Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text is found in the book of Esther. I’m going to begin reading at verse one of chapter 4. And for those of you who are not familiar with the book of Esther, read it. Well, perhaps you’re newer to the faith or have not read your Old Testaments as much as might be profitable, but the book of Esther, of course, takes place in the context of empire. It takes place with Esther, a believer in Yahweh, having attained to become the queen of the land, the empress so to speak. And a plot is hatched on the part of Haman against God’s people to destroy them. He gets a decree from the king that all those who follow that God should be exterminated. And so we pick up the story in Esther chapter 4, beginning at verse one. Mordecai is a relative of Esther, and he’s a good guy.

When Mordecai perceived all that was done, Mordecai rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes and went out into the midst of the city and cried with a loud and a bitter cry and came even before the king’s gate. For none might enter into the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth. And in every province wheresoever the king’s commandment and his decree came—that is the commandment and decree to exterminate the people of God—there was great mourning among the Jews and fasting and weeping and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

So Esther’s maids and her chamberlains came and told it her. Then was the queen exceedingly grieved, and she sent raiment to clothe Mordecai and to take away his sackcloth from him, but he received it not. Then called Esther for Hatach, one of the king’s chamberlains whom he had appointed to attend upon her, and gave him a commandment to Mordecai to know what it was and why it was. So Hatach went forth to Mordecai unto the street of the city, which was before the king’s gate.

And Mordecai told him of all that had happened unto him, and of the sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the Jews, to destroy them. And he gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given at Shushan to destroy them, to show it unto Esther, and to declare it unto her, and to charge her that she should go in unto the king to make supplication unto him, and to make request before him for her people.

And Hatach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai. Again, Esther spake unto Hatach and gave him commandment unto Mordecai: All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces do know that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such as to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live.

But I have not been called to come unto the king these thirty days. And they told to Mordecai Esther’s words. And then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, “Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall their enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. But thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed.

And who knowest whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” And then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer: “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan and fast ye for me and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I also and my maidens will fast likewise, and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law. And if I perish, I perish.” Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this portion of scripture. We pray, Lord God, you would help us to understand our obligations as a result of understanding these words. We pray that your Holy Spirit might illumine the text for understanding, as He did Esther, that we might be as her and say that we shall obey You, Lord God, and if we perish we perish. We ask this in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

In a book called “Welfare Reformed” put out just a couple of years ago by a man named David Hall, there is an essay by R.C. Sproul and his son, R.C. Sproul Jr. This particular book has to do with reformed principles about reforming the welfare system. And we were talking about this at our meeting last Thursday at the Oregon Alliance of Reformed Churches, making plans for the Geneva conference next year, which will be sponsored by the OARC and not just RCC.

In any event, I was looking over this essay by R.C. Sproul in this book, and he recites the story—retells the story of how he once was privileged to ride in a car with Francis Schaeffer to an event before his death, of course. And he asked Schaeffer, “What do you think is the greatest problem that faces us in the years to come in the future?” And Schaeffer said, gave him a one-word answer, and the answer was statism.

What is statism? Statism is a belief on the part of the population of a particular area that the state can produce social welfare, deliverance, salvation for people. Statism, as opposed to theism, is a belief that the state itself becomes the vehicle whereby man’s needs are taken care of. Statism is the religion of a particular people. You know, R.J. Rushdoony once said that if you look at the source of law in a particular culture, you’ll find the god of that culture.

And in the United States, that law used to be posited in the holy scriptures. And the legislators met to talk about the application of that law. But the source of law was posited in the scriptures because the God of the country, at one time, was the God of the scriptures. Now the source of law is posited in the civil state—not in the church, not in the family, not in the workplace, but in the state. The state believes that whatever it passes is good and proper and moral by virtue of it being passed.

And so we find the locus of power and authority in this culture to be the civil state. And increasingly, even Christians are really characterized by a good deal of statism at the center of their being. What’s the solution to a particular problem? If the solution that normally comes to mind is “pass a law, create a program, create a benefiting program for us for whatever our particular needs are,” then we find that we are sucked into this doctrine of statism.

I want to begin today a three-week series on Christian political action. And in a way, this is kind of connected to that series I’ve talked about for so long and delivered so little of so far, which is a series of taking the basic principles of what we believe the scriptures teach and easily formatted outlines to enable you to carry on conversations with your friends and relatives about infant baptism, paedobaptism, paedocommunion, theonomy, optimistic eschatology, the doctrine of Calvinism relative to salvation, etc.

And this really kind of fits into this particular kind of series that I’ve talked about doing. And we’ll actually begin with a with a little longer treatment of the doctrine of Calvinism and the Canons of Dort. After this three-week series is over, we’ll then plunge into the Canons of Dort for a series of sermons, and that will lay the foundation for these other messages I’ve talked about—to equip us—because really, the underlying foundation of everything that we believe in scripture is the revelation of the person of God as the sovereign of all creation.

So that’s the foundational work, and where that rubber really hits the road is in the doctrine of the understanding of God’s sovereignty as it relates to human salvation and His unconditional election. So we’ll talk about that as a precursor to this series. But I bring this up now because this is the time, the next couple of weeks, when many of you will be discussing and thinking about political action with the election coming up.

It was the custom in colonial America to preach election day sermons shortly before elections were to be held to remind the people of the basic truths of scripture relating to civil government to inform them as they went forward to vote. Now I think this congregation is pretty well informed on a lot of these issues, frankly. So that is part of my purpose. But a greater part of my purpose is that you can take these outlines, you can take these selected scripture references, and you can have discussions with your friends and relatives and community people that you might know about these particular aspects of the Christian understanding of the world.

We have available as you go out into the foyer the “Biblical Ballot Measures Voters Guide,” which really has a lot of this material stated in it as well as an analysis of all the ballot measures. Now it’s not invaluable—it’s a first kind of shot we’ve ever done in producing something like this for all the ballot measures. But I do want you to be able to use that as a resource to talk to your friends.

So that’s kind of what this is. Something that you should have these principles down really well, and you should be able to teach them to your children, and you should be able to interact in dialogue with your friends about these principles as well. Ultimately, what we’re trying to accomplish here is a new reformation. Yes. And a reformation that sees not the major source of antichrist being the Roman Catholic Church as it was in the context of the Reformers, but now the major source of antichrist being statism in our day and age, as Francis Schaeffer identified it to R.C. Sproul in the back of that car.

Okay. So let’s talk about this. I want to talk about first of all a defensive responsibility to engage in Christian political action. Then I want to talk about an offensive obligation we have to engage in Christian political action. And then I want to say that ultimately, the reason why we do anything is for the glory of God and obedience to His word—that’s the third point. And we’ll talk about Esther at that point. And then finally, the particular obligations that we have as people who have been given, in the grace of God, a knowledge of reformational truths—the same truths the Reformers came to—in the context of this day and age. We have a particular obligation. Yes, it’s a benefit. Yes, we’re thankful to God for it. But it’s a stewardship given to us that we must needs carry into whatever we do, including the political arena.

Okay. So first of all, the first assertion on your outline is that Christians have an obligation to guard themselves and their families. And as a result of that obligation, we have an obligation to enter into political action.

Genesis 2:15—I’ve given you these scripture references on your outline—reads, “The Lord God took Adam, put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.” To keep it means to guard it. To dress it means to nurture it.

In the Song of Solomon 4:12, Solomon says that “a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” Solomon’s spouse is referred to in the Song of Solomon as his sister, his spouse, as a garden enclosed. Adam had two gardens: one, the Garden of Eden; the second, Eve, given to him by God. And Eve is to be guarded by Adam as the garden was to be guarded by Adam as well.

This guarding responsibility flows right through into the scriptures. In Acts 20, we read Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders: “Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. Feed the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood.” So we have guarding and nurturing given in Acts 20:28 relative to the church.

Verse 29: “I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember that by the space of three years, I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

The numbers and references to the use of the instruments in the tabernacle service: the Levites were to guard or to keep those instruments and to use them to nurture, to till, as it were, the work in the symbolic representation of the garden of God, the temple. And so these same two basic functions flow from the beginning of Genesis all the way through the scriptures.

Men, you have an obligation according to Ephesians chapter 5 relative to yourself first of all. “No man hates his own flesh but nourishes it and cherishes it.” You have a cherishing obligation to your own flesh. Some men do violate that commandment, don’t they? We know that there are men who don’t nurture themselves or who don’t protect themselves. They’re insane. They reject the reality of who they are, made in the image of God. But we as sane Christian men know that we must protect our body and we must protect those things that pertain to us. And then secondarily, we must protect our wives, and we must protect our families, and we must protect our church. The officers of the church have that obligation.

So men, you have a guarding responsibility. Wives, you have the same guarding responsibility relative to yourself. And men and women together have guarding responsibilities to their families.

Statism is the particular point of attack in our day and age at which you need to guard your family. The state attacks our children, as we know all too well in this church. The state attacks our property through property taxes. Many of you—those of you who have property in the greater Portland area—got your property tax bills. Undoubtedly you saw a large increase, not in the tax rates but in the tax obligation you have.

You know, the scriptures are concerned about land and property. The scriptures are a land-based faith. The scriptures say that it’s important what you do at the land. It’s not some sort of irrelevant thing to who you are. And if God gives you property, He gives you property in stewardship. And it is your responsibility to guard that property from theft. If you leave your car on the street with the window rolled down and keys in the car, I believe you’ve sinned against God because you’ve not properly guarded that car as the scriptures say you’re to guard the things that are entrusted to you under your stewardship.

Ultimately, it’s not your property. It’s not your car. It’s not your wife. It’s not your children. It’s not your body. It’s God’s. God owns everything. And because God owns it, He says that you’re to guard it for Him. You are given stewardship, and we have a responsibility to guard ourselves and our families. And as a result of that responsibility, we must guard at the particular point of attack to our property, to our children, and to our commerce, and all too frequently to our wives and daughters as well as crime perpetrates.

Out in the Hillsboro area where I live, lots—no, I mean not lots, but several occurrences in the last year of women being taken from parking lots, forced abductions, etc. People being killed, people being murdered. As society continues to break down around us, we see the continual need and increasing need to guard our families physically as well as to guard our property, the education of our children, and the nurture of them.

We have an obligation to guard ourselves. And if we have a house and if we have all the windows latched up tight and the doors locked except one window, and through that window pours burglars day and night, coming in, going out, coming in, going out, and we’re always looking at the other doors and locks on the other portions of the house, we failed in our guarding responsibility. And that’s the picture we have today.

The civil state continues to have tax rates that plunder us. They continue to inject themselves into the training of our children. They continue to inject themselves into ownership of our property through various mechanisms. We have an obligation to engage in Christian political action first because we have an obligation to guard ourselves and our families.

Men, you know that we’re called “lords” by our wives according to the example of Sarah and Abraham, and that word “Lord” reminds us of two words put together: “loath” and “guard.” So the old English words that provided the word “loaf” or “lord” were a representation of our two responsibilities, and we as Christians have an obligation to guard ourselves, to guard our property, to guard our families, and to guard our culture as well. And as a result of that, we have an obligation to engage in political action.

Secondly, though, that’s defensive. Offensively, we have an obligation to seek the peace in the city in which we live. You’ll remember this from 1 Timothy chapter 2: “I urge, first of all, that prayers and intreaties be made for all men, particularly for civil magistrates. Why? That we might live quiet and peaceable lives in all honesty and godliness.” What does that hearken back to? It hearkens back to Jeremiah 29:7.

The people of God in captivity had an obligation to pray for the peace of the city in which they were placed and to seek peace as well. That’s what Jeremiah 29 says. It says to seek the peace of the people. I’ll read it specifically in verse 7: “Seek the peace of the city whereinto I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it. For in the peace thereof you shall have peace.”

We’re talking now to a group of people who are in foreign lands. They were in captive places. They were in countries where they’d been taken for their transgressions, for their sins, for punishment from God. But God said, “Seek the peace of that place that I’ve placed you in the context of.” He doesn’t just say, “Pray for it.” And when Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 2 that prayer should be made, he brings in, I believe, the whole context of the Jeremiah passage. It’s not just prayers. We’re to seek the peace of the city in which we live.

And the term—the Hebrew term used in Jeremiah—is to actively seek after. It doesn’t mean just go after or look for. It means to seek with diligence. Okay, that’s an intensified form of the word “seek” that’s used here in the book of Jeremiah. And we are to seek with diligence the peace of the city that God has placed us in the context of.

The obligations to seek peace in the context of our Christian life are repeated in several places of scripture. Psalm 34—we’re told actually in verse 12: “What man is it that desires life and loveth many days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, do good, seek peace, and pursue it.”

This verse is recorded in 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 11 rather: “Let him eschew evil and do good. Let him seek peace and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.”

We have a positive obligation to enter into the political discussion for the seeking of the peace of the cities in which we live. Forget the defensive obligation. We have an offensive obligation as well. Mars Hill today, the Areopagus today, are the men that meet to talk about political issues. In a country dominated by the religion of statism that seeks deliverance from the state and well-being from the state, the political arena is the place we want to inject the truth of the gospel and the claims of the crown rights of King Jesus.

Paul saw no difficulty going to Mars Hill and speaking with men who had false ideas of who God was and were suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. He went there specifically to enter into the kind of dialogue that would seek the peace of that particular place where he was. And so we must enter into the political arena and be engaged in political action in the context of offensively seeking the peace of the places wherein we live.

Now I’ve given you some other scriptures there. In a time of great apostasy, okay, this particular admonition to Christians, or to God’s people rather, in the Old Testament is put aside. I’ve given you quotations from Deuteronomy chapter 23 and Ezra chapter 9. And God says that in terms of His people, there are particular enemies of God’s people that they are not to seek the peace of.

In Ezra chapter 9:12, he begins this by saying in verse 11: “When you’ve commanded thy servants the prophets, saying, the land into which you go to possess it is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from one end to the other, and with their uncleanness. Now therefore, give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth forever.”

There is a time in which we don’t seek the peace of the context in which we live. That is a time when God has declared a culture totally apostate. We’ve not reached that point in this particular culture. But if Christians continue to withdraw from the political process or enter into it not as Christians, not as informed by the scriptures, we may well reach that particular place in this country.

Again, in Deuteronomy, because of the Moabites and the Ammonites and their hatred for God’s people and their conspiring against God’s people, they are told in verse 6 of Deuteronomy 23: “Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days forever.” But those are exceptional clauses in the scriptures. That’s the exception to the rule. The rule is as Timothy was supposed to do in the context of Caesar’s, who asserted to themselves sovereignty. He was to seek the peace of the city in which he was in. He was to pray for that peace and to actively pursue it.

And so we have an obligation to actively pursue peace. We have an obligation to enter into the discussions of the false religion of our age that we might hold the light of the gospel up to it. We have an obligation to seek the peace or well-being of the cities in which we live by driving out pornographers, for instance, and as a result of that having more of a degree of order in which we can live our lives and grow up Christian cultures.

So secondly, then, we have an offensive obligation. You have an obligation to bear full witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ. And this is where the story from Esther comes in.

We all know the third commandment says: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” But the word for vain there means emptily. And an understanding of that verse is fleshed out a little bit more for us in Proverbs 30:9.

This is where the writer of that particular proverb says: “You know, keep me from deceitful men. Keep me from becoming too full, keep me from becoming too hungry.” And then in verse 9, it says: “Lest I be full and deny thee, don’t give me too much prosperity, lest I be full and deny thee and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain.”

So he says in his prayer to God, “Don’t make me so poor that I’m tempted to steal, because if I steal, the end result is that I’ve taken the name of my God in vain.” Doesn’t mean he swore when he stole. He means that in stealing, he denies his profession of faith. He takes upon himself the name of Yahweh vainly or emptily. It’s not a full profession. It’s not a profession lived in the context of his life. It’s a vain verbal profession that doesn’t meet up with his deeds because now he’s broken God’s law.

The obligations of the third commandment are to bear a full and weighty witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in all that we do.

Now, this is not a sermon about evangelism, but in a sense it is. That’s the byproduct of this verse. If we in our paths of life, wherever we go, make a profession of the Lord Jesus Christ as the reason why we do what we do, okay, then we’re going to see evangelism in the context of the church. Then we’re going to see ourselves speaking the word that God and His decree uses as the secondary means to call the elect in Jesus Christ to salvation.

You want to speak that word. I do. I want to be more consistent in my walk each week to bear full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in all that I do and say. And when I have contact with people in the context of those outside of the visible community of Jesus Christ, I want to be a Christian in my profession, in my word, and in my deed. And I want that profession to speak out. When we understand the implications of the third commandment, to take our witness in everything that we do and as well to assert verbally that we’re servants to the Lord Jesus Christ, then we’ll see evangelism. Then we’ll see evangelism.

But back to this particular topic, we have an obligation to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in the context of the political arena. Esther was brought to a kingdom for such a time as this. What had happened there in the book of Esther?

Well, the story begins. The historical account begins with Vashti, a different empress in place. It’s a time of empire. It’s a time of the people of God in captivity. It’s a time of world empire, though, not individual little groups warring with each other. We’ve got an empire here, ruled over by an emperor who has a queen, Vashti, and he calls the queen forward to display her beauty to the people that he had convened for a party, and she disobeys.

There’s nothing explicitly wrong in the request of the king for his queen to come forth and show her beauty. That’s something that can be read into the text, but it’s not in the text. And in fact, the very reason given for the deposition of Vashti is that if all the rest of the women hear that this woman won’t obey her husband, who is the emperor after all, well, all the women will stop obeying their husbands as well. And so as a result, Vashti is deposed from being the empress, and another empress is sought, and that turns out to be Esther.

Now, Esther goes through quite a preparation before she becomes the empress. She is soaked six months in a particular kind of oil. Then she’s soaked another six months in a perfume. And the idea is that the oil would open up her pores. The perfume would get into all those pores, and at the end of one year of preparation, this empress would smell real good wherever she went. She would reek of beautiful odors and fragrances. Young men thinking, “Yeah, that’s the kind of wife I want.” Yeah, well, it is. And it’s the kind of wife that Esther represented, the submissive, obedient wife, Empress, that Vashti didn’t represent. She replaced Vashti the same way that Jesus replaces Adam.

But Esther had a deeper problem in terms of submission, because ultimately we’re not called—we are called to be submissive to our husbands and to our civil magistrates, but ultimately our submission is founded on submission to the King of Kings, the Emperor of all emperors, okay? The king of all those who rule. And Esther was having difficulty with that.

When the decree went forth to kill off all the Jews, Esther’s life wasn’t threatened. Why? Because she’d hidden her profession of faith, because she hadn’t borne full witness to who she was in the context of the empire. Mordecai exhorts Esther in strong language, essentially, to bear witness. And notice that Mordecai, in the context of this verse, doesn’t say that we need you, Esther, so that the people of God will be saved. He says if you don’t obey, the people of God will be saved by another means, but you and your house will perish.

Christians, we have a temptation in the context of empire to dim down, to dumb down our witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, to get along in the context of a pluralistic society. We tend to look like everybody else and talk like everybody else the way that Esther sort of talked like everybody else. And we need the same message today to us: that we have an obligation to bear full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that includes in the political arena. That includes in the public square.

The word “idiot” in the Greek technical meaning was one who did not go into the marketplace. And Christians are idiots if they do not take their faith into the public arena, into their vocational calling, and into the political arena as well, to bear full witness.

Now, understand that the whole purpose for the persecution that came through Haman upon Mordecai, Esther, and the people of God was to bring her to be not just a sweet-smelling fragrance to her husband, the emperor, but to bring her to be a sweet-smelling fragrance to the Emperor of all emperors, the Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, because she’s brought to a further demonstration—that when the king calls her forth through Mordecai to defend God’s people by approaching the king at the cost of her life if necessary—she comes forward to do that very thing.

Vashti was afraid. Vashti was offended. Vashti didn’t demonstrate her beauty. Esther, when challenged through the word of Mordecai to demonstrate her beauty, to demonstrate her profession of faith in Yahweh, the God of the scriptures, to come forward and dance before the world, so to speak, by declaring who she was, she responds obediently. And then God moves.

I can’t get into all the details of the story, but what happens is—now understand—her commitment is to say, “Yeah, I’m going to obey God. God, and if I perish, I perish.” So, you know, we have guarding responsibilities. We want to work for the peace of the culture in which we’re at. But ultimately, the bigger reason to engage in Christian political action, to talk about this particular part of our lives based on the scriptures, is to say—not it’s good for us or for our families, but ultimately to glorify the God in heaven. And if we perish, and if our wives perish, and if our children perish, and if our land gets taken away because of our Christian testimony, so be it.

That’s the motivation that Esther was brought to. If I perish, if he kills me, it’s okay because ultimately my submission has got to be to the King of Kings.

You know, Martin Luther—we’re going to sing that song in another week or two: “Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also.” The first two reasons are good reasons to engage in Christian political action. But this third reason is the most important one: for the glory of God, to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, and if we perish for that witness, we perish. That was Esther’s motivation. And then God begins to move.

She goes about doing that very thing. She makes that commitment to approach the king. And you know what God does sovereignly? He has the king—the emperor—not be able to sleep. And in his not being able to sleep, he asked for some records to be read. Like a lot of us, if you can’t sleep in the middle of the night, you get up and read. Well, he read the historical records of how Mordecai, the one who he had—who was going to kill off, to whom he had signed this decree, not knowing that Mordecai had rescued him from another plot. And so God begins to work, then, and show to the king that this was a bad decree, that Haman, the supposedly good guy, was actually the bad guy, through his sovereign working.

The point is this: The point is that when we commit ourselves to obey God, no matter what the cost, to bear full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, God moves providentially in history to honor that. I don’t mean that he has to honor it, but I mean it’s his way of revealing who he is in the context of our lives. He says, “Step out on faith. Commit to me whether you live or die. If you have to let goods and kindred go, your mortal life also.” That’s the kind of commitment I need from you. And then I—or that I desire from you—will accomplish from you. And then I will begin to act providentially in history as you do that thing.

We need to be engaged in full witness of the lordship of Jesus Christ, and that includes in the context the political arena.

Well, you know, genealogies are important. Haman is the bad guy. Okay, he wants to kill off all the Jews. You know who he is? Haman is an Agagite. Book of Esther tells us. Mordecai is the good guy, the guy that’s used to reawaken—to be the second—to be fragrant in her submission to the great Emperor of emperors. And Mordecai, the good guy, it says that he is a descendant of Kish. He’s a Kishite.

Well, if you know your history, the Kishites—Saul was a Kishite, the first king of Israel. And Saul’s kingship was taken away from him. Why? Because when he was supposed to kill off the enemies of God, to bear full witness to that, he was lured into the idea of empire and accommodation and pluralism. Men, and left alive one king—Agag. And Samuel went out to meet him. He said, “Well, you’re supposed to kill all these people.” “Well, you know, this is another king. I don’t want to—you know—he kill off the foot soldiers. These kings, you know, I’m a king too, and we’re kind of, you know, pluralistic thing going on here.” You had Agag with him. And Samuel hewed him to pieces. That’s the picture given for us here.

Samuel was the righteous one, and Saul was represented as those who were lured into a false—not a full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, to Yahweh, in that context. And as a result, replaced by David. And so we have Vashti replaced by Esther. We have Saul replaced by David. And we have the Christian church today tested by God.

You’re going to be called to the kingdom here. We don’t have an emperor and empress. We have voting. We have political dialogue. We have discussions about these things. And you’re called to the kingdom, so to speak, in the next couple of weeks for this particular purpose: to bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, not to win ultimately. We know that God eventually will deliver his people regardless, one way or the other. But your job is to commit yourself to bear full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not to get engaged as a conservative, but rather as a Christian. And you particularly have this obligation if you’re in this church very long, because you have stewardship responsibilities. We’ve said you should get involved in Christian political action for a guarding reason—defensive. We said you should get involved to seek the peace of the city in which we live. You go to the Mars Hill and you tell people, “This is idolatry. The Lord Jesus Christ is God, not the state.”

We said you need, thirdly, to get involved in Christian political process because of the need to bear full witness to obey the third commandment. The third commandment is followed by the fourth commandment. You get into Sabbath rest by bearing full witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to do that. And fourth—and those apply to any Christian. They have all those same obligations. And we have an obligation in addition to get involved to a certain degree because we, as reformational Christians, have stewardship responsibilities in terms of political action.

We’re going to have at the Reformation party, as I understand it, three of the men will speak on sola gratia, sola scriptura, and solus Christus. What are they? Sola gratia: solely by his grace, not as a result of our works. Sola fide: solely through faith. Sola scriptura: solely on the basis of God’s word. Okay? Solus Christus: solely through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—his active obedience, his life living in conformity to the law; his passive obedience, his life given as a substitute for our lives on the cross and his atonement.

But you know, the final and concluding capstone of the Reformation was not sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, solus Christus. It was soli Deo gloria. That the purpose of—well, this is solely for the glory of God. We, as reformational Christians, have given to us this great heritage of the Reformers: that what we do is to assert the glory and sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ and of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Reformation was fought over who is sovereign—man or God. And it asserted the sovereignty of God. And we are called today to assert the sovereignty of God as well. We, as a—really, if you look at Arminianism versus Calvinism, one asserts the glory of God and the other asserts the well-being of mankind. Now, I know people wouldn’t like to hear that, but I think that since we’ve been given a proper reformational motivation—the glory of a sovereign God—we have an increased obligation to take that message into the political dialogues that we engage in.

Ultimately, we’re not pragmatists. Ultimately, we’re not humanists. Ultimately, we’re not statists. As a result, we’re theists. We believe that what should be done should be done for the glory of a sovereign God.

We have seen in our day and age the erosion of authority as sola scriptura has gone away. The—there was a group that met in Cambridge earlier this year. They came up with the Cambridge Declaration, and they addressed each of these areas. They talked about sola scriptura—the loss of it being the erosion of authority. The solus Christus—the loss of that being the erosion of a Christ-centered faith. The loss of sola gratia—the erosion of the gospel because the gospel is a gospel of grace, not of works. And the sola fide—the erosion of the chief article. And finally, soli Deo gloria—the erosion of God-centered worship and God-centered living.

Our Christian political action, as reformational Christians, is to determine that it is motivated by the glory of God. And as a result of that motivation, we then have the proper also reformational standard: the Son’s gracious covenantal law. We’re not conservatives. We’re not liberals. We are Christians. And our standard by which we enter into the political arena is the word of God.

I’ve had a rather interesting series of correspondences with a man from the Christian Coalition over this very issue. Who decided—they, as you know, probably—they decided to take a swipe at R.J. Rushdoony and other people who want to use the law of God somehow and enact that into legislation in our country as the standard by which we’re supposed to do these things. And I’ve had these—I’ve sent messages. “What do you mean? What is your stand? I don’t quite understand. What’s the difference? Reed wants to outlaw murder. I suppose that’s based because the scriptures say, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ That’s the law. You’re trying to enact that, right? What’s the difference?”

And the answer I get back, last answer I got, was, “Well, I’ll pray for you that you understand these differences.” There’s no elucidation of what the position of the Christian Coalition is in terms of what laws should be passed or how we determine who we vote for or the ballot measures that we vote for or what kind of laws should be enacted. They said explicitly in their writings, “We’re not going to work on the issues of this, and particularly the Old Testament.”

But we, as reformational Christians, as covenantal Christians—we’ve talked about that for two weeks now—know that this is one word from God. And we know that this law of God is perpetually binding. It’s not an—it’s an indication of the character of God as it relates to many nations. And so we have the standard of God’s word by which to evaluate the things that we involve ourselves in.

We have an understanding of representative government based upon covenantalism. You know, we’ve talked for the last two weeks about the covenant of grace and how it’s worked itself out in history and the relationship of that to the covenant signs and seals. You see, this was how this country was formed. This country was formed by Puritans and Pilgrims. Now, they had their differences, but the one thing they agreed on was the centrality of covenant as the governing relationship that we have with God, and also then how we form relationships in the context of our horizontal relationships as well.

We live in response to the creator. We live our lives in analogy, so to speak, in relationship to how God reveals Himself to us. And as God reveals Himself to us by way of covenant, He then calls us to enter into covenantal relationships with each other. That’s why we get married and don’t, you know, live together without a marriage covenant. You know, at the end of the day, it’s not whether the state says it’s good or the church says it’s good. You get married because of the concept of covenant.

Well, as the culture moves away from an understanding of the covenant between God and His people—the covenant of redemption worked out in various ways—the culture stops getting married. They start just living together. And we think that’s terrible. Well, it’s no more terrible than a denial of covenantal relationships in terms of the civil government or the economy or anything else. It’s the loss of covenant.

See, we’ve been brought back to an understanding of the centrality of the covenant in our relationship with God. And as the Puritans and Pilgrims both agreed, those covenantal relationships—that’s how we do things in the context of the family, the church, and the state.

This church thirteen, fourteen years ago did what those Puritans and Pilgrims did as New England was founded. We drew a church covenant defining who we are on the basis of the stated obligations we have in terms of our obligation to God as seen in our obligations in terms of the church covenant. Confessional, membered membership—covenanted membership was key to an understanding of this country’s development, and that’s how the federal system grew.

Federal comes from—the word meaning covenantal. Covenantal theology is called federal theology. Foedus is the root Latin word of the word “federal.” By the way, you might be interested to know that they think that if they’re not sure where foedus came from, it’s in the English translation of those Latin words. They think it might mean “horrible”—there were pigs who were killed horribly, foedus. And so the idea of covenant had to do with this shedding of blood. A blood oath was central to the idea of covenant. Covenant judgments were brought into play.

And we know that God, through the covenant of redemption, pledged Himself to unilaterally provide all those things for us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. But in any event, the point is that the covenant theology that developed in the time of the Reformation is what performed—or what, rather, began to develop the basis for American political liberty.

So we have an understanding of the concept of covenant, and we have an understanding of the need to take that concept into all that we do and say, including the political arena. This means that we have great truth from God. We have the proper motivational standard of the seek the glory of God. We have the proper motivation, rather, to seek God’s glory. And we have the proper standard by which to engage in political action: the covenant word of the sovereign King Jesus Christ’s gracious covenantal law to us is the standard by which we’re to judge all things political.

And as a result of this, we have the answer by which to accomplish the proper reformational environment: the covenantal peace of the Spirit’s order. You’ve seen this model from me before: the trinitarian model—Father, Son, and Spirit—motivation, standard, and effect. You could say intent of what you’re trying to do. How do you do what you’re trying to do? And depending on the intent, whether it’s to seek God’s glory or man’s well-being, depending on how you do what you’re going to do—is it the law of God or just a set of moral principles, some Judeo-Christian ethic, some law other than God’s law?—then depending on which of those two paths you go down, you’ll produce an effect out here.

And we see around about us every day, in many papers, in many signs in our lives, personally and corporately, the effect of an improper motivation—the well-being of man—and the effect of an improper standard. You know, I, as I understand the correspondence I’ve gotten from the Christian Coalition, their standard is no different than Rush Limbaugh’s, and ultimately is no different than Bill Clinton’s. It’s what they think in their head is proper, moralistic foundations for our culture. It’s what I get from their writings.

Now, they’re informed by some kind of Judeo-Christian ethic, but there are only two choices for a standard. It is either this word. Now, we can argue about what this word means, but we can’t argue about whether or not it’s going to be the standard. And we know that this is the standard. The only other standard is man’s word—whether it’s man individual, man corporate, Howard L. said there are three parties in the country: those who think that man is sovereign, the libertarians; those who think the state is sovereign, all other parties; and those who think that God is sovereign. And he’s talking about the National Taxpayers Party at that particular point.

Well, really, you could say there are only two sets of motivations: the good of man or the glory of God. And we’ve been given by God’s grace the knowledge is the glory of God. And there are two sets of standards: man’s word, whether it’s collective or individual, libertarian or communist, no matter what it is, what man thinks, or is it God’s word? And God’s standard drives us to a covenantal view of the church and the family and the state.

And it drives us to see, as the Puritans and Pilgrims saw, that the state is a far less invasive force. That the essential work of the church and of the culture in which we’ve come—called to live—is done by the families. As you’re going to spend most your time this week as families doing your vocational callings, educating your children, teaching your children how to worship. That’s the place. The church educates you in the word of God how that’s to be done and exhorts you and encourages you. And the state protects you while you do that.

But the scriptural standard says that the covenantal nature of the family is the one by which all this work occurs in the culture. Okay? Not the state. And we know that based upon the sovereign word of God. And the effect will be one or the other. We see in our day and age increasingly the effect of the wrong motivation and the wrong standard, producing not the blessed peace of Christ’s order but rather the chaos of the sort of culture that we see increasingly round about us.

We have the answer. We have the only answer there. God can accomplish salvation for this country. The challenge at the Mars Hill—the guarding responsibilities toward our families—through Baptists, Quakers, Roman Catholics, no matter what—He chooses to. He can do it. And I believe He’s telling Christians like us, Reformation Christians, today, but you know, the question isn’t whether