The Role of Christians in Civil Government

This morning with a simple Bible principle.

We know that the Bible teaches us that the way that a people views its own history affects the way that people behaves.

If you look in the book of Judges, you have the story of the nation of Israel.

It goes through a cycle of ups and downs and ups and downs, seven cycles.

And whether Israel is up or whether Israel is down, always depends on whether Israel remembers her history.

If she remembers why God brought her into existence and what her national purpose was, she behaves differently than what she forgets.

And you recall the story of Josiah, when they were rebuilding the temple, getting God back in the center of that nation, which is a great thing for any nation to do.

And in midst of doing that, they found that old scroll.

They brought it out and they said, You mean we used to be like this?

Seeing that scroll, seeing their history, led to a national revival.

And so it is that we have passages like Isaiah 43, and we have Romans 15, 4, and 1 Corinthians 10, and Hebrews 11, and Psalms 3 and Psalm 77.

All these passages were that God says, Recall the former days, remember the former times.

God's into knowing our history.

As a matter of fact, when you get to the New Testament, now we've gone through the Old Testament, we go through the life of Jesus and the Gospels, we get into the birth of the New Testament in the book of Acts.

They're in the book of Acts, who has the longest oration in the book of Acts?

Stephen.

Stephen's got two chapters in the book of Acts.

Nobody else even comes close to that.

You look at what Stephen did there at the birth of the church.

He doesn't give a long theological treatise.

It's not a big doctrinal dissertation.

It is a history lesson.

He says, guys, don't you see what God's been trying to do in our nation since the very beginning?

Let's review.

And he went through every generation.

He went through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, went through every generation up to the present and said, this is what God's been trying to do.

Now we call that a providential view of history.

And we used to teach that in America.

We used to know what God had been up to in 1600 and 1640 and 1680 and across the generations.

We could say, here's what his plan was, here's what he was trying to accomplish, here's where he was trying to take us.

But we don't teach that providential view of history anymore today.

Matter of fact, we really don't teach even a good political view of history.

And I don't say that lightly.

I've been appointed by state boards of education in a number of states, in Texas and California and Kentucky, elsewhere, to write the history and government standard for students in those states.

And looking at what we teach, it's really fascinating.

For example, if you take what we did two weeks ago, Sunday, two weeks ago, 4th of July, 228 years we've celebrated that piece of paper.

If you look at our textbooks about why we teach that America became an independent nation, the reason we say is taxation without representation.

And that's good as far as it goes, but the problem is the Declaration gives 27 different reasons that we became an independent nation.

We studied one of them today.

I wonder how different we would be as a people if we were to study the other 26 or remember why it was that we became who we were.

You know, it's interesting.

At our place, we're very blessed at Wall Builders.

We we own about 70,000 writings that predate 1812.

So I own thousands of the handwritten documents, the guys who did this in church history and black history and et cetera.

And I brought some this morning, 250-year-old works.

But in looking back through those documents, it's interesting that this document from 1761 is the charter for the very first missionary society ever started in America.

Hey, that's a good idea.

Let's have a society to propagate the gospel.

We thought it was a good idea.

King George III vetoed it.

He said, no, he said, you can't do that.

He said, we have an established church.

You don't need a missionary society.

If you do, I'll tell you you do, and you don't.

So he vetoed our missionary societies and our Bible societies and our tracks.

We couldn't have any of these religious societies.

And because we could not have those religious organizations, that's why I signed the declaration Charles Carroll of Carrollton, that's why I signed of the declaration of Sam Adams.

That's why they said they got involved in the American Revolution, so that we could have religious liberties.

It wasn't taxation without representation, it's religious liberties.

And if you will, these guys got involved so that we could have, under God, a Pledge of Allegiance, or so that we could have a prayer at a football game, or so we could post the Ten Commandments if we won.

That was the issue to them.

That's what drove them to get involved.

You also have not only religious issues that we don't talk about, but even the moral issues.

Take something like slavery.

In 1773, first in Connecticut, then Massachusetts, and then Rhode Island.

1773 they abolished slavery.

And that's the right thing to do, move in the right direction.

1774, Pennsylvania also abolished slavery.

This thing's starting to pick up steam.

King George III vetoed every one of those laws.

He said, You can't do that.

He said, You're part of the British Empire.

In the British Empire, we have slavery, and as long as you're part of the British Empire, you too will have slavery.

So a lot of our founding fathers said, Great, let's not be part of the British Empire anymore.

You specifically had people like Dr.

Benjamin Franklin, Dr.

Benjamin Rush, both of whom signed the Declaration.

They said that was the reason they got involved.

They wanted to end slavery.

And you'll find that in 1776, when we did separate from Great Britain, more than half the states ended slavery right then.

You had New York and Connecticut and Rhode Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Not every state did, but this was a big issue to a bunch of these guys.

And for these two guys, it was such a big issue that they founded the first ever abolition society in America.

Now, if you see across the bottom line, that abolition society says begun in the year 1774.

1774?

We're still British colony.

Yeah.

But that is the year that King George III vetoed all those laws and said no more.

When he vetoed those laws, he said, you can't end slavery.

These two guys said, we so believe God wants to end slavery, we're going to do it anyway.

So they started this society as an act of civil disobedience against King George III.

And do you know how strongly you have to believe something to commit civil disobedience?

That's a pretty strong motivation.

That's a moral motivation, but we don't talk about those issues.

You see, out of those 27 issues, we talk about one, and that's economics.

And why is that?

It's because about 60, 70 years ago, a new group of historical writers started writing textbooks in America.

Charles and Mary Beard, W.

E.

Woodward, Fairfax, Downey, others, and they said, you know what, the only thing that motivates people, the only thing that people care about is money.

That's all that matters.

Why don't we teach history that way?

And in the 1960s, we adopted that as the way we now teach history.

We call it the economic view of American history.

So there's 27 clauses in the Declaration.

Only one deals with economics.

Guess which one we study?

That one.

And because we look at the economic view and not the moral or the religious or the other views, we've even changed a lot of the heroes we used to study.

You see, today, if we say who's behind American independence, you're certainly going to hear names of all, and by the way, this is one of the textbooks that was that was written by the Beers.

They had a whole bunch of textbooks, but you can see the economic basis of politics.

So politics now is just economics.

Constitution is just now economics.

They wrote the economic basis of the Declaration, etc.

So as a result of that economic view, what's happened is we have changed our histories because our heroes, because today we say, well, Sam Adams is responsible for our independence.

I mean, he's the father of the American Revolution, or we can say Thomas Jefferson because he's the chief author of the Declaration, or even John Hancock with that big bold signature as President of Congress, or even John Adams, because John Adams not only signed the Declaration, but eight years later he was one of only three guys who signed the peace treaty to end the American Revolution.

So he's there from start to finish.

These are the guys responsible for our independence.

That's what we say today, but that's not what we said 50, 60, 70 years ago.

As a matter of fact, 200 years ago, when John Adams himself was asked who's behind American independence?

And he was there.

And he was asked who's behind it.

He gave a list of names that we never studied today.

His list of names were all Christians, and a whole bunch of them were ministers of the gospel.

He said, Now, if you're asking me who's responsible for our independence, he said, right up top, you have to put the Reverend Dr.

Samuel Cooper.

And of course, of the Reverend George Whitfield, he said, and you can't overlook the contributions of the Reverend Dr.

Jonathan Mayhew.

He went through and named all these preachers and all these Christians.

We might know who Whitfield is today, but we probably don't do anything about studying Mayhew or Cooper or even knowing who those guys were.

See, we don't study the religious heroes that we had.

As a matter of fact, we don't even study the African American heroes that were involved.

Pastors like this man.

This man is Richard Allen, one of the coolest stories in American history.

Richard Allen was a slave in Delaware.

A Methodist missionary came through preaching the gospel on his plantation.

He heard the gospel, he committed his life to Christ, became a Christian.

He's so excited.

He starts preaching the gospel to everybody he can reach, which is his plantation.

Before long, he leads his master to Christ.

When he leads his master to Christ, his master says, Gosh, what am I doing holding slaves?

And so allows Richard to have his freedom.

And so Richard's out of slavery and he wants to preach the gospel everywhere he goes.

So he starts heading across New England, preaching the gospel.

He ends up going up the coast there into Pennsylvania.

He got to Philadelphia.

Now, Philadelphia at that time was a mega city.

There were 40,000 people in the city.

It was the third largest city in America.

40,000.

So there he is in Philadelphia.

He ends up having a church of 2,000 people in that city of 40,000.

That was a mega church even back then.

I mean it's a megachurch now, but it was really a mega church.

But you know the interesting thing about that church of 2000?

Here's a black pastor with a church of 2,000 white congregants.

You know, a black chastor and a white church in the American founding?

Never heard of that.

There's a whole lot of stuff we don't hear about.

Or the fact that he went on to become a soldier in the American Revolution and fought for independence.

You see, in the early American Revolution or in the American Revolution, unlike the Civil War, we didn't have segregated units.

It was black and white fighting side by side for freedom and independence.

We also have heroes like this man, Absalon Jones.

He's the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, another hero of the American Revolution.

And even Limuel Haynes, he's a black evangelist, and for 30 years, he started churches across New England, preached across New England.

For 30 years, interesting thing, he was one of the minute men at the Battle of Lexington Concord.

He was actually wounded there at Lexington Concord.

And he served throughout the American Revolution from start to finish, eight years.

Now, the term of enlistment in the American Revolution was one year.

He re-upped seven times.

He stayed in that thing for eight years.

Only a handful of soldiers did that.

And on top of that, he fought in every single major battle in the American Revolution.

Even a smaller group of soldiers did that.

And he's one of the elite.

And this guy, like a patriot and a hero that he was, as he preached across New England every single year on George Washington's birthday in his churches, he would stop and have a special sermon about his commander-in-chief, his comrade at arms with whom he had fought side by side throughout the revolution.

I mean, we never hear about ministers in general, and we sure don't hear about all the black pastors that had such a huge impact on the American founding.

But why would John Adams point to pastors and Christians and say, this is responsible for who we are as a nation, that this is behind our American independence?

Well, he could point to two things.

Number one, we as Christians were able to demonstrate to the whole nation how practical the Word of God is.

We were able to show that the Word of God applied to every single thing that went on in life.

Now, we know, for example, that Scripture teaches us in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable for reproof, for correction, for instruction, righteousness, etc.

But verse 17 tells us why God gave us the scripture.

It says that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Now, that word every really did mean every.

I mean, no matter what you got into, the word of God had answers for it.

And that's what we could demonstrate 200 years ago.

Particularly you see that through sermons that we preached.

It's interesting that 200 years ago, New England had a big earthquake, which is really unusual in New England.

But do you know what all the sermons were that next Sunday in New England?

They were all about the great earthquake in New England.

Now, I thought that's an interesting topic for a sermon.

I don't recall having heard a sermon like that, but I do read through the Bible once every year, and that's a great practice.

If you don't do that, let me encourage you to do that.

So many of our founding fathers read through the Bible once every year.

John Quincy Adams and John Jay and Benjamin Rush and others.

So having gone through the Bible once every year, I thought, you know, if I had to do a Bible study lesson or a Sunday school lesson or something on what the Bible says about earthquakes, what could I do with that?

Because I've read through the Bible a whole bunch.

And I thought I could probably come up with a good 15, 20 minute sermon on what the Bible says about earthquakes.

Well, that was a five-week sermon on what the Bible said about earthquakes.

I couldn't even come close to that.

Never even crossed my mind there might be that many verses in the Bible on earthquakes.

Five years later, the sermon was on the Great Fire in Boston.

It's all the headlines, big old tragedy in Boston.

Well, they just take the headlines.

See what's in the headlines?

Let me show you how the Word of God relates to the headlines.

Here's how we deal with local tragedies like that.

Here's the principles out of the Word of God on dealing with the Great Fire in Boston.

And by the way, both of those sermons were preached by the Reverend Dr.

Jonathan Mayhew, one of the guys specifically cited by John Adams as being behind our independence as a nation.

There's also this sermon.

This is a sermon on a solar eclipse.

And I can safely tell you, I've never in my life heard a sermon on a solar eclipse.

Not even one.

And I read that sermon.

I was shocked at how many verses in the Bible dealt with solar eclipses.

And this preacher spent a ton of time in the little bitty book of Amos.

I couldn't believe how many verses in Amos dealt with solar eclipses.

And try this for a sermon topic.

This sermon, 1851, is a sermon on the moral view of railroads.

Now, if you had to do a lesson on that, what Bible verse are you going to use to talk about the moral view of railroads?

I thought, man, what did he use?

And so I read that sermon.

He says, Well, railroads, he said, that's part of transportation.

He says, Does God's word tell us anything about transportation?

It certainly does.

He went through all these biblical principles of transportation, just laid it out.

And after having shown all this biblical framework for transportation, he said, now, having seen what God says about transportation, here's where railroads fit in, right over here.

You go, wow, cool sermon.

Never crossed my mind to look at things like that.

You see, the word of God makes us equipped for every good work.

But what's happened in America in the last 50 years, we've had courts that have said, you know, guys, your faith is really important.

Your faith is so important that you guys have a whole amendment in the Constitution to protect your faith.

Now, here's what we need you to do.

We need you to keep your faith at home or at church.

We don't need to see your faith at school.

We don't need a graduation prayer.

We don't need to see your faith out in public.

We don't need an activity scene at Christmas time.

We don't need to see your faith on writings like the state of Ohio with God and their motto.

You can't do that.

So we've been told for the last 50 years that religion's really important, but only stays in certain areas.

I mean, here's faith and here's real life, and here's faith, and here's business, and here's faith, and here's medicine, and here's faith, and here's education, and what we've done is compartmentalize our faith.

But we didn't do that 200 years ago.

The word of God applied to every single thing that went on.

Matter of fact, here's a sermon from 1796 that was called an execution sermon.

It was a sermon preached on the execution of Henry Blackburn for the murder of George Wilkinson.

You mean when somebody got put to death?

We had a sermon about that?

Well, it's in the newspaper, or does the word of God not apply to things that are in the news?

And quite often, these type of sermons were preached out of Romans 13, verses 1 through 4, where the scripture says that God has not given the sword to civil government to bear in vain.

Romans 13:1–4

We'd say, now wait a minute, what's it mean that God gave the sword to civil government?

What's it mean that civil government doesn't bear it in vain?

And is this a proper use of the sword by civil government?

Didn't matter what the issue was, we dealt with it and looked at it from a biblical framework.

Now, I could show you hundreds of sermons like these, but these are all called occasional sermons.

Their sermon preached on the occasion of a fire, the occasion of a tornado, the occasion of a hailstorm, the occasion of the repeal of a certain tax, the occasion of a dedication of whatever the occasion was, whatever was in the news, here's how the word of God related to it.

But we had sermons that were so important that we preached about them once every year.

They're called annual sermons.

And this is tradition that God Himself started in the scriptures.

Remember after God got his people together, called them all together there in the Pentateuch, the first five books, and delivers them with a mighty hand out of Egypt and establishes them as an independent nation.

After he goes through all those miracles, he stops and says, All right, guys, three days a year I want you to show up in front of me.

I want you here three holidays.

Three holidays a year, I want you right here in front of me.

And on those three days, what I want you to do is I want you to stop and remember what it was that I had done for you on that day in the past.

This is a time to remember what it is that I did when I brought you out of Egypt.

And he had three days, three different events that he wanted them to remember.

And he said, now when you do those days, your kids are going to say to you, Why are we doing this?

And you make sure and teach your kids what it is that I've done for you on that day.

So the purpose of holidays is to remember what God's done in the past and to teach the next generation on why that's important.

Show them the hand of God in history.

So the Old Testament starts with three.

By the time we get to the end of the Old Testament, God has seven days set aside.

Seven days he wants his people in front of him.

One was Esther, what Esther did pour them with saving the nation of Israel.

I mean, those were all days that we were to stop and remember what it was that God had done for his people and teach the next generation.

Now, in the Christian church in America, we still have annual sermons.

I guarantee you that in April everybody had an Easter sermon.

Oh man, I had an Easter sermon last year and the year before.

Yeah, and you'll have one next year and the year after because that's such an important day that we want to stop every year and remember what it was that Jesus Christ did in the death and resurrection.

We're going to remember that every year.

And we're also going to use that time to say, kids, here's what Easter is all about.

Here's what Jesus did for us on that day.

See, that's an annual sermon.

We also have an annual sermon on Christmas.

We also have an annual sermon on Thanksgiving.

Those are really important annual sermon days.

But in the American tradition, for over 200 years, we had a lot more annual sermons than just those three.

For example, this is called an artillery sermon.

It's from 1803.

But this artillery sermon, once a year, we would look at what God says was the proper role of the military.

It's indisputable.

In any nation's history, the military plays a major role.

It's also indisputable that the military is a huge subject all the way through the scriptures.

Matter of fact, even over in the New Testament, when John the Baptist was baptizing, he had specific instructions for officers and for soldiers.

And so once a year, we would look at what it is that God said about the military.

We used to know the difference between just wars and unjust wars and offensive wars and defensive wars.

We used to know why it was that when Saul went out to whack the Philistines, that God performed a miracle to help him destroy the Philistines.

Now, you can't say God's anti-war because God's performed way too many miracles to help armies defeat enemies.

But at the same time, Saul goes out to whack the Philistines, God helps him.

Saul then goes out to whack the Gibeonites, and God curses him, brings the whole curse on the nation for going to fight the Gibeonites.

So it's not that God's pro-war or anti-war, it's there's principles involved in the military.

Saul did it right one time, he did it wrong.

What were the principles that were involved that would bring God's blessings or curses?

Once a year we looked at that.

Now here we are in a war right now in America.

I mean, we got this war going in Iraq.

And if you ask people across the nation, if you ask Christians across the nation, what do you think about the war?

Everybody's got a strong opinion.

They're for it, they're against it.

Why are you for it or against it?

They give you humanitarian reasons, they give you political reasons, they'll give you partisan reasons, they'll give you economic reasons, they give you lots of reasons.

I have yet to have a Christian give me a biblical analysis, either for or against their position, of why what's going on with America and Iraq is either right or wrong.

See, we used to be able to do that because we knew the biblical principles that dealt with the military.

That's why we did that for 200 years.

And for 270 years in the American church, we also had what were called election sermons, and they deal with exactly what you think they deal with: elections.

Elections.

You see, we knew that in America we had a dual citizenship.

We are as Christians, indeed, we are citizens of heaven, but we're also citizens on earth.

And we're taught in Titus and in 1 Peter 5, and we're taught in Romans 13 that God ordains civil government.

So he ordains government.

The kind of government we have in America is ordained by God, and the kind of government we have is a stewardship government.

He's given it to us.

He gave it to us and said, Take care of this till I come back.

So, what does God expect of us in this kind of government?

And so in these election sermons, we would look at elections in the Bible.

You may recall that before Israel became a monarchy, she was a republic.

The scripture says in Exodus 18, 21, choose out from among you.

The leaders of thousands, the leaders of hundreds, the leaders of fifties, the leaders of tens, in other words, have elections.

Elect, if you will, federal, state, county, and local officials.

The scripture says, choose able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covenances, men who will rule in the fear of God.

That's God's list of moral qualifications for office holders.

He doesn't care whether you're running for dog catcher or president of the United States, you've got this moral list of qualifications, and that was for leaders of tens all the way to leaders of thousands.

See, we looked at the verses in the Bible that dealt with the elections about choosing our own leaders because that's the form of government he gave us in America.

For 270 years, every single year we did that, from 1633 all the way until after 1900, we had that every year.

Now, another sermon that we had in America, and I've chosen the sermon because you'll recognize the names, is a sermon preached in front of John Hancock.

Now, Hancock, signer of the declaration, president of Congress, but he's the first governor of Massachusetts.

It's also a sermon preached in front of His Honor Sam Adams.

Sam Adams signed of the Declaration, he's the father of the Revolution, he's the first lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and his sermon preached in front of the Council of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Do you know that for 270 years in America, it was tradition that when state legislatures started their legislative session, they would get together in a joint session.

They'd get the governor, lieutenant, governor, house center, get them all together, they'd bring in a preacher and say, We're lawmakers, we're going into a lawmaking session.

What guidance does the Word of God give us as we go into this next lawmaking session?

Now, man, did we have a lot of stuff to talk about?

Because think how many lawgivers there are in the Bible.

Moses was a lawgiver, Joseph was a lawgiver, Daniel was a lawgiver.

There's a lot of lawgivers in the Bible, so we could talk to lawgivers and say, here's biblical principles that deal with lawmaking and lawgiving.

Here's what God expects of you as lawmakers.

Now, see, this is 270 years we started legislative sessions this way.

Now, it's interesting, we haven't done this in America in almost a hundred years.

But let's let's say that you get home from church this afternoon, and this could happen in in for any Christian today in America, in any of the 50 states, but here we are in Texas.

We get home from church this afternoon, you check your answer machine, and lo and behold, you've got a message in your answering machine from Governor Rick Perry.

Governor Rick Perry calls, he says, I'm gonna resurrect a revision that hadn't been done in a hundred years.

We want to start these sermons again in the legislature.

I've called a special legislative session that's gonna begin this next Wednesday.

I would like you to come Thursday and preach a sermon to the joint session of the Texas legislature.

I'll be there, Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst will be there, we'll have the House there, the Senate there.

We're starting on Wednesday, but on Thursday I want you to come preach a sermon to the whole law making lawmaking body of Texas gathered there.

If most Christians in Texas had an opportunity to do that, or if most Christians anywhere in America, I mean Oklahoma or Nebraska or Alaska, it doesn't matter, if most Christians had an opportunity to do what we did for 270 years, what do you think most Christians today would preach about in that sermon?

I'm going to speculate that most Christians would somehow have a salvation message there, tell these guys about Christ.

And it's not a bad deal.

We need to do that.

We need to tell these guys about Christ.

But I really think that part of the change in the church today is that the church has become very good at making converts of all men, but not very good at making disciples of all men.

In.

We can't say, here's how the word of God applies to lawmaking, here's how it applies to medicine, here's how it applies to architecture, here's how it applies to fine arts, and all these areas that it applied to for all these years.

So because we had this biblical worldview that we taught 200 years ago, where that everything was relevant to the Word of God, it had a direct impact on our documents.

What we celebrated two weeks ago, 4th of July, this document is a blessing that we often take for granted.

We've been under this document 228 years.

That's longer than any nation in the history of the world has been under the same piece of paper.

As we are gathered here this morning, we have 29 nations in the world that are embroiled either in civil war or in revolution.

War is the way of the world.

There's this year 182 nations of the UN.

It goes up and down from year to year, but any given year there's two to three dozen nations tearing themselves or some neighbor apart.

War is the way of the world.

Jesus said there'd be wars and rumors of wars.

It was that way when he left, it'll be that way until he gets back.

That is the normal condition of man.

What we've had for 228 years is not normal.

Now we just think it is.

We think other people not so.

In the same period of time that we've had that one piece of paper, France has been through 15 different constitutions.

The same period of time we've had that piece of paper, you know, Italy last year just went into her 55th form of government in the same period of time.

And we consider Italy to be one of the stable nations in the world.

55 forms of government.

See, other nations are having turnovers unlike what we have.

So where in the world did these guys get their ideas?

They tell us, if you read the writings of John Hancock or John Adams or so many others, they said that their ideas came out of this book right here.

This is original from 1765.

This is what they used to write the Declaration.

It's called The Two Treatises of Government.

Now, this is a book that's still available today.

This is considered an international classic.

I deal with governments across the world, and I can get this book today in Spanish or Russian or Italian or Greek or French or whatever.

You can leave here today and go order this at Amazon.com.

You can go to Barnes and Noble Borders.

You can get that.

We used to study this in America.

Matter of fact, this book was so significant.

Richard Henry Lee said that they copied the Declaration of Independence out of this book here.

Now we used to study this in schools in America, but we haven't studied it in 50 years, but it's worth reading.

I would recommend it to you.

Now you can see this book here.

It's an inch and a quarter thick.

It's 360 pages long.

This is what they used to write the most successful government document in the history of the world.

If you read this, you'll be amazed.

This book cites the Bible over 1,700 times to show the proper operation of civil government.

Wow, 1,700 verses on how government's supposed to operate?

A whole lot more verses than that, but that's just the Bible verses that were put in this book.

1700, and this is the book they used to write the Declaration.

Maybe that suggests why we've been a little different from other nations.

Maybe we have a different foundation than what other nations had.

Eleven years later, when these guys gave us the Constitution, they placed in their ideas that had never before appeared in any written Constitution.

You can't find checks and balances or separation of powers or what we call republicanism, Article 4, Section 4, which says when you have elections, you get to elect federal, state, county, and local.

You get to elect leaders of thousands, hundreds of fifty.

No, the Constitution had that until the American Constitution did so.

Where in the world did these guys get their ideas?

Political science professors said, you know, if we can read the writings, see who they quoted, we'll know where they got their ideas.

They collected 15,000 writings in the founding era.

They read them all.

In those 15,000 writings, they found 3,154 direct quotes.

They took every direct quote back to its original source.

At the end of the study, they said, we can now tell you the 100 most cited sources in American founding.

Here's source number one.

Here's source number two, which is four times lower.

Here's source number three, which is four times lower.

Here's source number four, which was twelve times lower.

In other words, source number one was up there by itself, uncontested, nothing even close.

What was source number one?

It was the Bible.

34% of all quotes in the political writings came out of the Bible.

You find in the writings of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, that what we call separation of powers came from the principle in Jeremiah 17.9.

You find the three branches of government is in Isaiah 33.22.

We have a tax exemption in church today.

They gave us that 200 years ago.

Gave us tax exemptions 200 years ago.

Now you try to find in other nations 200 years ago that had tax exemptions.

That was a novel idea.

Where in the world do they get the idea of tax exemption for churches?

Read Ezra 7.24.

Matter of fact, if you want to have a little fun, just someday pull out the Constitution, lay it here, pull out the Bible, lay it here, and start going through things and see how much Bible language in the Constitution.

For example, go to Article 3, Section 3 that deals with Judiciary.

Article 3, Section 3, Paragraph 1.

While you're there, go open Deuteronomy 17.6 and read Deuteronomy 17.6.

Article 3, Section 3, Paragraph 1, you go, same language.

Same thing.

Go to paragraph 2, then go to Ezekiel 18.20.

Read it.

See.

Man, that's the same thing too.

See, it's amazing how much the Bible is actually embedded in our Constitution.

It never crosses our minds because, as we know, government's a secular arena, it's a secular institution.

Christians aren't supposed to be involved.

You know, it's a good thing for us that they didn't believe that because they applied those principles, and that's why John Adams said unequivocally, he said the general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.

They weren't perfect, but to the best of their ability, they took what they could understand and apply in their culture and put it into there, and that was the basis.

Now, significantly today we're trying to say, no, no, no, it never was like that.

I love to collect articles that refute all the actual historical findings.

Here's one that ran recently in the National Wire Service, but Stephen Morrison says the founding fathers were not Christians.

It didn't matter what they said, didn't matter what they claimed, didn't matter what they wrote, didn't matter what they did, they weren't Christians.

This was a secular nation, it's been that way from the beginning.

Here's an article editorial that ran in a whole chain of newspapers on the East Coast.

It says the authors of the Declaration were enemies of Christ.

And out on the West Coast, the LA Times says America's unchristian beginnings.

And notice the little tag that it has there.

It says the founding fathers were deist who rejected the divinity of Jesus.

Now we teach this.

As a matter of fact, I speak in law schools and universities across the nation.

Last five years, the most widely used textbook I've seen is called The Godless Constitution.

Now, why would we teach students that it's a godless constitution?

Well, we know it's a godless constitution because, as I just showed you, all the founding fathers were godless.

They were all atheists and agnostics and deists, and you can't expect a bunch of secular guys to write something religious.

No, a bunch of godless guys give you a godless constitution, and that's what's made us great for 200 years is our secularism.

As long as we can stay secular, we'll stay great, and that's why the courts are exactly right to say that you can't have under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, to say that Los Angeles can't have a cross in their city seal, a religious city Spanish with a religious name, been that way 300 years, but you've got to get that cross off your city's seal.

See, that's what is behind all that, the godless constitution.

A lot of people buy that.

Matter of fact, I can show this picture to virtually every school group in America, and I think we recognize this picture.

Now, you guys recognize these are the 56 atheists that signed the Declaration of Independence.

Now, I can show that picture to any school group in America and say, kids, who up there do you recognize?

Everybody can find Jefferson, everybody can find Franklin, and that's usually exactly where it stops.

I say, no, wait a minute, don't stop there.

Let's look at some of the other guys.

Which one of these guys is George Clinton or Robert Morris or Charles Carroll or Elbert Sherry or Oliver Woolcott or Abraham Clark?

Which one is James Wilson or Stephen Hopkins or they're in the middle?

Which one is Robert Livingston or Roger Sherman or over on the right?

Which one is Thomas McKean or George Reed or Samuel Huntington?

And I can go through the other 54 names.

They go, who?

I don't think I've heard those names before.

Isn't it interesting that we've all been trained to recognize the two least religious founding fathers?

We can find Jefferson and Franklin.

They're the least religious, no question about it.

But we don't know any of the others.

But we we know they must have been like Jefferson or Franklin.

Really?

Did you know out of the 56 guys who signed the Declaration of Independence, 24 of those guys held seminary degrees?

That's not bad for a bunch of atheists to have seminary degrees, and apparently that's what we had.

Can you imagine if Congress today would be made up of one-half pastors?

Oh, that's unconstitutional.

Really?

They're the ones who did it.

Half those guys minister the gospel.

People we don't talk about today include the Reverend Dr.

John Witherspoon.

John Witherspoon, the best known gospel evangelist in his generation, responsible for 15 volumes of gospel sermons.

Also responsible for two American editions of the Bible, including this one right here.

This is from 1791.

This is America's very first family Bible.

Dr.

Witherspoon did this Bible so that families could have Bible studies together.

Also on the right side of the screen, the tall gentleman you see there, his name is Charles Thompson.

He's responsible for a famous American edition of the Bible.

This is the original.

It's called Thompson's Bible.

You've probably heard of Thompson's Bible.

It's the first translation of the Greek Septuagint into English.

You can still buy this today in Christian bookstores, right now, this afternoon, if you want you.

You can get Thompson's Bible.

Now, it took Charles 19 years to make this translation, but it's considered one of America's most scholarly translations of the Bible, and it came from one of our founding fathers.

And then over on the left side of the screen, you see this gentleman, he's Dr.

Benjamin Rush.

Mentioned Merler.

He founded the first abolition society, but he's also the man that in 1791 started the Sunday school movement in America.

So if you think Sunday schools is a good idea, it came from a founding father.

He also authored this.

This is the Constitution for America's very first Bible society.

He started the first Bible society in America.

Why would he do that?

He tells us right here.

He says, if we can get Americans to read the Bible, he said two things will happen.

Number one, they'll become Christians.

And number two, if they'll read and obey the Bible, he said, we'll solve all of our social problems.

We want to have crime, we want to have slavery.

He went through all the things we wouldn't have if we lived by the Bible.

So he wants to get the Bible in the hands of every single American.

And in looking to do that, he came up with a new way to print books.

It was called stereotyped printing, early form of mass production.

Actually, it's part of printing history in America.

But this is the result.

This is the first mass-produced Bible ever done in the history of the United States.

It's done by signer of the declaration, Dr.

Benjamin Rush.

Then you have the man right in the center of the screen.

His name is Francis Hopkinson.

Now, he's a church music director and he's a choir leader.

He's also a federal judge, by the way.

He's also the man who designed the American flag.

But this federal judge, church music director, choir leader, is responsible for America's first purely American hymn book.

This one right here.

This is from 1767.

What Francis did was he took the entire book of Psalms out of the Bible and he set the entire book of Psalms to music so that we could sing the Psalms like David had sung the Psalms thousands of years before.

Now, can you imagine setting 150 Psalms to music?

I mean, for that matter, can you imagine just setting Psalms 119 to music?

That in itself has got to be a life project.

And if you did get Psalms 119 set to music, how many church services do you think it'd take you to sing Psalms 119 once you got it set to music?

No.

I mean, he sets the whole book of Psalms to music.

This is one of our founding.

Oh, they're a bunch of atheist agnostics, deists, not by a long story.

See, we don't know who these guys are anymore.

We used to know, we used to study in school.

This is an old 1848 textbook we used in public schools for generations.

Went through every one of these individuals.

We knew about their life and their faith and what they'd done, and we knew about the abolitionists.

We don't anymore.

Now, we reprinted that textbook, it's out front, but we used to know that.

But see, these guys were just not secular in their mindset.

And it's interesting that the first time ever that these guys got together was on September the 6th, 1774.

It's recorded in the records of Congress.

You can get it online.

You know what they did the first time these guys got together in Congress?

They opened with a prayer.

But it wasn't a dinky little prayer.

According to historical records, the opening prayer session in Congress ran for three hours.

Now, that's not bad to get atheists to pray for three hours.

I mean, we can't get Christians anywhere close to that.

But our atheists, and this wasn't even church.

This was this was in Congress, and they didn't just pray.

John Adams said that that morning they studied four chapters of the Bible in Congress together.

Silas Dean said that after that time of prayer and Bible study, he said even the stern old Quakers had tears running down their cheeks.

Now the Quakers were the least likely to cry.

That's why they called them the stern old Quakers.

And even they were touched by that time of prayer and Bible reading in Congress.

See, just we didn't compartmentalize our faith.

And that's why George Washington, when he resigned after 45 years of public service, in his farewell address, he reminded Americans of why our politics prospered when other nations hadn't.

Just in the period of time he had been president, France had already gone through three revolutions, just in the time he was president.

So he said, here's why we are different from other nations.

Here's why our politics prospers when that of other nations doesn't.

He said, of all the habits and dispositions that lead to political prosperity, of everything that makes politics prosper, he said, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

The two things that make our politics work well is we don't separate religion and morality from politics.

Isn't that interesting?

That's what we've been trying to do for the last 30 years.

What is the marriage amendment last week?

Oh, morality, that's a biblical thing.

We don't want biblical marriage.

We want civil marriage.

We can't have religious stuff in public arena, and we've got the same thing.

Well, you can't say under God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I mean, this is the civil arena.

Keep religious stuff over in church.

So we try to separate religion and morality out of this.

But that was not at all the design that they had.

They didn't compartmentalize their faith.

You know, and it's interesting to see even what we deal with in Congress right now, because in Congress, and I'm very involved in the U.S.

Congress, I deal with dozens and dozens of members of the House and the Senate and et cetera.

But you look at the issues that we're having to deal with and how they relate to religion morality, and you just really don't hear about many of these issues on the news because they're not economic issues.

We hear about the economic issues on the news.

But you take something like what we've had with same-sex marriage or trying to protect traditional marriage.

69% of the nation wants traditional marriage protected.

That should have been a no-brainer.

We didn't even get close to that on the vote last week.

Didn't even reflect close to what the national numbers reflect.

We also have the issue of prayer at school, football prayers.

You know, 81% of the nation supports daily voluntary prayer, not only in the classroom, but also on the football field and athletic events.

81% of the nation.

We can't get a bill out of Congress.

With 81% of the nation, that ought to be easy.

No, can't even get it out of Congress.

We've also got the issue of faith-based programs.

75% of the nation supports involving faith in social programs.

Letting that be part of, we can't get that passed through Congress.

It gets killed every time we bring it up.

Also got the issues of what's called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, where that if you kill a woman who's pregnant and you kill the child as well, that's two people you've killed.

It's not just one, it's two.

84% of the nation supports that.

Finally, after years and years, we finally got that passed.

Last April, President Bush signed it.

But why did it take us years to get something done that 84% of the nation wanted?

And you can take other issues.

Take the issue of the Boy Scouts.

We have, again, this session of Congress trying to beat back an attempt to break up the charter of the Boy Scouts, take away their federal charter.

Why?

Because those nasty Boy Scouts insist that Scoutmasters be morally straight.

They want morally straight instructors teaching those young kids.

We can't have a group like that in America.

So third time we're having to try to defend their charter against the tax against them.

We also have the issue of the Ten Commandments.

77% of the nation wants the Ten Commandments displayed, but we can't have that happen.

We also have the issue of Pledge of Allegiance.

92% of the nation thinks that we ought to keep under God in the Pledge.

Congress could pass a bill tomorrow so that this would not even go to the court.

I've been involved in six cases of the U.S.

Supreme Court.

Last case in which I was involved was back on March the 24th of this year, and it was the Pledge of Allegiance case.

Can we keep under God in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Congress could pass a law tomorrow so that it would never even go back to the Supreme Court.

We could be done with this.

92% of the nation, we can't get the law through Congress.

We also have the issue of free speech for churches.

In 1954, for the first time in American history, we told church pastors that you are limited with what you can say out of the pulpit.

Now, everybody else in America's got free speech, but not church pastors.

We can't have you doing what Elijah did when he talked to Ahab and Jezebel.

We can't have you doing what Nathan and Gad did when he talked to David.

We can't have you doing what Christ did when he called Herod and old Fox and called the civil leaders a bunch of whitewash sepulchres.

We can't have you doing that.

So for 50 years, we've had a one-line provision in the tax code that says you cannot, from the pulpit, talk about certain issues.

Everybody else in America can because they have the constitutional right of free speech.

So we've got to bill up to simply give free speech back to everybody, including the church.

And we can't get that through Congress.

That's a no-brainer.

We also have the issue of prayer on military areas.

Do you know we have three lawsuits now that we've lost that have said, hey, military, that's federal.

So you can't even have prayer in those areas.

You can't even pray over your lunch if you want to, because that's federal turf, and you can't pray on federal turf.

We also have the issue of judges.

Just this last week, we narrowly got a judge confirmed, 51 to 46 in the Senate.

You know why he almost didn't get confirmed?

Judge Leon Holmes made the mistake of saying, I think what the Bible says about the family in Ephesians 5 is right.

Oh, you're too radical.

We can't have you as a judge if you believe what the Bible said about the family.

Forty-six people voted against him just because he agreed with what the Bible said about the family.

You look at issues like why in the world is Congress so far out of step with where we are: 92%, 81%, and 77%, and 84%.

Why can't we get this stuff done?

I think the answer to that is given by this man.

This is President James A.

Garfield, 20th President of the United States.

Now, I don't know if you knew, but President Garfield was also a minister of the gospel.

This is a letter of his that we have from 1858, signed James A.

Garfield at the bottom.

But in this letter, President Garfield recounts that he had just finished preaching a revival service where he preached the gospel 19 times in that revival.

As a result of his preaching, he said that 34 folks came to Christ and he baptized 31 of them.

Now that doesn't seem like a typical presidential activity today, but that's what presidents used to.

Imagine what would happen if President Bush were to have a revival service and baptize people in that revival service.

I mean, that's unconstitutional.

Really?

That's what presidents used to do, because we didn't compartmentalize our faith.

We used to deal with, as a matter of fact, there's so much in history.

We have a piece called The Role of Pastors and Christians that looks at all these historical guys.

But I think Garfield told us why Congress is so far out of touch with where we the people are.

This is what he said a hundred years ago.

He said, now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it's because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

He said, if that body be intelligent, brave, and cursed because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.

And then he became a prophet.

I mean, what he said a hundred years ago is so perfect for where we are today.

He said, if the next centennial, which is where we are right now, does not find us a great nation, it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.

That is, if Congress doesn't line up with where we are, it's because we who have those values haven't done the things we need to to control them.

And this is where it's interesting because when you look at Christian voting statistics in America, do you know that between 1992 and 1996, the number of Christians voting declined by 17%?

Between 1996 and 2000, it declined by an additional 23%.

Christian voting turnout has dropped 40% since 1992.

I can't figure out why those guys in Congress won't protect these things.

It's because we who have those values haven't been electing people to Congress who will have those values.

40% decrease in Christians.

And when you move it into the evangelical Christian arena, now, what we have in America, we have six polls that have been done in the last two or three years where between 85 and 88% of Americans say that they are Christian.

They call themselves Christians.

That's 240 million Americans call themselves Christians.

We could debate whether they really are or whether they live like it or whatever.

So when you boil it down to those who really live their faith, what we have are what are called 60 million evangelicals in America.

Evangelical is someone who says, I am a Christian.

Jesus Christ has personally changed my life.

I believe the Bible is the basis of life.

I spend regular time in the Bible and in prayer and in going to church.

Bible-believing Christians are called evangelicals in the political community.

So we have 60 million Bible-believing, Bible-living Christians in America.

Those 60 million who have the right values and who live the right values, only 15 million voted in the last election.

That's only one out of four with those values.

Matter of fact, we have 24 million who are not even registered to vote.

They couldn't even be salt and light if they wanted to, because they can't even vote in that arena.

Now, people see those stats and say, oh man, that is depressing.

That is some of the most exciting news I have seen in a long time.

I mean, consider.

We're in the middle of this culture war, and if you will, both sides are evenly balanced.

It's kind of like having a teeter-tot or seesaw, and it kind of evenly balanced.

I mean, what are we going to do with marriage and what are we going to do with religious expression?

We're just kind of evenly balanced on these things.

And if you will, it's like an athletic competition.

It's like a football game.

Here we are at a football game.

We had two teams competing, and at halftime we're tied.

We're not quite sure who's going to win in the second half.

Now, you recall in a football team, you've got 11 players on your team.

So here we've been competing in the first half.

They've had 11 players, but we've only had one fourth of our team on the field.

We've been playing three players against their 11 players, and we're tied at halftime.

If the rest of our team shows up in the second half, the culture war is over.

It won't even be close if we simply show up.

I would be really distressed it with 60 million and we mean if we had 60 million evangelicals and they all voted and we were tied in the culture war, it would be really tedious.

But that's not the case.

We only have one-fourth of our team there and we're tied.

We ever show up.

See, it's not a culture war anymore.

So I want to close this morning with a challenge.

And by the way, what we've been talking about is nothing more than the scripture out of Proverbs 29.2 says that when the righteous rule, the people rejoice.

When the wicked rule, the people groan.

Quality of government's not in your constitution, although we have a phenomenal constitution.

That constitution is worthless in the hands of people who do not use those same values, those same religious and moral values.

So in America, this verse means something different than it does in other nations.

You see, in America, whether the righteous rule or whether the wicked rule depends on what we do with them, because we put them there.

Nobody gets there without us.

Even the federal judges don't get there without us choosing the presidents who appoint them and the senators who confirm them.

So this verse, if you were in China, if you were in, if you were in Cuba or elsewhere, that verse doesn't mean anything at all.

But in America, it means stewardship.

And that's why I like this challenge that was given by Matthias Burnett in 1803.

Matthias Burnett was addressing a joint session of the Connecticut legislature, is all the legislators there, and up in the galleries were all the citizens.

And with all the citizens there, this is what he said.

He said, To God and posterity, you're accountable for your rights and your rulers.

Wait a minute.

What do you mean I'm accountable to God for my rulers?

I didn't even vote last election.

Yeah, exactly.

That is the point.

We account to God.

You see, remember in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the master came and he gave all the stewards these trusts, these responsibilities.

He took off and said, I'll check with you later.

Uh take care of it until I come back.

So it came back and he said, What'd you guys do with what I gave you?

I gave you this government.

What'd you do with that government I gave you?

Oh Lord, we decided not to get involved with that.

Oh, not an optional choice.

He gave it to us.

We've got to be good stewards of it.

I gave you this vote.

What'd you do with that vote I gave you?

Oh, Lord, I decided not to use that vote.

That's not gonna be a good answer either.

Or if you say, Well, Lord, I know you gave me that vote, but I voted my pocketbook, that's not gonna be the right answer either.

See, righteousness exalts a nation, not economics exalts a nation.

I gave you this government to be a steward of, I gave you a vote to be a steward with, what'd you do with it?

See, he expects, and that's why it says to God and posterity we're accountable.

And this posterity aspect is really interesting because we, you know, regardless of what our eschatology is, and you know that the Christian church is divided even into denominations over eschatology.

Are we pre-trib or mid-trib or post-trib or odd trib or pan-trib?

Are we pre-melil or all melil?

I mean, we'll go through all the different views.

Regardless of what our view is on eschatology, we know that Jesus Christ commanded us in Luke 19, 13.

He said, occupy till I come.

So, whatever our view is, we know that we have to be found doing when he returns.

And so within that framework, that's why we understood that we had to be acting so that if he didn't return in this generation, we have not ruined it for the next generation.

And that's why he said, Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered you.

See, that's the stewardship we have.

And what is it that's been the foundations that make us different?

Religion and morality.

And of course, Psalms 11:3 says that the foundations be destroyed, what do the righteous do?

Psalms 11:3

For us, our responsibility is to make sure that we preserve not only religion and morality in our own life, but also religion and morality in community life and national life.

We've got a responsibility to choose to select people who will preserve those principles.

Bless is that nation whose God is the Lord.

But that didn't happen without godly people ruling, which doesn't happen without godly people electing them to rule.

So it comes back to our responsibilities.

And if God's gonna bless the nation, it comes back on us.

So we know, hands down, that if you don't have a personal relationship with Christ and live by the principles He sets out in His Word, His morality, your life's not gonna work well.

It's also the same way with a nation.

It's also the same way with a family, church, anyone else.

We've got to get those principles back at the foundation of what we do, and we've got to get away from compartmentalizing our faith.

It isn't that our faith.

You know, one of the great experiments you need to do is just every once in a while take a newspaper, throw it down in front of you, and start taking headlines and saying, How does the word of God apply to that story or that headline?

We need to get back in the habit of thinking the word of God applies to every single thing in life, and let that start reshaping the way we think about our life and our culture.

God bless you guys.