The Church and Power

NHOP School of Pray - How to Pray for Government, session 9 of 12 NHOP.ca

Transcript

hi everybody Welcome to session nine of our Series in the School of prayer on how to pray for government and today we're going to look at the relationship between the church and power uh specifically political power um and so we'll start off right off the top just a couple definitions of the word power what what are we talking about um uh Cambridge Dictionary uh defines it as the ability to control people and events uh britanica describes it as the right or ability to govern to rule or to strongly influence people or situations and Oxford languages defines it as the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events okay so we're talking

about the church its relationship with power what what happens when the church comes into a place of power specifically political power that's kind of what we've been obviously talking about for the last couple months so let's kind of look into this a little bit um first just looking at a few uh just a few ideas from the Bible related to this idea and the first thing I would say is the lure of power or control is seen right at the beginning in Genesis 3 in the account of the Fall um a desire to be in control is at the very heart of our sin nature and where we see that is when the serpent was tempting Eve uh Eve responds uh telling him that God said You shall

not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die but the serpent said to the woman oh you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil so when the woman saw that among other things the tree was desired uh was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate and the Allure part of the Allure was the ability to discern between good and evil like God so that they could act autonomously so they could make their own decisions without deferring to God that's kind of what's what's one of the things that's going on in there it's

this we want to have control over events and situations and and directions in our own lives we want to call the shots uh rather than deferring to The Sovereign God who is the maker and Creator and sustainer of all things rather than looking to him we would rather do things ourselves and that act of defying the one boundary that God had laid out for Adam and Eve that was an act of control that was an act of them saying no I want to do this um it's kind of like man raising toddlers if you have really young children it's amazing how one boundary and they can just fixate on it and they just that's the one thing they want to do Paul even talks like that in Romans

talking about how the the law um brought to light sinful desires or sinful urges that he had and it's that same idea that one boundary shows up and something in man wants to do that one thing wants to be in control and saying I'll decide what I want to do and not do so there's this thing of control that's um this this urge or this Allure of control that's at the the at the core of our sin nature um so that's that's one thing like that's just something that's common for all of mankind we all want that measure of power or control we were drawn to it we want to have that um letter C here scripture includes a lot of directives so now switching towards more towards

leaders and and getting towards more the political idea um you know as we've already seen there's there's a number of passages in Scripture that speak directly to leaders um and it touches on this this issue of control or or or power um in in Deuteronomy 17 one of the passages we talked about early on in the the series uh those laws for kings that Moses laid out they're all about preventing the king from getting too big from getting too powerful from self-aggrandizing um that so if you remember don't build up a huge Army don't amass wives and political alliances and wealth and all these sorts of things that are really abuses of power it's a king uh you know taking

advantage of perks of being the one in charge and really profiteering off of their their position of privilege um and one of the things that's interesting is the the very end of that Deuteronomy 17 passage um the Lord says what the king is to do is to make for himself a copy of the law approved by the Levites and read from it all the days of his life so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers like right there at the beginning he's saying the Temptation is going to be for this for these Kings to want to make themselves more important than others around them and he's saying I want them to stay on a similar plane as their brothers and even in that submitting to the law it's

telling the king to submit to one the law you know the Torah that which was given by God but in that one that's approved by the Levites right so one that they can that they would look at and say yes this is accurate this is good um and in that there's a measure of the king actually submitting to the Levites and actually receiving correction from a document that the Levites have submitted them uh submitted to them there's something of having to submit even though they're the king and so right in right even in Deuteronomy 17 we see hints of it's easy for those in political power to get too big and uh and that is there to stay keep that under control is the idea

the second one here God spoke to Kings through prophets we looked at this just a few weeks ago um and those prophets themselves were subject to the Kings so we highlighted how as a prophetic witness we need to stay in submission to the political leaders and other leaders that we may uh be called to speak to to speak to um but it works the other way around as well the king who has authority over the prophet they're challenged to receive those words of encouragement or correction or even rebuke in some cases their challenge is to receive a word to submit to the word coming to them from someone that is submitted to them like you see there's a there's an interesting dance

here of God's looking for submission from from one another to one another and uh you know we see this throughout the Old Testament when the Kings submitted to the word of the prophet they prospered when they refused or rejected the word of the Prophet they paid a cost um we see that with Saul and Samuel and 1st Samuel 15 uh we see it David and Nathan when Nathan confronts and rebukes David for his crime his sin with basba his crime of having Uriah murdered um and David submits to responds to the Lord from from Nathan the prophet there um but really if you walk through all of first and second Kings or first and 2 Chronicles you'll see time and time again where prophetic voices were sent

to confront Kings and the King had a choice of either receiving and responding to the word or rejecting it and you see so many times how a rejection brought some consequence but a response to it even for King Ahab Wicked King Ahab when he responded to Elijah's rebuke over nebo's Vineyard God had a measure of Mercy even on Ahab and so we see that time and time again God speaks to Kings through prophets even though the prophets are submitted to the Kings the Kings still need to respond to th those words um again this call to submission and response uh if you if we jump ahead to the New Testament you know a couple things from Jesus here uh one Jesus specifically instructed his

disciples about what leadership in the body of Christ Christ is supposed to look like and he he painted a direct contrast to What was seen in the politics of the day so in Matthew 20 uh starting in verse 25 Jesus called his disciples to him and said you know that the rulers of the Gentiles the RO you know probably talk about the Roman rulers uh the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their great ones exercise authority over them they they're not shy about demonstrating their power over the ones that they're ruling over but Jesus said it shall not be so among you but whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you

actually must be your slave even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many and so in Jesus words and actions we see our example or the standard we're to live by as the church which is if we want to if we aspire to be a leader or to have a position of influence or power it's expected of us to take the posture of a servant and to make ourselves lower not to push ourselves higher or stronger okay and uh we also see this again kind of making the same point jesus' own example demonstrated this for us his example was one of laying down absolute power and this is partly why you know in Revelation five Jesus the lamb who was

see the The Lion of the tribe of Judah who is seen to be a slain lamb he's declared worthy to take the scroll and open the seals and worthy to receive worship because he was slain and this points us to Philippians 2 where it talks about you know Paul says to the Philippians in appealing for them to to be humble and to serve one another and love one another he says have the same mind among yourselves that was that is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped or clung to but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant and it goes on to talk about how to talk about how he submitted himself to death even death

on a cross and in Jes we have this example of he did the one thing that human beings don't naturally do which is though he had absolute power he willingly laid it down he emptied himself of the Privileges of being you know um being one with God Sovereign on his throne being in that position he laid that down voluntarily and came not only not only just laying it down and coming but then dying like making himself lower than the people he lived and walked with made himself allowed himself to suffer the death of a criminal of a political criminal uh as one scorned and rejected and despised by men and and that is the example that we're supposed to follow there's a really famous quote uh from

Lord Acton says the one that says power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts abs absolutely and in that quote he went on to Sayre men are almost always bad men even when they exercise influence and not just Authority he said even when it's just influence and not absolute power our bad Tendencies tend to show and he said still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority authority he he called it he said it comes with a certainty of corruption it's so common to see I also found a couple interesting quotes from the same from the same man from the same Lord Acton despotic power is always accompanied by a Corruption of morality

and everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance right it's people will do everything they can to get power especially in politics people will do you know often we'll hear you know people will do many different things to get elected to get into position of power and very very rarely do we see politicians vote for a self-denying ordinance make decisions that harm their own personal position for the betterment of the people it's rare it's rare and this is the this is the power the problem with power is it it becomes something that we we there's something there's a strong lure to it and we want

to grab it and we want to hold on to it and Jesus came to demonstrate and to say that is not the healthy posture towards power and we're called not to reach and grasp for power but to be servants to walk and live as servants among the people we live among and so yeah the problem with power is that it has a corrupting effect on the one who wields it and Christians are far from immune to this effect we have to be a aware of that we have to be knowledgeable of that we are not immune to the corruption that comes from power and so from there I want us to just consider Roman numeral 2 consider the history of the relationship between the church and power so um predating the church if we go back to

the Old Testament something we see throughout the Old Testament this common cycle really starting in the Book of Judges and carrying on through through to the end of the Old Testament is that the people of Israel lived out a continuous cycle of backsliding when life was comfortable and when political fortunes were good they got power they got settled and they start slipping and it happens over and over and over and over again you know the Bible tells us Joshua gets the people you know they the conquest of the land they get settled and within one generation after he's gone the people forgot all that God had done for them and they're chasing other gods and they're chasing the carnal ways the

carnal worship practices of the Gods of these people around them and it all it took was one generation and down they go and it happens over and over and over again un lest we you know take the the response oh that was that was the Jews that's not us no no no the same the same uh pattern has been seen in church history as well and we are no different from them like Paul said their stories were written for our benefit so we could learn from them and uh this is something that we've been susceptible to over time in in 312 ad this is where things really started to turn for the church so we have Jesus his crucifixion resurrection and so on the church being established

and for about 250 years the church was growing but was under was subject to the Roman Empire which in many many seasons was oppressing and persecuting the church so they had no political power uh in fact they were enemies of the state in some seasons and in in some ways and uh they were constantly Under Pressure constantly um subjected to you know uh inequitable treatment and and things like that and yet the church continued to grow and that really it grew to a point where in 312 ad there was a uh there was a struggle for the control of the Empire uh Dian uh he had uh been one of the more recent Emperors he had waged a massive uh campaign of persecution

against the church so much execution so much Bloodshed that actually you know some historians are saying even some of the Pagan you know the Pagan worshipping people in the Roman Empire even they were getting a little sickened by this like whoa will slow down this is pretty extreme it was an extreme campaign of persecution and when he died when the the the the empire was kind of up for grabs Constantine is one of these figures vying for power vying for control and on the eve of one of the one of the battles with uh one of his uh one of his Rivals he claims to have had a vision where he saw a cross in the sky and Heard a Voice say in this sign conquer and he went into battle the next

day against a rival who was Superior to him mil militarily and he won and he claimed his victory came from or was empowered by uh Jesus Christ and and the god of the church and he gave his life uh he became a Christian is and uh and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire now some some argue that this may have been a political move uh there's evidence that he kept that he held to several Pagan practices still and he still maintained uh the title of uh uh ponteix Maximus which was the title basically that gave him the position of the head of the state religion uh the state the state uh Imperial Cult of the Roman Empire so he was still worshiped as a deity by many

so there's some things it's like that doesn't seem right but by all counts there was a change in his life and he made Christianity um a welcome religion in the Roman Empire and started giving favorable treatment to priests and Bishops and and others in the church and so from that day the church went from being oppressed by the state to now having a very cozy relationship with the state and so this is where we see the church coming into relationship with power now there were many benefits to this season and uh or to this era um one one I would point is that it point to is that it normalized Christian values and uh we can point today to many Western values in our society today we have them

because the church had such strong influence in Europe uh through the Middle Ages and so there's values like now some of those values those Christian principles have been taken to sinful extremes right remember Paul said you know not to use our freedom as Liberty to sin right but to use our freedoms to serve and love one another Well many have taken some of these values and principles of the gospel and taking them to sinful extremes use them for lenti justness for themselves but values like um the freedom the value and and dignity of individual people and of of women in particular now sometimes in some cases that's been taken to extremes and this whole the freedoms and values

and dignities of the individual the freedom of choice the freedom of conscience you know that's been taken to an extreme to where now you know in our culture there's this there's this common belief that the the Free Will of the individual should supersede even the right of a of an unborn human child in the womb to live right like there's there's ways that these freedoms have been taken to extremes but those freedoms and values that we have we have because of the influence of the church back in the day so there are good things that came of it uh free or concern for the poor and the sick uh those things came from the church wielding influence in Europe so it wasn't all awful and bad I'm not

trying to say that the church has been able to use those positions of power for good in many cases but there are many pitfalls to the church's cozy relationship with power and we have to be aware of those in our day and age it's important for us to be aware of those so uh a few of the problems that that came in like the church became very powerful and influential even to the point that its influence overarched political powers in in the region and I saw one commentator liken the the church in those years to the EU of today like an overarching governing body that the states that are part of the EU have their own governments that rule their their their own States but they all fall under this

umbrella of the of the European Union and the the church held a similar sway in that day had all these different Kings and especially as the Roman Empire fell apart and crumbled and and dispersed um the church maintained uh an umbrella of authority of of influence of of of sway over Europe with all these indiv idual States underneath and they became like a power broker through many of these years um and like the the that Reign we could call it lasted for over a thousand years and a few troubling and disturbing Trends came out of that rign so to speak first one is a consolidation of wealth the church uh had the power to tax to collect tithes but it was enforced more

like a tax and uh you know we know how the church built beautiful magnificent Cathedrals uh High Value Place of high value on beautiful art and statues and all sorts of things which I love the value behind it of seeing Beauty and embracing Beauty and wanting to wanting to create Beauty um in architecture and in art and in music and all these different things that's a good thing but they did it at the expense and on the backs of so many poor people and uh you know the church did give alms did did support the poor in many ways and did provide shelter and things like that basic Medical Care in in a lot of cases but at the same time the disparity of the amount of wealth that the church um

that the church collected on the backs of the people was was quite extreme quite extreme and it doesn't really match with you know the heart that's consistently uh expressed through scripture you know that when in acts when the people brought their wealth into the body to the apostles so that they had all things in common it wasn't so that the apostles would get super rich it's that everyone would have what they needed and uh it can be argued that that the church lost its way on that one um over the over the years of having power and influence so that's there's a consolidation of wealth there was a consolidation of knowledge or of Education um basically in those days if

you weren't clergy you likely weren't educated um scriptures were produced in Latin which only the educated could read as as time went on through the through the their reign um and really what that did is it put the common people at a disadvantage because they couldn't even read the scriptures they had to trust what they were being told by the clergy by by Bishops and Priests and and so on and and that created um a really unhealthy dependence on man and it kept man from relating to God and being able to um and be able to lead life Bas with from their own conscience looking at scriptures and uh being able to relate to God in that way um now Les we and and I hope you've noticed I've been

specifically not using the term Catholic Church was the church because this was the only church of the day this is our ancestry these are our Roots these are our foundations as the Protestant church today these are things that we are not immune to we may we sometimes look at the Catholic church and think oh you know this thing of priest mediating between God and man and and that was so wrong and we're so glad that Luther and others freed us from that tyranny well I would ask how many Protestants today voluntarily choose to have a pastor mediate for them between themselves and God and rather than go to God themselves and build their own prayer life and read

the scriptures for themselves they come and depend on the teaching of a pastor once a week and and abdicate or forfeit that that position that privilege that right of being able to approach the throne of grace with boldness we we forfeit that and let a pastor do that for us right so we still struggle with these same things today so let's not let's not want to caution you if you're thinking oh that was then we're different today the point I'm making is we're not different today we need to be aware of the the the problems and the pitfalls that are associated with political power especially as we talk about relating to Politics as the church today so the church sorry for that

little sidebar but this the church Consolidated knowledge and education in that day and one of the one of the saddest results of this for me is that you know we often hear of that era of human history referred to as the Dark Ages is this time in history where there was there was a lack of there was a lack of um scientific discoveries advancements in you know in philosophy philosophy and knowledge and whatever else there was very little moving the scale through that era and through the era when the church wielded so much influence it should have been an era of great growth and inspiration but because of the heavy-handed um wielding of power it suppressed people from flourishing in

what God would have wired them and created them to do and so that's a that's that's that's some bad fruit that came out of the church having a significant level of political power uh the third one I would say is just the consolidation of power itself uh the church used Force to De to force people to do to do its bidding in in many ways um in many situations the church played the role of kingmaker and many times they had significant influence over who was leading in which nations and and uh and so on that's that's that's a little iffy um not So Much by prophetic inspiration but just by you like us you're going to favor us okay we'll help you get in um so there's evidence of some of that

happening um you know clergy they they almost kind of live by their own uh thing and that they swore allegiance to the pope instead of their King we've advocated for swearing allegiance to Jesus over any Earthly King but they chose an Earthly ruler over the other Earthly ruler and uh we want to we want to be aware of the difference there I guess uh but but also this consolidation of power led to a number of atrocities um there are so many examples of uh forced conversions of people being forced to convert upon threat of death or threat of assault or damage or theft or something like that uh the Crusades man so many atrocities attached to the Crusades and

many of them carried out in the name of the church uh in the name of God the Inquisition uh same idea it's trying to sniff out Heretics and force them on threat of torture and death to repent and and become Christians like that's not at all uh the demonstration of Jesus or the apostles in the church in in in the New Testament um this you can see just that that wielding that power having troops at their disposal um just how off the rails that God over time now again this happened over a long period of time we're talking a thousand years but this is the this is the pattern this is the downfall of the the Trap the pitfall of having power that even the church

struggled with okay and so you know even today if we fast forward today uh in more modern times there's there's several current examples we could point to one I would point to is at the turn of the 20th century uh the church the National Church the Lutheran Church in Germany had a very cozy relationship with the state and you know end of the 19th beginning of 20th century we would have probably called it a good government a good state to to be in in League with and in their setup the state actually paid the salaries of the clergy in the church so essentially pastors being federal employees was kind of the the situation there and where that became very problematic was when the

National Socialist came to power in 1930 and many of the church many of the church leaders in Germany forfeited their prophetic voice they refused to speak up as the government began carrying out their uh you know their oppression of of minorities of of the Jews specifically of Communists so political enemies um disabled also sorts of other groups uh they really started targeting and harassing and and even murdering from these groups and the church was not only silent on those matters but in many cases complicit even twisting scriptures to justify what the government was doing and mostly tied to the favor they had with the government they didn't want to Forfeit that and they didn't want to

Forfeit their salaries and and this is something that uh it was a real Pitfall and again much of the church in Germany lost its credibility lost its prophetic voice because they refused to stand for righteousness and Justice when a clear affront to those uh things came to power in the National Socialist there and so uh this is an important one to keep in mind especially as here in Canada just in the last few weeks uh proposal of legislation that would remove uh charitable status of any any uh any nonprofit that doesn't agree with um with certain values related to abortion and so you know here is here's a challenge we're very privileged in Canada and the US that we actually get

charitable tax status that we get some sort of preferential treatment in that way there are churches in many even other Western Nations that don't have those privileges um we can't waver on truth of the word on on What God Says is good based on if we get a nice tax status or not that can't be an influencing factor in US deciding what is truth and what we stand on and so and we saw that happen just a hundred years ago in Germany under a 100 years ago and then separate from politics even just the the the idea of just power itself influence itself we're seeing so many examples today in the Church of how Consolidated power in church leadership structures has allowed issues like

clergy sexual abuse to grow and proliferate and remain hidden for decades um because of the unhealthy dynamics that come when one person or one little group has a lot of power and so there are absolutely pitfalls associated with power that the church has been subject to for 2,000 years and still is subject to today we need to be mindful of it as we navigate these Waters of praying for and relating to government so moving on to Roman numeral 3 uh the church eff of Kingdom witness and power so again unfortunately the pattern has been that we the church does a better job of advancing the kingdom when we're not enjoying political power and more specifically it seems to Bear the most

fruit when it's subjected to political persecution uh you know in the Old Testament like we said it was times of slavery oppression and decline that caused the people of God to cry out and God came through in power and we saw deliverance we saw you know the the the people of God would be in a high place on the heels of crying out to God from from a desperate situation you know in the book of Acts we see the church consistently growing in places where it experienced strong resistance you can see it in Jerusalem and Antioch and pidia in Iconium Lyra Philippi on and on and on and on the Paul and silus or Paul and Barnabas or Peter or others go to a place there's persecution but a church

is established and and grows and Remains the church doesn't fold when the Apostle moves on to the next place but it continues to grow and build and uh and that happened where there was resistance uh and then the Church continued as we already said through those first 300 years or 250 years after Christ uh it continued to spread throughout the Roman Empire even as various Emperors attacked it um and persecuted the Believers and uh you know out of that that time tertian you know kind of a famous quote the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and unfortunately that's been the pattern in church history is that times of persecution the blood of Martyrs would tend to produce the

greatest growth in the church okay even today the pattern is still consistent the church is thriving in some of the Nations that have the strict strictest stances against Christianity like Iran Afghanistan China and other places and so it's a it's a it's a pattern we need to be aware of because we are in a culture where we now especially the events of of last week the election in the in the United States many evangelicals are seeing it as the church now has um an ally in political office in the United States and there's a lot of celebrating and rejoicing over that there's good things that can come of it but the we can't do that they can't do that without being mindful of 2,000

years of church history that say that's actually a slippery slope and it requires we'll get to that in a minute it requires vigilance um our hint now in the book of Acts we've mentioned there's lots of examples of persecution and and suffering and difficulty there is one example in the book of Acts a one that comes to mind uh where the church grew in a time of peace now it came on the heels of you know we we know the story of Stephen being murdered and Saul was the one kind of approving of it and and signing off on the action and then Saul went off and started persecuting the churches in in other places even getting commissioned to go all the way up to Damascus to

persecute you know to drag people off into jail there uh who are who are preaching the way and we know he had his D dramatic conversion and in Acts 9:31 it tells us well in Acts n it tells us after Paul's conversion there was a time where the persecution kind of settled down it was like okay it was like the church could breathe a little bit and it was a time where they could have let down their guard and went oh we're safe now okay and note how what Luke says here it says in verse 31 of Acts n so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria so all these regions surrounding Jerusalem where Jesus had said you will be my Witnesses in Judea Jerusalem Judea

Samaria to the ends of the Earth right so in all that those regions around Jerusalem they had peace and they were being built up and he said this and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit the church multiplied and it it strikes me that in a time when the Temptation is to get comfortable and relaxed and to get comfortable in a a new peaceful situation maybe not politically they were still under the Roman Empire but as far as the attacks from the Jewish religious leadership that settled down and instead of finding their comfort in that it says they continued walking in the fear of the Lord and they walked in the comfort of the Holy Spirit and so in that there is

this there's not a complacency but I love how it says they walked in the fear of the Lord they they stayed close to the Lord and his love but one where we're kind of lacking in the western world today is walking in the fear of the Lord remaining in the awe of God remembering he is God Sovereign over all and you know the decider of Eternal Destinies and they remain walking in the fear of the Lord when their political situation maybe got a little more comfortable they walked in the fear of the Lord and they weren't comforted by their situation they were comforted by the Holy Spirit they remained in the comfort the Holy Spirit and that kind of leads us to our conclusion here so as we've said a

number of times through this series already we as the church are called to be Salt and Light in every sphere of society wherever we are placed and for many that includes the political sphere so our primary calling because our primary Allegiance is to Jesus our primary Allegiance is to the kingdom of heaven and so our primary calling and vocation is to bring salt and light wherever we we are that's the first thing the second thing we said this a few weeks ago the church is called to be a prophetic witness of the kingdom of God to all Society again including political sphere so to be a voice for righteousness and Justice to be a voice for the values of the kingdom of God in

our society today that's kind of the second thing there and the third thing we have to remain mindful okay this is the big one I want to drive home we have to to remain mindful that power and privilege have a drowsing effect on us okay it makes us drowsy it makes us complacent it makes us comfortable and that includes the church okay those things make us powerful powerful power and privilege sorry they make us comfortable and they cause us to drop our guard but we are called to remain Vigilant and watchful and there's a number of passages have included for you there we are called to remain Vigilant and even one of those I think it's the Matthew 16:6 is where Jesus says watch

out beware the leaven of Herod and of the Pharisees beware the leaven of Herod beware the leav of political power watch out be aware of it be aware that it has that leavening effect on us that it has just a little bit of comfort in that in that political power can have the effect of tainting everything we do and and what we are in the kingdom of God we need to remain Vigilant and watchful okay when the church comes into a favorable political situation we must H intentionally have two primary responses we have to be intentional about this because our flesh will slide into the opposite okay so here's the two that come to mind number one as I just mentioned we have to intentionally

remain Vigilant we have to know that the task of the Great Commission is not completed based on one election that gives us results that we like right it seems pretty obvious but we tend to forget that okay the and the Great Commission will not be completed by a good government okay The Church Must resist the temptation to Coast the church has to remain on the offensive okay one of the things that now this is maybe just my personal um observation I don't know if anyone else you know saw it differently but going back eight years to 2016 when when Trump won his first term the election for his first term of presidency uh the the sense I got was that the church in America the

Evangelical Church in America um gloated and got boastful and just kind of yeah we got our man in the presidency we're good that was the sense I got from a distance big picture I'm not saying every church I'm not saying every Ministry I'm saying that was the General sense I got and they're in a place where they're in danger of settling in that way again of boasting of you know rubbing it in the faces of people they disagree with who voted the other way who are having a real tough time with their loss right now that is never uh that's never something we see um that we're encouraged to do as Believers like Paul's saying let your speech always be seasoned with Grace like as

with salt like gracious speech um you know so things things like that the church easily gets complacent when someone who supports what the church supports gets into Power the job is not done the the Great Commission still stands the church has to remain on the offensive the church has to remain Vigilant Vigilant in prayer Vigilant in in action you know indeed in bringing you know in serving the poor visiting the lonely clothing the naked feeding the hungry all those sorts of things from Matthew 25 we got to stay vigilant in those things and it's so easy to stop when we think we get a little bit of political power the second one is The Church Must intentionally remain in humility like I

said a moment ago it's easy to start boasting it's it's easy for the church in America to be boasting right now and if you remember from James 3 when we looked at that boasting you know is is connected to Earthly wisdom which is sensual and demonic and full of selfish ambition and all those sorts of nasty things it's the opposite of heavenly wisdom we're supposed to embrace you know if any of you is W is wise let him demonstrate it by the meekness of his good in meekness by the good works of their life like it's it's humility it's meekness and it's good works that we need to be active in and so yeah remain in humility perceived victory in the political sphere is no occasion for pride and

boasting if anything there must be determination to remain in humility to say have the same mind as Jesus and to continue to take the posture of a servant remember Philippians 2 what's interesting about that is Jesus had all authority he had it and he laid it down and came and took the form of a servant it's not that he was reaching for it and didn't get it and then went okay I guess I'll be a servant instead he had Authority and that's when he laid it down and came and served and gave up his life as a ransom for many that's when that's especially when we need to be willing to lay down benefits of power and take us a a humble serving posture instead uh arrogance and boasting

undermine any work of the Kingdom okay it really really does it undermines you know you could have some of the greatest work going on in your church but if you take a posture of arrogance and boasting over an election result you undermine everything you're doing in the community it it's not the spirit of Jesus and more than that if we remain in it we will find ourselves eventually in opposition to God himself right God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble and so I especially want to say this because you know just to speak clearly about it sometime in the next year we will be electing a new government in Canada and as of today the polls show that it would likely be a

political party coming into power that much of the church in Canada would be really happy to see come in power and we have to keep these things in mind we cannot if that does happen we cannot gloat we cannot be boastful and arrogant about it we must be vigilant to maintain the posture of a servant in serving our communities loving our neighbors being Salt and Light and the other part of that is we have to remain Vigilant in the meantime anyways because guess what polls aren't always right and uh you know if if that's something something that's important to you to see you know a party that that that you perceive upholds biblical principles and values if you want to see them elected you know

taking this coasting route is not going to help you and uh this is this is something we must be mindful of in this season as the church in Canada political power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely and the more sway we hold in the political sphere the more Vigilant we need to be about remaining Vigilant and remaining humble continuing in the way of the Cross not using power for our benefit but denying ourselves taking up our cross and following him so this is what I that's kind of the takeaway I want to leave with you this week even as we you know we seek to navigate this thing of influencing political the political sphere in Canada bringing the kingdom of

God there we have to know that as we do we're swimming in shark-infested waters in a lot of ways and we need to remain humble and Vigilant and we need to pray for our elected officials who are lovers of Jesus to pray that they remain humble and that they remain watchful and Vigilant in their prayer lives and that they stay grounded rooted and grounded in the knowledge of God the love of God and just just keeping that clear he is God we are not and our primary calling to still be Salt and Light okay so that's a mouthful at the end there but I I hope that that lands with you so I just want to pray with us real quick and we'll close it father I thank you for your your for inviting us to be

ambassadors of reconciliation ambassadors of your kingdom I thank you that you've given us you know Jesus all authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to you and you you entrust your body with your work and with your Authority and so God our prayer today is would you help us to remain watchful and Vigilant when times are good politically and would you help us to remain humble and uh Lord we just ask would we be a church that would finally succeed in navigating this balance between humility and political power as we see your kingdom bring influence in Canada father may we may we stay pure and S salty and bright and and just remaining in that humility and

vigilance he called us to father bless your church bless your bride in Canada um that she would walk as you walked and speak your heart in these days in Jesus name amen amen bless you guys we'll see you next week for some practical how-tos on how to pray for govern it see you next time [Music]