Your Sacred Choice
Notes
Transcript
11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. 15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
I entitled my message today: Your Sacred Choice. Subtitled it Election day message.
As Christians and as citizens of this country we should make a choice based on the values that are aligned to the Word of God. You have a choice and it is not a small or trivial choice that you have to make.
Just like the Israelites to whom Moses said these words from the book of Deuteronomy, we have an important choice to make, and your choice has consequences, our choice has repercussions. From this passage it is a matter of life and death, blessing and curse. The Lord is telling us today:
“Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19b)
I want to share with you a poignant story that I first heard from a sermon preached recently by a pastor from Cornerstone Church in Virginia, Pastor Gary Hamrick, and he took an excerpt from a book, “When a Nation Forgets God” by Erwin W. Lutzer. The book talks of how Adolf Hitler seduced Germany and even the churches of Germany to follow his Nazi Agenda.
Reading from the excerpt from this book:
One of the most frightening instances of the seduction of Nazism is the eye-witness account of how some members of the church reacted to the Nazism of their times:
I quote..
‘I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!
Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.
We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.
Years have passed and no one talks about it any more. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene’ (p. 21-22)
end quote
I tear up whenever I read this, because the Jews that were herded like cattle into those packed trains represented real souls, they were just like you and me, many of them were families, men, women and their children separated from each other and sent to die in those Nazi death camps. And yet good people, even the church did not do anything.
This is a true story of how a church (the church of Germany) stayed away from the politics of its time in the face of so much evil, and did not lift a finger to save the lives of those Jews killed in the holocaust.
Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Image of Edmund Burke here.
Today, this nation has a lot of silent witnesses to the greatest holocaust of our time. There have been 61,628,584 abortions that have killed innocent unborn babies since the landmark decision of the Supreme Court on Rowe v. Wade.
Abortion:
61,628,584 babies killed and counting.
As of today (November 1):
236, 072 Deaths from coronavirus this year
Compare that to the Number of children who have silently died from abortion:
862,360 in 2020 alone.
Why isn’t anyone talking about this?
Where is the outrage in the church of Jesus Christ?
Are we like that church in Nazi Germany? Are we just doing church and sing our hymns to drown the cries of the millions of babies inside the abortion train as it passes by?
There are other moral issues that Christians have to fight for in this election season, the attack on the Biblical family of same sex marriage, the attack on our religious freedoms (you see that with how the government in many states are using the coronavirus as a weapon against church gatherings and worship), the attack on nationalism - and not a lot of Christians understand this — and I have preached on the end times. The spirit of the Antichrist is working to move the world into a one world government. This is called globalism and God is opposed to all of that. You saw that when he squashed the plans of man for a one world government in the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
So these are real issues and there are more that I cannot tackle in one sermon.. And these issues run contrary to your values as a Christian..
But even if there is only one issue that we can fight for and do something as a Christian, I would say, by the mercies of God that abortion, the murder of innocent babies is already worth fighting and dying for.
Christians open your eyes! Wake up! This should be the issues that direct your vote this election season! You should already know this!
The word of the Lord today has the same admonition from God to the Israelites:
11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
The word of God is very near you, the Spirit of the Lord is supposed to be in you, but why do some of you not see the reality of these things?
The Apostle Paul repeats this admonition from the vantage point of preaching the gospel in Romans 10:
5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
But I believe that true righteousness should be in your heart, that if the gospel is something that we only confess with our mouth so that we can be saved but not something that we live in our lives so others can be saved, we have made a mockery of the gospel of Jesus Christ!
IF you are a Christian, and you separate, set aside, compartmentalize, an area of your life like your politics. Lord I am a Christian, I give this part of my life to you on Sundays but when it comes to my vote, I will listen to what popular culture, the late night show hosts, Hollywood, CNN and the mainstream media tell me. I will think the way they think.
If you are a Christian and that is the way you vote, you have been lied to. You have been sold a bill of goods by this world system that want to continue the culture of death, curtail your religious freedoms, change the Biblical structure of the family and destroy nationalism in favor of globalism which is the grand plan of the Antichrist!
I don’t like his tweets, his personality, his manner of speaking. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus you should vote based on issues and policies and not on personalities, you are not electing someone for the office of pastor of the United States!
You may not agree with me but I will no longer be silent. I have to tell the truth. I only fear God.
I have a case in point: I celebrate the appointment of a pro-life justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. I will not be shy about it. I even pray to God that there will be another pro-life justice that will finally overturn Rowe V Wade and the evil practice of abortion!
So much is at stake in this election, open your eyes! Wake up to the spiritual forces that perpetuate evil in this country!
Verse 15:
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
Your choice, may mean good or evil, life or death, good and evil. Notice that abortion is not really a battle between pro-life and pro-choice (a woman’s right to choose). Abortion is a fight between pro-life and pro-death. Those who are for life and those that are against life or for death.
The word says that if you really love the Lord you will study and know the real issues of the culture and you will do what is right. The issues you hear from the mainstream media are artificial issues that seek to distract you from the real ones. The real issues are spiritual, this country’s real enemy is not Donald Trump, it is not Joe Biden but Satan and his demons who are using people and political parties to carry out his scheme to destroy this nation.
It is outrageous that during this pandemic while the country is closed down, abortion clinics have remained open as “essential”. Business as usual.
Last year, the governor of New York signed into law the expansion of abortion up to the time of death. As a provision of that law, in cases of a botched abortion, or babies who survived an abortion, they are no longer protected under the law. They may just be thrown in a can just like the baby in this picture.
Aborted baby picture here.
I know that this is graphic but you should see this and be angered by this evil murderous practice!
verse 17.
17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.
This country, through abortion and other ungodly policies has been worshipping and serving other Gods.
In the Bible, God condemns the practice of sacrificing infants to the gods of Canaan. God has a particular searing hatred to those who sacrifice children to the altar of these false gods.
36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
Child sacrifice through abortion is America’s greatest sin. God in His justice and righteousness would not leave America unpunished. But He can delay judgement if this country repents and when the church fights for righteousness. We can even see a spiritual revival.
34 Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
We can do something to fight this reproach to our people. This is the start of my election day message.
So how do we vote on election day if you haven’t voted yet? I will not tell you who to vote for, as your pastor I will challenge you to open your eyes and study the main issues that I have presented before you that are at stake in this election cycle.
Issues at stake in this election:
1. Abortion
2. Religious freedom to preach the Gospel.
3. Same-sex marriage (destruction of the Biblical family)
4. Transgenderism
5. Globalism (A diminished America in the global stage)
6. Withdrawal of Support for Israel (Two-state solution)
These are just the top national sins and issues in my list but this list is not complete. however, this should be enough to help you make your decision if you have not voted yet.
What do you do? Take all these issues, find out which of the two parties support them, and when you find out, vote for the other party that opposes them up and down your ballot.
Some of you may have been angered by my message today. Pastor you have turned political! As a pastor, I have to be Biblical! It is my duty to tell you the truth whether you like my message or not.
Last time a member texted me about a message I preached and told me keep politics out of my sermons.
The truth is I am not here to appease you or tickle your ears. I will preach what is in the Word of God. I don’t fear any man, I only fear God and I have a responsibility before Him when it comes to how faithful I am whenever I stand here at the pulpit. My ultimate accountability is to God Who I serve.
In answer to the question, should I talk about politics from the pulpit my answer is, when the politics of this nation puts our Christian values at stake, when life, religious freedom, the Biblical definition of marriage and family, and the Christian worldview is at risk, I should say that if telling the truth and saving the innocent unborn from further slaughter means being political to you... so be it, I have a duty to God first and then to this church to proclaim and stand for the truth.
I will not be like other pastors in this country who hide behind the pulpit and their 501C3 status and fear telling the truth. I will tell the truth even at the risk of you hating me. The fact is I speak the truth out of my love for the church. I would please God rather than man. I will stand someday before the Lord and I will be confident that this church has heard the truth in this critical time in our history and...
We did not ignore nor drown the cries of death inside that train of the holocaust as it rolls by.
This church should cry and stand for righteousness.
What I love about the word of God is that there is always a promise if we stand for righteousness, there is a positive ending to my message.
19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Let us pray.