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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Dealing with Seditions and Insurrections Through the Law of Liberty

Father in Heaven, as our nation and other nations around the world deal with political problems, economic problems, family problems, health problems, we're glad that you have solutions.

And we've come today not to just focus on the problems, but also on the solutions.

And we ask, Gloria, that you would bring things to our mind that could help us in our own personal life, in our family life, in our community, and even in our nation and this world.

Dealing with seditions and insurrections through the law of liberty.

You know, I was thinking, you know, this is in our calendar talking about religious liberty, and then we have New Star guests, we have depressed and recovered guests, and we have our normal church.

So how am I gonna preach a sermon that meets with all those groups?

And he brought to my mind Galatians chapter 5, because in Galatians chapter 5, there's a Greek word that actually translated means dissension and division and the root word you can see there is the root word of that word dissension is actually stasis which means sedition and insurrection.

I was so happy in the Bible it talks about insurrection and sedition.

I said, wow, it's talking about these very things.

And of course, sedition is conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against an authority or a state or a monarch.

And how many of you have been involved in having seditious thoughts, maybe towards not the government of the United States, but against God.

Where you say, I know what he says, but I'm not sure I want to do that.

And, secondly, a violent uprising against an authority or government.

Sometimes we've had violent uprisings even against ourselves, right?

Once you say committing suicide is a rather violent uprising against yourself.

So we have something that we can study here from God's word that may help us.

Now, James Madison, that's not my son, that is his name, James Madison Sabatismos, that's his name.

James, I named you after this man and this is what he said.

There was a time when early after the founding of the Republic that there was essentially a lot of people talking against government and John Adams the second president passed the Sedition Act that said hey look if you talk against the government We're going to put you away, And they actually took all the press away.

They said they were fake news and they put him in jail.

And they said, you're in jail because of what you said.

And James Madison said, if you keep doing this, you're going to lose your country.

And he fought against the Sedition Act and then he said this we have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves We have 1 done what?

Stake our future on the ability of big government to tell us what to do.

How many of you think that James Madison was on to something?

I know when we had kids, we had our first kid, and we said, man, we can control her.

Because we just have 1 and there's 2 of us on her.

Got a little more testy because, you know, 1 of us was gone and there's 2 on 1.

We didn't have a one-on-one situation anymore for kids forget about it.

We had to invest in self-governance If they were not governing themselves the whole family would go down Right.

So Yeah, and you know so self-governance Edmund Burke the famous Irish statesman, had this to say.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their appetites.

Anybody been learning about your appetites this week, a new start in depression recovery?

In other words, we have to be able to control our appetites, put chains on our appetites.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power be placed somewhere and the less of it there is within the more there must be without." So in other words, if you can't control yourself, you need help maybe from from outward sources.

And of course God did that with his people, you know, he put them in the wilderness for 40 years and put some controls and different things on to help them.

But his idea was that they would have God's law written on their hearts and minds.

In fact, it wasn't just Moses who was supposed to go up and get the law in Exodus 19.

If you read in Deuteronomy chapter 5, the entire people were supposed to go up and they weren't ready.

So he said don't come up because it'll kill you.

But Moses you come up and he went, he was a human just like them, and you go back and forth they said to him and in Deuteronomy 5, he said all that the people would have a heart that they would come up the mountain.

In other words, that they would have self-governance, that they would have something placed within.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate, or in other words, lack of self-control, minds cannot be free.

Maybe that's why in America we have more people in jail than most other people in the world, because people are losing control.

Now how many of you want to go out of here set up to not go to jail?

And that's the practical thing we see in Galatians Chapter 5.

Self-govern John Adams Who did you know the cheese did slip off the cracker a few times with the sedition act and whatnot?

In fact, they didn't vote him back in because he acted started acting like a king He dressed up real nice and he come up in a big carriage and stuff I said this guy's acting like a king they voted him out and Anybody but he did have a few good things to say and this was 1 of them This is what he said we have no government armed with the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality or religion.

Our government can't do that he's saying.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

So the founders, the framers recognized that America would fall apart unless the religious impulse, religion just means a ligament, a connection with God was there, a ligamental connection, was between man and God.

And it couldn't be done by a Pope, it couldn't be done by the state, so separation of church and state.

So they were counting on the Ekkaleo, the Ecclesia, the church, those that Ekk, Ekk means out, Ekk topic, Ekk, they would call people out of the world and they would depend on God.

And they said if that's not happening with people, they can't self-govern, govern, and This government and this constitution will be flimsy, and it doesn't matter.

Now, how many think we're living in times like that?

There is a tipping point in this country that's about 50-50.

And scholars say, Pippa Norris from Harvard University says, what we see right now is an authoritarian reflex and That authoritarian reflex is manifested by both sides of the aisle If the Democrats get in trouble in power they get authoritarian with their ideas So they sign all kinds of executive orders bypassing the people and the Congress and the executive and the judicial and they say we need an Authoritarian stand or if you get someone on the Republican side, no, we need our executive orders We'll pass it.

We'll bypass it And there's polarity and they say this is going to last for at least 30 years.

How many think you can't stand it even for 1 more day?

The job of the church is to promote liberty, freedom, and self-control.

And that's why it's essential to go to church.

So let's look now in the scriptures at Galatians chapter 5, this chapter.

And in Galatians chapter 5 verse 1, it says this in the NIV version, it was for freedom that Christ set us free.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free.

How many are going to be free for freedom?

Now in the Old Testament we see the God of freedom setting people free from Egyptian slavery.

Some people tell me that the Bible, you know, promoted slavery.

I mean, it's like 1 of the largest documents where God is taking people out of slavery and we see him sending people from slavery.

I am the Lord thy God which brought thee up out of the out of the house of bondage out of the land of Egypt.

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Dealing with Seditions and Insurrections Through the Law of Liberty

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