Sunday Night, November 1, 2020 PM

All right, folks, we're gonna go ahead and get started. There's some handouts in the back. And we're just going to have a discussion tonight. We speak kind of an extension from our Sons of Issachar study, though not officially.

And as we're looking at the election coming up on Tuesday, and then who knows what else coming after that, I thought it would be good for us to have a discussion and do our best to apply the truths of scripture to the things that we've been hearing a lot of, and then to the choices that sits before us, if you haven't already voted, and so on.

I do want to say at the outset that when we think about having citizenship in our nation, I think we're, we live in a nation that if we spent any amount of time trying to settle in a different nation, it wouldn't be just a matter of culture shock, but it would be, we would find that living in the United States is a pretty good deal.

To be born in the United States or to immigrate here and to live here is a genuine pleasure. There's a difference, don't you know, between different cultures. Someone has noted something about all the Muslim immigrants flooding Europe and other places as well.

Well, you wouldn't want to stay in the Muslim world either. Life is completely different in a place that is soaked with Muhammad versus a place that is soaked with Christ, even if they're not Christians.

I mean, if there's a place that's been weathered under the cultural reigns, per se, of Christ, that's just a much better place to live than in a place that is controlled by Islamic thought. And you can make the same application, I think, if you were to live in a place that was haunted by communism, you would much rather live someplace else.

Right?

And our missionary, Mitch Tillman, for example, I've known Mitch many years, even before he began to be supported here. Our previous church in Tennessee supported Mitch Tillman and the stories he tells about trying to live in Mongolia, a place that's very much that they have two strikes against them, you know, they were, their background is in the Lamas version of Buddhism.

So that's a terrible culture. And then on top of that, communism came in, tried to pound that down and try to eradicate it with an iron fist, and then communism failed. And then they're living in the wreckage of that, both those things.

And God is good and churches are being planted and good things are happening there in the name of Christ. But it is just not a nice place to live. It just isn't. And there is a distinct difference, you see, ideas matter, beliefs matter, values matter.

And which is why I think it's worth kind of talking about tonight, a disparity between the worldviews that are presented to us every year, every election cycle, every single candidate. We should always be concerned about what is their worldview even as we would be if we wanted to go into business with somebody, we would be concerned about what kind of worldview does this person have?

Is it somebody who I think would be trustworthy and have integrity? If we wanted to send our children to be educated somewhere, are we concerned at all about the worldview being represented by that educational institution, so on and so forth.

And so we should be thinking a little bit about that when it comes to voting. Now to say all that, I understand that politics is filled with all sorts of awful things and a great mess. And there's been plenty of people who have said they're for one thing, but they never actually live it out and betray trust and lie and finagle and there's all sorts of mess.

And so voting and being involved in politics and being involved in the civil side of governance for a lot of people I understand is basically eating meat offered to idols and no can do. So I can understand that it's a matter of conviction.

And at the same time, these folks are still following Christ and I'll still abide by the speed limit and I'll still follow the laws of the land I'm not trying to be rebellious but I still can't be actively involved though I'll be passively compliant in terms of being a good citizen and having a good Christian testimony.

So I understand that, but I do want to talk about some things that have been cropping up lately on the evangelical airwaves, which has been more and more ever since 2016. And it's basically a few versions of these ideas.

One of them is expressed this way. If you're a one issue voter, then you're probably racist. If all you're concerned is about abortion then you're not concerned about the plights of the immigrant and the minority, the poor and so on and so forth.

And it kind of shows you short sighted and so on if you're a one issue voter. And they never actually say what the one issue is but everybody knows what the one issue is and that issue is abortion. And so there is some moral equivalency going on in terms of abortion is just one issue.

What about this plentitude of issues that we all need to think about regarding this? There's also Babylon Bee ran an article just the other day about pro-life evangelicals for Molech, which was a shot at the pro-life evangelicals for Biden, which is a political action committee trying to say you can be pro-life and you can be a Jesus following, a believer, trust in the word of God, you're submitted to the scriptures, you believe the gospel, you're pro-life and definitely voting for Biden.

Which I think is about as logical as being a married bachelor. So, but why would I think that? It's not because we're not talking necessarily, we're not talking about the individual merits of somebody's character, which that does matter, but we're talking about a difference in worldview, difference in worldview, okay?

So what I'm saying is this, if you have somebody who's coming from a Muslim culture and wants to enforce Muslim culture, that has a way of shape of ruining all sorts of, right? So there's a ruinous nature there.

Somebody coming from a communist background and they wanna have a communist kind of country, a communist kind of culture, that's ruinous as well. And if somebody is coming from a Christianized Western background, I'm not saying that this person is perfect, I think our President Trump is, he is full of arrogance and that he is immoral and I think that he's very good at making a deal and more interested in making things work than making things right and all of that.

But I still think there's a difference. I think there's a difference between somebody operating with the remnants of a Christian Western worldview like Trump is, like Mr. Trump is, versus somebody who is working with the remnants of another worldview.

I think it matters and I think the outcome, downstream outcome, and it's been proven in history, it's been proven in recent history, that it matters. So I wanted to talk about a few things. You have a handout here.

I just wanna talk about that there is a difference and I just want us to think about what does the Bible have to say? Because this is going to be more and more emphasized as we move forward that Christians should, churches should vote for the Democrats because the Democrats have been way better on certain issues than other issues and so on.

And so what I wanna talk about is not whether or not Democrats or Republicans individually are perfect people. We know that they're not. We know several Republicans who have lied and done horrible things and there's no basic approval there but I wanna talk about the two different worldviews being expressed by their party platforms.

If someone doesn't abide by their own party platform, okay, but we need to understand that, and these party platforms are like 90 plus pages long, they're not a fun read, but there is an expression of a worldview there concerning all these different issues and the Bible speaks to all of them.

Okay, so there's gonna be a lot of stuff in the political party platforms on both sides that's going to be anti-biblical. It's going to be against the word of God. It's going to be against the character of God expressed in his law.

It's not gonna be in agreement with the scriptures. We know that from on both sides, but there is a difference, right? There's a difference between Claudius and Nero. There's a difference between, there's a difference between Sennacherib and Cyrus, okay?

There's difference in rulers in the Bible, okay? Not to say that anyone was, not to say that Claudius or that Cyrus were amazing God-fearing evangelicals who read their Bibles every morning before they had breakfast, but there was a difference.

And whereas the people of God in those situations didn't really have choice about who their leaders would be, they did have a choice, didn't they, in the life of Israel. When they organized themselves and when Moses' father-in-law said, you're taking too much upon yourself.

You need to organize these people. He gave Moses a list of qualifiers for men who should be placed in charge of small, medium, and large groups to render judgments. So basically elders or judges who would be able to oversee cases and make sure that justice was being done.

And there was a list of qualifiers. They should like fear God instead of man. They should not be corrupt. They should not be taking bribes. And there's like, so when you appoint these men, and then later on when the communities themselves would appoint these men to sit in the city gates and appoint and do justice, they were trying to pick people who feared God, who had integrity, and there was a difference.

And so they had a responsibility to do that. And if they didn't do that, if they didn't care about whether or not justice and righteousness was being done, then the whole society suffered because of that.

And Proverbs talks a lot about that. So what I want us to do is to do a compare. This is not the full platform of the two major parties, but let's read them for ourselves as we were doing with Sons of Issachar, just clarifying the terms, and let's just see for ourselves if there's not really a bunch of a difference.

If everybody is equally wrong on all the issues and so everybody should have their own choice, Christians can easily vote for Democrats as much as they would vote for Republicans, and there is no difference at all.

Let's see if that's so. So the first key issue here is listed as life and abortion. So let's look at these two descriptions. The Republican Party platform includes this language. Notice what's in quotes and what is not in quotes.

What is not in quotes is a summary of what the material is. And if you want to see if they've done a good job of actually summarizing it accurately, they have listed the pages that you can go find it on.

And these party platforms are online. You can go look for them and you can look at it for yourself and they actually encourage you to do that. So notice what is in quotes and what is not in quotes just so we're clear.

Quote, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed, close quote. We'll appoint judges who will support sanctity of life at all stages.

So that's a nod towards the question of euthanasia which is legal in Canada and I believe in Belgium I think they're doing euthanasia for children now. Opposes use of public funds to quote perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations like Planned Parenthood, close quote.

Okay, so let's see if, and we know there's a difference but what kind of difference is there on the Democratic Party platform? Quote, they are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health rights and justice so that every woman should be able to access high quality reproductive healthcare services including safe and legal abortion.

We will restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood. So we're not making stuff up. People aren't making things up about the Democratic Party that they actually call the murder of the unborn justice.

Right?

This isn't a neutral issue, okay? And it is the issue of our times. Let's just be clear that this is the issue of our time. 60 million dead and counting. It is not to be considered all, well, you know, not being friendly to immigrants sneaking across the border is as evil as 60 million dead and counting.

And these are of equal weight. Are they biblically of equal rate? Should we have concern for people who are being lied to and smuggled across the border and find themselves in all sorts of horrible situations and so on and so, yeah, I think we should be concerned about human trafficking, absolutely.

I think we should be concerned about that. I think that's an issue that we can take up the scriptures and do and think about clearly and respond to with grace and compassion and know what the right and the just thing is to do in these cases.

Absolutely.

But it doesn't even touch what's going on in terms of abortion. But the Democrats call it justice that every woman can go kill their baby. Just to be clear. Key issue, marriage, family and society. In parentheses, you notice that the words LGBTQ gay or homosexual are not mentioned in the 2020 platform.

Our president has positioned himself as pro-homosexual marriage, pro-gay rights and so on, which again, it's just evidence that he knows which way the wind's blowing and he's looking for every vote that he can get.

He's not coming from a biblical conviction on that matter. He just isn't. But it's not mentioned in the platform, which is again, a strategic move. But here's what they do say. Foremost among those institutions is the American family.

It is the foundation of civil society and the cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman, close quote. Quote, the data and the facts lead to an inescapable conclusion.

Every child deserves a married mom and dad, close quote. Now, is that a neutral issue one way or the other? Is it, you know, it doesn't really matter if kids have a mom and dad or just a mom or two moms or two dads or so on.

No, biblically, what does the Bible have to say about this? What Jesus said, have you never, have you not read what it was in the beginning? That God created the male and female and that for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. And that even the basic cultural mandate of what it means and what is humanity supposed to look like? Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

And what do we find in terms of the instructions to the church about husbands loving their wives, not being embittered against them, honoring them and treasuring them as the weaker vessel and wives, submitting to their husbands in all things as to the Lord, respecting their husbands in all these matters.

And so instructions about what healthy marriage looks like and then how parents, especially how fathers are to view their children and how to raise them up in the nurturing, the admonition of the Lord and not to exasperate them and all the instructions of a father to a son and Proverbs and so on.

The Bible has an abundance of instruction about how we are to view family, how it's a good thing and how to do it in the fear of the Lord, so it's an amazing thing. The scripture greatly values families so that so much more than it values the family government more than civil government.

There is no death penalty for treason against the state in the Bible. There is death penalty for treason against the family. Adultery is a death penalty. A child who completely rebels against his parents, and we're talking about an older child who has just become a nuisance on the face of society, an Antifa rioter, that child doesn't get to stay in the basement of his parents, that child is to be brought before the city leaders despite everything, this one is reprobate and the death penalty is assigned to such a one.

You see how much the Bible values the family, how important it is to God's intentions and yet we're told a great deal from evangelicalism that we value the family too much, the family's an idol, the church is idolatrous when it comes to the family and so on, and that there's no real significance or difference between singleness and marriage, singleness and family in the Bible, and all of it is equally fine and good and there's not to be any consideration one way or the other, but that's not what the Bible says.

Okay, so we have what the Republicans say. Do you not see that there is some artifacts here of a biblical worldview? I mean, is it perfectly expressing what the Bible has to say? Nope, nope, but the artifacts of a biblical worldview are here and it's very different than in a communist country and it's very different than in a Muslim culture.

Okay, so let's look at the Democratic Party platform. Marriage slash traditional family is not mentioned in the 2020 platform. You know, like this Cold War, Republicans are not mentioning the LGBTQ and then Democrats are not mentioning the nuclear family as BLM talked about.

Quote, we'll advance the ability of all persons to live with dignity, security, and respect regardless of who they are or who they love. We'll restore US leadership on LGBTQ plus issues by passing the GLOBE Act and appointing senior leaders coordinating LGBTQ plus issues.

So basically, redefining, getting rid of this idea of family essentially is the main idea. Redefining family to mean whatever you want it to mean until you don't have any more use for the word. And if you watch any kids cartoon movies lately, then you know, you see the agenda.

The, notice what they, the acronym is a wonderful euphemism to hide that they're talking about a grand variety of things that God calls abomination. Okay, he calls it abomination. LGBTQ plus is a wonderful euphemism to quickly run through a variety of things that God calls vile passions.

And that not only are these vile passions, but to act upon these passions is deserving of death according to the scriptures. And this is to mean that somebody who is identifying this way or caught up in this way has no hope.

Such were many of those who were in the church in Corinth, but they were saved, they were sanctified, but they were justified by the name, saved in the name of Jesus Christ and brought out of that. And so there was hope there, but notice the Democratic Party platform wants everyone to approve of these things, right?

At the end of Romans one, they want everyone to approve of these things. They want everybody to rejoice in celebrating these things. So there's a difference. Now, why are we considering a platform? Again, the claim is that we should be very warmly accepting and supportive of church members who want to vote for Democrats.

Because they're doing so because they know that the Democrats have much more compassion and concern for the poor, and they've been much better on poverty issues. Which is, that's obvious if you look at any major city under the control of Democrats over the last five decades, you can see how well they've taken care of the poor.

They've done a great job, haven't they? They have really solved those issues. They're really a whole lot better on them than anybody else is. Third issue is education. We will continue our fight for school choice until all parents can find good, safe schools for their children.

Close quote.

Quote again, parents are a child's first and foremost educators, and have primary responsibility for the education of their children. Parents have a right to direct their children's education, care, and upbringing.

Now, is that in any way biblical? Is there anything biblical there that parents are directly responsible for their own children's education? Well, yes, it's extremely biblical. Raise up your children from Deuteronomy, teaching your children everything that they need to know about the Lord as you rise up and lay down everything about the way life really is.

Raising up your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. It's the parents are the primary educators of their children. The way that they need to educate their children is the way, we wanna make sure that the families do that and do that well, but the parents are in charge.

Okay, that's the Republican platform. Okay, we read the Democratic platform. We believe that education is a critical public good, not a commodity. So that's critical public good, not a commodity. That's language from socialism.

And that it is the government's responsibilities, the government's responsibility. Now, what did the Republicans say? It's the parent's responsibility. Over here, it says it's the government's responsibility.

You see the difference? To ensure that every child everywhere is able to receive a world-class education that enables them to lead meaningful lives, no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability status, language status, immigration or citizenship status, household income, or zip code.

It's okay to laugh, it's all right. Boy, they've got to stuff all that in there too. And if they don't, they'll get in trouble, especially your zip code. I didn't even know zip code was part of my intersectional.

Did you know that? I was trying, when I get the lesson of intersectionality, I was trying to get all the intersectionals in there, but I missed the zip code one. I didn't know that was a deal. Man, maybe my zip code gives me some intersectional power.

I don't know.

But notice the difference is, one is saying the parent's responsibility, the other one is saying government's responsibility. So what do they believe about the government? The government is father. The government is father.

The government is, the state is father. The state will raise your children. The state will decide what they need to know and what they need to believe, how they need to view the world. And if you want to know how the Democrats think that the government should educate the children, just read the list of different things that they think matters right there and then.

So, I mean, there is a difference, isn't there? You know, when you think about what happened with Daniel and his friends, Daniel had an Azariah and the Sheol, when they moved to, when they were taken by the Babylonians and taken to Babel, to Babylon, they were given a new identity.

They were handed a new identity that was understood not from the perspective of the Lord. All their names in Hebrew meant some kind of praise to God, some sort of trust in God that their parents gave them.

But when the state of Babylon took them out of, away from their parents and then put them into their state-run education,.

What did they do?

They gave them a new identity crafted in the names of the pagan gods, didn't they? Belteshazzar was Daniel's new name, and then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the names of his friends. So they were given this new identity.

Interesting though, as you move through the rest of the stories, you find that they are still relating to one another and to everybody else based on their old identities. All right, they didn't give those up.

They didn't accept those, they didn't welcome those, though they were given all of this education. And the point was that education particularly failed when they refused to bow down to the golden idol, right?

When they refused to stop praying. You can see the failure of the state's education in those moments. And that's why they had to be done away with. And of course, we know the story, and they didn't. So now, we can talk about the, there's many other ones.

You can see the other categories and the difference. My encouragement to you is the more we run on kind of just basic momentum without checking out things for ourselves, okay, the more apt we are to believe somebody else's analysis of the matter, okay?

If somebody says, you know, hey, you can be a pro-life evangelical and in all good conscience, faithful to Christ, vote for the Biden-Harris ticket, does it actually square? If you take even just the synopses of the Democratic Party platform and begin to consider them compared to the Bible, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything that squares.

You'd find a lot of words that perhaps, but again, remember, we're using the same vocabulary in different dictionaries. You need to check that out. What does that actually mean? Now, at the same time, when you read the Republican ticket, there's gonna be, their party platform, there are gonna be some things which are in opposition to the Bible.

They just are, because they are just reflecting the paganized culture in which we live. And yet, there are several issues in which, as we've already noted, the artifacts of a Christian worldview exist.

The artifacts of a biblical understanding still remain. And so, this is not to say that you are required to vote Republican. This is to say that there's a difference. This is to say that there is a distinct difference.

For somebody who has a conviction that voting at all would be against their conviction, would be against faith, I understand that. I really, I do understand that. And you need to be well-seated in your own conviction, having wrestled through that biblically and so on.

But I cannot see any biblical justification whatsoever for someone saying that you can vote Democrat and you're being faithful to Christ. Because if you simply just take the time to read what is it that the Democratic Party platform stands for, you will find that it is antichrist.

Okay, it just straight up is antichrist. It is lofty arrogance, speculating, raging against Christ. Now, I'm not saying that the Republican Party platform is gospel truth. I'm saying there's lots of problems.

I'm really peeved with a lot of Republicans who are only pretending. So, just because they're on the platform doesn't mean they actually have any intention at all to do anything biblical, okay? But I'm saying that there is a difference.

And right now, we've moved from a time where, we've moved from a time where some people are basically saying, well, it's useless anyway to vote for anybody, which that's a different conviction than saying, I think it's against my conscience.

But I think that the lie now is one in which they're saying, if you're gonna vote, you can vote Democrat or Republican. It doesn't really matter. And so, nobody should be upset one way or the other. But I think there is really a distinct difference.

So, there's a lot of articles out there from Gospel Coalition, from Nine Marks, from Desiring God, John Piper himself, and they're all basically trucking left about it's okay to vote Democrat. But listen, what you have to do in order to get that across is that you have to start saying that basically, you have to flatline sin.

All sin is equal weight. There's no difference between one sin and another sin. They're all equally sinful, flat earth sinning, as we've talked about before, which is unbiblical because God weighted sins differently.

But that's what you have to do first of all. And then you say, well, look, because I can count more sins over here than I can count over here numerically, I've made my case. I think it'd be more helpful, like I said, to read the party platforms and then to be a good student of the scripture and just apply scriptural principles.

Take up the passages of the scripture and read and think, which side is more leaning towards the scripture? Which one is more leaning towards the Bible? And let that help you make your choice. I think the answer is obvious, but I think it's still worth the exercise.

I was greatly encouraged by reading it for myself and then thinking about it, about what kind of scriptures apply here and going through that process. And so I was more seated in my convictions about what I need to do and how I need to think.

So that's helpful. And just the point of the matter is that it matters. It matters who is been entrusted with authority. It matters who will be defining what justice looks like. It matters a great deal.

It mattered in the Bible. When the wicked reign, the people groan. When the righteous man ruled, the people were blessed. It was just, it's just that way. It's the way God has designed the world. And so I just think that that'd be worth considering and worth praying about.

Pray that God's will will be done. Pray that God would arrange things in such a way that the maximum amount of people who have, who are ascribing to these biblical artifacts, the maximum number of people who actually fear God would actually be advantaged to be in a place of civil service.

I mean, that would be to our good. That would be to the good of our nation. And in fact, it would be to the good of the churches. It would be to the good of the world for the sake of the spreading of the gospel.

And so let's pray that way. Let's pray that God will provide in that way. All right, well, let's close by singing the doxology together.

Pray.