I'd like to ask you to turn back in your Bibles to Isaiah, and I'll be referring to certain verses from Isaiah chapters two through five as I preach. There is nothing new under the sun, and the nations in decline, whether ancient Judah or our own in our own day, often follow the same course. In this election, seasoned citizens and their candidates are often fixed on key issues, some of which may be existential issues. Our problems as a nation are so big that many people think if we don't get this fixed, the results are going to be catastrophic or deadly. Many citizens are putting a lot of faith in the election to solve our troubles, But what if we were asking God to help our nation? Would he identify the same issues that we have? Long ago, when Israel was still a new nation, they were having major problems. When they had grown their crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites came every year, and they camped in the land, and they raided grain bins, they took all the produce, they stole every ox, sheep, and donkey that they could find. They were an existential threat. The stolen food could not be replaced. So Israel asked God for help. And you might think that God would miraculously crush the enemy. But he didn't. The way God helped was by sending them a prophet. Today, everybody talks about fixing the economy. fix the economy, or the border, or climate change. But what if God completely disagreed with us about the root of our problems? The prophet that God sent to Israel back in those days, which were the days of Gideon, told them what God had to say about their problems. God said the problem was, you have not obeyed my voice. And what if our expectation is that we're going to elect some Someone who's going to patch things up just so that we can get back to life as normal. And what if the candidate on his or her part is promising, yes, if you elect me, I'll fix this. But what if all of that is null and void because God is saying the real problem is that you have not obeyed my voice. What if God is saying, you don't need to get back to life as normal, you need to realize why you're in such trouble and your troubles will not be solved until you obey my voice. Well, from the book of Isaiah, I have prayerfully considered and identified what I believe are three sins in our nation that God would talk to us about today if we asked him. They are the sins that God rebuked in Judah, in Isaiah's day, day of temporal judgments, and just before a catastrophic collapse. God gets below the surface. If we said to God, tell us what's wrong in America, his answer would include pride, lies, and covetousness. First of these is pride. And in chapter two of Isaiah, in verse 11, the Lord says, the haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low. Pride is a wickedness that underlies other wickedness. It's a sin that strengthens other sin. As Judah's pride brought it into rapid decline and judgment, we should hear what God says about our pride and repent. Pride, what is it? It's an excessive, unbounded self-exaltation. Pride is in every one of us. Every time we desire to be greater than God would have us, every time we overvalue ourselves as better or wiser than we are, Every time we hope people will think and speak and use us better than they do, we reveal our pride. If we desire to be promoted above our place or make a show of our superiority, that's a prideful thing. Pride hides in our personalities so that we can hardly ever see it in ourselves, but we're often quick to notice it in others. Pride was the sin of Satan when he exalted himself above God, and pride was his lure to get our first parents to sin. You remember what he said to Eve, you shall be like God. Pride at its core is rebellion against God. It's breaking the commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. In pride, the creature seeks to be God in some fashion. And so it is treason against God's government and Christ's kingdom. How is it treason, you ask? Well, because God is worthy to be highly exalted. It is our creaturely obligation to bless God and to fear Him, to consider His every word, to give Him thanks and first place, to worship Him, to know Him, and much else. God deserves to have many followers, but what is it that the sinful human wants in our pride? We want to have millions of likes, subscribes, and followers. Here in the United States, we elect leaders who stink of our collective pride. Americans have a collective pride disease. The worthy thoughts that should go to God, we expend on ourselves. Would you like to be able to recognize pride in people? Here's how, here are a few ways how, certainly not exhaustive, the proud can never feel content in a low position or in serving others. If there's ever some kind of preferment or a raise, a promotion at the office, they think they ought to have it. And if they get into government office, they despise those who are below them and don't value the advice of their equals. When the proud see the accomplishments of others, they think they could have done better It's pride that puts such a high value on one's own knowledge that he thinks he can banter and argue with those wiser than him and that his opinion should be esteemed even if he knows nothing on the subject. When the proud sin or commit crimes, they make them out to be like little things of no account. Pride can't stand to sit under any kind of teacher and humbly say, thank you, God, for knowledge. Thank you for the privilege of being a learner. Pride only thinks I'm listening to this to judge it and to find the speaker's faults. Pride takes notes on the pastor's sermon, not to know anything, but to find faults. The proud can never be pleased. If they think someone isn't doing enough for them or holding their opinions high enough, they get angry. ever had to coexist with a proud person, find they've got just two options. You either leave and get far away from them, or you become an expert man-pleaser, a flatterer, someone to compliment them and wait on them hand and foot. Proud politicians hate godly and true ministers of Christ, but they love those who flatter them. The proud will only tolerate their own admirers as friends, And whenever they receive wealth or power, it's their tool to snub their inferiors. They can't stand to be questioned or reproved for a fault. The proud are talkative, but don't listen to others. They always want their accomplishments to be remembered. They chide people who forget how great they are. Sometimes they say self-deprecatory things about their accomplishments just to nudge people into remembering them. They can be open boasters, showing off and performing, or secret boasters, maneuvering conversations to move minds, people's minds into the directions that inevitably bring them honor. Do you remember Haman in the book of Esther? When he thought that he was going to receive the highest honor in the kingdom, he called together his friends and his wife and told them about the honors in store for him. Nothing in the whole world ate him up as much as Mordecai the Jew, who did not admire him. Well, that's some identifiers for pride. But how does that affect us as a nation? Well, it's the cultural and individual pride that swells our nation is abundant, and it is a reproach to us. You remember God's word in Proverbs 14, 34, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. The righteous way is humility, but pride is sin. Chief among the sins that the Lord hates and which he calls abominations are haughty eyes. It's a mark of the perilous last days in 2 Timothy 3. Men will be proud and arrogant. God says such people are opposed to the truth and corrupted in mind. Our pride is bringing this nation into judgment because our pride is treason against God. Pride is ingrained in our very way of life. We talk of pride as if it is good. We have school pride days. There are pride events, pride parades, pride flags, the modern equivalent of the Nazi flag, As is always the case, the thing we are most proud of is despicable in God's eyes. As he says, their God is their belly, their glory is their shame. That's Philippians 3. But this is nothing new because if you look at chapter 3 in verse 9 of Isaiah, God says, the look on their faces bears witness against them. That's a proud look. They proclaim their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to them. The president we had before this one was an inordinately proud man. He was, hopefully no longer, but was a pompous self-aggrandizer, a flatterer, and a boaster. His eyes were high. He used to speak in a haughty way to reporters who provoked him with leading and ignorant questions, but might have been won over by a reasonable word Their intentions were evil, but the president's responses betrayed pride. What do we know as Christians? That a soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Proverbs 15, 1. He's a proud man who stirred up the pot, and unless he repents, God will punish him for it. He's done something else that is proud. He made a Bible for himself called the God Bless the USA Bible. And in it, it has copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the lyrics from somebody's song. What would God say about such a thing? God would call that speaking out against the Lord and his anointed. He would call it defying the will of God. Why? Because the Lord said we must not add to or take away from the Bible. Thomas Jefferson made a Bible and used a razor blade to cut out the parts he didn't like. This man made a Bible and added a bunch of man-made stuff. God says if anyone adds to the prophecy of this book, the Bible, God will add to him the plagues described in the book. If King Jesus will not endure the proud heart, then here's a principle for Christian voting. A vote for the proud is a vote against Christ's kingdom. I'll not endure the proud heart, nor him with lofty eyes. Psalm 101. Well, pride was everywhere in Judah, in Isaiah's day. As I preached about it and how you recognize it, you probably recognized some signs in yourself. I know that you are children of the King. I know that you want to help your nation. Will you remember the humility of Christ in his earthly ministry, who rode into Jerusalem on a humble donkey and then volunteered for the shameful death and in his life exemplified a mind of service to people. Then he died to pay the debt of punishment for our sins of pride and our treason that we had stored up for ourselves. And so by faith in His name, we have been forgiven because He shed His blood for us. Let us, beloved, let us see God's mercy for us and let us repent of our pride, knowing that the Lord has a day against all pride. God will bring it low. Well, so that is pride, but God would also speak to us about our lies. not only pride but also lies. God says here in Isaiah chapter five and verses 20 and 21 and then later in 24, he says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight. For they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts. They have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." God's word is truth. God defines right and wrong. But as a nation, we have rejected the truth. And so we are troubled by people at all levels substituting evil for the good. elevating destructive ideas. Why do we do it? Because we're wise in our own eyes. The law of God with the gospel is of great benefit to bring sinners to the truth. The law restrains the corruptions of sin when it's enforced, but we have rejected it to our detriment. If you wonder what I am about to say, it's that our national willingness to despise the word of the Holy One from earliest days of our nation's founding now leads to our willingness to believe other lies, including that we can have a utopia here on earth and fix the curse by ourselves. The lies we believe and the temporal judgments of God are connected. Why? Because our rejection of revealed truth makes us liable to God's wrath. It threatens our continued existence as a nation. Our lies are our existential threat. Christianity is stuck on truth. The reality of Christ's death and resurrection, his life, that's historical reality, not a myth. Paul preached about the resurrection to a king named Agrippa, and he called on him to believe, saying, these things have not been done in a corner, Acts 26. God's intervention in our world is not a secret. Christianity is stuck on truth because if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain and your faith is also vain. 1 Corinthians 15. We believe in Christ because the Bible is true. As sinners, we're natural born liars. We know this from the word, out of the heart proceeds false witness, Matthew 15. We do not only tell lies, we live lies by accepting and holding false worldviews that influence us. That's why conversion to Christ is so difficult. Belief in the truth to the disadvantage of our former worldview is a radical makeover that takes a miracle. That's at the individual level. We need God to work a miracle in us called the new birth. Our national lives, speaking about the collective now, go back to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a movement of intellectuals who were really impressed with the scientific method. They were pretty sure that science would discover and solve all of our problems. In the year 1748, the philosopher Kant advertised the Enlightenment saying that man was leaving his self-imposed immaturity. A world of progress lay ahead if man would only free himself from the bonds of old worthless traditions, especially religion. Now that's unusual because earlier scientists like Kepler, Newton, and Galileo studied science to the glory of God. Science is not contrary to God. Where God has not spoken, knowledge of our world may certainly be gained through science. The Bible does not tell us everything possible to know. It only tells us what we need to know about God and his will for us. Science and Christianity are not opposed. But the Enlightenment scientists went on the attack. They said God's word was darkness and man's reason was light, and in doing so, proclaimed themselves wiser than God. That kind of thinking influenced our national identity. First, there was deism, which Thomas Jefferson and other founders believed. They thought God made the universe and then stepped back away from it. He never moved or moves the pieces with providence as the Bible teaches. He's not involved. And so they could talk about the creator without obeying God because they held a false view of him. out of the Enlightenment has come the worldview of atheistic naturalism. It says that the only thing that ever existed or ever will exist is matter. So, for example, if you're wondering how that could work out practically, naturalism says your thoughts are not the motions of a God-given human soul that will live forever, as the Bible teaches, they're the collision of molecules, chemical reactions in a complex machine. There is no made in God's image because there's no God, just the extension of space, naturalism says. Naturalism is what we're taught in school. It says whenever we talk about right and wrong or life's purpose, we're only talking about human constructs. Whatever exists can be explained by evolution, that the universe came from nothing and you came from monkeys. Evolution replaces the sweet with the bitter and leads many to despair and suicide. Belief in evolution has had great influence on the kind of people we become as individuals and, friends, it influences how we steer our economy and our nation. Evolution is blind. No one knows, according to evolution, why we're here or where we're going. And so people reason if we're the highest animal, the best we can do is to try to evolve more or hope that aliens from another planet will let us in on their secrets. and its most powerful influences in morals. Where God says there is a universal, binding, transcendent standard of right and wrong, naturalism tells us that morals are changeable, political, or practical matters. What's wrong yesterday could be right today. Racism or hate or murder is wrong for you, but right for me. Calling sin, sin, is narrow and intolerant. The pilgrims who first settled this land were looking for better freedom than license to sin. Talking about freedom now. Freedom originally meant freedom to do what is right. It still means that. For freedom, Christ has set us free, Galatians 5.1. True freedom is freedom from having to earn salvation for ourselves. That is a yoke of bondage. Freedom is the ability under the salvation won for us by Christ to pursue virtue, to obey God and receive his blessing. It's freedom to become the people God made us to be, which we can never be as long as we remain in sin and outside of Christ. The pilgrims came because they wanted to know God and his Christ, to be able to live and worship as he directed. But under enlightenment naturalism, freedom means now freedom to transgress and even to smash the things that other people made. That's slavery masked as freedom. 2 Peter, this is God's word, 2 Peter 2 says, those who entice others, and I'm paraphrasing here, those who entice others to sensual passions of the flesh, promise them freedom, but are themselves slaves of corruption. Whatever overcomes a person, like sin, to that he is enslaved. The Constitution is an Enlightenment document. It has a great deal in it that is good, such as its form of government, Bill of Rights, division of powers, but the core truth is missing. And what is that core truth? That God the Creator has an anointed human son, whom God has set on Zion to rule the ends of the earth, not that God stepped away from the world as Enlightenment thinkers foolishly thought, but that he intervened in the world to save us from our self-made sin disaster. God's royal son steers this world's events, even to the rising and falling of nations, and Americans owe him national loyalty and obedience. By ignoring this obligation, our nation's founding has made a monument to the lie that we owe Christ nothing. Let me get to the point. Early lies are related to later lies. Our early willingness to compromise truth so that we could have a secular nation is in the same family as today's lies. Without God's truth, we're willing to believe them, such as those that are being fed to us with historical revisionism. You say, well, what does that mean? Well, a good illustration of revisionism comes from Orwell's fiction book, 1984, in which the main character works at the Ministry of Truth. Perhaps you've read it. And what's his job? It's changing the historical records to harmonize with the shifting agendas of the government. His job was pushing out lies to cover the truth and to keep people subdued to a tyrannical government. That's not fiction anymore. A few years ago, the New York Times launched what they called the 1619 Project, and their core thesis, which is demonstrably false, is that the founders launched the Revolutionary War in order to preserve slavery, and now governments push their propaganda talking about misinformation and disinformation. And because we, the people, are not sold out to God's truth, we are collectively vulnerable to the lies of people who hate us and desire to punish us for thought crimes and wrong think. Why go to all the effort to lie? Because having rejected God's law, we culturally want to foster the idea that we can have utopia on earth. We question God. Has God really said that man is made male and female? Has he said that marriage is honorable among all? That the earth is cursed? Is an unborn baby a human? They offer instead Marxist socialism. We can have the license for limitless sexual pleasures if we will yield to totalitarian control. Unless Americans repent and begin believing God, we are going to bring ourselves a hardship that we can hardly imagine, likely socialism. Nazi Germany was Nazi, sorry, National Socialism. Cambodia, a socialist killing field. Soviet Communism murdered nine million people of their own people. Our Bible tells us why people end up with dystopias. They have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Alexander Solzhenitsyn saw it firsthand in Russia, and he said, men have forgotten God. That is why all this has happened. Do our fellow citizens excel at forgetting God? Well, our founding fathers paved the way for it. How much better to acknowledge Christ, who told us the truth, who is himself the truth, How much more wholesome for your own soul and your own life to believe the truth that gives strength to your bones, not that you came from a monkey, you didn't evolve, but God created all races from Adam and sent us a second Adam to save us, a king who does not lie. Lastly and very shortly, there is covetousness. Isaiah saw covetousness in Judah. In chapter 2, verse 7, he said, their land is filled with silver and gold. And there's no end to their treasures. Their land is filled with horses, and there's no end to their chariots. And in chapter 4, verse 16, the daughters of Zion glance wantonly with their eyes. In chapter 5.8, the rich become richer, spoiling the poor, accumulating bigger houses and estates, joining house to house and field to field, robbing others and living like little kings. Not all love of things is sin. Loving living things and loving God's world and riches is not sin of itself because everything God made is good. We do right when we esteem all things in their proper relation to God. Everything made is related to God. His wisdom made them. He gives them to us. Things have the stamp of God's goodness. And when we find something we like, it should feel to us like a token that God has given us of His love, and therefore it should draw our minds to Him, to meditate on Him, to help us talk to Him, to thank Him. What are our lives for except to serve and glorify Him? Therefore, the things He has given are given for serving Him. That includes to serve Him by helping the needy. Covetousness, though, is sin. We covet when we desire things more to please our flesh than we desire them for our salvation, and more than we want to use them to see Christ's kingdom come. We covet when we use things to puff up our pride, pride in new clothes, pride in a house, or in a degree, or money. That's covetousness, and so is desiring things so that we can domineer over others. or keep a lifestyle that displays just how rich we are. It's covetousness that desires things so we can be happy in this world only. Isn't covetousness rampant here in America? Advertising stirs up our lust for things that promises you get this one new thing and then you'll be happy. We desire more than we need. We put our emotions into consuming. We find ourselves eager when we can make more and more, and depressed if we miss out. Our daydreams about worldly plenty are sweeter to us than thoughts of Christ. We'd rather have our money than our integrity. We would stretch. to accommodate sins and even crimes if it will make us richer, that's covetousness. Some of you are familiar with Tolkien's work. And I think you'll remember a display of covetousness if you remember Smeagol, nearly weeping for joy, holding his precious ring over the body of his friend that he murdered to get it. As the story goes, he ruined himself An even better illustration is in the Bible. As Mary was anointing the feet of the Lord Jesus in an act of love and honor, at the very moment when life and death of precious human souls was suspended upon the Lord, going to the cross, Judas Iscariot, blind to the goodness and purpose of God in the world, was thinking about money. It says he was a thief, and having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it, and then he betrayed his friend, the Lord, to death for a measly few pieces of money. As the story goes in the Bible, I don't think you hear this very much, as the story goes in the Bible, he too ruined himself by hanging himself and falling, till he burst open and his bowels came out, and he went to his place called hell. So I conclude with this. It was too late for covetous Judas once he was dead, but it is not too late for Americans because of the complete sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice to atone for our every sin. If we will obey God's voice, he will redeem us and save us, forgiving us from the sins of pride, lies, and coveting. We did not evolve. We are the work of a loving creator, and that means we can be redeemed by faith in the Savior. God's message to our ungodly nation is that we don't have to ruin ourselves. But if we disobey him, we are going to become one more failed nation in the annals of history. If we keep believing lies, there will be consequences. What might he do? He might take away the resources for life. He might take away the honorable, wise, and skillful leaders and replace them with the oppressive, the stupid, and the capricious. He may whistle for the nations to come make war. but it doesn't have to be like that. We can petition Him for redemption, we can ask for His salvation. His promise is He will give it. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Our God delights in mercy, so let's ask Him for it.