Biblical Citizenship in Modern America
Week 1
Biblical Course on Freedom
https://www.patriotacademy.com/
The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. Sam Adams
“All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.” Noah Webster
Why we should be Biblical Citizens?
-Politics stirs up fear in Christians
-We the People are to govern what God has given us
-We the People are to be good stewards
-We the People need to take authority and reflect who we are in Christ in all he has done for us
Data:
-217,000 church congregations do not vote
-church congregations do not see faith in central
solutions
-church congregations do not act in faith as a Biblical Citizen
Faith in our public life:
-no part of our life that God is not involved
-humans have separated civil government from God
-America was built on both Biblical context and Constitutional context
Questions:
-Did
your faith influence your vote?
-Do
you feel your faith, morals, and values demand involvement in voting?
-Did your church encourage or equip you to vote?
**Citizens with a Biblical worldview use Biblical principles that protects our freedoms
Today:
-Secular humanist infiltrating the church-no belief in God
-Secularism- believes there are no absolutes or moral truths-you are on
your own
-Secularism-Jesus is not the solution to most people’s problems
-you can’t have limited government if run by secularists
-Culture is where people find their values
-If Jesus not part of the culture, then how do they learn those values
-Bad people in broken system = bad results
-Disciples of all nations = you are saved so what do you do with it?
-we are saved so we should be about doing righteousness
-if the Gospel doesn’t offend then you haven’t been convicted
-613 Civil Laws in the Bible
-the law is freedom to do what is right
-Bible calls itself the law of liberty
-Bible has 10 laws to keep you out of jail
Great Commission:
Then Jesus came to them and said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 18-20).
-doing righteousness is what we are supposed to do after we are saved
-discipleship is not a saving edict
-In scripture, Jesus teaches…Matthew 19-Marriage & Divorce, Matthew
25-Taxation, Matthew 20-employer/employee relationship, John 8:10-civil court
procedures
-How
do I in a free nation hold my government in check?
-disciples
= good citizens
-citizens
must contribute and hold politicians accountable
-politics
requires participation
-for
liberty and equality to work they must be defined by Biblical context
-we
are called to missionaries in the halls of government
-we
are to be salt and light in the midst of controlling political forces
-Church
must be the epicenter of the community
-it is
our Christian duty to be a voice in Ecclesia (public square)
-we need to fight for liberty as our ancestors paved the way to true freedom-Jesus-so we fight knowing in the end Jesus wins-be about His business until He returns (parable of coins)
Ecclesia:
lost in translation-not church but the public square:
-Jesus
co-opted a secular word=assembly. He does not use a religious term like synagogue
or church (word not in original text, but added 400 years later)
-People
assembles under two words= Liberty (eleftheria) and Equality (isotita)
-Matthew
16:18 Jesus asked who does men say that I am? Then asked who the disciples say
I am? Peter responds, “you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responds,
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church,
and the grates of Hades.”
-the
term church inserted for the Greek word ecclesia, so interpretation removes its
true meaning of the public square in the Greek culture
-Ecclesia
means a political assembly of citizens of ancient Greek states
(Place where citizens conducted all public business and for considering affairs proposed by the council)
History:
National Monument of the Forefathers in Plymouth, Massachusetts:
Forefather’s
Monument: recipe on how to build liberty, freedom, and prosperity of a nation
-Plymouth
Rock: marker of how to create liberties and how to keep those liberties
-is a
“how to” for the everyday person
-have
we forgotten what made our country in the first place?
-separatists
(pilgrims) had a Biblical worldview and dreamt of building a Biblical nation
-separatists
wanted government under the authority of God
-they
risked it all to get to the promise of true freedom and liberty
-separatists
fled England to Holland and prepared for 12 years under their pastor John
Robinson
-they
took the same principles that God gave Moses
-political principles learned from their pastor through the lens of scripture
Monument:
Monument
was established in 1889
-inscribed
are the principles of this country
Inscribed:
“National Monument to the Forefathers. Erected by grateful people in remembrance
of their labors, sacrifices, and sufferings for the cause of civil and
religious liberty.”
-The
right and left panels contain the names of those who came over in the
Mayflower.
-decodes
civil and religious liberty =internal (personal) and external (public) freedom
-monument
took 50 years to build-paused building during the Civil War
-1st
contributor to the monument was Abraham Lincoln
-pilgrims
planted the seeds into the hearts and minds of their children and to their children’s
children, so monument was built by their descendants,
-we
have lost the principles on the monument in only 150 years, it is in our
Christian conscience, it is still in the soil and we need to till it up,
-get idolatry and fear out of the way, and get back to the fruit of liberty,
-5
human figures:
1. Largest
on top--center-core of the monument-primary= 36-foot Statue of Faith
Faith-is
the heart and soul of this Republic
Faith-is
pointing to the one true God of heaven
Faith-has
a star on her forehead that represents wisdom
Faith-is
holding a book= The Bible with it pages being blown open by the wind of the
Spirit of God
Bible-historic
as it is the Geneva Bible is the 1st English translated Bible
referenced John 3:16
Star-wisdom=reason
toward every aspect of life, reason how to be a family through the word of God,
reason how to have a government through the word of God, reason through the
word of God on how to educate our kids
Feet of Faith-firmly standing on a rock
2. Woman
Figure sitting= morality
Woman-eyes
are closed as if looking inward
Woman-holding
the 10 commandments in her left hand
Woman-holding
the scroll of revelation in her right hand
The did
not believe that morality as imposed by a king through external rules, but an
internal change in the heart
Woman-under
her chair it says evangelist
Civil liberty
and religious liberty must begin with the transformation of the heart by the Spirit
of God through the preaching of the Gospel
-Government is for a religious and moral people as they are ruled first by faith and God-given morality
3. Man
of Law
-sitting
on judge’s chair
-holding
the book of law in his left hand
-the
book of law is directly below the book in Faith’s hand indicating man’s laws
must always line up under God’s laws. Laws are not good laws unless they are
God’s laws
-Justice
is written along his right side and mercy is written along his left side
-Justice
is depicted as a woman holding a sword and a set of scales
The
sword is government doesn’t bare the laws in vain
The
scales represent justice
-Mercy-so
there is a balance in good and Godly laws based on the Bible between justice
and mercy
The
man of law can extend either one because he has a Biblical worldview and his laws
are based in Biblical morality
Once you have civility and your laws are nourishing the good and punishing the evil you no longer have chaos or anarchy
4. Woman
of Education
-loral
wreath around her forehead representing victory
-holding
books of knowledge in her hands
-on
her right is written youth
-a
picture of a mother training her children with the child with a notebook and a
pen
-prioritize
our children
-train
them up on the way they should go so when they are old they will not depart
from it
-on
her left is an old man with a long white beard holding a globe and a Bible
indicating he has a Biblical worldview
-deep ingrained worldview into the 2nd and 3rd generations they would stay the course
5. Man
of Liberty (Freedom)
-he is
well fit, and strength seen in his muscles
-he is
ready to fight, a warrior dressed in the full armor of God -Ephesians Chapter 6
-wearing
the breastplate of righteousness, belt of truth, helmet of salvation, holding
the sword of the Holy Spirit, sandals of the Gospel of Peace, and the chains
around his wrists and ankles are hanging there broken because tyranny has been
overthrown
-on
his right shoulder is the claw of a lion and behind him is the head of the
slain lion with the hide draped on his shoulders because the lion represented England,
so he has defeated tyranny
-below
is the words tyranny and an image of the liberty man with his foot on the chest
of the beast and the sword is at the beast’s throat (tyranny overthrown)
-on his
left is his wife, her name is peace
-she
is holding a basket of gifts for her friends and family
-Freedom
both internally as we have been set free from the power of sin through the
Gospel with a transformed heart
-he is
looking out toward the ocean where the tyranny he came from
-he is
ready to defend his faith, his Bible, his Biblical morality, the gospel that
changed his heart, the laws, and his ability to self-govern, children, and select
leaders who govern in our nation, and right to train up his children in a
biblical worldview,
-he
would never want to hand his children over to power loving government
-Freedom
externally from the power of tyrants and bad governments
-education
was a parental blessing and personal responsibility and he was ready to defend
it
-He was ready to defend his liberty
National
strategy must be personalized:
-nation
that each citizen reflects each of these principles
-each
individual citizen reflects these principles has to fear and love God and repent
of our sins and be men & women of Biblical faith, reason with wisdom God
has given us, personal private morality that lines up with things that God
loves and the things God hates
-be
the person who is involved in the duties of the government, participating in
the laws that are being passed in our country if we want to have civility
-we
need to be individuals who care about the education of our children and not
hand our kids over to be discipled by others
Pastor
said: “if we hand our children over to Caesar to be educated, we shouldn’t be
surprised if they come back Romans.”
-we
have been given the sacred task of training up our children in the way they
should go
-I should
be educating myself in history, theology, principles of our country, so I can
be the liberty man
-liberty driven citizen living in peace and have tyranny overthrown in your life if personlly lost
-if
you are trying to destroy a free nation then this is also the strategy on how
to do that, you can hijack the strategy for building a good nation and you can
use it for evil
***start
with education-capture the education of our youth and teach then a whole new
value system, teach them a whole new way of thinking through the textbooks in
public government school system, then you can unravel the whole thing,
-if
you capture education then you can change the way people think and you can
change the laws of our country
-today
education is becoming corrupt, our laws being made in our nation are going against
the things that God says are laws should be for
-where
did these old laws come from, so archaic morality we need to get rid of, and
all that morality is tied to this Christianity, it is tied in the Bible, and 10
commandments, so let’s get them out of our courthouses, get them out of our
schools, get rid of root of biblical faith,
-if you
can hijack faith then you don’t have to get rid of faith, all you need to do is
give people a reason to put their faith into something other than the book in
her hand,
-take
away the bible and give them the communist manifesto
-give
people a different religious book like the Quran
-give people the idea that we can write our own book that we are our own God, masters of our own destiny, then they will reason from that faith, and create a new morality, new set of laws, new reeducation of our children, it produces at the end of that strategy is tyranny instead of liberty-
*** we
must recapture our education, reinstitute a courageous faith, a church with a
backbone that is preaching the Bible and using wisdom to reason every aspect of
life!
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