Should Pastors Call Out Government Leaders?

Should pastors call out government leaders? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. Here's our phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Feel free to leave us a voicemail at that number if you can't get through, and you can post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts anytime and email us a question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Michael calling in from Kansas. Michael, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hello?

Hey, Michael. Hey, so my question is about God being the light. In the book of Genesis, two things were not created, which was God Himself and darkness. Light was created to separate the darkness. So how can God be the light if light was created after God? Hey, thanks for that question.

A couple of things. When you're looking at chapter one of the book of Genesis, one thing that a lot of scholars, especially scholars of the ancient Near East, will say is you have this sort of polemic there, an argument against the creation stories that were floating around in that day at that time. It's God setting Himself against and over and above these other stories that were out there, and typically what you had in those stories was creation out of conflict, dualism, light versus darkness, this great cosmic battle, this war out of which came creation, humanity, the world. Really, some of those ancient Near Eastern creation myths are quite interesting when you think about why the gods created humanity. But Genesis is totally different. In Genesis, in Genesis chapters one and following, you don't have creation out of conflict. You don't have dualism, light versus darkness. You have instead God, the great sovereign and creator King making all things from nothing for His own glory.

Totally different than anything that was around at that time. This is absolutely unique and quite wonderful when you look at it. You see there in Genesis chapter one, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. Now the picture that we have here of the creation is this sort of uninhabited wasteland, this darkness, this void, and God makes, He creates. Now there's actually, in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, kind of a neat parallel to this scene in Isaiah chapter 45.

It's where you get the language of inhabiting. Again, what's being stated there in Genesis one is that God is making the world, and He's making it a place where creatures can live, where creatures can dwell. Isaiah chapter 45 verse 18, for thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is God who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty.

He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other. In other words, this is the true God, the creator God, who actually made all things into whom we owe our allegiance. And a little bit earlier in Isaiah 45, and I think this speaks directly to your question, Michael.

It's sort of interesting, the language that's used there. Isaiah 45 verse 7, God speaks, and He says, I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Now there in the context of Isaiah 45, you have a prophecy about Cyrus, this king that was going to come and help restore the people in the temple. But what's very clear is that God is alone, if you will, in the creation scene, and He's making all things, not because He's coerced. It's not out of conflict. He's acting as this free sovereign who created the universe, the whole world, everything in it for His own glory.

That's what the biblical text says. Michael, appreciate that question. God bless.

You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Joseph, who's calling in from Benedict, Kansas. Hi, Joseph, how are you?

I'm just fine, sir. I want to thank you again for the question he answered concerning the who is the they on this whole thing that was just explained. I am a Messianic Jewish pastor. I am a Jotham. I am from Salomo, you would call Solomon, who is from David, you would call David, and I can walk that back to Abraham, but you probably don't have time for that.

So I just want to thank you again. I pastor a church in a town that unfortunately, when I came here, was predominantly KKK neo-Nazis. They tried everything in their power to push us out. They shoot the windows out of our antique John Brown church.

They break things, one thing and another. We held on. We held on to God. God came through. They moved out.

The Jew wouldn't move, so they moved. So people are getting saved in our little town, and now people are moving in by the bunch, and we started out at 67 people. We're over 200 right now. Hey, Joseph, one, thank you for your encouragement. Two, may the Lord bless you as you seek to be faithful to him and to share the love of Jesus and the message of Jesus with others.

Sounds like you guys have experienced some persecution there. May the Lord keep you guys strong. Let me just say a quick prayer for you, Joseph, and the work that you're doing. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for the work that you've given him to do there in that small town that he's in. I pray that you would bless him, that you would draw him close to you, that you would help him, Lord God, to share the love that you have with his neighbors, that people would be called to repentance and faith, and that they would experience the life-changing power of the Gospel through my brother's ministry. And so would you be with him? Would you bless him?

And would you use him mightily there in that town? In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You're listening to CORE Christianity, and if you're one of our regular listeners, we appreciate that so much. In fact, we have a group of people who really believe in this ministry enough where they want to make a monthly donation to keep us on the air. We should point out we don't receive money from a church or denomination.

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Well, let's go back to the phones. This is a voicemail we received from one of our listeners named Viola. Pastor Sanchez, thank you for your ministry. God bless each and every one of you.

Congratulations to your family on your new addition, a daughter. I have a question on the subject of pastors, the pulpit and politics. Recently, I heard a pastor speak out about the present US administration, and this sounded divisive to me.

I don't recall in the Bible what Jesus spoke out specifically about Caesar or the Roman government. Is the pulpit a place for politics? Thank you. Viola, thank you for your encouragement.

Thank you for listening and appreciate you, sister. What a good question and what an important question, especially, I mean, it seems like over the last few years with contentious election and a number of other things, certainly with the pandemic. This has been a time where we're more politically divided, it seems, than ever, and that has certainly bled into the church. There are pastors who will take very strong political stands, even encouraging people to vote a certain way or saying that if you don't vote this way, you're not a Christian binding people's consciences, so on and so forth. I think that this is a timely question that you're asking.

First, I'll say this. The church does have a prophetic voice in the world today, meaning there are a number of things that happen around us in society that we are called, according to scripture, to address, to apply the truth of God's word, the truth of God's law, to the world around us. That's just, I think, a part of being a Christian, a part of being a pastor, is having that prophetic voice. I would say that that's different than politics in the pulpit. I think that's just being faithful to preach God's word well.

I get nervous and uncomfortable when you have pastors who are sort of steering away from faithfully teaching the text of scripture, and they've become ambassadors for a particular political party. We're ambassadors, the apostle Paul says, of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. It's that kingdom that we represent. We are not called to be representatives of another earthly kingdom, first and foremost.

That's not what we're called to preach. We are called to pray for civil rulers, civil leaders. That's something that we are commanded to do. 1 Timothy 2, Paul said, First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. What Paul is doing there, right? Let me just say that the leaders, the government leaders in his day, they were not very favorable toward or kind toward Christianity. Yet he's not writing to the churches saying, we need to stage a rebellion, we need to revolt. No, he's trying to advance a different kind of kingdom, the kingdom that grows through the proclamation of the gospel and hearts that are transformed by the grace of God. He says, as we do that, pray for the civil leaders who are over you, that we might continue to live lives that are peaceful, that we can serve the Lord and honor the Lord in all that we do. But it doesn't seem like the apostle Paul is trying to take over the government, per se.

No, that's not what's happening here. He's establishing, through the preaching of the gospel, a different kind of government, if you will, on earth, the kingdom of God, which is manifested first and foremost in the local church. So it's the job of pastors to be ambassadors of that kingdom, preaching the word, addressing the problems of today, calling out sin where there's sin, and sometimes we're going to be persecuted because of that. You think of John the Baptist rebuking Herod for his sinful affairs. Well, what did that lead to for John the Baptist? He spoke the truth to the leaders in his day.

Well, it led to his persecution, to his being killed. Sometimes being faithful to the word of God, calling out the sin in society is going to lead to persecution. But we have to be careful that we don't confuse the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God. And I'm afraid that that happens sometimes today in churches, that people are not able to differentiate those two things. And so we need to be faithful to the text of scripture, preaching the Bible, and applying the word of God to the issues of today, and really seeking first, as Jesus said, the kingdom of God, his righteousness through the proclamation of the gospel.

Thank you again, Viola, for that question. May the Lord bless you, and may the Lord bless your church. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can always send us an email.

Here's our email address. It's questions at corechristianity.com, and we're open to questions about doctrine or theology or how your Christian walk intersects with today's culture. Again, it's questions at corechristianity.com. Pamela wrote to us, and she says this, Have you ever been told that the stories in the Bible are just fables to teach us morals, or do you believe stories such as The Woman at the Well and The Good Samaritan really took place?

This is something that people will say, of course. Those are just a bunch of stories. Those are just a bunch of fables.

The question is, what are you talking about, first and foremost? Are you talking about the parable of the sower? Some of these parables, are you saying that that wasn't a historical event that took place? Well, sure, Jesus is telling a parable, but if we're talking about The Woman at the Well in John 4 or some of these other passages of scripture, yeah. I think that these things did actually happen as they were recorded by the disciples of our Lord for us to read about.

And with regard to the other things, like the miracles that you see in scripture, yes, those things actually happened. We're talking about the God who made all things out of nothing. Nothing is too hard for this God.

I mean, this is what he says. What does he tell Abraham and Sarah when he promises them a child, even though they're advanced in age, they haven't been able to conceive? He says, is anything too hard for the Lord? The problem is, we just don't believe. We just lack faith. We don't believe that God is who he says he is, and that he does what he says he does, or did what he said he didn't. I think that we approach the text of scripture and we say, look, this is what God has revealed to us in his word as events that took place, and so we receive that by faith.

And the neat thing is there's a lot of historical evidence to corroborate the things that we see in scripture, I think even things like the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And again, especially when we're talking about the miracles, in the 20th century there was this big push to sort of do away with all of the miraculous in the Bible. The modern man is not going to accept miracles. We need to go back to the essence of religion, which is really, it's not the miracles. It's love each other, be nice people.

God is the father of all people, and we are just a sort of universal brotherhood of mankind. That's how we're going to save Christianity, because the modern man can't accept things like the resurrection from the dead and the parting of the Red Sea, and so we need to go back to the essence of Christianity. The problem was, people who made this case and were arguing in this way, is they were actually doing away with the essence of Christianity. The kernel of Christianity, the essence of Christianity, is not be a good person. It's not love your neighbor and do nice things. This is what God calls us to.

It's his law. But the essence of Christianity is the gospel, what God has accomplished for us to forgive our sins, to redeem us so that we might have a relationship with the Creator, with the true and the living God. And that happened through the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says, look, if Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead, we're in our sins still. We might as well just quit preaching. Why am I suffering like I'm suffering, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. Why am I experiencing the persecutions, the famine, the nakedness, all of these things that I've experienced, why am I going through it if it's just a fairy tale? If Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, brothers and sisters, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. You only live once.

Stop wasting your life. No, Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead. And because of that, we have hope. We have hope for ourselves, for our sins, that they'll be forgiven, that we can stand before God justified and right in his sight, that we can have a relationship of peace with him. And we have hope for this world, the created world that we live in that is struggling, where we see wars and all these other things, famine, people hurting each other, sinning against each other. We have hope for this world and for this creation because of what Christ has done in paying for our sins and rising from the dead. And so, yeah, I feel strongly about this because I think that when we try to minimize what the scripture teaches, we say the miracles aren't that big of a deal.

It's really just we should love each other. We're doing away with the very heartbeat, the very essence of the Christian faith. We're doing away with core Christianity. And it turns the gospel into not good news at all.

It turns it into good advice, you know, be a good person. That's not what the gospel is about. The gospel is about your sins through Jesus are forgiven and you have hope. And so that's what we need to proclaim. Amen, Brother Sanchez. That was so well said. I just appreciate that so much, so thank you. That's what the gospel is all about and we can never forget that.

This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. One of the ways you can ask a question is by leaving us a voicemail. And our voicemail operates 24 hours a day. We try to review our voicemails each day. Here's the number to call if you'd like to leave a question. It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673.

Here's a voicemail that came in yesterday. Hi, my question is why do we still obey the Ten Commandments? I ask this because I learned just recently that the Ten Commandments was first introduced in the Old Testament. And a lot of the laws that we see in the Old Testament we don't do to this day. So I was wondering why is it that we keep the Ten Commandments? Overall, it's a sound doctrine to keep for life in general, but I wanted to know if there was more behind that.

Thanks. Yeah, super good question. And of course Jesus, when he summarized the law, he said, look, the law of God, the Ten Commandments, are fulfilled in this. Love God perfectly and love your neighbor as yourself. And so this is something that we are called to. And the Ten Commandments are basically a summary of what we sometimes refer to as the moral law. The Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue, is what God calls us to. And in one sense this is written on our hearts, this sort of call to worship God.

We know that he's the creator. Romans chapter 1 says this. We often suppress that knowledge sinfully. Again, that's what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 1 with the call also to love our neighbor, not to steal, not to murder, not to do those things. These are things that you see universally across cultures. And so this sort of natural law, this moral law, is something that we see all over the place, summarized again in the Ten Commandments.

And it's something that we're called to and summarized even more succinctly by Jesus in the commandment to love God and to love our neighbor. And there are a number of laws though, as you bring up in the Old Testament, that we don't follow today. Sometimes there's what we refer to as a threefold division of the law.

We'll talk about this. So you have the civil law that was for Israel as a political body under the Old Testament. So you think about the law specifically that governed them as a nation, as a body politic. Well, that's not in place today. God's kingdom isn't the political nation of Israel on earth today.

It's the church through the proclamation of the gospel. So we don't have the civil law in place today. We don't obey those laws as they did in Israel under the Old Covenant. You also have the ceremonial law, the laws that were associated with their worship with the cult. And by cult, I mean the sort of temple, the system of worship that they had with the sacrifices and the incense and all of those types and shadows, those things that sort of pointed forward to a greater reality that was fulfilled in Jesus.

John the Baptist said of Jesus, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In other words, the temple system with its religious ceremonies pointed us forward to Jesus and the New Covenant, to the time that we're in right now. So we don't do those things. So you have the civil law and the ceremonial law that have been abrogated today because of where we are in redemptive history. But you also have, again, the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments.

And we do still believe in those. We do still abide by them. Jesus said, I didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. So he's fulfilled it in our place. We're no longer under the law as a sort of works covenant, trying to obey the law so that God will love us. No, we've been justified freely by the grace of God in Jesus Christ through the perfect work of Jesus that he offered for us and the forgiveness of our sins.

And now we're free by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the righteous requirements of the laws, Paul says in Romans chapter 8. Now we don't do that perfectly. No one keeps the law of God perfectly.

We don't. But we're not justified by our obedience to the law. We're justified by Jesus' perfect obedience and the forgiveness that we have. And so as Christians, we continue to seek the Lord, to love God to the best of our ability, and the Spirit of God is working in us to that end. But we don't seek to reestablish the civil law or the ceremonial law of Israel. We are led by the law of liberty, if you will, as Paul refers to it in the New Testament. So appreciate that question, and may God bless you as you seek to honor him and as you seek to love him and to love your neighbor as yourself. You know, Adriel, I'm struck by the fact that there are some pastors today, even some well-known pastors, that say really we shouldn't be talking about the Old Testament, that we shouldn't be preaching from the Old Testament because the New Covenant has completely replaced that. I'm wondering how you would respond to that.

I say, man, that's crazy. I'm currently preaching through the book of Genesis. Other books I've preached through in the Old Testament, I've preached through the book of Daniel, I've preached through the book of Leviticus, which I know you think, boy, that must have been a boring sermon series, but it wasn't. It was exciting.

It was good. We need to be in the Scriptures, all Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it's for us, for our edification, for our growth. And so we need the Old Testament and the New Testament to understand who God is.

So we need it. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar. Or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.