Last week, we looked at the negative requirements of a Christian civil magistrate from Deuteronomy 17. This week, we're going to consider the positive requirements. These principles are all very simple and very profitable, even if you're not going to be a king or a president. And I'm going to read Deuteronomy 14 to 20. When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwelt therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me, thou shalt in any wise set him a king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose, one from among thy brother, and shalt thou set king over thee. Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. but he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses. For as much as the Lord hath said unto you, ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away, neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. And it shall be, and this is the beginning of our text, 18 to 20, and it shall be, when he sitth upon the throne of this kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law and a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites, and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel. Now last time we were here, we discussed the three requirements. Do not multiply wives. Do not multiply gold and silver. Do not multiply horses, which of course is referring to building a large standing army and building up military equipment. These are all pretty straightforward negative requirements. Now we're going to learn what are the positive requirements of kingship, or for us today, a Christian civil magistrate. So this section turns to the king's positive duty in relation towards the law of God. As each king assumes the throne, he has the right for himself a copy of the book of this law. Now the Jews and many commentators believe that this teaches that the king himself, not a secretary or a scribe, is to write out the whole book of the law by hand. If this was the case, the hand copying by the king would help imprint the law of God on the king's mind. You remember as a young child, of course maybe not nowadays, but in the old days we would have to write things out in class over and over to try to stick them in their mind and that would certainly help. Even if copies were permitted, we see that the first order of business for monarchs was to have a fresh, complete copy of the law for daily study at home or abroad. Although Presumably, a king with a godly father would inherit a copy of the law from his father upon his death. God wanted him to possess a copy that was uniquely and personally his own. And this would impress upon him the honor and the importance of the law for godly rule. This is your own copy as king. It's fresh. Just for you. Now, scholars differ over what is meant by the phrase, this law. Some believe that it refers only to what is called the Book of the Covenant, or the original document of the Sinai Covenant, which would be Exodus 20 through 23. That's one position. Others, including the translators of the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, think that it applies to the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy contains this section on kingship. It is a covenant renewal document, and it contains an excellent restatement of the moral law and many moral case laws that, of course, would be especially important to civil rulers. Still others, including all the ancient Jewish writers, believe it included the whole Pentateuch, the Torah, or the five books of Moses. The whole thing. It is likely that the Jewish interpretation is correct, given the nature of Deuteronomy itself. Now as a covenant renewal document, it would include a renewal of the whole prior revelation. So it would include the five books of Moses. The whole Torah was the foundation of the covenants and the source of their moral and judicial laws. So this is the first order of business for kingship. The first order of business for a kingship. Now the phrase from the one before the priests and the Levites indicates that the king is not to make a copy from a copy, but he is to go to the original source, the original manuscripts that were stored first in the tabernacle and then later in the temple. The original manuscripts. and that they're stored in the central sanctuary. You can look up later Deuteronomy 31-26, 2 Kings 22-8, 2 Chronicles 34-15-16. It was the responsibility of the priests, the Levites, to take care of the manuscripts and keep them safe near the very presence, the Shekinah presence of God. The fact that the original stored in the very presence of Jehovah in the central sanctuary was used would not only guarantee authenticity, the king's copy is going to be made from a perfect, inerrant source, the original manuscripts, but would impress upon the king that these words came from God himself. It's just not some copy laying around. It comes from the tabernacle. where God dwells, his special Shekinah presence. The moral laws and the moral case laws were based on God's nature and character, and thus had an authority over all men, even the king. Now, in the only detailed description of a coronation ceremony in the Old Testament, the boy king, Joash, was crowned and presented with, in the Hebrew, the testimony. That is the covenant stipulation, 2 Kings 11-12. Now we are not certain what this testimony entailed. We're not certain the nature of the document that was received by this young king. But even if it was only symbolic and in an abbreviated form, it represented the whole law of God. That much is clear. Now it is clear from these verses. that the law of God places a central, pivotal, foundational role for a biblical, just, civil government. It's quite clear. These teachings about Christian civil government, as we study these, what do we know? This is simple. This is not rocket science. These are simple passages. They're easy to understand. And their application to a modern nation-state should be fairly easy to put in place. The problem is, it's not the complexity of the teaching. The problem is, people don't believe this anymore. Evangelicals don't believe it anymore. Most Reformed people do not believe it anymore. And we've even had people visit this church, oh, you're a theonomist. We're out of here. That's dangerous. That's terrible. You would want to impose God's law on society? Well, there are many who argue that the whole law, or every aspect of the Mosaic law, only applies to Israel, the nation of Israel, the covenant people, the covenant nation. And therefore, to look at these verses as applicable to today is legalistic. That's the argument. That such a view, which of course is rooted in dispensationalism, which is a 19th century Plymouth brethren heresy, has a few insurmountable problems. We're just going to briefly hit on this because the problem isn't the complexity of the teaching. It's very simple. It's very fundamental. But people don't believe it anymore. Well, number one, the moral law was given to a redeemed people. It wasn't given to redeem anyone. It was given to a redeemed people as a guide to holy living. It was designed not to save Israel, but to maintain and nurture their walk with God. That's the purpose of the law. In fact, it is wrong simply to look at the Torah as another ethical code, or as a set of abstract principles. It is a very personal document that is akin to a marriage covenant. It expresses love and devotion, not a harsh legalism. which is the way it's presented today. Oh, that barbaric, harsh Old Testament law. You know, they put homosexuals to death and adulterers were put to death. What a terrible thing. That's the way Christians talk about God's law. God wrote it! The fact that the Jews in their corruption and apostasy viewed the law in a legalistic manner has confused many professing Christians. They mistakenly take Jesus and Paul's condemnation of the Pharisaical perversion of the law, which we find in Matthew 5-7 and of course Paul in Galatians and Romans, as a criticism of Moses himself. That's incorrect. They ignore the fact that Moses was inspired by God and the reality that the Mosaic Law taught salvation only through the sacrificial death of a spotless substitute. It taught salvation by grace through faith alone. It did not teach salvation through obedience to the moral law. It never did. It is fully consistent with the New Testament, the Gospels and the Epistles. Paul, in the New Testament, not only repeatedly appeals to the Ten Commandments, he does so, for example, in Romans and Galatians, but also quotes moral case laws out of Israel's judicial laws. He refers to moral laws outside the Ten Commandments and applies them directly to Christian churches and believers in the New Covenant era. They're authoritative for Christian ethics, in other words. When Christians stopped depending on God's moral law in its totality, they began to look at medieval concepts of natural law, and then even worse, Enlightenment humanism. So why are things as bad as they are? You can blame the churches, in large respect for the United States and Europe. And then number two. One cannot ignore the fact that the Mosaic Law contains many laws that are moral in nature. You've got the Ten Commandments. You have the two laws that summarize the Ten Commandments, which by the way are repeated by Jesus in the New Testament. And you have what are moral case laws within the judicial code of Israel, dealing with sexual sins and all sorts of sins relating to the Ten Commandments, but they're case laws. They explain, they flesh out the Ten Commandments. Laws that are moral are not arbitrary or based on some abstract realm of ideals, but are based on God's character himself. That's why they're moral. That's why they're eternal. That's why we cannot change them. That's why their absolutes, their ethical absolutes, they're based on God's nature and character. The expressions of hatred toward God's revealed Old Testament law that is common today among evangelicals and even quite a few Reformed people is really shocking. Because when you insult the law of God and you imply that it is not worth studying, it's not worth applying today, that it's something negative, that it's something for a former dispensation, that it's something harsh and unloving and bad for the people of God, you're not just imputing God's law, you're imputing God himself. Because it's based on his nature and character. Our attitude should rather be that of King David. Psalm 119, 15-16. I will meditate on your precepts. and contemplate your ways. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word." And that's David, under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, talking about how he loves God's law. Now, does that sound like something negative and harsh and unloving to you? Well, it shouldn't. It's a reflection of God's nature and character. It is eternal. It is unchanging. It applies to us today. If you don't believe that, then you impugn God himself. And then number three, Jehovah repeatedly affirms of his own revealed law that the penalties are just, fair, or equitable. This is not the opinion of R.J. Rushdoony or Greg Bonson. This is not the opinion of John Calvin. This is the opinion of God himself. God himself says that they are just. The penalties, not just the commandments, but the penalties. They're just. Therefore, the common idea today among professing Christians that they are harsh, barbaric, antiquated, and thus can and should be ignored is unbiblical and it's irrational. Now, if God says something's just, it's just. How can a penalty that is given and identified as just by God Himself become unjust over time? Well, such thinking denies the righteousness and the immutability of God. It is very unbiblical. It is very unrational. But it is very common today. We hear it all the time. And then four. As noted last week, there can be no neutrality with respect to God's revealed Old Testament moral laws and the penalties. If one does not accept God's Old Testament revealed law, then one must embrace law from another source. There's no choice. You have to choose one or the other, whether natural law, Mystical leadings and impressions. Inner leadings of the spirit. Community standards. Here's one we hear all the time today. Old-fashioned family values, whatever that means. Majority vote. Decisions of a select panel or a community of supposed experts. Like in hospitals today, they have a committee of experts, medical experts, and they decide, oh, this baby here, let's let him die. We've decided it's ethical to let them die. And that goes on today all the time. All the alternatives to God's revealed law are subjective, undependable, and continuously changing. Now, don't get me wrong. Natural law, biblically defined, would be the law written on the heart, Romans 2.15. But keep in mind, if God wrote the law in the heart and God wrote the written divine revelation, they can't contradict each other. They have to teach the exact same thing. The major difference is, one is used in scripture to condemn man who does not have written revelation. It is never a guide to societal ethics. The written revelation was given by God to his people for personal, corporate, societal ethics. That's the difference. Now the problem with natural law today and in the past is it means a hundred things for a hundred different people and my experience has been is that people who hold to natural law come to conclusions very different from God's revealed law. Natural law is a smoke screen for autonomous law in the vast majority of cases. All such views leave a civil government on a foundation of sand. A foundation of sand. And this is why the law of God is emphasized, not simply for personal sanctification, but for national godliness. The law was given not just for the Christian, not just for the family, not just for the church, but for the whole nation. And so when a whole nation covenants with Christ, what law are they going to adopt? Well, it better not be humanistic law. It better be God's law. If there is to be a national revival in our nation, professing Christians must stop siding with God's enemies against His law. You say, well, why are things so bad in the United States? Well, that's the position we're in today, where professing Christians are siding with secular humanists against the Word of God. As long as that continues, things are going to degenerate. Now, the reason that the king is to make a copy of the law from the original manuscripts as stated in verse 19. And it shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life. So the king is to keep a copy of the law with him at home and abroad at all times. He's to have a copy of the law with him. And every single day of his life he's to read it and meditate on it so that it saturates his mind and his heart. So the leader of the nation, by implication, all civil magistrates, all judges, are to be well-versed in God's law. This is a requirement of Scripture for a civil magistrate. They are to know thoroughly what is in it, so they can consult it quickly and easily, when necessary. And they are to study it and come to a solid understanding of its meaning. So if we had a Christian civil magistrate and they asked the president a difficult question about something, some kind of policy, I'd love to see in a Christian country, I'd love to see him whip out the Bible and open it up. Well, here's what the Bible says and this is what we have to do because this is what the Bible says. The Torah is to be his lifelong source of truth, meaning, ethics, and covenant loyalty. Now, today, we live in an age when most politicians are successful lawyers, which means they are not experts at the law of God. They're not experts at what the Bible teaches. They're expert at man-made laws. They're good at finding and manipulating a bunch of man-made rules and regulations. A jumble of arbitrary man-made laws. Most other civil leaders are successful businessmen. And they tend to be better than lawyers who are thoroughly corrupt, usually. They know how to run a company and make money. They're good managers. The biblical focus is on success in biblical understanding and personal sanctification. It's the number one focus. So, if we were a Christian country and you were seeing political ads, this would be the focus of the ads. You know, I've been a member of a church for 25 years. I've read Matthew, Henry cover to cover. I've read my Bible several times. I'm dedicated to the Word of God. I'm dedicated to only doing what God requires, not adding to it, not detracting from it. Where the American system ignores religion and piety and emulates worldly wisdom and rhetoric, the Bible emphasizes the law word of Jehovah and one's relationship to God. That's the biblical emphasis. Now the purpose of having an habitual study in God's law is set forth in verses 19, B, and 20. That he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes. that his heart may not be lifted up above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel." So an intimate knowledge and understanding of the Torah is to have three main effects. on the civil magistrate, which are all intimately related. Three main effects of studying the Torah daily, meditating on it. And by the way, remember as we study these requirements for kingship, just like the requirements for the ruling elder in the New Testament, these are things that are really required of all Christians. Obviously not the husband and wife for women, but the ability to teach is not necessary. But the basic ethical requirements The basic command is to study the Word of God and know it so you can apply it to life. These are things that all Christians ought to be paying close attention to. And if you read Matthew Henry's commentary on this, basically what he does is he just applies these verses primarily to believers in general. Well, let's look at these first. The Holy Spirit will use a deep, sustained study of God's Word to increase his fear of God. He will have a deeper understanding of God's attributes and His holy law. And this will produce a holy reverence and awe toward Jehovah. The more you learn about God, the God of the Bible, the more you learn about Jehovah, the more you learn about His law, the more impressed you're going to be. And the more in awe you're going to be of how great God is. And the more you're going to love God. This is not a servile terror. but an affectionate reverence which causes the king to humbly, gently, and carefully submit to God's law." Now, the fear of God is placed first because, as Scripture says in many places, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and that's repeated several times in Scripture. Psalm 111, verse 10, Proverbs 1, 7, and 9, 10, and Job 28, 28. It's a favorite saying of Scripture. Now this expression, the fear of the Lord, is an expression of frequent occurrence throughout the Bible. It has various shades of meaning marked by the circumstances in which it is found, but the main it implies a right state of heart toward God as opposed to the alienation of an unconverted man. The unconverted man does not fear God. Therefore, what does he do? He goes out and he happily breaks God's commandment. Now though the word is fear, it does not exclude a filial confidence and a conscious peace. It does not exclude the idea of love and peace and deep fellowship with God. They both exist side by side. And there may be such love as she'll cast out all the torment out of fear. and yet leave a full body and human heart the reverential awe which creatures owe to Jehovah. There is a forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. So this is tightly held in conjunction with loving God, your peace with God. O fear the Lord, ye saints, for there is no want of them that fear him. I am the Lord by God. Behold the ground of submission and reverence which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Behold the source of confiding love." So what God is, His very nature and character inspires awe in His people. Yet what God has done for us commands affection. These things are held together. See here the centrifugal and the centripetal forces of the moral world holding the creature reverently distant from the Creator, yet compassing the people of God with everlasting love. We're between the hands of Jesus Christ and God the Father who protects us. The whole of this complicated and reciprocal relation is often indicated in the scriptures by this brief expression, the fear of God. So these things are held together. Love, peace, fear, awe, reverence, all of that's held together. And this is the first product of a thorough acquaintance with, a thorough study of, a thorough meditating upon the Word of God. So, what is good for the king is good for us. So, you know, you children should not have to be told to read your Bible every day. You should want to read your Bible every day. and you should study it happily and fervently for it will produce the fear of God in you if you have the Holy Spirit. The civil magistrate who does not study the Word of God and fear God can have a certain amount of knowledge. He can be very bright. He may have a degree from Harvard or Yale. He may be a bright fellow. He has a certain amount of knowledge about the world around him, about the things about us. But he does not know anything as he ought to know it. That is, from the perspective of the Word of God, from the perspective of the biblical worldview, from the perspective of our covenant love toward Jehovah, from the perspective of truth, ethics, and justice as they relate to God and his Word. The Bible, Jehovah, is the reference point for meaning, the reference point for justice, the reference point for truth. The civil magistrate, without the fear of God, without this deep study of the Word of God, as Van Til would say, is like a man made of water in a sea of water trying to climb a stairway of water into a sky of water. There's no reference point. So what do we get? We get leaders who are Marxist, slash racist, slash fascist, slash socialist, habitual liars, and whoremongers. This is what the United States gets these days. It's not good. His knowledge in all those aspects is distorted, perverse, and unreliable. Without God speaking in his revelation to the civil magistrate, he is left to stumble in the darkness on the basis of some kind of human autonomy. That's his source, human autonomy. He has no fixed reference point to guide the ship of state. A deep study of Scripture will equip him for every good work and instruct him in the way of righteousness, equity, and justice. The civil leader who does not look to God and His Word is a fool, the Bible says. He's a fool. He does not know God nor the great value of His Word. Now just think about the United States for a moment. We could have a president in office for two or three years and nobody really knows what the guy believes. They may know a few things. They may know he's anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, but that's about all they know. They don't know much about him. Consequently, the leader without God, the leader without God's word, he leans on his own wisdom or the wisdom of heathen counselors and is filled with pride and folly. He rushes into stupidity and ruin and he brings the nation into stupidity and disaster. The wicked leader who follows his own autonomous will and reasonings may seem wise to other blind worldlings. The people in Hollywood, the New York Times, the news media, they may love it because they're a bunch of fools. But to God he is an evil tyrant, a dangerous man, People of the world look at godly Christians as witless fools, but the man who is constantly studying God's Word to stimulate and nurture the obedience of faith is the only truly prudent man. And this is what the United States needs. This is what every nation needs. Now this first reason is important, for it tells us that Obedience to God's commandments cannot be separated from a relationship to Jehovah. I hope you understand that. Obedience to God's commandments cannot be separated from a relationship to Jehovah. Now there's such a thing as called civic goodness where a plumber may do the right thing. But all our obedience really to be a proper God honoring obedience has to be done in and through Jesus Christ to his glory. And a relationship to God cannot be separated from a deep understanding of the Scriptures. These things are crucial. Many pagans read the Bible. Well, not many, but some do. They don't understand it, though. The good civil leader is not merely some technocrat who looks at God's law as simply a code to be deciphered, but builds his rule on his love and respect for Jesus Christ. You see the difference? The Book of Deuteronomy, the five books of Moses, these are documents of love, of relationship, of covenant. This causes the law to be something personal that is cherished and loved because it is written by the Lord and keeping it demonstrates our love toward Him. This is the attitude that the civil magistrate must have to be a good civil magistrate. Every aspect of a Christian civil magistrate's analysis of reality is conditioned by his relationship to Jesus Christ, his relationship to God, and his desire to interpret everything in the light of the Bible's teaching. Not one speck of policy, whether foreign policy or domestic policy, or economic policy, whatever it is. Not one speck of policy is to be done without looking to Jesus Christ and the Word of God. Everything is to be done in the light of the Bible's teaching. Thus godly rule begins with the fear of God for obedience and covenant loyalty must come from within to be sincere. It's got to come from within. The fact that the fear of God only flows from a habitual study of the Word of God means that it is not some mystical, subjective, non-rational experience but is rooted on the sure foundation of real truth. Can we make a distinction between a Reformed Christian and a Pentecostal heretic who gets an office and says, well, you know, God told me to go to war with Iraq or whatever. or God told me to do this. I heard a voice last night. I had hot peppers and anchovies on my pizza and I had a dream and now we're supposed to go to war. No, that's not how it works. Everything is tied to the objective Word of God. Civil magistrates who have no fear of God will have no reverence for the revealed moral law of God. They're intimately connected. Without a fear of God, the rule of law, biblically defined, dissipates and vanishes. We've seen it in our own nation. And the nation becomes progressively more arbitrary, statist, and savage. We hear about human rights all the time, and yet babies are slaughtered in this nation every day simply for being unborn. Murder in the name of compassion. That's the United States today. This is basically the case with the United States. The widespread rejection of Christ and his word that occurred in this nation during the 20th century is coming home to roost. I'm not saying it didn't happen earlier than that, I'm just saying it really came to fruition when modernism took over all the denominations in the 1920s and 30s, and of course when evangelicals embrace dispensationalism and abandon the Old Testament. Our nation is like a branch pruned from a tree. For a time she appeared green because of the leftover sap in the branches. The leftover sap of the Christian worldview. Even though people, even though your grandparents may not have been Christians, they thought like Christians because they were taught that way. You don't leave your family. You don't get a divorce. You don't do certain things. Homosexuality is evil. They had the Christian worldview in their consciousness left over from prior generations. But as the sap is exhausted, the leaves turn brown and wither away. Our only hope is a massive revival where the masses turn to Jesus Christ, fear God, and love His commandments. Unless our civil magistrates begin with the fear of God, They will not have wisdom but only madness and nonsense. Our laws in this country are absolutely absurd. Where a man can be arrested for running over a rat with his tractor. Where we have sodomites getting married. Perverts being honored by our civil magistrate. This explains why most politicians in our day are corrupt imbeciles. Listen to Harry Reid. Listen to President Obama. These men are evil. The second reason the nation's ruler is to habitually study the Torah is so that he will be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes. The effect of the fear of God is to be a studious, habitual, obedience to the whole law of God. Godly government, godly civil government, begins with self-government. The assumption here is that if a man is wicked and ungodly and is personalized, he cannot be trusted to rule the nation with justice and equity. He can't. Like the prohibition on polygamy. This reflects the New Testament qualification for ecclesiastical rulers. This verse presupposes that one's relationship to God will directly affect one's relationship to other men. Remember, we never look at the law as some isolated code apart from the covenant, apart from the relationship to Jesus Christ. Note that the fear of God is to lead to a keeping of all the commandments and statutes. Now in this context, this would include the whole law, moral, judicial, and ceremonial. In this context, he is to be diligent in not only keeping the Ten Commandments, but also the ceremonial laws that were a badge of church membership, and which focused one's faith on the atoning, sacrificial death of the Messiah to come, He has to be a thoroughly moral and religious leader. The fact that the requirement includes the whole law means that his duty to rule according to biblical justice is included. It includes his personal ethics, it includes his rule over the nation. The king is not to lead as if he were a dispassionate technocrat, but is to strive to be the model Israelite, an example to the whole nation. A living example of righteousness and justice. This is what the king was supposed to be for Israel. The king is to set the tone of the nation by following the admonitions that Moses constantly pressed upon the covenant people in his covenant renewal speeches. One thing I didn't do, which I could have done, but you can tie almost all of these requirements of kingship to things that were said by Moses in Deuteronomy to the whole covenant people. Fear God. Do not depart to the right or the left of my law and so forth. Do not add to it. Do not detract from it. Although the king and the subject share a common goal of covenant faithfulness, as the leader The king bears a greater responsibility to exemplify and demonstrate sincere heart obedience unto Jehovah. Because the people are looking up to him as an example. This is one way to preserve the nation from apostasy and keep intact a God-fearing dynasty. Now look how far we've come. For now it seems that the most wicked people are attracted to political office. By holding to pluralism and rejecting a religious test oath for office, the United States bars the nation from requiring its leaders to study the Bible in order to fear God and keep all His commandments. The result of this pluralism has been exceptionally negative. is resulted in a number of fallacious ideas regarding civil rulers. A common idea, which we heard a lot under the Bill Clinton administration, is that one's personal life does not have any effect on how a leader will rule. Whether or not a political candidate is a member of a cult, or has committed adultery, or habitually lies, or does not attend church, is generally considered irrelevant to his credentials for rule. The basic idea is if a leader is a good administrator, gives good speeches, he can read a teleprompter effectively, and is pragmatic, he will make a fine president. That's the general view today. One's private beliefs and practice regarding religion are considered to have no effect on one's ability to rule. In fact, it is even considered immoral, it's beyond the pale, and un-American to question one's ability to lead based on his or her religious profession. Some Baptist pastor called Romney a member of a cult, and the Republicans almost universally condemned him. That's not proper in America to point out the fact that somebody believes that Jesus' brother is the devil, and that God had sex with the Virgin Mary, or whatever. Mormonism is insane. You shouldn't even be allowed to vote, let alone be a member of a president, if you're a Mormon. And yet that's considered out of bounds by so-called conservatives. The American system has completely bottomed the myth of neutrality. And consequently, the most important questions regarding leadership, which ought to be based on what you believe, your system of beliefs, your worldview, your worldview commitments, are ignored while only surface issues related to public policy are discussed. It's the exact opposite of the teaching that we find here in Deuteronomy chapter 17. The biblical view is you start with a person's character. You start with a person's worldview. You start with a person's belief system. You start with somebody's relationship to God, to Jesus Christ. That is where you start. But that is out of bounds in the American system. The result of this kind of system is politicians hold their finger to the wind and they do not really hold firm on religious or ethical principles. If the majority of people wanted to worship Baal in our country, then you'd have politicians up there arguing on stage on, oh, I worship Baal more effectively than he does, as an example. Moreover, if a person is strict regarding religion and admits that it will affect his views on public policy, then that person is generally considered to be unfit for office. And you see this in the treatment, for example, of Bachman and people who are religious. And the news media brings this up as, oh, this is dangerous. These people actually believe in something. That's dangerous. They don't pass the code for pure secular humanism. They might actually do something in accordance with the Bible. That's dangerous. They're unfit for office. For example, The Christian position on abortion and homosexuality is increasingly seen as a bigoted religious intrusion into the political realm. Don't think Republicans are immune to this. They're adopting this view too. When the Obama administration went to work and they got sodomites and lesbians admitted to the military where you can be an open sex pervert, an open immoral ungodly wicked person and be in our military, Republicans didn't... I didn't hear one Republican say, well, they could do that, but it's still wicked and God says it's wrong. They can't argue from a biblical source, so what do they do? Well, maybe it's not a good idea, you know, it might upset the troops when they're in the shower or something. They come up with pragmatic arguments. That's not how you argue. The Bible requires arguing strictly from the Word of God. Politicians have responded to this myth of neutrality. and the phony bifurcation between the personal and political realm by reassuring voters that their private beliefs will have no effect on public policy." John F. Kennedy. Mitt Romney. The Roman Catholic or Mormon or fundamentalist promises to rule as a good secular humanist. Don't worry, I'm not going to look through the Bible. I'm not going to base anything I do on my religious beliefs, which of course essentially means you're a hypocrite, you're dishonest. That's the common American view of the Constitution. And the separation of church and state requires religious political leaders to be hypocrites to win office. And that's exactly the case today. For example, Romney, when he ran for Massachusetts, became pro-abortion. Mormons don't hold to that, but Romney did. Roman Catholics, there's tons of Roman Catholics in in the Senate and the Congress who are pro-abortion. Even partial birth abortion, where you take a fully developed baby and you split the back of its skull open and you suck out its brain and collapse its skull. You see? Yes, you can profess religion and run for office in the United States, but you better be a big hypocrite. You better be really a secular humanist if you're going to be elected to office in this nation. That's the position today. requires political leaders to not only be hypocrites, but in principle, idolaters, for the Constitution is placed above the Word of God as a requirement for office. The Constitution is placed above the Word of God for office. In this system, the political leader is not an example of what a covenant-keeping Christian leader should be. but instead is merely a reflection of the corrupt apostate population. A true rule of law, a true constitutional republic must be founded on the Word of God. The rule of law has been replaced by a popularity contest with no fixed reference point. In modern materialistic hedonistic America the most important topic in the political domain is economic growth. What can I do to put more money in your pocket? Whether you're an idolater, or an adulterer, or a whoremonger, or a habitual liar, or somebody who believes you can murder your own children, or a sex pervert, that doesn't matter. We want more money in our wallet. That's the American system today. An area of which the civil government, according to biblical law, has no jurisdiction. The civil magistrate really has no jurisdiction over economic growth. All that can regulate is when specific laws are broken. No just weights and measures. Fraud, theft, false advertising, coercion of competitors. That's the only relationship that the civil magistrate has to economics. It's purely don't lie, don't break the law. What happened in Wall Street, the corruption, the lies, the fraud that happened in Wall Street, that's not biblical capitalism, that's not biblical free market economics. That was ungodly and those people should have been locked up and made accountable. It's the type of fascism we have today where they were saved by the state and paid off. Now, we're going to take a break, we're going to come back, and then we're going to look at the purpose of reverence and obedience. It goes on, what is the purpose of this reverence and obedience toward God's law? These are important concepts. We pray that we need for Christians in this country to believe the truth. What the Bible teaches about the civil magistrate, Christians have to believe it before there can be any hope of reforming the civil magistrate. If Christians don't believe the truth, our nation's doomed. Because they're supposed to be the salt and light of the culture. And if they're not going to be salt and light, they're good for nothing. They need to be cast out on the road, to be stepped on. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for your holy word that you guide us. You tell us what we need for our own good. You point us to your nature and character and your divine law. Lord, instill in us a fear of you. Give us a love of your holy word. cause us to want to be faithful and obedient to everything your Bible requires of us, and bring revival to your church, that it once again would look to the Word of God only for all areas of life, not simply the prayer closet of the church, but even to the civil magistrate. In Jesus' name, amen.