How Should a Christian Vote?
A Word to the Wise
Romans 1; Daniel 4
 
Starting three weeks ago, we took a look at some of the major moral issues that were before us in the election.  In particular, we looked at abortion, same-sex marriage and support for the nation of Israel.
 
But prior to those messages, I spoke about some foundational truths regarding our responsibility as a Christian living in the world.  And one of the places I directed your attention was Romans 1, and today I want to take you back to that passage and look at some of the decisions our country made this week in light of that passage. 
 
There is a lot of post-election talk about the problems we are facing.  Most every news outlet is discussing them.  Those in office are commenting; talk radio is talking about them, and I daresay every coffee shop in America has a group that is chiming in as well. 
 
Most will say that Romney lost because he was too far to the right and what is needed is for the GOP to moderate its position.  You mustn’t take hard stands that exclude people.  In particular, they mention “women’s rights” which is their code word for abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration reform. 
 
In other words, the solution to the problems facing America is a political one. 
 
But unfortunately, almost without exception, no one is addressing the real problem.  In fact, they’re not even close to addressing the real problem.  Now I assume that is true, either because they don’t know what the real problem is or they’re afraid to say what it is. 
 
So I’m going to tell you what the problem is today--the problem with this country, the problem with the rest of the world, the problem with every nation, every leader, every ruler, every counsel, every committee, every assembly, every group that comes together.
 
There’s only one problem and it is identified in
 
Romans 1:28
 
That’s it.  That’s the problem. 
 
And unfortunately the leaders of America, on both sides of the aisle, are essentially arrogant fools who have no hope of changing anything because they do not understand the problem.
 
The problems we are facing are not primarily economic, financial, social, or military; they are not problems of foreign policy, government policy, capitalism, free market, or socialism.
 
Those are not the problem. The problem is not the situation in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Korea or Afghanistan.  The problem is not Muslim terrorists. The problem is not abortion or homosexuality or sexual liberation.
Those are all symptoms of or results of the problem, but the problem is we no longer find it necessary to acknowledge God and His Word. 
 
And that’s the whole point of Romans 1.
 
Notice verse 18
 
The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against those who have known God and yet they do not glorify Him as God, they do not honor Him or thank Him and as a result they have become empty-headed (futile in their thoughts).  Their foolish heart is darkened and they are arrogant fools and they are under judgment.
 
And the result of not acknowledging God is found in
 
Verses 24-32
 
Do you remember that I said to you just four weeks ago that the Democrats made the sins of Romans 1 their party platform? 
 
And now the country (at least a little over half of it) has given their stamp of approval.  And what we are seeing become crystal clear before our eyes is that the nation is under divine judgment.  We are living Romans 1.  In fact, we’re already been experiencing verses 24-25.  Ours is a pornographic, sexually perverted  culture.
 
And we’ve already been experiencing verses 26-28.  We’ve seen in the last several years the rise and acceptance of homosexuality and lesbianism. 
 
And what we saw in the last few months is the natural digression of that.  It just makes sense that a coalition of leaders would come up with a party platform that advocates these iniquities and the murder of babies and give hearty approval of it.  That’s how depraved the mind is. That’s how perverted the mind of the people who are supposed to be the elite leaders and educators of the world has become.
 
And then, last Tuesday showed us to what degree this judgment is now operating. We put the same people back in power.  In addition to that, four states gave their approval to same-sex marriage.  Four states approved the use of marijuana, two of them for recreation al use.  One state, Wisconsin, elected the first openly lesbian US senator. 
 
She was one of at least 118 gay or lesbian candidates that won election on Tuesday.  And every one is bowing at the altar of political correctness to talk about what a significant and historic day it was. 
 
And it is all happening, not because of strategic political moves or mistakes the candidates made, but because God is moving in judgment on America and the judgment is speeding up.  Everyone wants to speculate on the hurricanes and floods and fires and droughts and whether or not they are God’s judgment on America.  That’s not where we need to be looking. 
 
Those may be some evidence that God is judging America, but we’ve always had natural disasters and more productive years than others in crops and such. 
 
But we cannot deny the evidence of Romans 1.  We’ve moved from a depraved mind that ignores God to debased actions that flaunt it before God to the point where we have now given our approval to those whose very actions God condemns.   
 
There is no political answer or explanation for what we are experiencing in this nation because our problems are spiritual problems.  And yet, ironically, we have gathering in our nation’s capitol, fools that reject God trying to find solutions to problems that are caused by rejecting God. 
 
Three times in these verses we find the statement "God gave them over," verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28. Another way to describe that phrase would be "abandoned by God."
 
There comes a point in God's dealing with men and nations, groups of people, when He abandons them. And the consequence of that abandonment is they will reap the consequences of their choices. 
 
If I were asked to provide a simple answer to the question...what's wrong with America?...I would say God has abandoned America. And America is now reaping the consequences.  We have chosen to sin and turn our back on God and reject the gospel and biblical morality and disobey the clear commandment of God and God says...let them alone. 
 
And perhaps the most graphic and comprehensive discussion of being abandoned by God anywhere in Scripture is found here in Romans 1. 
 
 
And by the way, after dealing with this passage for several weeks now, I think I can safely say we are not waiting for God's wrath, we are now experiencing it. And God's wrath in its initial form is simply to allow men to live with the result of their own choices, to take the restraint off, the protection. That's what is happening right before you in Romans 1.
 
Three times, as I told you, in verses 24 to 32 you have the phrase "God gave them over." Now that word carries a judicial sense as in making a judgment on a criminal and handing him over for execution or punishment.
 
The whole scene here is man found guilty before God and seeing God's wrath released against guilty men. The wrath of God then acts judicially to sentence sinners. And the first phrase of that sentence is to just let the restraints go and let them go the way of their own choices, turning them over to the uninterrupted course and its effect that their sinful choices will produce.
 
But there is a progression, or perhaps better said, a digression here that I want us to see. 
 
Notice verse 24
 
The first thing God does in expressing wrath on a sinning society is to just let them go to their lusts.
 
The first evidence of the wrath of God is not earthquakes, tidal waves, mass executions and national tragedies.  It is just letting people operate in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.
 
Moral perversion, sexual deviation, pornographic desire allowed not only to exist but becoming popular, tolerated and accommodated by the society itself.
 
But it doesn't stop there, verse 24 says, it goes to the body. The heart in its impurity and lust will ultimately end up in the dishonoring of the body. It can't stop on the inside.  It's got to show up on the outside. The heart is wicked and unrestrained and the body follows because as Jesus said, "What comes out of the heart of man is what defiles him."
 
And we've already seen that. Sex, alcohol, drugs, abuse, abortion, euthanasia, a low view of everyone else's life that leads to killings and murders, knifing, shootings, no sense of man being created in the image of God that leads to dishonoring bodies in every direction.
 
Look at the second statement in verse 26.
 
First there is sort of this general category of unrestrained vice and we know that's a part of our culture.  But there is a second level of degradation that follows.  The lusts become so perverted and degenerate and unrestrained that they take over the body and use it to do the unthinkable in homosexuality. 
 
And isn't it interesting that it starts with women here who really are the minority in homosexuality? A very small percentage of women are lesbians, compared to how many men are sodomites. Why does he start with women?  Because he wants you to see how deep the plunge is.
You see, usually the last to be affected in the decline of the culture are the women. They are the moral bastions.  They are the ones who stand fast.  And that's his point. Proof that absolutely all virtue is gone, that the women have come to this base level.
 
verse 27
 
They're abandoned by God. God pulls back all restraining grace. There will be no mitigation of the consequence of their sin and their lives are destroyed morally, mentally, emotionally, medically and ultimately physically and eternally.
 
Look at the third level that this abandoning by God plunges men toward.
 
verse 28
 
What is a debased or depraved mind? At its root it is a mind tested and found useless.
 
In other words, a mind is disqualified for its intended purpose. They're so wicked and so base that their reasoning abilities no longer function as they ought to.  The conscience is so destroyed that they do those things which are not proper or moral.  They do what they do and think nothing of it.  And by this point, sin has rendered the brain useless.  They're not rational. They're not reasonable. They don't think straight.
 
A few years ago, a gentleman named Phil Manley served as chaplain at the County USC Medical Center in California. 
 
He said one of the biggest problems they experienced in the AIDS ward at the hospital was keeping the homosexual male nurses out of the beds of the AIDS patients.
 
All rationality is gone. All ability to reason about life and choices and morality is gone. Those are the kind of people in our culture who are now in positions of leadership and the Bible says they have a mind that is useless.  
 
And look at how broad it goes.
 
Verse 29
 
That sounds like a description of virtually any segment of society in America today.  That's how you could define our culture.
 
And then the epitome comes in verse 32
 
There is the lowest point of human descent.
 
That's all the way from the people living on drugs and living for sex on the street and the homosexuals to the sophisticated socialites who get on Oprah and laugh at sexual deviation and moral perversion.
 
The end result of abandonment by God.  And I believe what we're experiencing in our country is nothing other than God just letting us go the way the nation has chosen to go. We’ve chosen for our leadership, a man who advocates murder and homosexuality. We’ve put into office alongside him others who agree.  We’ve written down the platform and published it for the world to read. 
We’ve publicly and openly with loud voice booed God and said we don’t want him included, and now God says, “You want it, you got it."  Therefore, I must conclude that we are under the judgment of God. 
 
Why is it that God abandons a society? Couldn't we say, "Well all societies are like this? I mean, you've got to expect this. This is the way people are. I mean, why would God abandon us in this situation when we need Him most?"
 
Well in this text, Paul says the problem is a blatant rejection of the law of God which has been given to man. It is not man in his ignorance but rather a rejection of knowledge that brings the wrath of God.
 
And as he expands on that, Paul lays out four specific reasons for God's wrath, and I'll just give them to you. I think you'll find them absolutely fascinating in light of what we are experiencing. 
 
Four specific reasons for God's wrath.
 
Reason number one is
 
1. Revelation
 
verse 19
 
In other words, God has built into His the human heart a sense of spiritual and moral truth; knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.  It is a part of our very nature. 
 
Along with that, He has also inlaid the awareness that there must be a God and that that God must be powerful and wise and good and just.
Man is not without the witness of divine reality and divine morality. Men can't plead ignorance because even apart from Scripture, God has through general revelation made Himself known.
 
Notice the phrase there in verse 19, "That which may be known of God,"
 
That simply means that what is knowable about God, we can know.  It’s made available to us. Where do we find it?  “In them”.  God put it there.  That means the very fabric of reasoning and understanding is made from the strands of the revelation of God.
 
That's what Paul means over in chapter 2:14-15
 
God built us with all of these faculties by which we can come to proper conclusion about right and wrong and God. 
 
It's not obscure to believe in God, it's innate. It's readily apparent. It's not obscure to believe in right and wrong, it's innate. And just like when you wound your body you feel pain, when you wound that moral rational soul, you feel guilt. It's normal to believe in God. It's common sense, the mind dictates there must be a God. And this is what He must be like.
 
Reason alone tells us there is somebody sending the rain and somebody painting the sunsets and somebody making the flowers grow and somebody providing this plethora of foods.  Somebody is making life happen.  Somebody designed the process for bringing a little baby into the world.  Somebody invented these feelings that a boy gets when his girl walks into the room.
The mind and reason, the very fabric of the soul, says there is a God and He is a creator and He is powerful and He is good and He is beautiful and He is wise. That's just woven in to the very fabric of reason.
 
And because of that, according to the end of verse 20, men are without excuse.
 
Even in the earliest of days, they could look at the stars, they could look at the incredible arrangement of the petals on a flower, they could look at leaves on a stem, they could look at the cycle of water, they could see the mystery of human birth, the mystery of growth.
 
They could see the glory of a sunrise and the glory of a sunset. They could understand the roaring and the rolling of the seas.   They could understand the rush of the rivers and the trickle of a brook, the flight of a bird. They could understand that incredible transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Even then the heavens were declaring the glory of God and the firmament was showing them His handiwork. Even then the beasts of the field were giving Him glory.
 
And today it's even more obvious.  We now know that birds navigate by the stars while they migrate. Birds, with this little tiny bird brain, raised from eggs inside a building where they have never seen the sky can be released to flight and instantly orient themselves toward home. They can even be shown an artificial sky representing a place their species has never been and orient themselves to it in flight.
 
Archer fish shoot drops of water with great accuracy at insects for no other reason than the fun of it. They get their food like all the rest of the fish and nobody else has figured out why God had them doing that.  It’s recreational; just for the fun of it.
 
Do you know that mites occupy only one ear in a moth? If they occupied both ears, the moth can’t  fly. How do the mites know if somebody is over in the other one?
 
Bombardier beetles produce chemicals which mix at just the right moment to explode in the face of their enemy and the explosion never occurs prematurely to blow the beetle up.
 
Think about water. Salt water is lifted from the oceans against gravity thousands of feet into the air, suspended until carried inland where it's needed, and then rained back down as fresh water on the earth.   It's incredible. That same fresh water that rains on the land is rained on the oceans and when it gets there it’s turned to salt water.  How does all that happen? 
 
Through the very design of God as the sun, from 93 million miles away initiates the process of evaporation. 
 
The very essence of a creator and something of His character is absolutely everywhere and for human reason to reject that goes against the grain of everything that God designed us to be and is in fact,  blatant, willful sin.
 
And even though we’ve received revelation, the mind becomes useless and God gives them over to judgment. 
 
Here’s the second reason:
 
2. Rejection
 
verse 21
 
There it is again. They didn't use their minds and instead of thinking sensibly, their thoughts became futile or empty and useless and their foolish heart became black.  In other words, the light went out. Man finds God in creation. He finds God in reason. But he suppresses it and rejects God and plunges into darkness and the light goes out.
 
I love what Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote in regard to this:
 
"Will God give man brains to see these things? And will man then fail to exercise his will toward that God? The sorrowful answer is that both of these things are true. God will give a man brains to smelt iron and make a hammerhead and nails. And God will grow a tree and give man strength to cut it down and brains to fashion a hammer handle from its wood. And when man has the hammer and the nails, God will put out His hand and let man drive those nails through it and place Him on a cross in the supreme demonstration that men are without excuse."
 
Paul says, “They did not honor Him as God or give thanks.”
 
Listen:  Man's problem is not that he can't recognize God.  It is that he won't recognize God. For all the joys and beauty and thrills and pleasure and fulfillment and for all the things that God fills our life with, He gets no thanks.
 
Instead we ignore Him and make ourselves the center of attention.  It must be about what I want and my rights and my desires.  I am the center of the universe and no one sits in judgment over me.
 
That's how stupid men have become.  Having lost the ability to be rational and logical and understand good and evil, they have now become foolish in their thoughts.  They are empty and useless and wander around in the darkness of their own creation. 
 
Wrath because men received revelation. They had the opportunity. Wrath because they rejected it.
 
Thirdly,
 
3. Rationalization
 
Verse 22
 
"They profess to be wise." Instead of realizing how desperate is the situation and how dark the surroundings and crying "Oh, woe is me, I'm in a pit. I've become an idiot, I've lost my sense. I can't find my way", they've convinced themselves they're doing fine and in fact are the smartest individuals in the world. 
 
It reminds me of the guy lying in the hospital bed in the mental ward who kept saying, "I'm Napoleon, I'm Napoleon."
And the guy in the next bed after about three days of this said, "Who told you you're Napoleon?"
 
And he said, "God did."
 
And the guy said, "Oh no I didn't."
 
It reminds me of the lady who walked into the psychiatrist's office with a duck on a string and said, "You've got to help my husband, he thinks he's a duck."
 
They’ve lost touch with reality!
 
When he says in verse 22, "Professing to be wise they became fools," he uses the word moraino, moron we get from it, that's what it means. They think they're wise and they're morons.
 
And then there’s a fourth cause. In spite of the fact that man rejects revelation and fully rejects the God and the truth revealed because he wants no rules in his life, and in spite of the fact that he rationalizes that he's really very wise and everything is fine, he still will still try to fill the void within with
 
4. Religion
 
We can't exist without some sense of religion. We have to believe in something or someone. We need some shrine to bow to.  So we create our own god to accommodate our useless mind and immoral actions.  Voltaire said, "God made man in His own image and man returned the favor."
 
Verse 23,25, 28
 
They did not see fit to acknowledge God. Please understand what that is telling us.  Man does not rise from paganism and ignorance to the truth of God. He falls from the truth of God in to the slime of religion. Religion is not man at his highest. Religion is man at his lowest. He's down at the bottom when his willful rejection of the true God has allowed him to invent false gods to accommodate his own life.
 
You start at the truth of God and then descend into anything else substituted for Him.  Religion is nothing more that the wickedness of man rejecting God and creating a substitute. They may be unsophisticated wooden carvings in a pagan jungle somewhere.  They may be the gods of self and sex.  It may be Mother Nature or environmentalism. It may be New Age or Islam but they are all pathetic little substitutes that man has created in place of the real thing.  
 
So it is no wonder that as a society we are struggling.  How can we have an ethical moral system when there's only one in the universe and we've abandoned Him?  And if you abandon God, there’ll come a day when He’ll abandon you. 
 
You say, "Is there any hope for America?"
 
Well let me answer that with a story straight from God’s Word.  If you want to read it sometime, you’ll find it in Daniel chapter 4.  It is the personal testimony of an ancient king in Babylon whose name was Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
Nebuchadnezzar was quite a guy!  He was evil as the day was long and vicious in his dealings with his enemies. 
 
But when you begin chapter 4 you discover he is addressing the whole world.  We are now about 25 years past the fiery furnace.  Nebuchadnezzar has accomplished what no other had ever done.  He is the first man in history to establish world dominion.
 
In his testimony, he tells about a dream he had that had terrified him.  In this dream he saw a large, flourishing tree covering the world.  It provided habitation and protection and food for all the earth.
 
But a messenger from heaven calls for the tree to be cut down, leaving only a stump.  A fence is built around the stump and grass grows around it and the dew waters it. 
 
We also discover through the dream that the stump is actually picturing a man who loses his mind and winds up living like a wild animal, and the dream is intended to let the world know that ‘The most high rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will and sets over it the lowest of men.”
 
Well the king calls for Daniel to help him understand what the dream means.  Daniel says, “I wish it were about your enemies, but it’s about you and here’s what it means:
 
You’re going to be cut down and nothing but a stump will remain.  You’re not only going to lose your kingdom, you’re going to lose your mind also and wind up living like a wild animal.  But there is some good news.  God is going to restore you to your kingdom one day. 
 
Well, a year goes by.  Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t change a thing.  He’s still in charge of the world.  He’s still worshipping a false god. And one day, while he’s walking around the palace talking to himself about how great he is, a voice from heaven declared that it was time for the dream to become a reality.
 
By the end of the day he was out of the palace and off in the pasture eating grass like a cow.  His body was drenched with dew and for seven years that’s how he lived.  His hair grew long and shaggy; his finger nails and toe nails looked like bird’s claws. 
 
But then one day at the end of the seven years while he was laying there chewing his cud, he raised his eyes toward heaven and his thinking abilities were returned and for the first time in his life, He blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him Who lives forever. 
 
God returned his kingdom and his honor and added to him additional majesty. 
 
What’s the point?  Simply this:  Defy God and you will be judged. And the only hope is to honor Him.
 
In certain areas of Africa, there are huge ant colonies. Some of them are 15 yards long and 20 feet high.  Besides what is above the ground, there are massive subterranean tunnels that go way down into the earth and down in these tunnels is where the young ants are sheltered and that's where the queen is housed. And the queen is in charge of these millions of little insects.
 
 
Now those who study these ants tell us that the workers go out to forage for food in distant places and come back with all the stuff the whole colony needs to eat. What research has discovered is that if some unrest develops in the colony that threatens the queen while the workers are away, they become immediately nervous and agitated and confused. 
 
And what they've concluded is that there's some kind of connection between this one queen and every one of these ants. In fact, if she's killed, they will actually become so frantic that they rush around aimlessly and die out in the field somewhere.
 
Frankly, I can't think of a better parallel to what we've seen in Romans 1. When man loses his connection to God, all sense of orientation is lost and he winds up in a mad frenzy that will ultimately end in death.
 
And the only hope is for the connection to be re-established.  We’ve rejected God and the only solution is to return to God by honoring His Son, the only Savior, the only hope.  People talk about hope and change. There’s only one hope--that’s Christ.
And there’s only one change--that’s salvation. 
Otherwise nothing changes and there’s no hope.
 
If our nation will turn back to the creator and the law-giver who is the true God and submit to His Word, He will bless us. If not, the wrath will continue to unfold.
 
Now what’s true for America is true for you personally as well. . .
 
Let’s pray