Imperfect People + A Perfect God = Great Things

Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Well, Gateway Church, it is my pleasure to be with you.

Thank you so much.

It is an honor to be in this house.

Thank you.

I feel like I can be done now.

I didn't even do anything yet.

This is great.

Thank you guys so much.

It's such an honor and a pleasure, a privilege for me to be in this house.

I so appreciate Pastor Robert, uh, the staff, the family here at Gateway, and I'm excited to be with you on Fourth of July weekend.

As uh an American, I love celebrating Fourth of July.

Hopefully, uh, as we get into this, uh, there'll be some stories you learn along the way that will help you enjoy celebrating the fourth even better.

And let me just start with the fact that most Americans sadly don't even know why we even celebrate the Fourth of July, and I say that without pun.

Literally, people don't even know about the American Revolution.

We don't know what the Fourth of July is, or even back up to 1776, what's going on.

And what's interesting is even if we talk about the revolution, a lot of the knowledge we have today is not always the most historically accurate based on what actually happened.

For example, John Adams, when he was asked, when did the revolution actually begin?

We might think of the shotherd around the world, the Lexington Green, there was a Battle of Concord, there was a Battle of Bunker Hill, there's a lot of things that happened at the beginning.

John Adams says, no, actually, the beginning was in 1770.

The first blood that was shed in the American Revolution, actually, he says, was the Boston Massacre, because that's when the British first fired into these American patriots.

What's interesting, even about this thought, is if you back up, if we understood that this is the first blood that was shed in the cause for liberty, well, if you look back and see, well, who was the first person believed to have been killed in this cause for American liberty?

It was actually a black patriot by the name of Crispus Addicts.

Now, let me just pause for a second and just throw a monkey wrench in a lot of the narrative happening today.

Did you know the American Revolution began with the death of black patriots?

Let me go even further.

If you go to the last major battle of the American Revolution in 1781, one of the major players in that battle was the Marquis de Lafayette.

He was a Frenchman, became a major general during the American Revolution, and George Washington charged Lafayette to track the movement of the British officers, see where they were going, see what they were doing.

And Lafayette had been a major anti-slavery guy.

When he gets to America, he continues this on.

And Lafayette said, you know, the best way for us to track the movement of these British officers is we need to get a regiment of black patriots who can pretend to be spies, go into the British camp, they'll spy in the British camp, they'll come back and report to me.

Because he understood, right, if if these black patriots pretend to be escaped slaves, the British would welcome them in.

So he gets these black spies to go into these British camps.

But one of the guys working for him was a man named James Armistead.

James Armistead actually goes and serves in the camp of the commander of all the British forces, Lord Cornwallis.

And as James Armistead is serving in the camp, James Armistead is the guy who found out Lord Cornwallis was moving with several thousand of his men to Yorktown.

And as this is happening, he gets the information of Lafayette, and Lafayette tells Washington, Washington says, hey, maybe this is the moment we've been waiting for.

We can surround Cornwallis, we can capture him.

This might end the revolution.

There's a very famous painting that is depicting the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

This is when Washington gets the victory.

This is what is recognized as ending the American Revolution.

And I would point out the only reason Washington even knew where to go was because there was a black spy who got the intelligence.

And I want to unfold this for you, right?

We're in the middle of a conversation about what kind of nation is America, and is America good and bad.

We don't even know the history of the nation, so let me just throw you a little bit.

The American Revolution began with the death of a black patriot, and the American Revolution was won because of the work of a black patriot.

You can't even tell the story of America.

You cannot even fully tell the story of the American Revolution without including the work of these black patriots, and yet today we know so little.

So, understanding that we know so little, let me give you a crash course.

Okay, if we back up, July 4th, 1776, this is when the founding fathers declare independence from Great Britain, and ultimately we're separating from King George.

And in the midst of this, as you look at the Declaration, we probably ought to think about the Declaration a little bit differently than a lot of us think about it today.

The Declaration really was a breakup letter.

And I would argue this was the greatest breakup letter ever written, because in this letter, we said it's not us, it's all you, and then we listed 27 reasons why he was the problem.

Okay, like really brilliant breakup letter.

Okay?

In the midst of this, if you look back at the declaration, I I remember when when we learned that Thomas Jefferson, right, is the guy who drafts a declaration.

Okay, that's fine, whatever.

He was 33 years old when he did this.

When I was a teenager growing up, I used to think that 33 was really old.

And that you have to be obviously really smart as a 33-year-old.

I'm a little past 33.

I realize, first of all, it's not that old.

Perspective teenagers, okay, it's not that old.

And you're not inherently really smart as a 33-year-old, which makes it even more profound.

What Jefferson wrote in the declaration, as a 33-year-old man, encapsulating so many brilliant thoughts, and I want to read a couple, we'll probably recognize.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.

This is really a brilliant synopsis of the American philosophy.

But let me let me unfold a few things, and I want to start with what he starts in this phrase.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

See, we live in a culture today that isn't sure truth even exists anymore.

Now, let me tell you, as a Christian, if you don't understand the foundation of truth being God and found in God's word, then we have a different problem, right?

Truth exists, it's found in the person of Jesus.

John 14, 6, he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Truth does exist, we find in God's word, with all that being said.

The founding father said there is truth that we are basing our actions, our behavior, our decisions on.

And this is what Jefferson said they believe to be true.

He said that that all men are created equal, that we've been given rights by God, and that government exists to protect those God-given rights.

I would also point out that a lot of people today, when when we read the declaration, we hear well, Jefferson might have written that all men are created equal, but he really only cared about equality for white people.

I would challenge you.

Go back and read Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the declaration.

Because the declaration that we know today was the final version approved by Congress.

John Hancock said they could only include in the declaration what everybody agreed to, which is why the final declaration says the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America.

Everybody had to agree to it.

When Jefferson originally drafted the declaration and he had a listing of all the grievances, the problems we had with the king, the longest grievance in the entire declaration was a grievance against slavery.

He said, We've had several colonies try to end slavery, and the king actually vetoed the laws, and we've had several colonies try to stop the importation of slaves.

And here's where it gets interesting.

He said the king has enslaved these men, bringing them from their continent across the sea to this continent to put them in perpetual slavery.

But he said the king has enslaved these men, and if you go back and read that grievance and look for that, you can find Google images, look at his handwritten document.

When he says men, he puts it in full caps locks.

Capital M-E-N, he says the king has enslaved these men.

Why does that matter?

Because when Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he was recognizing something much deeper than what most of us understand the declaration to mean today, that everybody in all of the universe made in God's image, there is equality in that.

Now, I don't have time to go a lot deeper than that, but let me just back up.

He says that these are truths we see from God, but notice he also said that we owe these truths to be self-evident.

Self-evident means it's obvious.

I want you to think about this for a second.

Is it obvious in the world that everybody's equal?

Or that we all have rights from God, or that government exists to protect those rights?

Because it's not obvious in China, it's not obvious in Russia, it's not obvious in most of the Middle East, it's not obvious in most of Europe, it's not obvious in most of Africa or Central and South America.

So why would they say these were obvious?

Because also it's worth noting, these were not obvious in the king's eyes, right?

Like the king didn't agree with any of this.

Who were these truths obvious to?

These truths are only obvious to people who know what the Bible says.

Because if you know what the Bible says, it's from the Bible that we learn that God made them in his image, male and female, he created them in his image.

This notion of equality comes because we recognize that we have a creator God.

And I think it's also super interesting that if you look at the story of creation and Adam and Eve, the Bible does not tell us what shape, size, or color Adam and Eve were.

You want to know why?

Because that doesn't matter.

We live in a world.

We live in a world that pretends like your shape, size, and color determine part of your value.

That is not biblical at all.

But see, if you know the Bible, you recognize that God made us male and female in his image, and our value comes because we were made in the image of God.

If you go further and talk about this notion, well, well, the idea that we have rights from God, yeah, I go to the Garden of Eden, where God gave Adam and Eve, right, the freedom of speech and choice and worship.

God gave rights, and this was way before government ever existed, but God gave rights to men.

And if you look at Genesis 9, when Noah is on the ark, it lands on Mount Arat and he gets off and part of the Noahic covenant, God gives the very first civil ordinance to man.

And he says, if man sheds blood, by man his blood will be shed, where God said, We're not gonna allow this murder and drunkenness and debauchery and all this evil that was happening.

God says, from now on, we're gonna make sure that we are protecting people from these murderers or whatever the case might be.

This is where, and by the way, we can go through lots of other passages that would outline this as well, but I just stayed with Genesis because it's super easy.

Like this is the very beginning, explaining these thoughts and ideas.

These are obvious if you know what the Bible says, but one of the things today is people say, wait a second, but the founding fathers, by and large, we've heard they weren't really religious people, right?

This is this is what we hear, that they weren't good people, that they were atheists or agnostics or deists.

We hear all these negative things against them.

And I would point out that if you back up just a couple decades, we used to know something very different than what we are learning in more of our modern era.

If you go back, for example, in the mid-1900s, Clinton Rosseter was a professor at Cornell University.

He wrote a book called The Seed Time of the Republic, and in this book, he identified there were six major people from kind of the formation period of America that led to America separated from Great Britain.

All the main ideas we used in the Founding Fathers era came from six main guys.

Now, you can see on the screen it's Benjamin Franklin, Richard Bland, the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the Reverend Roger Williams, the Reverend John Wise, and the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew.

Four of these six people that he identified as the most influential, the most significant to what we did were pastors.

Today, a lot of people don't have any idea the role the pastors played, but let me just give you one easy example.

If we look at the Reverend John Wise, he was a pastor in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, in 1717, there was a book of sermons published, and in his book of sermons, he had actually taught a sermon where he said that God's preferred form of government, excuse me, the first one was taxation, but representation is tyranny.

He said God's preferred form of government is the consent of the governed, and he preached another sermon where he said that all men are created equal and we have all been given certain rights by God.

If you're familiar with the declaration, you know those are verbatim lines out of the declaration.

How did this pastor sermons from 1717 make it in the declaration?

Because they were reprinted in 1772 by the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts, because they said, we need every American, every patriot needs to read this and understand the role of government, the role of Christians in government, the role of the church.

And these sermons were reprinted.

They went to all the colonies, all the founding fathers had read the sermons of John Wise.

So in 1776, when they come together to do the declaration, this was something that everybody had read.

They were familiar with these ideas.

Historians have thoroughly documented how the founding fathers knew and studied and read John Wise.

And he's just one of many pastors we could point to.

But let me back you up.

So one of the guys who was a son of liberty, he was actually one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty was Samuel Adams.

Samuel Adams was also known as the father of the American Revolution.

He was a guy trying to stir up Americans to action.

And as he is involved leading the Sons of Liberty, the Sons of Liberty begin to see asking, how can we stir up other patriots to action?

How can we encourage other Christians to stand up?

And so one of the things they determined was they were going to start what was called the committees of correspondence.

And this is before there was group me, right?

It's before you have group texting, it's before there's email.

So they said we just need to write something down and we'll just send it with different people on horseback.

We'll send these to the colonies so everybody can read it, so we can all be on the same page.

What's super interesting about the thought of them all being on the same page is the very first ever committee of correspondence was written by Sam Adams.

And there were three sections in it.

One of the sections that Sam Adams identified was the rights of the colonists as Christians.

He was saying, Christians, you need to understand what's going on in our nation and why we should stand up.

And what he said is if you want to understand what our rights are as Christians, here's what he started off this section with.

These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great lawgiver and the head of the Christian church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.

Now, this is what they're telling all the colonies.

If you want to understand where you should stand as a Christian, you should study the life of Jesus, right?

Because that is who the great lawgiver and the head of the Christian church is, it's Jesus.

You should study the life of Jesus and make sure you're reading your New Testament.

This is the very first committee of correspondence that goes to all the colonies and they're saying, guys, to make sure we're all on the same page, let's read our Bible more.

Okay, that's a pretty good suggestion.

This is not what most people think of, that the founding fathers are guys saying, hey, we should read our Bible more, but it's an indication, again, of the fact we don't know that much of American history, or we would think differently about some of the modern narrative being said today.

And let me just give you one super easy example.

A famous name, John Adams, is somebody that hopefully we recognize that name.

He was a signer of the declaration.

He helped end the American Revolution with the Peace Treaty of Paris.

He was the first vice president, the second president.

He was a very significant guy.

In the midst of this, he wrote often about the Bible.

And one of the things he said that impressed him so much about the Bible, let me just read part of this.

I've examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.

I think it's really impressive, first of all, that he said, I've examined all religions, because one of the things that we don't do a really good job of in Christianity today is apologetics.

That we really don't do enough time studying to know what we believe and why we should believe that as a Christian.

He goes even further and says, I haven't just studied the Bible, I've studied all religions, and nothing compares to the Bible.

Well, in this letter, he goes even further.

He says, Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited.

Meaning, imagine if there was a place, right?

This island, this state, a county, a city.

If there was a place where the only thing they did was live according to the Bible, right?

Now process what what would that look like?

His conclusion was what a utopia, what a paradise would this region be?

If we could just get people living according to the Bible, I feel like that would solve a lot of problems, like in Chicago, right?

There's a few places I can think of, right?

That would really help.

This is literally what saying, or excuse me, what John Adams says.

Well, John Adams' son, John Quincy Adams, is growing up in this environment, not only in the Adams' home, but in early America.

He says something about the way he viewed America that I think is so profound.

He says, with regard to the history contained in the Bible, it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with it as it is shameful to be ignorant of it.

I want you to think about this for a second, because on the surface level, I would actually disagree a little bit.

He said it's not impressive to know the Bible, it's embarrassing not to know the Bible.

I would disagree a little bit.

I think it's super impressive to know the Bible, right?

Like, no, that's a very good thing.

That's one of the reasons we love so many of the pastors here at Gateway.

They know the Bible so well, they teach it so well.

So why would he say it's not really impressive to know the Bible?

Because if I asked this room full of largely adults, what is two plus two?

It's not impressive that you should know the obvious answer of four.

But it would be embarrassing for you not to know what should be obvious.

This is where he's coming from.

He said it's not impressive for someone to know what should be obvious, but it would be shameful for them not to know what should be obvious.

This is literally his thought of the Bible.

Well, where did he get this?

Let's back up again to his parents.

John and Abigail Adams, known as kind of one of the ideal couples in early America, well, during the revolution, as John Quincy Adams is growing up, actually, when when he was just a kid, he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from a side hill.

He watched some of their family friends be killed, he watched their pastor die.

He went through a lot growing up, but they saw this happening in front of them.

John Adams is the American diplomat.

He's over in France, he's over in Europe as a lot of this unfolding.

And so Abigail is the one at home raising the family.

Okay, so she's rocking the single mom life, she's raising kids, she's taking care, and she was amazing, by the way.

So impressive, all the things she did.

In the midst of this, one of the really cool things that was very well documented and known about the Adams family.

I feel like there should be something happening right there.

Sorry.

One of the things that was known about the John Adams family, it's an ADD moment, I'm sorry, was in Massachusetts, where they went to church.

Their church is still in existence today, and where they went to church, there actually was a statue erected that was depicting Abigail with John Quincy Adams because they went to church every single Sunday, even when John was out of town, they would always go to church.

So this this is the life they grew up in.

They were faithful in church, they were faithful Christians.

As the story goes forward, with John Quincy Adams, first of all, when he's eight years old, the Massachusetts Minutemen used to do their musket drills in front of John Adams' home.

When he was eight years old, John Quincy Adams was eight years old, his dad took down a musket and gave it to his eight-year-old son and said, I want you to go train with a Massachusetts Minuteman because I want you to know how to do this.

Let me just go ahead and give all the dads out there, like this is father of the year status.

Okay?

I grew up with a Red Rider BB gun, right?

If my daddy comes home one day and he's like, son, here's your gun, go play with the military, like, okay, this is one of the coolest things that's ever happened.

Every boy, yes.

When he's eight years old, he's literally training with a Massachusetts Minuteman.

When he was 11, he got to go with his dad on one of their diplomatic missions overseas.

And what's kind of funny as you study history is sometimes there's gaps of missing material in history.

And so you have to piece together what's going on.

And so one of the things that's kind of funny piecing together is when John Quincy Adams went with his dad over to Europe, Abigail apparently had told John Quincy Adams that you need to write me when you get there, let me know you made it, let me know you're safe.

And either John Quincy Adams did not write the letter or it got lost, because what we know is Abigail wrote a letter, and Abigail's letter starts off essentially with, I'm not sure if you're even alive, but if you are, you're in trouble because you were supposed to right.

I grew up when cell phones were just coming out, right?

And that was a thing.

Mom says, Hey, you can go hang at your friend's house, call me when you get there, let me know you're safe.

Like, okay, so he was supposed to write a letter.

Apparently, either he didn't, it got lost.

So her letter starts off saying, You're in trouble, but then it goes further because she wants to encourage him, remind him of the the way he should be living his life.

And one of the things she points out in this letter, she says, adhere to those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled in your mind.

And remember, you are accountable to your maker for all your words and actions.

This is like that moment some of us heard growing up, right, that you can go hang out with your friends, but God is watching you, right?

Like that.

This is the first time historically I've ever seen that used.

But literally, right?

She says, Hey, go do your thing, but remember you are accountable for everything you do, and her letter gets even more fun and intense.

She continued on in this, and she said, Dear as you are to me, I had much rather you should find your grave in the ocean, or an untimely death crop you in your infant years, rather than see you an immoral, wicked, or graceless child.

I hope you drown in the ocean, love mom.

What?

I love this letter so much because it reminds me of Proverbs 22, 6, which tells us train up a child in the way they should go when they're old, they won't depart from it.

What she is doing is instilling eternal perspective in her son's life.

It is better for you to be connected and committed to God and die early than in this temporal life for you to live a long time doing your own thing, rejecting God and be eternally separated.

This is an amazing perspective she's giving her 11-year-old child.

Well, this is how John Quincy Adams is growing up.

And so actually, when he's 11 years old, he received an official congressional appointment to be the secretary to the American diplomat.

Well, the American diplomat over to Paris was his father, so he got permission from Congress to go with his dad as secretary.

And we might look at that and go, okay, like that's kind of silly.

It's kind of a head nod because this 11 year old can't be an official secretary.

It would be easy.

To discount him as, you know, just this honorary title, except when he was 14, he received a second congressional commendation where he was appointed to go with a diplomatic team over to Russia before the throne of Catherine the Great, and his job as a 14-year-old was the official interpreter, because he was already fluent in six languages as a 14-year-old.

So this guy really, really was impressive.

As he grows up, he's 21 years old, George Washington becomes president.

When George Washington becomes president, he chooses John Quincy Adams to be America's top diplomat.

George Washington says that John Quincy Adams was the best diplomat America ever had.

Then under John Adams, he's also a diplomat.

When Thomas Jefferson becomes president, he is chosen, elected to be a U.S.

Senator.

Then under James Madison, he again is chosen as America's top diplomat.

He's the guy who actually negotiates the end of the war of 1812.

Under James Monroe, he became the Secretary of State.

He then became the sixth president of the United States of America.

This guy has one of the most impressive resumes of anybody in American history.

Super impressive, but one of the things I respect so much about him is after being president, he did something no other president has ever done.

He went and ran for Congress.

He got elected, he served in Congress for 17 years.

Why would a president go serve in Congress?

John Quincy Adams says there was an evil in America that needed to be remedied.

It was the evil of slavery.

He went and he became the leader of the anti-slavery movement in Congress.

He was given the nickname the Hellhound of Abolition because it was his passion to see slavery ended in America.

And actually, as he was there for 17 years, slavery was not ended in his lifetime.

And one day a reporter came to him and said, Mr.

Adams, you've been fighting for so many years and you haven't been successful in ending slavery.

How do you stay motivated when you haven't been successful?

Now that's a good question.

His answer was based on his life motto.

He wrote in his journal that his life motto was, duty is ours, results are God's.

What he told the reporter, he told the reporter, it's only up to me to do the right thing.

It's up to God what happens after that.

I would point out from scripture, God has not called us to be successful, he's called us to be faithful.

Now, success will often follow faithfulness, right?

But our objective should be I'm gonna do what's the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and the rest is in God's hands.

Right?

This is his perspective.

Well, as he's serving in Congress, every two years you have to run for re-election.

And so every two years, there's actually new congressmen that get elected.

His last term in Congress, there was a young freshman that got elected.

And this young freshman heard John Quincy Adams leading in the midst of this anti-slavery movement, and this this young freshman joins the anti-slavery movement.

He actually gets mentored by John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams has a stroke and dies his last term in Congress.

Actually, the couch where he died on is still in the Capitol building, which is kind of weird, but it's still there.

So his death couch is still in the Capitol in the midst of this.

After his two-year term was up, this freshman decides he wants to run for re-election because the leader of the anti-slavery movement is gone.

We need a new leader now.

And so there's different guys running to fill this position.

So he runs for re-election.

Except he did not get elected.

Not to be discouraged, he tried again, did not get elected a second time.

He then ran for U.S.

Senate, did not get elected.

He then ran for state office, did not get elected.

This young freshman, you might have figured out, was a guy named Abraham Lincoln.

He did not win another election until he became the president of the United States of America.

I would point out that when you look at Lincoln getting elected, right, Lincoln actually was elected at that time.

He ran as a Republican.

The Republican Party at that time had nine planks, and of those nine planks, seven of them were anti-slavery.

He was known to be an anti-slavery guy when he got elected.

He then does the Emancipation Proclamation, right?

Then you have the 13th Amendment.

Lincoln is a guy who is effectively credited with ending slavery in America, but I would point out Lincoln was part of the legacy of John Quincy Adams.

In this room, I want to highlight the fact that there are John Quincy Adams and there are Abraham Lincoln's.

And the reality is for many of you, you might have been praying for decades that God would bring revival, that God would fix the problems of America, that God would change America.

Now I'm just telling you, you might not live long enough to see those prayers answered, but you might be the one God uses to mentor pour into you and raise up the next generation who will fulfill every prayer you've been praying.

Some of us in the room are the Abraham Lincolns.

And I'm going to tell you that as you are pursuing where God is leading you in your life, you need to allow and look for mentors in your life who can pour into you, who can impart to you the things that God already has already shown them, that God's taught them, so that you can be raised up to accomplish all that God's called you to do.

And this is where, as we look at our nation, we have to understand this long-term perspective that John Quincy Adams was fighting for what was right because it was the right thing to do, even though he never was successful in his lifetime at seeing it ended.

But this is part of this incredible story and legacy of America.

And see, he was one of the guys, grew up in the founding fathers era, and yet today we don't hear many stories about the John Quincy Adams.

We don't hear about these incredible guys, these heroes from American history.

Instead, what is being said so much today is wait a second, but America's bad or the founding fathers were evil, and we hear this so often.

And let me just to answer this as we finish up, I want to point to the Bible.

I think that's always a good place to go back to the Bible.

What does the Bible say?

One of the heroes from the Bible, we can look at King David in the Bible, and King David, we know was an incredible warrior.

We know that he killed a lion, we know that he killed a bear, and actually we know he did it when he was very young, because when he was a teenager, he killed Goliath and he told Saul, I've already killed lions and bears.

So, like this dude had to be an amazing warrior as a child going up against lions and bears, winning, that's impressive, right?

As a Texan, I've grown up with guns my whole life.

I'd be a little scared going against lions and bears with guns, not like rocks and sticks.

Okay, so David was an amazing warrior.

David also was an amazing worshiper because he writes the majority of the book of Psalms.

There are so many cool, good parts to David's life, but the Bible doesn't stop there.

Because the Bible tells us about David's kids, about Amnon and Absalom and Adonijah.

Remember, Amnon was the one who raped his sister, and Absalom came and killed Amnon for doing that, and Absalom gets angry because his dad's not doing a good job as king, and so he tries to violently overthrow and take the throne from his father.

And then if you read 1 Kings chapter 1, it introduces us to Adonijah.

1 Kings 1 · chapter mention

And it says, Adonijah was a son whom David never corrected.

The Bible tells us that a father disciplines the son he loves.

Right?

If you're a parent, the question is not, did you ever correct your kids?

It was how many times a day?

Because, like, you were constantly, right?

Hey, don't do this, don't touch that.

Hey, go.

Like you offer instruction, insight, wisdom, guidance.

That's what you do as a parent.

David didn't do any of that.

One of the things you can see from the Bible is David was not a good parent, and this is actually a bad part of King David's life.

If you go even further, the Bible tells us about the time when kings go to war, and David didn't go to war, and he has the affair with Bathsheba, and then he murders Uriah the husband, and all of this unfolds.

David was a murdering adulterer.

This is a really ugly part of King David's life.

But one of the things that's so important about the Bible is the Bible tells us the whole story.

The Bible tells us the good, the bad, and the ugly, and it doesn't hide any of it.

It just says, here's what happened.

But one of the crazy things about the culture we live in today, the modern culture says, well, wait a second, we we can't celebrate people who have done bad things.

I want you to think about this.

How can you sing one of the Psalms if you know it was from a murdering adulterer?

Right.

Okay?

Here's the reality.

See, as a Christian, we have a different perspective of the world because we understand what the Bible says.

We understand Romans 3.23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

What does that mean?

It means everybody is jacked up.

And we all need Jesus.

What that means is as we look back historically, you pick any great leader in American history, any of them.

And what I can tell you is all of them were jacked up.

So when you say, Well, they weren't perfect, my starting place is they're not perfect.

My starting place is they were fleshly and sinful and they needed Jesus real bad.

But what is different?

Let's go back to David.

What why?

Why can we celebrate these moments in King David's life?

Because one of the things significant about the whole story, even from the Bible, is we never celebrate the sinful moments.

Instead, what we do is we celebrate how a perfect God used imperfect people and did great things through them.

As a Christian, one of the places that we are given for guidance in Hebrews chapter 11, known as our faith hall of fame, right?

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Where we're told these are people that look to them and have these are examples of faith, live, act, follow their faith in their lives.

Have you ever thought about who's in the Faith Hall of Fame?

Okay, Noah was an alcoholic, Abraham was a liar, Moses was a murderer, Rahab was a prostitute, Samson was a womanizer, David, murdering, adulterer, terrible father.

I mean, literally, have you ever thought about the jacked-up people that are in our faith hall of fame?

Why would Scripture tell us?

Look at them as examples of faith.

Now, first of all, I would tell you, I think Hebrews 11 is one of the most hopeful chapters you will ever read.

Because if God could use those jacked up people, we got a chance.

Right?

This is the reality that we forget so often, even as we look at American history, where people say, but America's not perfect.

Of course, America's not perfect.

No nation is perfect.

Every nation has people, therefore, every nation has problems.

But when we look back at America, we're not celebrating any perfect moments in America.

Instead, what we are celebrating is how a perfect God used imperfect people and did amazing things along this journey in the American story.

This is one of the things we have to we can't get caught up in this modern cancel culture that we're gonna cancel everybody.

Now, by the way, if we're gonna cancel everybody who's not perfect, that means only Jesus remains, and I'm kind of okay with that.

But understand this does not make sense biblically.

As a Christian, we need to see things differently.

And by the way, let me point out if you want to know more about some of these John Quincy Adams amazing hero stories, our website, wallbuilders.com, is a great place to go.

We actually, my dad and I just wrote a new book called The American Story.

We start with Christopher Columbus, we go roughly to the end of slavery in America.

So many cool moments that we point to, not of perfect people, because they're everybody, again, everybody's jacked up and needs Jesus.

Like, check.

That's our starting place.

And yet, there's so many amazing moments where God used these imperfect people and did amazing things through them.

And this is part of the cool thing we have as a story in America.

I want to close with a psalm that David wrote, Psalm 33, 12, Blessed is a nation whose God is the Lord.

One of the reasons that we have been so blessed in America for so long is because America, more than almost any other nation, remembered who God was and strove to put God first.

We have not always done a good job, but this is where I would point to, even right now.

We're looking at America when there's so many problems.

What do we do?

It's the same solution there's always been.

When the church rises up and will be who God made the church to be, when we put God first again, we can begin to enjoy God's blessing again.

I thought, man, when we sing God bless America, one of the most powerful renditions I've ever heard, I love it.

I love the notion of we want to pray, God bless America.

But here's what I know from scripture.

When you do what God blesses, then God will bless you.

When America does what God blesses, God can once again bless America.

But the only way America does what God blesses is when Christians stand up and begin fighting to put God first again, so that God can once again bless America.

I want to encourage us, and we're gonna close in prayer.

I want to encourage us as we celebrate the 4th of July.

One of the things we need to remember, we're not celebrating a perfect nation.

We are celebrating instead how a perfect God did great things through imperfect people in this nation, and we celebrate the moments that we recognize God has truly blessed this nation, not because of us, but because of who he is and his goodness.

Amen.

Let's pray as we close.

God, I thank you so much that you've allowed us to live in a place where we have so much freedom.

God, we have so many blessings, and we don't want to take those for granted.

But God, I also am so grateful that you give us examples along the way of how we don't have to be perfect to be used by you.

God, we we we are not gonna be cheated and shortchanged by being part of your kingdom or part of service because we've not been worthy and we're not good enough.

But God, we're so grateful that you still are able to come into us as imperfect, as messed up as we might be.

And God, you can use us for great things in your kingdom.

God, we ask right now, even as we look at this nation, God, that you would use us as the solution.

God, we're not praying that you raise somebody else up, we're praying that you raise us up.

God, use us to make a difference in our family, God, in our friends, in our workplaces.

God, wherever you've called us to be, what we're doing, God, use us to make a difference.

And God, thank you for allowing us to live in a nation where we have the freedom to honor and worship you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.