This week, our Decency Minute writers were all on the same page.
As the political season begins to warm up, one of our nation’s besetting sins becomes more and more evident. Psalm 121 asks, “From where does my help come?” If our answer is a political office or department or candidate, rather than “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth,” we have an idol! No matter what American Christians might say with our mouths, our political decisions reveal what we truly believe.
This is a temptation for all of us in a “democratic” form of government, this belief that our choosing the right political leader could solve all of the nations’ problems. Let us instead pray for our leaders, whoever they are, knowing that “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”
When the time comes, vote. In the meantime, let’s worship and serve the One who’s actually in control down here.
We hope you’re blessed by the scripts from this week’s Decency Minute radio program. You can click on the title to hear them as recorded by Bill Johnson. We’d be grateful if you were to share them with your friends!
Americans think we’re too smart for that idol worship of old, but we mustn’t think idolatry is the worship of statues. John Oswalt teaches that “Idolatry is: The attempt to gain control over the forces of this psycho-socio-physical cosmos so as to provide my needs for myself.”
Like the Israelites of Hosea’s time, described in chapter two, many try to exercise their control over the “forces” of nature and government by going “after my lovers who give me my food, and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil, and my drink.”
God said that since Israel didn’t know their blessings came from Him, He’d take those blessings back, leaving her destitute and exposed.
America, like Israel, is chasing after “lovers” instead of God; poverty will, then, be our reward.
Trust God to decide your needs and to fulfill them in His time.
When politics becomes an idol.
We are living in an age of political idolatry.
We look to a specific candidate to solve our nation’s problems. Both those on the left and on the right have made politics a religion; wrongfully putting our hope in rulers instead of the One who rules and overrules, who removes and sets up kings. When we make politicians our idols, God says in Judges: “Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!”
Will we ignore and rationalize it when our favorite politicians betray conservative values? Recently, Lauren Boebert has been engaged in public sin and Donald Trump has betrayed pro-life principles, calling heartbeat bills terrible.
As commentator Steve Deace stated: “Will we water down the Word of God for political expediency and power or will we stay faithful to it and call sinners to repentance?”
When King Solomon dedicated his temple, he prayed this beautiful benediction over the people of Israel:
“May the Lord maintain the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.”
This prayer is all the more appropriate for the temple Christ established – His church. We have surety that our prayers are as near to the Lord Our God as His Son, our Intercessor, seated at His right hand.
Let us therefore take Solomon’s words to heart and let our hearts be true to the Lord our God, and may all the earth know that the Lord is God; there is no other.
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