I want you to hear the word of the living and true God this morning from Hebrews 13 verse 7. Father, it is amazing to look back and look over the scope of 2000 years of church history, 230 years of American history, and to see great men that you have raised up, men of profound stature. Men who loved you, men who followed you, men who died, men who sacrificed, men who God used to birth this nation. Lord, we stand amazed. We stand in awe. And Lord, we want to obey this verse and we want to examine at least once a year a biography of one of these great people so that we can be instructed by them and that we can do what this verse actually tells us to do. Lord, as we look this morning at Alexander Hamilton. I pray, Father, that we will. Learn from him. That we will not follow in his steps. in Jesus Christ's most precious name. Amen. You may be seated to the glory of God. The verse that Brother Reese just read to you is where the writer of Hebrews instructs the people of a small little church somewhere in Asia Minor around 68 AD to remember We are to remember people who have two different characteristics. Number one, we are to remember people who led us, and we are to remember people who spoke the word of God to us. And then the writer goes on to say that we are to do two things with those who led us and who spoke the word of God to us. We are to consider the result of their conduct, and we are to imitate their faith. Now the way this is written in the original Greek tells me that the people we are to remember are dead. Because the writer does not say that we are merely to consider their conduct, but we are to consider the result of their conduct. And you simply can't do that until the life of an individual is finished and there's no more conduct to consider. We have to be humbled by the reality that we are fallen creatures and that we can destroy a lifetime of faithfulness in 30 minutes. And so we have to make sure that we are able, we are in the Lord at all times and that we are being faithful to Him. And so we have to wait till a man lives his life and look back on his life before we can imitate their faith and consider their life. So the Holy Bible teaches us that we are to have heroes of the faith who are now dead, men who led the church, men who preached and taught the Word of God during their lives. And we are told to consider the end result of their conduct. And we are also told to imitate or copy or emulate their faith. In fact, the writer of Hebrews thought this was so important that he included in his epistle his own brief biographical sketch of several Old Testament heroes of the faith, which is what we call today the 11th chapter of Hebrews. The books of the Bible were not divided by verses and chapters until many, many hundreds of years after they were originally written down. So the writer of Hebrews never wrote chapter 11. He wrote the epistle, the letter to the Hebrews, and he gave that as probably a series of sermons and wrote it down. And later we came back and separated it by chapters and verses, supposedly to make it easier to read and memorize. So a few years ago, I began something that I pray will not only be a blessing to you today, but will be something that we will engage from now on, that around the end of October, the 1st of November, we will celebrate the many people who came before us, who live lives of godliness and faithfulness in Jesus Christ. And we will obey this portion of scripture, and we will remember some of the heroes of the Christian faith. Recently, Sister Colleen took, I don't know how many it was, eight or nine? And and put them in a book form and put it on the internet for sale eBay Is that a good site? I don't even know So many people have done this No, I know I know we want people to obey the Bible Just particular things about these people, right and So anytime you do this, there's a danger. And the danger is not that we might get some facts wrong about history or get some dates mixed up. I usually am pretty good at doing that. But that we will ever slightly replace inerrant and infallible scripture with the weak and frail personal experiences of other human beings, no matter how important those people might be. And yet we see that the writer of Hebrews tells us right here to go ahead and risk that danger and to go ahead and remember these people. And so in my effort to be biblical, let's obey this verse and remember these people. Now, the man I want to bring to your attention this morning is not. A good example. He's a bad example, a very bad example. Wait a minute, Brother Blair, you just said we're supposed to study godly people. Well, I understand something, that it's just as important to learn what not to do as it is what to learn what to do. That we need both of those. And this is why failure is so important in our lifetime. When we speak of freedom, there's a lot of talk about liberty and freedom right now. But when you talk about that, you need to also be talking about the freedom to fail. Failure is one of the most important things that can ever happen to you in life. Because that's the teacher that God uses, that you can learn from your mistakes and change your ways. And this is why I am personally against the federal government bailing out corporations, airlines and automobile industries and other businesses that run up against hard times because they didn't manage their businesses very well. They didn't negotiate good contracts, and they ended up on the south end of the contract, and now they want the federal government to bail them out. That's a mistake because we need to learn from their mistakes. And I realize that people are going to get laid off, and I realize they're going to suffer pretty severe economic hardships, but people need to learn from bad decisions so that we don't keep making bad decisions. And so I'm sorely afraid that we're not going to learn very much from the recent economic downturn because we're bailing everybody out, and that's a mistake. So in that way, us examining the very troubled Christianity of Alexander Hamilton, we're going to learn what not to do. in at least a couple of areas. Number one, we're gonna learn how not to think about our relationship with Jesus, and we're gonna also learn how not to think about our place in the church of Jesus. But positively, by looking at Alexander Hamilton's spiritual life, or the lack of one, we're gonna see the beauty of belonging, for that is truly a gift worth valuing. You see, as people who have experienced the miracle of the new birth, the God who sovereignly chose us, the God who sovereignly set his love upon us, the God who powerfully and effectively dragged us to Jesus so that we might be washed and forgiven and made righteous, that very same God has also put us, he has sovereignly placed us into a body, an assembly, a group. And that body is called the church. and as part of the one holy universal and apostolic church that Jesus is building and over which Jesus is head, and as a part of the church that Jesus will guarantee that the very gates of Hades itself will never overpower it, we are no longer alone. Hallelujah. Through salvation, we are not only forgiven and made righteous, but we are now joined with Jesus to the degree that we now have what the Puritans called union with Christ. And the Apostle Paul was moved by God the Holy Spirit to teach us that this union with Christ is so powerful that he likened it to the union that a husband has with his wife within the marriage covenant when he said this in Ephesians 5, 28 through 30, so husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Just as Christ also does the church because we are members of his body. So even as you care for your own body and you eat right and you sleep right and you take medication, you get surgeries and you get therapies and you sleep well and you do all kinds of things, exercise to keep your body in place. That's what you ought to be doing with the church. You ought to be culturing the church and helping the church to become what it ought to be, a glory to God, hallelujah. It's not about showing up and sitting in a pew and hearing something and going and doing what you really want to do on Sunday. It is about being transformed in the presence of God, that we're no longer the same people, and that we both come closer to God and closer to each other. That's the plan that God has in the New Testament. Now maybe you don't like the New Testament, maybe you'd rather go under the old law, where out of the mouth of two or three witnesses you were stoned to death if you did something wrong. Maybe that would be more appropriate. I don't wanna do that. So this is both amazing and breathtaking. But in addition to all of us having union with Christ, the Bible also teaches that every single genuine believer also has a union with every other genuine believer. And it's inescapable when you read the Bible. And that union is also to each other and for each other. There is nothing like the church of Jesus on the earth. Now I would guess that the majority of you know very little about Alexander Hamilton other than he was famous for being part of the early government of this country and that he and Aaron Burr had a squabble that ended with Burr killing Hamilton in a duel on July the 11th, 1804. Aaron Burr was the Vice President of the United States. And dueling was illegal back then, even then. And he was charged with murder as the Vice President of the United States. And he never was tried for murder. He was charged with it. He's also charged with treason and a lot of other things. He never went to trial for any of it. And it wasn't the first duel that Aaron Burr had. I'm not doing a biography on Aaron Burr because I don't find any redeemable aspect in Aaron Burr at all. But what you may not know, is that among other many, many other accomplishments, Alexander Hamilton was a brilliant legal scholar, a military commander, a lawyer, a banker, an economist. Hamilton was also one of the founding fathers of the United States, a promoter of the U.S. Constitution, the founder of the nation's financial system, he designed it, a founder of the city of New York, he designed it, the founder of the Federalist Political Party, the founder of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the founder, editor, and publisher of the New York Post newspaper. You may also not know that Hamilton was born on the Leeward Islands around 1755. He and his older brother were the illegitimate sons of Rachel Fawcett and James A. Hamilton. And one of the first snubs that Hamilton experienced in his brief life was when he and his brother were denied membership in the Church of England because their parents were not legally married. This may sound harsh to some of you, But records show that Rachel Fawcett had been legally married to a German merchant on St. Croix and had birthed a child named Peter. But in 1750, Fawcett abandoned both her husband and infant son and moved in with James Hamilton. The couple settled in Nevis into a seaside lot that she had inherited from her father. And around five years later, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States was born. Now to their credit, the leaders of the Church of England went to Hamilton's parents repeatedly to encourage them to repent and be saved and get married. They weren't aware that she'd already been married until later on. and become active members, but they repeatedly refuse to become members of the church. So Hamilton learned from his parents at a young age how to supposedly believe in God, and how to supposedly be saved, and to supposedly be in right standing with God, and yet be completely isolated from Christ's church. So in light of that, I want to ask a few questions of you this morning. What are your children learning from you about salvation? What are your children learning from you about the church of Jesus and about their role in it? Is the Lord's Day just another day to your children? Are your children learning from you that church attendance matters? What are your children learning from you about the importance of church membership? Jesus said in Matthew 16 and 18, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. That's the first reference in the New Testament of Jesus using the Greek word ekklesia, the assembly of the believers. And you simply cannot read the New Testament with any degree of honesty and not understand that the infinitely superior new covenant that God established through the sinless life, the flawless ministry, the substitutionary death, the bodily resurrection, and the physical ascension of Jesus is wrapped up in the Christian church. The new covenant does not give any special significance to the geographical nation of Israel. The New Testament Scriptures give all attention to the church. So everything done to the glory of God the Father in the name of God the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit under the auspices of the new covenant is done in, by, and through the church. So under the new covenant, there are no more individual people acting individually according to God's will. Everybody needs to belong to a local body. And everybody that's in the local body is under subjection to the elders of that local body. I understand most churches don't have elders. I got that. I'm sorry about that. It's hard to submit to elders in the church if y'all don't believe in elders. But they're supposed to be, the Bible says, I'm going by the Bible. There's a plurality of godly men who are trained and qualified and morally qualified to be elders. And those are the ones that lead the church. Those are the ones that guide the church. Those are the ones that shepherd the souls of the people. And they do that primarily through teaching and preaching, through the acceptance of doctrine or the rejection of heresy. And over a period of years, as we put our arms around people, lovingly shepherding them as a shepherd does his sheep, we guide them into the presence of God. We guide them away from sin. We encourage them to serve the living God. And the Bible commands, the New Testament commands that people in the church are held to account, not only with each other, not only with God, but to each other and to the elder board. Haven't even mentioned deacons yet, I understand that, because I'm primarily interested right now in the leadership of the church of teaching and preaching. The deacons are to serve the church. They are to love the church and make sure that the people are tended to, to make sure that the people have what they need. But the elders are for the spiritual aspects of the house of God. Don't you want to submit yourself to people that love you enough to tell you the truth? Don't you want to know what's right and wrong? Three of y'all do. Praise God. Thank you, Jesus. In this church, it's okay to respond. You can say amen or oh me, but just something. Nobody today is an island unto himself. If you are, you're a rebel. If you're not part of a local body, you're rebelling against the clear commands of the scriptures. And when you go to church, you're not supposed to go to church. You're supposed to be part of the church. You are the church. We meet here. The Holy Spirit's not in the sheetrock. Holy Spirit's in you. Hallelujah. All who are truly saved are part of the invisible and eternal church of the firstborn, and every one of these saved people are commanded by God's Word to be a vibrant part of a local body or assembly. And each genuine believer is commanded to submit themselves to the authority of the elders of that local body, and to submit to each member, and to regularly attend. The writer said in Hebrews 13, 17, obey your leaders and submit to them. Why? Why? Why, writer of Hebrews, whoever you were? For they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. This is not about elders being hot dogs. This is not about elders being boss hog over your life and running your life. It's not what this is about. This is a fearful and trembling position. because God is gonna come to the elders. Jesus Christ is going to visit the elders of the church and say, have you shepherded my people? Have you loved my people? Have you taught my people the truth? Why not? He will not spare when he comes back. Remember, Jesus is coming back not to bring mercy and grace. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got mercy and grace right now. Jesus is coming back to kick and take names. Jesus Christ is coming back to destroy all evil that remains on the earth and to cleanse the earth from all evil. You know how he's going to do that? By killing all of the evil people. Amen. Read the Bible, the blood will run up to the horse's bridle for 200 miles. Slaughter, he's coming back with a sword. He's coming back as king and ruler over the universe. The time for grace and mercy is right now. The time for repentance is now. There'll be a day when the angel will say, let him that is filthy be filthy still, let him that is holy be holy still, and there'll be no more salvation. Better run to Jesus now. Amen to that. So it says, why do you need to submit to those elders? For they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account to the Lord. And look what it says next. Let them do this with joy and not with grief. Why? Because that's gonna be unprofitable for you. You don't want leaders that are grudgingly shepherding you. You want leaders that are joyfully shepherding you. Amen. And again, in Hebrews 10, 23 through 25, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider, us here is who? All the saved. Huh? Let us consider how to stimulate one another. To what end? To love and good deeds. Think of what that says. Consider, ponder, think, meditate, plan how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. Well, I think that takes time. Does it take time when you think about other things? Sure, it does. So how much time do we spend in considering how I can stimulate you? You can stimulate each other. You can stimulate me to love and to good deeds. How much time are we investing in that? That is a command of the Holy Bible, is it not? I didn't write that. OK. And then while you're doing that, not forsaking our own assembling together 2,000 years ago, as the habit of some is, but encouraging one another. And look what the next one is. And do it less and less as the internet and football become more part of your, huh? No. And all the more. as you see the day drawing near. If you have ever one time thought or said or written or spoken to anybody, I think Jesus is soon to return, then you should be gathering together more often, not less often. I see the day coming quickly. I see it all while I think God's judging this country. I believe that with all my heart. I weep over it. I don't think you've seen anything yet. I think it's going to get infinitely worse. And then when you think you can't get any worse than that, then the economic apocalypse is going to happen. And everybody's broke, including the government. And they can't pay you any all your Social Security checks, all your retirement checks. Everything's going to fail. There's not enough money in the universe to pay these debts. And it's coming. It's coming. It is the sin of this century that these elected officials are spending our great-grandchildren's money like they're doing. Right now, to every man, woman, and child in this country, they owe $86,000 to China. And that's going to get worse because they got the print and presses going. you're gonna see hyper, and you gotta remember something, there's only one reason why the German people, it was the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation, embraced a monster like Adolf Hitler, it's called hyperinflation. And people got so desperate, they paid them in cash three times a day, and they put it in wheelbarrows to take it to the bank before the inflation would make the money less valuable by the time they got to the bank. And people would steal the wheelbarrow and leave the money in the street, because the wheelbarrow was more valuable. I'm not making it up. That's why they said, be he God or Satan, we will embrace him. Just get us out of this mess. The American people will get to this place. You let hyperinflation come for one year, and you can't buy bubble gum. You can't buy bubble gum. It'll be $30 a chew. You've never seen hyperinflation one time in this country, it's coming. And it's like a steamroll, there's no stopping it now, it's coming. I don't know when, 20 years, 10 years, five years, three years, it's coming. And when it hits, all the retirement plans in the whole country are gonna be bankrupt overnight, all of them. And there's only one solution, print more money, which makes inflation worse. It's coming, beloved, and we better cry out to God. I'm telling you, you better grab the horns of the altar. It's coming. So I see the day coming, and so I want to gather more. I want to have more prayer meetings. I'm desperate. I'm hungry for God, and I want to have more times together, not less. Amen? That's what that passage says. And yet in spite of the clear teachings of infallible and sacred writ, we have today a wide gap, a sinful distance, a selfish separation between far too many people who lay claim to be saved and the effort to actually obey these verses. It is common today for people to say they're saved and yet put forth little or no effort to actually belong. to any local church, where they can enjoy the beauty of standing shoulder to shoulder with other blood-washed saints against the evils of our day, and to encourage and strengthen them, and to be encouraged and strengthened by them. They'll come in the front door. Who's the pastor? Pastor raises his hand. They take him in the front yard and they shoot him in the head. They come back in. Who are the elders and the deacons? They raise their hands because they're not ashamed. I'm talking about history. This has already happened. They raise their hand because they're not ashamed. And they say, I'm a pastor. I'm an elder. I'm a deacon in the church. They take them outside and shoot them in the head. right in front of everybody, to try to frighten you to renounce Jesus. That happens all over the world, all the time. It's just never happened here yet. It's coming. It's coming. The hedge of God's protection is being lifted, and God, the Bible says in Romans 1, God turned them over. God turned them over. God turned them over. It's coming. The Bible that talks about Jesus is the same Bible that commands those who have been saved by Jesus to not walk on this straight and narrow path alone. But Alexander Hamilton, like many today who lay claim to be saved, didn't believe that. He may have been an amazing patriot and a founding father of our nation, but according to the standard laid out clearly throughout the entirety of the New Testament, Alexander Hamilton was a rebel and a terrible spiritual example for us today. Now when the truth about their adultery became known, Hamilton's father responded by quickly deserting his mother, and Hamilton never saw his father again. Rachel Fawcett then moved to St. Croix, where she supported her children by keeping a small store in the town of Christianstead. And sadly, Fawcett contracted yellow fever and died on February 19, 1768, leaving 12-year-old Hamilton as an orphan. And to add insult to injury, James Hamilton then went to court and legally seized all of Fawcett's assets, leaving the two young boys destitute as well as orphaned. Hamilton and his brother then went to live with a cousin who soon committed suicide, causing the boys to be split up and cast out on the street again. After this, Hamilton never saw his brother again. Hamilton thrived as a merchant trader and continued to self-educate himself. And before he was 20 years old, Hamilton was proficient in both the French language and in eloquent writing. His letter to his father about a hurricane that had devastated Christiansted on August 30, 1772 was so amazing that a Presbyterian minister sought to have it published. By this time, his own personal library had grown to contain 34 volumes at a time when it took a year's salary to buy a book. Now to his credit, in spite of perceived snubs, Hamilton was no stranger to the Bible or to the church. So as a child on the Caribbean island of Nevis, where he was born across the street from St. Paul's Anglican Church, he was homeschooled and taught by a Jewish mistress who taught Hamilton to recite the Decalogue, that's the Ten Commandments, in its original language. And when he finally arrived in America, Hamilton was allowed to attend Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey, where he wrote commentaries on the books of Genesis and the Revelation. And at King's College in New York, he sometimes attended chapel, listen to this, where he began, quote, this is somebody talking about Hamilton, the habit of praying quietly upon his knees both night and morning, a habit he continued to his death. So while several of America's founding fathers either questioned or outright rejected, the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, Hamilton had periodic glimmers of a man who had experienced the miracle of the new birth. And during his life, Hamilton seemed to basically remain within the bounds of historic Protestant Christianity. The homeschool in which Hamilton was instructed left him with a lifelong affection for the Jewish people, and Reformed Protestantism was the very reason that Hamilton's family had arrived in the West Indies in the first place. In a letter to William Jackson in 1800, in which he fumed over criticisms of his humble birth, Hamilton wrote, quote, my grandfather by my mother's side of the name of Fawcett was a French Huguenot. who immigrated to the West Indies in consequence of the Edict of Nance and settled in the island of Nevis and there acquired a pretty fortune. I have been assured by persons who knew him that he was a man of letters and much of a gentleman." Now the Huguenots were Protestants in France back in the 16th and 17th centuries who held to the teachings of John Calvin, a French-born theologian in Geneva. And while the Edict of Nannes in 1598 granted religious tolerance to Protestants for the sake of civil unity, the French Reformed Church would endure severe persecution when the edict was revoked in 1685 by Louis XIV. The result was a Huguenot realignment. That's what they called it. When you're being realigned, you're getting the stew beat out of you and displaced from your home. That's what that means. throughout the Western world, including the West Indies. John Fawcett had arrived at the shores of Nevis as a French immigrant seeking religious freedom from the tyranny of the Roman religious system. Not surprisingly, his grandson would carry an aversion to potpourri all of his life. So Hamilton may well have thought of his grandfather when he denounced the Quebec Act of 1774, a measure that extended the border of Quebec to the Ohio River and granted full religious liberty to French Canadian Catholics. In his writing, a full vindication of the measurements of the Congress, Hamilton opined, quote, the affair of Canada, if possible, is still worse. The English laws have been superseded by the French laws. The Romish faith is made the established religion of the land, and his majesty is placed at the head of it. That means the governor over Quebec. The free exercise of the Protestant faith depends upon the pleasure of the governor and council. In other words, you had to be a Catholic, and you can only be a Protestant if the governor gave you permission to be one. He then asked, quote, does not your blood run cold to think an English parliament should pass an act for the establishment of arbitrary power and potpourri in such an extensive country? Shown by his friendship with Marcus de Lafitte and his proficiency in the French language, Hamilton never lost touch with his French heritage. But an abiding hostility toward Catholicism and French infidelity always remained. In a letter to Edward Carrington in 1792, Hamilton warned that Thomas Jefferson had, quote, drunk deeply of the French philosophy and religion in science and in politics, unquote. Although the supposed rationality of deism appealed greatly to Hamilton, he never strayed from a Protestant worldview. But despite his rich family heritage, there was also a darker side to the religious world Hamilton inhabited. As the illegitimate son of a bankrupt merchant, Hamilton was barred from being instructed at an Anglican school, and these losses and rejections that he and his brother James suffered at a young age influenced his religious consciousness. Alexander Hamilton was in some sense disinherited by his own family and by the church. As his biographer Ron Chernow observes, quote, as a divorced woman with two children conceived out of wedlock, Rachel was likely denied a burial at nearby St. John's Anglican Church. This may help to explain a mystifying ambivalence that Hamilton always felt about regular church attendance, despite a pronounced religious bent. What does this mean? He got offended at something they did in church, and he was pouting so he would withdraw his love and his attendance from the church because he was at war with God. That's what happens when people pout. You may have read about some people like that. I know we've never done anything like that. No, no, no. We're much too spiritual to do that. But people pout at God. And so they, I'm going to church. I'm going to go over here where I can do what I want to do. What you're saying is you're a rebel and you want to continue to be a rebel. As long as the church is preaches in the word of God. Let me just tell you something. Unless the church is preaching rank heresy and refuses to repent. You can't leave. There's no there's no biblical reason to ever leave a church ever unless the church is preaching rank heresy and refuses to repent. So if the guy next to you offends you or takes your parking spot or even your seat, That's why all those one another verses are in the Bible. Guess what, the number one reason why people leave a church, beside getting mad at the lady that runs the nursery, true, true. The number one way that Southern Baptist churches procreate, number one reason. because they have a unbiblical government in Southern Baptist churches. It's called congregational rule, and as long as you have 50 plus one, you get the thing. Well, the 49 didn't like the 51, so they leave. They get mad and leave and start another church. That's how Southern Baptist churches procreate. So stop and think. The foundation of the majority of the reason Southern Baptist churches procreate in the United States is because they got mad at people. Now, I would suggest that's not the right reason. I mean, I'm just stupid me. And so guess what the number one theological reason is why people leave churches? Eschatology, which the Bible specifically says, don't leave the church over that. Help us, Lord. And you want Jesus to come back quick? Really? We better get right first, don't you think? Amen. You know, help us, Lord. Hamilton's affiliation with the church thus became not unlike his own American citizenship, being at the same time an insider and an outsider. He couldn't figure out what he wanted to do. Here's a guy who started the country, but didn't think enough of the country. He was the Secretary of Treasury. He didn't think enough of the country to become a citizen. Help us, Lord. The hierarchical West Indian system that encouraged his abject hatred of slavery, along with a powerful ambition, may have also fostered a rather conflicted view of the church. Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. Constitution and the nation's first banking system, was a firm believer in institutions. Yet, as demonstrated in his last moments, he also had difficulty in submitting himself to that very authority. So despite his seemingly authentic personal faith, Hamilton was a man between two churches, Anglican and Presbyterian, shaped by both but finding fellowship in neither. So this amazing man never became a member of either church. So if his salvation existed at all, it was a very troubled one. Now, those of you who know me understand how I struggled with the concept of church membership for many years. And my struggle centered on one issue still is to this day. I don't want to make it harder to become a member of the church than it is for a lost sinner to go to heaven. That's right. There isn't a specific command in the scriptures for formal membership anywhere. But after studying all that the Scriptures teach that the church and the leaders of the Christian church and the saved people of the church are supposed to do, it became clear to me that the only way to actually obey these commands was to have some form of formal church membership. And I have a paper that I've written that I talk about my struggle with membership in the membership package. Now as an orphaned and destitute young man, Hamilton owed his passage to America largely to the patronage of one man, the Reverend Hugh Knox, who inspired the teenager to record his thoughts about God and who likely sponsored the subscription fund that financed his journey to America so he could be formally educated. So this man loved Alexander Hamilton, took him under his wing and tried to preach the gospel to him and tried to see that he was saved. But according to what anything I could find from Reverend Hugh Knox, not one word of confidence that Alexander Hamilton was truly a Christian. Hamilton went by ship to Boston in October 1772 and immediately came under the influence of William Livingston, a local intellectual and revolutionary. He entered King's College in the autumn of 1773 as a private student, and he quickly advanced into higher grades with honors in May of 1774. Hamilton was now able to speak passionately and eloquently about the Patriots' cause against the English. During the British occupation of Boston, Hamilton was forced to suspend graduation until after the Revolutionary War. In 1775, Hamilton volunteered for the New York Militia, which was called the Corsicans. He drilled with the company before classes in the graveyard of St. Paul's Chapel. and in his spare time he taught himself military history and tactics. It was then that he met other patriots such as Alexander McDougal and John Jay. Hamilton raised 60 men to fight against the British and was elected as their captain. He fought in the battles of White Plains, the Battle of Trenton, and in the Battle of Princeton. Hamilton was now convinced that his path to fame was in the military, so he accepted a position as George Washington's aide with the rank of lieutenant colonel, in which he served four years. Hamilton also served in heavy combat in the Battle of Yorktown, which finally ended the war. In 1782, Hamilton was able to pass the bar exam and argue cases before the Supreme Court of New York. In July, Hamilton was appointed to the Congress of the Consideration, which was an early precursor to the U.S. Congress. As a representative from New York, he resigned that post in 1783. In 1784, Hamilton founded the Bank of New York, which is still in existence today. Today it's called New York Mellon Bank. In 1787, Hamilton served as an assemblyman from New York County and as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, which drafted what we know today as the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was ratified by New York solely because Hamilton persuaded other delegates to sign it. It was Alexander Hamilton that recruited John Jay and James Madison to help him write a series of essays that we know today as the Federalist Papers. Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays himself. George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton to be the first Secretary of the Treasury on September the 11th, 1789. He left office on January 31st, 1795. It cannot be overstated that much of the entire structure of the federal government was created and worked out during that time largely by Hamilton and many times solely by Hamilton. He literally created from scratch the entire financial system of the United States during that time, along with creating the United States Mint. Even though he left the federal government in 1795, Hamilton did not leave public life. George Washington leaned on Hamilton very heavily for the remainder of his life, and it was Hamilton who wrote most of George Washington's farewell address. But then in 1797, Hamilton also had the dubious distinction of becoming the very first American politician to be embroiled in a sex scandal, where he was actually blackmailed by the woman's husband with whom he had repeatedly committed adultery. However, this scandal didn't stop him from becoming the Inspector General of the United States from 1795 to 1800. Now, Aaron Burr, was born in 1856, the son of great wealth and prestige. His grandfather was Jonathan Edwards, who was perhaps America's greatest theologian. Burr's mother was Esther Edwards Burr, the daughter of Edwards. But like Hamilton, Burr became an orphan at a young age. His father died in 1857. This is 1757. I'm sorry. Forgive me. And Jonathan Edwards moved into the home to care for Burr, but in March of 1758, Edwards died of smallpox, the mother died, Jonathan Edwards died of a smallpox vaccination, that is 1858. Jonathan Edwards died of a reaction to a smallpox vaccination when he was in his 50s. Soon after, Burr's mother and grandmother also died, leaving Burr as an orphan at the age of two. Burr then went to live with Uncle Timothy Edwards, who routinely beat him. But also like Hamilton, Burr was a naturally brilliant man. And so at age 13, Burr enrolled into what is today called Princeton University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the age of 16. Now, you've got to understand the requirements. I don't have time to put all this in. You had to speak, read, and write fluent Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. in order to graduate from these colleges. Princeton was started because Edwards thought that Harvard and Yale had corrupted themselves. So he started Princeton to take the place of Harvard and Yale. So now they're all dens of creeping, crawling creatures and every abominable work. I wouldn't put my dog in one of these colleges. I'd beat the dog if he went to one of these colleges. It's not a good thing for you to go to Harvard Law School. So you'll get a good job and you'll make a lot of money and you'll lose your soul. He remained there. to continue studying theology until he changed course and at 19 began studying law. In 1775, when Burr heard that the British had killed many people in Lexington and Concord, he put his studies on hold and joined the Continental Army. During the Revolutionary War, Burr worked under both Benedict Arnold and George Washington. It was under General Israel Putnam that Burr saved an entire brigade from capture, which elevated Burr to the status of a national hero. Due to failing health, Burr resigned the Army, yet was still used by George Washington in intelligence operations. After the war, Burr graduated and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1782. He then served as an assemblyman in New York from 1794 to 1785. In 1789, Burr was appointed as Attorney General of New York. In 1791, Burr was elected as Senator from New York, and he served until 1797. In 1796, Aaron Burr ran for president and received 30 electoral votes coming in fourth behind John Adams. After being rejected by Adams for a brigadier general position, Burr went back to New York and served in the New York legislature from 1798 to 1799. In 1799, Burr founded the Bank of Manhattan, which today is Chase Manhattan Bank. which brought him into fierce competition with Alexander Hamilton, who had the other bank. Burr used his bank to promote his political agenda in both city and national areas, many times in opposition to Hamilton. In the presidential election of 1800, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson both received 73 electoral votes. So the House of Representatives voted and gave the presidency to Jefferson, who Hamilton had supported, which alienated Burr even further. But because Burr had the second largest vote count, he assumed the office of vice president. Thomas Jefferson never trusted Burr and purposely kept him ignorant of what he was doing. He never met with Burr the entire time he was president. But as the president of the Senate, Burr received high honors. His farewell speech in 1805 even brought his political opponents to tears. In 1804, when it became clear that Jefferson would drop him from the ticket, Burr ran for governor of New York. He lost to little-known Morgan Lewis. It was during this race that Hamilton supposedly said that Aaron Burr was, quote, a dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government, unquote. Hamilton denied that he said this and was misquoted. But the tension between Burr and Hamilton continued to rise until Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. He did it publicly on the steps of this building in front of everybody. So Hamilton either had to face shame or he had to do the duel. So the sitting vice president had challenged the former secretary of the treasury to a duel, to the death, in order to defend his honor. Now dueling had been outlawed in New York for several years, and the punishment for a conviction of dueling in New York was death. Dueling was also illegal in New Jersey as well, but the consequences were less severe. They just threw you in jail. So on July the 11th, 1804, the two men met just outside Weehawken, New Jersey, at the very spot where Hamilton's oldest son had died in a duel just three years prior. Both men fired, and Hamilton was mortally wounded by a shot just above the hip. Aaron Burr was officially charged with murder, but was never tried. He fled to his daughter in South Carolina for a while, but then returned to Washington, D.C. to serve out his term as vice president. Hamilton, however, clung to clung to life for another grueling 31 hours after the duel. Until my lifetime or. Even even as after I was born, you get shot in the liver, you're dead, you're dead, man. There's nothing they can do for you. You're going to bleed to death. They can't stop the bleeding. And you're but you don't you're conscious and you understand you're going to die. And I remember a testimony of a of a man that was in the. Memorial Hospital, it was not there where it is now, it was near where the CB base is. Back in the 50s, where this guy got shot in the bar. And his mother went down to the emergency room and the doctor said he's dying. There's nothing we can do. And the boy begged his mother to pray. Pray, Mom, I'm dying. Pray, Mom, I'm dying. His mother didn't know how to pray. She wasn't a Christian. And she just kind of hung her head. And her boy died right in front of her without. Without praying for him. Hamilton clung to life for another grueling 31 hours after the duel, and although his amazing life and sad death have not typically been remembered for their piety or devotion, Hamilton's beliefs about God and Jesus and sin and salvation came full center during his last excruciating moments. We need to remember that back then, dueling was looked at by most of the people of the church as murder. And even though it had been legal for many years and in spite of the strange nobility that was associated with it, dueling was a purposeful and measured and thoughtful act of murder. And so those who participated in dueling were looked at as murderers. Burr's bullet had torn through Hamilton's liver and his vertebra and had left him completely paralyzed while slowly bleeding to death. Yet he was fully conscious, and his family took him to a second-floor Manhattan bedroom to slowly and agonizingly die. And it was there that Hamilton's non-relationship to the church became a very serious issue. Because Alexander Hamilton, the West Indian immigrant who became the principal architect of the new American government, was still without a church home. And as a result of his repeated refusal to ever submit himself to the authority of Scripture during his life concerning Christ's Church, Hamilton was denied communion on his deathbed twice. Shortly after crossing the Hudson River, wounded and being transported to the home of his friend William Bayard, Hamilton called for Reverend Benjamin Moore, the Rector of Trinity Church, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, and the President of Columbia College. In 1788, the Hamiltons had their three eldest children baptized simultaneously at Trinity Church. Since 1790, when the church was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1776, they had rented Pew 92. Therefore, to ask more to perform last rites was not totally unexpected. On one hand, Hamilton appeared to ascribe some efficacy to the sacraments and wished to be buried at Trinity Church. But on the other hand, Hamilton was only nominally a Christian. No amount of legal work he supplied for the church or religious fervor on the part of his wife, Eliza, who was a glorious Christian, could atone for the fact that Hamilton had never actually been baptized. Hamilton had neither attended Trinity Church regularly nor had he personally ever taken communion. Therefore, despite a dying plea from one of the nation's founding fathers, Hamilton was to Bishop Moore nothing more than a lawless rebel without access to the Lord's table. And Moore's refusal to administer the Lord's Supper to an unbeliever would only foreshadow the high church theology of the next Bishop of New York, John Henry Hobart, whose apology for apostolic order and its advocates was aimed at the second clergyman who had visited Hamilton that day, Reverend John Mitchell Mason. And although Mason was less exclusivist than the Episcopalians, he likewise was bound by his own theological convictions in the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church. When Hamilton pleaded with his dear friend to administer communion to him, Mason replied that even though it gave him unutterable pain to decline such a request. Quote, it is a principle in our church never to administer the Lord's Supper privately to any person under any circumstances. Wow. I will come to you and give you communion. They thought it was sinful unless they had it in church. I don't. I just think you need to be saved to take communion. And I'm not your judge, but if you want me to give you communion on your deathbed, you need to convince me you love Jesus. Because I will refuse you. Because I'm right about that. It matters whether you're saved or not. And it matters whether you're part of the church. And we believe in the Bible in this church. Not personalities. Now I'll go outside and weep my eyes out, and I probably won't eat for a week, but I will not give you communion if I don't think you're saved. So again, I'm not your judge, but I need to believe you're born again. I'm not gonna marry. I'm not gonna perform the wedding ceremony if I don't think you're saved. I just had a request from somebody in my own family, and I'm not gonna perform the wedding. They're not saved. I know they're not saved. So they need to get saved. And I see they're not here today, even though they said, if the sun rises in the morning, I'll be there. Well, I declare the sun rose. I'm hoping they'll listen to this later on. Yeah, I'm talking to you. After Mason explained that the supper was only a sign of mercy, the mercy of Christ that was accessible to him by faith, Hamilton replied softly, I am aware of that. It was only as a sign that I wanted it. That's that's good talk. That's good talk. So here's a man who is dying, a very famous influential man, a founding father of the country, no less than a patriot of the highest order. And this man is begging people to give him communion. And I would suppose that today nine out of 10 pastors would have relented and would have given this dying man a final moment at the table of the Lord. And I would also suppose that nine out of 10 pastors today would condemn those men for not giving Hamilton his time. Yet those men were right. They were correct because they refused Hamilton, not because they were evil men who had no compassion. They were refusing to allow Alexander Hamilton to eat at the Lord's table because they were concerned that he was not genuinely born again. and lost people have no business at the table of the Lord. So it was precisely, you say you're excluding people, absolutely, Jesus is going to exclude you. My exclusion is pittance compared to what Jesus, Jesus will throw you headlong into hell fire. Amen. And there's no appeal. And you'll burn in an immortal body and scream in agony for the remainder of eternity. I believe the Bible, beloved. And lost people have no business at the table of the Lord. So it's precisely because they valued the sacrament of the Lord's table so much that they refused to allow a man of this stature to eat unless he showed proper fruit that God had washed his sins away. Now where I differ, if a man's showing fruit, you got no way of knowing if he's sincere or not. Look, I'm easy. You tell me you're saved, I'm going to believe you. But I want to see some fruit, beloved. If you're saved, why don't you love Jesus? If you're saved, why don't you come to church? Why do you have to beg saved people to go to church? I've never understood that. How many of y'all called me last week to see if I was going to show up this morning? Nobody did, right? Because you knew I was going to be here even though I'm sick. Amen. I'm expecting you to be here, too, even if you're sick sometimes. Amen. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Praise the Lord. Oh, Margaret, I wish we hadn't come here this morning. Too late, you heard it. Now you're gonna be held accountable for it. Would to God we would value the Lord's table like this ourselves. Would to God we would so appreciate the scriptures, the very word of God, that we would not dare to rebel against it and call ourselves God's people. And so instead of condemning the pastors who refused him communion, we need to ask some questions. Number one, why didn't Alexander Hamilton obey the Bible? Who did he think he was, that he was exempt from that? Why didn't he formally and publicly become a member of Christ's church if he was saved? Number two, did he consider himself to be outside of the grace of God? Maybe he thought he was too bad to become a member. You gotta go to people like that and minister to them and shepherd them so that they'll come on into the church. Number three, was he concerned about being held accountable? Guarantee you a bunch of people are. They wanna live their life the way they see fit outside these walls and they don't want anybody knowing about it. They don't wanna become members either. Number four, was it because he had no love for the other members that he remained separated from them? Here we go. You have a duty to your other brothers and sisters to help them love God more. It ain't just about you. You're coming here for us. We're coming here for us. It's about us, not me or you. Huh? Amen. We minister together. And when I hear you sing out of key and off time, I'm blessed beyond measure because you're loving Jesus. Hallelujah. It's not about performance. You should do your best. And I was doing my best this morning. That's as good as you're going to get out of me singing. I could just give you loud, I can't give you anything else. God'll put somebody in here one day and he'll be better than me. He'll do it all according to the rules, Hall's rules of order, and he'll be just perfect. And I'm just as rough as a cob, that's just fine, that's who I am. But I'm just telling you, you give it all. Whatever you got, you give it all. Somebody asked me, some pastor asked me, are you concerned about commitment, brother? I said, no, I'm concerned about people willing to die for Jesus. I want you to be willing to die this afternoon for Jesus. And the commitment will take care of itself. Amen. Praise the Lord. And as we seek to understand this amazing and strange man's relationship with God, we also need to ask ourselves some questions as well, such as how do we view church membership with joy or with dread? Do we believe that faithful attendance is a commandment or an option? Are we concerned about being held accountable? Do we love the other members of this local church enough to participate in their sanctification? Alexander Hamilton held to a basic understanding of the gospel to be sure. Nevertheless, in the face of Hamilton's shameful and imminent death, Pastor Mason discarded every notion of how important this man was and proceeded to quote from a barrage of scriptural texts, including Romans 3.23. for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The Acts 4, 10 through 12, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name, this man stands here before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men. by which we must be saved. You know why that's in the Bible? You know why he's quoting Peter? Do you know why that's in the Bible? That is in the Bible because Caesar had declared, there is no other name in the world, I'm at the Roman Empire, by which men can be saved except by Caesar. And so Peter, you remember when he signed that real, the guy signed that real big name on the bottom of the Constitution? You know, he's sticking his finger in the eye of the King of England. He said, yeah, I did it, I signed it, I signed it. Peter is doing that to Caesar. And he says, there's no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which to be able to say, but Jesus, just Jesus, just Jesus. Look at Hebrews 7.25, therefore he's able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Here's this pastor talking to this patriot, the designer of the American financial system, trying to get this man to be saved on his deathbed. That's what we need to be about, beloved. Ephesians 1, 7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespass grace. 1 Timothy 1 and 15, it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. In Isaiah 43, 25, I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. So when it came down to it, in the mind of Pastor Mason, Alexander Hamilton was really no different than any other human being. He was a sinner in need of a savior. And even though Hamilton was gifted to be able to design the entire financial system of the United States, he failed to see how important it was to live his life in connection with his brothers and sisters in the church and not be separated from it and them. So when the preacher reminded him that in the sight of God all men are on a level as all have sinned and come short of his glory and must take refuge in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, Hamilton answered, quote, I perceive it to be so. I am a sinner. I look to his mercy, unquote. Upon Mason's insistence that the grace of God was rich, Hamilton interrupted him and said, yes, it is very rich grace. Few presentations of the Gospel have ever been clearer than the one delivered to Alexander Hamilton on his deathbed. Still, perhaps the most compelling testimony from Rev. Mason is his account of Hamilton's reaction to Ephesians 1, verse 7, after hearing of the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Alexander Hamilton finally let go of Mason's hands, clasped his own hands together, looked up to heaven, and cried, I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that what you want to hear? Something like that? These were the words of a true believer, were they? At first glance, Alexander Hamilton's confession appears as if they were uttered in genuine faith. In his final hours, the Major General claimed that the promises of Scripture were his support. Years earlier, in a renowned legal case, Hamilton had referred to the Jews in the Old Testament as the witness of God's miracles who were charged with the spirit of prophecy. Now, even though Hamilton was influenced by deism during his lifetime, he was never suspicious of biblical revelation to the degree that Franklin, Jefferson, or Madison were. Hamilton once confessed that he could prove the truth of the Christian religion, quote, as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man, unquote. His abolitionism, he was violently against slavery. He told Madison and Jefferson, you guys are going to regret not stopping slavery right now when you got a chance. And they were. and his capacity for lasting friendship set him apart from many of the other founders, and his view of human nature demonstrated best in the Federalist Papers, often bordered on the Puritanical. However, like George Washington, Hamilton was reluctant to discuss his Christian faith. Ironically, the man who, to rescue his own financial integrity, printed an entire account of his own affair in the first major sex scandal in American history had seemingly less to say about his relationship with Jesus Christ. Episcopal Bishop William White refused to publicly drink a toast to Hamilton due to his indiscretions with Maria Reynolds, and until recently, evangelicals in this country have been reluctant to honor a politician who was a flagrant and unrepentant adulterer. Although he had once opposed dueling, quote, on the principles of religion, unquote, and seemed not to actually intend to kill Burr, he told people, I'm not going to shoot at him. In fact, he shot a tree limb above Burr. Some say he was falling backward, and that's why he did it. But he told people before the duel, I'm not going to shoot him. A duelist he was, nonetheless. As many scholars have noted, Hamilton was a very strange man whose sins were just as public as his successes. And when we examine the complexity of Hamilton's faith, we are confronted with a conflict that inevitably arises when the authority that the Bible gives to the local church is subordinated by people with great ambition. The holy fire of Christian zeal is slowly cooled by professional aspirations, and the clear commands of the Bible are ignored because of the carnal lusts that dominate this fallen world. And so in that sense, we need to look at Hamilton so we know what not to do, and so we may know how not to live our lives. Because in analyzing the relatively brief life of Alexander Hamilton, we encounter both grace and temptation that exemplify what we might face in our own lives. such as the danger of building earthly kingdoms without seeking first the kingdom of God, the grace and encouragement of a believing spouse, the fleeting nature of even the most astonishing career, or as the wisest man in all the world at that time discussed what this life actually is without Jesus, vanity of vanity, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. I honestly believe that God used Alexander Hamilton to help fashion this nation. And we all owe a great debt to this man for all that he did to help us become the greatest nation in all of human history. So if your desire is to study American history, you could not do any better than to examine the life of the man named Alexander Hamilton. But as a Christian, As a man who was supposedly washed and forgiven and made righteous by Jesus, Hamilton failed us badly. His reluctance to publicly praise his Savior and his repeated refusal to ever join a local church are sins that we must make sure we are not guilty of. So in that sense, God can use Alexander Hamilton to help us, certainly not for us to emulate his walk with God, but to warn us about what not to do and how not to live our lives. Oh, if I could convince you all today of the pristine beauty of belonging, really belonging, to Christ Church. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I value being a part of a body that genuinely loves me, a church that weeps when I weep, that rejoices when I rejoice, and a church that earnestly prays for me. And I know that they can only do that when I resist the temptation that pride whispers to me to keep to myself and to not let anyone get that close. And I go ahead and open my chest and allow my brothers and sisters to see my beating heart. When I first started this church, I was on the tail end of one of the most hardest times of my life when I was betrayed publicly and repeatedly by a man who was the closest man to me in this world. I loved him like a brother. And he betrayed me publicly and he betrayed me repeatedly. And I'm before the Lord in the seasons of fasting and prayer. I was wounded like I've never been wounded in my life. And the Lord dealt with my heart to open my chest and to let people see my beating heart. And with all of its flaws, with all of my idiosyncrasies and all my stupidity, you need to see who I really am. And I protested and I said, but if I do that, somebody might hurt me. And he said, no, if you do that, somebody will hurt you. And I said, what will I do then? He said, open your chest and let them see your beating heart. And so that's what I want. I want to stand naked before you, and I want you to know who I am and all of my foolishness, because that's who I really am. I am only as strong as my weakest moment. I am only as holy as my most wicked sins. I'm only as glorious as my most embarrassing times. That's who I really am. Because only when people see me with all of my warts and failures and weaknesses do they really know me, because that is who I really am. And when by God's grace we can actually do that together, when we can really come to really know each other and to love each other, then and only then will we actually obey the Bible and be able to confess our sins and our faults and our weaknesses to one another so that we may pray one for another. I can't even begin to tell you how I value being held accountable by godly elders. Brother Reese, Brother Vern, Brother Jeff, who genuinely love me, and who help guard my soul, and who pray for me, and who teach me God's word. We pray nearly every Saturday, unless one of us is sick, we pray nearly every Saturday together, and we cry out to God, not only for you, not only for this church, but for ourselves, that we will be right with God. And as much as he experienced, Alexander Hamilton never knew the beauty of belonging. And so he robbed himself of one of the greatest gifts, one of the most important means of grace a human being can ever have in this life. Not merely belonging to Jesus, which of course is the greatest, but belonging, I mean really belonging, to other saints of God in the church. So may we all yield to the truth of Scripture, and to the unmistakable leading of God the Holy Spirit, that in our lives we will celebrate the beauty of belonging to Christ's Church, that we will rejoice that the new covenant allows us to not only have a union with Jesus, but a wondrous union with other like-minded believers, so that we are never alone, but part of something much bigger, much more important, and much more glorious than ourselves. Because this is what the Apostle Paul saw when he wrote this in Ephesians 5, 25 through 27. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. Hallelujah. Amen. Let's pray. Oh, God, help us to be such a church. Oh, God, help us to be such a people, I pray in Jesus' holy name. Amen.