The Faith That You Have, Have As Your Own Conviction Before God

I want to start by reading a verse. It's not actually the verse I'm going to preach from, but it's on the topic, or it has to do with what we're preaching on. And that verse is 1 Timothy 1, verse 5. Paul's writing to Timothy. Timothy's a young pastor that he's left behind at Ephesus to set things in order in that town. And so he's giving instructions as a father to a son about how to conduct himself. And one of the things that he says to Timothy is he says, the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And so he's instructing Timothy and he says, one of the primary fruits of your teaching, of your work, of your ministry, of our instruction, is that Christians ought to maintain a good conscience. And if the people of God are to maintain a good conscience, The preachers of God have to maintain a good conscience. He goes on later on, just a few verses later in that chapter, talking to Timothy more personally. He says, This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.

And so here we see not only the necessity of keeping a good conscience, but the fruit of not keeping a good conscience. If we don't have a good conscience, those who have not maintained it have suffered shipwreck of their faith. And so we see that maintaining a good conscience is very important. And so this morning, that's what I want to be talking about is our conscience. And what does it mean to maintain a good conscience? And you might wonder, well, why are you preaching on that? We just got back into Luke last week, and here you are doing something different again. And for this week, I am.

And the reason is because I think one of the biggest problems that's plaguing us right now as a nation is that we don't have a good conscience. That the people of God don't value or don't treasure the necessity of having a good conscience. We don't even understand what it means. We don't negotiate our lives and our decisions in consideration of, can I do that in good conscience? Now, why do I say this is one of the things that our nation's struggling with? Well, I say it because of all of the elections going on. And everyone's talking about it. Everyone's completely inundated with talk about the elections. This, that, or the other thing. You vote for this, you vote for that. You vote third party, you don't vote at all. There's so much pressure and so much talk surrounding this. I'm just sick of it. Are you ready to be done with it?

It's like seeing a car accident and everyone slows down. It's the Gapers delay. They're all looking at the car accident. And you want everyone in front of you to not look and to speed up so that you're not slowed down. But then when it's your turn, what do you do? You slow down and you look. And that's sort of how this is working. You can't help but look. And you can't help but have opinions about it. And so what I think has happened is that this election cycle has exposed the pressures that assail our conscience. And not only that, but also our vulnerability to having our consciences seared. And so the main point this morning is for us to understand what a Christian conscience is and what it looks like to maintain one. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Romans chapter 14, verses 16 through 23. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Therefore, do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil.

For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles. The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves, but he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So I want to give a little bit of a context for what's going on here in Romans, because we're not talking about eating meat, we're not talking about drinking wine.

But we are talking about the principle that's at work in this text. The summary of what Paul's dealing with here is he's got this church of Romans who are new converts. These are Gentiles. These people didn't grow up in the church knowing the law of God. And so they weren't familiar with the worship of God. They were familiar with the worship of idols. And one of the things that every religion requires is sacrifice. It requires blood. And so these Romans would have been familiar with... with making sacrifices to their gods, to their idols. And so then these Romans, who've spent their life in this idolatry, they come to Jesus Christ and they believe on his name. And everything in their life has changed. And now they're Romans in their hometown, or they're Christians, rather, as opposed to Romans. And they serve the true God instead of these idols. And the question that's before them is, can they eat the meat?

that was produced during the worship of the idols. And so during the idol worship, they would have slaughtered animals and they would have killed them. And what are they to do with that meat? Well, they would eat it. They would sell it. And the question is, can you buy it and can you eat it? Can you eat meat that's been sacrificed to idols? And these Romans are really struggling with it because they're going, for me, where I come from, that meat was associated with the worship of idols. And for me to get near it or touch it or eat it, it's sin to me. Because my interaction with that whole thing before was a part of my worship of a false god, and I can't in good conscience eat it. Well, then you've got this other group there who are saying, God's made everything clean, that meat. We know where the meat came from, but God's made these things clean, and you can eat it, and you don't have to be worried that it's sinful for you to eat it.

And this is the conflict because one group is saying, you can eat that meat and it's not sinful. And the other group is saying, I can't eat that meat without sinning. And the question is, how are they to live together? And so there's a number of ways that they could live together. There are lots of options. One is for those who don't eat meat to say that nobody can eat meat. And to say, you're sinning if you eat that meat. Another way is for those who do eat the meat to say, We can eat this meat. God's given it to us and it's good and all these things. And if you don't eat it, you're not being thankful and you're sinning because God's given us this food. The third option is that these two groups can just separate and never have anything to do with each other. One group eats their pure meat and one group eats the meat sacrificed to idols and they don't have anything to do with each other because they don't agree about it. These are the easiest solutions. These are the most common solutions.

Consider when you have a disagreement with somebody. You either want to prove to them you're right, and what do they want you to do? They want you to concede that they're right. And what ends up happening if neither one of you gives? Well, you just separate. You don't spend any more time together. You've been divided. And it's common that we get into situations with people where the thing we're talking about is not inherently sinful or righteous. And that's what we find here. inherently sinful or righteous. It's not sinful to eat the meat and it's also not sinful to abstain. It's a matter of conscience. And what that means is that Christians will disagree about what to do in this particular situation. And they'll both be acting by faith and they'll do exactly opposite things. And so I want to talk about our consciences because it's very, very important that We understand what a Christian conscience is and that you have one as a Christian. That you understand what it is for you to have your conviction. As he says down in verse 21, he says, The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. It's very important that you understand what that means. What are your convictions? And then you understand how to negotiate those in the midst of life. Not oppressing other people with them and not abandoning them because of the pressure you feel from other people.

And so the first issue I want to deal with regarding our conscience is how it fits together with obedience. The idea of a Christian conscience or conscience in general can be abused. And the way that it can be abused is we can say our conscience, whatever we think is right or feel is right, can subvert the word of God. We can say, well, I think it's okay for me to do this. I have peace about it. I prayed about it and I think it's okay. Those are all things that we ought to do. When you're seeking the will of God, you ought to think about it. You ought to study about it. You ought to pray about it. But your conclusion, however strongly you feel about it, if it's contrary to what God's word says, you may not do it. Your conscience can't lead you to disobey the word of God.

This is the first thing that we have to realize is we have to develop a Christian conscience, but we have to develop a conscience that's subordinated, submitted to under the word of God, the authority of Jesus Christ. The place of our conscience is to enter in when particular obedience isn't clear. Can you eat the meat or not? Or more to the point, must you eat the meat or not? And here Paul says, all things are indeed clean. And so the meat's fair game. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. They're evil for the man who eats and doesn't eat by faith. And so how are they to, so where's our conscience fit? Well, this is where our conscience fits. It fits where there's more than one thing to do. And one of the temptations, the reason I bring this up is because Christians spend a lot of time wanting everything to be black or white, right or wrong, yes or no.

And there's plenty of that in scripture. And we can't abandon what God says yes to and what God says no to. We have to love that. That's ground zero of our ministry to the lost, is to proclaim God's yes and his no to them. And the forgiveness of sins that they find when they are supposed to do this and they do that, or when they're not supposed to do this and they end up over here. You're saying that problem is what Jesus solved. But then there's this whole other area of life where we don't have a clear yes or no, up or down, black or white. It's gray. And what's a Christian to do then? Well, I'll tell you what Christians want to do is we want to take gray and say, no, it's either black or it's white because I see it as black. And so if I see it as black, you have to see it as black. The issues that they were dealing with here, think of just, you know, he's dealing with meat and he's dealing with wine. Are Christians allowed to drink alcohol?

Should all Christians drink alcohol? Why? Okay, so if you were an alcoholic, maybe health reasons, is it okay for a Christian to not drink alcohol just because they don't like alcohol? What if they come to your house for dinner? Yeah? How about not have wine? But isn't that an infringement on your liberty? If someone who doesn't drink comes to your house for dinner, and you know they don't drink, and they've got a conscience issue with it, and you're thinking, But it's okay. It's not like you're an alcoholic. You just, you know, it's okay. But they say, no, no, it's not okay for me. What do you do? You say, oh, well, we have this non-fermented grape juice for you. But we're going to have our wine. And here's your liberty. And what pressure do you put on them? They feel pressure to drink wine. Don't you feel pressure to eat and drink the things that the people you're with are eating and drinking? How much pressure?

How much pressure does this create? Do you ever go out to dinner with people to a restaurant and it's like, okay, it's a whole group thing and it's like, it's not clear who's paying. Are you paying or am I paying? Are we going Dutch or what are we? And then what do you do with appetizers? You know, what do you do then? If I'm out to dinner with you, can I order an appetizer if I don't? Because you might end up paying for the thing. Well, I'll order an appetizer. And then there's this pressure. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to pay for the appetizer? Are you supposed to order another appetizer so that they're evenly split on the bill that's going to be separate? Do you realize the pressure that you feel? Don't you ever have someone take you out to lunch and you're like, you're trying to gauge what you can order. No, no, you go ahead first. Because you want to know if they're going to get the combo or not. Or whether they're just going to get a cup of water. Because if they just get a cup of water, then you can't get a combo. It's very complicated.

And this is the pressure that these sorts of things, that we all feel when we're around. You're at someone's house. Is it okay for you to get seconds? I don't know. Is this the kind of house where they have seconds? Or do they take that extra food and it's at their lunch tomorrow? And are you offending their way of life if you want seconds? And we're always dealing with this kind of stuff. Is it sinful to get seconds? Or a combo? Or an appetizer? No, it's not. Might it be offensive? What are you to do? Paul's dealing with these things in this passage, and we're still dealing with them in our own lives. Now, the one thing you wouldn't ever think to do if you were out to lunch with someone and it wasn't clear is to say, are you paying or am I? You can't say something like that because that's rude, right? And so then you're like, well, I'm supposed to pay. And there's all this pressure that you feel.

And I'm trying to illustrate to you in a thing that doesn't matter. I don't care what you do. If you're with me and I take you out to lunch, you don't have to pay attention to what I eat. You can get whatever you want. Don't worry about it. And I'm trying to take something that we can all laugh about and say, yeah, we feel the pressure. And I'm going to say, okay, now that pressure, bring it over into matters of faith and obedience. And I want you to see that that same pressure, those are still there. You still feel them. You don't want to be the oddball. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't eat that. It gives me an upset stomach. I can't have that. You don't want to be that person. And so you feel pressure. And so if you were to take that way of thinking and you come to big picture and you think about the election, do you feel pressure? Do you feel pressure to vote some way or not?

Do you feel pressure to do something or not do something? Are you a bad person if you don't do what whoever says you're supposed to do? Of course you feel pressure. Now, we deal with this pressure differently. Some of us just ignore it. I don't care what you have to say. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. And you're stupid if you don't do what I'm doing. And so it's like we double down. And it's like you're going to put pressure on me. I'm going to make it miserable for you. I'm going to put more pressure on you. And so we respond to it that way. We also can respond to the pressure by saying, oh, well, maybe I should just do what they're saying because what will they think about me? And maybe they'll unfriend me on Facebook if I don't do what they do because you know people are losing Facebook friends over this, right? Have any of you lost Facebook friends over this election? Jamie hasn't because he doesn't do Facebook. The few things in this world that you're not supposed to ever talk about are politics and religion, right?

And so what in the world am I doing? I'm here, we're at church, and I'm talking about politics, and it's like two for the price of one. The reason I'm talking about it is because there's so much pressure surrounding this election that a Christian acting according to his conscience has just been thrown away. And what I want to tell you is that if you don't act in agreement with your conscience, you're going to sin. And I'm not saying... necessarily, if you vote this way, particularly, or this way, particularly, you will sin. You may. You may not. But if you don't act according to your conscience, if you don't act according to your conviction before God, you will sin. And it won't be the end of the world because you sin in all kinds of other ways too, right? But for whatever reason, we really, really care about this election.

And everything's going to fall down around us if the right thing, whatever that is, depending on who you're talking to, if that doesn't happen, everything's going to implode on itself. And so you feel this pressure. And everyone puts on this pressure. And you put on this pressure on other people. And all of the things I've read and all the things I've watched and conversation I've been in, very few people have talked about voting their conscience. And if they do talk about voting their conscience, they often say, well, you need to vote my conscience too. But that's not how it works because it's not written in the scripture what you're supposed to do. And so the question is, how do you know if you're acting by faith? How do you know if you're obeying your conscience? Well, the first thing is you have to have a conscience. You have to cultivate it. You cannot just be a pragmatist and call that your conscience. That's not the same thing. A Christian conscience isn't a logic machine.

So how do you know if you're acting by faith? Well, here's one of the things. When you act by faith, well, let me ask you this. Can you do the wrong thing by faith? Can you screw something up, having realized it later, you know what, I shouldn't have done that. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I realize that was wrong. Of course you can. And so what is the rhetoric surrounding this election? Well, the rhetoric surrounding is you will be personally liable if you don't do what I think you should do. The guilt and the burden of of of the destruction of our of our republic will rest squarely and solely on your shoulders. In the midst of that, you're supposed to act by faith. I said to I was in a recent I was in a conversation and I was in this man and I we weren't arguing, but there was.

intensity in the conversation, adamant about our discussion. And I said to him, man, listen, this is, I don't know how it was a couple of weeks ago, a month ago. I don't know when it was. And I said, what's important to me is that we act by faith and I am having so much trouble figuring out what my conscience is about this because there is so much pressure. You ever just have so much noise around you that you can't think you can't, you, you can't even hear your own thoughts. And so if you want to act by faith, if you want to figure out what your conscience is, all of this noise makes it very hard. And so at one point I was talking to the man and he says, I said, you are reactionary. You're yelling at me. I'm not even saying you have to do this or do that. You're yelling at me. Why are you yelling? How are we going to talk about this if you're yelling?

And by the end of the conversation, we weren't yelling anymore. And it was sweet. We could actually talk. And there was a lot of, it was a fruitful conversation. But one of the things I said to him is, I think you're just reacting to the pressure because someone's making a bad argument that you don't appreciate. You don't like the pressure it's putting on you. And so what you're doing is you're meeting their intensity with more intensity. And that doesn't help you figure out what to do. And it doesn't help you love your brother who might do something different. And that's a real problem. It's a far bigger problem than Because the election is going to happen. But you living in unity with your brothers, that doesn't end on Tuesday. That goes on from now until eternity. And you have to learn how to do that. And to do that, you have to have a very good understanding of a Christian conscience. And there has to be room in your understanding for realizing Christians will do different things. And they'll both do them by faith. So how do you know if you're acting by faith? Well, consider how you would answer if someone questioned your actions.

Why did you do that? Why did you buy that car? It's an awful nice car. Why did you buy that car? None of your business. We're in trouble now because you're defensive. Why did you buy that house? Why did you vote that way? Why did you discipline your kid for that? Why didn't you discipline your kid for that? You realize that these sorts of things, we can get real defensive of really quickly. And I'm telling you that if you've acted by faith, you won't get offended when people ask those questions. Why'd you buy that car? Why'd you go spend $45,000 on a brand new car? Well, I can show you. If you want to know, I can show you how I didn't bankrupt my family and that I'm not just being greedy by going and getting that car. So can you give a reasonable explanation for what you did or not? That's one of the ways you know if you're acting by faith.

Here's another thing you have to know about acting by faith or obeying your conscience. I'm using those things interchangeably. Acting by faith, obeying your conscience. Another way you can know if you're acting by faith is whether or not you're afraid. Fear and faith can never occupy the same space. You cannot be scared of something and then act by faith. It only makes sense if when you go to vote, You're in the little thing and you're scared. I'm scared that if I don't vote for, all kinds of bad stuff's going to happen. It's next to impossible for you to act by faith if you're in there. Scared to death. Fear and faith are mutually exclusive. They can't occupy the same space. One has to drive the other one out. And no matter what news source you read or where you follow, Fear is the currency of this election cycle. That is it. That is the coin in the paper of this election cycle. Fear. What are you afraid of? And, you know, go and figure. We're all afraid of different things. Well, some people are afraid of their liberties being taken away. Well, some people are afraid of their income being taken away. Well, some people are afraid of their welfare being taken away. We're all afraid, and so we all vote according to our fears.

You can't live by fear. The righteous live by faith. They live obeying their conscience. And you say, but if there's this bad thing that could happen, I'm not saying that bad things can't happen. I'm saying I know bad things can happen. I'm saying if, as a Christian, you ought to be able to look at those things that could happen, look them square in the face, and say that could happen. And you don't have any guarantee that if you do something else, you'll prevent that from happening. What did the rich man whose barns were just full to the brim with crops, what was his solution? I'm going to build bigger barns. That's my solution. And what does the scripture say about him? You fool. You didn't know that tonight your soul would be required of you. He thought, well, I can.

I can, I have a problem as I perceived this problem and I have a solution that I think is a good solution. And I'm going to, I'm going to put these things together. I'm going to have bigger barns and more room to store up my wealth. What was the assumption that he made? He assumed he'd live, he'd live long enough to do it. You fool. You didn't know that tonight your soul would be required of you. And so you have to understand that, that to make an argument or to make a case for something, you always assume things. You always make presumptions. Well, I think this, or I'm afraid this is going to happen because of this and this and this. That's just part of arguing. It makes sense. You can't make an argument without making some assumptions, something being likely to happen. But what I want to say to you is you can't be 100% sure this is what's going to happen. There's so many arguments about this regarding politics.

You think of the Supreme Court, for instance. The Supreme Court justices are a big factor in this thing. You presume that the one that three of them are going to be replaced, we're down one right now, right? So one of them needs to be replaced. I don't actually know. I didn't look at it to see how long those seats can go vacant or how long they can slow stonewall it. But everyone's saying there's three justices that are going to be approved. And I understand that some of them are old and that they could die like Scalia did. But that's an assumption that there's going to be three seats filled in the next four years. And it's also an assumption that whoever's in charge or whoever the president is, that they'll put good people that you would like in there. That's an assumption you're making when you're in this process, right? And you go, well, he said he would because I saw the list that he put out.

And I say, okay, well, if he's a man of his word, then you have something to go on. But we're not all men of our word all the time. And we're no different than the Donald in that regard. And so fear and faith can't occupy the same space. The person can't be afraid to eat meat and eat it by faith. They cannot do it. It is sin to them. That which ever is not of faith is sin. They can't do it. They can't be afraid and act by faith. Another thing I'll tell you about acting by faith is that faith is not always expedient or pragmatic. To always be, you know, sticking your finger up and checking which way the wind's blowing and then tending the easy direction, that's not faith. Sometimes it makes sense to go that way, but not because that's the way the wind's blowing. Faith is principled in whatever it does. Faith looks to Jesus Christ and hopes in him and trusts in him, and then it acts. That's what faith does.

Faith doesn't go, oh, if I do this, then that bad thing is going to happen, and so I'm not going to do this. Think of a little child. You don't want them to take a cookie out of the cookie jar. That's good. They're not allowed to have a cookie. They need to come ask you if they can have a cookie. Perfectly reasonable. So do you want your child to love you and honor you and obey you and all that, and so they come ask you, Daddy, can I have a cookie? Or do you want them to think, I'm going to get a spanking if I do that. I don't want that to happen. I'll just not do it because I don't want a spanking. What's that child demonstrating? Are they demonstrating fear or are they demonstrating faith? That child is demonstrating fear. And so what you need to know about that child is they will obey whatever they're afraid of. They will always act according to their fear. And what you want to do is help them grow beyond their fear to living by faith.

And acting by faith. Because what's that same child going to do when they see their sibling do something wrong, but mom and dad didn't see it? Well, if I tell, he's going to beat me up. Well, that child's acting by fear. What does acting by faith look like? It looks like informing mom or dad about what happened. Not tattling, not loving their brother's destruction, but it looks like them acting and being honest and telling the truth. Now, if they do that, is there still the danger of them getting beat up when mom and dad aren't around? Oh yeah, there is. And so faith is not always expedient or pragmatic. And if you're a pragmatist, if you're always looking for the shortest path between two points, you can't assume that that's faith. There's lots of discussion about how long did it take God to, did God create the world? Let's assume that he did for the sake of this argument. So did he create it in literally six days or was it longer than six days?

My question to you is, did it have to take him six days? Don't you think he could have made it all that quick? So why did he take six days? Because he couldn't do it faster? No. There's other reasons for why he took six days to create the heavens and the earth. My point in saying that is to say God's not necessarily, his ordering principle isn't expediency. And it's not pragmatic. And it's certainly not maintaining your level of comfort as you perceive it. When you read in the pages of scripture the things that God allows and causes his people to endure for the sake of his glory and the sake of their souls, you can't come to this election and think, I gotta do what, I gotta save my butt. Because you can't save your own tail. So our consciences have to be informed by scripture. Our consciences have to look to the lordship of Jesus Christ and trust and hope in him and then act. Our consciences can't be bound by fear.

And so moving on, I want to talk about cultivating a Christian conscience. There's a lot of temptations. When we talk about our conscience, we're talking about convictions. Paul's very clear here in verse 21, 2. He says, the faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Convictions are not the sort of thing that we have or that are popular today. You can lose a lot of friends and a lot of sway if you have convictions about things. And so convictions are something that there's a lot of pressure on you to keep them silent. And that's not the same thing as having your conviction before God. Paul tells you here, the faith which you have is your conviction before God. It doesn't mean keep silent and disengage. Have your own private convictions and never...

Expose them to the light of day. That's not what it means. Paul's writing this letter because the convictions of the people in Rome are known. And so your convictions don't have to be hidden. It would have been easier, as I said earlier, for the groups to just sort of separate. But we're going to eat our food, and you're going to eat your food, and we love you, and you love us, and we say those sorts of things, but we don't love each other enough to eat together. And so developing a Christian conscience does not promote disengagement. It doesn't promote secrecy. The apostle says it's good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything which causes your brother to stumble, which means you're in fellowship with people who have different convictions than you. And you live together in peace and unity with those different convictions. And you deal graciously with them, with the disagreements. You ever heard somebody say, well, I don't want to do that because I might mess it up. Some work or some, you know, there's something to be done. And they say, I don't want to do it because I might screw it up if I do it.

Was it true that they might screw it up? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I screw things up all the time that I'm trying to do. I mess up. Don't do what I should have done. Learn later. Oh, not like that, stupid. Like this. And so this idea that you won't act until you're sure you won't screw it up is just a lie. You'll never be sure that you won't screw it up. Remember when I asked you earlier, I said, is it possible to act by faith now and then realize later that you didn't do the right thing? And you all said, uh-huh. And I say, so if you're going to wait to make your convictions known or to have convictions until you're convinced that your convictions won't be wrong or might be found out to be wrong later, I say, you'll never have a Christian conscience if you're committed to never having a conviction until you're positive that you're right. The righteous live by faith.

what will end up happening is you'll end up becoming proud and arrogant because you refuse to engage with the people around you. And so you have to work to cultivate your own Christian conscience. But not only your own Christian conscience. You have to learn, as you do that, you have to learn to honor and to respect other people's consciences. And that's really hard. If you think it's hard to develop your own conscience and to have your own convictions and to actually care, it's hard enough. And then I say, beyond that, you have to learn to respect and to honor. your brother's conscience as well, when it differs from yours. It takes a lot of humility to say, you know what, there are plenty of things that God's, you know, the Lord saith. And it takes a lot of humility to say, the Lord hasn't spoken just so clearly about this particular issue. This sort of thing can create, you know, consciences can create a lot of tension, lots of accusations. They also make for strange companions, real strange companions.

Because what ends up happening is when Christians have convictions, they end up disagreeing with some other Christians, but then they end up agreeing with some other people in the decision, but not in the reasons why. So let's talk politically for a minute. I'll give you an example. Some Christians will vote for Donald Trump, and they'll do it by faith. And they'll be in yoke with... Other people who aren't Christians and who are who absolutely are terrified of Hillary or terrified of of what they whatever they perceive is their exposure and their loss and who are adamant that you have to vote for Donald Trump. That's the only reasonable, logical, appropriate thing to do.

And here will be a Christian casting their lot in with people who they don't agree with about much of anything else. But in which box they mark, they're the same. And that Christian's divided from other Christians that they know and that they have fellowship with who say, I can't in good conscience vote for him. And so then there's the clean Christian over there who I'm not going to vote for Donald. Who are they in yoke with? They're in yoke with libertarians and anarchists and all kinds of other people. And liberals, for one. Because they won't vote for Trump. And these two Christians are looking at each other going, you're like them. And the other one's looking back, no, you're like them. And they're going, no, I'm not like these guys.

I ended up voting the same way, but I don't agree with their rationale. But trying to make the room to make those sorts of distinctions in our own minds, it's almost impossible. Because there's so much pressure. Because you don't want to bear the label. Recently in a conversation I was talking to a guy and he said, I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump because of his moral failings. And I said, Okay, that's reason. He's got moral failings. And I'm not comfortable because he doesn't meet the requirements that the Bible lays out for rulers. And I said, really, what requirements are those? And so they say, well, in Exodus 19, when Jethro comes to Moses and he says that you need to have a man who fears God and who, what are, there's three of them, hates dishonest gain. I forget, what's the other one? Has to do with money.

And he says, well, those are the biblical qualifications for civil government, and you can't vote for anyone who doesn't meet those requirements. And I said, you've got to be careful making that argument. Are there requirements for the civil magistrates? Oh, yeah, the Bible has things to say about it. Is that ground zero of it? There's good principles to pull out of it. But that was something that you can't assume. You know, here, remember, we talked about assumptions. What assumptions do you make if you assume those particular parameters apply directly and fully to our government system? Well, one, you assume that we're God's chosen people as a nation, because those were for in Israel, right? And so what you end up, what I said to the guys, I said, listen, I would be happy for you to say, I will never vote for anyone who I don't think is a Bible-believing Christian.

If that's what you actually think and you won't vote for McCain and you won't vote for Romney and you won't vote for Trump and you won't vote for whoever else is up, I said, just be honest with yourself and with me and just say, I will never vote for anyone that I don't think meets those requirements. And don't make a principle out of it. Just have that as your conviction before God and then act according to it. Or let's talk about whether that's a good, you know, let's talk about that then. But let's work to be honest about what our convictions actually are. And so acting according to your conscience, it's hard to do yourself. It's something that gets easier as you practice it, just like most things do. But it's not something that's easy because it creates division. It necessarily creates division. Christianity is not a monolithic movement where everyone's in lockstep agreeing about every single thing.

There are essentials. There's the foundation, the bedrock of the faith that must be adhered to. And then there's lots of other stuff that goes on in life that's not so cut and dried. And a mature Christian, which is what we all want to strive to become, has to recognize that good men of good conscience will disagree about things that are important. And that that's the freedom that Christ has procured for us through his death. There's a couple of final things I want to say about this election regarding how you ought to think about it and what you ought to do. The first is that whatever you do, you have to do it by faith. This means that you might end up doing something that a lot of other people are doing, but for different reasons, distinctly Christian reasons. The thing that you've probably all noticed I've steered away from, how many of you have wondered, who's Dave voting for? Jamie doesn't care, the rest of you laughed.

You all wonder, he's got to be driving it, who to vote for. And I say, if you've had that thought, then you need to repent of having that thought. Because that thought indicates, I just want to know what the pastor does so I can do what he does. You have to have your own conviction. What if you disagree with me? What if you disagree with me? Can we be friends? Can we talk about it if we disagree? Or is it just, we can't, it's off limits. Whatever you do, you have to do by faith and not fear. And you have to deal with the fallout of your convictions. Maybe fallout's not the right word. You have to deal with the collateral damage. It's just part of doing business, and it's okay. You can talk to your brothers. You really can talk to anybody. They don't even have to be your brothers. You could go on Facebook and be a voice of reason and stability and calm.

the election two days away. You actually could do that. You actually could act by faith there. If you're going to contribute to the din of racket, you can do it sensibly and by faith. So whatever you do, you have to do it by faith and not by fear. This also means you can't be reactionary. That's not faithful. Someone punches you, you punch them back. No, Jesus says if someone hits you on the cheek, turn your other cheek to them also. You can't be a reactionary. and think you're acting by faith. You have to act realizing that all this election is is something for you to demonstrate to you that you actually can be made to care about things very intensely to the point where you'll lose friends over it. Cause tension. It causes tension in families. It causes tension at work. It causes tension with friends or in the classroom. But I want you to know that what you do You have to do by faith, and you have to do it knowing that you're going to answer to God for everything that you do. And you have to be ready to give an account for what you did. And if you were nasty and foul with people, because they were being nasty and foul with you about this election, this election really is just fuel on a fire that just sort of smolders in all of us. All it is is someone came and they kicked open the coals and dumped some gas on it. Boom!

And here comes all this stuff out of us. We have all these convictions and all these arguments and all this hatred in us for people. And I want you to know that that's all this election is. It's going to come and it's going to go. And something's going to happen. Someone's going to be elected. Someone's going to lose and someone's going to win. And then there's going to be the outcome of that downstream. But whatever you do, not just in how you vote, but in how you relate to other people, you're going to have to give an account to God for it. And don't be so foolish as to let this election take your eye off the ball that you still have to love your neighbor. You still have to care for them. And when they put obnoxious things up on Facebook or they've got a Hillary sign out in their yard or whatever it is that upsets you, they need Jesus too, just like you do. And if the result of your disagreements over an election causes you to hate your neighbor, then you're the one who's in sin.

The amount of time and energy that Christians have spent on this election is mind-boggling. The amount of fact-checking, the amount of research, reading ten articles about the same scandal. Would that you would read Scripture that way. And search out the things of God to know the details so intimately. We've neglected our pursuit of knowledge, of knowing God, for entertainment. That's what this is. It's entertainment. I've often said that of debates, I wish they happened in private with no one there. and you had to read the transcript. Because for one, you would show how much we care, because we wouldn't read them. Nearly as many, compared to how many people watch them, we just wouldn't do it. And that says something about our interest and why we go. We come to see the conflict on stage. We come to be entertained. We don't come to be informed about topics. And we've neglected the pursuit of holiness to be entertained by this.

And then to take that entertainment and pump it up like it is so, so, so important and so, so, so detrimental, so consequential in our lives. And we've neglected the things of God for that purpose. I'll close with this. The reason this election has been so divisive is because we've neglected to know the things of God. There have been a few, you know, in the things I've read, I've read men who are reasonable. and who understand how to disagree with someone without attacking them. And it's refreshing to read people like that. And what I've noticed is there's a correlation between the people who speak that way and the people who've studied the Word of God and who know God and who aren't caught up in thinking that either one of these candidates is going to save or destroy our country. We have the choices we have because that's who we as an aggregate, as a group of...

citizens want. And you say, I don't want them. And I say, why do you spend so much time paying attention to them then? We really are worried. And when I say we, I mean me. Really worried about what's going to happen. Really concerned. What's going to happen to churches and free speech and all of these things if Hillary gets in office? The thing that you have to know is that this election is not... ultimately a threat on the Great Commission or on the gospel going forward. It's not. Because these rulers aren't sovereign and what we're really protecting, and I mean me, what I really want to protect is my comfort. But I realize when I read in scripture the things that God's people and his ministers have endured for the sake of the kingdom, I realize his power and his will in this world are not going to just shrivel up and die and melt away.

If speaking God's truth becomes criminal, you can't bind his truth. And so my work is, Paul said to Timothy at the very beginning, this command I entrust to you, Timothy, in accordance with the prophecies, keep faith and a good conscience. That's my job as a pastor. And it's my job to teach you to do that. And part of the way that you'll do that is by not fearing who our king is, who our ruler is. If you want to fear someone and you want to act according to fear, fear God. Because he has the ability to not only kill your body, but having killed your body, to send your soul to hell. And there's not a person in this land who can do that. And so if you want to act according to fear, act according to the fear of God. I don't know what will happen in this election. I do care. I do have concerns. But my hope is in Jesus Christ.

My hope's not in our president or in our Congress or in our Supreme Court. And I don't want your hope to be either. I want you to trust God. I want you to be stable and settled in his kindness and his goodness and in his mercy to his people. And then I want you to act by faith, not just in the voting, not just when you vote, but in all of your life. I want you to act according to your conscience and according to your conviction. I want your conviction to be informed by the word of God. I don't want you voting for murder. I don't want you committing murder. The progress of God's kingdom is not going to be quelled or stopped if it gets more difficult for Christians. And I don't want you to be afraid of life getting more difficult for you. Because you have a king who sits on his throne in heaven and who's preparing a place for you. And that's your home. And his government is perfect there. Now in light of that being settled, behave like Christians here. Love your brother.

Have your convictions, act on them by faith, and trust God. Let's pray. Father, you are the creator and sustainer of this world. Your son is the author and perfecter of our faith. And we pray that you would strengthen us by the power of your Holy Spirit to live by faith, to act by faith, to be prepared to give an account for our actions, our thoughts, our words, when we face you in judgment. I pray, Father, that each one of us would be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ and that we would be found in him, perfect and righteous and holy, not in ourselves, but dressed in his righteousness. And I pray that you would give us love for our neighbors, for our brothers, for the lost, for those that we disagree with. We pray that you'd help us to develop a Christian conscience, each one of us, and to hold our conviction, our faith, before you.

And we pray, Father, that in the last day we would hear, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with little things. Now I'll give you big things. Enter into the joy of your master. We look forward to that day, Father, and to spending eternity with you in heaven. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.