What We Want

Don’t know if you saw the Presidential Debate on Thursday night.

If you did, it had to solidify in your heart and mind that

We want leaders who want Jesus

If you’ve never read C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, you need to hop on that.

You can easily get a copy for less than 10 dollars and it isn’t a difficult read at all.

It was written in 1942 which might make you think it is dated and a few references are

But the book is timeless.

If you know the story you know it’s about a demon named Screwtape coaching a junior demon named Wormwood who is also Screwtape’s nephew.

One of the theme’s of Screwtape’s coaching is thinking.

He coaches Wormwood on how to keep his target human from thinking about Godly things.

For instance, his human attends church, but Wormwood’s goal is to get his human to notice how annoying church people are.

Notice the things that these people do that get on your nerves and notice how makes them less than you.

And notice how shallow and how ridiculous some of the things they believe are.

With the demon’s goal being, that the more your human notices the church people’s strangeness

The more your human will realize that this faith - or at least this church - is a ridiculous waste of time.

I was thinking about this because this is the week with Independence Day in it AND it is an election year.

And we have this interesting societal convention that says the two things that should never be discussed in polite company is religion and politics.

And at church especially, politics should be rarely, if ever be mentioned.

I’m increasingly finding that curious - maybe even a Wormwood tactic.

Because the most important thing in all of eternity is the Hope we have through Jesus Christ

And the most important thing to our immediate physical lives is who is in charge here.

Religion and politics.

The most important things we aren’t supposed to talk about amongst polite company.

All of that to say this - today we are going to talk politics.

Not candidates per se, not political parties - but our baseline.

The Bible is exceedingly clear about what makes a great Godly leader.

So, turn to Isaiah 32 - we’ll get back to Exodus next week.

But this week is special to our nation and this election will be the most consequential election in most of our lifetimes I suspect.

So - what does the Lord have to say to us about our leaders?

Children,

The younger you are, the less you care or understand about who the governor or president are.

But, even the youngest among us can tell when someone is a good leader or a bad leader.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about.

We want you, at your young age, to learn how to tell if someone is a Godly person or whether they are pretending to be a Godly person.

This is important and I’m asking you to pay as close attention as you can.

The three words to help you pay attention are: Jesus, Right and Justice.

Let us all hear now the word of the Lord from Isaiah 32:1-8

Isaiah 32:1–8 ESV

Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice. Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land. Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed, and the ears of those who hear will give attention. The heart of the hasty will understand and know, and the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak distinctly. The fool will no more be called noble, nor the scoundrel said to be honorable. For the fool speaks folly, and his heart is busy with iniquity, to practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink. As for the scoundrel—his devices are evil; he plans wicked schemes to ruin the poor with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right. But he who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands.

Isaiah 32:16–17 ESV

Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

The is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

They say we vote our pocketbooks.

But what do we really want?

We want our leaders to rule and reign with righteousness and justice

Look at verse 1 - Isaiah 32:1 “Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice.”

Great words - what do they mean?

Righteousness is:

Righteousness refers to the quality of being right - which is kind of nebulous because

What is right?

Remember Pilate saying at Jesus’ trial, “What is truth?”

That’s a valid question.

So follow me here.

Jesus answers that for us in John 17:17

John 17:17 (ESV)

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

So, if God’s Word is truth, then God’s Word defines what is right.

So, being right or righteous simply means that a person is doing what God says.

If a person does what God says, then they will be right.

So we want leaders who do what God says.

Psalm 119:165 ESV

Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.

And if we have leaders who “reign” in righteousness, then they will be just rulers.

Now, what is justice?

Justice is:

Justice is a very simple thing that we all want and expect.

We want in every dealing we have with our rulers, justice - to be treated fairly and impartially.

That if this is the rule for one person, then this is the rule for all people.

Justice “promotes equality among humanity.”

Remember this, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created - equal.”

This is what we crave.

Because God has placed the desire for justice in our hearts.

It is who He is.

It’s who He wants us to be.

Now, does this mean we are advocating for Christian nationalism?

I think that’s a phrase that pretty much meaningless now.

It’s a pejorative that those bashing Christian conservatives use to create fear.

They paint conservatives as gay bashing, trans-phobic, anti-intellectual, anti-science morons - again, to stoke fear among those who don’t really know what a real Christian looks like.

What a real Christians wants is exactly what verse 1 says: Isaiah 32:1 “Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice.”

We want someone who will do what is right and apply what is right to every single human being in our country.

That’s why we truly do want real, Bible believing Christians in law and politics.

If you are truly a God fearing individual your first goal will be to honor God by doing right

And your second goal will be to love your neighbor by being just.

How will we know what we have true Christian leadership?

Read verse 2 while you think of a Godly president or governor.

Isaiah 32:2 “Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.”

To sum that up in just a few words,

A Christian ruler will provide protection and provision

If you want to see what this doesn’t look like, look at pictures of San Francisco.

Read the article about the family who worked so hard to get their son into college in California only to have their car robbed while they went into a restaurant.

The mom said she withdrew her son from that college.

She took him home where it was safe.

Defunding the police is not protection.

Giving needles to drug addicts and cell phones and debit cards to illegals is not provision.

A ruler who is righteous just doesn’t do those things.

When a Christian is the ruler we will see people changed

Look at verse 3 - Isaiah 32:3 “Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed, and the ears of those who hear will give attention.”

I know you’ve said, “I can’t believe my eyes.”

We close our eyes to so many things that are wrong because we can’t stand to see them and we don’t think we can do anything about them.

And we are so desensitized to some evil that we don’t really see it anymore.

It’s just a fact of life.

We had our Save Our Students conference yesterday.

We screened the movie “My Ascension” last week.

We did that to open eyes that are closed.

How long will we allow the assault on our children and on our grandchildren to continue?

Social media is not safe.

The perversion the media is feeding our children and us isn’t safe.

The people pushing these things are not Christian - no matter their words.

Their fruit proves who their father is.

If you want to know what a Christian ruler looks like, see if you can listen to them without a spiritual cringe.

See if when you listen to them, see if the spirit within you soars or if your heart sink.

Because listen:

When we have Christian rulers, these false values will end

Justice and righteousness will prevail.

Gays and trans won’t be beaten in the streets

But neither will we be required to say that a person who is an obvious man is a woman.

False values will end.

That leads us to this question:

What proves we have the wrong person in power?

Isaiah 32:5 “The fool will no more be called noble, nor the scoundrel said to be honorable.”

What is a fool?

A fool is a person who has no morals.

That doesn’t mean that everything they do is immoral

It simply means that everything they do is guided by something else, other than Godly morality.

They have no sense of “moral or spiritual” obligation.

They don’t care if it’s right or wrong as long as they get their way.

Have you ever said, “Those politicians, they will say whatever they need to say to get elected.”

“They say one thing on the campaign trail and do another thing when elected.”

George Herbert Walker Bush: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

He was inaugurated January 20, 1989.

He signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act on November 5th, 1990 that raised taxes.

He lost the next election to Bill Clinton - who, along with his wife, are two of the most morally corrupt politicians around.

What is a scoundrel?

The difference between a fool and a scoundrel is the difference between saying and doing.

The fool has no moral compass so he’s here one minute, there the next, for or against whatever seems to be best at the moment.

No rudder - his boat floats where ever the wind blows.

The fool is the one in the church watering down the gospel.

He’s the one who plants seeds of doubt and preaches an almost gospel.

A scoundrel is different.

A scoundrel is cunning, plotting and devious.

The scoundrel is the one who plans to deceive you - who wants to deceive you.

Verse 7 says, “he plans wicked schemes to ruin the poor with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right.”

They are the ones who take advantage of the good hearted nature of senior citizens.

They are the ones who mark the ballots of incompetent residents of nursing homes and turn them in to be counted.

They are the ones getting rich off of green energy knowing the costs are so huge poor people won’t be able to afford power.

How will we know we have chosen wisely?

Look at verse 8 Isaiah 32:8 “But he who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands.”

I love that word noble.

We need a leader who is noble and honorable.

Who has a character strongly rooted in the Word of God.

Not someone who stands up for the little man

But someone who stands up for all men and women and children - from conception to natural death.

Someone with the courage to stand alone and be ruined if that’s what it takes.

We need men like Telemachus who was so righteously offended by the gore and death and the barbarism of the mobs at the gladiatorial matches in Rome

That he jumped into the ring to stop the fighting.

And he was promptly killed.

But his was the last death ever in the Coliseum.

Or William Tyndale who translated the Bible into English even though it was against the law of the Church of Rome.

He knew if people could only read the Bible in their own tongue, they would follow Jesus and be saved by faith.

But the Church knew if that happened, they would lose their power and money.

Sounds like they were scoundrels, right?

Tyndale translated the Bible anyway and the church had him burned at the stake.

But today, you are reading the Bible in English in a Southern Baptist church because of the nobility of William Tyndale.

That’s nobility.

That’s honor.

That’s Christian leadership.

What difference will justice and righteousness make?

Look at verses 16 & 17 Isaiah 32:16–17 “Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”

Isn’t that what we truly crave?

Peace.

Quietness.

Trust? Forever?

There was a time when we thought we had that is this country - and maybe we did long ago.

But the church got complacent.

Our easy lives compared to the rest of the world lulled us to sleep.

And we listened to and elected fools and scoundrels.

We have allowed people to reframe our faith to one of exclusivity and judgement.

Jesus is exclusive - no one will go to heaven apart from Jesus.

But on this earth and in our relationships with all people, Christians have to be the most respectful and caring people alive.

You know, back during the civil rights era, it was a great virtue signal for white people to say, “Well, I’ve got black friends.”

And now, “Well, I’ve got gay friends.”

Well OK, if you are a Bible believing, God fearing Christ follower, you should have all kinds of friends.

Holding your faith closely

Never affirming any persons sin, regardless of what it is

But forever and always showing compassion, love and care to everyone.

There is no one beneath us.

There is no one above us - save our Lord and Savior Jesus.

OK, but knowing how far our elected leaders and our country and our state is away from all of this:

Can we get there from here?

Yes but it won’t be easy.

In case you haven’t realized it by now, this entire passage is about Jesus.

The verses we’ve read describe Jesus and what His reign is going to look like

And what the effect of what following Jesus will be.

But it’s not about heaven or the new heaven and the new earth.

Jesus established His kingdom on this earth the day He was raised from the dead.

That moment all of creation knew who the King of kinds and Lord of lords was.

And Jesus said about this kingdom He created, Jesus said, “Matthew 16:18-19

Matthew 16:18–19 ESV

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The rock is the confession that Jesus is the Christ.

The confession is the power behind the kingdom

The power that hell cannot stop.

The power to bind Godly things on earth

And to cut loose unGodly things.

A power that isn’t ours - it isn’t natural - it can’t be used by fools and scoundrels.

It is a power that only can be displayed in the lives of men and women, boys and girls who are sold out to Jesus.

And the evidence that we have it, the evidence of that commitment, is:

Repentance evidenced by heart broken and pleading prayer

It will do us no good to sing God Bless America.

It will do us no good to sing, God Bless the U.S.A.

If we want those things to matter,

We must repent with a broken heart.

We must own the fact that the Church is responsible for the fall of America.

We did it - we allowed fools and scoundrels to usurp our words and usurp our beliefs and turn them into caricatures of the truth.

We sleep walked our way in our wealth never giving our Heavenly Father His due for our success

But instead elevated men and women who lied and still lie and expect us to believe it.

And we turned them into our leaders and then we wonder what has happened.

Our first step is to pray broken hearted, pleading prayers to the Lord.

Like Daniel in his book, praying that even though we do not deserve deliverance, Lord deliver us anyway for His Names sake

So people will make much of the Lord.

And then we have to get off our knees and we have to get involved with politics and we have vote.

We’ve got to encourage good solid Christian men and women to run.

We need to stand with them when Satan sends his demonic forces to devour them with lies and half-truths.

We need to stand in the gap for them in prayer.

And when we don’t have a good choice like in the presidential election this year.

We vote for the one who will give us the most protected environment to practice our faith (post-it note voting)

Because - as long as we can speak Jesus - people will be changed

And there is a chance that the United States can once again be blessed by God rather than under the judgement of God.

If you saw the debate, you know that is true.

The man who is standing between us and nuclear destruction can’t string 10 words into a coherent sentence.

And we put him there.

We are going to pray now for our country.

And then we’ll sing.

Christians, examine yourselves.

What is the foremost desire of your heart?

Make sure before you go, that the foremost desire of your heart is to follow Jesus for now and forever more.

Let us pray.