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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Brian Hindman

Government, Politics, And The Kingdom Of Heaven

Tackling a potentially very controversial subject this morning.

For those of you who don't know, I used to be a government and American history teacher at the high school level, not college, but high school level, for 17 years.

And In light of the current season, it seems like this is a subject that carries a lot of interest for many of us.

I just wanted today to take a look at Scripture and the counsel we have in the spirit of prophecy and find out what should be our position, our attitude in this area of our lives.

That government impacts all of us, government, politics, and the kingdom of heaven.

But as we begin that study today, we want to know what God's Word says.

What my words have to say, those are meaningless.

Those are just an opinion, and opinions are a dime a dozen.

Matthew 24, 35, the Bible says, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

So we want to know the words of God, the everlasting God.

So as we begin our study this morning, will you bow your heads with me as we seek the Lord in prayer?

Father in heaven, Lord, I commit myself to you as a weak and sinful vessel.

Lord, I ask that you would grant me the gift of the Holy Spirit to speak clearly and effectively the message of your Word and that all people would understand and that we would be convicted of your scripture, what you want each 1 of us to do.

Lord, thank you for guiding and leading us and not leaving us in the dark on these important subjects and these important matters.

I thank you and I praise you as my own personal Savior in Jesus Christ's name, Amen.

Alright, I want to begin by sharing a statement with you that's found in Signs of the Times.

Signs of the Times, July 4, 1899, paragraph 1.

And it says there, The greatest and most favored nation upon the earth is the United States.

Greatest and most favored nation upon the entire earth is the United States.

A gracious providence has shielded this country and poured upon her the choicest of heaven's blessings.

Here, the persecuted and oppressed have found refuge.

Here, the Christian faith and its purity has been taught.

This people have been the recipients of great light and unrivaled mercies." That's the first part of the paragraph but it doesn't end there.

Continuing on, but these gifts have been repaid by ingratitude and forgetfulness of God.

The Infinite 1 keeps a reckoning with the nations, and their guilt is proportioned to the light rejected.

A fearful record now stands in the register of heaven against our land, but the crime which shall fill up the measure of her iniquity is that of making void the law of God." You know the Bible does mention the United States in Bible prophecy, Revelation 13 we understand that.

Pastor David preached a sermon in the spring season on America in Bible prophecy and it's not my subject this morning to really go into that standpoint but we understand that that will happen.

There will be a time when the United States will make void the law of God.

It says in Psalm 119 verse 126, "'It is time for thee, Lord, to work.' Why?

The Lord will rise up and work when his law is made void." Well some key questions I want us to look at today, just some of them very basic and elementary, what is government and what does the Bible say about it?

How did Jesus relate to governments while He was on earth?

Also, what counsel does the Bible give regarding earthly governments?

And then finally, practically speaking, we don't want to just hear a message and have it be theory.

We want to practically know and apply the Word of God to ourselves, what should be our attitude toward politics and government today.

Now I might add that about 5 years ago, my family, we got rid of our television set.

So I have not seen any campaign speeches, I have not watched any talking heads on TV, I have not heard any of those over and over news cycles at all.

All right, now let me just give you just a very brief, basic explanation of what our US government is founded and based upon.

There's a picture here on your screen of the signing of the U.S.

This was an extremely important document that was written over the summer months of 1787, written over a period of about 4 months by a group of about 55 delegates from the states at that time.

Our Constitution, which is the document that our government is supposed to operate based upon, it consists of 7 articles and 27 amendments.

An amendment is a change that has been added to the original document, and I might add that an amendment is fully equal to and has the full weight of the original document itself all 27 amendments are equal to the original Constitution written back in 1787 The very first 10 amendments are called collectively the Bill of Rights and they were added just a few years after the Constitution itself was approved in 1787.

I believe it was 1791 that they were added.

And the very First Amendment is 1 which we should thank the Lord for providing for in our country.

The very first mention in that First Amendment is the freedom of religion.

Number 1, the Establishment Clause, which says that the government does not have the right or the power to establish a religion for all people.

And then number 2, the Free Exercise Clause, that all people within the government of the United States have the freedom to exercise their religion according to their conscience and their own personal beliefs.

Free exercise and the establishment clause.

Now I want you to also realize the Constitution in itself has a built-in provision for change.

In other words, the rights and freedoms and privileges that we have today, they can be altered.

They can be changed, and that is of course through the amendment process.

In Article V, it actually gives 4 ways, I won't go into those, there are 4 different ways the Constitution can be altered or changed.

And it requires a vote from the states along with ratification at the congressional or national level working together, but it can be altered.

And we do have an example of an amendment to our country that was changed.

It was added and then it was later changed.

The 18th Amendment, added back in 1919, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol was added to our government, added to our Constitution, and then about 15 years later, 14 years, 1933, another amendment, the 21st, canceled the 18th.

And so both of those amendments just really cancel each other out.

But it is possible for it to change now notice here the little picture at the bottom this is the back of the chair that George Washington sat in he was the president of the the group here meeting to discuss and Reorganize our government after our first failed attempt at government called the Articles of Confederation did not work out too well.

And Benjamin Franklin, you can see him seated in the middle of this artist's picture, he often stared at this chair and wondered if the sun that was on the back of the chair, is it a rising sun or is it a setting sun?

And he kind of, as he was listening to the discussion over 4 months of debating and discussing how to create a government, he finally at the very end as they came to a conclusion of this document, He came to the conclusion that he determined it is a rising sun.

That the sun in fact was rising on the newly created United States and the government that had been created in just a few short months in which we still follow today.

Well, interesting, that government that was created protects freedom of religion.

In 2009, this is a picture here of a news article of a person named Cecil Bothwell.

Cecil Bothwell is a member currently serving of the Asheville City Council.

And he was, and is, as I understand it, an avowed atheist.

And in the North Carolina state constitution, it actually has a clause in there that says that no 1 can serve in North Carolina, the state of North Carolina, who does not, let's see here, who denies the being of Almighty God, is the wording as it is there.

And so there was an effort to try to remove him because the North Carolina Constitution says you cannot serve in government in this state if you reject the existence of God.

Well, I'm here to tell you the national constitution actually is preeminent over the state constitutions.

And so the fact that the national constitution says in Article 5 that no religious test shall ever be a requirement for any office under the public trust that trumps anything that would be in a state constitution that might say otherwise.

And so he is actually serving his second term still as an atheist in Asheville because he enjoys that freedom of religion, the protection just as we as Christians enjoy freedom of religion, so too do others who are non-believers enjoy that same protection.

Well 3 criteria for classifying governments, and I think I'm going to skip over this for the sake of time because we want to get into the Word of God, but let me just say up here there's 3 ways that governments are defined, and the United States is a federal government.

That is a government in which power is divided between a national government or central government and regional or state governments as we call them.

They have some power at the regional or state level and there are some power at the national level and neither 1 can overthrow the other because that would be to overthrow the whole federal system.

Number 2, the United States is a presidential government.

We invented this form of government in fact in terms of world history.

We have a president who is the head of the executive branch, and he is also co-equal to the legislative branch.

In a parliamentary government, of which Great Britain is an example, the prime minister is part of the legislative branch and operates as a member of the legislative branch, and so they are actually closely tied together as opposed to being separate and independent from each other.

And then finally, the third criteria is who can participate in the government.

There's 2 major forms, a dictatorship and a democracy.

In a democracy, well in a dictatorship, an autocracy is a one-person dictator, such as North Korea or Cuba.

In an oligarchy, that is a government in which there are a small group of people that are holding all the power, such as a family or a small group of generals.

There are over 50 dictatorships in the world today.

Democracy, there are 2 types of democracy, a direct or pure democracy, where all of the will of the people is translated into public policy.

But in a country with 323 million people, that's not practical, and so we have an indirect or representative democracy where we choose people that represent us, that actually vote and make our laws and discuss and debate those things.

Better, more properly known as a republic is a indirect democracy where we rule through, or the rulers are based on being chosen by the people representative.

Well is the United States government any problems?

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Government, Politics, And The Kingdom Of Heaven

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