SPEAKER_00: I love it when announcements feel like sermons.
SPEAKER_00: That's good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: David's passionate about this, and he is the right man for the job.
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate you, David.
SPEAKER_00: And are we still doing axe throwing or is that off?
SPEAKER_00: Are we doing axe throwing?
SPEAKER_00: He left that out.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
SPEAKER_00: I I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe these people?
SPEAKER_00: Anyways.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So listen, uh Exodus chapter uh 19, verse number four.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to join you there in just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you, this is a difficult day for preachers to preach most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Holidays are always difficult because the go-to sermons, the go-to passages have been done, and like we always want to provide something new and something fresh because, you know, we're arrogant, and that's just what we do.
SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, this is a great opportunity for us to humble ourselves by trying to try to take a message that is so true and so rehearsed year by year, and and to give it to give it new legs when reality it it only has it only has like two legs.
SPEAKER_00: It's this is that what we're going to see today is that the truth of what we celebrate today has the foundation of scripture, or it's not going to stand.
SPEAKER_00: And so that makes it difficult.
SPEAKER_00: But it's difficult for another reason, and that is because for me, like I understand what scripture says about countries.
SPEAKER_00: I understand what scripture says about nations, and I understand what scripture says about the kingdom just as you do.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like when Jesus stood before Pilate and said, Hey, my kingdom is not of this world, then that causes me to like to look at patriotism through a certain lens, just like it does you.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, as Mike pointed out as he read that passage in Romans, like there is a place for patriotism.
SPEAKER_00: There is a place to, uh, according to what God told Jeremiah in the Old Testament, to seek the welfare of the place where you're being planted.
SPEAKER_00: And we are called to love people, to love our communities.
SPEAKER_00: And mixed into all of that, while the word patriotism does not appear in scripture, whenever you take the component parts of what God tells us to do, the idea of patriotism is there properly placed.
SPEAKER_00: But of course, patriotism, like every other good thing, can be misused and leveraged for idolatry, where patriotism becomes for us an end, an end to a selfish means rather than an end to bring God glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as we get started, what I want you to know right out the front is that patriotism is appropriately placed whenever it is a resource for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: When it is instead used less as a resource to glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: Are you all with me?
SPEAKER_00: Like being in this country, having the freedoms that we have and the opportunities with prosperity, with wealth to share that, to make a difference in the world around us, that's a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: And blessings are called to be stewarded because they are resources that God has given us to bring God glory.
SPEAKER_00: But too often, and we have to be careful with this, we have to be very careful.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever patriotism becomes less a resource to glorify God and a rescue to make our life better, that's totally different.
SPEAKER_00: See, the the ends to the means here, why God gives us nations, while he gives us governments, as we are going to read out of our Declaration of Independence here in a few minutes, is to bring him glory.
SPEAKER_00: It's why God brings people together.
SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter 9, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just going to encourage you, like leave your Bibles open or your Bible apps open, because we're going to go through this pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to see the verses that just leap out of Scripture and direct us to celebrate and leverage this incredible resource that God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: God looked down and he saw the oppression of who he called his people, Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me be very clear to you that the United States is not Israel.
SPEAKER_00: We are not replacement theologians.
SPEAKER_00: Israel has its own place on God's time clock.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the promises for Israel that extend through the church make their way down to us, but you can't and I can't take the promises that are given to Israel, wrap them in an American flag, and assume that they apply the same way to us as they did to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: God did a unique work through Israel, just as he is also doing a somewhat unique work in this country himself.
SPEAKER_00: But what you see here is the heart of God in Exodus chapter 19 for the work that he's doing among all people.
SPEAKER_00: Look at we, if you will, at verse number four.
SPEAKER_00: God is about to give the people his law.
SPEAKER_00: And as he does, he comes to Moses and he says, Here's what I want you to do, Moses.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to say this to the people.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to share this to the people.
SPEAKER_00: You yourself have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you and I look back at the history of this nation, we should be observing and quickly looking for the places where we can see the fingerprints of God.
SPEAKER_00: The founders did that.
SPEAKER_00: They attributed so much of their success and the miraculous opportunity, the miraculous turn of this small band of ragtag militia to overthrow, to cast out the most, the most powerful military on the planet.
SPEAKER_00: They did not attribute that to their skill in battle.
SPEAKER_00: George Washington wasn't the hero of the Revolutionary War in their mind.
SPEAKER_00: They attributed it to providence.
SPEAKER_00: Here God is turning to his people and he's saying, You need to remember what I did for you.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't remember what I did for you, you're not going to be able to do the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: Have you got that church?
SPEAKER_00: If we don't remember what God has done for us as a people, as a community called the United States, then we are not going to be able to do the next thing, the thing that we are called to do, because living out the gospel, living out the obedience to Christ is always done as a reaction to the work of God in and around us.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God does.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Because I have brought you out, because I've delivered you and I've I've set you up on eagle's wings.
SPEAKER_00: You have flown above all of this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all people, for all the earth is mine, God says.
SPEAKER_00: That's to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They are his treasured possession among the earth, but all the earth being his includes this land.
SPEAKER_00: And he has a plan for this land, and he has a plan for you and I in this place, in this land.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, our story started long before the declaration of independence, but it really was, it really was that words which pointed this nation to a place where it would take an equal standing on the world stage, as they said.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us had to memorize at least the preamble whenever we were in school.
SPEAKER_00: And as an adult, looking at this and comparing it to what I have been able to see in my short 50 years around the world throughout history.
SPEAKER_00: I think if we pause and look at this objectively, we know that this document is truly unique in human history.
SPEAKER_00: It did for this nation what no other nation was able to do for itself.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the words with me, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know like we're preaching God's word, so don't go out here today.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We are laying the Declaration of Independence out and then bringing scripture understanding alongside of it to compare where do these words come from?
SPEAKER_00: What do they mean to the founders?
SPEAKER_00: What do they mean to us today as a nation?
SPEAKER_00: And what should they mean?
SPEAKER_00: The founders.
SPEAKER_00: What what what do they mean for us today?
SPEAKER_00: And what should they mean to us?
SPEAKER_00: So here it is.
SPEAKER_00: We hold these truths self-evident.
SPEAKER_00: The original words there were uh sacred and undeniable.
SPEAKER_00: They were crossed out to make the document a l uh a a little more earthen.
SPEAKER_00: They are self-evident.
SPEAKER_00: This is logical, this is reasonable, and mixed into this small phrase is the understanding that there is truth, that there is a reality that tells us what is right and what is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And they are these truths, according to what the founders say, are sacred and undeniable.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, you know what happens next.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing that sort of grabs at my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you think about self-evident truths, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if they are so self-evident, why do we see so little of it throughout human history?
SPEAKER_00: We live in a bubble where life is guaranteed, where liberty is guaranteed, where our ability to pursue happiness is guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to tell you like I understand, this is not an American hurrah moment.
SPEAKER_00: I understand we have our problems, and they are significant problems in our history and in our present, the way we're treating people, the way we're treating the sojourner, the way we're treating, in many cases, the marginalized, the way we treat uh people of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Like it disturbs me very deeply.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm here to tell you those are problems which history is replete with.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the fact that you and I are able to critique the failures of our government is a unique experience.
SPEAKER_00: In history past, you would have lost life and limb because there was no such thing as freedom of speech.
SPEAKER_00: This is unique for us.
SPEAKER_00: These are not self-evident truths unless you're operating from a perspective of a biblical worldview.
SPEAKER_00: The founders saw these as self-evident truths, I would suggest to you, because they had a biblical worldview.
SPEAKER_00: If they had had a secular worldview of their time, they would not have seen these as self-evident truths.
SPEAKER_00: Because twelve years after the Revolutionary War, our French neighbors across the pond had their own Revolutionary War.
SPEAKER_00: And the outcome of that, if you know your history was radically different.
SPEAKER_00: Where the Revolutionary War in this country cost the lives of only 7,000 British soldiers and a little over 20,000 American soldiers, most of whom died in prisoner of war camps because of the horrible conditions that were there, less than 30,000 people who died.
SPEAKER_00: In France, 17,000 people were beheaded during their fight for revolution.
SPEAKER_00: Historians put the death toll in the French Revolutionary War at over a quarter million people.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there may be a lot of reasons for this, and you may be a historical uh buff uh expert who can point to a lot of factors that distinguished what happened here in the colonies versus what happened on the mainland of Europe.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the principal causes that is laid out for the distinction, that is suggested for the distinction among some historians, is that the French had a very different perspective on humanity.
SPEAKER_00: See, uh, the French were informed by uh the writings of uh men like Voltaire, who were saying things like, people were basically good, and it's our responsibility to unchain them to be good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm here to tell you, you know what happens whenever you unchain people to do what they declare or imagine to be good, is they execute 17,000 people by cutting off their head.
SPEAKER_00: By contrast, in this country, the founders of this document, as well as the Constitution, did not see people as basically good.
SPEAKER_00: They saw people as tempted, as evil, as wicked, who needed a government to help create boundaries and separation and to encourage people to do what is right.
SPEAKER_00: One of the founders said that if men were basically good, they would not need government.
SPEAKER_00: And then he went on to establish or help establish this government.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm saying to you these are self-evident truths, but the self-evidence comes from a source.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to talk to you about here in the next few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: These self-evident truths must arrive from somewhere outside of us, they're not going to come from the government.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what happens here, right?
SPEAKER_00: We imagine that these self-evident truths are provided for us by the state.
SPEAKER_00: But government does not provide these rights.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the document says.
SPEAKER_00: We hold these rights as sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and are endowed by the state, by DC, by the president, by the Congress, by the government, by the governor.
SPEAKER_00: No, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable and the ideal there being it cannot be separated.
SPEAKER_00: This cannot be pulled from you.
SPEAKER_00: These are your rights given to you by a creator.
SPEAKER_00: Our rights do not come from the government.
SPEAKER_00: The government instead is in is established to protect them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the next line of the Declaration of Independence says.
SPEAKER_00: To secure these rights, governments are established among men, deriving their power, their just power, from the consent of those who are governed.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a that's that's an essential understanding for us to grasp concerning the founding document of this country.
SPEAKER_00: That they look at these things which we all claim to be ours and say, they are yours, but they are not yours because the state says they're yours.
SPEAKER_00: They are yours because there is a higher power, there is a God who has given them to you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in a society that is becoming increasingly secular, I would say to the extent that the society becomes increasingly six uh secular, these rights become increasingly in danger.
SPEAKER_00: Because if the government determines, if it's determined that the government is the one who extends these rights to you, then they can de-extend them.
SPEAKER_00: They can define them.
SPEAKER_00: You need something outside of the government, you need something outside of you, we need something outside of us that tells us what is right or what is wrong, because democracy is not going to do it.
SPEAKER_00: I listen, I believe in the right to vote, I believe in the right of free speech, I believe in the right for you and me and every other wacko on social media to be able to say whatever it is they want to do.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, the truth is, those rights, those rights cannot derive from us.
SPEAKER_00: Because if they derive from us, if they come from us as a group, then all you need is 40 million people or so to determine that Jews should be executed, and suddenly that becomes okay.
SPEAKER_00: Democracy does not get it done.
SPEAKER_00: Looking around us does not get it done.
SPEAKER_00: The rule of law has to come from something outside of us, something greater than us.
SPEAKER_00: Because, listen, I'm here to tell you, like you, you know this to be the case, 50 million people can be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: 300 million people can be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever 300 million people go wrong, they go wrong in horrific ways.
SPEAKER_00: Left to our own devices, according to Scripture, we need this type of government.
SPEAKER_00: This type of government, this type of God who has given us this government, extends to us these rights given to us, extended to us by God.
SPEAKER_00: So here they are very quickly: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: The understood that the founders understood that this government does not secure rights.
SPEAKER_00: God extends, God secures rights.
SPEAKER_00: See, the Declaration of Independence did not come out of someone's random thought, like it wasn't something they just derived on their own.
SPEAKER_00: There were influential writings circulating around the world at the time that laid the groundwork for the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most important works of that time was written by a man named John Locke.
SPEAKER_00: The document, I believe, was entitled Two Treaties on Government.
SPEAKER_00: And in that document, the founders found the foundation for the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, many of them have attributed the words to the Declaration of Independence to the writings of John Locke.
SPEAKER_00: Now stay with me.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that important?
SPEAKER_00: It's because John Locke, especially in his early years, was a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: It's because in that two treatise on government, John Locke cited the Bible more than 1,500 times.
SPEAKER_00: That means that this document that you and I hold in our hands finds its root in John Locke's writings, which finds its foundation in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see this as we examine these rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Life.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a significant idea for us today, because today, increasingly, it's becoming the case that what is life and a person's right to it is not determined by the idea that all life has value because God has extended it.
SPEAKER_00: It is instead determined, life, the value of life, is determined by what that person can bring to society.
SPEAKER_00: Or worse, what others think about the right of that individual to live.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me on this for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: You probably have seen examples where you have a a mother, a pregnant mother, who uh is is uh loses her life.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there's a popular documentary on Netflix right now uh that is just gripping and heart-wrenching, where a mother loses her life, and whenever the perpetrator was tried, she was not tried for the death of one person.
SPEAKER_00: She was tried for the death of two people.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, in that same state, at that same time, if that same mother had gone into a doctor's office and approached a man with a white coat and said, I want this life inside of me to be taken out, then that would have been legal and the state would have sanctioned that execution.
SPEAKER_00: Which means at its core, what is happening is that the mother is determining whether or not that being inside of her is an actual life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I am not comfortable living in a society where someone other than me determines whether or not my life is valuable.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I may have gotten on some toes there for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just move on.
SPEAKER_00: But you get the point, you get the tension that's there.
SPEAKER_00: Samuel Adams, uh, the uh cousin of John Adams and one of the influential members of the Sons of Liberty uh said concerning this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, the grand end of civil government, that's what we're talking about today, from the very nature, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support and protection and defense of these rights.
SPEAKER_00: And the very first one he lists is the right to life.
SPEAKER_00: That's why governments exist.
SPEAKER_00: They exist to protect life.
SPEAKER_00: Paul touches on this, and this is this is one of the areas where the founders pulled this phrase from in Acts chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul is standing on the great, the great uh uh pinnacle of Greek thought on Mars Hill, and he's arguing for the existence of God.
SPEAKER_00: He explains to those Who are listening, that um that God, that this God, this unknown God who is out there that they all know exists, but they can't quite pinpoint who he is, that he's not served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
SPEAKER_00: God is the source of life.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that important?
SPEAKER_00: It's important because whenever someone with the highest authority says your life has value, no one no one usurps that.
SPEAKER_00: There's no court that's going to supersede that.
SPEAKER_00: There's no judge's gavel or legislator's pen that is going to diminish the fact that you have value.
SPEAKER_00: That those of us who have disabilities have value.
SPEAKER_00: That those of us who have a little more age on us have value.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Not because the state extends it, but because God has extended it.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, liberty.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the idea of liberty in the period of the Declaration of Independence is not the same idea of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: You can pull up Victor Hanson's recent interview on Big Think, and he covers this in just incredible uh clarity.
SPEAKER_00: That there was a distinction between freedom and liberty.
SPEAKER_00: We make the same distinction today, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We don't always see it, but you you you have liberty, but you know you don't have the freedom to do just anything you want to.
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, Kim and I had a membership to Planet Fitness.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever you walk into Planet Fitness, there is this these big words on the side of the wall that say judgment-free zone.
SPEAKER_00: The idea is you can just, like there's no judgment here.
SPEAKER_00: You can come in any body shape, any experience, right?
SPEAKER_00: No matter what health level you're at, you can come in and be safe because this is a judgment-free zone.
SPEAKER_00: But how many of you know that judgment-free does not mean rule free?
SPEAKER_00: There were a couple of years ago, I read an article where an individual came in and walked up to the treadmill and began to disrobe.
SPEAKER_00: Stripped all the way down, got onto the treadmill, and began to enjoy his run.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever he was approached by people who felt like that this is not appropriate, he pointed to the wall and said, This is a judgment-free zone.
SPEAKER_00: Liberty does not mean freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Liberty means that you have the right to do what you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: You have the right to choose within the bounds of law.
SPEAKER_00: Who would know this better than a Supreme Court justice?
SPEAKER_00: James Wilson, the first Supreme Court justice, said that without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name.
SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as liberty without law.
SPEAKER_00: It's chaos.
SPEAKER_00: It's every woman, every man for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you want to live in that kind of society?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, we need law.
SPEAKER_00: Liberty does not mean an absence of rule.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: It means you get to do whatever you want to do and choose whatever you want within the boundaries of law because liberty, Wilson continues, without law leads to licidiousness.
SPEAKER_00: It leads to this cancer of seeking more.
SPEAKER_00: This disease of pursuing what I feel like is right in my own heart.
SPEAKER_00: This endless, bottomless pit of wanting to feel the darkness in my heart with whatever joy, whatever perversion, whatever addiction seems to be right to me at the time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for those of us who understand this, we also understand that our liberty comes at a cost.
SPEAKER_00: Liberty has boundaries.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 5, verse 13, again, this is one of these principal passages.
SPEAKER_00: This idea comes from Paul's writing concerning law and its necessary place, but the value of liberty and how that liberty also has its boundaries.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, For you were called to be free, to freedom, brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Only do not let your freedom become as an opportunity for the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The King James Version, I think, says lasidiousness.
SPEAKER_00: But through love serve one is a radically different perception of liberty from that which is espoused today.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not here to tell you that we as Christians should be imposing biblical principles on non-biblical people.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the best thing we can do is to do what God does.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get a witness?
SPEAKER_00: And just allow people to live with their decisions so that they can feel the weight of their lostness and separation from God by doing things their own way.
SPEAKER_00: If there is a God who created us, then perhaps it's the case he has a plan for us.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's the case that he may know better than I do.
SPEAKER_00: And my liberty in Christ is given so that I can choose to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: God allows us to why does he do that?
SPEAKER_00: God allows us to choose because he wants us to love, and love requires choice.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that before, and that's why God in the Old Testament constantly, He didn't people, He just simply said through His prophets, I'm laying before you life and death and blessings and cursings.
SPEAKER_00: You can choose.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go back and worship the gods God just destroyed, or if you want to go and worship the the child murdering the family, destroying gods of this land who I've just conquered, then knock yourself out them.
SPEAKER_00: So I just think it'd be a good idea if you worship me, if I become your God since I brought you here to this place.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very reasonable argument, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But God gives us the choice.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, we're almost here.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to draw this in here real quick.
SPEAKER_00: The pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: This might be, as a Christian, the most awkward piece of this puzzle because the idea of happiness we know has been so perverted as to be defined by whatever it is that I want in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the scripture does say in Ecclesiastes 3, verse 12, Solomon, who probably more than any other character in the Bible, you and I can identify with in wealth and prosperity, he speaks that there is nothing better than uh for uh for them than to be joyful, talking about us, right?
SPEAKER_00: For us to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, also that everyone should eat and drink in all his toil, this is God's gift to man.
SPEAKER_00: We could camp out on that statement for a while.
SPEAKER_00: What does he mean?
SPEAKER_00: This is God's gift to man.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he means he means that if you and I really are sinful, and we are, and if our sin really is an affront to the glory of God who exists everywhere in all places, and it does, then the fact that we get to experience any joy at all, any pleasure at all, is an incredible gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't deserve to hold a newborn grandbaby.
SPEAKER_00: I don't deserve to enjoy my belly being full.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't deserve to enjoy air conditioning, which I am really enjoying right about now, right?
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't, though, those are not things that that that are rights to me as a human because I am a fallen, broken human.
SPEAKER_00: They are a right to me because God has gifted them to me.
SPEAKER_00: That means your ability to pursue happiness, to to find your way.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes you and I, we think of God as some ogre, some joy uh stealing, some pleasure absorbing uh ogre in the sky who is just like some upset neighbor trying to figure out how to get you to be less annoying so that he can enjoy his quiet heavenly spaces.
SPEAKER_00: That's not it at all.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to have life and to have life more abundantly, but he is the one who knows what brings real joy and real happiness.
SPEAKER_00: And for those who are pursuing happiness as an end, you know, if you pursued it very long at all, you know that's an endless, bottomless pit that cannot be filled by human experience.
SPEAKER_00: It can only be filled by experiencing the joy that comes through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is also known by our founders.
SPEAKER_00: They understood that the pursuit of joy hedonism was not a healthy end in itself.
SPEAKER_00: John Adams, one of the one of the men who put pen to paper to critique this document after Jefferson had wrote it, said later in 1776, later that year, he said, All sober inquiries after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man as well as his dignity consists in virtue.
SPEAKER_00: Which means our definition of happiness is not their definition of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Their definition of happiness is living within the bounds that God has given us to exist and enjoying it richly.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God wants.
SPEAKER_00: The government is not a rescue, the government is a resource for us to put forth the truth of life, to put forth the truth of liberty, to put forth the truth of what it really means to pursue happiness.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it's very interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00: That uh he doesn't say life, liberty, and happiness.
SPEAKER_00: It's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know happiness isn't guaranteed?
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: But God extends to you the right to pursue it even in times of brokenness, even in difficulty, even in life-shattering circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: True joy can be found in the promise of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This government is not a rescue.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to provide for you life, it's not going to provide for you uh liberty, it's not going to provide for you happiness.
SPEAKER_00: It cannot do it.
SPEAKER_00: It is not the source.
SPEAKER_00: Government is not the source of these rights.
SPEAKER_00: God is.
SPEAKER_00: So let me close with two words of exhortation to you.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the source, trust the rain.
SPEAKER_00: Fathers, can I just say to you and mothers as well, parents, grandparents, if you are attempting to pass your patriotism to your children without passing your faith to your children, you're passing them something that is hollow and will not stand the test of time.
SPEAKER_00: Patriotism is toxic without faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we seek the source and we show the source, because the source, right, somewhere in their heart, they're going to find a God to worship.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever you open up the pages of scripture, what you see over and over again is God is setting himself up against the institution of government.
SPEAKER_00: Go back and read your Bible again and you'll see it.
SPEAKER_00: It just pops out at you.
SPEAKER_00: That's, oh, this is God facing the government again.
SPEAKER_00: It's God facing the government again.
SPEAKER_00: It's God facing the, it's God standing before the government saying, You have no power that my Father in heaven has not given you.
SPEAKER_00: So don't you think for a moment, Pilate, that you're the one in control here.
SPEAKER_00: My kingdom is not of this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's God against the government.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the government constantly sets itself up as the source of these rights, and it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Government is a protector of these rights.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to tell you as an American, I think our government has done an outstanding job.
SPEAKER_00: Not perfect, but an outstanding job, the best job of any nation on the planet, so far as I know.
SPEAKER_00: Show me another one.
SPEAKER_00: Take me to the corner of Marxist-ruled countries.
SPEAKER_00: Take me to the fields of despot uh empires and show me where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been more attainable than they are right now.
SPEAKER_00: Right here in this place.
SPEAKER_00: But we we don't seek this government as the source because this government did not provide this for us.
SPEAKER_00: We seek the source who is God.
SPEAKER_00: Without that source, our patriotism is hollow.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the source and finally trust the rain, the R-E-I-G-N.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't put our hope here in this place.
SPEAKER_00: This place here, we're told, is one day going to end.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know, fun fact for you, do you know that even now, right here, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of this country?
SPEAKER_00: And even right now, this continent, as far as European involvement is concerned, this continent has still been colony longer than it's been a nation.
SPEAKER_00: From 1492 to 1776, 280 years.
SPEAKER_00: From 1776 to today, that's 250 years.
SPEAKER_00: This is, we're young, right?
SPEAKER_00: And yet most of us are able to look and see the trajectory of this country and realize that, man, I don't know if we can make it another another 250 years.
SPEAKER_00: If we do make it another 250 years, it's because we're doing point one, it's because we've turned to seek the source of these rights.
SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, we know eventually, even if this country does make it another 250 years, at some point it's going to collapse under its own weight.
SPEAKER_00: Or it is as foretold in Daniel going to be crushed by that great stone that falls from heaven and crushes all governments.
SPEAKER_00: One day it will end.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that the founders knew that too?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's written right there into the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see that?
SPEAKER_00: It's that that final line of the preamble.
SPEAKER_00: That whenever any form of government he doesn't say, they don't say any form of government except for the one we're about to establish here because this one's going to work.
SPEAKER_00: That any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to what's the word?
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not suggesting that we take up arms and start a revolution here in this right here on Christiansburg Mountain.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying to you, even the founders knew that every nation at some point makes its way to tyranny.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the entropy of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we do.
SPEAKER_00: We erode to a place where eventually there has to be this reset.
SPEAKER_00: There has to be this alteration.
SPEAKER_00: The founders knew that.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're putting your hope in this country, I'm here to tell you like you are, if you're treating this country, if you're if your patriotism isn't about this is a resource for the gospel, but instead it's a rescue for me, you're probably not feeling real well right now.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're concerned, and understandably so.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of the state of the country.
SPEAKER_00: I think, I think I'm optimistic that we're going to turn a tide and that church attendance is going to continue to increase and the gospel is going to continue to flourish.
SPEAKER_00: Like I've I want to believe that.
SPEAKER_00: But my concern for you isn't this future of this country.
SPEAKER_00: It is the fact that if you are using your patriotism as a rescue for your future for your kids, then that is a difficult spot to live in.
SPEAKER_00: Because government was never meant to fill the shoes of savior.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the source.
SPEAKER_00: Trust the rain.