Righteous, Impartial, & Courageous

For a culture and civilization to survive, leaders with righteous impartiality and courage are essential. That's what we're talking about today in Deuteronomy chapter one. So, open with us and follow along. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. We are in the book of Deuteronomy, which is the fifth book of the Bible. Open up to Genesis, the very first book, and turn a little bit to the right; you'll find Deuteronomy. We are in Deuteronomy chapter 1, and we will probably be here for a very long time because I can't seem to get out of this chapter.

As you're turning there, if you have any questions today about the message or about what we're discussing in this passage of Scripture, you can text your questions to the phone number on the screen. Pastor Mark and I will do the podcast this week answering those questions, which you can find at thequestionspodcast.com.

Now, in Deuteronomy chapter 1, we will begin reading today at verse 16. It is written, "Then I commanded your judges at that time, saying, 'Hear the cases between your brethren and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small as well as the great cases. You shall not be afraid in a man's presence, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring it to me, and I will hear it.' I commanded you at that time all the things which you should do."

God, I pray that you would open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to receive from you. It is my conviction that this passage of Scripture is given by inspiration from you, and it is useful in our lives even today. Even though we live thousands of years from the time in which these events took place, you still want to speak to us and teach us. Lord, we just sang of the freedom and liberty that you have given to us. The people who received this word from Moses 3,400 years ago had been freed from bondage; they had been given liberty and redeemed.

Of slavery, God, You wanted to bring them into the experience of the abundant life in the promised land. In a very similar way, Lord, You bring us out of bondage, slavery to sin leading to death. You desire, Jesus, You said that You came that we would have life and that we would have it more abundantly. I think that the principles we learn here from Israel apply to us as it relates to experiencing that life in the abundance. Lord, so God, speak to us today, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

This last week, if you're paying attention to the news, you know that Hollywood media mogul Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sexual assault. Though he was acquitted on charges that could have, and probably would have, brought a life sentence, he faces five to twenty-nine years in prison for the crimes of which he was convicted. All in all, Harvey Weinstein was accused by more than eighty women of sexual misconduct. Though for decades he was able to escape prosecution, he finally has experienced, if you will, a little bit of justice.

Though he had power, position, and wealth, he was not able to get out of that. Many see his conviction this last week as a righteous retribution and potentially a major win in the fight against sexual harassment and assault. However, reports from the courtroom reveal something fascinating. In an interview with ABC News, one of his attorneys said that when the conviction was announced, those in the courtroom saw that Weinstein expressed shock. His lawyer stated that Harvey turned to him and said, "But I didn't do anything wrong. How could this possibly happen in America?"

Process that for a moment: more than eighty women have accused him of sexual assault.

He says, "But I didn't do anything wrong. How could this happen in America?" It is certainly possible, though highly unlikely, that what he said to his lawyer is true. He was shocked; he's shocked because, in his mind, he didn't do anything wrong. However, I cannot imagine that there is anyone considering the facts of the case and the information surrounding it who hasn't assumed or at least hoped that this would be the ultimate outcome of a trial such as this.

When faced with behavior like Harvey Weinstein's, there is within us a deep desire and hope for justice. We want justice; we desire a righteous judgment—one that is right and in accord with some value set, some principle of morality or law. We expect punishment. I would go so far as to say that not only do we expect, hope, and desire judgment and punishment when the law has been broken, but there is a sense in which, for society to succeed, there needs to be judgment. There needs to be a righteous justice that is handed down.

The fact is, we don't always see that. I am old enough to remember the white Ford Bronco. Does anyone remember that? I remember it very clearly. I was in tenth grade geometry class at Orange Clay High School in the morning. I don't remember the exact date, but I remember my teacher, Coach Cummings. I remember him turning on the radio, and we all listened, as did a lot of other students in classrooms across the Lawrence Glen High School campus, when the jury foreman stood and said, "We, the jury, find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty."

I remember that, and there were a lot of people who were shocked. Why? Because we think that justice wasn't done. There are times when we see that justice seems to be what we would call a miscarriage of justice.

Judgment handed down brings about a collective feeling of vindication. We might even think, "Wow, maybe the world is a tiny bit better than I feared." When we see things like what we witnessed this last week, it brings us to the first point: I feel better when I feel that justice has been rightly applied. Don't you?

So, what's the problem? I think this is important for us to consider. The world that Western culture—specifically North America and Western Europe—is currently pursuing, or perhaps we could say that we are creating, is a world that will make just and righteous outcomes less likely. We live in a culture that is pursuing a certain kind of world, and when you start to peel back the layers and examine the grounding philosophy for the world our culture is pursuing, you begin to realize that just punishments, like what we witnessed this last week, are less likely in that situation.

All of us, and I am certain I can say all of us, want, expect, hope for, and even need justice to be rightly applied. This is an issue of ontology. What I mean is that this is not just something we are socialized to want. There are certain people in the fields of social sciences who argue that our desire for vindication and judgment is merely a result of socialization. However, I would object to that. I believe it is more an issue of ontology; it is an issue of nature.

I would argue this because all of us have observed in children, probably even in our own children, a deep desire for fairness from a very young age. You didn't have to teach your little kid to say, "That's not fair," but you've certainly heard it. Where did it come from? It’s an issue of ontology; it seems to be innate by nature.

Based on what we see revealed to us in Scripture, it is an issue of creation. God created you and me to have a deep conviction and desire for justice. At least, that's certainly how it appears when you start to look at it. Although all of us innately and instinctively desire justice rightly applied, and even though that is the conviction we all share, there is a critical point to consider: there is no impartial application of justice without an objective standard of morality.

You cannot have unbiased, righteous judgment if there is not an objective, clearly stated standard for right and wrong. It's simply not possible. I encourage you to think about this deeply. We do not live in a culture that really likes to engage in deep thinking. Instead, we live in a culture that is very much given to the concept of amusement.

The word "amusement" is interesting because the Greek preposition "a" negates something, while "muse" means to think about something. Therefore, amusement literally means "without thought." We live in a culture that says, "Don't think about anything; just live in the moment." As a result, we are not inclined toward deep thinking, which can be challenging and hard.

Recently, we received a question on the podcast about whether we really need to deeply study cultural issues to understand a particular passage of Scripture. My response emphasized that some answers do not come easily; they require us to investigate and think critically. Unfortunately, we do not live in a culture that encourages deep thought.

Consider this important point: there is no impartial application of justice without an objective standard of morality. We do not like injustice. How many of you would say "yes" or "Amen"? We do not like injustice, and the inverse of that is that we want justice. This is why crime dramas do so well. Think about it—consider all the crime stories that captivate our attention.

Dramas that have been around include "CSI Miami," "CSI Las Vegas," and "Law & Order," particularly "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." There are tons of them, and we enjoy seeing justice served. If the good guy doesn't win in the end, we feel deeply conflicted. We cannot stand bias in judgment or unfair judgment. This is why we get so angry when it appears that certain levels of society have different laws or justice.

If a person, because of their ethnicity, socio-economic position, or political clout, does not seem to receive the same justice as anyone else, we become upset—and rightly so. We have a very strong sense of disparity and are sensitive to inequity and unfairness. We desire an unbiased and fair application of justice. However, that desire is completely impossible without a standard of right and wrong that is invariably applied, consistent, and agreed upon by consensus.

At this point, I would not fault you if you were thinking, "What on earth does this have to do with Deuteronomy chapter one?" I hope to show you how this actually relates to Deuteronomy chapter one. We are about six weeks into the study of Deuteronomy, and we are not even a third of the way through the first chapter. The question could rightly be asked: What does a thirty-four-hundred-year-old piece of literature have to do with our situation living in Southern California in the year 2020?

That is certainly a question that our friends, co-workers, or neighbors might have. They may wonder why we study this text. You realize that very few people, even Christians and churches, ever go to the Old Testament. So, why spend any time on this old piece of literature? Some people view it as draconian.

Repressive as it may seem, how could something that happened to a group of people thirty-four hundred years ago, who lived under a theocracy in the Late Bronze Age, possibly have anything to say to us today? We have iPhones, Alexa, Google, and Wikipedia. Some very loud voices in our culture believe we just don't need this anymore.

However, let’s look at what it says again in Deuteronomy 1, verse 16. Moses says to the people, "Then I commanded your judges at that time, saying, 'Hear the cases between your brethren and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small as well as the great cases. You shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring it to me, and I will hear it.'"

What is this text? If you've been here over the last several weeks, I've explained that the book of Deuteronomy, which actually means "the second law," is the message of Moses, the great Redeemer of Israel. He was sent down to Egypt to bring the children of Israel out of slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years—four hundred years, in fact. For many of those years, they were under strong bondage and slavery in Egypt.

Through a series of miraculous events that God brought about, known as the ten plagues, they were released from their bondage. Moses then brought them to a place in the wilderness called Mount Sinai, also referred to as Mount Horeb. He went up on the mountaintop and received from God a divine law. When he came down, this established a relationship, what we call a covenant, between God and these people.

That was forty years before this book. For the next forty years, we see the conflict of those people not really obeying the commandment of God and all the consequences that came about as a result. That entire generation of people who established that covenant back in Exodus chapter 19 and 20, when they said, "All that you have said we will do and be obedient," died in the wilderness.

Now, their children are preparing to go into the Promised Land. Moses stands before the people to read the law once again to renew the covenant with them. He knows he is going to die, and as they prepare to enter the Promised Land, they need to know how to lead themselves. Thus, Moses is giving them the reading of the law to reestablish the covenant.

The book of Deuteronomy follows a very specific format, which is the format of a treaty from the mid-2nd millennium BC, about 3,400 years ago. Moses, having spent the first 40 years of his life raised within the dynastic political structures of Egypt, was very familiar with that treaty format. This document is literally a treaty between God and a group of people.

In this treaty format, one of the things you would do is express the previous history. From Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 6, through Deuteronomy chapter 4, we find Moses reminding the people of their history. Remembering history is important; you have probably heard the saying before: those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. So, he is reminding them of their history in this passage. He takes them back to something first recorded in the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, specifically Exodus chapter 18, to remind them of the structure ordained for them to live and thrive when they would come into the Promised Land.

Over the last four weeks, I have stalled completely at verses 9 through 18. Why? This is a 3,400-year-old Constitution that declares itself to be a divine revelation from a God referred to in the Scriptures as Yahweh. Every time you see the word "Lord" with a capital "L" and lowercase "ord," it represents that name, Yahweh. This Constitution establishes a hierarchy of leadership: leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, and leaders of tens. These leaders are to be selected by the people, creating a democratically selected representative government according to a law—a Constitution—that they believed was divinely given.

Sound familiar? There are some connections and similarities between what we have here and what they had all those years ago. This group of leaders was to be wise, understanding, and knowledgeable. They were to know the law, understand how to interpret it, and be wise enough to apply it. This group of leaders was to function according to a ruling statement, which is point number three under the outline: the community will...

Collapse if it is not governed by righteous, impartial, and courageous leaders according to a superordinate rule. Now, there's a lot there; I get it. I want to try and work through this again, thinking deeply about these things.

We all agree that we desire, by nature, justice applied fairly—justice that is righteously applied. We understand that fair and unbiased, impartial justice cannot happen if we don't have a standard of what is right and what is wrong. If we don't agree upon what is right and what is wrong, we cannot function. There has to be an agreed-upon standard, an objective standard of morality. You can have the absolute best laws, but if you do not have leaders who righteously, impartially, and courageously apply those laws, they hold little value.

If you go back and study the history of Rome, the Roman Republic, you will see that this was the case. They started out okay, and then, after a while, they moved away from right, impartial, courageous application in law, and things destabilized. They fell apart.

Here's the thing: when you really start to examine cultures in history, you find that this can happen really quickly. Things can spin out of order very, very fast. That's clearly the story of Israel. As we're going to see, God gave His law to these people as an expression of His perfect nature. Then, Israel agreed to relate to God according to that law. They entered into a relationship, a covenant with God, to relate with Him. They were to select leaders who would lead them, and if they walked out that law with righteous, impartial, and courageous leadership, they would experience blessing—what Jesus would refer to as the abundant life.

Now, holding all of this in your mind, consider what this book is and what was happening to the children of Israel thirty-four hundred years ago. Fast forward thirty-four hundred years to today, March 1st, 2020. All of us here in this room are involved in a cultural experiment.

In the West, a cultural experiment has been ongoing for the better part of the last 200 years. We are in the midst of a cultural experiment among a society that has effectively rejected all that has to do with Moses and Israel. This rejection has led to a significant problem: we all desire justice, rightly applied, but the very thing that brings about justice is being pushed back against by our culture. This cultural philosophy has been referred to by many as post-modernism.

You may not have heard the term "post-modernism" before, and you may not fully understand what it entails. It describes a variety of concepts, including architecture, art, philosophy, and worldview—the way we perceive things. While you may not know the word "post-modernism," you are likely familiar with its ruling ideas.

Post-modernism questions the existence of a superordinate rule, a rule that governs us all. It asserts that there is no such thing as a universal rule because every group of people and every culture has different rules. Therefore, it is impossible to claim that there is a superordinate rule that applies to everyone. Additionally, post-modernism questions the existence of a moral lawgiver. Not only is there no moral law, but there is also no moral lawgiver—no God.

As a result of the absence of a moral law and a moral lawgiver, post-modernism challenges the existence of a single story, known as a meta-narrative, that holds culture together. For the better part of three thousand years, culture has developed, especially as it moved into the West, according to a cohesive story that has united us. However, post-modernism denies the existence of a superordinate rule, a moral lawgiver, and a common story that binds culture together. It does not accept a standard of right and wrong and promotes ideas such as "you just have to do you" and "I have my truth, and you have your truth." This perspective has been increasingly prevalent in contemporary discourse.

All the time, that's your truth, and it really begs the question: Is there a truth, or do we all have our own independent concept of what truth is? This isn't new. When you look at the conversation between Jesus and a man named Pontius Pilate just before Jesus was condemned to die, Jesus made a statement about truth. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate said, "What is truth?" That's our culture today.

Post-modernism does not think that any one person or group can claim to have or know absolute truth. This is kind of funny because it's a self-defeating argument. It makes the truth claim that it is true that there is no absolute truth. Now, the question to that is: Is that true? But that's the claim that it makes—there is no absolute truth, and anyone who tries to bring an absolute truth is doing it as a will to power.

What does this mean? We have this deep desire for justice, and we have this cultural mindset that we're being indoctrinated with, bombarded with, as a culture as a whole. What does it mean? It means this: Our cultural philosophy is in conflict with our conscience, and that's destabilizing. It causes what we would call cognitive dissonance, where your brain just can't really compute that our cultural philosophy is in conflict with our conscience.

We want what can only be had by an objective moral law rightly applied, but we don't believe that there is an objective moral law. We're not sure that you can even claim to have categories of right and wrong. This leads a person who has been indicted, charged, and convicted of sexual misconduct according to the claims of over 80 different women to say, "But I didn't do anything wrong." According to him, he didn't. And who are you to say that he did? Well, that could be a problem.

But hey, this is my message to you: Don't.

You worry about a thing because every little thing is going to be all right. You don't want that. That's about as good as I can do right there.

I think if you study history—and I've studied history a lot—you will discover that everything we enjoy as a culture is the result of a ruling philosophy, a story, a meta-narrative. This overarching story goes back 3,400 years to Mount Sinai. That's why this book matters. It connects to this history.

As I said, we are about 200 years into a cultural experiment of deconstruction, the consequences of which are not yet fully realized. One very prescient observer, who was on a course to go to seminary to become a minister, ended up not being able to find an adequate place to stay while visiting that seminary. He ended up staying at a hotel or motel that turned out to be a brothel. This experience changed his life. His name was Friedrich Nietzsche. He was on his way to seminary to become a minister, but that didn't happen. Instead, he became one of the most fascinating philosophers. He died in 1900, but not before he wrote a poem called "The Madman," in which he said, "God is dead, and we have killed Him. What becomes of us, the murderers of God?"

He theorized that if you remove a moral lawgiver and you remove a moral law, there is nothing to govern society any longer except for the meaning and value that you ascribe to things yourself. In that concept, it will lead to chaos, bloodshed, and anarchy. He died in 1900, and what happened in the 20th century? We are the recipients of death. This is the culture of our day; this is the philosophy. What could possibly go wrong?

This isn't new; a group of people has the ruling principles that...

God has given, and they reject. That's not new at all. In fact, if you follow the nation of Israel, which we're going to be doing as we study through, we're going to see that this happens constantly with them. What are the consequences when they reject that?

If you look at their history through the books of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, and then you get into Joshua, Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, along with all of the prophets, you will see a repeated cycle. They walk according to this superordinate rule and principle from God, and then they start to reject it and move away from it. As a result, society begins to crumble. They experience the loss of justice and an increase in oppression because who is to say what is right and wrong? They also experience the collapse of the market, and their enemies come in and overtake them.

Then they cry out to God, and in His mercy, He sends a prophet. What does the prophet do? He takes the book of Deuteronomy. The prophets were sometimes called seers because they could see clearly when everybody else was in a fog. They would call out to the people and say, "Listen, this is what God said. If we do this, this, and this, then it's going to lead to these consequences that we're experiencing. If we would repent and turn back to God's principles, then we would experience blessing and abundance."

That's exactly what the prophets, the seers, would do every time Israel began to move away from God's path. God would mercifully send them a prophet to call to them. What would they do to the prophets? They would arrest them, beat them, kill them, and persecute them. Then the people would slide into judgment.

So, what does this thirty-four-year-old piece of literature have to do with our situation in Southern California in 2020? I would suggest it has a little bit to do with us. Point number four on your outline: collapsing societies desperately need prophetic voices courageously calling for a return to God.

If you look at our culture, not just in the United States but throughout the West, you'll see a lot of fractures in our culture. These fractures lead to destabilization, potentially leading to a collapse in the future. At certain times, these fractures are more clear than at others, but we can be blinded to not see the fractures by being told just to live in the moment.

Now, live in the moment. Don't think deeply about these things; just amuse yourselves. We amuse ourselves to death, and if we're not careful, things could devolve very quickly. It is frightening how fragile things can be and how very fast they can ignite.

You may object, and there are people in our culture who do. One of them is a psychologist from Harvard University named Steven Pinker. He has a best-selling book that came out about a year ago called "Enlightenment Now." His whole proposition in "Enlightenment Now" is that everything is getting better. Because of human reason and science, along with all the principles of the Enlightenment from the 1700s, everything is going to get better and better.

In some respects, when you look at certain things, there are good developments. Infant mortality in Africa is now the same as it was in Europe in the 1950s. That's great! Poverty is decreasing, and we are dealing with major diseases. The Gates Foundation has almost completely obliterated polio and is working on malaria. These are all good things, and you could be lulled into the perspective that everything is getting better and that it will all be perfectly fine.

However, that's exactly what you would have thought if you lived in Germany at the end of the 19th century, the most scientifically advanced society in the world at that time. Everything was getting better and better, and then you have the 20th century. What happened in Germany during the 20th century? Two world wars resulted in millions upon millions of people dead.

Setting that aside, you realize that two major world powers during the 20th century rejected the idea of a superordinate principle and a God. One of them was guilty of killing 70 million people—Mao—and the other nearly 20 million people, leading to nearly a hundred million deaths. The USSR and China were responsible for the bloodiest century on record.

But these things don't matter at all. Things can destabilize very quickly. Societies need continual renewal, reformation, and course correction. They desperately need righteous, impartial, and courageous leaders who rule according to a superordinate ethic, a law, a rule, a moral framework.

The law that governs us all is being dismissed, and if it doesn't exist, what hope do we have? I know this sounds optimistic, but I want to suggest that our culture needs prophetic voices courageously calling for a return to God. We do not need a return to better politicians or improved politics and policy; we need a return to God.

I've had conversations with people who believe that if we just get some better politicians in office, everything will improve. That was the mindset in Germany, and look where it led them—with Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Superman, the Übermensch. I want to suggest that the individuals our culture needs are those who have knowledge of the superordinate principle and the God who ordained it. They understand how to interpret it and are wise enough to apply it. That is the role of the church.

Here’s the frightening reality: the church has been incredibly quiet for far too long, watching as things happen and thinking it will all get better. One of the major problems for the church in the last thirty years has been a theology that suggests everything is going to be really bad, but don’t worry, God will get us out of here. The belief is that everything will go to hell in a handbasket, but we will be okay because we will be raptured out of here.

What if that doesn’t happen? What if you are here for the rest of your life, and then your kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids are still here? I’m not saying Jesus won’t return; He will return. But we cannot turn our brains off and think it’s okay to do nothing because He will rescue us. That was the thinking of Israel when they went into captivity with Assyria and when they were destroyed by Babylon. This was the mindset of the Jewish people before their destruction: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." They also believed, "Tomorrow will be like today and much more abundant." What does that mean? It means they thought the stock market would continue to rise.

At 30,000 feet, everything's fine. Here's another thought that they had: the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah, who had just shown his entire kingdom to a little group of people, an emissary from Babylon. He showed the Babylonians everything in his household, all his armament, and all the gold in the temple. The prophet came in and said, "Hezekiah, who was that?" He replied, "Oh, those were those people from that place called Babylon. They wanted to see how great our kingdom was." Isaiah then said, "In a hundred years, they're going to be taking your sons and daughters away into captivity." Hezekiah responded, "Well, at least we'll have peace in my day."

This is found in Isaiah chapters 37, 38, and 39. Hezekiah thought it didn't matter; it wouldn't affect him. Someone else could deal with that. Society needs the church to be vocal about not politics, but the principles of Scripture. What does the Bible have to say? What does it teach us?

Someone might say, "Well, I don't believe in God." That's fine, but can you disprove the statement that those who have ordered society based on the principles of this book have not been better for people? If you study history, you'll see that wisdom is justified by our children. The outcomes are important. We need individuals who have knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, governed by morals, values, and ethics. That's you. It's not just me; it's not just my job. It's all of us speaking clearly the principles of Scripture.

This may cause a little apprehension for you. There's a woman in our church, about six to eight months ago, who came to me. She's a teacher at an elementary school here in town, and she was very concerned because they had a training for the district. They brought into that room a group of trans activists who were telling them that they need to teach certain ideas and philosophies to first graders, second graders, and third graders. She and her other friends, who are Christian teachers in the school, were very concerned about this, and rightly so.

She asked, "What should we do?" I said the teachers need to speak up and say, "We will not do that," like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel. We will not bow to the image of the king when you have no valid objective moral foundation.

Values, ethics, and anything goes. Friedrich Nietzsche saw this, and when you add the explosion of knowledge and information to that, it happens faster than you can imagine. We are living in the midst of an explosion of information and knowledge. However, knowledge and information are not the same as understanding and wisdom. When we have tons of knowledge and information, there is very little that is held back from us.

I read this last week from Vice News: after babies were born to women who were otherwise unable to have children following successful womb transplants from deceased women, it is amazing. You have a woman who is unable to have a child; she is barren. She receives a womb transplant from a cadaver. Now, a doctor in the UK says transgender women should be entitled to womb transplants so they can have a baby. Christopher Ingenfield, a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and a founder of the London Transgender Clinic, told the United Kingdom Mirror about a year ago that it should be illegal to deny trans women a uterus transplant, given the recent success of the procedure.

If you think all of that is just fine, you can disregard everything I am saying. However, I think that maybe it is not so simple. Moses says you shall not be afraid in any man's presence, yet the church is fearful to say anything because people might say, "You're wrong. Where do you get off saying that sort of thing?" But we do not have much of an option. We can either be quiet and let things go as they will, or we can speak up and say, "I object."

When that co-worker, friend, or family member says, "Well, who's to say whether it's right or wrong? You just got to do you," how well will that work? I don't think it will work very well for long. Therefore, I believe that remembering what the Scriptures have to say is important. Paul the Apostle wrote in the New Testament that all these things from the Old Testament were written for our admonition and instruction for those of us living in our time. He also said these very important words that you would do well to memorize: "So then take heed when you think you stand, lest you fall." Something to think about: would you stand?

With me as we close in prayer.

Lord, we stand here today, two days away from a primary vote in California. You gave us the voter guide, which is called the Bible. God, I pray that you would stir us to speak with clarity about what the principles of Scripture exhort and teach. Even if those we share it with persecute, scream, yell, get angry, or get upset, God, help us to be kind. Help us to be gracious, but help us to be clear and to stand upon the truth of Your Word, the principles of Scripture.

It is Your desire that those whom You have created, all of us in this whole world, would experience the joy of Your kingdom and abundant life. The principles that are guiding the mindset of our culture today are not leading to that. So, God, would You give us boldness? This is what Your church, 2,000 years ago, prayed in the face of opposition: grant that Your servants would have boldness.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.