"Hope Compared: A Biblical versus Political Perspective "

Music.

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I'm

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In season two of this podcast we are looking at why we should have the Bible

as an authority in our lives and then we discuss some of the issues in our society

to see what the authority of scripture says about those subjects.

In this episode we discuss biblical and societal hope.

This lesson was taped about two weeks before the 2024 U.S.

General election for president. Society was placing hope in each political candidate

prior to the election, and we will look at some of those placed hopes.

We will also look at hope from a biblical perspective.

Thank you for joining us in our discussion today.

And so we're going to take a look at what hope is, biblically speaking and worldly

speaking, and see how that is corresponding to the election and what our response to it should be.

So hope means, from Merriam-Webster's dictionary, it's a verb form and a noun

form, and they're very, very similar.

So the verb form says, to cherish a desire with anticipation,

to want something to happen or to be true.

So the key word that I think is in that definition for a verb is an anticipation.

It's something that you want to have happen.

And so that's the verb form of the word hope, where the noun form is a little bit different.

It says a desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.

So when you use it as a noun, it's the idea of I expect this to happen.

So if you are a ranked team in the college football and you're playing a non-ranked

team that's only won one game this year,

your expectation going into that is that we're going to be victorious.

And so you hope that. You don't know for sure it's going to happen,

but that is an expectation that you have of that.

And so those are the two ways that we can look at hope, according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary,

with anticipation, wanting it to come to fruition, or with expectation,

like you are thinking it's going to happen.

And whenever I think of the word hope, I always go back to a quote from The

Hunger Games by President Snow.

This is found in the movies. I'm pretty sure this is not found in the books.

President Snow is a dictator, and he is trying to stop a rebellion from happening.

And in the midst of the series, he says this, hope, it's the only thing stronger than fear.

A little hope is effective.

A lot of hope is dangerous.

A spark is fine as long as it's contained.

And so the goal here is that human beings need hope. It is a strong feeling.

It is something that is intrinsic in us.

We can get out of bed in the morning if we have hope.

But too much hope, according to the dictator here, is dangerous because it can

lead to other things. It can lead to a rebellion and getting more support to that rebellion.

And so even in the secular world, hope is seen as something that is so powerful

and so intrinsic to us as human beings.

And this is what the Bible declares. And so I have a couple of verses to go over.

One is looking at hope as an expectation and the other one as an anticipation.

So in Titus chapter 2 verses 11 through 14, we read, For the grace of God has

Titus 2:11–14

been revealed, bringing salvation to all people.

And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures.

We should live in this evil world with wisdom,

righteousness, and devotion to God while we look forward with hope to that wonderful

day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.

He gave us life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us and to make

us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds.

And so for Paul here, who's writing to Titus,

he's saying the ability for us to do good works,

the ability for us to live with wisdom and righteousness and devotion to God

is reliant upon our expectation that Jesus is coming back.

And that he will take us to where he is. That is the hope that we have.

Living in expectation, we can do the hard things, we can love our enemies,

we can pray for those who persecute us because we have this hope in us.

So it is used in this context as an expectation of being united with Christ permanently.

It is something that allows us to function. It allows us to carry on when things

are really, really hard.

Anticipation is a little bit different, and I'm using it here in a negative

sense to help us to understand the correlation here.

So in Paul's missionary journey, He, at the end of Acts, he is on his way to

Rome and they get caught while he's on a ship in a terrible storm.

And in Acts 27 20, we have these words from Luke.

The terrible storm raged for many days, blotting out the sun and the stars until

at last all hope was gone.

So in anticipation, they were wanting to reach land. They were wanting this storm to be over.

They were wanting to be safe and secure.

That was their desire. But what was happening is that the storm grew worse and

worse and worse, and they were being tossed about like a rubber ducky in this ocean.

It was really, really scary for them. And all anticipation of being saved was gone.

They had nothing to.

And so as the world is saying,

and the world and the Bible seem to be meshing up when I look at what hope is,

it is an expectation and it's also an anticipation, depending on the context that you use it.

And so the study that I have that I will get to in a little bit deals mainly

with voting and the election and the lack of hope that people have in that.

So we're going to first look at what anticipation and expectations might look like in this election.

So we can and probably do have some sort of anticipation, or maybe even we expect

something to happen in this election.

And this is not wrong. It's not wrong for us to live in expectation or anticipation

of what's going to happen on election day.

We can have hope or anticipation or expectation in a specific candidate.

We can have hope in something's going to change if we see that something needs to change.

Or we can be in anticipation of things continuing on the way they are.

If we want things to continue the way they are.

So we can have this for cost of living changing or a world with more peace and eliminating wars.

We can come to this election with lots of different anticipations or expectations

depending on what is going to happen.

And so I went on both of the presidential candidates' websites and I pulled

some things from their websites that if you are voting for one or the other,

you can anticipate happening.

So the first one was from the Harris campaign.

It says, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are fighting for a new way

forward that protects our fundamental freedoms.

Strengthens our democracies, and ensures every person has the opportunity to

not just get by, but to get ahead.

And so the anticipation, if you are voting for Harrison Walls,

the anticipation would be for you to have to protect fundamental freedoms,

to strengthen the democracy and to ensure people have the opportunity to not

just get by, but to get ahead.

And so that's what they're promoting.

And if you are believing in that, then you're going to vote for that if those

are what you want to come out of this, if this is what you are anticipating.

On the other side, the Trump-Vance ticket, they don't have it laid out in paragraph

form, so they just had 20 bullet points, and I just pulled the first three because

Harris and Walls had three.

I'm using the three from Trump and Vance as well. And so the anticipation for

voting for them would be to seal the border and stop the migrant invasion,

carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,

end inflation, and make America affordable again.

And so voting for them, that would be your anticipation. If they are elected,

I would want them to come through on these promises. And they had,

I think, 20 on their page there.

So all of them, I would anticipate them coming.

And that would be my hope, that they would do what they say they're going to do.

And so this is what it would look like as we would anticipate,

as we anticipate the election and what these two campaigns are presenting as

their goals and agenda for the future.

So again, I want to reiterate, it's not wrong to have hope in this election,

whether you want things to continue on, whether you want things to change,

whatever it is, you can have hope.

In this election. Because of the policies that will be implemented.

Because of the differing in what is a priority for each administration,

whatever it may be, those are what we can put our hope in.

And again, it's not wrong to hope in this.

The Bible said that when the sailors were on the ship, Paul was among them,

all hope was lost of getting to shore.

It was an earthly thing, and they had hope, they had anticipation of safety, of rescue.

It's not wrong to put our anticipation into an election and what's going to come out of it.

But according to the study that I read, it seems like there is a lack of hope for this election.

And so we're going to look at this study very briefly.

There are two paragraphs that I'm pulling out that I'll quote from.

But it's a study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.

This study was published on October 7th, so just over two weeks ago.

And it found that, and they did not sample this many people.

Their sampling size was, I think, 2,000 on multiple different sampling sizes.

So it wasn't just one sampling size. It seemed like there were more than one of these.

And they found that 104 million people of faith in the United States were not going to vote this year.

This included 34 million Christians who attend church at least once per month,

and that was their criteria for regular attendance, once per month.

And so in the first paragraph of this study, they wrote.

As the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election campaign unfold,

it appears that the outcome of the close race between Donald Trump and Kamala

Harris will depend on which candidate does a more effective job of getting their supporters to vote.

A new national survey by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, led by Dr.

George Barna, indicates that voting enthusiasm is significantly lower than in 2020,

and that a massive number of Christians who regularly attend church services

are not likely to vote in November.

So in 2020, I believe the percentage of eligible people to vote that voted was

about 61 to 63 percent, somewhere in that range.

Their anticipation with their study here finds that it's going to be about 10%

lower, about 53% of the people that they have polled are,

and based on their numbers, that's what they anticipate the voter turnout to

be across the country this year.

So the enthusiasm is lower, and the reasons for these is what makes me think

that there's a lack of hope in this.

So a little bit later in the study, we read, The research asked people who indicated

they were not likely to vote to explain the reasons for that choice.

The most common reason offered by two-thirds of the non-voters,

or 68%, was a lack of interest in politics and elections.

Other common reasons included disliking all of the major candidates,

that was 57%, feeling that none of the candidates reflect their most important

views, 55%, and believing that their one vote will not make a difference, 52%.

And so those are pessimistic looks, views of this current election.

And it shows that they have a lack of hope in the candidates,

in the candidates' platform, that they don't even think their one vote really will matter in the end.

And so it's a lack of hope in this process.

And this poll has

led to some interesting interactions on

social media and that's really what

got my attention for this and so i'm going to read to you some quotes that were

posted on the social media platform x which was formerly called twitter and

so it reads like this this one was from the handle at JVEV2ME.

And this person says, thousands of Christians refused to vote for Trump in 2020.

Now our country is on the precipice of losing everything we love,

everything we stand for.

And so this person is really interested, is really enthused with this election

to the point where they think everything that they love can be lost from this election.

Everything that is stood for can be lost in this election.

And it's blowing this back on Christians who this person seems to say cost Trump

the election in 2020 because they refused to vote.

And so this person is obviously saying that people who are Christians who are

not voting are giving it to the wrong party.

They're allowing the other party to be victorious.

And that is wrong because we are going to lose everything that we love and stand for.

The next one, which is the handle at Black Label Advisor, an advisor has no vowels in it, says this.

I'll say this, it's immoral to not vote for Trump as a Christian.

Again, someone who is really pointing out the fact that they think Christians

should be voting for Trump.

He doesn't give any other reasons for that, but he's saying Christians who aren't

voting for Trump, they are living an immoral life.

Again, this person is very enthused about the election. They have a lot of hope.

They have a lot of anticipation or maybe even expectations.

And it is coming to a point where they are calling it immoral to not vote for

a specific candidate here.

Then we have one with the handle Two-Bit Idiot, which I think is hilarious.

But it says, Christians who fail to vote for Trump because he makes them feel

icky are weak, not righteous.

And so, again, there's this idea that because Christians aren't going to vote,

they're choosing not to go to the polls according to this study,

that they are not being righteous by not voting. They are being weak in that.

And then the one that really stood out to me is this last one here.

It is by the handle at Eric Metaxas.

And Eric Metaxas is a Christian commentator. He is someone that I have really, really respected.

He wrote the autobiography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He has a book. I have a book from him on my shelf in there, in the office.

He is someone, he has a video on the White Chair films, which is I Am Second,

that I just, I could watch it.

I watch it once a year because it just hits me really, really hard.

It's just really, really powerful to me. But he got on to X and he said this,

if your pastor doesn't insist,

insist in all capital letters, you vote in his next sermon, he may as well preach

on the blessings of abortion. It's the same thing.

And if you attend a church like that, you share in the guilt.

It's almost past time that the American church repent and turn from its wicked ways.

So those are very, very strong words because I have never insisted anyone vote.

And I talked last week on how wrong abortion is and that it is not something

that is in the biblical worldview.

So not responding directly to any of those, I want to go into what they are

saying and look at that biblically.

Is it wrong or a sin to not vote?

And then we'll look at the second premise here.

Okay. So the teachings in scripture tell us to obey our leaders and follow the rules.

This is found all throughout scripture.

So Romans 13 spends a good amount of time on this.

Verses 1 and 2 say this, Everyone must submit to governing authorities,

for all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.

So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted,

and they will be punished.

So Paul here is saying that we do need to obey the authorities that are in our

lives. We need to have people.

In authority over us, and we need to submit to them, humbly submit to them.

In our context, in America in 2024.

We have a differing perspective and view than what Paul would have had back

then, because there it was not a free and open society, even though there were elections,

even though the Senate was voted on by Roman citizens, not everyone in the empire,

the authoritarianness of this and the absolute power that the Roman government

has is surpassing what is happening in America today.

So they had more authority. They had the ability to do things that our government

leaders don't have to do because we have protections in the constitution.

So Paul, saying this in an even more, what is definitely more like a dictatorship

than what we have in America now, says you must submit to governing authorities.

Those are pretty powerful words.

Peter is going to reiterate this and take it up a notch.

In 1 Peter 2, 18 and 19, he says, you who are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect.

Do what they tell you, not only if they are kind and reasonable,

but even if they are cruel.

For God is pleased when conscious of his will.

Patiently endure unjust treatment.

And here we have the someone in authority over someone else.

And Peter is saying, even if this person is unjust, immoral,

and is beating down on you, you are to obey them.

You are to submit to their authority. And we can use the same mentality to think

about the governing authorities over us.

It is something that we need to submit to, even if they are unjust, even if they are cruel.

And lastly, Jesus chimes in with these words in Matthew 22.

This is supposed to be 18 through 21, not 31. But Jesus knew their evil motives.

Sorry, he was asked right before this if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.

But Jesus knew their evil motives. You hypocrites, he said, why are you trying to trap me?

Here, show me the coin used for the tax. When they handed him a Roman coin,

he asked whose picture and title are stamped on it.

Caesar's, they replied. Well, then, he said, give to Caesar what belongs to

Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.

And this applies to, again, the hierarchy of the government,

because in Jesus's time, the Judeans were taxed unfairly.

People were putting heavy burdens and ladens upon them.

And Jesus was saying, if they ask for the tax, they tell you that you're taxed,

you give it to them. You don't rebel.

You don't hold it back from them. You pay them what they want,

even when they are not nice about it, even when they are overtaxing you.

And so this is a, again, evidence that all throughout, especially the New Testament

here is the verses that we're covering, that we are to submit to our authorities.

So the idea is that God places governing authorities over us.

Even when they are corrupt, we are to obey them.

Jesus and the apostles are telling us these in these passages and more.

But it begs a question because there are lines that get crossed.

And so when we come under the authority of a governing system,

what happens when what they say disagrees or is the opposite of what God says.

This is where the Bible shows us Daniel.

Daniel was a loyal and faithful servant in multiple different kingdoms to multiple different kings.

He worked for Nebuchadnezzar all the way down to Darius the Mede,

Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon to Darius the Mede.

And he was very good. He got promoted as a high official in the government because

he was doing what he was supposed to do.

He was submitting to their authority, even when they were pagan.

Even when they were unjust in what they were doing and corrupt,

that he was obedient to them.

But when Darius the Mede came on the scene, people were jealous of Daniel and

his authority that the kings had given to him.

And so they try to trap him by having Darius issue this ridiculous rule that

you could only pray to Darius the king over a 30-day period.

This does not go with what God's word says.

Daniel knew that he should continue to pray out to God.

And so we read in Daniel 6.10, But when Daniel learned that the law had been

signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room with its windows open toward Jerusalem.

He prayed three times a day, just as he always had done, giving thanks to his God.

And so the idea here is that when the governing authorities'.

Rulings and laws are contrary to what God's law says, that is when we have biblical

permission to not follow them.

But when they don't disagree with God's laws,

when these leaders are cruel and they are harsh towards their people,

we are to surrender and submit to them even if we don't like it.

So, trying to put this in the context of what these people on Twitter and other

people like them were saying, we have to ask ourselves, is it a sin to not vote?

When we look at the rules of our Constitution, when we look at how we govern

ourselves, our government does not tell us it is wrong not to vote.

Our government does not say that.

And so our government allows us to do that. And so we should have the freedom

to do that because we are submitting to our government, ultimately to God,

but to our government secondarily.

And they give us that option to vote or not.

So biblically speaking, I don't see a mandate for making people vote or telling

people they have to vote. It just doesn't make sense to me, scripturally speaking.

So because we have the right to vote or not, I also don't think it's valid for

me to tell you who to vote for.

For me, you have the mental capacity, you have the reasoning,

you have the ability to work things out for yourself, you have a connection

to God just like I do, and so I don't think it is right for me to tell you how to vote.

I don't have this platform to promote politics, I have this platform to promote Jesus Christ.

And that's what I feel my objective here is.

I do believe it is a constitutional right that we have to vote.

And I think it is a good thing to vote and to look through the candidates and

all that's happening, what they're saying on both of their websites and listen to what they say.

I think it's a good thing to vote and I would encourage people to vote.

But to say that you must vote is not something that I would ever do because

I don't see the mandate in scripture and our government allows us the choice whether or not to vote.

And so I see a real issue with the quotes that were shared.

It seems like these people are trying to really scare people into voting instead

of really looking at it and saying, all right, this is what we can anticipate.

And this is what I see us anticipating if this candidate or this candidate gets

voted in. That's perfectly fair.

But to make people scared into voting for somebody, I think is manipulative.

And I just don't see a place for that.

So, lastly, I don't want us to put hope in a political candidate.

I don't want us to put, let me

say that again, I don't want us to put our ultimate hope in a candidate.

I said earlier, it's okay to hope in things of this world, and I truly believe that.

But our ultimate hope is not going to be decided on election day.

And so I just want to go through four more scripture passages here that talk

about hope as an anticipation and expectation of God and what he is going to do.

And as we get closer and closer to election day, I hope that our hope is going

to be in these passages and not in one political party or the other.

So 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 3,

1 Thessalonians 1:3

Paul writes, As we pray to our God and Father about you, the people from Thessalonica,

We think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you

have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Paul is saying, your hope is because of Jesus Christ and what he has

done for us on the cross and that he rose from the dead and that he is preparing a place for us,

that he will come back and take us to one day. That is your hope.

And I hope that's our expectation of the future, of what Jesus has done for us.

Then later on in 1 Thessalonians, he writes, And now, dear brothers and sisters,

we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died,

so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again,

we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.

This sets the expectation. This sets why we do good works, why we go out there,

get out of bed every morning, because we expect Jesus to come back.

He was raised to life again, and we believe that when he returns,

all the people that are in him and that have died in him will come back with him.

Then Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4, verse 8, Physical training is good,

1 Timothy 4:8

but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.

This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it.

This is why we work hard to continue to struggle, for our hope is in the living

God, who is the Savior of all people, and in particularly of all believers.

And so it's not just in what he's going to do for us. It's literally in himself.

For our hope is in the living God.

It is his characteristics. It is his love and compassion that our hope is in.

It's not in this, ultimately, it's not in this world.

Ultimately, it is in Jesus and God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Lastly, 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 5.

1 Peter 1:3

All praise to God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great

mercy that we have been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Now we live with great expectation and we have a priceless inheritance,

an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled beyond the

reach of change and decay.

And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive

this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.

So because God raised Christ from the dead, we live with this great expectation

of a priceless inheritance.

And so it doesn't matter what happens on November 5th.

It doesn't matter what happens at the poll. November 6th is going to come,

and we may be disappointed because our anticipations were not met or our expectations were not met.

But when our ultimate expectations are in God, with God, and trusting that he

is going to, he is preparing a place for us in eternity,

then we can face anything and so ultimately that's that's really what was laid

on my heart as I was going through this,

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of hope from a political perspective

and hope from a biblical perspective. If you are interested in learning more

about Faith Chapel and its ministries, please visit gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, our discussion happens one day after the 2024 presidential election.

We will discuss the reaction of people and look at what the Bible says about

leaders and what our response to these leaders should be. we hope to have you

join us next week have a great day.