Pastoral Comments on the Trump Assasination Attempt

As most of you know, if you've been at Redeemer for any length of time, I am not a political person. In fact, you could almost say I'm anti-political. I can't stand politics. I really can't. But a number of reasons that I won't get into this morning.

That's a sermon for another time. But no doubt, unless you have been living under a rock or you were asleep the entire day yesterday, you heard about the complete and utter madness that took place yesterday.

And I almost wasn't going to address it because I really don't feel like that's my job.

I'm a preacher.

I'm here to open the Bible and explain what it says. But then I began to, I woke up this morning at like 7 .30 and was lying in bed and I began to think. And I began to realize I would be somewhat failing in my shepherding duty if I didn't at least address what took place yesterday.

Again, I am not a political person. I am not a partisan person either. So I'm not going to get into the politics of all of it. I'm thinking of this purely from a spiritual perspective. And I have three thoughts I'm gonna leave with you very quickly before we get to the preaching of God's word this morning.

First of all, faith family, I want you to consider the power of words. I wrote it down in my manuscript here is, rhetoric becomes reality. And this may be unpopular for me to say, but this goes for both sides of the political aisle.

Rhetoric becomes reality. One of the problems, I have a lot of problems with this generation. My mom said once upon a time, you were born in the wrong generation. I was like, well, I blame you and dad for that one,.

I suppose.

But one of the problems I have with this generation is we don't think words matter. We'll just say anything. And then we'll wonder why what we say ends up happening. I don't believe in the idea that you can speak things into existence, but there's a tiny kernel of truth to that,.

Which is this, you keep saying stuff,.

And someone's gonna act on what you keep saying. And again, I don't think that this is a one-sided, I think both sides can be guilty of this. Granted, I do think once, again, let me leave that alone.

I think it's very apparent that somebody took rhetoric and said, I'm gonna make that a reality tomorrow. And faith family, I wanna encourage us as God's people. We do not want to be given to that kind of reckless talk and reckless use of words.

Kind of the second thing I wanna say to you. So first of all, behold the power of words. Rhetoric becomes reality. I was finishing up my sermon. I had a bit of a tech mishap and almost half my sermon got lost.

Well, it did get lost yesterday and I had to rewrite it. And so I need to take a break. And so I jumped on Twitter just as the events unfolded, like terrible timing. And very quickly, I began to see, I expect the world to kind of go crazy and lose its mind when stuff like this happens.

And let's be clear, what happened yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. I expect the world to kind of lose its head. What troubled me was watching believers do the same thing. I wanna caution all of us.

We all love this country. I love this country as much as I joke about it. I do love this country. My wife is an American, my two children are American. So I love this country. But now is not the time for the people of God, the church to get swept up with emotion because of what we saw yesterday.

If I can put it bluntly, it's time for the church to be the adults in the room. Clearly our political powers can't do it. I mean, we all watched that travesty of a debate weeks ago. Maybe you didn't, more power to you.

I almost didn't. I decided last minute to. Clearly they can't be the adults in the room, but the people of God should be. So this is not the time to get swept up with emotion. I was really, really unhappy with what happened yesterday.

My wife will bear witness to that. But there comes a point, James 1 .20 says that human anger doesn't produce God's righteousness. And so a time comes where we have to, like I said, be the adults in the room.

We can't get swept up with emotion. We can't get swept up with rhetoric. Refer to point number one. No, we have to be the adults in the room. Third and final point. First Timothy chapter two verses one through four reminds us that we all have a God ordained duty to pray for those in authority over us.

Didn't say anything about whether you like the people in authority over you. And I feel the need to say that, because sometimes I think we who, I don't know the political leanings of everyone in the room, I lean somewhat conservative.

The danger can be if the other guy or the guy in, you know, who occupies that really big building in DC, if he's not where I'm at, I don't owe him that. I don't owe him my prayers and trusting. The Bible doesn't actually say that.

First Timothy two four says that we are to pray for kings and all who are in authority. And why should we do that it says? So that we may lead the CSB says quiet and tranquil lives, quiet and peaceful lives.

So I want to implore all of you, like I did this morning and I will continue to do in the weeks and months ahead. Pray for our leaders. Pray for our prospective leaders.

Pray for peace.

One of my, I'll be honest, one of my big fears is that this leads to an escalation. Because again, point number one, rhetoric becomes reality. So I want to encourage all of us, for every moment you're tempted to kind of commentate and listen to this.

And again, I'm not saying don't listen to, you know, if you like talk radio and all of that stuff, I'm not saying don't listen to any of that. I'm not saying turn off your news sources. I'm not saying any of that.

But I am saying, in addition to all of that, I'll say before you do all of that, pray, pray and pray some more. You probably know what quote I'm about to say next. You know, I love my John Bunyan quote on prayer.

We can do more than pray after we have prayed, but we cannot do more than pray before we've prayed. That's all I have to say on that. Before I read God's word, allow me to actually lead by example.

Let's pray.

Let's pray together.

Lord, your word says in Acts 17 that you have appointed the bounds of every nation and caused men to dwell in them, which tells us that nations matter to you. And so that means by extension, this nation matters to you.

So Father, we thank you for this nation. We thank you for the liberties that we enjoy. We thank you for the fact that we get to live here and lead lives. We get to glorify you in the midst of this nation.

Father, in light of the events of yesterday, we pray for peace in this nation. Father, I pray that there would be no escalation. I pray that calmer heads would prevail, that what we saw yesterday would be a bug and not a feature.

I pray that we, as the people of God, would be an ocean of calm, an oasis of calm, excuse me, in a desert of confusion. Father, we pray for former President Trump, who, despite the exterior, I have to imagine is pretty shell-shocked by what happened yesterday.

Father, if I may be so bold, I pray that this would be used by your spirit to call him to repentance. He discovered last night that just like all of us, we are one moment away from eternity. And so I ask, Lord, that you would use this to awaken him to his need for you, that unlike what he has said in the past, that this would be the catalyst for him actually asking for forgiveness.

Father, I pray for this election cycle that we find ourselves in. It's nasty, it's nasty. Father, I pray that we would not be swept up in that. I pray that we would not be caught up in the furor and the emotion of the moment.

Father, I pray, like I said,.

That we would be the adults in the room, that first Peter 3 .15, that as we evidence calm and settled confidence and trust in you, that that would be used by your spirit to bring people to ask, why can you be so calm with everything going on?

Father, I pray that you bless this nation. May first and foremost, you bless it with repentance. May we recognize how far we have come away from you. May you do a mighty work of bringing men and women, boys and girls to the foot of the cross.

And Father, we can pray that because your word says you have given the nations as an inheritance to your son. Father, we long for the day when that faith that we have will become sight. And until then, help us that we would be faithful emissaries of that message.

I ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.