For God and Country

Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Sabbath to all of you. I'll take it every last few times that somebody refers to me as a young man. Happens less as every year goes by. Hello to everyone out there on Zoom as well. Hope you're enjoying the day. A little rain coming our way. Hopefully it'll clear up and we'll enjoy a nice sunny 4th of July. We are approaching, of course, the 4th of July, and lots of things, I'm sure, go through all of our minds as we think about this great country that we live in. It's always a bit of a time of reflection for me.

As some of you know, I'm the son of immigrants on one side and the grandson of immigrants on the other, and neither of my parents started life speaking English. And so I always reflect on what a difference this country has made in my life and the lives of my whole family, and certainly incredible blessings that come from being in the society and the country that we have in.

I also think about my calling from God. We think about things that have made a difference in our lives, even far ahead of anywhere that we live, is God and His Spirit and how that works within us. And so as we think about those things, I'd like to spend a little time today in this message talking about God and country. These are two things that are probably the deepest emotional things for human beings of any kind, no matter what country they live in, and these strains of patriotism and religion intertwine in different ways for people.

What I'd like to do is just take that apart a little bit and think less from the idea of country and, this time, more from the idea of us as individuals. How are we to manage and think about these areas of allegiance to country and allegiance to God, our calling by God? What does specifically the Bible have to say about those concepts? I think it's especially important in the environment that we live in today, as great as our country is.

We also struggle with different things, and right now it's a time when there are a lot of different political thoughts and views and very strong ones that often are in opposition to each other, and the people who hold the views tend to be in opposition to one another as individuals as well. So for a title today, I've chosen the title for God and Country, and I'd like to revisit a few basics from the Bible of our understanding of God and Country and how those two concepts intertwine in our lives.

The first portion of this I'd like to talk about is our attitude towards the leadership that we have as a country, and again focusing on ourselves as individuals. And when we reflect on the Scriptures, what is it that we think about in the attitude that we have towards those who lead our country, whether we agree with them or particularly like them or not. We don't tend to have the idea much in society anymore about being respectful towards our leaders. In fact, I think our our democratic system has sort of led us down this road that we actually we do have the freedom of speech and we tend to glorify in the fact that we can say anything we want about our leaders.

That's absolutely a good thing. But as Christians, should there be some guardrails on that? Should there be boundaries to how we think and how we speak about those who lead our country? I found an interesting survey in Newsweek. This one comes from back in October of 2022, just before our last major national election. I think the headline tells it all. It says 80 percent of Americans think opposing party will destroy country.

And it goes on to quote one specific survey finding which says exactly that some 80 percent of Americans believe that their opposing political party poses a threat to the country and if not stopped will destroy it.

Interestingly, it's about the same whichever political party you think you talk about. They both think that of the opposing side. And I think we can't help but be impacted by this environment. There's not a lot of civil debate these days going on in our society and we tend very quickly to believe you're either with us or you're against us in the way that we approach people.

So I'd like to dwell for a few minutes on what it is the Bible says about this and how we should react to that. If you would, turn with me please as a starting point to 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy 2, we'll read verses 1 through 4. 1 Timothy 2 verses 1 through 4. For many, this might be a familiar verse. It actually brings back interesting memories for me because my mom used to always listen to a radio station, happened to be a radio station, that was sponsored by Christian College back in Minneapolis where I grew up.

And she'd tune in the afternoon to UPI World News, if those of you might remember back when United Press International existed. And after that, after they had like the five-minute news, they'd have a musical interlude for like 30 seconds. And before that, they would read this scripture. And so it kind of got etched in my mind from a young age as a kid because I'd hear this thing probably several times a week back when I was home from break during school time in the summer.

1 Timothy 2, starting in verse 1. Therefore I exhort, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and comes the knowledge of the truth. A couple strong words here that I'd like to focus on in verse 1. Exhort. This isn't just something where Paul is writing to Timothy and say, you know, get around to it. It crosses your mind sometimes. Think about this. Maybe talk about it if it's convenient. Exhortation is something very intense, saying, look, you've got to do this. This is something that is a must. You have to do this. And he says, first of all, he's putting this thing in a first rank. He's talking about supplications, prayers, and giving of thanks.

And he says, all men, generally speaking, but then hones in very specifically on kings and all who are in authority as a connection not only to living a quiet and peaceful life, but also to the idea that all God wants all men to be saved and ultimately come to the knowledge of the truth. We know, of course, that's not all going to happen in this lifetime for everybody, but there's a recognition as a part of this that God does desire salvation for everybody. What's also interesting is what's missing. It's not aimed at people who like Christianity.

We don't pray just for people who are kindly disposed towards Christians. We don't pray only for people who we agree with, whether as individuals or from an organizational standpoint. It says, for all men. And that's an exhortation and a thing that, first of all, Paul was writing to Timothy, should be done. Now, there's a bigger and more important why that goes along with this. I'd like to turn to Romans to explore that for a few moments. Romans 13 verses 1 through 7.

This is an important element as well of how we understand human authority, human governments that exist, especially vis-a-vis God and His way of life. Romans 13 will start in verse 1. We'll read verses 1 through 7.

Here Paul, writing in his letter, says in verse 1, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. He goes on and talks about rulers and what they do and governments and their intended protection of the people. And then in verse 5 he continues on. He says, therefore you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

For because of this you also pay taxes. For there God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor. What's interesting here, too, is that Paul doesn't give a lot of room here, does he, if we read in verse 1, he says there is no authority except from God, and that the authorities that exist are appointed by God. What he's saying here, and we see it in other places, Daniel 2 21, Daniel mentions the fact that God raises and brings down kings.

What's being brought across here is the idea that all human authority exists at the pleasure of God. If God does not will someone to be in authority, they will not be in human authority. If they are in authority, it's at the very least something he's allowed to happen if he's not specifically willed that person to be in authority. So there's a connection, essentially saying that God has delegated to mankind the ability to rule itself. Not necessarily the way things were originally intended. We see how God worked with the children of Israel when they asked for a king. He went ahead and granted them a king. He allowed that to happen.

But he's delegated, in that sense, the ability for mankind to rule themselves with all of the good things and all the bad things that come along with it. But there's a level of respect and understanding that's supposed to come along with that, that these authorities are there because God's allowed it to happen. And he's ordained, at least from an overall perspective, that mankind is to rule over himself. And we as Christians are not, in that sense, to resist the authority of the human governments that are on us.

Now we're blessed to live in a democracy, a representative democracy, a republic, however we want to specifically identify it, where we have a say at some level in how we're governed. But we're still supposed to live in concert with that, paying our taxes, as it says here, and rendering to everyone what is due to them. So Paul does something else here as well that's not quite as clear from reading his specific words, and that is that he takes away from us the argument that things have never been as bad as they are now.

Now it's easy to say, well Paul could write these things, but you know this was back in the old days where people were good, and people were kind, and things just weren't as bad as they are today.

And of course we know that Roman times weren't like that at all. So Paul takes away that argument completely because he's writing this in a different context. So Romans was written in 57 AD. The ruler of Rome at that time was Nero.

It was about three years after Nero had taken the throne. Now the wholesale persecution of Christians by Nero didn't start until around 64 AD, after the great fire in Rome, that most people attribute to Nero himself as a device to take power. But let's read just briefly a little bit about Nero for those who aren't too familiar with him. This comes from the website christian.net. It says, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is known as a brutal, irresponsible, and opulent ruler. During his time as the fifth emperor of the Roman Empire, he persecuted many Christians. He forced them into gladiator matches where lions ate them.

Aside from that, Emperor Nero often lit his garden parties with burning carcasses of Christian human torches. He ruled the Roman Empire around 54 to 68 AD. The greatest event that surrounded the emperor was the great fire of Rome. This event was also part of the execution of Paul the Apostle. History tells us that Emperor Nero started the great fire in the city of Rome. It began on July 19, 64 AD, which spread for six days, reignited, and burned for three further days.

This event made Emperor Nero bypass the senate and rebuild Rome to his liking. He took advantage of the disaster for two things, to build his luxurious architecture and to persecute Christians. That's the backdrop. That was the emperor at the point in time when Paul wrote Romans. He hadn't done all of these things yet at that time, but Paul himself was ultimately, as we read, put to death by Nero.

Timothy and Titus were the two last books written by Paul, and while he foreshadows his death in those books, he doesn't say anything against the Roman government. Most people would date 2 Timothy just to within a year or so before this fire in Rome.

It's hard to believe that all the persecution against Christians started just as a result of that one event. In fact, Titus 3, verse 1, which was written right about the time that the persecution really started to heat up, is where Paul wrote to Titus, remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities. So even with this backdrop, Paul asked that Christians, in fact, he exhorted that Christians understand the fact that human authority, human government, is something that we have to remain subject to and respect. The underlying themes here, as we close up this first section, thinking about our attitudes towards governmental leaders, is the idea that God has left civil rulership over mankind to our governmental systems.

And as people in different countries, we've adopted different governmental systems, we live with the good and the bad that comes from it, sometimes with more choice than in other times and places, but all governments and rulers, at the end, rule at the pleasure of God. We should not only render due respect, but should pray for our leaders, whether we like them, agree with them, or not.

And I'll be honest with you, I've had to reflect and think as I was preparing this sermon, and honestly think back to when's the last time that I've prayed for our governor, our president, our senators, my congressman. I'll let each of us answer that question for ourselves, but if we read what is told us in the Bible, it's a question we should ask ourselves. Let's move on to the second section here, as we consider this idea of God and country, and we'll explore briefly the concept that allegiance to God and his truth always comes before allegiance to country.

Allegiance to God and his truth always comes before allegiance to country. That's not meant to be contradictory to the first point. We follow government, we respect government, but when it comes to a choice between the rules of men and the rules of God, there should be no doubt that we follow God. Again, going back to this Newsweek article in October of 22, the second poll that it cited was a fact that nearly two-thirds of Americans stated back last October that they would still vote along party lines even if their candidate had a moral failing that was not consistent with their own values.

And so what it says is that two-thirds of people that we would encounter would go ahead and vote for whatever political party they felt aligned with, regardless of what it is the person did. And we've had political candidates famously talk about the different rules or laws that they could break without actually losing any votes in the process. How is it that we're supposed to think about that? It might seem self-evident that we should follow God and not man, but as we start to apply our thinking to political situations that happen within the world and the views that we take, and maybe even sometimes a spouse, how is it that we marry those two things together?

God's truth, his way, his spirit has to be the lens through which we view everything. We can't overlook sin because we think there's a greater good that gets produced as a result of that sinfulness. God just doesn't give us room to do that. Let's see what Jesus said as he addressed this idea of God versus country when the Pharisees approached him. We'll read Mark 12. This is a section that's probably pretty familiar to most people. The Pharisees came to Jesus Christ and, of course, they were trying to trap him. They felt the yoke of Roman government very heavily. They brought a coin to him, had a picture of a governor or the emperor, probably Tiberius, and it would have identified him as Pontifex Maximus, the supreme ruler, like a god to the empire.

And they asked Jesus, should we pay taxes? Jesus took the coin. He said, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. A bit of a riddle, maybe, but as we take that apart and think about that, he was dealing with a currency that represented the governmental and the authority structure of the empire. He was telling the Pharisees, look, we all benefit. We've got roads. We have peace.

We have the ability to do most of the things that we want to do. We pay our taxes for that. We recognize the fact that the government is there, and we have to give it the due respect. At the same time, of course, he was saying, in rendering to God the things that are God's, that we don't let government stand in the way of what we understand and know to be issues of right and wrong and issues of faith.

And thankfully, we experience many of the same things today in our system. As much as we might complain about different parts and pieces of it, what's one of the most common things that we hear in opening our closing prayer here at services? We so often thank God for the freedom to worship and peace. Not everyone can do that.

It's not everywhere in this world. In fact, in most historical contexts, this would have been very unusual. That you can just get together and you can worship the way that you want to. I was incredibly encouraged this week by one of the Supreme Court rulings that came out. I don't know if many of you watched the news on this, but there was a case called Graf versus DeJoy. It was a case actually of a Sunday-keeping U.S. Postal Service worker who wanted to respect Sunday as a day of rest.

And what I found particularly encouraging was that the Supreme Court ruled nine to nothing unanimously. Every justice, regardless of who it was that nominated that justice, ruled that there needs to be a stronger standard applied to companies and any employer before they can deny religious practice to their workers. That's a fantastic blessing that we have being in this structure that we're in. And so we need to recognize the fact that we do gain advantage from living in the governmental system that we do.

At the same time, when it acts separately from God, we have to follow God. Let's look at a case study on this in the Bible, and we'll use the example of Jonah. Now, it might seem like an odd example at first. Why is it that we would talk about Jonah and this idea of allegiance to God versus allegiance to man?

Jonah 1, we'll read verses 1 through 3. Now, we know Jonah was a prophet, prophet to the nation of Israel, and one of the major world powers at this point in time was the empire of Assyria. Assyria was known as a particularly brutal group of people. They not only would go in and conquer nations, but the way that they would do it, some of the machines of war that they invented, were particularly brutal to the people that they attacked.

And Nineveh stood only 500 miles away from where Jonah grew up and where he was located, not far from Nazareth. And so at that time, in about 770 BC, we were only about 30 to 50 years before Assyria would ultimately take Israel captive. So here's Jonah as an Israelite, seeing this brutal regime that's already in tensions with his country of Israel. And God comes to him in Jonah 1, verse 1, and says, verse 2, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. So Jonah's got an interesting situation here. He's being asked to go to a powerful enemy of Israel, one that's threatening his country, and one that would likely, and would eventually, overtake his country and take them captive.

And God asks him to go there and preach to them. And we see later in the book, we're not going to read that, but we see later in the book, and you can read commentators, I think it's Jonah 4, where Jonah says at the end of all this, look, God, I know that you have endless mercy, and if I was going to go there and preach to them, they were going to repent.

He's essentially saying, I didn't want them to repent, because they're our enemies. So what did he do? He arose and he fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And we know the whole story of Jonah. It's probably one of the two or three Bible stories that most anybody in our country could recite.

Where's Tarshish? Tarshish is not 500 miles like Nineveh. It's 1500 miles in exactly the opposite direction. So there's no doubt what Jonah was trying to do. He was clearly trying to get away from God. He was trying to get away from what he was asked to do. And at the root of it was his patriotism. He denied what it was that God wanted him to do because of the way that he saw the dynamics between Israel and Assyria.

And he didn't like the way that he thought it would go to give an advantage to a country that was an enemy of his country. And so he denied God's calling for what God asked him to do. Let's look at one other case study from the New Testament, and that's Paul. Now, we speak a lot about Paul and the fact that he was the apostle to the Gentiles. That's very clear and very plain from the Bible. And we also know that he's somebody who learned at the feet of the greatest Jewish scholars at that time. He talks about the fact that he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

But do we always focus on the tension that must have existed there? Here you have somebody who was raised as a Pharisee who would have been forbidden from even associating. We see that there's arguments about whether he should be sitting at the same table with Gentiles even eating a meal. There was a lot of tension there between the philosophies and the teaching that he grew up with and what God asked him to do at the end of the day in going to the Gentiles. And he writes very poignantly about it in Romans 9.

Romans 9, we'll read verses 1 through 8. And he talks about the tension that's in him because of the difference between his nationality and the way he'd grown up as a result of that and what it was that God asked him to do. Romans 9 starting in verse 1. He says, I tell the truth in Christ, and I'm not lying.

My conscience bears witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. Paul's laying it on the line here. He's broken up about this. This is something that really troubles him. And what is it? He says in verse 3, I could wish that I was accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen, according to the flesh. He's saying he could lose his own salvation for his countrymen. That's a very patriotic view.

There Israelites in verse 4, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory of covenants, the giving of law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came. But it is not that the Word of God in verse 6 is taken no effect, because they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they're the seed of Abraham.

But in Isaac your seed shall be called. In verse 8, that is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. It's what Paul's recognizing in this verse, this passage, is the fact that through Jesus Christ, the offspring of Abraham, as we know, all nations of the earth could be called. But as he lays out in verse 2, this caused him a lot of agitation as a Jew, because what he knew was that God was turning from this physical covenant to a greater spiritual covenant, and it wasn't going to the benefit of his people.

It was going to the benefit of people he had been taught to treat as outsiders that could not be accepted. He had a choice, and it was clear the choice that he made after he was struck down on the road to Damascus, and that was to follow God, and to go where God was calling him, and to preach the things that God was giving him to preach, regardless of what his allegiance was, as he says here to his countrymen. So again, a case in point here that when what it is that God tells us to do, his truth, his word, differs from what it is that we would do out of allegiance to our country.

Our greater allegiance is without a doubt to God. So allegiance to God before country is a foundational principle that we should all understand. We're blessed to live in a place where we're not faced with this as an ultimatum on a day-to-day basis, and we're given the freedom to act out our beliefs and our faith almost entirely without restraint. But that can become lost in the haze sometimes as we get caught up in the political controversies of the day.

So we have to remember that as much as we might have a belief of one kind or another kind in terms of what should happen in the country and who's got the better ideas and everything else, we can't condone or excuse sin in individuals or groups because we'll believe that the broader philosophy is good for the country.

In that sense, we have to stay true to God's word, call a spade a spade, if you will, and be consistent in recognizing actions that are consistent with God's word as being that way, and recognizing actions that aren't as not being consistent with that way, regardless of who it is that does those actions. Lastly, let's talk briefly about our attitude towards individuals who have other beliefs, let's say political beliefs, beliefs about what should happen in the country.

And I'll go back to a different poll. This one was taken August of 22 by the Pew Research Organization, and again the headline is telling, majorities in both parties view members of the other party as more immoral, dishonest, and closed-minded than other Americans. Pretty clear where that's going. 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats think members of the other party are immoral. 72% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats think members of the other party are dishonest.

51% of Republicans and 52% of Democrats think members of the other party are unintelligent. 69% of Republicans and 83% of Democrats think members of the other party are closed-minded. So if there's one thing that we all agree on, it's that the people we disagree with are a bunch of idiots.

Great recipe for our future, right? A couple of concepts I want us to consider in this context as we think about, you know, we always have to think about what is it that all of these prevailing views in society do to us as individuals? Because if we're honest, they can't help but impact the way that we think in some way. It's going to be different for every one of us. That's why I encourage everyone just to reflect and think about this on your own within your own life and your own mind. But two concepts I'd like us to consider. One, the concept that godliness does not fit within the construct of any political party in any country. And secondly, the partisan spirit that's often at work in our country and in others is not consistent with Christian belief. Let's not try to attribute it to one side or the other in terms of good and evil. So first of all, godliness not fitting within a political bucket. If you want to turn with me to Isaiah 55, 55, 55th chapter of Isaiah verses 8 and 9, the prophet lays out, again, a verse that many of us have probably heard, maybe not thought of entirely in this context, but Isaiah 55, starting in verse 8. My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. We have to take god's thoughts and his ways as what they are. I think a fallacy that we often commit here within whatever human structure we work is we try to take god's thoughts and his ways, and we try to jam them inside this box of whatever we think, as though our opinion, our party, our point of view encompasses god's point of view. And if we're honest about it, god's ways, what he's doing, is so far above mankind to try to wedge that in and say it's in this philosophy and it's not at all in that philosophy, is not the right way to go about things. We have to look at all of the different points of view that are out there and compare them to god's word. And what we're going to find out is there are a lot of human systems out there that have been built that are exactly what's happened in every moment of every day since Adam and Eve ate of the fruit in the garden. They're a mixture of good and evil. Some have a bigger percentage of good, some have a bigger percentage of evil. But there's not a human political, social, governmental, economic philosophy that we can say encompasses the way of god because god's ways are not our ways. There's so much above us and that's where we have to keep our focus in making sure that we're looking at those things and not on the individual philosophies and ways that we see debated around us all the time. Jesus also talked about this in John 18 with a comment that he made near the very end of his life. In fact, as the authorities were coming to take coming to take him away and that was John 18 verse 36 as he was being taken captive and people marveled that he wasn't going to put up a fight. What is it that Jesus said famously? John 18 36, he said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight.

This is a broader statement. He's not talking specifically here about military service. He's talking about a broad philosophy about this world and how we view it. And he was saying that his kingdom is not of this world. There's not a political system that's going to usher in God's kingdom. There's not a man-made viewpoint, philosophy, or way of doing things that is going to bring God's kingdom.

What is it that we read every year, especially as we approach the Feast of Tabernacles, about the kingdom of God? Think about the prophecies in Daniel as a stone comes down and hits the image on the feet and dashes it. As we read in Revelation, what do we read? We read that God, his kingdom, Jesus Christ, will replace, will destroy, will displace all human government. It doesn't say that God is going to pick the best human government or the one that he's been working through, and he'll raise it up above all other human governments and work through it.

He says that Jesus Christ is going to come and he's going to set aside everything that mankind has built. He's going to institute his rule, and that's the view that he asks us to have as well. The second half of this, in terms of how we view other people, whether or not we agree with them, is that we have to have a godly view towards others. I was reading the outcome of those polls and how they said each party thinks of people in the other party. I remember training that we did at work, being in a client service business, and I remember somebody standing up and they said, you know, if you have a client and you don't think you can trust them, you don't think they're honest, you don't like them, you don't want to be with them, you need to hand that client off to somebody else because you're not going to have a productive relationship with that person.

And it's a good way to explain the way that we interact on so many levels these days as people in this country. That's not the view, though, that God wants us to have. Turn with me, if you will, to Titus 3. Again, this section would have been written within a year or two before Nero just went absolutely nuts, and he was probably well on his way in terms of just destructiveness and acting out the things that he was doing.

This is among the last books that Paul wrote before his death. Titus 3 verses 1 through 3. Within that whole context, Paul writes, we referred to this earlier, reminded him to be subject to rulers and authorities to obey and be ready for every good work. And then after that, he says, speak evil of no one. Be peaceable, gentle, showing humility to all men, for we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and be hateful, and hating one another.

I think this scripture is really a good demonstration of grace in action, because what he's saying is our viewpoint towards other people, even those who have very strong and diametrically opposite views from ours, should be one of realizing the fact that we were once not called by God either. When we weren't called by God, we were subject to our own lusts and thoughts and devices and casting about like everybody else in the world, trying to push forward for what we thought was right.

And if we weren't called by God, we'd be in that same situation with everyone else today. And so that attitude of understanding where we were and where God has brought us by His grace, not by our work, is supposed to then operate in the way that we view other people in the way that we deal with them. It says to speak evil of no one. It doesn't say take the people we agree with. They're the ones that are really nice, but a little misguided and be good to them. Don't speak evil of them, but those other people?

It's okay. They're really bad, so you can speak evil of them. And again, the context that this was written in was one where times were getting increasingly dangerous and recognizing as well that God is trying to work something in everyone, just not all at the same time, just not all now within this life. Let's read one more scripture in this context. That's Proverbs 20 in verse 3.

Proverbs 20 verse 3. I'd say this is a scripture that gets proven multiple times every day. If we ever watch the news, look at social media or tune in anywhere else. Proverbs 20 verse 3 says it's honorable for a man to stop striving since any fool can start a quarrel.

We've talked before about this. It's funny even on our, you know, we have this app called Next Door where everyone in the neighborhood can sign up and you get all these posts that come on there. And it's just, it doesn't even matter what the subject is. By the time you get down to about the tenth post, somebody has started to argue and somebody else is calling them an idiot and somebody else is calling them a fool and somebody else is telling them to stop it. And it's just people like you that are ruining the neighborhood and it just goes from there. That's Proverbs 20 verse 3 in action, isn't it? Any fool can start a quarrel. That's pretty easy to do. And if I speak for myself, you know, we all know how to do it, don't we? We know how to push other people's buttons when we're not thinking or we're not putting a governor on ourselves. So to wrap this up in terms of our attitude towards others, even those that we think have even wrong political beliefs, God's way is above the way of human beings. Righteousness does not fit neatly into one political or economic or social bucket or philosophy. And recognizing, secondly, the state that we are in before we are called, we need to be peaceable and gentle, not quarrelsome, as we try to live God's way and demonstrate His way. Also understanding that He wants to call all of these people, even those that have views that we understand to be very misguided, even opposite from God's way. He wants to call them. He wants to have a relationship with them, and He will give them an opportunity to be His children. So in conclusion, despite its imperfections, I'm incredibly grateful for the blessings of living in this country. If I look back at even two generations before me, the difference between the lives that they had and the lives that I'm able to enjoy because of being in this country is just beyond words. At the same time, it's good for us from time to time to consider our conduct as individual Christians against the backdrop of our country's situation. We're in difficult times in many ways, as we probably always have been in variety of ways through history. So let us pray for our leaders. Paul's inspired writings give us no room to ignore those that we don't particularly like or agree with. We're asked to pray for all who are in authority. Let's view everything in this world through the lens of our primary allegiance, which is our allegiance to God. God doesn't give us any room to sacrifice that or make ways about it because we might think that the broader philosophy that somebody has is good for a group of people or a state or a country. And then lastly, let us remember that God's righteous rule is going to replace man's rule, not be implemented by a man's rule, and avoid the arguments, the finger pointing that can come from being immersed in our human system as though we think that's really going to bring lasting solutions to the world. So if we look forward to enjoying the July 4th holiday and thanking God for the wonderful blessings he's given, I encourage us all to continue to look for the biblical perspective on God and country.