"Well, we are wrapping up our final sermon in this series. Stay out. I'm vining God into the uncomfortable places of our lives. And my name is Pastor Bob Kedlesic, and this has been a really challenging series for me, because these are not areas that I can say, "Pfft, I got that," you know. How should God impact our entertainment and what we do with our free time? How should God impact our food and how we eat and our relationship in that way? How should God impact our money? And then today, the two things you're not supposed to ever talk about in polite company is religion and politics, and we're going to do both, so I guess this isn't polite company. But if you want a life hack for change, like if you want to know what is the best way, because if you're like me, if you've been here these last three weeks, and I wasn't here last week, but I watched Pastor David Wyman preach it online, and you've been a part of this series, you probably came away one of these Sundays, if not all three of these Sundays saying, "You know what? That needs to stop, or I need to change, or that this needs to happen in my life." And then you went home, and nothing happened. And so here's the, if you really want to change, here's one thing you can do, and it'll only take like two or three minutes, and it will like multiply the chances that you'll actually change. Ready? Tell somebody. That's why you just tell somebody you're going to change, and if you want to double that down on that and make it even more probable that you're going to change something, you just ask someone for their help in addition to that. Whoops, I'm skipping ahead. There we go. All right. Well, we'll get to the verse anyway. All right. So I just want to challenge you to do that if one of these weeks, even this Sunday, but if any of the other Sundays as well, you came away thinking, "You know, I need to have a budget. I need to get my spending under control." Or you know what? My entertainment is just out. Wouldn't it be wonderful if a year from now, this congregation, in Montrose, that we lost like 5,000 pounds? Wouldn't that be amazing? And in Hancock, that they lost 500 pounds? Wouldn't it be amazing if a year from now? We all showed up and we said, "Hey, is anybody really good at that new, cool game?" And everybody was like, "No, I'm terrible because I don't spend my time doing that. I'm going to invest it in something more lasting and something that's beneficial." Wouldn't it be great if these areas of our lives that we actually did something different? And to do that takes other people. Christianity is a team sport, you cannot follow Jesus Christ alone. We need others. So today we're going to talk about politics in Romans 13, talks about this and starts off, "Everyone must submit to governing authorities." Well, that sounds like a bad idea. For all authority comes from God and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted and they will be punished. So Romans 13, the apostle Paul is writing to the church and guess what city? Rome. There we go. You're Bible scholar, you know. And Rome was the capital of the what empire? The Roman Empire, yeah. And they thought it was the entire world really in their minds. And so he's telling them, "You people in Washington, D.C., you need to obey those in authority." Was Roman Empire, was that like a really good, like how many of you think that was a really good empire? They were really kind to people and no, it was brutal. In fact, if it was around today, it would be among the top five, top ten definitely worst nations to live in for human rights and things like that. And yet he's telling them, "You need to obey." Here's the bottom line of what he's saying. "Trust the God who's in control of who is in control." And so sometimes God puts wicked people in control. In fact, there's an interesting story in the Old Testament about a king named Josiah and the Bible says he was the best king ever in Israel, better than David, better than any of other kings before him, and he's killed in a battle against the Egyptians at age 34. Why? Why would God do that? Because the nation of Israel was evil and they were doing terrible things and God needed to judge them and he couldn't judge them with a good king like Josiah on the throne. And so God is in control of who is in control. He's in control when someone half-decent becomes president. He's in control when a terrible snake becomes president, right? Like God is in control and so we need to trust God. And just coming out of the 4th of July, I want to thank all of you who are involved in that and the float or I love the little, we had 11-year-old kid from Bridgewater who is the end of the parade with the garbage can and the sweeper and says the end. I'm like, Bridgewater, at the beginning, the first person in the parade was Jeff Shrekungas, Pastor Jeff from Conklin leading the Punishers, the gang he's in, I don't know if you know, one of our pastors is in a motorcycle gang. It's New York, it's Conklin, you know, they, you know, Hancock understands but, you know, so he led the parade and then we were at the very last thing and so I want to thank all of you who helped with the race and were in the parade and helped like that, it was awesome. But speaking of the 4th of July, what is the 4th of July about? This is Queen Elizabeth, for those of you who are maybe too young to know who that is or was. It is about rebellion and you read this verse, so anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling them what God has instituted and they will be punished. According to God's word, which is infallible, should our founders of our nation, like George Washington and John Adams, John Adams, Godly man, real Christian, better Christian than me, should they have rebelled against England because of some taxes? Or rep, you know, what is that? Taxation without representation, yeah. According to the Bible, no, they shouldn't have, they were wrong. They were sinning against God. Here's the thing, there's something called Christian nationalism and I really don't know what it means. I think it's a boogeyman by people who are socialists to like scare everybody about Christians or whatever, but if, if, if they're, I don't know what Christian nationalism is, but I'm going to explain something that's terribly bad. If you take your nation and your patriotism and you say America and the Declaration of Independence and our founders and our country are equal to God and his word and being a Christian and my citizenship is just as important as my Christianity. If you are doing that and you're putting them on equal footing or you're putting your America above what God says, that is idolatry and if that's Christian nationalism, we should run from it like the plague. We do not look at God's word and say, well, but the founders were good, so this must, we got to reinterpret this to mean, so anyone who does not rebel against authority, that's what it really means. No, that's the opposite. That's not an interpretation, that's a contradiction. We need to filter everything, even our heroes through what God's word says. The Constitution is a wonderful document. This nation, one of my regrets is that I never served in our armed forces because this nation is worthy of, of, of our life, of our service, of our, of our respect. This is a great, I think it's the greatest nation on earth, but I am a citizen of heaven first and I follow God's word. Way, you know, following other leaders of our country and things like that, it's like not even second place, it's like a distant place to, to following what God's word says. And so this is important as we read God's word that we need, we need to follow it that way. And here's the thing about democracy or republic that we have and I know it's the different, but in a democracy, we get who we deserve. We do. If you are upset with who leads our country, you need to understand it is just a mirror of who we are as a nation. We don't want honest people in the, can you imagine someone who is actually honest, like someone who is running for president would say, okay, you know what, we are spending ourselves into oblivion and so there need to be hard cuts made, but that's going to lead us into a recession and you know that your social security, we're going to have to cut your benefits because you know what, it's not there, it's been spent, we've broken our promise, live with it, we're going to, you know, if someone actually said what was true, no one would vote because we don't want a politician who's telling us the truth. We want someone like us, in fact, a good citizen is a threat to a bad leader because he'll hold them accountable. He won't blindly follow Jesus Christ, the best citizen to ever walk the face of the earth. The leaders got together and said let's kill him, right? And if we want to follow Christ, we need to put God's word and what God says, but God does say we need to submit to the authority that is above us and if you want better leaders, we need to make better people, that's the solution. The solution isn't get a better person in office because we'll never get a better person in office if we aren't better ourselves. So this is God's plan for political change is change your heart, have God change you from the inside out and then talk to your neighbor about Jesus, see God change your neighbor from the inside out and it's an inside out, it's a bottom up thing, it's not a top down. The top down is very alluring because it's so fast. It seems so, if we could just get enough votes in November, it'll fix everything. How long have people been saying that? How many years has it been that every time there's an election for president, people say it is the most pivotal election in our lifetime? I think every time they say that and maybe it's true, but that's not the way God's going to change this nation. That's not, it's through Jesus Christ, it's through making more and better disciples of Jesus, which is our goal and what God has set us to do. And so here's the thing, laws are at the bottom. People say you can't legislate morality, this is like a crazy saying. In some ways that's true, like if Nate is a thief, like we can pass laws against thievery, we can throw him in jail for stealing, but laws won't ever change his heart. If he has a heart for theft and coveting and taking what other people have, no law is going to stop him from doing that unless we kill him or something, you know, but that'd be pretty extreme, you know, but right, laws don't change people's hearts. So in that way you can't legislate morality, but the truth is every piece of legislation is about morality. If you're not supposed to legislate morality, what are you supposed to legislate? Random things? You can't buy gasoline on Tuesdays. Why? Well, because you can't legislate morality, so we're just legislating random things. No, every law, if you believe that murder is wrong and there should be laws against murder, you are pro-legislating morality, right, everything, even the stupid zoning laws, right, somebody stood up and said, you should not be able to have a business next to my house. I think it's morally wrong, it's too loud, and they passed a law against it, you know, so laws, but how do you change laws? You got to change leaders, right, and elections, but how do you change leaders? Ultimately, you got to change the culture. Culture is so much more powerful than laws. If people, people's beliefs and behaviors are against stealing, then you don't even need a law for stealing, because people just won't do it. They'll be like, well, that's shameful, that's wrong, that's evil. I'd never take from somebody, why, because of the culture, but what is more powerful than culture? What makes culture, people make culture? And so if you make more and better disciples of Jesus, it changes people, which changes the culture, which changes those who are leading the culture and elections, which changes the laws, if you change people's lives by leading them to Jesus Christ, if you make more and better disciples, it changes everything, but it's slow and it's hard. And even in this congregation, I've been talking over the Fourth of July weekend about some of you, so if your ears were itching, but individuals in our church who maybe were just living a terrible life, and maybe addiction and crime and prison, and then they change and they're doing good, and then they fall back into it. And then they come back out of it, and then they fall back. And then now they've been out of it for like 10 years and they're living so great, but it's just a rocky road, but you just got to keep persevering and keep going, and God will change, but it takes time and it's hard. And this is how we need to view politics. We will never have a Savior in the Oval Office, right? He's in heaven. Second thing, this is talking about in Romans 13 is we need to obey the government. So the very next verse, verse 3, "For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong." Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what's right and they will honor you. Is this always the case? No. But many times it is, most of the time it's true, and he's saying the role of government, there may be other roles it plays, but here it says the role of government is to punish people who do wrong and to honor people who do right. The authorities are God's servants, sent for your good. But if you're doing wrong, of course you should be afraid for they have the power to punish you. The last servants sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what's wrong, and in the original language, and some of you have more other translations that say this, the very purpose of it says, "They do not hold the sword in vain. The sword was used in the Roman Empire for only one thing, executing people." And the government that Paul is saying you need to obey had crucified Jesus Christ 25 years before he wrote this. And the government that Paul is saying you need to obey is going to cut off Paul's head a few years later. And he still says you need to submit, and you need to obey the government. There is an exception to this. Submit to them not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience. And we need to obey the government, even a bad government, unless it means disobeying God. And so Acts, chapter 4, verse 18 and 19 gives us an illustration of this. So they, the authorities, called the apostles back in and commanded them, never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, "Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?" We cannot stop telling about everything we've seen and heard. So if the government says you need to do this to your neighbor and it's wrong, you don't do it. The government says you need to lie and not tell people the truth. You need to, you need to tell people the truth anyway, even if it means going to jail, even if it means being executed like the apostle Paul was, like Jesus was. So we obey God first, but if the government just tells you to do something that's stupid, which they do all the time, or it's inefficient, or it's counterproductive, or it doesn't make any sense, or on and on and on, we need to obey the government. And we need to submit to it because God is in control of who is in control. And here's a leap, and I'll explain where I get this. If you don't believe your political party is ever wrong, you're worshiping that party. Okay, so the Bible says Romans 3, 23, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." So that means nobody's perfect, right? We are all sinners. If that's true of individuals, that's also true when individuals get together in a group. So has Bridgewater Church ever done anything wrong? Why are you laughing so loud? Yes, yes, yes, obviously. Yeah, we have. Why? Because we're just a bunch of individual sinners that get together as sinners. And yes, we're trying to follow Jesus. We're trying to do the right thing, but there's no way. Even me. I know I'm bursting your bubble. I'm a sinner. I've done things wrong. There are people in this community who hate me. But some of them actually have reasons that are good. And so if individuals are sinners, then groups of individuals are sinners, if there's two things going on, if you think of any issue, any way in which you disagree with what your political party does and what they believe, then one of two things is happening. Either you don't know a lot about your political party, which is not a bad thing, good for you. Or you don't know a lot about God's word, which is not so good. And this is where we need to be reading the Bible. We need to be not looking at current events and trying to fit the Bible into it. But just like the 4th of July saying, "This is what the Bible says. In my heroes, even godly good people were wrong because the Bible is right." You know, I was talking to individuals, actually a Mormon about this, how they follow the living word or whatever the president of the Mormon church is kind of the living word. And so what he says, if he comes out and says, "Hey, guess what, polygamy is okay again." Then polygamy would be okay for Mormons. And so he said, "How is it different?" I said, "It's bad to follow a person. You should never follow a person. All persons are sinners." He says, "How is it different to follow a book that fallible people wrote than it is to follow a man who's living?" And I didn't have a good answer, I answered it a little bit, but I thought of a better answer later. And that was the apostle Peter. He wrote two books in the Bible, first and second Peter. He actually helped with one of the gospel writers as well, who maybe Peter was probably his main source. But Paul in Galatians confronts Peter for sinning and leading people astray into being legalistic about Jewish laws and in separating themselves from Gentiles. So an author of scripture who the Roman Catholic church would say was the first pope was wrong. And what he was doing and what he was saying and was confronted by Paul and then accepted that rebuke. And so it is better to follow the word of God that was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Not just written by fallible people, but the Holy Spirit inspired it so that it is right and it is true and that's what we follow. And not our political party or other people. Don't follow me. Follow God's word. Pay your taxes. Going on. Keep reading Romans 13 and pay your taxes too for these same reasons for government workers need to be paid. They're serving God in what they do. And so you're like, "Pay your taxes really? Even with my side hustle job that they never know about?" Yes. Really, even though they take too much already, it's true. They take too much already. But yes, you need to pay, but almost nobody does that. Well, that may be true. Christians need to be different. We need to obey and submit and even pay taxes. But my taxes go toward killing babies. You're right. They do. My taxes go toward war. My taxes go toward things that I don't support and I think are morally wrong. Shouldn't that mean I shouldn't pay taxes? Let's think about the government in power when Paul is telling them to do this. A grippina poisoned her second husband. We don't know how her first husband died, but historians have a good guess, considering she poisoned and killed her second and third husbands. But she poisoned her second husband, killed her aunt so she could marry her uncle. This is great. Her emperor Claudius was her uncle, and then after she married him, she murdered his son, who was the heir to the throne. She murdered several people who were getting wise to her and any political rivals. And then eventually she killed Claudius, so her son Nero could rule. Any of you heard of Nero? Yeah, not a nice man. And Nero, and so when Paul is writing this, Nero is on the throne and a grippina is ruling with him. And then about a year after he wrote First Corinthians, Nero murders his mother, which honestly she had it coming. But then he goes crazy, and he starts murdering all sorts of other political rivals, and Rome gets burned to the ground, something he started it, others say no, he didn't start it, but he blamed the Christians for it, and it's said that he lit his gardens with human candles of Christians as human candles in his garden. So when Paul is saying pay your taxes, it's not like he's America as bad as much of a decline or whatever, you can say negative about America, we are not the Roman Empire, okay? And yet this is what God's word says about how are we to respond? And more than even paying our taxes, he says give to everyone what you owe them, pay your taxes and government fees to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority. If you have a flag in your yard that says F. Joe Biden, you need to get rid of it if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. Now if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, this is just an interesting talk here today, and we have no expectation, we should have no expectation that people who say they're not following Christ are not following Christ are not acting like Jesus. Why would they? So we need to realize that there is a standard for those who are followers of Jesus Christ, for those who said Jesus is my leader, he's my Lord, he's my Savior, he died for me, I'm trusting in him to be forgiven, there's a difference between those who say that and everybody else, and we should not hold other people to that standard. But the conversation about politics today has been erased to the bottom. You can say, you know, this politician or that politician is the same about Trump too. You can say, you know what, Trump is an immoral man who I don't appreciate his words and not swear or be demeaning and be respectful and honorable. Give proper respect and honor, and then the last thing I want to say is we need to love our neighbor and this feels like whiplash to some of you. Wait a minute, we've been talking about bare knuckles, politics. What's this lovey-dovey stuff? What does that got to do with anything? And actually, this sermon kind of ended there and then I shared it with the other pastors and the pastor in Halsted, Kevin Stiles, Pastor Kevin Stiles, he said, why didn't you just keep reading? I'm like, oh, and I kept reading, here's the very next verse, own nothing to anyone, right? He's talking about paying taxes except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God's law. For the commandments say, you must not commit adultery, you must not murder, you must not steal, you must not covet, these and other such commandments are summed up in this one commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. What has love got to do with anything with politics? Everything, everything with politics, that's the whole point of government. And the whole point is to how do I help and love my neighbors? That's the original point. Maybe we've forgotten why government exists and I think most people have. No, it's about rewarding and giving. You shouldn't vote for the person who will forgive your student debt or vote for the person who will let you keep your bump stock gun, semi-automatic rifle or whatever. You need to vote for who is going to do the best job loving my neighbor, punishing the wrong and honoring those who are right, because the problem with America, number one problem with America, you know what it is? Americans. And it's not solved by importing Mexicans or Ukrainians or Canadians, although we do appreciate a Canadian now and then coming to our fairland. Because the problem is, the problem is people. And again, this is the solution. The solution to our country, some environmentalists say that the way that we help solve the environmental problem is fewer people. If we only had half as many people on earth, if we only had, well, let me tell you, I remember there's over 8 billion people on earth. I remember when there was, I think it was four or five billion, about half that much. And the environment was way worse. And so it's not fewer people. That's not the solution. It's better people. Do you know what the worst thing to the environment is? Absolute worst. Hands down. Everybody agrees. There's the worst thing to do. It's not CO2 emissions. It's not fossil fuels. Do you know what the worst thing to the environment is? War. War. You want to see a bad environment, go to Syria, go to Ukraine, watch the oil refineries and rush a burn. Nobody cares about endangered frogs when your son's starving to death and you're fleeing a bunch of men with guns trying to shoot you. The problem, almost everything that's wrong with the world is people that aren't following Jesus. They don't love God. And the solution is more good people. Your neighbor doesn't need four more years of fill in the blank. And the thing is they're only going to care about Jesus if you care about them. And this is why July 28th, we're going to do Be the Church Sunday. This is the one Sunday of the year where we don't get together and talk about how we should love other people. We get together and actually go out and do it. And I want to challenge you to look for projects in your neighborhood. Talk to a man and he said we have this widow that lives near us. She had these fantastic flower gardens. She had all this, but her husband passed away. She's maybe in her 90s by now. She can't keep up with any of it. It's all overgrown. I'm like, we can help her. We can get together and show her God's love. So look around your neighborhood. And you might say, well, this person doesn't go to church. That's exactly who we want to help. You see something out of park. And this is for Hancock as well. Hancock is getting together July 28th and they have some projects. But here in Montrose, we need projects. So we have projects for about 140 people, which means we need projects for another 140 people. So if you know anyone who needs something done, and even if it's a small budget, it's going to cost $50,000. But it's going to cost $500 to get a dumpster or something like that. The church can help pay for that. And so if you know of a project, you can sign up at the Welcome Center with a project. If you're watching online, you got to come up with your own project anyway or show up to a campus in person that Sunday because we're doing this at all of our campuses. If you want to be a part of the new campus and congregation that we're starting in the Springville-Demic Elk Lake area, they're going to not be meeting here. They're going to be meeting at a pavilion at the Elk Lake School. Okay, so they're going to meet there Sunday morning at a little bit before 9 o'clock. We're going to meet here at 9 o'clock, 845. If you don't have a project yet, 830. If you are a project leader, but we'll meet here at 9, you'll get an optional donut. A cool Bridgewater t-shirt says, "Don't just go to church." And if you have kids, you can bring your kids. Like the previous slide, you know, exactly. He's invited, you know? And nobody will care if he's crying because you'll be outside or wherever you might be. But we will have a woodlands here from zero to four years of age if you want to drop off your kid and then go to your project. So I just want to encourage you. This is one of the best Sundays of the year. And we don't sing and we don't hear a message from me. We go out and serve the community. Then we come back and have lunch here. Or at Elk Lake, they come back and have lunch there or if Hancock you come back and I don't know what they're doing in Hancock, they'll tell you. But because this is the question that is often framed for us. How should the church be involved in politics? And let me ask you a question and I'm going to give you 30 seconds to actually talk to someone next to you and say which side you'd be on, okay? There was a church split at Bridgewater a few years back over politics. And the split was both sides agreed about the political issue. But this church was so involved in this political issue. It started a newspaper. So this is before the internet started a newspaper about this that was one of the most widely read in the state of Pennsylvania about this particular issue. There was a people in the church that were literally breaking the law over this issue. There was a political group gathered of hundreds of people that would get together and talk about this issue. And so there was a splinter group, one sixth of the church said, "We are supportive of this issue, but you are too political and they split off." So I want you to turn to the person next to you and say which side of that you would be on. Would you be on the side? This was the senior pastor actually left with the church split. Would you be on the side? So it wasn't me. So would you be on the side that says, "Man, if it's right, the church needs to be involved politically. We need to break the law. We need to do whatever it takes. Would you be on that side or would you be on the side to say, "You know, we just need to preach the gospel. We need to not get involved in politics." And I would have been on the side that left. So say to the person next to you, even if you're in Hancock, say to the person next to you, which side you'd be on. Give you 10 seconds. If you're online, which side would you be on? How should the church be involved in politics? That's great. We could talk about politics and when nothing, no one came to blows. All right. So I exaggerated a little bit about it being a few years ago, it was actually in 1839. And that is the founding pastor who left with the church split. He's sporting a mullet, I believe, but everything comes back around, you know? He left with his son, who was a congressman. David Stemick Jr. was a congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Democratic Party. The political issue was slavery. New York had just 11 years before outlawed slavery. This is 22 years before the Civil War. And our church, everyone in the church said they were against slavery, but there was an outpost who was an interim pastor at our church and one of the elders in the church. He had a room in his house as part of the Underground Railroad. He'd have bounty hunters come to his house and say, "We know there are slaves hiding here." And he'd say, "Look, look for him." And they'd look all over his house and they wouldn't find him. And he'd say, "How dare you defame my good name in my community. I happen to be a lawyer in this town, and if you're not gone by tomorrow, I'm going to sue the pants off you for libel and saying that I would hide slaves in my house all the way after he's hiding slaves in this house." And so they were breaking the law, and hundreds of people would gather. The pastor of the church at the time was the head. He was the president of the Anti-Slavery Society in Susquehanna County. And hundreds of people would meet at Bridgewater Baptist and then at the Presbyterian Church and other churches to talk about this and say, "How do we end this? Now are you glad that Bridgewater Church was really involved politically? Are you ashamed of that?" Time gives us perspective. Here's the thing about this question though. This is a bad question. It's a bad question. In two ways. Number one, how should the church be involved? How should I be involved? What is the church? Am I the church? I'm one tiny little piece of it, but the leaders aren't the church. Is a church a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization? No. Is it this building? No. A better question is, how should I be involved in politics? But better than that, even, is how should I love my neighbor? That's what politics, forget the politics thing. It's all about how do I love other people? Do I support someone who's going to lead to the death? And elections have consequences. Guns of people, if not more, have died because of who has been elected. And so I'm not saying it's not important, but we need to think about it in this realm, the way the Bible frames this question. It's not a political one at all. It's we need to love our neighbors. We need to love God and love people. We'll take the shortcut of just four more years. Think about politics the way God wants us to think about. It's about changing people's lives, from the inside out, from the bottom up. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just ask that you would just help us to be who you want us to be. Help us to become like Jesus and to just bring as many other people along with us in that journey. Now that you would transform Montrose, that you would transform Susquehanna County, the state of Pennsylvania, the United States of America and this world. Not through an election, but through a revival, through a change in our hearts, God. And Lord, if there's anyone here who has not surrendered their lives to you, I just ask that they would pray with me right now and do that. God, I know I'm a sinner and I've done things wrong and I deserve hell, but I just thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die in the cross from my sins. And I just ask that Jesus would pay and that he would take my hell from me and pay for my sins and God out of gratitude for him doing that. I want to give you my life. I give you my life. You are my Lord. You are my leader. I want to follow you in my politics, in my food, in my entertainment, with my money in every way of my life, in my family, with my relationships, and how I date, God, you are my Lord. You're my leader. I want to follow you from this day forward. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
