November 4

A lot’s happened in my tiny lit­tle life over the past months, not the least of which is that  I’ve be­come in­ter­im pas­tor at the Bap­tist church here in town. Long sto­ry, and I do  plan to get to that here in this space, but I thought it best for now to share my ser­mon  from last Sun­day with a few mi­nor ed­its. Be­cause re­al­ly, we could all use a lit­tle perspec­tive today?  Yeah?  

Yeah.

Every­one ready for to­day?

Every­one dread­ing to­day?

Every­one just pray­ing to­day  will hur­ry up and be over with?

Yeah, me too.  

I like to keep up with what’s hap­pen­ing in our na­tion and in our world. I think that’s  part of be­ing a good cit­i­zen. But it’s so much, isn’t it? There’s just so much in­for­ma­tion  com­ing at us from so many di­rec­tions. And be­cause of that, two things can hap­pen.

One is that with so much in­for­ma­tion com­ing from so many sources, it can get  hard to know what’s re­al­ly true and what’s re­al­ly not.

The oth­er is that we can get sucked right into mid­dle of this riv­er of in­for­ma­tion  and start con­fus­ing what’s im­por­tant in the Chris­t­ian life with what isn’t.  If you lis­ten to the news, if you turn on your TV or your ra­dio or take that phone  out of your pock­et, what you’re go­ing to hear is that it all comes down to Tues­day.  Tues­day is the most im­por­tant day in our his­to­ry. Tues­day de­fines the fu­ture. Tues­day  de­cides every­thing.

There’s a great risk in­volved any­ time a preach­er starts talk­ing about pol­i­tics. The prob­lem with preach­ing about pol­i­tics from the same pul­pit that you preach God’s truth is that it gets aw­ful­ly easy to cheap­en the Bible by bring­ing it down to the same  lev­el as pol­i­tics, or it gets aw­ful­ly easy to make an idol of pol­i­tics by el­e­vat­ing it to the  same lev­el as the Bible. So it’s best to just not talk about pol­i­tics at all, and call it off  lim­its.

But. 

The prob­lem I found with keep­ing silent about what’s on every­one’s mind to­day is  just that — it’s on every­one’s mind today. And let me tell you, I tried find­ing some­thing  else to preach about. Some­thing nice like one of Je­sus’s mir­a­cles, or a Psalm. But it  just didn’t feel right. Not this time. Any preach­er worth his salt should ad­dress what’s  hap­pen­ing in the world. Hon­est­ly, what good is a preach­er who doesn’t ap­ply the Bible to what’s go­ing on in life?

I’ve vot­ed in every elec­tion since George Bush, Sr., and I’ll vote in every elec­tion  for the rest of my life. Vot­ing’s im­por­tant. Vot­ing is a priv­i­lege. But none of you will  ever know who I vote for. Ever. That’s none of your busi­ness.

And un­less you flat-out tell me who you vote for, I won’t ever know that. Be­cause  that’s none of my busi­ness, and be­cause it doesn’t mat­ter any­way. Who you vote for  would nev­er change how much I love you as per­son and as a broth­er or sis­ter in Christ. Pe­ri­od.

The Bible is God’s word to us and for us so that we can know Him and have a blue print for the way we live our lives. But many times, the Bible gives us prin­ci­ples in­stead of an­swers. The Bible is a guide, and all of its wis­dom from Gen­e­sis to Rev­e­la­tion should help form our de­ci­sions per­son­al­ly, so­cial­ly, and po­lit­i­cal­ly. But the Bible nev­er  says vote for this person or that per­son. It just doesn’t.

God says, “Here’s my book. This book is the truth. You read it. You take every­thing that’s there and ap­ply it to your life with the help of My Holy Spir­it. You let this book shape your view of the world, and you pray to Me when you step outside your door, into your work, or into the vot­ing booth, and you’ll al­ways know what to do.”

So I’m not go­ing to talk about to­day be­cause that doesn’t mat­ter.

I don’t care who  you vote for. I only care that you vote. No­vember 3 doesn’t con­cern me at all.

November 4 does.  

Be­cause some­one is go­ing to win this elec­tion, right?

We might not know who that per­son is tonight, but chances are we’ll have a pret­ty  good idea. And if that’s your per­son, you’re go­ing to feel great. You’re go­ing to feel  like a huge bur­den has just been lift­ed off your shoul­ders. You’re go­ing to think that now, fi­nal­ly, we can start putting this hor­ri­ble year be­hind us.

But what if that doesn’t hap­pen? What if the guy you thought was the right choice,  the one who had the wis­dom to guide our coun­try for­ward, the one you knew be­yond  any doubt that God want­ed to lead our na­tion, what if that guy los­es?

What if on No­vember 4 you wake up to the re­al­i­ty that you prayed and prayed wouldn’t hap­pen? 

I looked all through the Bible to find an an­swer to that ques­tion, and there it was  in Joshua. We talked about Joshua a while back, and how God wants us all to cross  our own Jor­dan Rivers. This time we’re go­ing to fo­cus on a mo­ment in his life af­ter that  cross­ing.

Let’s read now to­day’s scrip­ture, Joshua chap­ter 5, vers­es 13-15:

When Joshua was by Jeri­cho, he lift­ed up his eyes and looked, and be­hold, a man  was stand­ing be­fore him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him  and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our ad­ver­saries?”

And he said, “No; but I am the com­man­der of the army of the LORD. Now I have  come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and wor­shiped and said to him, “What  does my lord say to his ser­vant?” And the com­man­der of the LORD’S army said to  Joshua, “Take off your san­dals from your feet, for the place where you are stand­ing is  holy.” And Joshua did so.

And this is God’s holy word.

So, where are we? Joshua has led the Is­raelites into their fu­ture home — a home  that would be de­liv­ered to them by the very hand of God. All the men of Is­rael have been cir­cum­cised. It’s the first time that Joshua’s gen­er­a­tion has been so ded­i­cat­ed  and so unit­ed to God’s pur­pos­es. They’ve cel­e­brat­ed Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. And now they’re ready to face their first chal­lenge — tak­ing the city of  Jeri­cho. There’s go­ing to be a fight here. It’ll be a fight un­like any the world has seen,  but it’s still go­ing to be a fight. A bat­tle.

But be­fore this bat­tle takes place, we get these few vers­es here where Joshua  learns the very same per­spec­tive that some of us are go­ing to need in the com­ing  week. Be­cause Joshua kind of makes a mis­take here, and it’s one we all make. But  then he’s re­mind­ed of the truth, and he re­acts to that truth in a way that both hon­ors God and ce­ments Joshua’s place as Is­rael’s leader.

Let this pas­sage be your guide if come No­vember 4 you think every­thing’s lost and this coun­try is dam­aged be­yond repair. Be­cause if your vote isn’t for the win­ner, we see in these three vers­es how we should re­act, what we should remem­ber, and  what we should do.

First, how we should re­act. 

The Is­raelites are on the plains of Jeri­cho, and they can see those thick, tall city  walls ris­ing into the sky. Those walls were built about 10,000 years ago. Jeri­cho was built on a mound and sur­round­ed by a huge dirt em­bank­ment. At the bot­tom of that  em­bank­ment was a re­tain­ing wall about 15 feet high. On top of that was an­oth­er wall of bricks and mud that were six feet thick and 26 feet high. And at the top of the embank­ment was an­oth­er brick wall with a base that was 46 feet above the ground.  It is the ear­li­est tech­nol­o­gy that sci­en­tists have found for some­thing built pure­ly for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Those walls were there for a rea­son — to keep in­vaders out. This was the city that Joshua had to take. And right now, he doesn’t know how he’s go­ing to do it. So he does what a lot of us do when we’re try­ing to fig­ure out the impos­si­ble — he goes for a walk to think about it. That’s what Joshua is do­ing. He’s walking and think­ing. And we know this be­cause at the be­gin­ning of verse 13, we learn  that Joshua lifts up his eyes and looks, and there’s a man stand­ing be­fore him. But not just any man. Verse 13 doesn’t come right out and say it, but it has to be  pret­ty ob­vi­ous to Joshua that the per­son stand­ing be­fore him was more than a man.  Be­cause for one, Joshua has grown up in the desert. He’s not a city boy. He’s a war­rior.  He’s a leader. It’s aw­ful­ly hard to sneak up on some­one like that, but that’s what this  man has done.

And more, this man has a weapon. He has a sword. No­tice the po­si­tion of his  sword. The blade’s not in the scab­bard. It’s drawn. And in those days, a drawn sword had only one pur­pose. The only time you drew your sword was when you were go­ing  to fight.

We get a glimpse into Joshua’s char­ac­ter here. What does he not do? He doesn’t run, doesn’t back down. He stands there like he’s say­ing, “Okay, if you want to fight, I’ll  fight.”

We don’t get a de­scrip­tion of the man stand­ing be­fore him. We’ve seen this person be­fore though, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but there has to be some­thing about him that throws Joshua off. He’s a man in ap­pear­ance, but some­thing more.  Some­thing pow­er­ful. Some­thing dan­ger­ous. So Joshua stands ready. Maybe he puts  his hand on his sword, ready to draw if he has to.

And he asks a ques­tion that’s as old as hu­man­i­ty it­self and as rel­e­vant to the year  2020 as any ques­tion in the Bible —

“Are you for us, or for our ad­ver­saries?”

Now on the face of it, this is a great ques­tion for Joshua to ask. Be­cause the question of whether or not he’s go­ing to fight is about to be solved by what­ev­er the man  an­swers. But it’s also the wrong ques­tion, be­cause even though the man hasn’t told  Joshua ex­act­ly who he is yet, Joshua has to know this is some­one dif­fer­ent, some­one  com­plete­ly un­like any­one he’s ever met. Some­one even not of this world. This is some­one to whom the nor­mal ways that hu­mans think don’t ap­ply.

Here’s ba­si­cal­ly what Joshua’s ask­ing — “Whose side are you on?” Wrong ques­tion. 

But isn’t that the same ques­tion that’s hid­ing un­der the sur­face of near­ly every  choice Amer­i­cans make these days?

Every­thing from the friend­ships we make to the peo­ple we choose to as­sociate with to the news chan­nels we watch and the web­sites we vis­it, it all comes down to that ques­tion, doesn’t it?

We no longer sep­a­rate peo­ple by whether they’re good and de­cent or whether  they’re just trou­ble wait­ing to hap­pen. It’s no longer about what kind of per­son they are, it’s about what kinds of opin­ions they have. And when we hear it like that, we think, “Well, okay, that sounds like a pret­ty un-Chris­t­ian thing to do.”

But we still do it, don’t we? We all do, to the ex­tent that we’re no longer one nation. We’re two sides liv­ing in one land. What’s hap­pened to make things like that? Pol­i­tics has al­ways been a big deal in our coun­try. If you think the past few elections have been bad, take a look at some of our ear­li­est elec­tions in the late 1700s  and ear­ly 1800s. They were terrible. But by and large, peo­ple still got along be­cause  even if they were di­vid­ed by pol­i­tics, they still had the com­mon foun­da­tion of re­li­gion.  Even then our coun­try con­tained many faiths, and even then there were many who  had no religious faith at all. But there re­mained a huge ma­jor­i­ty of the na­tion had at  least a ba­sic be­lief in God and un­der­stood the ba­sic doc­trines of Chris­t­ian faith.

Things be­gan to change af­ter WWII though, when it be­came clear ex­act­ly what  Hitler had done in the Holo­caust. Millions upon mil­lions of Jews slaugh­tered. The hate in­volved in that. The ut­ter dis­re­gard ab­sence of hu­man de­cen­cy. There was only one  word for it — evil.

Peo­ple start­ed won­der­ing how a good and lov­ing God could al­low some­thing like that to hap­pen. That led to a steep increase in athe­ism that took hold in Eu­rope and in Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, and by the 1960s, it was pret­ty much everywhere.

Re­li­gion in this coun­try be­gan to de­crease. By the 1990s, few­er peo­ple were going to church. By the 2000s, few­er peo­ple iden­ti­fied them­selves as Chris­tians. And it’s to the point now where re­li­gion in gen­er­al and Chris­tian­i­ty in par­tic­u­lar no longer has  a cen­tral place in Amer­i­can life. We’ve lost our foun­da­tion, the glue that once held our so­ci­ety to­geth­er.

All of us once had at least that ba­sic faith in com­mon. We don’t any more. 

But here’s the thing — even though re­li­gion is be­ing pushed aside in our coun­try,  we’re all still re­li­gious. As hu­man beings, we’re all built to wor­ship. We can’t help it. It’s  in our DNA. So as or­ga­nized faith de­creased in our coun­try, something had to take its place. And prob­a­bly since the mid-90s, peo­ple have turned to pol­i­tics to fill that gap.  So much so that now, pol­i­tics is re­al­ly our na­tion­al re­li­gion.

We got rid of God, but be­cause we’re made to wor­ship some­thing we still need­ed  a god, and the only thing that came close to the law of God are the laws of man.  The news­cast­ers on CNN and Fox are our prophets. The lead­ers of our politi­cal  par­ties are our mes­si­ahs. Their word is iron.

We can’t dis­agree with any­thing they say, be­cause that would mean be­ing dis­loy­al.

And we can’t be that, be­cause we all have to pick a side.  

When pol­i­tics be­comes re­li­gion, it has to get in every­where. That’s why every­thing is po­lit­i­cal to­day. Every­thing from our tele­vi­sion shows to our mu­sic. Even sports are po­lit­i­cal now. We’ve gone so over­board in mak­ing pol­i­tics our na­tion­al god that we’ve made even a dead­ly virus po­lit­i­cal.

And it’s not just the sec­u­lar folks who live this way. Many Chris­tians and many Chris­t­ian pas­tors make a god of pol­i­tics, too. They stand in their pul­pits and say, “This  is how you have to vote if you’re a be­liev­er in Christ. This is the par­ty you have to belong to, and this is the way you should feel about so­cial is­sues.”

And by do­ing this, what are they re­al­ly say­ing? That our real prob­lem isn’t spir­i­tu­al, it’s po­lit­i­cal, and so the real an­swer doesn’t lay in God, but in pol­i­tics. They say that the only ones who can save us are the ones who think like us, and those are the peo­ple who have to be in pow­er. Be­cause they are the ones who will pro­tect our rights. They are the ones who will keep our na­tion on track.

And why do we think that? Be­cause we be­lieve the peo­ple who need to be in  pow­er, the ones who think like we think, are the ones who think like God. And once  we start giv­ing our­selves over to that kind of think­ing, that’s when Joshua’s ques­tion  be­comes our own — “Who are you for? Us, or them?”

Are you on our side, the side of truth? Or are you on the oth­er side, the side of lies  and de­ceit?  

This is a com­plete­ly new way of see­ing the role of pol­i­tics in the life of a Chris­t­ian.  The New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers didn’t see pol­i­tics this way at all. The New Tes­ta­ment writers knew that if you give any hu­man be­ing enough pow­er, they’ll mur­der the Son of  God. So this idea that Chris­tian­i­ty can be im­proved in any way by a po­lit­i­cal par­ty or a politi­cian goes complete­ly against the grain of the New Tes­ta­ment.

So what’s our first step here if on No­vember 4 you wake up to find your guy has  lost?

It’s to start try­ing to sep­a­rate your­self from the kind of think­ing that made Joshua ask his ques­tion. We can­not sur­vive as a na­tion if we keep see­ing our neigh­bors as en­e­mies. We can­not bridge the di­vide be­tween us if we keep see­ing peo­ple in terms of their worldly opin­ions in­stead of their eter­nal souls. And the first step in get­ting away from that is  to pray.

Pray for our lead­ers, no mat­ter what par­ty they be­long to.  

Paul writes in 2 Tim­o­thy, “I urge, then, first of all, that pe­ti­tions, prayers, in­ter­cession, and thanks­giv­ing be made for all peo­ple, for kings and all those in au­thor­i­ty …  This is good, and pleas­es our God and Sav­ior.”

Get that? All peo­ple. Kings and all those in au­thor­i­ty. Pe­ti­tions, prayers, in­terces­sion, thanks­giv­ing — Paul uses just about every kind of word there is for prayer in say­ing how we should pray for our lead­ers.

And re­mem­ber, Paul wrote these words un­der the reign of Nero, and I prom­ise you that as a man and a politi­cian, Nero was a lot worse than Joe Biden or Don­ald  Trump.

Joshua, though, made an even big­ger mis­take with this ques­tion, be­cause he  didn’t ask, “Are you for us, or against us?” to sim­ply a per­son. He asked it to God. In verse 14, the man stand­ing be­fore Joshua of­fers his name. He’s the com­man­der  of the army of the Lord. There’s an­oth­er name for that — the an­gel of the Lord.  We’ve seen this per­son be­fore, haven’t we? Re­mem­ber Ja­cob all alone in that valley, wrestling with God? Wrestling with the an­gel of the Lord? What did we say about  the an­gel of the Lord? He’s Christ, right? He’s Je­sus be­fore com­ing into this world as a  man.

Joshua is stand­ing be­fore Christ. More than that, Christ is stand­ing be­tween Joshua — who rep­re­sents God’s cho­sen people set apart for the Lord’s own pur­pos­es  — and Jeri­cho, a pa­gan city filled with un­be­liev­ers.

Joshua asks Christ, “Whose side are you on? The good guys, or the bad guys? The ones who know you, or the ones who don’t?” And look at how Christ an­swers him — “No.”

There’s a bet­ter trans­la­tion for that word from the He­brew — “Nei­ther.” Whose side are you on, God? Nei­ther.

Take a minute and let that sink in. Not even Is­rael, God’s cho­sen na­tion, could claim God was com­plete­ly on their side when they were ap­proach­ing Jeri­cho. Why?

Be­cause God doesn’t take sides. 

The most hor­ri­ble pe­ri­od of our na­tion’s his­to­ry was the Civ­il War. If you think  things are bad in this coun­try now, think of 750,000 Amer­i­cans dead just be­cause they went to war against each oth­er. And even though half of our na­tion would have strong­ly dis­agreed at the time, there is no doubt that the man who served as Pres­i­dent dur­ing that war was placed there by God him­self.

There’s a sto­ry that of­ten told in books about Abra­ham Lin­coln. A man approached him dur­ing the height of the war and said, “Mr. Pres­i­dent, we trust dur­ing  this time of tri­al in which the na­tion is en­gaged, God is on our side, and will give us  vic­to­ry.”

Lin­coln, wise as he was, an­swered,

“Sir, my con­cern is not whether God is on our  side. My great­est con­cern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

Lin­coln re­fused to think of the North as en­tire­ly vir­tu­ous and the South en­tire­ly evil. In his sec­ond In­au­gur­al Ad­dress in 1865, he said, “Both North and South read the same Bible and pray to the same God … ” He knew the out­come of that war, what­ev­er  it would be, was in God’s hands. He knew God’s per­spec­tive is not al­ways out perspec­tive be­cause God sees every­thing, and we don’t.

But we don’t get that in this coun­try any­more. Our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy is al­ways to  ask, “Whose side is God on?” when the ques­tion we should be ask­ing is, “Who’s on God’s side?”

How many of us want to be on God’s side? Ra­tio­nal­ly, prob­a­bly all of us. But if  we’re hon­est emo­tion­al­ly, most of us want God to be on our side. We want God to back us up. We want God to think like we do. We want God’s will to line up with our own when we should be pray­ing for our will to line up with His.

So how should you re­act if on No­vember 4, your can­di­date los­es?

Start pray­ing for our pres­i­dent, who­ev­er that may be, and stop ask­ing Joshua’s ques­tion.

Stop ask­ing  that ques­tion about oth­ers, and nev­er, ever ask that ques­tion about God.

Now, what should you re­mem­ber? Look at the sec­ond half of verse 14:

“And  Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him, ‘What does my  lord say to his ser­vant.’”

There’s our an­swer. What should you re­mem­ber if the wrong per­son wins on Tuesday? That God still sits upon his throne. That you only have one Lord, and our pres­ident — who­ev­er it is — is not him. Your al­le­giance is to heav­en and heav­en alone. That  means you should be in this world but not of it.

Re­mem­ber what Je­sus says here — I’m  not on your side and I’m not on their side, I’m al­ways on my side.

What’s that also mean? Don’t dirty me with your pol­i­tics.  

God’s not a De­mo­c­rat. God’s not a Re­pub­li­can ei­ther. God’s not a lib­er­tar­i­an  or a so­cial­ist or a cap­i­tal­ist be­cause God doesn’t side with us. He ex­pects us to side  with him. 

No one is always right. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty, no ide­ol­o­gy. We’re all part­ly right and part­ly wrong, be­cause God will not fit into any box we try to put him in, and so nei­ther should His peo­ple.

The New Tes­ta­ment doesn’t lay out a de­tailed blue­print for a Chris­t­ian so­ci­ety,  whether a con­ser­v­a­tive one or a lib­er­al one. We only think it does be­cause we only  use those parts of the Bible that we agree with in­stead of us­ing it as a whole.  It does say all life is pre­cious, and we should pro­tect the in­no­cent. Does that mean abor­tion is mur­der and a ter­ri­ble sin? Ab­so­lu­te­ly.

So God says we should all be Repub­li­cans.  

But now hold on, it also says we are to care for the poor and seek jus­tice for the  op­pressed. And there are many places in Acts where the ear­ly church adopt­ed some thing very close to a vol­un­tary form of so­cial­ism.

So God says should all be De­mocrats?  

Conservative Christians say, “Love God”.

Secular liberals say, “Love people.”

God says to both, “You’re right.”

Nei­ther par­ty rep­re­sents the en­tire world­view by which we as Chris­tians should  live. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty only votes God’s way.

Do you see? Je­sus was too big to fit in ei­ther of those lit­tle box­es. He was al­ways moral, he was al­ways lov­ing, he al­ways revered hu­man life, and so he was al­ways in  trou­ble with both the left and the right.

Who were the con­ser­v­a­tive Re­pub­li­cans of Je­sus’s time? The Phar­isees.

Who were  the lib­er­al De­moc­rats? The Sad­ducees.

Those two groups could nev­er agree on any thing. Ex­cept hat­ing Christ.

Maybe that’s how politi­cians on both sides of this coun­try should see us, too. Ours is not a Chris­t­ian na­tion, though we should work to­ward be­ing a na­tion whose Chris­tians are ad­mired as good and true and kind cit­i­zens.  Amer­i­ca is not a shin­ing city on a hill, but we should let our free­dom be an ex­ample for the en­tire world.

The Unit­ed States is not the great­est bless­ing God gave mankind, but it is a na­tion  wor­thy of our sup­port and faith­ful­ness.

What should we re­mem­ber on No­vember 4? That we are cit­i­zens of the City of  God first and the City of Man sec­ond, and we should nev­er con­fuse that or­der.

Fi­nal­ly, what should we do on No­vember 4? It’s right there in the last verse. We  should take off our san­dals.

Look at verse 15.

“And the com­man­der of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off  your san­dals from your feet, for the place where you are stand­ing is holy.’ And Joshua  did so.”

As soon as Joshua re­al­izes who this per­son be­fore him is and that he wasn’t for either side, what’s he do?

He bows. Joshua takes a knee. That’s a sym­bol for sub­mis­sion. And what does Christ re­ply? Take off your san­dals. That’s an­oth­er sym­bol. Joshua stood on holy ground be­cause that was the ground where Christ stood.

This was Joshua’s burn­ing bush mo­ment, and to take off his san­dals was an outward way of show­ing what was go­ing on in­side his heart — Joshua was re­mov­ing all of  his world­ly thoughts, and every bit of pol­lu­tion in his soul.

Joshua bowed down be­fore Christ, be­cause Christ is the only per­son he should  bow down to.  

And Je­sus is the only per­son we should con­form our­selves to, not some po­lit­i­cal plat­form that says some things that, as Chris­tians, we should agree with, and oth­er  things that — ac­cord­ing to the Bible — we shouldn’t agree with but do anyway.

Be­cause that’s how it is, isn’t it? You have to be­lieve it all to be a Re­pub­li­can. You  have to be­lieve it all to be a De­mo­c­rat.

Je­sus says, “You sure about that? Be­cause I gave you two rules — love the Lord with all your heart, and love your neigh­bor as your­self.

That means you have to be  com­mit­ted to racial jus­tice and the poor. That means truth is some­thing that stands above what is true for just you. But one of those is a lib­er­al stance, and the oth­er is  con­ser­v­a­tive.”

Lis­ten to me. No mat­ter who wins on No­vember 3, our job as Chris­tians won’t change be­cause our hope doesn’t change.  

Our hope doesn’t lie in which par­ty has con­trol of our coun­try on Wednes­day, because no mat­ter what par­ty that is, we’re still go­ing to have bad gov­ern­ment, un­wise  gov­ern­ment, and in­ept gov­ern­ment.

That’s why God cares about who you vote for, but God cares a lot more about how you treat those who vote dif­fer­ent­ly than you do.  

COVID-19. Debt. Abortion. Ra­ci­sm. Gay rights. Cli­mate change. Fo­re­ign po­li­cy.  Gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. These are the is­sues that de­fine this year’s elec­tion. But these are is­sues that will still be with us on No­vember 4. They’re is­sues that nev­er go away,  be­cause they have their roots in the hu­man heart. The main is­sue we have in Amer­i­ca right now is the main is­sue that’s plagued hu­man­i­ty since the be­gin­ning of time. It’s  sin.

There’s only one per­son who has an an­swer for that, and that per­son will not be our pres­i­dent on Wednes­day.

The world doesn’t need po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tions, it needs Gospel so­lu­tions. We don’t  need the right can­di­date, we need the right Christ. And that’s where we come in.  That’s what we need to be do­ing as Chris­tians.

In the days of Ezra and Ne­hemi­ah, the peo­ple had the huge task of re­build­ing  Jerusalem’s walls. They’d been in ru­ins for over 70 years. And at first the peo­ple be came dis­cour­aged be­cause the job was just so big. It seemed im­pos­si­ble, but God showed them what to do.

He told each per­son to re­build the area just in front of their  house. Just con­cen­trate on what they were sup­posed to be do­ing.  

That’s what we should start do­ing now, no mat­ter who wins. Start do­ing what we  should have been do­ing all along. Start with what’s right in front of you. Quit putting  your faith in a per­son and put it in God. Start pray­ing that who­ev­er wins this elec­tion will fig­ure out how to do things right. Stop be­ing so wor­ried about what every­one else is do­ing, and start con­cen­trat­ing on what God wants you to do.

Be­cause no mat­ter what you hear on the news, no mat­ter what your Face­book feed says, no mat­ter what plays over your ra­dio, who­ev­er wins on Tues­day will not be  the sav­ior of this na­tion. And he won’t be the death of it ei­ther.

And be­cause when you stand be­fore God, his ques­tion to you won’t be who you vot­ed for or what par­ty you be­longed to, but what you did for Him and for those He made.