# Government and Political Involvement

Key Passage: 1 Corinthians 12
Date: June 7, 2024

I forgot to mention Brother Michael Arnold; continue to pray for him. They did put him on a ventilator this morning. It’s very touchy sometimes when they put those in, and in surgery he had—he had got some, he inhaled some things, whatnot. There’s a term for it. I can’t remember. My wife, Ms. Tamer, what’s that called when they—they intubated him today? What’s the call in the surgery when he got all the fluids down his lungs? He aspirated, and so that’s part of the problem. There are so many complications. When I was there, he was in the ICU. The next couple days are just key.

So pray for him if you would. I assured the family in the waiting room that you would be praying, and just keep praying for Mike Arnold. I got a text right before from the family. They said he’s resting well. That’s good; that’s positive. They said they think there’s a little bit of an upward swing since they put the ventilator in that way. It’s kind of opening his lungs up. His body just could not get any infection out of there, and it’s opening it up a little bit and breaking it up.

So this is helping something. Praise the Lord for that. Pray for Brother Michael Arnold, would you do that? I just would love it in my church family—just kind of bond together in prayer for Mike Arnold. I mentioned, I think, this morning, but just kind of keep it on the mind. He was in and out during the day. Every person I brought up, I was trying to joke a little bit with him and his wife, whatnot. Every person I brought up, he’d just brag on them. I thought, I hope I’m like that if I’m ever in and out like that.

He wouldn’t mention a bad word about a person, just always bragging on them. I was trying to joke, you know, and he just bragged on every person brought down. I thought that’s awesome. So pray for Brother Mike Arnold, would you please? Let’s, as a church thing, let’s pray for him. That’d be great. I’d tell you what, and I’m sorry, I’m messing the schedule up. I forgot to mention it earlier, but let’s just stop and pray for him right now. Would you do that? That’d be great. That’d be great. Brother Tim, he kind of sits over here in your section. Would you lead us, just stand and lead us in a prayer for Mike Arnold? Would you please do that? Amen. Thank you, brother.

Brother from Rutherford County Baptist Coalition, I’m excited about that and seeing how the Lord will use that. I appreciate Brother Adam, Ms. Melissa, just the vision, burden, desire. So many people involved in politics are just doomsday about how bad it is. I appreciate his positive spirit and his vision for Christians being involved. I think it’s just key. He’ll tell you more about it tonight, but I appreciate that.

By the way, I appreciate them moving down just out of faith. They didn’t have a job, didn’t have anywhere to live at the beginning of all that, just moved down by faith to where God had it to be. Praise the Lord for that. I appreciate his vision. He’s going to come preach for us. Let’s give him a warm Rutherford County Baptist welcome. Would you do that, please?

All right, you can turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. I’m going to give a little bit about this ministry before we get into the message. The Baptist Coalition is going to be—we’re going to start out here in our church with delegations. Basically, we have the privilege of having at least three of the cities here in Rutherford County represented. We’re going to have some members from LaVergne, some from Smyrna—which I get to be one of those now that we’ve moved here—and also Murfreesboro.

We will be attending our local meetings, and then we will all be together attending the county meeting. We will meet at least once a month to talk about everything that’s going on, answer questions that anyone might have, discuss what’s happening, and figure out what we need to support, oppose, and what we need to do. Eventually, we do want to push this out and invite more churches to also be a part of it.

On the printout that we had, I do have it listed that we want to have at least two people go from each area. It’s biblical to go in twos, so we want to have that to go with us. I wanted to mention, too, before I even brought this idea to the pastor, I actually ran it by a friend of mine that’s an evangelist, and I also ran it by a friend of mine who is involved in politics. He actually worked for the Republican Party for a short time.

So I had both sides look at it to see how it would work. They looked at both the plan that I came up with and also the mission statement that we came up with. I did that before I even went to the pastor with it. They both loved it. They both said it sounded doable. We were just waiting for the right time to do it. So we look forward to seeing what we can do.

Now, the problem that we’re going to run into for the time being is that all of our local meetings and the county meetings are on Thursday nights. The pastor is very selfish and has taken up all of the Thursday nights for Bible Institute. So I am not going to actually be able to go to some of the meetings starting out, but I will be watching the replay of them on the website. So if anybody wants to be involved, wants to go to the meetings, take notes, if you have any questions, come and see me. I’m going to go back and watch those videos, and then I can look for that specific thing, and we can talk about it.

So that’s basically what it’s going to be in a nutshell, starting out with 1 Corinthians chapter 12. You should be there. If you all stand with me, I’ll read a couple of verses here in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and then we’ll get into it tonight. First Corinthians chapter 12, starting down in verse number 27, it says, “Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular. And God has set some in the church: first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers; after that, miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”

So I’m going to start out with a little bit of a history of myself being involved in politics, but I wanted to start with this passage. I know this is the spiritual gifts that God has given, and a lot of them we don’t have anymore. But how many of you have ever heard this passage taught or preached, and you’ve heard the pastor say, “Now what Paul really meant when he said governments is that it was the gift of leadership or the gift of administration? That God gave them the gift of organization to be able to lead in a ministry”? Have you ever heard that?

Well, here’s a radical idea. Remember, Paul was a Pharisee, right? A Pharisee was a religious leader, but was also a political figure. Here’s a radical idea: Maybe when Paul said government, he meant government. Now, I know that there are some things in this list that we don’t have anymore, right? We don’t have apostles today. We don’t have prophets. We do have teachers. We don’t perform miracles, but we know that God is still in the miracle-performing business. We don’t have the gift of healing, but we certainly do have the gift of help. We don’t have the gift of tongues, but I think that there is a gift of government.

And I’ve talked to the pastor about this in the past, and I’ve talked to others, and I’ve always looked at my love of politics as a gift from God—understanding of politics as a gift from God. I know it’s not for everybody. I get that. It is tough to learn some of the things that they do. I know Brother Chip and I, we’ve gone to a few of the meetings, and I see him taking notes and listening, but I know that all I have to do is lean over and say, “This is what they’re doing,” and he’s like, “Oh, that makes sense.” But I know. I understand. I get that.

So a little bit of my testimony in politics: My first memory of being involved in politics was as a child. My father would come home from work, and he would turn on C-SPAN, and he would watch the congressional hearings on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. I didn’t understand anything that was going on, but I knew that I was enjoying it. I caught the bug and I started to really want to be involved in politics.

2014 is when I first got the opportunity to do that. I volunteered on the Rob Astorino campaign for New York governor, made some phone calls for his campaign. 2016, I was invited to go to—in our county, Cougar County—there’s a women’s Republican club that holds a spring brunch every year. I was invited to go to that. I met with the county chairman and the city chairman and talked with them about my interest in being involved in local politics and possibly even making a run for some office in our city in Auburn.

Later that year in 2016, the New York State Republican Party put out an ad looking for people to work for their local congressman’s campaigns. So I basically picked up a part-time job working and getting paid to go door knocking and doing some surveys for my congressman, who at the time was John Katko. Now, after that, the rest of the time I spent trying to get him out of office, which is a whole 'nother story.

In 2017 is when I was first asked to run for city council in Auburn, which was not successful, but for a first-time candidate running with no name recognition, I picked up about 15.5% of the vote, which is not terrible for a first-time run. After the election, I was asked to join the county committee and take over their social media because they were looking for somebody to reach younger people. They figured that I was young, so I would know how to do it. At the time, I was 30, but if you know—you can ask Melissa—if you knew our county committee, I was the young one for sure. And the Lord blessed; we took that. I was able to take that account from a couple of hundred all the way up to over a thousand before they finally took it away from me for other reasons.

In 2018, we had our annual leadership vote in our county committee, and the lady who was getting ready to be elected as the next chairman—our county is very long, and so we actually split it up into three sections. So we would have our chairman, and then the chairman would ask three people to serve as vice chairmen so that we could cover the entire county. Whoever was in charge of the middle third also doubled as the chairman for the city of Auburn, and she asked if I would serve in that role as vice chairman and chairman for the city, and I was elected to that position.

2019, I was again asked for city council to run for city council, and again I did not win that. I was also invited that year to join the board for the newly formed Cougou County Loves Life pro-life organization. It was a Catholic family, and they invited me in because they wanted to have a different religious point of view. And I said, “Well, pretty sure killing babies is universal, but sure, I’ll join. Let’s do it.”

And then in 2020, the man that I mentioned before that I ran this idea by—I worked for his campaign, state race, which he did not win, and both of us ended up leaving the state of New York, and now you’re stuck with me. So here we go.

All right, so Romans chapter 13. We’ll get into Romans chapter 13. Another goal that I have with this coalition is to show that joining, getting involved in local politics, is a lot like getting involved in a local church. You think about it: you get saved, you join a church, then you start serving in ministries. And it’s the same way with our local politics. You find out what you believe, you join a committee, and then you join a subcommittee.

So if you think about it, right? You get saved, you join the church, and then the next thing you know, you are a deacon and running the PA and the choir, right, Brother Marlon? Right. You get saved, you join the church, and then the next thing you know, you’re mowing the lawn, you’re fixing the bus, and you’re teaching the boys, right? Right? You join the church, you get saved, you join the church, and then you become the court jester, right, Brother Chip? There you go. Right?

So it’s the same way with our local politics. You find out what you believe, you join a committee, and then you serve on a subcommittee. It might be organizing fundraisers. It might be planning events. It might be stuffing mailers to go out to people. It might be the person that drops off the yard signs. It might be running for office. But there are so many other things that are necessary, things that are needed in our local politics.

Romans chapter 13 is a typical passage that we go to to talk about our relationship with our earthly government, but it is also the outline that God has given us for a biblical form of government. Now here’s the thing: We need Christians on both sides. We need Christians that will be good citizens to be an example of what our relationship with government should be, but we also need Christians in government to show what God’s plan is for government.

Do you think that Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and McConnell—and not even Donald Trump—do you think that they’re going to be able to show the world what a biblical form of government looks like? No. That’s why we need to be involved. So let’s look at some of these now.

All right, I’m going to break this down. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you, and then I’m going to tell you what I told you. All right, so that way you’ll figure it out. I think that we can break this chapter down into three sections. First section, I think, is what God wants in the form of a good citizen. I know the Bible is written to Christians. I know the book of Romans is written to the Christians in Rome. I get that. But I think that being a good citizen, as we look through this, I think we all will be able to think of some good, moral, maybe even religious, lost people that we know that would be considered good citizens.

Secondly, the middle section of this chapter, I think, is what we could call a decent citizen. And again, I don’t think that’s limited to Christians. I think that we can say that we know some lost, moral people that could be a decent citizen. But the last point is how to be a godly citizen. And that one is obviously for us. That’s the one that we need to pay attention to all of it. But that’s the one that really falls on our shoulders.

All right. So now you know we have three points. Now you know where we are in the message. Okay. Romans 13, verse 1, it says, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” We know that all authority comes from God, whether it be, you know, the man is the head of the home, the parents are in charge of the children, a pastor is in charge—the earthly head of our church—and in government, we have governors and mayors and county commissions, and we have police that enforce the law. We have a chain of command, and every single one of those are put in place by God. And therefore, we need to be subject to them. We need to be following the rules. We need to be obeying the laws in every aspect of that.

Verse two, it says, “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive for themselves damnation.” What is an ordinance? In the first two verses, we see this word pop up. It’s simply an authoritative order that is set by God. We know that God is not the author of confusion. So he’s given us this chain of command to follow, this order that we’re supposed to follow, so that things can be done decently, things can be done in order, so that we can live in peace with our neighbor and peace with our earthly government.

Now, according to that verse, it does say, “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.” We know that that person is there by God, good or bad. They are there by God. It says that we should not resist them. There are some exceptions to that rule, which we will look at in a little bit, but keep that in mind.

In verse three, it says, “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. But thou then, wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.” Basically, you could say that this is another way of saying, you reap what you sow. If you do what you’re supposed to do, if you follow the rules, you obey the laws according to this biblical form of government, you are to be left alone or even rewarded for it. But if you don’t—if you do the evil, if you don’t follow the rules and obey the laws—then it is the government’s job to punish you. So if you don’t want to get punished, if you don’t want to reap that, don’t sow it. So basically, it’s a reap what you sow principle there.

Verse four, “For he is, for he, that is the minister”—the government official, what we’re talking about, that elected person—“for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” So in this example of a proper minister of God in this biblical outline of government, it is someone who will aggressively seek out those that are doing wrong and punish them, and someone that will recognize and reward those that are doing right.

Now, if there is a situation in your life where you do need to call—if somebody offends you, and I don’t mean “I’m offended”—I’m talking about if somebody commits an offense against you, like it’s a crime, basically, it is not your job to handle it. It is God’s job through the vehicle of our earthly government to take care of it. Look back in Romans chapter 12, probably just a page over, starting in verse 17: “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

So if we have an issue come up, we call the police, we call the authorities. We can take it to court, we can take it to our local government, our county government. We allow God to deal with the situation through that medium of our local government, and we let him take care of it. I always get a kick out of that verse, too, that if we give to our enemies—because if we do, maybe it’s just because I’m from New York, and we have a different sense of humor—but it says that if we are, it says, “Give thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink,” for in so doing, “thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” I just like that idea of killing somebody with kindness. But maybe that’s just because I’m from New York, and we’re kind of twisted.

Anyway, so we let the government handle it under God’s direction. Verse five, “Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” We want to follow the law, we want to obey the law so that we can have a good conscience. We want to follow the law with the idea that we could be rewarded for it. And what is our reward in America? Leave me alone, and let me enjoy my freedoms and liberties the way that I want to, as long as I’m not breaking the law, leave me alone, right? That’s the promise that we have in America. So we do what we are supposed to do so that we can live peaceably, so we can have a good conscience, and just to be left alone, so we can enjoy our freedoms, and we can live peaceably with our neighbor. We can live peaceably with our government authorities as well.

Verses six and seven says, “For for for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”

All right, I might lose a couple of people. Pay your taxes. We are supposed to pay our taxes. It is God’s plan for us to pay taxes to compensate the ministers of God for the work that they are doing. And it’s their job to collect those taxes. Hey, Jesus paid taxes. So if Jesus can pay his taxes, so can you.

And now I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re going to say: “Brother Adam, taxation without representation.” I know, I agree, it’s wrong. And you know what? Praise the Lord, we already won that war, right? And you know how I know we won that war? America, right? We’re here because we fought that war and we won. Taxation without representation, I agree, is wrong. I know what you’re going to say, you’re going to say, “But overtaxation.” Yes, okay, I agree. Overtaxation, we could say that that is theft, right? We don’t have the money problem in America; we have a spending problem in America. If we could reel that in, we wouldn’t have so much of a problem.

I know overtaxation is wrong. I know what you’re going to say: the Libertarian Party is wrong. Taxation is not theft. The Bible says that we owe our taxes to compensate our government authorities, so pay your taxes, and if you don’t like it, then get involved and change it. That’s how it’s going to work. It is their job to collect it; it is your job to pay it.

In verse 7, it talks about some other words here that I want to look at. It says, again, “tribute to whom tribute is due.” Again, pay your taxes. But then it says, “custom to whom custom.” I think that we could say that custom is to have a regular dealing with our government officials, to have a good working relationship with them. For example, my pastor in New York and our state representative—our pastor had his personal cell phone number, and he could call him any time. He would actually go out with him multiple times; he tried to go out with him at least once a month, have lunch with him and talk with him. Our church had a very good relationship with him.

So if he was in the middle of a tight race and he needed some help with a campaign, he could call the church and say, “Hey, I need some help making phone calls. I need some help doing some surveys.” And Pastor would announce it, and we would all take a trip, and we would get together on one night, and we would go and take care of it. But if there was a situation that came up, there was a bill that came up, we would call him—Pastor would call him—and say, “Hey, this bill that’s coming up, we need you to vote for or against it.” And he knew that he was going to be able to get him every time he called it because we had a good working relationship with him.

We should all be able to do that. We should all be able to pick up the phone and call our state representatives, our United States representatives. They should know who you are, and you should be able to call them, talk with them, even go out to lunch with them, and be able to say, “Hey, this bill is coming up; I got a problem with it.” I know Brother Kevin, he was just doing this; he was making phone calls all this last week, calling representatives all over the United States over the Speaker of the House vote. I think they probably heard from him more than they heard from their own constituents this week. But we should have that good working relationship with our representatives.

Then it says, “fear to whom fear.” I think that we should be respecting the person who holds the office, whether you agree with them or not. We have President Joe Biden, right? You respect him because he is the President of the United States of America. In 2012, I believe it was, President Obama came through Auburn, and all my coworkers were picking on me because they know—they knew, they know—I’m Republican. They’re like, “Oh, what are you going to do if he comes here?” And I said, “You know what? I may not agree with him, but I would be honored to meet the President of the United States, because he is the President of the United States.”

And you know what? Even if you don’t necessarily like him, you should have honor to whom honor. Respect the office. Respect the office of president. Hey, look, you’re listening to a guy who came from New York. My governor was Andrew Cuomo. I had to respect Andrew Cuomo as governor and also had to respect the office of governor of the state of New York. But here, let me tell you, there’s the encouraging part of it: It doesn’t matter who is sitting in the mayor’s chair. It doesn’t matter who is living in the governor’s mansion. It doesn’t matter who’s working in the Oval Office. It matters who’s sitting on the throne of heaven, and he was not elected, and he cannot be impeached. So we allow him to guide us through all of these different avenues, these different politicians that we may not like, but we have to respect them and the office that they hold.

Again, this first section about being a good citizen, I think we can say that we all can think of somebody right now that’s lost that could probably fit in that category of being a good citizen.

Let’s look at the next few verses here together. Starting in verse 8, it says, “Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Christians should have a good testimony when it comes to interpersonal relationships or with business dealings. You know, the reason why—we should be a people of our word. There was a time in America when your handshake was as good as a contract, and a Christian should be like that. We should have that kind of a testimony. Because by maintaining that testimony in our interpersonal relationships and business dealings as we move as God directs us, we’re being an example of God’s love and his honesty to the lost world. And if the lost world is looking at how honest you are in your business dealings, how quick are they going to be to trust God? We need to be having those good interpersonal relationships, those business deals that we make so that we can be a decent citizen.

And we need to—again—we need to strive to maintain that good testimony. And, you know, it tends to be easier for a Christian to follow the law. John Adams said that our form of government works best for a moral and religious people. Why do you think that is? My opinion is this: As a Christian, we are trained to study God’s word so that we can better understand it so that we can better serve him. I think that spills over, and we are paying attention as a legislative body comes up with an idea, and they discuss it, and they debate it, and they rework it, and they write a bill for it, and they discuss it, and they debate it, and they rework it, it’s voted on, and as it’s signed into law, we’ve been paying attention; we know what the law says because we’ve been digging into it, and that allows us to be a better citizen because we know how best to live according to that new law.

But how is the world going to know that unless you show them the example of doing that? And then also we have to remember this, that whether we’re following God’s law or man’s law, we’re in the New Testament Age of Grace, and we’re not doing it for atonement. We’re not doing it for forgiveness or any other reason, but to maintain that good testimony. I know Brother Ted and I, we’ve talked about this before. Don’t get scared. I’m not talking about lifestyle evangelism. I’m not talking about it, but we do maintain a good testimony because people do watch that. They watch how we conduct ourselves, and we are to reach the lost world. And again, if we’re not being a good example in this area of interpersonal relationships with business dealings, and if your example is the world’s idea of what God is, then how eager are they going to be to come to know Christ as their Savior?

So we need to be a decent citizen. And again, not limited to Christians, I think we can all think of someone that would fall into that category of also being a decent citizen.

But here’s the part that we get into: to be a godly citizen. This is the part that is directed to us. This is the thrust of the idea behind the Baptist Coalition to try to get people involved. Look down in verse 11: “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” We know the biblical timeline. We know where we are. We know we’re close to getting out of here. And I know what you’re going to say: “But it has to get worse before Jesus comes back.” Yes, I agree with that. But here’s the question: When is he coming back? You don’t know. We don’t know that.

Ronald Reagan said that freedom is only one generation away from extinction. Are you going to sit back and let freedom die while you wait for it to get worse for Jesus to come back? Are you going to gamble the freedom of your children and grandchildren so that they will not be able to serve the Lord with the same freedom that you have?

According to this verse, it says, “knowing the time, it is high time to awake out of sleep.” I’m not talking about being woke; I’m talking about being awake. It’s time to wake up and pay attention in this context of government, of politics. Pay attention to what the devil’s doing. He knows what he’s doing. He’s the one that separated church and state. It was never supposed to be that way, and we need to be getting involved. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to wake up and pay attention.

Verse 12: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” Hey, after you wake up and you find out what’s going on, it’s time to suit up. We know our spiritual armor in Ephesians chapter 6. And you can read this Bible from cover to cover, and you’re going to see multiple passages that tell you to put on your armor. But you know what? There’s not one passage that says, “Take it off.” There’s none. Not every situation in a Christian’s life needs to be a battle, but you are commanded to put on the whole armor of God for a reason. And if you’re not told to take it off, then I think that God is implying that he wants you ready to fight in every situation, at any time in this area of politics. Get ready. Because I got news for you: the fight is not coming; the fight is already here.

When I was on that county committee back in New York, I had to fight with them to be pro-life. They told me that I was too Republican because I believed that killing babies was wrong. You might say, “Well, that’s liberal New York. We don’t have that problem here.” Anybody see what President Trump said this last week? That the reason why Republicans lost the midterm elections is because of pro-life voters. That’s you; that’s me. The fight’s not coming; the fight is here, and it is time to suit up and get ready for that fight.

In Proverbs it says, “The horse is prepared for the day of battle: but safety is of the Lord.” We know that the fight is here. We know that the fight is going to get nasty, but we know that we have God on our side. We get prepared for the battle, and we let God guide us and take care of us through the fight.

Verse 13, it says, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” Now you have to keep in mind when I first wrote this, it was in the middle of 2020. America was burning down. We had riots, streets were filled with violence, we had cities that were literally being burnt—mostly peaceful protests. We had all of that going on. But you know what? Think about it: there’s nothing new under the sun, is there? Look what Paul wrote in verse 13. The world was destroying itself in rioting and drunkenness. The world is destroying itself physically. In chambering and in wantonness, the world is destroying itself sexually. And in strife and in envying, the world is destroying itself emotionally.

And you know what we’re supposed to do? Look over in 2 Timothy. Look over in 2 Timothy, while the world is battling it out, while the world is destroying itself. 2 Timothy chapter 2, look down in verse 3 and 4: “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” You know what? While the world is destroying itself in all of these different ways, let it. Don’t get tangled up in it. You take a stand for Christ. You wake up, you suit up, and you stand up for Jesus.

Now, I want to leave you with this thought, this idea. It might sound a little bit like a contradiction. Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. First Corinthians chapter 15.

1 Corinthians 15, look at verse 58: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Now here’s the contradiction, seemingly. “Be steadfast and unmovable”—that’s to stand your ground, to hold the line. But then it says, “always abounding in the work of the Lord”—that’s advancing the line, that’s charging forward. How can we do both? How can we hold the line and advance the line?

Melissa and I know some people that are really good at one particular issue. And they fight, and they fight, and they fight on that one issue, and they win. They win big on that issue. And they are steadfast and unmovable on that issue. But they never leave that issue. They hold the ground on that issue and that issue alone and they don’t advance to the next one. Now, you have to stand steadfast; you have to be unmovable here, but you have to be advancing the line. You have to be charging forward to the next battle. We can’t just sit back and hope that they don’t come back on that one.

You know, we’ve made some great victories over the last year or so in some major issues, and we need to stay steadfast and unmovable, but it’s time to move to the next one. For example, we won on Roe versus Wade across the country. And here in this state, we have the privilege of living in a state that actually cares about life. Would you know what the next battle is? The Respect of Marriage Act. When they’re going to start forcing churches to perform same-sex marriages, are you just going to sit back and say, “Well, I’m pro-life, and we won this one. I’ll pray about it”? Are we going to get involved and start fighting? Start to advance the line. That’s what we need to do.

Let me give you some ideas here. Remember I told you there’s an exception to the rule of not resisting the powers that be, right? Here’s the exception for the rule: When man’s law goes against God’s law, we follow God’s law. Let me give you an example of that. The law said—man’s law said—when the music started playing, everybody was supposed to bow down and start worshipping an idol. But God’s law said, “Don’t bow down to idols and don’t worship anyone but me.” And there were three Hebrew boys who were steadfast and unmovable. They literally stood their ground and said, “No, we will not.”

The man’s law said, you can only pray in the name of the pagan king. But God’s law says you can only pray to Jehovah. And Daniel swung his windows open wide, was steadfast and unmovable by getting down on his knees so that everybody could see him pray to the one true God. The early disciples were thrown in prison and they were beaten. And the law said, “Do not go out and preach in the name of that man again.” But God’s law says, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature.” And they were steadfast and unmovable and rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to be beaten up for Christ. And they went right back out and started preaching again. They were steadfast and unmovable.

Hey, what about this one? Queen Esther. The law said that her people were to be put to death. The law said that. She was steadfast; she was unmovable in her beliefs. But did she just stand back and say, “Well, I’ll pray about it and God will take care of it”? No. She was abounding in the work of the Lord. When she walked into that throne room, she got involved in the local politics of her country and changed the law.

You take a stand for what God has already shown us. Stand firm on the victories that he’s already given us, and then we work to advance the line. We move forward. We fight. We wake up to what is going on around us. We suit up with the armor of God, and we take a stand for God in this area of politics, in this realm of the political nature.

You know, I’ve talked to the pastor about this. I’ve talked to other people about this in the past. You know, our founding—and he mentioned it too—our founding fathers were Christians. There was only one or two of them that were questionable, but most, they were not deists; they were Christians. And they based our government, our nation, on principles found in God’s word. And then the devil got involved and convinced us that there should be separation of church and state. But you know what? The left is not anti-religion; the left is a religion. And that means that state and church are back together in the same arena, and we aren’t there representing God. We need to get involved. We need to make a change. We need to wake up. We need to suit up. We need to stand up for Christ.

I’m going to leave you with this quote from Ronald Reagan. You and I—it’s just an excerpt from one of his speeches: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us, ‘We justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.’” I ask you again: Will you be the generation that freedom dies on?

Original File: Government - Brother Adam Miller - Sunday PM 182023