"Coveting Cesar's Throne: Navigating Christian Nationalism in an Election Year" Selected Passages Sunday Evening Worship Service

But tonight I want to talk about something easy, politics and the Christian.

I want to help you think rightly about Christian nationalism.

Augustine wrote in the 5th century, the early 400s, at a precarious time in world history.

Augustine was an influential bishop in the church at large, of course.

His influence extended beyond North Africa, where he was writing throughout all the Roman Empire, even into the Eastern Church.

It transcended Latin and into Greek.

And he stands alone in his impact really in church history and our theology in so many different ways.

But he was writing at a very interesting time in world history at the Roman Empire, which had reigned for six centuries as the pillar of human civilization, was falling, and was falling in his lifetime.

Its downfall came relatively quickly over the course of a hundred years or so, and in a surprising fashion.

Augustine was pastoring a church in North Africa and is dealing with people who are asking him how they should think about the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire, of course, expand all around the Mediterranean basin and into North Africa.

And, you know, the people that's all they had known for hundreds of years.

And they were asking why, what is God doing causing the Roman Empire to fall to the Visigoths and to quote-unquote uncivilized people?

What's happening in the Roman world?

And this is what made his question so difficult, and what makes it relate today.

When the Roman Empire was at its zenith, when it was at the height of its power, it was overtly hostile to Christianity.

When the Roman Empire was ruling and dominating the world, they were persecuting Christians, burning them at the stake, feeding them to lions, and so forth.

As the Roman Empire became more Christian, even, you know, beginning with the so-called conversion of Constantine and whatnot, as the Roman Empire began to cease persecution and allow Christianity, in fact, adopt Christianity, is when it fell.

And so the question that's presented to Augustine then is how can you explain that?

Because the the Romans, many of the Romans were lobbying accusations at the Christians, blaming them for the decline of the Roman Empire.

After all, if Christians would have only worshipped the Roman gods, then the Roman Empire could have been preserved, was their logic.

The Christians refused to do so.

Now the Roman Empire is falling.

And this kind of turns the common American thinking about the relationship of politics and religion on its head, because we are so we so easy, easily buy into, you know, if our nation repents and calls the Lord uh on the Lord, then the promises that he gave Israel will be ours.

If we humble ourselves as a nation, then God will bless us and strengthen us from the inside out.

And Augustine has a little word for us that that's not necessarily true.

To explain this over the course of about ten years, if not longer, Augustine wrote uh his longest work called City of God.

It's really a collection of 22 different books that build together a polemic or an apologetic about how God can be good and sovereign and Rome can fall at the same time.

Augustine's City of God, which I'm sure many of you have read, is a complicated book.

It is part theology, part history, part philosophy, part uh apologetics.

It's very difficult to summarize, but I would say the bottom line, truth of it, the main point that Augustine is arguing from that book is that the fate of the city of man is disconnected from the fate of the city of God.

They don't influence each other.

Augustine painted a vision of two competing worlds, the city of man and the city of God.

The city of man is where people have their hopes and dreams and ambitions and live their lives.

They form governments, they form coalitions, they build lives there.

It's beyond just the governments, all of their culture, it's all of their life is the city of man.

And the city of man will come to a screeching halt when God judges it.

Nations rise and nations fall, and the word of the Lord endures forever.

That's the city of man, according to Augustine.

Nations come and nations go.

The Roman Empire is but a drop in the bucket.

And imagine the hubris to write that.

At the end of, you know, six plus centuries of Roman rule, frogs seem to speak of the Roman Empire as basically one of many nations God works through.

In fact, the first probably eight books or so of City of God is making fun of the Roman deities.

It's not exactly his attempt to win friends and influence people, that's for sure.

His main argument at the end is that the city of God endures forever.

The city of God will come to earth in the new Jerusalem that comes from the heavens comes down to earth.

There is where people can have a home forever and ever through their faith in Christ.

The city of God is not of this world yet, but it will be in the future.

That makes citizens, uh, that makes Christians citizens in a sense of two kingdoms, of the city of man and the city of God, but we need to flee from the city of man and find our hope and refuge in the city of God.

Now, when Augustine describes the city of man, he's not simply meaning government.

So it's too simplistic to say Augustine means government is city of man and Christianity is city of God, although that is true, but he means more than that.

Certainly government falls under city of man, but he is talking about more than that.

He's talking about the world where people live and that God will destroy.

The main point I want to bring to you tonight before we start looking at Christian nationalism is Augustine's main point, which is not politically correct today.

It ruffles feathers today.

Augustine's point is to get you to believe that the downfall or the rise of nations is disconnected from their religiosity.

God turns people over to their sin?

Of course he does.

As cultures go in more and more sinful, they are judged by God.

But even put yourself in a Christian shoes if you're in a nation that's being judged by God, what's your role in that?

Do you stop the judgment of God?

Of course not.

You're not Christ.

Only Christ can stop the judgment of God.

You cannot.

That starts to unveil this uh complicated relationship inside of many Christians thinking about their own country.

How often do you hear people say, you know, our nation is under God's judgment, but if we do this or that, we can escape it.

The only thing you can do to escape God's judgment is to flee to Christ.

And Augustine would tell you that nations rise and nations fall disconnected to their religiosity, and that makes us uncomfortable.

And because we want to have something to do to further our nation, don't we?

Like we want to have a place for our kids to grow up in safety and security.

We want to have a culture to hand down to our kids.

Of course we do.

We don't like the, you know, the gay flags in the elementary schools and the cross-dressing elementary school teachers, and we don't like the open borders and you know, whatever else.

And so we think there's got to be something I can do to make sure I have a country and a culture to hand down to my kids.

And that is exactly where the seeds of Christian nationalism get planted.

Where people start to think that if I do this or that, the Lord will foster a kind relationship to our country, a covenantal relationship to our country, even.

If only the church would do this, that, or the other things.

Let me start with definitions tonight as I'm critiquing Christian nationalism.

Actually, I'll get to that one in a second.

Let me give you some bad definitions of Christian nationalism first.

Let me tell you how Christian nationalism is defined by like NPR or CNN.

Because I'm sure you've you've seen those definitions of Christian nationalism.

You know, in the mainstream American culture, a Christian nationalist is anybody who voted for Trump, a Christian nationalist.

Anyone who is pro-life, a Christian nationalist.

Um to the right of Justice Sotomayor, a Christian nationalist.

And that's not a good functioning definition of a Christian nationalist, though.

Um Al Moller.

He often calls himself a Christian nationalist.

I know many of you are familiar, uh, you listen to his podcast and you've heard him call himself a Christian nationalist.

What he means by that is not really what I mean by it tonight.

What Moller means by calling himself a Christian nationalist is really just combining the two words.

A nationalist is someone who believes that there are nations in the world and that each nation should look out for their own interests above others.

That's a nationalist.

You just take the word Christian on that, that some nations have a Christian heritage, and therefore you have some nations with a Christian heritage and Christian legal tradition that should look out for their interests above others.

That's a Christian nationalist.

That's how Muller uses that phrase.

He often uses the descriptor of an Anglo-Protestant legal tradition that our Western world in general, but specifically the United States, is coming out of an Anglo-Protestant's legal tradition.

That Anglo-Protestant tradition gives uh certain rights like liberty and freedom, a concept of uh democracy and so forth.

And so a nation should hold on to that, especially our nation because we have it in our past, we should hold on to that and look out for our own interests above other nations.

I mean, and that's certainly that's a way to define it.

That's a form of nationalism, but that's not the kind of Christian nationalism I'm concerned about.

You know, if that's all the definition is, then sign me up.

I mean, I don't I don't have a problem with that definition.

But the concern I have about Christian nationalism is a different flavor of it.

The kind of Christian nationalism that I see making inroads into the church, not just our church, but other churches, uh, just evangelicalism in general, is not the benign, you know, we have a legal tradition that we should hold on to, but a more, I think, prescriptive form.

Muller uses the phrase Christian nationalism as a descriptive thing, just like who we are.

I'm concerned more about the prescriptive form of it.

That and I would define it this way.

I'm getting this definition from uh Stephen Wolfe in his book, A Case for Christian Nationalism.

He writes, quote, that Christian nationalism is the totality of national action consisting of civil laws and social customs conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.

So you read that definition and you think a few things stand out for you.

Firstly, it's not ultimately that problematic, I guess, uh, but it's a little circular, isn't it?

That a Christian Christian nationalism is things a Christian nation does to procure for itself good.

So it has a little bit of a circular flavor to it.

Having read several books on Christian nationalism recently, including Stephen Wolfe, so let me give you a more particular definition.

This is my own, this is the kind of Christian nationalism I'm critiquing.

This is my own words here.

So this is not what I believe, this is how I'm defining Christian nationalism.

And I think this I'm defining it in a way that is fair to uh the kind of Christian nationalists I want to critique.

Um, that Christian nationalist uh is the ideology that believes that government should have a role in fostering true religion, keeping the church accountable, and through things like punishing heretics and uh you know advancing the Sabbath, rebuking slothful ministers.

That's one of my favorite phrases from Stephen Wolfe, that the government should rebuke slothful ministers.

Like a I'm not necessarily opposed in concept, but it's the practice of it that gets me nervous.

Uh calling church councils, etc., uh having some kind of formal oversight of the church.

At its core, this kind of Christian nationalism is the idea that a nation is properly composed of only one ethnicity, and that in that ethnic uh identity is what passes down Christianity through it.

And the government advances the kingdom of God by positive action and oversight of the church.

So these aren't his words.

This is my own definition that comes from reading him as well as many other Christian nationals.

I think that's fair to what they uh would hold to.

And that's the kind of Christian nationalism that I want to critique for lots of different reasons.

But the gist of it, if you're to boil it down to one sentence, is this.

Here's where the divide is in my mind.

Christian nationalism has a role for the government in fostering and advancing what they call true religion.

And I want to counter that by saying that's not what God gave governments to do.

The role of the government is not to foster and advance true religion, but I have a different concept of what the role of government is.

Before I get to that, I want to walk you through uh my concerns tonight.

Um, I preached something like this a year ago.

I'm not going to re-preach that message, but uh if you recall, which I know you don't, but if you did, you would recall about a year ago I said my concerns with that kind of Christian nationalism are fourfold.

Uh, and I'll just run you through, I won't re-preach that message, I'll just give you the points real quick.

I said it idealizes the past by saying that our nation had a Christian heritage that we need to recover.

I said it's kind of idealizing the past.

You know, there wasn't really this kind of uh era in our own country's history where Christian culture prospered and flourished.

And I challenged you with this thought exercise to find the era of history that people often cite as saying this is was our our Christian nation that we've lost.

Find that era of history and then go find Christian authors or preachers from that time period that you respect and see what they had to say about the American culture then.

And you'll find that it was not nice.

You know, Martin Lloyd Jones called the American culture of the 60s materialistic and appalling.

Spurgeon called the American culture of the 1800s bloodthirsty and uh and he had other words that are worse than bloodthirsty, shameful, abominable, abhorrent, and so forth.

Think of the revivalists in the 1700s, you know, just condemning the kind of uh distant culture.

The church was dead in the 1700s when at the the nexus of our country where our country is is born, so to speak.

And so I said it idealizes um the past.

It creates this kind of vision of the past that's not true.

My second concern with it is that it impossibilizes the presence, which is the word I made up.

Impossibilizes, but I'm sticking with it.

Um Christian nationalism presents an impossible situation for the church today, to say that the church needs to take back, you know, the church needs to wake up and take back our country.

If only you all realized how what a sad condition we are in, then finally the church should stand up and be the church and let's get things done.

Which means when you fail in elections, it's always the church's fault.

You didn't do enough, you didn't vote hard enough.

You press that button harder next time, kind of attitude.

It's just an impossible situation because it's a numbers game.

You know, the church is narrow, the road to eternal life is narrow, and there are few that find it.

The church is uh, you know, we're in exile, so to speak.

We are pilgrims, we're sojourners, we're not the majority, we're not the wide road, we're the narrow road, which means in a democracy you're not going to win elections unless you uh make partnerships with other groups that are outside of the gospel in order to get your numbers game.

I mean, I was in California when uh their proposition passed uh banning gay marriage, and it was a vast coalition with the Catholics and the Mormons and the African American churches and the Bible churches.

They all partnered together.

Uh but the Mormons were the big funders of that.

And people say, why is the church partnering with Mormons?

Uh you can partner with Mormons on law issues, like things that are uh common grace kind of law issues.

Certainly, you that's politics.

You make coalitions that are broad, but when it comes to gospel issues, you don't partner with other groups.

When it comes to gospel issues, you're narrow because the gospel is narrow, which means the government will never be able to advance the gospel in a democratic setting without you compromising it ever.

There's much more I could say about that, but I did a year ago.

Thirdly, it institutionalizes the church, it puts the church as an institution in society rather than the bride of Christ by tying it to the government.

It makes the church just one of the things the government oversees.

And I talked about the Catholic doctrine of two swords.

Uh, in the Catholic Church and the Catholic doctrine, you have one person that leads the city of God and one person that leads the city of man, and that's the same person.

There's a sword for government and a sword in the church, and the same person should hold both swords.

In the Catholic mind, that's the Pope.

Church of England has something similar to that, that the king is the protector of the church and also the figurehead of their country, and it's you know purely symbolic, but there used to be a time where their swords were sharpened and had edges to them.

The Puritans didn't go that way.

The Puritans want a separation of those two.

The Puritans had this idea in mind of a separation of church and state.

Not that they don't influence each other, but that one person is not holding the sword in both places.

And if you recall, the kind of Puritan view of separation in church and state is even different than our own.

Like in the Puritan view of separation, church, and state, John Owen would say, I identify the heretics, you, the government, kill them.

You know, let's let's keep this straight.

The Puritans were telling the government, could you stop identifying heretics?

Let us do that.

And the government was saying, okay, but let us put them to death, you stop killing them.

Deal.

That was separation of church and state in much of the late 1500s, early 1600s.

Anyway, that's not, I'm glad we've moved beyond that.

Um the fourth concern with it is that it idolizes or idolizes ethnicity.

By saying that a nation only properly composes one ethnicity to it, it makes an idol out of ethnicity, which you see in all kinds of Christian nationalist writings.

So much of Christian nationalism is so weird when it comes to ethnicity because it idolizes it.

It tries to say that ethnic divisions would have existed in a pre-fallen world.

If you go back before the fall, people had sin not entered the world, people still would have, you know, spread out from the Garden of Eden and put themselves in little different groups and cultures, and different languages would have developed, and different governments would have developed, and different ethnic identities would have developed before there was sin in the world, which is just, I mean, honestly not true, but impossible to argue with a kind of hypothetical like that.

But it makes an idol out of ethnicity.

And if you try to place some kind of, you know, anything in the world, if you try to put it in the garden and you argue that it should be in a pre-fallen world, that's the hint that you might be dealing with an idol.

If something's so important to you, you want to justify its existence in a sinless world, that's a warning sign.

But beyond that, our own nation didn't have, wasn't founded by one ethnicity.

It just doesn't exist that way.

Our own nation is a is a complicated mixing of ethnicities.

We have e.

pluribus unum, you know, out of many one, not in Solus Christus.

You know, it wasn't our country's approach, it was to have a Christian nation.

Our country's approach was to have a mixing pot of lots of different ethnicities.

You know, I'm from New Mexico, which was founded long before Plymouth Rock, okay?

I say New Mexico is the true ethnic identity of our nation.

The rest of you, you're just hanging on.

Anyway, those were, as I think, if I look back on that message a year ago, those were more philosophical objections to Christian nationalism.

But I have theological objections tonight.

So tonight I want to share with you more the theology of the thing, theological objections to Christian nationalism.

And I'm gonna frame the rest of tonight in this way: five differences between the church and government.

Five differences between the church and government.

And as I go through this, let me just say at the beginning, these five differences that I'm gonna give you, I think most Christian nationalists would agree with these differences in principle, but I'm submitting to you that their view of Christian nationalism does not actually agree.

It erodes these distinctions rather than embraces these distinctions.

So that's why I think the best way forward, as we talk about Christian nationalism, is to get the theology of the thing and to understand why we believe different theological convictions and why, here's what here's what I really want from you all that are here tonight.

Because I know I said I was gonna be teaching on this this morning, so I'm sure some of you came because of something you're interested in.

Here's what I hope to plant in your heart tonight.

Because it's so easy on the outside to say, like, listen, I don't like gay marriage, I don't like open borders, I don't like the rainbow flags in elementary school teachers, okay?

So I don't like those things.

Christian nationalism is offering me an antidote to that.

It's offering, it's telling me if I do this, we can get to a country that doesn't have those things.

That's what I want.

What's the big deal about that?

Isn't it as simple as that?

And I want to tell you tonight that that worldview that's behind that is not compatible with even our own church's statement of faith.

And you might think, well, how are they in conflict?

Well, I want to walk you through how they're in conflict tonight with my theological objections.

So, first of all, I'm gonna frame it through the difference between church and government.

And firstly, I want to say that church and government have different covenants.

Church and government have different covenants.

And what I mean by different covenants is they have a different origin in God's economy.

The way God has designed the world, government is located with a different origin point than the church.

And a different origin point than the family, also.

I mean, families are rooted in the creation ordinance in Genesis 1 and 2, confirmed in Genesis 3 with the curse of the pain in childbirth.

Families go back to the pre-fall world, certainly.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, the two will become one flesh.

Adam and Eve were commanded to be fruitful and multiply as a pre-fall ordinance.

That's where families come from.

Not where governments come from, not where ethnicities come from, where families come from.

Governments find their location in Genesis 8, in Genesis 9.

We did first scripture reading tonight.

After the flood, this is where God established governments.

He said, There will be food for you to have, there will be family for you to have, be fruitful and multiply, there will be life for you to have, and then the government's job is to protect that.

When he establishes government in Genesis 9, he says, Whoever sheds man's blood, by man's hand shall his blood be shed.

That's the establishment of government.

That's what didn't exist before the fall.

There was no government before the fall.

That's why murder and violence reigned all over the earth.

God judged the world by flooding.

Remember, Cain committed murder before the fall.

He wasn't put on trial.

There was no jury of his peers.

There was no police that arrested him.

God marked him, and God himself said, protect him, go into the world, nobody touch him.

That's all reversed after the flood.

After the flood, to reign in violence, God establishes government, and government then has its obligation through Genesis 8 9 to protect the food.

Protect the family, protect life.

Government bears the sword to check evil.

Government is rooted in the Noahic covenant.

Acts 17, Paul describes that looking back on it.

He says that God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined the allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place.

God determined their periods and boundaries and their nations after the flood.

If you remember, that's where Genesis 9 and 10 go.

The days of Peleg where the earth was divided, the nations went their own way.

That's after the flood.

That's where God established nations.

And God did that in hope that those nations would one day seek God.

Remember the language of Paul uses that one day they would they would grope in the darkness to find their way back to Him.

So God established nations to check evil, to cover the earth, to protect family and food and regulate society in that sense, so that one day the Savior would come and people inside all of the nations would look for the Savior that way.

That was the point of nations.

The point of nations was not to foster true religion, but to check evil and punish murderers, protect families until the Savior came.

Nations were God's idea.

He appointed them.

God did not design nations to promote true religion.

Nowhere in the Old Testament does it say that nations were supposed to promote true religion, except Israel, and Israel was certainly a distinct nation.

The truth is, governments don't do things well.

Right?

Governments don't do things well.

And DC told me uh a while ago, one of my favorite lines from me said, you know, Jesse, when you say that the government is corrupt or the government is, you know, doing this or that, you know that the government is the people in the pews in front of you when you're preaching.

I was like, yeah, I keep that in mind.

You think, yeah, I'm not corrupt.

I should up at work at 8:30 on Friday morning.

I stayed until 5.

The government's not corrupt.

Back off.

But keep in mind, just the nature of bureaucracy in the fallen world is a lack of efficiency.

And if you work for the government, I'm sure you can appreciate at least that much.

The role of the government was not to foster true religion, but to check evil and to do it in the best of way they can.

You wouldn't want to give the government the role of fostering true religion because the government doesn't do things very well.

They certainly shouldn't be overseeing the church.

And by the way, the church just has a different origin point than government anyway.

The church has its origin point in the new covenant, not in the Noahic covenant.

The church has its foundation in the blood of Christ, not in the rainbow.

The rainbow hangs in the sky still.

Government still exists to this day.

The rainbow's still there.

I saw a beautiful one just last week.

The rainbow's still there.

Wrath is delayed.

The point of the rainbow is to testify to the worlds that God will avenge sin one day, not now.

He's not going to flood the world now.

He will avenge those who are wronged.

The innocent people who are murdered, their blood cries out from the ground for justice.

God will avenge them in the future.

He'll avenge them through governments now, but in the future, he will judge every human being.

The books of their works will be opened.

God will judge everybody in the future.

The rainbow testifies of that.

The rainbow does not testify of redemption.

The rainbow has the colors of the rainbow in it, but it doesn't have the blood of Christ in it.

It hangs in the sky, bloodless.

But the blood of Christ comes through a different covenant, prophesied through Abraham, solidified through David, realized in the new covenant.

So the church just has a different operating manual altogether than government, because we have a different covenant than them.

That means the church has different goals.

What do you mean by different covenant?

Some subpoints here.

The church has different goals.

The government's goal is to check evil.

That's what they do.

When the government does it well, evil is checked.

You know, what you want from the government is the water to turn on in your faucet, for the lights to turn on, for you to be able to drive to church without getting murdered.

If you can accomplish those things, yay, government.

If they pick up your trash relatively on time, which in my neighborhood, Northern Virginia, the government doesn't even do that.

They farm that out.

Triple A trash.

Oh, those villains.

Unless any of you work for them, then praise God.

The goal of the government is peace and food and protecting families.

That's not the goal of the church.

The goal of the church is the evangelization of the nations.

Taking the gospel to the frontiers, taking the gospel inside of every tribe, every language group, every ethnic group.

That's the goal of the church.

And because of that, they have a different focus.

The focus of the government is to keep the common peace.

That's their objective.

To keep the common peace.

They're focused on that.

And then, of course, they get focused on their own power.

That's what government is good at, their own power.

There's an expression in the British English that is so true in the United States.

It doesn't matter who wins the election, the government will always take its seat.

It doesn't matter if Trump or Biden wins in that sense, according to that expression, because the government will still be in power.

Every election, without fail, the government always wins.

Have you noticed that?

It's a foolproof system for them.

That's their focus.

That's not the church's focus.

The church's focus is on Christ, on advancing the gospel through the worshiping of Jesus Christ.

And that gets to the point that they have different agents.

The agents of the government bear the sword.

The agents of the government are soldiers, the agents of the government are the police, are the bureaucrats, are the justices, the magistrates, those are the agents of the government.

The agents of the church are the priesthood of all believers, the elders, the deacons, the pastors, the shepherds, the evangelists, every believer through their priesthood, they're an agent of the church.

It's different categories.

There's qualifications to be an elder that are not the qualifications for government.

You know, you can be a non-Christian and be a good government agent.

That's kind of foundational in our worldview.

Would you rather have, you know, people say, uh, I'd like to find out who the Christian is and vote for the Christian.

Well, okay, I guess.

Would you rather have a competent non-believer as your mayor or an incompetent Christian?

I mean, just let's just go to a basic level, something we're all familiar with, Chick-fil-A.

If you're the manager of a Chick-fil-A, would you rather have a competent 20-year-old who's not a Christian working for you, or an incompetent 20-year-old who is a Christian?

What's going to make a chicken sandwich that more glorifies the Lord?

And that's true at the level of the chicken sandwich.

Extrapolated out to the government.

Extrapolate out to a judge.

Would you rather have a judge who is wise and discerning and intelligent and a master of the law who is not a Christian or one who is a Christian whose knowledge of the law is deficient?

It's just different agents.

That's not true in the church.

In the church, the people you want leading the church are the godly people.

That's a different category than the government altogether.

And that's because that's not a contradiction.

That's because they have different covenants.

The covenant of the rainbow is the covenant for the nations and it restrains sin.

The new covenant is a covenant for the church, and it provides redemption from sin and transformed lives through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

So, firstly, there's different covenants involved.

Secondly, there's different laws.

There's different laws.

Government has a set of laws that they operate under, which is designed to check evil.

Government deduces their laws from common grace, natural law, general revelation, and the explicit teaching of the Word of God through the prophetic voice to government.

You know, so Christians can call out to government and say, that's wrong, that's sinful.

Government, you're doing this, that's bad, that's sinful, repent and don't do that.

The government may or may not listen, but that's the prophetic voice of the church, is to call people to repentance.

But government is not starting by opening the Bible and asking what they should do.

Government is starting by saying, using human reason and natural law and general revelation, what best protects the common peace.

Government operates in the realm of human reason.

The church does not operate that way.

You know, you don't go to an elder meeting and everybody closes their Bibles and say, let's get a blank piece of paper and with our own human reasoning figure out what we should do as a church.

No, you open the Bible and you read in 1 Timothy 3 how the church ought to behave is the pillar and buttress of the truth.

It's just totally different laws.

The church is operating under the laws of Christ, the commands of Christ that direct us, divine direct revelation.

Political authorities can make and enforce laws grounded in the Noaic covenant.

They're supposed to.

There's nothing like that in the church.

There's nothing like that in the New Testament.

Earlier I said nations were described like that in the Old Testament.

It's worth asking yourself: does the New Testament redefine nations?

Does the New Testament redefine how nations should work?

How government should work?

No.

Does it redefine the laws for nations?

Of course not.

It does not.

The closest teaching you have in the New Testament to the way government should operate is Romans 13, which maps onto Genesis 8 and 9 very, very well.

Governments check evil.

They promote the good in the context of Genesis 8 and 9.

Promoting the good is protecting food, family, and life.

The two map onto each other very, very well.

The New Testament doesn't redefine nations.

How God established them at the covenant of the rainbow exists to this day.

And so the laws they're operating under are still the same.

Meanwhile, the New Testament does redefine church.

It invents the church at Pentecost, gives us the laws of Christ to go into the world.

And because of that, by the way, we very much, with our different laws, we have different ethics.

The church ethic and the government ethic are very, very different, aren't they?

You get this in Romans 13.

You get this in Romans 12.

The end of Romans 12, you need to turn the other cheek.

Don't repay evil for evil.

Somebody hits you, you turn the other cheek.

You don't take vengeance on yourself when you're wronged.

That's the Christian ethic.

That is not the government ethic.

And I would take issue with the person who says, you want a government that operates under a Christian ethic.

Well, in some ways, in the protection of life, yes, but not in others.

Like you don't want a government, you don't want an agent of the government, a police officer, to operate with a Romans 12 kind of ethic.

You punch a police officer and he turns the other cheek.

You do a crime and the police officer says, hey, take no vengeance.

No, that would be very bad for society.

That would destroy the common peace.

You want a government that checks evil by punishing sin.

So that Christians can turn the other cheek.

The reason you can turn the other cheek when somebody punches you is because when you call 911, the police will show up.

The reason you don't need to avenge the person who wrongs you is because the police will take care of that.

When you call 911 and say, hey, somebody's breaking into my house, the 911 operator is not going to say, Are you a Christian?

Then turn the other cheek.

No, you're going to send the police.

So you can turn the other cheek because the police are coming.

That's the idea.

If you want the Romans 12 ethic, you need the Romans 13 protection.

That's the reality.

And that's why government and church are fun fundamentally different.

Again, in Christian nationalism, they would grant these two kingdoms, they might even grant these two ethics, but they end up conflating them and erasing that distinction.

And erasing the ethic in a way that's just very confusing about government and church.

Number three, church and government have different obligations.

Different obligations.

The government's obligation is to punish evil and protect life, to protect the family, to regulate the food sources.

I know if this is starting to sound redundant, that means you're getting it.

The government's obligations are to create the conditions upon which peace rules in the earth and which true religion can thrive.

The obligation of the government is to check evil so the gospel can flourish in society.

But the government's job is not to be active in the flourishing of the gospel, but rather to pull the weeds so the gospel can grow.

The government doesn't plant the seed of the gospel.

The government pulls the weeds so the gospel can go.

Now, of course, this is where governments always, you know, get this wrong.

Governments often persecute believers.

Around the world, governments close churches, governments arrest believers, they find believers, often flimsy pretenses.

We've talked about Bhutan, the government Bhutan would say, you know, of course we have religious freedom.

You just can't be part of a religion that buries the dead.

You know, you saw some of those laws even in our own country in COVID, like, oh, we don't have laws against churches.

We just say that you have to sit this far away in church and not sing these songs and do this or that.

But they're not aimed at churches.

There's all kinds of groups in our country that gather together to sing.

Like this could affect the League Club or something like that.

You get those kind of outrageous examples.

You think of our own declaration of independence that we have the unalienable right to life, liberty.

Just pause there for a second.

Liberty?

Liberty from what?

What do you need liberty from?

It's liberty from the government, right?

Governments take away rights.

Governments don't have the capacity to give rights, they only have the capacity to take rights away.

Your dignity, your being made in the human image, your right to life, so to speak, isn't rooted in government.

It's rooted back in creation.

The government doesn't give you the right to a family, that predates them back in creation.

Government can take away your rights, but they don't grant them.

The obligation of the government in the same way is not to advance religion, but just to refrain from interfering with it.

It was President Reagan who said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

You don't, I'll save your time.

You don't need to count them.

They really are nine words.

I'm here from I'm from the government, I'm here to help.

You wouldn't want to put the church under the authority of people that have those words.

You wouldn't want to say the church also falls under the obligation of the governments because they don't do things well.

They only interfere, they only take away people's rights.

The obligation of the church, meanwhile, is to lead a Christ-like life and bring the gospel to the nations.

It's the church that has the mandate for the evangelization of society, not the government.

Number four.

Because of all this, they have a different identity.

They have a different identity.

As it functions in this world, the identity of the country or of the government is a different fundamental identity than the identity of the church or of a Christian.

And this is true in a couple different ways.

First of all, I'll give you two points under this one.

First is the citizen versus sojourner distinction.

You're a citizen of your country.

As a Christian, you're a sojourner on earth.

And you see that kind of language all the way back in Genesis, don't you?

With Abraham as a sojourner, Isaac as a sojourner, Jacob as a sojourner, Joseph even as a sojourner.

How did they relate to their own governments as sojourners?

They didn't call on their the governments they were interacting with to convert, but they did enter into arrangements with them.

They bought wells from them, they bought fields from them, they bought graves from them.

Sometimes they wronged them.

Remember, Abraham and Isaac wronged their own governments at some points, but they repented when they did that and they sought forgiveness and restoration, and God providentially used that in their life anyway.

But their identity through the whole Genesis narrative was that of a sojourner.

Even Joseph, very clearly at the end of Genesis and the start of Exodus, Joseph is still regarded as a sojourner in Egypt.

Even though he came to power, he was the most powerful person in Egypt.

He brought them wealth unparalleled in world history until Solomon's day, probably, and yet he was still a sojourner.

There was no confusion about that.

It's the identity of Daniel writing literally in Babylon, not figuratively in Babylon, literally in Babylon, as the pinnacle of godliness as a sojourner.

He wasn't taking over Babylon.

He was clearly a foreigner and an exile there with his heart on a different place.

That's the language the New Testament uses to describe Christians in this world.

The New Testament does not describe Christians as having a presence in this world as if your country was your true and lasting city of God country.

No, the New Testament uses the language of sojourner, foreigner, alien, exile, and applies it to Christians in all countries today.

Our identity is of a citizen of our own nation, but as a sojourner here on earth.

Yes, we're citizens of heaven as well.

My point is that Christian nationalism erodes that distinction by implying that in some nations there truly are, truly are the citizens of Christianity.

It's just so different in the way the Bible describes the Christians' interaction in the world.

This is why, by the way, Christian nationalism works so well inside of postmillennialism.

The idea that the church will create a kingdom of God on earth.

This is the theology of Jonathan Edwards, a lot of the Puritans, a lot of the early American Christians had that theology, it kind of went away for a while, but it's on the rise now today, often paired with Christian nationalism.

I'll grant that Christian nationalism works inside of postmillennialism.

Of course it does.

If your idea is that you're going to cultivate a kingdom of God on earth through the government, that's Christian nationalism, and that works so well with post-millennialism, granted.

But in premillennialism, and the idea that the nations will go their own way until the Lord returns and establishes his kingdom reigning over the nations from Jerusalem, that's the premillennial worldview.

The idea that that is true is incompatible with Christian nationalism.

Because we just have a different hope of the future that is related to our different identity here and now.

Another distinction here under our different identity is ethnic identity.

I mentioned earlier that Christian nationalism often makes an idol of ethnicity by saying that, you know, every country properly defined is only one ethnic group with shared culture, shared customs of one ethnic group as represented in their nation.

I called that the idolization of ethnicity.

But it's not that's not the only problem with it.

The other problem with it is not just the idolization of it, but the fact that that is so at odds with the Christian's ethnic identity.

The New Testament does use ethnic language to describe Christians.

We are a royal priesthood.

We are, in this sense, our own camaraderie.

And that is a camaraderie that transcends ethnic identities in this world.

You have more in common with a believer who's of a different ethnic group than you than you do with somebody of your same ethnic group.

That is foundational to Christian anthropology.

Your brothers and sisters in the Lord with people that don't even speak your earthly language, regardless of their ethnicity.

In fact, I would argue that ethnic diversity in the church magnifies the glory of the gospel by showing that people from different ethnic groups rejoice in Christ together at the brothers and sisters, even though they have a different ethnic group.

The glory of gospel is actually magnified inside of the church by having a multi-ethnic congregation.

But in Christian nationalism, their approach to ethnicity gets so clumsy and so awkward by saying things like you need to cultivate a single ethnicity to represent your country and your culture, and that ethnicity should reflect Christian values, of course, but it's one ethnicity that describes the nation.

This leads to all kinds of craziness in reading Christian nationalists' works.

They get all tripped up over interracial marriage or inter-ethnic marriages.

You know, one author says, Should people be able to marry somebody from a different ethnicity?

And he says, Oh, it's a close call.

You know, I've even heard Stephen Wolfe use the analogy of gay marriage.

You know, a gay marriage is no marriage at all.

That's not a valid marriage.

But a marriage of a believer to a non-believer, that is a valid marriage, but unwise.

And a marriage of people between two different ethnic groups is closer to the second kind.

He says he grants that it's not like a gay marriage, but it's just an unwise marriage.

What's such a confusing worldview?

It's confusing, first of all, because I know many of you are married to people that aren't in your uh own ethnic group, but it's not just that.

It's confusing because it takes something that is good in the church, a multi-ethnic church that is good in the church.

That multi-ethnic diversity is a virtue in the church because it shows the transcendent glory of Christ.

It takes something that is good in the church and makes it a negative in society.

If your goal is to foster one ethnic homogenous group in society, then a multi-ethnic marriage would be to the detriment of society, even though it's good to the church.

And if you end up with something that is bad for society but good for the church, you made a wrong turn somewhere.

Rather, it's better to say that diversity in the gospel is good and virtuous.

You know, it's better for the for the outlook of a nation and the peace of a nation that can be debated, and I'm frankly not that interested in it.

But it does get my attention if you say that something is good and virtuous in the church would be harmful for society.

I even saw one author who said, like, listen, we just need to stop the intra ethnic marriages.

We need to stop that for a while until we as a nation figure out who we are.

Like, let's let one ethnic group develop over time and then we can start it up again.

But the New Testament doesn't give the church the mandate to preserve ethnic groups, but to transform ethnic groups with the gospel.

And that happens through the ordinary means of grace, the preaching of the word, the evangelism, the singing of songs, the ordinary means of grace, that transforms every nation from the inside out.

But it doesn't preserve ethnic identity.

That's not our goal.

In fact, let me give you definition of ethnicity from one book I read.

I read this and I honestly thought it was like gonna be a Jesus juke.

I thought this was meant to be uh well, here it is.

Ethnicity is defined as familiarity with others based on common language, manners, customs, stories, taboos, rituals, calendars, social expectations, duties, loves, and religion.

I read that and I'm like, yes! You're talking about the church, right?

The church?

Please say you're talking about the church.

And no, it became an argument against inter-ethnic marriages.

The church has that.

That is the church.

Number five.

Fifth and final distinction just for tonight between church and government is the church has a different hope.

The hope of government is the peace and preservation of society.

That's the goal of the government, to preserve society.

The reason there's political divisions is there's debate about the best way to do that.

But generally speaking, the goal is to preserve and foster some kind of peace and thriving society.

That's the role of governments.

That is not the hope of the church.

The hope of the church is not a culture that gets his act together.

The hope of the church is not fostering a culture, an American culture that provides stability in the earth.

That's not the hope of the church.

The hope of the church is not in an election that one party wins the election or the other.

The hope of the church is not even getting the rainbow flags out of the elementary schools.

That's not the hope of the church.

The hope of the church is the glorious return of Jesus Christ from heaven.

Reading the, I reread much of the city of God recently, and what struck me most this time reading it is the different telos, is the word Augustine uses, the end, the different goal of the city of God and the city of man.

How do things end in the city of man?

And you can tell what God thinks about something by how it will end.

And the city of man will end when God comes and judges it.

And so as you build your hope in the city of man, you're putting your hope in something that will be destroyed ultimately.

That's not the hope of the city of God.

The hope of the city of God is the new Jerusalem that comes from heaven where Jesus will reign over the nations from his throne.

That's the hope of the city of God.

And Christian nationalism, it weds those two together by saying that the goal of the church is to foster some kind of ethnic continuity and societal peace and hope inside of a nation.

But that's only building a nation.

That's such a small thing to build as a nation.

Such a small thing.

We as Christians do not have a lasting city.

Don't try to build a lasting city.

Your city is not going to last.

We have no lasting city.

We go outside the city to suffer with Christ, knowing that in his resurrection we will be glorified with him.

That's our hope, isn't the resurrection of Christ, not in the city on earth.

And how fickle would it be if you got wrapped up in an election every four years and put your hope in an election outcome?

Like even if you get super engaged and you get all the voters and all this stuff and you get everybody to vote the right way and you win the election, then what?

You do it again in four years.

And then what?

You do it again in four more years.

You're sucked into a cycle of craziness that will dominate your life.

Oh, don't do it.

Don't put your hope in that.

There's such a better place to put your hope in the glorious victory of Jesus Christ.

I mean, I'm sure elections matter.

Of course, elections matter.

But don't put your hope in them.

Please don't put your hope in them.

I had somebody at Emmanuel come up to me once and say, hey, you know, all those African American churches in DC and those liberal Methodist churches and whatever, they're bringing buses out and they're bringing everybody to go vote in early elections, and they have voting supervisors to supervise their absentee ballots and all that and turning them in all weeks before the election.

We should do that, because that's how they're winning the election.

All those churches are getting everybody busted to go vote.

Why don't we do that in manual?

If we did that, we have more people in those liberal churches that are practically empty.

If we did that, we would cancel out their votes and we'd get everybody, we can win the election.

Yowsers.

The reason we don't do that is not because we don't want to win the election.

The reason we don't do that is because we have hope in a different place.

We don't invest our time and energy and our hope in that.

Just by doing that, you're putting your hope in that and you're putting your hope in something that will fail.

This is why we don't have voting guides at our church.

Don't put your hope in that.

Do you really need my help to know who to vote for?

Come on.

This is why we don't have a flag on our podium.

Because we're not putting our hope in this nation.

I like that we have a flag outside of the door.

You know you're walking into the world.

But this church is an embassy.

It's an outpost.

We're in a hostile nation.

It's an outpost.

I'm not advocating that Christians should remain apolitical.

You know, you and you scatter into the world.

You can do what you want in the world.

You be a r uh you know, you use your own resource and your own time in your own way.

That's up to you.

But you need to be so careful that you guard your heart that you don't get wrapped up in the hope.

Remember the last election where people were like, you know, the Sunday or two after the election, everybody's still, you know, who won, who won?

You got the My Pillow guy on TV, and you've got people handing me in the hallway.

Here's this 40-page document that shows how they're stealing the vote, and you know, the my pillow guy, again, I keep going back to that guy in my mind.

If only you'd listen to him, then you'd wake up kind of thing.

And you remember that next Sunday I just stopped.

What we were doing, and I preached Psalm 131.

Let me read it to you.

A song of a sense where David writes, My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high.

I don't occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

I've calmed and quieted my soul like a wean child.

Like a weaned child is my soul.

Oh, Israel, hope in Yahweh from this time forevermore.

Don't get your hope wrapped up into this world and the outcome of an election.

Quiet your soul.

If David, as the king of Israel, could say, you know, that's beyond me, God.

This political machinations, that's too high for me to think about.

He's the king, and he says, That's too high for me, Lord.

Get my soul quieted down like a baby.

Tuck my soul into bed at night, Lord.

I don't want to get wrapped up in hoping about this world.

Please guard me.

And that's that's my appeal to you.

What you do with your own time and you know, in your own political involvement, I'm so thankful that we have people at Emanuel, some of whom are here tonight that are involved in politics and religious liberty and those kind of issues.

I'm so thankful for you and the work you do to stem the tide in our society and make our society more virtuous and better.

I am thankful for that.

It's the pulling weeds.

And I hope you pull weeds and you represent Christ well in our society.

But I have a fear for your heart as well that you don't put your hope too much in the city of man.

Don't get caught up there.

And for the rest of you, try to wrestle your eyes off of the city of man.

You're not going to commit the error of thinking too little about this world.

That's not an error you'll commit.

You will commit the error of thinking too much about this world and thinking this place is your home.

Remember, we do not have a lasting city.

So, like I said, I don't want open borders, I don't want the gay flags in school, I don't want the cross-dressing elementary school teachers.

But more than that, I don't want the church to lose the preciousness of what Jesus has called us to do.

The gospel is so precious to the church.

Get your eyes off of the world and onto the glories of Christ in the church.

God, we're grateful that you have given us something bigger and more important to worry about than the nations.

We don't want to presume on your kindness, but we do pray for it to continue.

As this election year comes around again, we pray that you would keep our hearts united in Christ, knowing that we do not have a lasting city here.

Help our hope be in heaven, not on earth.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.