Keep sharing good news without ads.
#NoDespair2020
Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. Alright, well, today I wanted to get into a little bit of politics. I know I'm stepping on cross-politics toes a little bit, but that's okay.
That's okay. This is the political season. They gotta expect that kind of thing from time to time. But if you don't listen to cross-politics, definitely go over there and listen to those guys. They do fantastic work.
I've been listening to a lot more cross-politics lately. And it's good stuff, man. It's good stuff. And let me just say this as well. If you enjoy the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, which hopefully you do if you're listening here today, please consider joining the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as a club member.
You can support the content that you love. You get access to all kinds of exclusive content, gear, discounts, all that kind of thing. And use the show code ROBLES to let the guys know that you appreciate this show in particular.
R-O-B-L-E-S. Use the show code ROBLES and become a Fight, Laugh, Feast Network club member. Let's jump into it today, because on Monday I put out a video that—. Oh, by the way, before we get started, let me get distracted for a second.
I'm working on the lighting here in my studio. And pretty soon I'm gonna have a wall back there, and I'm working on it. So let me know what you think of the lighting here. I think it's still a little bright, but I wanted to just kind of, you know, kind of slowly go down in brightness to see how it works.
So let me know what you think in the comments section below. Let's jump into it. On Monday, I mentioned that I wanted to help everybody that has questions about this upcoming election and this political season.
And so I solicited questions so that I could, you know, make content that would be most helpful to everybody. Now, I'm not promising to answer every question, but I'll do many of the questions. And I'm gonna try to focus on the ones that not only do I think will be helpful, but also that get asked a lot.
And today I want to focus on really two things that I think are kind of related. But for some reason, evangelicals are confused about this. And I don't think that there's really any reason to be confused about this.
This is actually pretty clear in the Scripture. One of my themes in the last few months has been telling you that the Bible, the book that we have, the words from God, it's way better than you've ever been told it is.
It's way better than I've told you that it is. The Scripture is able to equip us for every good work. That's what the Bible says. And we ought to be very concerned with good works. I think when I first became an evangelical, good works almost became like maybe not a dirty word, but something that when somebody talks about them, that you kind of like you got your spidey senses up, and you were kind of like maybe very careful and cautious, and maybe even your heresy alarm kind of went up when people start to talk about good works.
But the reality is that we need to devote ourselves to good works. God has prepared good works for His people to walk in. He prepared them beforehand. Like He prepared good works for you to walk in even before you had been converted to Christ.
That's something that is very clear in the Bible. The book of James is one of the most helpful books in the Scripture, in my opinion. People call it the wisdom literature of the New Testament. I'm going to read you from James 2.
You know this passage, but I just want you to really understand. If you're used to this passage, try to pay extra attention here because sometimes when I'm used to a passage and I know it very well, I just kind of turn my brain off when people are talking about it.
Don't do that. Just really hear the words of God from the book of James. This is James 2, verse 14. These are the words of God. He says, What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warm and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God, you do well.
Even the demons believe and tremble. But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the altar?
Do you see that faith was working together with his works? And by works, faith was made perfect. And the scripture was fulfilled which said, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.
And he was called a friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. These are the words of God, my friends. These are the words of God. We should be a people that is very concerned with demonstrating our faith by our works because if we say we have faith but we don't have works, our faith is dead, which is to say it's not faith.
It's to say it's not a faith that is something that you can even easily discern. You can say you trust Christ all day long, but if you don't do the things that demonstrate that you trust Christ, do you really trust Christ?
The example I've always used when I've been preaching or talking to someone about the gospel is, let's say I was scared of an airplane, right? Like I was scared to fly in an airplane. And then someone was giving me all the facts about the airplane, how it's so safe and how this and that.
And I said, you know what? I believe you. I trust you. I'm not scared of flying in an airplane anymore, right? Okay, so I've told you I've got faith in the airplane. I'm not scared to fly in it anymore.
But do you know if I actually have that faith or if I'm just saying I do? Well, there's one way to find out. There's one way to find out. Put me in a situation where I have to get on an airplane. And if I decide not to get on that airplane because I'm too scared, well, then it was a lot of talk, but it wasn't actual trust in the airplane.
But if I do get on the airplane, that's the good works. I do the work to get on the airplane and I go fly to my destination. Well, then you know that I wasn't just blowing smoke. I actually did trust the airplane.
And it's the same with God. Faith without works is dead. The people of God should be devoted to good works. Jesus Christ actually talks about this as well. Jesus Christ, I often will say this to people when they're saying that I sound like a legalist because I'm saying you should obey Christ.
I ask them, are they abiding in Christ's love, right? Are they abiding in Christ's love? Here's what Jesus says about this issue. How do you know if you're abiding in Christ's love? He says in John 15, verse 9, As the Father loved me, I also have loved you.
Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. So it's not about just reading your Bible with a nice cup of coffee every morning.
It's not about conjuring up feelings and affections inside of you. It's not about closing your eyes and having smoke and all kinds of mood lighting when you're worshiping God. That's not abiding in Christ's love.
What Jesus says is if you abide in his love, you will keep his commandments. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. So what does all this have to do with politics? Well, the thing is there's a popular idea that somehow politics can be disconnected from obedience.
Somehow politics are somehow disconnected from good works. Let me give you an example of this kind of thing. This commenter on YouTube, his name is Dave. He said this, he attributes this quote to David Platt.
So I don't know if this is actually David Platt, but I know this is a very popular theory in Big Eva, so I wouldn't be surprised if David Platt said this. I'm not saying I don't trust you, by the way, commenter.
I just didn't look it up. So that's the only reason I'm saying that. Here's what his comment says. He says the following quote from a David Platt interview is popular among many churchgoers and even pastors.
Here's the quote. When people say you can't love Jesus and vote for Donald Trump or you can't love Jesus and vote for Joe Biden, then what we end up doing, said Platt, is questioning people's orthodoxy based on how they vote.
He is not saying that either statement is right or wrong. Rather, I'm just saying how do we keep focus on the centrality of Jesus in the middle of it, love for one another in the middle of it? So the commenter asked, what's the best way to respond when you hear calls for nuance, unity, listening well regarding voting, but appear to be striving to sit on the fence as though they have conservative convictions, but due to their efforts to appease liberal congregants, they always find a way to punch right.
So that's what the commenter says. And so here's what I'll say to this. This is my response to this because we have to understand that how we vote is part of our works, right? Like how we judge between things, how we act on good and evil, how we decide to live our lives and who we support and who we promote and things like that.
All of that is part of our good works. And so, well, our works, I'll say, not necessarily good works, it's either good or bad. And so you can't disconnect your political activities from your work, you just can't do it.
It doesn't work that way. Your political activities are part of your works. In fact, they demonstrate your faith in a very, very clear kind of a way, a very clear cut kind of a way because really your political activities are nothing more than your ethics and your morality played out on the public stage.
So you can't be like a Christian in private, but when it comes to public policy, you're a secular, you're an atheist, you're a Muslim or something like that. It doesn't work that way because that's part of your works.
And so if you say, I can vote for the Democratic Party and still be a Christian, well, I would say that you're demonstrating not only very bad fruit, but you're demonstrating that your faith might be dead because here's the thing, the Democratic Party's platform is upside down.
And we're gonna talk more about this. I keep saying that, but we're definitely gonna talk more about this. There are no redeeming qualities of the Democratic Party platform. There are no redeeming qualities for Joe Biden.
He advocates things that are against the commandments of God. And so how in the world would you be able to say with Christ, I'm abiding in his love, even as I'm supporting and attempting to promote and to empower people that are looking to overturn every single commandment of God.
From one to 10, the 10 commandments, all of them, the Democratic Party seeks to undermine and subvert every one of those commandments. So if we take Jesus seriously and we say, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, then how can we say, okay, I really like people in power and I'm gonna support them, I'm gonna donate to them, I'm gonna promote them, I'm gonna vote for them, people that are seeking to undermine every single one of those commandments.
Not only are they undermining it, but they're telling you they're going to undermine it. So it's not a situation where somebody is saying one thing but doing the other. They're actually saying to you, I'm going to undermine every one of these commandments and then they do it.
And so it's not like you can't say, well, I was fooled by it or I was trying to do good because you weren't trying to do good if you took what they said, which is I'm gonna undermine these 10 commandments and then vote for them.
And so we can't disconnect your political works from your works. And so are you abiding in Christ's love if you're voting for people and supporting people and promoting people that are seeking to undermine the commandments of God?
Well, Jesus Christ in John chapter 15 says, no, you are not abiding in his love. And James, furthermore, the brother of Christ would say, demonstrate your faith by your works. And so if your works are evil, what does that say about your faith?
This is not something that's negotiable. And the thing is like, when it comes to, for some reason, like I know David Platt would probably say, look, if you're cheating on your wife constantly or if you're donating to a platform that enables people, that cheat on their wives, for example, like that Ashley Madison thing, if you're paying Ashley Madison or if you're donating to Ashley Madison or maybe you're a stockholder in Ashley Madison or something like that, I'm sure David Platt would say, you know, you have to stop that or you're gonna get excommunicated from your church, right, if you don't stop.
I'm sure David Platt would say that. But for some reason, political works are disconnected from personal works in David Platt's system here. They would have to be, otherwise he couldn't say this. And my point is your political works can't be disconnected from your personal works.
Your political works demonstrate your faith just as much as your personal works. You see what I'm trying to say? And so this is, that's how I would respond. Like, we can't have nuance when it comes to God's commandments if they're not nuanced in the scripture.
We can't have nuance there where the scripture isn't nuanced. We need nuance only where there's nuance. And we need to be clear where there's clear. And so I would agree with this commenter that people disconnect politics from your personal works because they want to appease liberal congregants.
They want people that are voting Democrat to be comfortable in their seats at their church. And that's unacceptable. That's unacceptable. If your church shrinks because you decide to take the right stance on the Democratic Party, this is a non-starter for a Christian.
A Christian cannot do it. A Christian must repent of supporting Democrats, must. Your church is going to be smaller if you take a stand like that, but it's necessary to take a stand like that because it's the right thing.
You don't want to comfort people in their sin. That's one of the most evil things that you could do as a pastor, as a Christian, is to comfort people in their sins. And so that's how I would respond to that.
In what planet, on what universe would you disconnect your political works from your personal works? You can't do it. Your political works are part of your works. They're either good or they're evil. And we need to treat them.
There's no separate way to treat sin if it's political sin, right? There's no separate way to treat public sin or public policy sin than personal sin. It's not separate. The Bible gives us the specifics on how to handle sin in the church.
And so you would need to make a very strong case to somehow that the Bible says that you're allowed to separate your public sin from your personal sin. And there's nowhere in the Bible that does that.
The other thing I wanted to address today is this idea that people were saying that capitalism isn't taught in the Bible. Capitalism is a made-up, man-made system. And even a lot of capitalists will say this.
Well, it's not perfect. It's a man-made system. And so we need to understand that we can't insist that people are capitalists if they're Christian. And that's also, likewise, it's not true. Guys, the Bible is much better than anyone's ever told you.
You see, the Bible gives us principles that we can apply. And sure, we call it capitalism, and we've invented that term, and we've invented sort of some of the frameworks for it. But the principles all come from the Bible.
It starts with private property, right? It starts with private property, the idea that you should be able to do what you want with what you own, right? You should be able to own things, and you should be able to have private property rights, and you should be able to pursue income from what you own, pursue profits, and things like that.
Now, the government is there to adjudicate for fraud and for stealing and stuff like that, but the government should not have any say in what kind of a business you run unless it's something illegal, like a slavery business where you steal people, you man-steal, or something like that.
And so unless it contradicts something that the scripture also says is illegal, you should be able to do what you want with your money. That's obvious from the scriptures. That's obvious from the scripture.
The Bible is so much better than you think it is, guys. It's so much better. This is an example of the idea that, look, the government can't steal either. You understand? Like, that's the thing. When we're talking about socialism versus capitalism, like, socialism thinks it's okay for the government to take what they want and distribute it how they want, but the Bible is against that.
Thou shalt not steal is applicable to the government, right? It's not just applicable to individuals. It's applicable to groups of people as well. The government is a group of people. So why would we, again, there's often an assumed disconnect.
Like, the government doesn't have to play by the same rules as individuals. Why? Why would that be? Where would you get that from the Bible? The story of Naboth, right? You've heard this story from 1 Kings 21.
Naboth's wife, Jezebel, steals a field. So here's the thing. Naboth wants this field because it's close to his house. So he offers to buy it from someone. He's the king, and he offers to buy it from one of his subjects.
That's what a government needs to do, right? They're accountable for everything that a person's accountable for. So Naboth goes to this man and says, like, I want your field. I want to pay you for it.
Okay? He's going to pay a fair price for it. The man says, no. I'm not selling you my field because this is my inheritance. This is the inheritance of my father's. I'm going to keep the field. And so Naboth goes away sad.
He can't buy the field. See, Naboth is held, even though he's the civil governing authority, he's held to the same standard. He can't just take a field. And so what does Jezebel do, that witch? Jezebel makes a plan where someone will falsely accuse the guy who owns the field so they can execute him, and they do.
And then she takes the field for her husband, Ahab, the king. So this is an example. And the Lord condemns Ahab for this, right? Condemns Ahab for the actions of his wife. This story proves that the scripture tells you the government can steal, and it's wrong for the government to steal.
It proves it. And you don't even need this story because the scripture proves it. The law of God proves it. And furthermore, logic proves it. Again, why would thou shall not steal not apply to the civil governing authorities?
The scripture, guys, is better than anyone's ever told you. Both of these ideas are related because they're attempting to make a disconnect, right? There's a disconnect in David Platt's thinking. Public policy and your activities in the government is somehow different from your activities as an individual.
The sin that you do in the government, in the public policies, it's not treated the same way in the church. We can agree to disagree if you vote for upside-down laws and commandments that are antichrist and for sin, nothing but sin.
The Democratic Party is all about sinning. Every commandment, they try to overturn. They'll never be able to do it, but they are attempting to do it. That's sin to support that. And it gets treated the way any sin would in the church.
At least it should be. But for David Platt, there's a disconnect there. And likewise, the people that say, well, capitalism isn't taught in the Bible. You can be a socialist Christian. No, you can't. Because again, they're trying to make a disconnect between public government policy and your personal life.
No, the government can't steal either. You remember in 1 Samuel 8, the prophet of God, Samuel, Israel wants a king. Israel wants a more structured government the way everybody else has it. And what does he tell them?
He tells them what the king's going to do. And he describes tyranny. And he talks about the draft. He says, they're going to draft you. They're going to take your fields. They're going to take a tenth of your stuff.
Tax rate is going to be 10%. And to Samuel, clearly, the scripture says, clearly God commands that 10 tax, that's absolute tyranny. That's abject tyranny for them to take 10 of your income. And yet we have prophets and teachers and preachers and blind guides that are over here saying, well, you know, yeah, you know, big government's okay too, right?
Progressive tax rates, you know, partiality, that's okay too. You know, after all, the Bible doesn't really tell us. The Bible does tell us. The Bible tells us how to do government. The Bible tells us how to do taxation.
The Bible tells us how to do our economy. But a lot of people don't like that it does because it doesn't allow them the wiggle room to placate and to play footsie with liberals. Stop playing footsie with liberals.
We need to clean this mess. We've got a church that for some reason disconnects public sin from private sin, government sin from private sin. For some reason they do it. And it doesn't matter why they do it, but we need to purge this sin from among us.
And step one is to start church disciplining people who are insisting on voting for antichrist politicians. Antichrist politicians. Politicians that say, I want to overturn the law, and then they seek and go and do it.
Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.
