Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: 1 Peter 2:12-17

N:

Welcome

Good morning, and thank you for being a part of Family Worship here with the church of Eastern Hills.

I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor, and if you’re our guest this morning, I’d like the opportunity to thank you personally for being here.

At the close of service, I will stay down here at the front for several minutes, and if you’re a guest today, I invite you to come after service and introduce yourself.

I have a gift to give you just to say “thanks” for your visit to EHBC today.

We’d also like to get a record of your visit, whether you are joining us in person or online today.

You can text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a link back to our digital communication card.

If you’re in the room and prefer analog communication cards, you can use the one in the back of the pew in front of you, and either drop that in the offering plates by the doors as you leave at the end of service, or bring that card down to me when you come to say hello.

Announcements

Many of you might not know that we have a church library from which you can borrow books and videos.

That’s because for the most part, the library has been by appointment only since COVID.

However, we’d like to get the library back into having available times for the church family to use it.

We’re shooting for having this begin in two weeks, on February 12.

The plan is for the library to be open for a half hour following Family Worship each Sunday, and for an hour every Wednesday night beginning at 5:30 pm.

However, this means that we need a few volunteers to agree to staff these times.

Amanda Bowman is our church librarian, and she’s looking for 2-3 people to help out.

If we can get more, that would be great.

You can email her at amandab@ehbc.org to find out more or to let her know you’re interested in helping.

In four weeks, the BCNM will hold our annual Evangelism Conference at Sandia Baptist Church.

The conference is free, and will be held Monday night, February 27, and all day Tuesday, February 28.

It will be full of great preaching and music, breakout sessions on various topics, and have wonderful opportunities for fellowship with other believers.

You can register by visiting bcnm.com/nmec/.

LMCO ($28,017).

Goal period ends on Tuesday.

Opening

This morning, I’m excited to share this final message of this series on our Statement of Belief.

It’s been good to go through this as a church, and I pray that these messages have brought some clarity and understanding to what we believe as a church, and why it’s so important for us to all be on the same page.

Our plan for the near future is to link each message from this series to its corresponding article in our Statement of Belief, and we pray that this will be useful for you as a refresher, or for those who are looking for a church family and want to know what we believe before they visit.

Now, as we get into this last message, let’s stand as we are able in honor of God’s holy Word as we read our focal passage from the first epistle of Peter:

PRAYER (Iglesia Hermosa in Santa Fe)

This morning, we are looking at the topic of Religious Liberty.

Simply stated, religious liberty is the right of every person to worship God, or not, as they see fit, without any interference from the government, but under the direction of God, to Whom all of us will give account.

Our focal passage from 1 Peter is one of the main passages to consider as we contemplate the relationship between the citizen Christian and the government, the relationship between the law of the land and the law of Christ.

One of the incredible truths about Christianity is that Religious Liberty as we know it is a decidedly Christian notion: the belief that a person cannot be forced to worship, and therefore, must be free of government interference in their pursuit of the object of their faith.

In fact, Peter shows that our submission to the governing authority we find ourselves under is something that we choose to do because we are free in Christ.

This is why our Statement of Belief has a section on Religious Liberty:

EHBC’s Statement of Belief, Article 19: Religious Liberty

“Church and state should be separate.

The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends.

… A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.”

While every world religion claims to be true, we can know that only Christianity actually holds that title because it is the world’s most verifiable religion.

Everything on which Christianity is based happened in real public, in real time, and recorded by real people, and not just one of them, either.

Jesus really lived, and He really died, and He really rose again.

And this one true faith holds to the fact that one’s relationship with God is first an individual faith—that a person is saved through surrender to Jesus as Savior and Lord, not through doing good works, appropriate family ties, church membership, or national identity, and neither the person’s salvation nor their worship of God can be forced upon them by anyone, even by the government.

Southern Baptists have long been champions of Religious Liberty.

Article XVII of the Baptist Faith and Message, which our Article 19 comes from, is much more comprehensive.

Article XVII says:

“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it.

Church and state should be separate.

The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends.

In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others.

Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God.

The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work.

The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends.

The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind.

The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion.

A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.”

What biblical foundation do we have for espousing the position of Religious Liberty set forth in this article of the BF&M, or in our Article 19?

Like many other ethical positions we as Southern Baptists hold, they are drawn from Scripture as a whole, rather than simply being from one or two specific passages.

Jesus tells us that He is the author of freedom, both of conscience and of worship when in John 8:32 He says,

and in 8:36, where He said:

Jesus drew a distinction between the church and the state in Matthew 22:20-21:

Paul instructed the Christians at Ephesus in 1 Timothy 2:1-4 to live in harmony with the government, even to pray for their leaders.

He then went so far as to tie our citizenship to our witness by saying:

Of course, Romans 13:1-7 clearly tells us that as Christians, we have a responsibility to submit to the authorities God has placed over us and that God has ordained government to punish the evildoers and to reward those who do good.

These are just some of the passages that this statement of Religious Liberty is founded upon.

There are many others.

For the purpose of our study today, I want us to look at several of the statements made in Article XVII of the Baptist Faith & Message and expound upon them briefly.

1) We believe in religious liberty.

It is to this end that Article XVII begins with the affirmation that “God alone is the Lord of conscience.”

This conviction is at the very heart of all religious liberty, the idea that God alone is the Lord of conscience, the one Who, in His Word, tells us what to believe and practice.

One of the great Southern Baptist preachers of last century was George W. Truett, at the time the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas.

In 1920 Truett delivered a sermon from, of all places, the steps of the United States Capitol, if you can imagine.

As he stood there preaching to somewhere between 10 and 15 thousand people, he summed up what most Southern Baptists believe religious liberty is.

Truett said:

“It is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of His conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices.

Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty.

There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty....Toleration is a gift from man, while liberty is a gift from God....God wants free worshipers and no other kind.”

We do not believe people should be, or truly even can be, forced to worship God... nor do we believe they should be in any way kept from worshiping God.

As Baptists we have long been the champions of this kind of religious freedom, not just for Christians, but for all people.

It is interesting to note that it was Baptists who pushed for religious liberty with the framers of the Constitution of the United States.

Dr. Jerry Johnson, a leading Southern Baptist ethicist, and former President of the Criswell College in Dallas, noted that, “While most of the early American Colonies had official denominations, the Baptists worked with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to oppose state churches and to enshrine religious liberty in the Bill of Rights.

John Leland was the most outspoken Baptist (preacher) on religious liberty and exercised considerable influence on Jefferson and Madison.”

Johnson says that Leland's argument was theological when he said, “Religion is a matter between God and individuals: the religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil government, not in any way under its control.”

This conviction that God alone is the Lord of conscience not only applies to religious liberty where our government is concerned.

As Baptists we have always resisted any kind of hierarchical oversight from a denomination, as we saw a couple of weeks ago when we considered the topic of cooperation.

The depth of our conviction runs so deep here that we strongly believe each local church is autonomous, retaining the right to affirm their own beliefs, doctrinally examine their own pastors and own their own property.

Religious liberty is not only freedom from meddling governments—it is also freedom from any kind of external religious body which would seek to force their creeds upon our conscience.

While our Statement of Belief is based on the Baptist Faith & Message, it’s not because it must be so—it’s because we believe the Baptist Faith & Message to be a confession that accurately states both what the Bible says and what we believe.

As Baptists, who have often been the victims of religious intolerance, we believe strongly in religious liberty, that being the right to worship or not worship as directed by one's conscience, not by the government.

2) We believe in the separation of church and state.

I mentioned last week that in late October of 2022, Pew Research published a couple of research articles relating to the concept of the United States of America and the terms “Christian nation” and “Christian nationalism.”

They are interesting reading.

According to their research, 60% of Americans believe that the founders of our country originally intended for the U.S. to be a “Christian nation.”

However, only 45% believe that the U.S. should actually be a “Christian nation.”

Much of the disparity in the opinions of those surveyed has to do with semantics: the meaning of the term itself.

Many (about 69%) see this in a generally positive light—that a “Christian nation” refers to a country being guided or founded on Christian beliefs, or that the laws reflect a Christian or other generally Christian moral or value foundation.