If you have your Bibles, let's go over to 1 Samuel chapter 17 this morning. 1 Samuel chapter 17, a very well-known story, but I think it illustrates what we are up against in Ohio at this time. As I mentioned in the announcements a few moments ago, if you do not have a manuscript, you may want to get one for this one, especially so you can consult it even during the message and certainly after the message. And for those of you watching online, if you'll go to our website at cbcfinley.org, you'll find that they're right at the top of the sermon's page, and I would encourage you to follow along with that. We find one verse in 1 Samuel chapter 17, verse 29, and this is where the title of this morning's message comes from. And David said, What have I done? What have I now done? Is there not a cause? Shall we pray together? Father, we are so grateful for the way that you have worked by your grace in the saints of God across the ages. As the Apostle Paul said, I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me, the grace of God that works in us. Oh Lord, at this time we are asking that your great grace would labor in the believers here in Ohio, that we would be awakened to the great peril that we face as a state, which is a reflection of what we face as a nation. Dear Heavenly Father, would you be glorified in this time to awaken us using the very words of God? You've told us that the entrance of your word gives light. Lord, would you enable us and give us understanding, even as we seek to follow your ways and understand your will? Lord, give us your Holy Spirit, we pray, grant genuine revival and quickening among us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. It was March 30th, 1981, 2.40 p.m. at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. A black limousine screeds to a halt outside the emergency room entrance, and they gently wheeled in a 70-year-old man. And as the emergency room nurse began to scissor away his coat and shirt, a stark realization settled on them all that Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States, had been shot. He had been fired upon by an assailant named John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley had fired six Bingham Devastator bullets at Reagan. These were designed to explode inside his body with shrapnel. But only one of those bullets hit the President, entered his left chest, endangering his left lung and his heart. As those doctors and nurses were hovering over that emergency room table, a stark realization settled on all of them. This is a matter of life and death, a matter of life and death. Here in Ohio, you and I are faced with matters of many lives and many deaths over these next 90 days in our state. What does it mean to say that a matter is a matter of life and death? It means it is of the utmost urgency. It means that it demands our highest energies to carefully look at what is happening and see what you and I can do to honor God in the midst of all this. I ask you only to look forward a few years and to look into the eyes of your children, perhaps yet unborn, or your grandchildren. When they ask you, daddy, mommy, grandfather, grandmother, when you saw the way that our state was going and you saw the way that our nation was going, what did you do? What did you do to turn our nation back to God? When you begin to think that way, you begin to recognize that there is a cause. The passage that we opened to here a few moments ago from 1 Samuel chapter 17 helps us to understand this. Centuries ago in the Elah Valley, there stood a young shepherd watching the people around him as they looked upon this mighty warrior, a supreme and superb soldier standing out before them, screaming blasphemies against them and against the most high God. He was stunned to realize that this standoff had gone on for nearly six weeks. When he began to ask those around him, who is this uncircumcised Philistine who defies the living God? Well, as you know how families work, his own brothers began to scold him and say, look, you've left the sheep out in the field, you don't belong here, and in your proud heart you're making all these statements. And David said the passage that we read a few moments ago, what have I done now? Is there not a cause? Is there not a cause? You and I both know that in any endeavor, in any struggle, when we begin to take a position, there will be those who will say, no, no, no, you're getting this all wrong or you're doing it in the pride of your heart. You're just a proud person, so stay away and back off. And David's answer really impels every one of us to action. That question he asked is, is there not a cause? I beg of you, I beg of you as a people of God, that you would carefully consider that question in this time, at this present moment, over these next three months here in the state of Ohio, because the issues are very, very great. Just like wicked Goliath was defying the living God, so there are wicked government policies that are at work all around us. How do you respond to that? It's not as if we're going to take our sling and rock and begin to kill anybody. Paul said that our labors here are not about flesh and blood, we're not struggling with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers. How should we approach this? Well, Paul addressed this in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 when he said, casting down imaginations. I love the way that's translated in a couple of other translations, destroying arguments. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Can you see how that Paul is basically bringing forward the same idea that David the shepherd boy brought out? Who is this that defies the living God? Now dear friends, it's your turn. Now it is your time. It is your time to enter into the struggle and be casting down imaginations, destroying arguments that are brought forth on you and you say, but how do we do this? Paul went on to say, bringing every thought into captivity to Christ. Here is what you may not understand. You may not know this, but pause just to recognize this. If you read your Bible, if you meditate, if you think upon the word of God, my friend, you are uniquely equipped to enter into these public policy debates. You are uniquely equipped. You have been exercising your senses in the word of righteousness and you of all people are the very best equipped to enter in to say, here is what is right and here is what is wrong and to speak up. Now is your time to do so. I ask you the question. When you see that like Goliath of old oppressive governments are today lifting up their voices against the living God, would you not agree with David? Is there not a cause? You say, pastor, what are you talking about specifically? I mean, what is it that we're facing here in the state of Ohio? Well, as you can see there in your manuscript, at this moment, the eyes of the nation are on the state of Ohio, Ohio has often been referred to as a bellwether state. What does it mean to say that we are a bellwether state? What does that mean? It means the one who takes the lead or it can mean something that indicates what is just ahead. That is especially true right now in our state because the evil influence of wicked people with wicked policies, what they are trying to do in our own state, they are going to do in 11 more states next year. The battle is right here in Ohio. The battle is so extremely serious. You and I know this. We know that the battle is the Lord's. What does he want us to do? He wants us to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bring every thought into captivity to Christ. You say specifically, what is it that you're trying to do? They are trying to change our Ohio constitution. And here's the way they're doing it. Have you seen these ads on television? Have you seen these attractive and smiling women who are talking about what a blessing it was to murder their babies in the womb? I ask you to stop to think about what is happening in our society. We condemn the Nazis for killing 6 million Israelites during World War II. We have killed 10 times that many. We've killed 63 million in their mother's wombs. They gassed them in ovens. What's happened in our society is there are people going after these babies with scalpels in a bloody mess. I am sorry to speak in such graphic language today, but here is what has happened over the last 50 years since Roe v. Wade. People have said, well, we just need to sanitize this. We just don't need to be so graphic. Dear friend, there has never been a more important time to talk about the blood guiltiness, yes, the blood thirstiness of what is happening in our society right now. You have scientists who say that they can tell you what life is like on another world. And the same scientist can't tell you what life is like in a woman's womb. Do we see what is happening to us? Are we understanding the issues that are before us? What's happening now is they are trying to change us and they are trying to say, we want to inject this poison on the Ohio State Constitution. Here's what the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 8. He said, 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, and that is exactly what they are attempting to do right now. And it's 90 days away on the November ballot and you have a choice about the way you're going to process. Now, there may be those here who say, I'm not really sure that you're representing the issues correctly. So here's what I did. I put this manuscript in front of you, I footnoted it so you can go through and you can study this for yourself, but as you do, here's what you're going to find. Article 1, section 1 of our Ohio Constitution enacted in 1851 says this, all men are by nature free and independent and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, seeking and obtaining happiness and safety. Here is what is being proposed. This is on the November ballot. Article 22 is what they are, I'm sorry, section 22 is what they are proposing to Article 1. So the very same article that has this defense of life, defending life, safety, the very same one, 21 now, if they succeed in Article 22, here's what they want to put. And what I did was I took excerpts from this, but I also footnoted it so you could go and read the entire thing for yourself. So there's no sleight of hand here. It's not like I'm trying to pull out a phrase here and there. You can go and read it for yourself, but I think you will see what they are actually trying to do. Here's what they're proposing, that every individual, notice, they do not use the word adult, they do not use the word mother, they say every individual, here's what the lawyers tell us, that applies to minors as well. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions including but not limited to, that means you could drive a truck through it in the courts, but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one's pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion. They went on to say abortion may be prohibited by fetal viability. You say wait, they're saying then if they know that the baby is alive, then they don't abort. It sounds really tricky, but then they went on to say this. They said as used in this section, fetal viability means the point in a pregnancy when in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus. This is determined on a case by case basis. Well if Roe v. Wade has shown us one thing over the last few years, it has shown us that when people say well it's on a case by case basis, it's like Gosnell there in Philadelphia. Go back and read about Kermit Gosnell and the horrors of what happened there, why? Because he was the physician who made the choice on a case by case basis. By the way, with a tremendous profit motive, he made millions from his bloody deeds. When you stop to think about what's happening here, you begin to see some things going on. In Ohio, your legislators whom you elected, they passed the Ohio heartbeat bill it's called. It was passed, it was signed into law, it was immediately challenged in the lower courts. Once that works through the lower courts, here's what we know. When it goes to the Ohio Supreme Court, it is going to be enacted into law. You say why is that important? The Ohio heartbeat bill says if the doctor can recognize that there is a heartbeat in that baby, in that mother's womb. If there's a heartbeat, then he can't just say, well, you know, for convenience sake or whatever, oh no, no, no, no. What they're doing is they're saying if there is a heartbeat, by the way, you can read in your notes here. This is the National Institute of Health and it's a journal of pediatric medicine. They say about four weeks, about four weeks after conception, you begin to have a little heart beating. According to the way this amendment is put forward, that we're going to be voting on in November. They could abort infants right up until the moment of birth. Why? Because the doctor says so on a case by case basis. That's what we're up against. It says in Proverbs 8.36, all those who love me hate, all those who hate me, I should say. It says Proverbs 8.36, all those who hate me, they love death. That's what's going on here. We are dealing with a bloodthirstiness, the like of which we have not seen in quite some time. Okay, here's the question. Why is it then that we are facing this right now? Is this, is this like new, I mean, what's happening here? Well, here's what happened. No versus Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court by the Dobs decision. What that did was, it put the issue back into all the states. So what these really evil organizations have done is they've tried to choose the most vulnerable states and say, let's go after Ohio first. Why would they go after Ohio first? Because you can change the Ohio Constitution with a 50% vote plus one vote. You can change the Ohio Constitution with that. You then begin to see why issue one, which we're going to be voting on, on Tuesday, you now begin to see the rationale behind that of, oh, that's why there is a move to move that to 60%. That's at least one of the provisions in what we're voting on, on Tuesday. Why? It's an attempt to protect the Ohio Constitution. Now I will freely admit to you that the ads you've been receiving in the mail, even the yes ads have really confused some of this. And I know because people have come to me and said, look, you know, this says vote yes, but it says we're voting on abortion and transgender and even Farm Bureau pedotype stuff. Is that what we're voting on? It is a problem. The problem is that it's indirect messaging. Okay. Here's what those yes ads were saying. Do you not see what is coming down the road? That's what they're saying. Can't you see? The problem is people are having a hard time making a direct connection between, what now? I mean, I didn't think that's what we were voting on on Tuesday and it's not. What we're voting on on Tuesday is the threshold by which we should change the Constitution. Nevertheless, those same ads are anticipating what's going to happen. Remember what Paul said? Casting down arguments, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Here's what's getting ready to happen. Your television ads on your cell phone, the text messages you receive on the radio in your mailbox, you are going to be bombarded by advertisements for and against the issue that we are facing in November. Dear friends, there has never been a more important time for you and me to exercise our senses in the word of righteousness to discern between good and evil. Those are the words in Hebrews chapter five. There has never been a more important time for us to do this. It may be that I'm talking to some here today to say, Pastor, should we even be talking about this in church? I mean, come on now. We're here for church. We're here to try to understand the word of God. Well, we're also here to apply the word of God and learn what we should do in these hours. Here's the issue. And by the way, now churches all over the country are faced with exactly what we're talking about right here since Roe versus Wade was overturned by the Dobs decision. And now this all goes back into state on a state by state, city by city, locality by locality, church by church basis. This matter is going to be fought. And you and I, as God's people ought to know how to take the word of God, how to take our common sense and address the issue and talk about what is happening here before us. If we do not do this, if churches do not speak to the issues of the day, then we're basically abdicating our responsibility. You say, well, can we do that? I mean, there's like government regulations against this. I cited in the manuscript here, I quoted to you from the internal revenue policy that says, oh yes, churches, other 501c3 organizations, they can absolutely speak to the issues of the day where they draw the line is on endorsing specific candidates. I don't think pastors or churches ought to endorse candidates. I think we ought to endorse policies. I think we ought to get into the values, understanding behind trying to understand where every candidate is. But should we do this? That every time the state comes along and says, this issue is mine. Does that mean that we as churches then abdicate our responsibility? Just because moral issues are politicized, does that mean that we say, oh, well, if the states are really on that, then we just won't say anything. Dear friends, it cannot be right. If you and I truly understand issues of right and wrong, then when your state comes along and it wants to murder in bloodiness, it wants to murder babies in the womb, or euthanasia killing old people, or gambling, or illegal drugs, churches have to speak to those issues. Pastors absolutely must, and in the long history of our country, this has been true, that pastors and churches have addressed the laws of the day and said, let us take the eternal standard of the Word of God and show you what a good law looks like and what a bad law looks like. That's exactly what we have to do in these days. So as we face this, as we are wrestling through this, we have to ask if we're going to be like Daniel. Think about this because there's actually a number of illustrations in Scripture of those who interacted with government officials. In fact, there are a number of illustrations of believers in Scripture who were themselves government officials. Very highly placed was Daniel, and Daniel knew the pompous pride of Nebuchadnezzar. How did he approach that? Well, what he said, as you can see there in your notes, he said, therefore, O King, let my advice be acceptable to you, break off your sins by being righteous. Can you just see you and me doing that for the society around us? Think through it again. Therefore O King, therefore O people, we would say, let my advice be acceptable to you, break off your sins by being righteous and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity. Do we really believe, prosperous as we are in these United States, do we really believe that our prosperity will go on and on and on when we are committing such abominations? Scripture would say no. Well then shouldn't you and I be like Daniel approaching Nebuchadnezzar and saying, O King, break off your sins? This is wrong. It is so clearly wrong. Now careful. When you take up any cause, such as the cause of what we are facing in these next three months, you and I have to ask, well, is that our highest cause? And of course it is not. To the glory of the living God, our higher and highest call would be to honor the living God with the good news of Jesus Christ. This is what John the Baptist preached when he said in John chapter one verses 16 and 17, and of his fullness, he's speaking of Jesus, and of his fullness we have all received and grace for grace, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Look, in the midst of this statewide debate we're having over abortion, you and I really have to ask, wait a minute, isn't there a worse disaster? There is. There is a worse disaster that is hell and the lake of fire. There is a worse disaster. So you and I have to always be thinking about how are we going to address our greatest cause in the midst of all this? This is the fullness of Christ that John the Baptist was speaking of here. It's the Christ that was promised to Adam and Eve and to Abraham and to David of his fullness. We, every Old Testament and New Testament believer have received and it's grace for grace. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. How did that happen? The Son of God came to this earth, became a man, and as God and as man he lived out that righteous record that every one of us should have lived, and then in our place and in exchange for us, he exchanged his record for our record, for our sinful record. He went to the cross of Calvary, not for his own sins, but for our sins. He went and took the curse of our sins upon him, but then gloriously, three days later he rose bodily from the grave. Why? To demonstrate to every one of us, he has power over death. You need not fear hell. You need not fear the lake of fire. You need not fear the second death because our mighty conqueror, the Lord Jesus Christ, has triumphed over death. That's our higher cause in all this and it's important to remember because as these debates stir up over these next three months, here's what's going to be happening. There are people who have had abortions and their consciences are going to be awakened and troubled like it hasn't happened in many, many years. There are others. I've already talked to these folks. There are others who have pressured others to get abortions and their consciences are troubling them. Well, in the midst of this debate then, are we going to be condescending and say to these people, well, you're just wrong, oh no, no, no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to offer them the grace and truth of the fullness of Jesus Christ who is full of forgiveness. He alone is the answer for a troubled conscience. He alone can deliver someone from sin and not merely the sin of murdering a child, but from so many other sins as well. You can read this in Psalm 32 about David. You can read it in Psalm 51 about David. He full well understood, there is forgiveness full and free in our God through the grace of Jesus Christ. So when you stop to think about what's happening here, how are you and I going to address this? In closing, I'd just like to tell you a story. This is a story of a man whose name is Granville Sharp. That name is going to mean something to some of you here in the room, but the reason it would mean something to you is because you have had to labor through learning Greek. Those of us who labored through trying to learn biblical Greek, we were taught the Granville Sharp rule. You say, well, who on earth was Granville Sharp? Granville Sharp was a believer who was talking to another believer. This is in Britain. And as he was witnessing to him, he said, Jesus Christ is God. And the person who was confronting him said, yeah, let me tell you the reason you say that. The reason you say that is you don't really understand Greek. And by the way, Granville Sharp didn't understand Greek, but he said, you really think so? He said, that's the problems. You know what Granville Sharp did? He began to study Greek. He studied it so diligently and he mastered it so well that he even wrote a rule of Greek grammar called the Granville Sharp rule, which has been used repeatedly to defend the deity of Jesus Christ down through these decades since that time. That's how masterfully he applied himself. Now let me just pause for a moment for the young people here in the room. The young people here in the room, would you be willing to consider that the Lord might use you that way? Would you stop to think about the fact that the Lord could use you if you took up a cause? When somebody says to you, well, Jesus Christ is not God, how are you going to defend that? We were at the Greenville Rescue Mission years ago when I was a youth pastor and I was witnessing and I preached the message. A man came forward and said, I want to get saved. I said, let's talk. He began to talk and as I was explaining the gospel to him, I told him, you know, and Jesus is God. He goes, whoa, wait, Jesus is not God. I said, well, yes, I can show you from Scripture, Jesus is God. And I began to turn to a pastor. He said, stop. And he looked at the teenagers who were with me and he pointed out one of the teenagers. He said, you, do you believe that Jesus Christ is God? And the young man said, I believe that. He said, prove it to me in the Scripture. And the young man went, what do I do now? And I said, okay, hey, are you willing to pick on somebody your own size? I mean, do you really want to know or you just want to win an argument? And I pointed them to Hebrews chapter one and verse eight where you have God the Father who says, thy throne, oh God is forever and ever a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. You have God the Father praising, exalting. You could even argue worshiping God the Son as God. Granville Sharp was faced with that. And so he diligently studied. On another occasion, he was witnessing to a Jewish acquaintance and he said, look, these prophecies that you have and promises in the Old Testament about the Messiah, those apply to Jesus Christ. You know what the Jewish acquaintance said to him? He said, yeah, your problem is you don't understand Hebrew. You want to guess what Granville Sharp did next? He went out and mastered Hebrew. He threw himself into the task of being able to labor in those scriptures. But then the day came, the Granville Sharp was horrified. He came to his brother's house. It was part of a musical concert. They were a musical family. He came to his brother's house who was a doctor and there on the porch was a bloodied, beaten slave who had been beaten within an inch of his life. Sharp immediately called his brother. They managed to get the man some medical treatment, helped him to recuperate a little bit and actually got him a job with a local apothecary, a local pharmacist. But then one day, the slave owner who had beaten that slave, that slave's name was Jonathan Strong, that slave owner saw Jonathan Strong and immediately had him imprisoned and began to make preparations to sell him to somebody in Australia so he could get him away as quickly as possible. Well, Jonathan Strong could write. And so he wrote a note, sent it to Granville Sharp and Granville Sharp immediately went down to the jail and demanded that the man be released into his custody. He was, but then the slave owner sued Granville Sharp. Granville Sharp began to do a legal defense and began to talk about it. So he went to a number of friendly attorneys and he said, okay, guys, I really need your help here. You know what those attorneys told him? You don't have a case. You don't have a case. We'll lose this. He will go back to his owner. This is British common law. This is English common law right now. He will go back to his slave owners. Granville Sharp using the sharpening power of God's word with skills he had sharpened in studying the scriptures and studying Greek and studying Hebrew. He used those same diligent study habits to begin to study English law. And you know what he found out? He found out that there were actually precedents in English law that said, this is a human being on English soil and therefore he is free and to be set at liberty. And the more he found of those, collecting those, he went back to those same friendly attorneys and he said, what do you think guys? And they said, you have a case here. I mean, you're proving exactly what is happening. We can see it. We can see that plainly. Then he went to the slave owner and said, I need to meet with you and your attorneys. He presented exactly the same precedents from law to them and they immediately dropped the case. That's the way the slave owner was fined for wasting the court's time. The reason that's important is Granville Sharp is considered to be the father of the abolitionist movement in England. He is the forebearer for people like William Wilberforce and John Newton whom you've heard about who wrote Amazing Grace. But wait, do you have to have that kind of mental ability? I mean, obviously, this is a fairly intellectual person who gets in and studies all these things and has a gift for languages. Is that what you have to have to get into this cause? Oh no, no, not at all. And it all goes back to a black evangelist who preached in the colonies. Benjamin Rush who signed the Declaration of Independence said that this young man was the finest preacher in the colonies. In fact, somebody else said about this man, he's one of the greatest preachers in the world and here's the amazing thing. That black evangelist could not read very well. He had an amazing memory. He could hear verses. He could begin to memorize them. He could get hymns down very easily and he began to preach using what he remembered from Scripture and those hymns and his name was Harry Hoosier. Does Hoosier sound familiar? If you were to go over Indiana today, they call themselves Hoosiers. Why would they call themselves Hoosiers? Here's why. As the frontier opened up and those in the colonies who had been converted as they made their way right through this region right in here, there's a reason we have, you know, Fort Findlay and Fort Defiance and all the other forts. There's a reason for that as they made their way across and they got into Indiana, their fellow pioneers said, what is with these people? I mean, they are just unusual people. Why? Those people had been converted by the grace of Jesus Christ preached by Harry Hoosier and their fellow pioneers said, oh, they're Hoosiers. Do you not see the impact you could make on the nation around you by getting a good grasp on the gospel and understanding in humility and by being poor in spirit and being willing to graciously offer answers? Do you not see how you could be used at this time and at this place? It is as Esther recognized, you may have come to the kingdom for just such a time as this, dear friend, I'm appealing to you. Use your energies. Use your efforts. Use that mind that God has given you labor in the scriptures. Read up on these news articles and public policy discussions and be ready to give an answer to every man who asked a reason of the hope that lies within you. Be ready to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Why is there not a cause? Shall we bow our heads just for a moment before we pray? May I just ask you? Have you come to know that precious Lord that Granville Sharp was trying to defend and that Harry Hoosier preached? That's going to be essential. If you really do want to glorify the living God and you want to honor him from the very core of your being, dear friend, now's the time to be saved, to cry out to the Lord and ask him to save you for his namesake and his glory and then watch what he will do in you as he enables you to become a powerful tool in his hands. Watch the way that the Lord could use you because you are willing to answer this question. Is there not a cause? Oh, dear heavenly Father, would you help us? Help us Lord, there is a great need for those of us in this room to stir churches all over Ohio with this understanding that we have come to the kingdom for such a time as this and Lord, the matters are matters of lives and deaths. Help us Lord. We long to be compassionate and show the grace of Jesus Christ to all those who are hurting. We also desire to take a stand for righteousness sake. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.