Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: If you have your Bibles, turn with me to the book of Romans. We are in Romans chapter 13, these first seven verses again today. If you don't have your physical Bible with you, feel free to use the one in the chairs in front of you. We will have scripture on the screen as well to help us along as we go.

This has been an important passage of scripture for us these last three weeks as we spend time on how Paul talks about the relationship between God, governing authorities, the church, and the individual Christian. It is often said inside of Christian circles that churches and Christians really should not talk much about politics or government except to assure that everyone is obeying and staying inside of their lane.

You can't talk religion and politics at Thanksgiving, and the church can barely talk about religion and certainly can't talk about politics on Sunday mornings either. But part of what we are finding out is that exactly the opposite is true according to the Word of God. We have discovered already and read a lot of scripture about the truth that God has created the institution of government and leadership and governing authorities to serve His good purposes, and that we as individual Christians and we as the body of Christ, we have a role to play in all of that.

As a matter of fact, it is exactly the Christian and the church who should be able to and should learn how to talk about governing authorities and the kind of role that we play as followers of Jesus Christ. Paul talks about it explicitly and clearly here in the first section of Romans chapter 13. We have read passages where the Apostle Peter does very much the same in his epistles. We have read a lot of passages from the Old Testament and we will read more about what even comes out of the mouth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on this very issue.

We also recall as we talk about this again this morning that we are still inside of the context that began in Romans chapter 12, those first two verses. You may recall that as we sort of turn the page from Romans 11 into Romans 12, we recognize that there is this shift inside of the book. Now the Apostle Paul, beginning with those first two verses of chapter 12, is basically telling us the rest of the book is about this. He appeals to us as brothers and sisters in Christ to present our bodies, everything about us, as living sacrifices to God, holy and acceptable to Him, that we should not be conformed to the image of this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we might then be able to discern or learn what the will of God is in real daily life.

Isn't that an incredible thing? To present ourselves to God, to have our minds renewed, transformed in the image of Christ so that you and I may know what the will of God is in our normal daily lives. We often hunt for that, we search for that, we desire that, and Paul says there is a way of doing that. So we are still inside of that context as we discuss these relationships here at the beginning of Romans chapter 13.

In the context of our relationship to authority and our relationship to our neighbors, I want us, especially this morning, to feel equipped and courageous enough to be the kind of salt and light that God has called us to be. As we work on the last three verses of this section especially, I want to deal with three questions. The first is, why obey? The Apostle Paul is clear that we should submit ourselves to and, where we pick up this morning, he gives us more reasons why we should submit ourselves to governing authorities. Why should we obey?

Then the question that everybody wants to ask for very good reason: What about bad governments? What about bad leadership? What about corrupt leadership? What about governing authorities that might even put pressure on the church to not do what God has called us to do? What should we do with that? What does the Bible say about bad leadership? I think we are going to find some really interesting things in the Word of God. Why obey? What about bad governments? And then, should Christians care?

This is another attitude that often finds itself inside of the church. Christ has saved me, I am on my way either to the Rapture or death, God is going to sort all of these things out in the end, I'm not even going to bother with any of this. I'm not supposed to, I don't want to, there's nothing I can do. Should Christians even care about any of this? I think there is a very important answer to that question.

Let's read our passage of scripture again this morning, beginning in Romans chapter 13, starting in verse 1. Friends, this is the Word of the Lord. "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."

"Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." Where we pick up our thoughts this morning is specifically in verse 5 through the end of this section. "Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience."

Therefore we must be in subjection, he says. He reiterates some of the things he says at the very beginning of this section of scripture for us. Everything else that Paul says is true inside of this passage. Everything else that we have been dealing with about the purpose of government, the role of it, the why God has created it to maintain His order, to promote what is good, and to punish the evil, all of these things we have discussed. The Apostle Paul gives us a few times our kind of baseline disposition: that we must submit to governing authorities. Our starting point is clear.

He makes it clear in about three different ways. He begins with let every person be subject to the governing authorities. He says whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. If God has created this institution and it should be doing these things under God, then our role as Christians is to learn how to submit and obey properly and well. Then he says here in verse 5, and this first stopped me a little while ago, he says now we should be in subjection for two very specific reasons. One of them summarizes part of what is in those first six verses, and the other gives us a little bit more to think about in this passage. We should be subject to governing authorities for two reasons, he says in verse 5: because of God's wrath and because of my conscience.

God's wrath and my conscience. We are being called to be virtuous, Christ-like citizens and there are two motivations. One is external and one is internal, and both of them are very real for the follower of Jesus Christ. The external motivation, we might even call this one the big one: God's wrath will be upon the wrongdoer. This is part of how we made sense of this passage of scripture, that government is intended to do these things and government's accountable to God for doing these kinds of things. When government doesn't, they are responsible to God for those kinds of things.

God Himself is going to watch over all of this and God's wrath is upon the evil doer. It makes sense of our moral universe as Christians. At the end of chapter 12, we recall that the Apostle Paul said don't take vengeance, don't work on revenge inside of your own hearts and minds and lives, but leave that up to the wrath of God because God has said vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

The fact that there is a holy and all-powerful God that exists, that's what makes sense of our moral universe. We know, and this is part of what frustrates us, so much evil in this world seems to go unpunished. But because God exists and we know who He is, we know that God's wrath is upon all sin and that God in the end will put all things right. That gives us hope and courage and peace even in a broken and difficult world. God's wrath is upon the wrongdoer, it's upon evil, the citizens who disobey His commands and the nations that disobey His commands.

There's a fascinating passage of scripture at the end of Matthew chapter 25. Matthew 24 and 25 are often called the Olivet Discourse. There on the Mount of Olives, the disciples are talking to Jesus about the temple. Jesus tells them some stunning things about the end of the temple itself physically. Then they turn to Him and they ask the question, what will be the signs of the coming of the Son of Man? That's a question you ask God in flesh: How are we going to know when You come back and set everything right? And Jesus answers them.

Chapters 24 and 25 are the very core of that answer. At the end of chapter 25, Jesus says something fascinating about how He as King of kings will wrap everything up. In Matthew 25 verses 31 and 32, this is part of what Jesus says: "When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." He goes on to talk about the judgment of nations.

From the Old Testament into the New and the words of Jesus Christ, somehow in the sovereignty and in the providence of God, He is able to hold nations accountable. So God's wrath is upon evil and upon the wrongdoer, including nations. We have this external motivation and internal motivation. We are motivated internally for the sake of conscience, Paul says. We are motivated by Christ-like virtue and the desire to love our neighbor, to live as if Christ were living my life in my position.

We are driven by conscience and the development of our own souls, living out a Christ-like life. Externally, justice needs to be done and will be done. God is holy and righteous and He is the one who will bring all judgment to sin. And then even among us, justice must be done. When evil is done and we recognize it as evil, it's convicted as guilty, justice should be done. In some cases, it will deter people from committing that same crime. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but crime persists anyway. Sometimes justice is a deterrent, but primarily justice should be done because that's the very character of God and that's what He intends to be done. That's why justice ought to be done, to deal with sin and with harm.

The external and then the internal. We obey and we live Christ-like lives, and it is true that God sees and watches all things. Sometimes that feels a little bit trite to say, but I am thankful that God sees and knows and watches all things. But the follower of Jesus Christ does not have this internal motivation because of the fear of God in that sense, but because of what God has done for us. We now live for the sake of conscience, we are living in love for Christ, in thanksgiving to Christ, encouraged because of Christ. We don't live in fear of the wrath of God; we live motivated by love, we live motivated by thanksgiving to now live lives like Jesus Christ.

He says we ought to be the kind of people who obey, who submit ourselves to authorities because God is the one who's going to settle all of this because of the wrath of God and because we are being turned into certain kinds of people. For the sake of our own conscience, is my conscience clear before God in the way in which I live with my neighbor, the way in which I live with my spouse, my family, my friends? Is my conscience clear before God?

Here we are at this point, we're being given these kinds of motivations, these reasons for why we ought to obey. So then that leads us to this next question, the question that I know many of us wrestle with when we read a passage of scripture like this: What do we do with bad authority? What do we do with corrupt leadership? What do we do with governments that do not do what God has asked them to do?

Every time I go through this passage, I sit down and I spend time with it and I'm trying to work through these questions biblically, I continue to be reminded of the group of Christians that Paul first writes this to. These Roman Christians who live under the thumb of the Roman emperor and the way that regime works. There's nothing Christian about it, there's nothing open or free about the world that they live in. In fact, about the same time that Paul writes the book to the Roman Christians that we are reading, the Emperor Nero rises to power inside of the Roman Empire and he is a bloodthirsty, rotten tyrant.

Paul writes these things to those Christians. Those Christians didn't have the kind of capacities and abilities that you and I have, and yet nonetheless the Apostle Paul is saying remember, God's wrath is on the evil doer and we obey according to conscience as well. Christians are not being called to submit to governing authorities because of the virtue of the government. Christians are not being called to obey the government because governments always do what is right. That's not why we are being called to obey government.

We are being called because we are people who belong to Jesus Christ. You and I live inside of the order that He has created and you and I are living according to our consciences as they are transformed by the renewing of our minds, living like these kinds of citizens in this kind of world. We're being called to do this because we belong to the King of kings. We don't belong to our government in that sense; we belong to the King of kings.

We are accountable to God, and governing authorities are accountable to God as well. As we put together the biblical witness about this, there are some important things for us to see and hear about this very question. What about bad leadership? One of the things that happens sometimes in the Word of God is this: God will sometimes use bad leaders to bring revival. He will sometimes use bad leaders to raise up good leaders. He will use bad leaders to bring people back to Himself. He will often use the example of bad leadership and of bad kings in the Old Testament to raise up prophets to speak His word so that His people will turn back to Him. God will sometimes use bad leadership so that the people of God, the church of Jesus Christ now, are able to talk through rotten and corrupt leadership and to speak of the one true King of kings: the pure, holy, righteous, good, great God, Jesus Christ.

As we live under tyranny or frustration or dictatorship or persecution, wherever it is the church lives in those kinds of contexts, it gives the church the opportunity to speak more clearly about who Jesus is. Sometimes God uses bad leadership to simply bring people to Himself. On Tuesday nights earlier this year, we took the opportunity of America's 250th to talk about the founding of America and the role that the Word of God and theology played in that. Part of what we talked about, one of the lenses we used, was the Great Awakening and the preaching of George Whitefield. George Whitefield comes and he preaches, and there are others like Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. So many people came to Jesus Christ under the preaching of George Whitefield that it comes to be known as the First Great Awakening, and it changes the character of the nation. So much so that some of the other founders like John Adams say there is no revolution without George Whitefield. As people begin to feel the press of tyranny, the Word of God is spoken clearly and people come to Jesus Christ in droves.

We need to keep a passage like this in mind in Daniel chapter 2. Daniel 2:21, it just simply says this, speaking of God: "He changes times and seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings." God in His sovereignty, God in His providence, does these things for His purposes, and you and I are finding our role to play in the midst of all of that. So God will sometimes use bad leadership to bring His people to revival. God will sometimes use evil leaders to do His work and even to judge sin. This is an interesting piece, especially of the Old Testament. King Saul was anointed by God to begin with. He does some things that please God and he does obey God sometimes, but then he becomes corrupt and broken. He is evil leadership, but God has used him in pockets to do certain things. King Solomon, the wisest of all kings, the wisest of all people, he brings a certain level of peace and prosperity to the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel is as large and as powerful as it ever is under the reign of King Solomon, so all of this wisdom, and yet he rebels and falls away and he makes really bad decisions.

Then the book of Jeremiah. This is one of the most interesting parts of this. In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is a book about the fall of the nation of Judah. Their sins have reached a certain point where they're going to be judged by God. The prophet Jeremiah keeps warning the people of God about this, that if they do not repent, then the nation of Babylon is going to come, destroy the nation of Judah and the city of Jerusalem, and King Nebuchadnezzar is going to take them off in exile. None of them listen. Poor prophet Jeremiah, as far as we know only a handful of people even listen to what he has to say. Sure enough, Nebuchadnezzar and his armies and Babylon, they show up and they destroy the nation of Judah, take them off into exile. Three times in the book of Jeremiah, God calls Nebuchadnezzar "my servant." Not because he's virtuous, not because he is a morally good person, but because God is using him to judge sin. Sometimes corrupt and broken leadership is being used by God to judge sin. We have to be aware of these things in scripture because we watch these things happen.

But we also see this. We will obey God instead of men when they ask us to disobey God. This often for us is where the rubber sort of hits the road. This is often what we think about when we think about what do Christians do under bad leadership. We will obey God instead of men when they ask us to disobey God. We go back to the book of Daniel and it's got a couple of the clearest Old Testament examples of this. If you grew up in Sunday school class, you remember some of these moments. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to bow down to a pagan idol. They are thrown into a fiery furnace, a fourth man appears and they are saved. But they refuse because a leader has told them upon penalty of death, you will bow down to a pagan idol. And they will not do it. So they don't. Daniel, the story of Daniel in the lion's den, he's thrown into the lion's den because the Medes have made public prayer to any god except the Median king, any prayer illegal. The text says this in Daniel chapter 6: As soon as Daniel knew that law was signed, he went to his balcony, he opened up his window, and he prayed to the God of Israel. As soon as he knew, he prayed to the God of Israel.

We see this in the book of Acts as well. Christ has ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit has fallen upon the disciples, the church is just now getting started there in the city of Jerusalem. These are the religious leaders who managed to get Jesus killed, and now the disciples are at the tip of the spear. They now are preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They now are getting in trouble with the same people who got Jesus crucified. Peter and John are before those religious authorities and they're trying to intimidate Peter and John. Acts chapter 4 verses 18 through 20 says this: "So they called them and charged them not to speak or to teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, 'Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.'" You stand before God for what you think is right. Do you think you usurp the authority of God? Well, you're going to have to figure that one out. We have figured it out. We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. I don't care what you say, I don't care what kind of power you have over me, we're going to talk about Jesus Christ.

That's important. I don't care what kind of authority or fear or pressure you can put on me, when I speak the word of Jesus Christ and His entire truth, this is all I'm going to do. I can't do anything else but speak the truth of the Word of God. We often think about Martin Luther King Jr. Most people think about his letter from a Birmingham jail. How many of you have actually read the letter from the Birmingham jail? Here's part of what Martin Luther King says while he is sitting in jail for disobeying several laws. This might fascinate some of you that he actually says this. He says, how does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in the eternal and natural law.

Well, how do we know if it's just or unjust? We have the Word of God. We have what God has given us in His word. We have what God has given us inside of our normal natural law and social structure, what God has created. We know these things. So you and I are able to, especially when we know the Word of God, determine what is a just or unjust law. You may or may not know that our national motto as proposed by Benjamin Franklin was almost "Disobedience to tyrants is obedience to God." Now that would be an awesome national motto. Disobedience to evil leadership is obedience to God. This is what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego showed us, what Daniel showed us, what Peter and John showed us, and so many faithful Christians since. We will obey God instead of men when they ask us to disobey God.

Then we see this as well. We watch this actually happen in the life of the faithful church across time and across culture. Corrupt and inept governing authorities drive Christians to action. If we believe biblically that God has established authority in the world around us to maintain His godly order, to protect and promote what is good, to deal with what is evil, and if government won't do that, one of the things that then happens is Christians step into the fray and they start to do it. It actually drives us to action to do certain things. We watch this in the lives of the early Christian church, specifically the Christians who first read this book in the city of Rome. We discover that one of the things that the early Christian church did is they rescued abandoned Roman babies. It was a common practice in the Roman world and in the city of Rome that if a family had a baby they didn't want, and it's almost always girls, they would abandon those children or they would throw them over the edge of a bridge, they would throw them in giant piles and just simply let them die.

The Christian church steps up and literally, we have engravings and stories of this as well, Christian fishermen would park themselves underneath bridges to catch babies. Christians would go to these dumps and they would rescue these babies. So the state is blowing it, the culture is blowing it, they're doing things that are evil, so Christians step up and do what is right. It drives Christians to action. So even when they did not have the power of the vote or the power of the dollar, they had power to do other things and they did it. We also read, and we get this in great ways, we also read that Christians refused to leave cities where plagues would hit. We know this in part because we have letters from Roman governors, and they would write to one another about how frustrated they were that a bunch of these Nazarenes, these Galileans, these followers of this man called Jesus, they stay in and they not only take care of each other, they take care of Jews and they take care of our own people when we won't do it. Christians do this, they said, and we don't, and it frustrated them because it made them look bad.

So they're failing, and the Christian church just steps up and does what is right. Corrupt and inept governing authorities drive Christians into action. In our system, we can actually do a lot, a lot more than a lot of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world and through the ages. So I believe it is part of our responsibility to step up and be engaged where we can be engaged. I think it is a shame on the Christian church and these stats just show up every election cycle that around 50% of evangelical Christians don't vote. That is literally the least you can do, Christian. Those Christians put their lives on the line in a city run down with a plague. They parked themselves under bridges to catch babies, and a lot of us just don't even bother to do the least possible thing.

We can do a lot. We can do a lot more than a lot of other Christians through time and through space and different cultures and in different systems. It made me think about some of the things that we here at Living Hope do. These are some of the things that we do, on top of hopefully constantly preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ from the Word of God. That just has to be done on a regular basis. But here are some of the other things that we do and that we have done and that we will continue to do. We advocate against pro-abortion laws. We do that, in fact, sometimes we will have petitions out there for us to sign in order to do this. The last petition that we had here to sign basically said, and this is just a translation of how it works politically, it was one line that just said abortion is evil. That's basically what it said. We want to overturn Amendment 79. Abortion is wrong. Do you know how many pastors refused to put that inside of their foyer because they didn't want to be political?

I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here for just a second. This is how a sermon turns out to be an hour long, but we're not going to get to an hour long. So being a pastor, I hear this, I read this, I see this. You guys know it as well, but especially as a pastor sometimes and sometimes it's face to face, a lot of times it's online as well. Pastors should never be political. Now you tell me: Is the sanctity of life theological or is it political? Because somebody has taken a theological issue, pulled it out of the Word of God and put it into a bucket called politics, I can't talk about it anymore?

The problem is not that the church has become more political; the problem is our politics have become more theological. That's what's happening. And so for us to speak about the sanctity and the preciousness of life in the womb to the end of life, the sanctity of marriage, all of these things, of course it's becoming political, but it is fundamentally the Word of God. So we cannot be frightened by people out there who hate my faith anyway and tell me I can't say certain things or you can't say certain things. I want us to be courageous this morning about following Jesus Christ.

So we advocate against pro-abortion laws because it's biblical. We advocate against the psychological and medical mutilation of kids by working against state-sponsored trans measures. We do that and we will do that. By the way, state-sponsored, the state of Colorado, friends, there are things coming out about the state of Colorado that should just curl your hair. It's wicked, wicked. We advocate against laws that would make reality a crime. Last year, we advocated against HB 13-12 with forced pronouns and educational trans-mandates and so on and so forth. It passed anyway, but the church needed to speak up and say something about it.

We also need to speak out against the anti-God and anti-human philosophies of socialism and communism. It is always anti-God, it is always anti-Christian, always anti-human, it is always pro-violence, and it is always poverty and oppression. Always. And so we speak out against it. One of the other things we do specifically as a church is we are heavily invested in the programs of Sarah's Home and the Daniels Academy, where we do the very, very difficult work of the long-term support and ministry and education and renewal of minor kids who are rescued out of the sex slave trade here inside of the US. This is interesting when it comes to that. There's a lot of law enforcement that does a lot of good with that issue. The state does a really bad job with that issue. So guess who steps up? It's the Christian church that steps up and does what needs to be done. It's you and it's me. It's followers of Jesus Christ.

So hopefully this kind of thing answers our third question: Should Christians care? Friends, Christians are invested in civilization as God has ordered it. I use that word "invested" specifically. Paul says in chapter 13 verse 6: "For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." We also pay taxes for this reason, and we should pay what is owed. Christ was confronted by the Pharisees at one point about paying taxes to Caesar. You know, they're this Jewish minority sort of under the thumb of Pilate and the Roman Empire. So they wonder whether or not they should pay taxes to this corrupt authority.

And Jesus grabs this coin and it's this phenomenal answer. The coin, he says, "Whose name and inscription, whose image and inscription's on this coin?" They go, "Well, Caesar's." He goes, "Well, I'll tell you what: Pay to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's." Yeah, there are things that are owed to our governing authorities, and I don't know, as I read that passage of scripture, every time I just kind of think the man who created the universe is holding this little thing in His hands that you and I think is the universe. And in my head, He throws it back at them. Says, give Caesar this coin. That's fine. Give God what He is owed. And I also love the use of the word "image." The best thing that Caesar can put his image on is a little coin that's now lost in the sands of time. But upon whom has God placed His image? Every single human being. You give to God everything about you.

And very much like our conversation so far, I am responsible to God for my duty. And this kind of thing should cause governing authorities to shake just a little bit, but they are responsible to God for what they do with my money. Does that make sense? They are now responsible for that. And actually, our taxes do pay for a lot of important things. I was having a conversation with some friends earlier this week that made me think about this and think this is actually a very important thing to say. Among the things that we pay for are things like first responders and law enforcement, the judicial system, and our military. And friends, if that is you, God has chosen you to be how the good and the innocent are protected and how evil is dealt with inside of our culture. Some of you have been and are the sword that God gives to government. This is a God-ordained role, and oftentimes this is what we pay for.

So we are invested in civilization the way that God has ordered it. And then, friends, Christians are ready to pray for and to work for civilization as God has ordered it. We are salt and light, and God has designed us to be the hands and the feet of Christ, ambassadors of the gospel of Jesus and agents of the kingdom of God inside of this world. This is what He's called us to be. This notion comes from Matthew chapter 5. The Sermon on the Mount as Jesus says this: "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house."

We can't lose our light. We can't lose our role as God's salt inside of this world because as soon as we do, and this is just the nature of salt itself, when it loses its properties, it's worthless. The followers of Jesus Christ lose this, we just melt right into the rest of the world and we lose our witness. We are salt and light. This is what God has designed us to be. The author Os Guinness, if you don't know who Os Guinness is, he's worth looking up. He wrote a book called "Our Civilizational Moment." He believes that we find ourselves at a bit of a tipping point, that's incredibly important for Christians to pay attention to this, he believes. And so inside of that book, he writes this: "A civilizational moment is a critical transition phase in the rise, course, and decline of a civilization, when a civilization loses its decisive connection with the dynamic that inspired it."

Part of what he is saying is, have we, as an American and Western culture, lost our connection to the Word of God and the dynamic that created us? "Such a moment must then issue in one of three broad options: a renewal of the dynamic that inspired the civilization in the first place, a successful replacement of the original dynamic by another, or the decline of the civilization and perhaps the birth of a new and different civilization late in time and elsewhere in the world."

So he is arguing for renewal, the fact that the church needs to step back up again, we need to make sure that we are connected to the Word of God in that we are responsible, courageous, active salt and light in the world around us. Friends, think of it like this: the only people who can bring the virtues of Christ into this world are the people who follow Jesus Christ. If we are upset, and we should be, at the number of people celebrating the slaughter of three innocent children this week, guess who needs to bring the virtues of Jesus Christ into this world? Well, it has to be the people who follow Jesus Christ.

If people need the love of Christ, they need a faithful, loving church and they need Christians inside of their lives. If people need forgiveness and mercy and they need the only power for salvation and redemption, they need the church and they need Christians to proclaim Jesus Christ. If this world is lost in its sin and its falsehood, it needs the truth and the righteousness of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. There is one organization on the face of the planet that's been empowered and entrusted by God to do exactly that, and it's you and me. Our neighbors need Christians and the church.

Friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is just the best news. It's just the best news. It's the best news for the salvation of the sinner's soul, it's the best news for the renewal and transformation of our lives, our sanctification and Christ-likeness, and it is the best news for civilization in the world around us as well. The gospel's just the best news. So I encourage you friends, don't retreat, do not despair. Do not be cowed by those who hate Christ and His church. But we need to learn how to bear witness, how to speak up, how to live as if all of this is true. Why? Because all of this is true. And learn what it is in our world here and now to bear witness to Jesus Christ. Let's pray.