secularism. As long as we can stay secular, we'll stay great, and that's why the courts are exactly right, to say that you can't have under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, to say that the Los Angeles can't have a cross in their city seal, a religious city Spanish with a religious name, been that way 300 years, but you've got to get that cross off your city. See, that's what's behind all the Godless Constitution. A lot of people buy that. Matter of fact, I can show this picture to virtually every school group in America, and I think we recognize this picture. Now, you guys recognize, these are the 56 atheists assigned the Declaration of Independence. Now, I can show that picture to any school group in America. Say, kids who are 30, you recognize. Everybody can find Jefferson, everybody can find Franklin, and that's usually exactly where it stops us. And, wait a minute, don't stop there. Let's look at some of the other guys. Which one of these guys is George Clinton or Robert Morris or Charles Carroll or Elbert Jerry or Oliver Wilcott or Abraham Clark, which one is James Wilson or Stephen Hopkins, or there in the middle, which one is Robert Livingston or Roger Sherman, or over on the right, which one is Thomas McCain or George Reed or Samuel Huntington, and I can go through the other 54 names. They go who? I don't think I've heard those names before. Isn't it interesting that we've all been trained to recognize the two least religious founding fathers? We can find Jefferson and Franklin. They're the least religious, no question about it, but we don't know any of the others, but we know they must have been like Jefferson and Franklin. Really? Did you know out of the 56 guys who signed the Declaration of Independence, 24 of those guys held seminary degrees? That's not bad for much of atheists to have seminary degrees, and apparently that's what we had. Can you imagine if Congress today would be made up of one half pastors? Oh, that's unconstitutional. Really? They're the ones who did it. Half those guys, ministers of the gospel. People we don't talk about today include the Reverend Dr. John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon, the best known gospel evangelist in his generation, responsible for 15 volumes of gospel sermons, also responsible for two American editions of the Bible, including this one right here. This is from 1791. This is America's very first family Bible. Dr. Witherspoon did this Bible so that families could have Bible studies together. Also on the right side of the screen, the tall gentleman you see there is named Charles Thompson. He's responsible for a famous American edition of the Bible. This is the original. It's called Thompson's Bible. You've probably heard of Thompson's Bible. It's the first translation of the Greek set to it in English. You can still buy this today in Christian bookstores right now. This afternoon, if you want to, you can get Thompson's Bible. Now, it took Charles 19 years to make this translation that's considered one of America's most scholarly translations of the Bible and it came from one of our founding fathers. And then over on the left side of the screen, you see this gentleman, he's Dr. Benjamin Rush. He mentioned Merler. He founded the first abolition society. But he's also the man that in 1791 started the Sunday School movement in America. So if you think Sunday Schools is a good idea, it came from a founding father. He also authored this. This is the Constitution for America's very first Bible society. He started the first Bible society in America. Why would he do that? He tells us right here. He says, "If we can get Americans to read the Bible," he said, "two things will happen." Number one, they become Christians. And number two, if they'll read and obey the Bible, he said, "We'll solve all of our social problems. We won't have crime. We won't have slavery. He went through all the things we wouldn't have if we live by the Bible." So he wants to get the Bible in the hands of every single American. And in looking to do that, he came up with a new way to print books. It was called Stereotype to Printing, early form of mass production. Actually, it's part of printing history in America. But this is the result. This is the first mass-produced Bible ever done in the history of the United States. It's done by sign of the Declaration, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Then you have the man right in the center of the screen. His name is Francis Hopkinson. Now, he's a church music director and he's a choir leader. He's also a federal judge, by the way. He's also the man who designed the American flag. But this federal judge, church music director, choir leader, is responsible for America's first purely American hymn book, this one right here. This is from 1767. What Francis did was he took the entire book of Psalms out of the Bible and he set the entire book of Psalms to music so that we could sing the Psalms, like David had sung the Psalms thousands of years before. Now, can you imagine sitting 150 Psalms to music? I mean, for that matter, can you imagine just sitting Psalms 119 music? That in itself has got to be a live project. And if you did get Psalms 119 set to music, how many church services you think it'd take you to sing Psalms 119 once you got it set to music? No. I mean, he sets the whole book of Psalms to music. This is one of our foundings. Oh, they're a bunch of atheist agnostics. It's not by a launch. See, we don't know who these guys are anymore. We used to know we used to study the school. This is an old 1848 textbook. We used in public schools for generations. Went through every one of these individuals. We knew about their life and their faith and what they'd done. And we knew about the abolitionists. We don't anymore. Now, we've reprinted that textbook. It's out front. But we used to know that. See, these guys were just not secular in their mindset. And it's interesting that the first time ever that these guys got together was on September the 6th, 1774. She recorded in the records of Congress. She didn't get it online. You know what they did, the first time these guys got together in Congress? They opened with prayer. But it wasn't a dinky little prayer. According to historical records, the opening prayer session in Congress ran for three hours. Now, that's not bad to get atheists to pray for three hours. I mean, we can't get Christians anywhere close to that. But our atheist -- and this wasn't in church. This wasn't in Congress. And they didn't just pray. John Adams said that that morning they studied four chapters of the Bible in Congress together. Silas Dean said that after that time of prayer and Bible study, he said even the stern old Quakers had tears running down their cheeks. Now, the Quakers were the least likely to cry. That's why they called them the stern old Quakers. And even they were touched by that time of prayer and Bible reading in Congress. See, just -- we didn't compartmentalize our faith. And that's why George Washington, when he resigned after 45 years of public service, in his farewell address, he reminded Americans of why our politics prospered when other nations had. Just in the period of time he had been president, France had already gone through three revolutions. Just in time he was president. So he said, "Here's why we are different from other nations. Here's why our politics prospereds when that of other nations done." He said of all the habits and dispositions that lead to political prosperity. Of everything that makes politics prospered, he said religion and morality are indispensable supports. The two things that make our politics work well is we don't separate religion and morality from politics. Isn't that interesting? That's what we've been trying to do for the last 30 years. Whether it's the marriage amendment last week or morality, that's a biblical thing. We don't want biblical marriage. We want civil marriage. We can't have religious stuff in public arena. And we've got the same thing. You can't say under God in the Pledge of Allegiance. I mean, this is the civil arena. Keep religious stuff over in church. So we try to separate religion and morality out of this. But that was not at all the design that they had. They didn't compartmentalize their faith. You know, and it's interesting to see even what we deal with in Congress right now. Because in Congress, and I'm very involved in the U.S. Congress, I deal with dozens and dozens of members of the House and the Senate and et cetera. But you look at the issues that we're having to deal with and how they relate to religion and morality. And you just really don't hear about many of these issues on the news because they're not economic issues. We hear about the economic issues on the news. But you take something like what we've had with same-sex marriage or trying to protect traditional marriage. 69% of the nation wants traditional marriage protected. That should have been a no-brainer. We didn't even get close to that on the vote last week. Didn't even reflect close to what the national numbers reflect. We also have the issue of prayer at school. Football prayers. You know, 81% of the nation supports daily, voluntary prayer, not only in the classroom, but also on the football field and athletic events. 81% of the nation. We can't get a bill out of Congress with 81% of the nation. That ought to be easy. No, you can't even get it out of Congress. We've also got the issue of faith-based programs. 75% of the nation supports involving faith in social programs. Letting that be part of -- we can't get that passed through Congress. He gets killed every time we bring it up. Also got the issues of what's called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, where if you kill a woman who's pregnant and you kill the child as well, that's two people you've killed. It's not just one, it's two. 84% of the nation supports that. Finally, after years and years, we finally got that passed last April, President Bush signed it. But why did it take us years to get something done that 84% of the nation wanted? And you can take other issues, take the issue of the Boy Scouts. We have, again, this session of Congress trying to beat back an attempt to break up the charter of the Boy Scouts. Take away the federal charter. Why? Because those nasty Boy Scouts and sisters, Scout masters be morally straight. They want morally straight instructors teaching those young kids. We can't have a group like that in America. So third time we're having to try to defend their charter against attacks against them. We also have the issue of the Ten Commandments. 77% of the nation wants the Ten Commandments displayed, but we can't have that happen. We also have the issue of Pledge of Allegiance. 92% of the nation thinks that we ought to keep under God and pledge. Congress could pass a bill tomorrow so that this would not even go to the court. I've been involved in six cases of the U.S. Supreme Court. Last case in which I was involved was back on March the 24th of this year, and it was the Pledge of Allegiance case. Can we keep under God in the Pledge of Allegiance? Congress could pass a lot of Mars so that it would never even go back to the Supreme Court. We could be done with this. 92% of the nation, we can't get the law through Congress. We also have the issue of free speech for churches. In 1954, for the first time in American history, we told church pastors that you are limited with what you can say out of the pulpit. Now everybody else in America has got free speech, but not church pastors. We can't have you doing what Elijah did when he talked to Ahab and Jezebel. We can't have you doing what Nathan and Gad did when he talked to David. We can't have you doing what Christ did when he called Herod and Old Fox and called the civil leaders of a bunch of Wasseplickers. We can't have you doing that. So for 50 years, we've had a one-line provision in the tax code that says you cannot from the pulpit talk about certain issues. Now everybody else in America can because they have the constitutional right of free speech. So we've got to build up to simply give free speech back to everybody, including the church, and we can't get that through Congress. That's a no-brainer. We also have the issue of prayer on military areas. So you know we have three lawsuits now that we've lost that have said, military, that's federal. So you can't even have prayer on those areas. You can't even pray over your lunch if you want to because that's federal turf and you can't pray on federal turf. We also have the issue of judges. Just this last week, we narrowly got a judge confirmed. 51 to 46 in the Senate. You know why he almost didn't get confirmed? Judge Leon Holmes made the mistake of saying, "I think what the Bible says about the family in Ephesians 5 is right." Oh, you're too radical. We can't have you as a judge if you believe what the Bible said about the family. 46 people voted against him just because he agreed with what the Bible said about the family. You look at issues like, "Why in the world is Congress so far out of step with where we are?" 92 percent, 81 percent, 77 percent, 84 percent. Why can't we get this stuff done? I think the answer to that is given to this man. This is President James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States. Now, I don't know if you knew, but President Garfield was also minister of the gospel. This is a letter of his that we have from 1858 signed James A. Garfield at the bottom. But in this letter, President Garfield recounts that he had just finished preaching a revival service where he preached the gospel 19 times in that revival. As a result of his preaching, he said that 34 folks came to Christ and he baptized 31 of them. Now, that doesn't seem like a typical presidential activity today, but that's what President -- imagine what happened to President Bush or to have a revival service and baptized people in that revival service? I mean, that's unconstitutional, really? That's what President's used to do because we didn't compartmentalize our faith. We used to do -- and matter of fact, there's so much in history. We have a piece called The Role of Pastors and Christians that looks at all these historical guys, but I think Garfield told us why Congress is so far out of touch with where we the people are. This is what he said 100 years ago. He said now, more than ever before, that people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it's because the people tolerate ignorance, reckless and corruption. He said if that body be intelligent, brave and cursed because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the National Legislature, and then he became a prophet. I mean, what he said 100 years ago is so perfect for where we are today. He said if the next centennial, which is where we are right now, does not find us a great nation, it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces. That is, if Congress doesn't line up with where we are, it's because we have those values, haven't done the things we need to be controlled. Now, this is where it's interesting because when you look at Christian voting statistics in America, do you know that between 1992 and 1996, the number of Christians voting declined by 17 percent. Between 1996 and 2000, it declined by an additional 23 percent. Christian voting turnout has dropped 40 percent since 1992. I can't figure out why those guys in Congress won't protect these things. It's because we who have those values haven't been electing people to Congress who will have those values. 40 percent decrease in Christians. And when you move it into the evangelical Christian arena, now, what we have in America, we have six polls that have been done in the last two or three years where the between 85 and 88 percent of Americans say that they are Christian. They call themselves Christians. That's 240 million Americans call themselves Christians. We can debate whether they really are or whether they live like it or whatever. So when you boil it down to those who really live their faith, what we have or what are called 16 million evangelicals in America. Evangelical someone who says I am a Christian. Jesus Christ has personally changed my life. I believe the Bible is the basis of life. I spend regular time in the Bible and in prayer and in going to church. Bible believing Christians are called evangelicals in the political community. So we have 16 million Bible believing, Bible living Christians in America. Those 16 million who have the right values and who live the right values. Only 15 million voted in the last election. That's only one out of four with those values. Matter of fact, we have 24 million who are not even rich to vote. They couldn't even be salt and light if they wanted to because they can't even vote in that arena. Now, people see those stats and say, oh man, that is depressing. That is some of the most exciting news I have seen in a long time. I mean, consider. We're in the middle of this culture war, and if you will, both sides are evenly balanced. It's kind of like having it. The teeter topper seesaw and it kind of evenly balanced. I mean, what are we going to do with marriage and what are we going to do with religious expression? We're just kind of evenly balanced on these things. And if you will, it's like an athletic competition. It's like a football game. Here, we're at a football game. We had two teams competing, and at halftime, we're tied. We're not quite sure who's going to win in the second half. Now, you recall on a football team, you got 11 players on your team. So here we've been competing the first half. They've had 11 players, but we've only had one fourth of our team on the field. We've been playing three players against their 11 players, and we're tied at halftime. If the rest of our team shows up in the second half, the culture war is over. It won't even be close if we simply show up. I would be really distressed. It was 60 million a week. (Applause) I mean, if we had 60 million evangelicals and they all voted and we were tied in the culture war, it would be really tedious. But that's not the case. We only have one fourth of our team there, and we're tied. We ever show up. See, it's not a culture war anymore. So I'm going to close this morning with a challenge. And by the way, what we've been talking about is nothing more than the scripture out of Proverbs 29. It says that when the righteous rule, the people rejoice. When the wicked rule, the people groan. The quality of government is not in your constitution, although we have a phenomenal constitution. That constitution is worthless in the hands of people who do not use those same values, those same religious and moral values. So in America, this first means something different than it does in other nations. You see, in America, whether the righteous rule or whether the wicked rule depends on what we do with them, because we put them there. Nobody gets there without us. Even the federal judges don't get there without us choosing the presidents who appoint them and the senators who confirm them. So this verse, if you were in China, if you were in Cuba or elsewhere, that verse doesn't mean anything at all. But in America, it means stewardship. And that's why I like this challenge that was given by Matthias Burnett in 1803. Matthias Burnett was addressing a joint session of the Connecticut legislature, is all the legislators there. And up in the galleries were all the citizens. And with all the citizens there, this is what he said. He said, "To God and posterity, you're accountable for your rights and your rulers." Wait a minute. What do you mean I'm accountable to God for my rulers? I didn't even vote last election. Yeah, exactly. That is the point. We account to God. See, remember in Matthew 25 and Luke 19 that the master came and he gave all the stewardship, these trusts, these responsibilities. He took office and he'll check with you later, take care until I come back. So he came back and said, "What did you guys do with what I gave you?" "I gave you this government." "What did you do with that government I gave you?" "Oh, Lord, we decided not to get involved with that." "Oh, not an optional choice." "He gave it to us. We've got to be good stewards of it." "I gave you this vote." "What did you do with that voter game?" "Oh, Lord, we decided not to use that vote." That's not going to be a good answer either. Or if you say, "Well, Lord, I know you gave me that vote, but I voted my pocketbook." That's not going to be the right answer either. See, righteousness, exaltination, not economics, exaltination. I gave you this government to be a steward of. I gave you a vote to be a steward with. What did you do with it? See, he expects, and that's why it says to God and posterity accountable. And this posterity aspect is really interesting because regardless of what our eschatology is. And you know that the Christian church is divided even into denominations over eschatology. Are we pre-tribb, mid-tribb, or post-tribb, or atribb, or pantribb? Are we pre-malal or almalal? I mean, we go through all the different views. Regardless of what our view is on eschatology, we know that Jesus Christ commanded us in Luke 19, 13. He said, "Occupy till I come." So whatever our view is, we know that we have to be found doing when he returns. And so within that framework, that's why we understood that we had to be acting so that if he didn't return in this generation, we have not ruined it for the next generation. And that's why he said, "Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you." See, that's the stewardship we have. And what is it that's been the foundations that make us different religion and morality? And of course Psalms 11.3 says that the foundations be destroyed with the righteous too. For us, our responsibility is to make sure that we preserve not only religion and morality in our own life, but also religion and morality in community life and national life. We've got a responsibility to choose to select people who will preserve those principles, blesses that nation whose God is the Lord. But that didn't happen without godly people ruling, which doesn't happen without godly people electing them rule. So it comes back to our responsibilities. And if God's going to bless the nation, it comes back on us. So we know, hands down, that if you don't have a personal relationship with Christ and live by the principles he sits out in his ward, his morality, your life's not going to work well. It's also the same way with a nation. It's also the same way with a family, church, anyone else. We've got to get those principles back to the foundation of what we do. We've got to get away from compartmentalizing our faith. They didn't have our faith. You know, one of the great experiments you need to do is just every once in a while take a newspaper, throw it down in front of me and start taking headlines and saying, "How does the Word of God apply to that story or that headline?" We need to get back in the habit of thinking the Word of God applies to every single thing in life and let that start reshaping the way we think about our life and our culture. culture. God bless you guys.