Missing the Mark

To me, the greatest loss in our generation is the perspective and purpose of a church that has come to the erroneous conclusion that a strong, moral America is the same thing as a strong church. That a moral culture is necessary for a church to have a spiritual impact.

That a conservative victory on some level is equal to a Christian victory. Have we actually forgotten that our relationship to society is not to reform it, but to redeem it? What's our cause as the church? What should the church be focused on?

And more specifically, what should our cause be as it relates to our government? Is there a sense in which the mission of the church can be fulfilled in the context of politics? Steven Davey believes that at times the church lost its perspective. There have been times when some Christians equated political victories with the mission of the church.

How should we think about that? Today he begins a series from Romans 13 called, I Pledge Allegiance. We begin in verse one with a message called, Missing the Mark. The very beginning lines of our Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1882.

Francis of Bellamy was a socialist but also happened to be a Baptist minister, was heavily influenced by a cousin of his who wrote that utopia was possible if humanity would only unite. His original pledge was written to celebrate the anniversary of Columbus' arrival in America and it was published in a children's magazine. And he intended to stress the unity of the states of this country with this pledge so that his original pledge read this way, and I quote, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Twenty-five years later there was a growing concern that the many immigrants who were flooding to our country wouldn't know what my flag stood for and so they adapted the words to read and then a year later they added the, of America so that the pledge read I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

What's still missing? Under God. Thirty years later in an attempt to differentiate America from the growing communism and atheism of the world, wanting to differentiate between us and them because of our basic belief in a creator God, the words were added under God. And after those words were ratified, President Eisenhower wrote, and I quote, from this day forward the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and schoolhouse, this patriotic oath and public prayer.

Mark those last words. It was unapologetically perceived and conceived as a public prayer. Now sixty years after Eisenhower applauded the new pledge and the contents within it that made it a prayer, it is the growing center of controversy, is it not?

It is undeniably a confession. It is undeniably a public prayer, a declaration of the sovereign rule of God and if you were an atheist you wouldn't want to say it either, would you? And that's why atheist Michael Newdow, the father of that third grader who challenged the state of California for allowing a teacher to begin class by leading the students in the Pledge of Allegiance as something they shouldn't do and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with him and declared such leadership unconstitutional.

And of course the uproar began in June of 2004. The Supreme Court acted upon it, in fact reversed the decision if you've been following in the newspaper, but in the process the Supreme Court sort of sidestepped the issue, the greater issue of separation of church and state. They overruled the lower court by simply saying that that man did not have the right to speak for his third grade daughter because he was involved in a current custody dispute with his former wife over her.

So they simply threw it out of court as it were and in the process neatly begged off the weightier issue of addressing the church and state relation as it related to the Pledge of Allegiance. There isn't any doubt in our culture, all you have to do is open the newspaper, all you have to do is watch television or read a magazine that we are living in days of great erosion as it relates to the issues of the entity of state and the relation of state and church and how they coexist. But what do the apostles mean? How do they expect us to interpret statements like, we are to live as believers in quietness? 1 Timothy 2. That we are, as we relate to the state and the governing authorities, that we are to be submissive to rulers and authorities, Titus 3.1. That we are to be subject to every human institution including the emperor and governors, 1 Peter 2. What does Paul mean when he writes in chapter 13 and verse 1, let every person be in subjection in Romans to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. What does this text imply as it relates to how we as the church are to relate to the state and what we as a church should expect from the state and how we would expect the state to act in relation to things of the church? What does this text and the other text that I've just referred to have to say about the state and the church existing in this culture?

What are the unique roles for each? How do we apply the perspective of these texts to the church in the 21st century? Surely you don't expect me to answer all those questions this morning.

At least I hope you don't because we're really not going to even hardly begin to answer them. I just want to raise the questions as we begin to approach Romans chapter 13 which is in this day at this particular hour more controversial than ever, I just want to provoke your thinking by raising questions. And I will tell you ahead of time that I will swim upstream today not against the political current of our day but the evangelical church current of our day. And I want you to hear me out. Not many have left in the first and second hour.

Some did but try to stay as long as you can. I want to provoke your critical thinking faculties to ask questions about the relationship of the church to the state in this day of spiritual political activism which is growing dramatically. I will never forget one of my former professors, Howard Hendrick, saying to us in class, the church in every generation has missed the mark somewhere. And then he pointed his finger at us and he asked, do you know where the church is missing the mark today? Do you?

Do I? Are we to believe that the church is not to be corrected and that we're on course in every aspect? I'm personally convinced that one area in which the church is missing the mark is in its relationship to government, specifically in its desire for political influence in hopes of stemming the tide of immorality and digression that we read about in our newspapers every time we open them up. There is no doubt there is great confusion in our country's history with the state. Our state is confused as to its relationship with the church. What has become known as the wall of separation between church and state has nothing to do with our founding fathers' intentions. What our founding fathers intended to do was create protection of the church from the state, from state-imposed religion.

They didn't want to repeat England or France. Instead of protecting the church, however, from the state, the amendment is now being interpreted to sort of pull the drain and wash away all influence of the church over or around or within state. In effect, it's sort of the slow riddance of religious expression. It has become the separation of state from the church. It has become the separation of state from God basically. So today we see our courts and our state and our country using the Constitution to defend someone's right to look at pornography in the locker room but not a Bible in the classroom. One elementary girl in Virginia was told not too long ago to stop reading her Bible on a school bus. It violated the separation of church and state.

It's ludicrous. Today, the Constitution is being twisted to defend the rights to all sorts of things. You have the right to use God's name in profanity at liberty but not the right to mention God respectfully. So in Decatur, Illinois, not long ago, a primary school teacher who discovered the word God in a phonics textbook was able to successfully order his seven-year-olds in his class to color over it so that it could not be seen, thus not violate the separation of church and state.

The only thing that ever brings a change in this politically correct culture that is shunning God is war or terrorism. And then you can watch in the newspapers, you can read how our leaders from both sides of the aisles assure us that this country is in their prayers. And every news anchor you watch ends by saying, we're praying for you. And I often wonder what are those prayers like and who are they praying to?

And I can envision them bouncing around the studio ceiling. The state is deeply concerned for its rights but at the same time confused over its relationship to the church. But here's where I'm going to go upstream. That isn't what concerns me. That isn't what troubles me. It is the church that is confused, which I want to sound an alarm before. I'm convinced that the greater problem, the greater danger, the greater loss is not the degradation of our society, which was predicted by the scriptures to grow worse and worse. The greater danger is not the erosion of values even in our country. It isn't even the desire of our country to strike God from the textbooks or the courthouses.

It isn't even the slouching of our country as one author wrote toward Gomorrah. Greater than the degradation of societies, digression into greater evil is the distraction of the church and the diversion of the evangelical church's resources and manpower and energy and objectives toward influence over the state. The church, I fear, is leaving its first love if it hasn't already left it. A church today that seems to believe that making disciples one at a time is not good enough.

It needs to be improved upon. Then that would make, of course, Jesus Christ a colossal failure who after nearly four years had only 11 men and a handful of women who believed what he said. Church is deeply confused in regards to its relationship with the state, its position and posture toward the issues of our day. To me, the greatest loss in our generation is the perspective and purpose of a church that has come to the erroneous conclusion that a strong moral America is the same thing as a strong church, that we must have one to have the other, that a moral culture is necessary for a church to have a spiritual impact, that a conservative victory on some level is equal to a Christian victory. Have we actually forgotten that our relationship to society is not to reform it, but to redeem it? Have we forgotten in our power push for moral activism that a man with good morals will go to hell as quickly as a man with bad morals?

Romans chapter 2 already delivered the shocking news that a man with a taste for religion and good moral upstanding reputation is as quickly on his way to hell as the man in Romans chapter 1 who has a distaste for God and a love for perversion. Ladies and gentlemen, the mission of the church is not to make bad people good and good people better. Our mission is not moral reformation, it is spiritual reformation. And spiritual reformation brings about individual moral reformation. The political systems of our world and even our country was never supposed to achieve that end. They have been ordained for a different purpose.

The state doesn't even have the equipment to bring about the necessary changes. Only the Gospel delivers a new nature. The courts do not have the tools to bring about spiritual change. A classic case of the church's misdirection is in our own history. A hundred and fifty years ago with the church's role in prohibition, the effects of wonderful people, believers, many of them women, many pastors and Christian leaders who succeeded actually in outlawing alcoholic drinks, which was considered and conceived to be a great victory for God.

Now in retrospect we see that it created an incredible opening for crime to organize and fill the vacuum siphoning off millions of dollars for their own evil purposes. This may shock you, but if I were living back then preaching what I believe Paul is going to deliver in Romans 13, the goal of the church would not be to make drinking illegal. However, the mission and energy and investment of the church was not then and is not now to clean up the evils of society.

It is to evangelize society and an evangelized society cleans up. Think about it as I continue to try to provoke your thinking. What if homosexuality or sodomy was illegal? What if abortion was outlawed? What if sexual relations outside of marriage unacceptable? What if prayer was brought back into the beginning of every classroom setting and the Ten Commandments rehung in the courtrooms?

What then? Are people going to heaven? Are more people going to heaven?

Has the real mission of the church advanced? The answer is no. Well what if we turn back the clock as there are many well-meaning believers trying to do to win back America? What if we turn the clock back to the good old days wherever they are?

I'm not sure. Study American history. It certainly wouldn't go back to the first century. Look at Rome where Nero married a man in public and several women, where bestiality was acceptable. How far back do you want to go before you get to the good old days? But suppose we could turn the clock back to our own culture when there were some semblance of boundary, morally speaking, a basic respect for the name of God, a basic underpinning of truth, a time when there was embarrassment over adultery, when sexual acts and aberrations were kept in the closet. Would we, if we could roll the clock back to that point, would we breathe a sigh of relief then? What if we had our every way in Washington?

Evangelical council was the only council allowed on Capitol Hill and every piece of legislation we cared about passed in our favor. Would we wipe the sweat off our brow and say God is winning this so-called cultural war? I believe the church at large today would wipe the sweat off its brow because the church at large today has forgotten the nature of our battle. It is not cultural. We are not in a cultural war. We are not called to engage in a cultural war. We are in a spiritual war. Our enemies are not flesh and blood.

They are the spiritual rulers of darkness who've blinded the hearts of men who will act like sinners will act. We are sweating over good things but the wrong cause. Now that doesn't mean that we don't care what society does. Given our current freedoms, we vote against evil at every opportunity and we rejoice every time the court reveres moral purity. And for those of you who are called into civil service, we praise God that you have that arena of influence and use that framework as an opportunity to shine just like we would encourage college students and high school students on their campus to affect those by means of the gospel that they can influence. At this present time the church has vast privileges in this country but a privilege is not a prerogative. The church in America has turned its privileges into its main purposes. See that's the problem with the distracted church in our generation today that has bought the logic that if we can keep sodomy illegal that we have won a victory for God.

We have not. That if somehow we can clean society up and put a bow around its neck and say, now there, isn't that better? We have not changed its nature and it will go to hell as quickly as if it went from your kitchen with a bow tied around its neck. See victory is not changing the behavior of our culture unless we have first changed its beliefs. That's our mission.

To change the belief by the grace of God of those who are blinded by the God of this world so that they come to see by the grace of God that Jesus Christ is the living Lord and they bow their knee in their heart to him. Guess what they will do? They'll vote differently. They'll live differently. They'll treat their wife differently. They'll treat their children differently. They'll think differently.

They'll pursue different things and they will look to us for guidance. The church that's a few steps ahead. Oh that's how I live. Isn't that the mission? Spiritual transformation does not happen from the outside inward but from the inside outward. Think of it this way as I just continue this introduction of Romans 13. What did Paul do?

Think about it. When he entered the Las Vegas of his world, Corinth in fact it was so wicked, so decadent that if in his day you wanted to refer to a woman as sexually loose you would refer to her as a Corinthian woman. He entered there with the gospel. In fact the gospel had such inroads that we read in 1 Corinthians 6 that the church body was composed of former embezzlers and homosexuals and adulterers and idolaters and drunkards and you can just read the church membership role. But Paul never started a campaign to clean up the city's morals.

This may trouble you but I want you to think this through. He didn't organize the believers to fill government positions with Christian friendly officials. No doubt Christians will speak their mind about pornography and prostitution and idolatry and drunkenness that plague Corinth. But their mission was not to clean up Corinth. Their mission was to win Corinth with the gospel of Christ. And Paul would write to officials who served in the household of Caesar.

You remember? No mention of leaving that household. No mention of leaving that political structure. No mention of undermining Caesar and let's try to replace Caesar. Be a light in the household of Caesar. Don't try to assassinate Caesar as Bonhoeffer attempted to do. He felt that that would be the right as that church was distracted as well and tried to take the life of Adolf Hitler. That was the error of Peter.

Peter arrived at the point where the political views regarding Jesus Christ had reached a point where he thought there was no return and Jesus Christ was just going the wrong way and moving way too slow and so when they came to arrest an innocent man, the God man no less, what did Peter do? He drew his what? He drew his sword. He said in effect, I will fight this cultural digression with the same weapons they are using against us. They use that method.

I will respond in using their method. You remember what happened? He swung away. He was a fisherman not a swordsman so he only caught an ear not a head. And an ear fell to the ground. And I can imagine as I reentered that scene that everyone came to a hushed silence.

What now? And you remember Jesus Christ reached out to that injured man and he touched his ear. The implication is he literally recreated his ear. That would be enough to hoist Jesus upon the shoulders of that mob and declare him Messiah, wouldn't it? He stopped the pain of a man's body who'd come to bring his body great pain. And then you remember what he said to Peter? He said, Peter, you don't fight them with their methods. You live by the sword, that classic phrase, you die by the what?

By the sword. You don't match muscle with muscle. That isn't the mission of what we've come to do. And then he told Peter this, which ought to encourage us. He said, Peter, listen, if all I have to do have you forgotten is as it were snap my fingers and we could have six legions of angels right here in this garden, 72,000 angels, just like that.

You want to have a little muscle, a little might? I could do that, but that's not our mission. When Paul wrote to the Roman believers in this chapter, you have to understand that there was no record of any Christian on the Roman Senate, though I'm sure Paul would have rejoiced had there been. We know of leaders and officials who were coming to faith in Christ as the influence of the gospel spread. But mark me, there was no Christian political lobby in Rome, no watchdog committee to make sure the interests of Christians were being upheld, no press quoting the believers' perspective. There were no courts where the false accusations against Christians could be resolved.

In fact, when the barbarians would come a little later and overran Rome, you remember what they did? They blamed the believer. They blamed the Christian.

This is your fault. It was total injustice. No court stood up for them.

They were covered with pitch and set on fire. Did the cause of God lose a victory? No, the cause of God advanced. When Paul wrote the book of Romans, we have no reference or much less encouragement to change Rome. Instead, he writes a text of Scripture that would have been, I'm sure, shocking and maybe even unsettling to them.

And I think in our generation, in our day, it's equally as unsettling and shocking. In fact, I think it goes against the nature of this current called the evangelical church. There are at least two things.

We'll look quickly and that's about all we're going to do. But look there at verse 1. Let me give you two principles that are clearly declared in this text and we'll talk about what these implications are later. Number one, submission to government is the command of God. This means if we were preaching in China, we'd say the same thing. Can you imagine those implications? Now, obviously, there are other texts that tell us that when the government tells us to avoid or deny or disobey a specific command of God, we will obey God rather than whom?

Men. But the ordinances of the government and obedience to them is the command of God. Do you know there are churches in this country right now that will refuse to be approved by the licensing agencies of our culture?

They won't put that extra door in there. They won't hang a fire extinguisher on the wall because you have no right to tell us what to do. Paul says you're wrong. Obey the ordinances of government. Secondly, he says the institution of government is the creation of God. Paul goes on to say, for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God.

In fact, you could take your pencil and you could underline every time the phrase from God or by God or of God appears. Verse two, of God. The ordinances of God. Verse four, the first part, a minister of God. Later on in verse four, the government is the minister of God.

Do you understand the implications of saying that the pagan government of Rome, the pagan leadership of Nero was ordained, positioned, placed there by God? So let's not forget our true battle. We have not been called by God to save America. We have been called by God to save Americans. We are ambassadors of the king. We are sent to introduce our world to that message. It is the power of the gospel, which is the power to reform, to transform, to change, to revitalize.

But that power comes inside by means of the Holy Spirit outward as we reach our world for Jesus Christ. I recommend we get back to the business of being the church. I hope this reminder today has encouraged you and perhaps challenged your thinking.

This is wisdom for the heart. Today's message from Stephen Davey is called Missing the Mark. This was part one of a three-part series called I Pledge Allegiance.

Stephen will be back next time to continue the series. I want to make sure you know that this series has been turned into a book. The book goes by the same title of the series. It's called I Pledge Allegiance. You'll find this resource on our website, wisdomonline.org. We can also help you over the phone if you call us at 866-48-BIBLE. If you ever miss one of these broadcasts, we have an app that you can install on your phone and access our daily Bible lesson and read the daily devotional and more. The Wisdom International app is in the iTunes and Google Play stores. Join us next time to discover more wisdom for the heart. .