Hi, this is Pastor Lutzer. Let me ask you a question.
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Or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Those who mix the cross and any nation's flag do a disservice to both. For believers, keeping them distinct is the only way to fulfill our prime mission as ambassadors for Christ to a needy world. Stay with us.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, is it wrong to have allegiance to your nation's flag? Dave, it's not wrong to have allegiance to a nation's flag. As you might know, I actually was raised in Canada, so I'm a naturalized American citizen. I stand for the flag.
I love America despite its many faults. The point that I'm trying to make is this, that whatever allegiance we have to our nation, we should always give our primary allegiance to God and to the cross. So in that sense, they have to remain distinct. But it's not as if, you know, we can leave the world, nor do I believe that we should leave politics behind.
The question is, how do we relate the two? That's why I've written a book entitled, Christians, Politics, and the Cross. And for a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here's what you do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that contact info again at the end of this message. For now, let us listen, even as we try to untangle the relationship of the cross and the flag. Take your Bibles and turn now to the book of First Peter. And you know, I could have used many, many passages in the New Testament to preach this part. Why are there so many passages in the New Testament that I could have preached this from? It's because most of the letters that were written in the New Testament were written to churches that were islands of righteousness in a sea of paganism. And the reason that they were written is to help Christians to know how to live in the midst of a pagan, godless society.
And that's why chapter after chapter and book after book is devoted to the topic. Notice how we are to live if we are committed both to God and to country, rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's. He says in verse 9, but you, First Peter chapter 2, but you are a chosen race, elect by God from before the foundation of the world, a royal priesthood, the priests in the Old Testament could go into the Day of Atonement only under specific regulations. We today live there in the Holy of Holies. We live in the Holy of Holies. Christ has brought us in. We are a holy nation, a people for God's own possession that you may proclaim, and this now gives us the reason why we're here.
What are we supposed to be doing, people ask? Well, let's hear, that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That, my friend, is the basic fundamental agenda of the church in all generations regardless of the kind of regime under which they live. And the Greek word here is that you might proclaim the excellencies. The idea is the worthiness of Jesus Christ. That's what the world needs to see is how worthy Jesus is. And the word proclaim is used here only in the New Testament.
It is used in an Old Testament translation into Greek of the Old Testament for praise, that we ourselves, our lives might praise and give glory to the excellencies of the one who has called us out of darkness, out of the pit of misunderstanding into his glorious light, and that is our agenda. What is our responsibility at a time when everything that has been nailed down is being torn up? First, to have a clear message.
Let's not forget that. That's why God called us, is to have a clear message. Notice also, you say, well, but people don't believe our message. They just don't want to believe. This week somebody was telling me, they said that the people to whom I witness have such hard hearts.
I've tried to tell them the truth and they won't listen. Now, because I believe that God is sovereign, I think that God, if he wanted to, really could zap them and they catch the truth real fast if God zapped them. Just boom, they'd see it, that they're sinners, that Christ died for sinners, and they'd better rush to Christ to believe.
We'd love that, wouldn't we? But you know, that's not the way God usually does it. You know what his program is? His program is to enable his people to live in such a way that they soften the world and worm their way into the hearts of the unsaved, who eventually see a life and say, I can't explain it.
What makes you tick? That's why, in addition to a clear message, what we should do is to have a credible lifestyle. Verse 11, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lust.
The world most assuredly does not abstain. Fleshly lusts are the things in which they indulge, the things in which they glory, and the things about which they boast. But we abstain from fleshly lust, which wage war against the soul, that whole battle with impurity. We become a part of a community that prays for us, and that helps us to yield, and that counsels us, and that disciples us, so that we are not like the world. We are not into what they are doing, and their magazines, and whatever it is that they may watch. We don't do that because we have been called to a higher calling.
Now that gets the attention of the world. So what does it mean to have a credible lifestyle? Negatively? Moral purity?
Positively? Notice, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, that is, among the pagans, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, on account of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. What he's saying is that what you need is credibility. Credibility.
I think we've lost a lot of that, but credibility. You ever been in an office area or somewhere where there is somebody who's a Christian, but they're a little bit, they're a little awed anyway? And they're always spewing out these platitudes, and then they begin to give out tracts, and the people just shake their heads and say, give me a break.
Give me a break. Why is it, why is the message rejected? It may be a true message. Lack of credibility.
Lack of credibility. You live like the people of the world. You engage in lust like people of the world. You talk like the people of the world. You complain like they do.
And I was born close to a little town, and I'll tell you something. When it rained, all the farmers would get together in the little store, and all that they did was complain. They complained when it rained. They complained during times of drought. They complained when the crop was good. They complained when it was bad. They complained when it hailed. They complained when it didn't hail.
They complained, they complained. And if you're a part of that, why should anybody believe that Jesus is able to save people? You know, it's like saying, I've met a doctor who can cure the blind. Who in the world is going to believe that? But if you say, you know, I've got six people who can come and they can tell you that they were blind and now they see, people say, I can't believe it. If that's true, if he can cure the blind, those blind, why can't he cure other blind? And the credibility is gained. And the world today no longer believes that God actually changes the lives of people and that they live differently. It is because they have heard us, they've heard us shout as loudly as they, they've seen us as angry as they are, they've seen us go for our rights just as much as the world goes for their rights. And the world says, what in the world is there to believe? Why should I believe in your Jesus? A clear message, a credible lifestyle.
And we just keep moving through this passage because we're not to the top of the hill yet. Cheerful, you know it would begin with C, didn't you? If I, after all, had clear and credible, it would have to be C, cheerful, submission. Now, when this was written, who was ruling? Caesar, of course, but Nero. Nero was in charge and he's the one, you remember, I told you, he killed his mother.
And did some very despicable things to Christians that we still read about in history textbooks today. And this is what Peter says, shock, submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it is to a king as one in authority or to the governor who is sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing your right, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men. Do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as a bond slave of God. Obey him.
Nero, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Bill Clinton, submit. He's been put there by God. You speak about him.
You do not malign him. You pray for him because he is your leader. That's what you do as a Christian. You say, but oh, in America, we have the privilege of choosing who our king is.
Yes, of course. And that's why you get involved in politics and you vote wisely and you pray about your vote and you take your voter's guide and you ask yourself what it is that you should do. And of course, the point is that we live in a participatory democracy, which the people didn't have in those days, and we take full advantage of it. But at the end of the day, we realize that ultimately we are to submit even if it is not our man or our woman who gets elected.
That's what the text says. And then he goes on to say that we should submit to civil authorities. Verse 18, servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.
Oh, you should hang on to your rights and get an organization that says Christians are having their rights trampled on. No, for this finds favor if for the sake of conscience toward God, a man bears up under sorrows, suffering unjustly. He says, what credit is it? The next verse, if you suffer unjustly, if you get what you deserve, don't think that that's for Jesus. But if you get something you don't deserve, what does he say? This finds favor with God. God is watching.
God is watching. You say, well, shouldn't we be involved? Isn't it Christians who have been on the forefront of good legislation?
Yes, be involved. Whether it's a Wilberforce against slavery or whether it is child labor laws, oftentimes it was Christians who brought about all the good changes that they could. And what we should do today, if you're into term limits or even if you are for the NRA or whatever, go ahead and do your agenda. Just don't take all those agendas and nail them to the cross and call them Christian so that in the eyes of the world, the cross of Jesus Christ looks like an overused bulletin board. Don't do that.
Don't do that. The cross must always be distinct. We must recognize today, dear folks, that there are many people to whom we can appeal with persuasion and with love and humility who can get onto our ethical agenda. And that's perfectly fine, our moral agenda. But let's not tag it with the name Christian and let's not go out of our way to antagonize the world that we are supposed to represent Jesus Christ to.
That's the point. And that's the way we live in a pagan society, the way the church has always lived. We've talked about the flag above the cross.
I've spoken now about the flag and the cross, and there's one other relationship, and that is the cross against the flag or the flag against the cross, however you put it. You say, don't we sometimes disobey? Don't we just sometimes say enough is enough?
Yes, yes, we do. The whole history of the church is full of lawbreakers. At what point do we simply say we're not going to obey the government anymore, we're not going to take it anymore? Very simply, whenever we are asked to do something that the Bible forbids, or whenever we are asked to refrain from something that the Bible commands, that's the time that we become lawbreakers. If we're asked to do something that the Bible forbids, asked to not do something that the Bible commands, we break the law.
You're in Germany in the 60s, in East Germany, and you're asked to help build the Berlin Wall, of course you help build the Berlin Wall, be subject to every rule of man. But if the government tells you that you cannot witness to your colleagues, you begin to witness, you do so with care and with a great deal of wisdom, but you witness nonetheless because God has placed you there for one reason, to display the excellencies of Jesus Christ. That's why you are there. That's why you're there. And in those instances that I spoke about earlier where we can be involved in legislation that betters America, fine, wonderful, but even there remember we are to be witnesses of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. So what do you do if your children are asked to watch steamy sex movies as part of sex education in the schools?
What do you do? First of all, you appeal to the teacher and you go in humility because you know right well that all the sins in the world are basically found in the church if we knew the truth. And so you go with a sense of brokenness. You don't do the first thing that you want to do. You don't go with a grenade to try to burn the school down. You go in humility.
If that doesn't work, yes, you can go to the school board and if you want to join a group of people, a group of concerned parents, you can do that too. But what you try to do is you try to work with a system. You try not to gain adversaries by highly political means and start to call one another names like someone did who is a great leader in this country who said that because you are calling us a religious right wing fanatics, we're going to call you bigots. That's a quote.
You don't do that. When we disobey, we disobey wisely. We disobey wisely. We disobey honestly. We don't write letters about our opponents that aren't true in order to get some money so that we can fight some cause.
We don't embellish our argument for the cause of truth. We do so and we accept unfair treatment because we realize that Jesus said, if my kingdom were of this world, that's really what it is. My servants would fight.
I have enough resources to win this thing politically. But my kingdom is not from this world and therefore my servants will not fight. Peter, take your sword and put it back into its sheath. This is not the way you fight in God's kingdom, not the way you do it in God's kingdom. What is it that I'm saying as I come now to the top of the hill? I'm simply saying this, folks, and I hope that you know that we've taken this journey together so that you might realize that it's possible for the kingdom of man to decline and the kingdom of God to be doing just fine, just fine.
They're two different kingdoms. It's possible, you see, for the kingdom of man with all of its institutions to decline. I need to mention that in China where the church was so oppressed during communism, and I'm not in favor of communism, I'm not in favor of oppression, and I fear persecution because I don't know what I'd do if persecution came. I hope I do the right thing, but I don't know. But I need to tell you that the church has grown a lot more in China than it has in Taiwan with all of its freedom.
I do need to tell you that. It is possible, you see, for a state to decline. It is possible for the city of man to go downhill and the city of God to rise up to fill the vacuum and see God do something wonderful in the midst of it. I'm here to encourage you and let you know that our destiny as a church is not dependent upon the next election that is going to take place in the United States. We have a higher leader. We have a higher calling. We belong to that city which have foundations whose builder and maker is God. We are going in different directions. Yes, for this brief time we intersect, but the city of man and the city of God will separate forever, finally, in the end, and that's why we aren't complainers. I'm flying from Los Angeles to Chicago home and I have a stop off in Atlanta.
I don't get all tight about the fact that the washrooms in the Atlanta airport aren't carpeted and there's inadequate lighting and some of the fixtures are dirty. I don't get shook. Why? I'm just passing through. I'm on my way home. Remember the years ago when we used to sing this world wasn't my home and some people actually believed it because we belong to another country, another city with another leader, and our responsibility is to pick up the pieces of a crumbling society. What a day and age in which to live so that we speak to the homeless and to that pregnant mother and we minister to her in a daycare center and we talk to those who are going through times of financial distress and those single mothers, God bless them, whose homes have been ravaged by divorce and immorality and alcoholism and we move in and we take over and we represent Jesus to them. That's what we do when society crumbles. Not to save America, but we're committed to saving Americans. That's God's agenda.
Excellencies. Remember that story that comes to us from the turn of the century? That boxer rebellion called the boxers, by the way, because they used to do calisthenics there in China and during those terrible times Christians were going through times of persecution that were horrendous. They marched into the school with guns, this Christian school, about a hundred students, and they said, we want all of you to come out because we've laid a cross down on the step. If you step on the cross, thereby despising it, you'll live. If you walk around the cross, you'll be shot. The first eight students stepped on the cross and their lives were spared. But the ninth was a girl and she stood and she knelt there beside the cross asking God to give her the grace to do what she knew she should do. And she very quietly walked around the cross in respect of it and was mowed down.
All the other students in the school followed her example. Ninety children killed because they were Christians. Were they losers?
Were they losers because they didn't know anything about the American way of life? No, my friend, it is possible to lose in the city of man and win forever in the city of God. We belong to a different country with a different set of values, with a different commander, and we are in march to a different drummer. And what we must do is to represent Christ well in a nation that is crumbling around us, looking for answers. And we must call forth the excellencies of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Go today in peace to your neighborhood, to your home, to your apartment, to your place of work tomorrow and say I represent Christ.
That's what we do when paganism encroaches. And if you are agreed, we've come to the top of the mountain. Let us now bow in prayer. Our Father, we thank you today for all those who have gone before us who have held high the cross that we love.
Thank you for those who have died because they understood clearly, they understood clearly that their kingdom was not a kingdom of this world. We pray today, Father, that you might invigorate us. Help us to know, help us to know that we can be faithful no matter what. And for those who have never believed on Christ today, who have never been translated from one kingdom to the other, cause that to happen too. Grant them the faith to believe personally, even during this prayer. We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer, as you might know during this political year. Oftentimes as we speak about the cross and the flag, that relationship has to be nuanced.
By that I mean we need to be able to think clearly about it. And I've written a book entitled, Christians Politics and the Cross. I wrote it to show that the cross of Christ must be above the flag, but at the same time, what's happening within our country politically is very important. We believe in the separation of church and state, but you cannot separate the state from morality.
So we have every right to be able to lobby and to be able to encourage our legislators to accept biblical morality. For a gift of any amount, this book can be yours, that I've written, Christians Politics and the Cross. Go to RTWOffer.com.
That's RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. I want to give you a word of caution. Your friends may think of this relationship between the flag and the cross differently than you do. If they are true believers, let us always remember that that which unites us together in Christ is more important than that which tears us apart when it comes to the issues of politics. Christians Politics and the Cross. I hope that you get a copy soon.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. It's in the cross of Christ that we glory, but our eyes are often drawn to secondary things such as political advantage. Sometimes we make the mistake of equating the cross with American values. That's why we need to have a clear view of how important the cross really is. So what does the cross mean to you? Next time on Running to Win, don't miss What God Thinks of the Cross. Running to Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
